Mystery Book Review - The Light We Lost by Kyla Stone

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆

Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆

Overall: ⭐⭐

From the cover:

"When all lights fail, will you survive? A catastrophic solar flare strikes Earth, plunging half the planet into darkness. Amid the chaos, thirteen-year-old Shiloh awakens to a nightmare: a dead body beside her, her brother missing, and no recollection of what happened.

As she desperately searches for her brother, a killer is hot on her trail, determined to silence the only witness to the brutal crime.

Undersheriff Jackson Cross races against time to catch the killer and save an innocent girl. But the more he uncovers, the deeper he is drawn into a dangerous darkness that threatens to consume him.

With law and order crumbling around him, Jackson's only hope may lie with Eli Pope, a ruthless ex-convict just released from prison. But Eli has a score to settle - he's hellbent on vengeance against the very sheriff who put him behind bars.

With the world on the brink of destruction, the stakes have never been higher. As the killer closes in on Shiloh and her missing brother, they must navigate the devastation to stay alive."

March Mystery Book review - Fable for the End of the World by Ava Reid

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆

Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆

Overall: ⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"By encouraging massive accumulations of debt from its underclass, a single corporation, Caerus, controls all aspects of society.

Inesa lives with her brother in a half-sunken town where they scrape by running a taxidermy shop. Unbeknownst to her, their cruel and indolent mother has accrued an enormous debt - enough to qualify one of her children for Caerus's livestreamed assassination spectacle: the Lamb's Gauntlet.

Melinoe is a Caerus assassin, trained to track and kill the sacrificial Lambs. The product of neural reconditioning and physiological alteration, she is a living weapon, known for her cold brutality and deadly beauty. She has never failed to assassinate one of her marks.

When Inesa learns that her mother has offered her as a sacrifice, at first she despairs -  the Gauntlet is always a bloodbath for the impoverished debtors. But she's had years of practice surviving in the apocalyptic wastes, and with the help of her hunter brother, she might stand a chance of staying alive.

For Melinoe, this is a game she can't afford to lose. Despite her reputation for mercilessness, she is haunted by painful flashbacks. After her last Gauntlet, where she broke down on livestream, she desperately needs redemption.

As Mel pursues Inesa across the wasteland, both girls begin to question everything: Inesa wonders if there's more to life than survival, while Mel wonders if she's capable of more than killing. And both wonder if, against all odds, they might be falling in love."

📚📚📚 

Ohhhh, I hate Inesa's mom so much. She straight up sucks so bad, there's no nuance to it at all. Beyond my hatred for her, my feelings about this book are thoroughly middle of the road. The idea behind the world is intriguing, but from the jump I had questions - like, people can rack up a bunch of debt and then nominate seemingly anyone to take their place in a gauntlet? Unless I missed something, it seemed like that was the case, although maybe it's just people you're related to. Either way, though, it seems a little too free-for-all to be like yeah, you get into huge debt and then you can just pick a name to nominate. I know this premise is so that Inesa will end up in the Gauntlet, but it just doesn't feel justified. Give me like...her mom somehow tricked her and got her to cosign as an account holder or something, you know?

Beyond that, everything just feels one-dimensional. They drip information about the creation of the Angels program, but I don't think it's enough. Inesa, Luka, their mom, and the few people we're introduced to in town all fall flat and, in Inesa's case, it didn't seem like she was fully developed and things about her sort of flip flop depending on what the scene calls for. I'm a little more forgiving of the inconsistencies with Melinoe, since part of her whole thing is that Caerus wipes the Angels' memories and does all kinds of shit to them, but with her as well it was like...the Angels are augmented super killing machines, but then Luka hits her with a glancing shot and she has to stop for hours to regroup, and then she takes a stimulant, gets hit in the head, and is completely destroyed after. Unstoppable killing machine, unless she's in a Gauntlet for more than an hour, I guess, or she gets bonked on the head extra hard.

Next, let's talk about the romance. It was forced, and that's an understatement. Inesa is on the run from the Angel that she knows murdered a CHILD in her village. This Angel is actively trying to murder her. Yet in her first encounter with Melinoe she's so frozen by her gaze that she wonders if she was hypnotized and then when she and Luka are regrouping afterward she's reflecting on how she just doesn't have it in her to hate the Angel. It doesn't take long for her to be thinking about how beautiful she is. Same with Melinoe - her whole existence as she knows it depends on her murdering this stranger, it's her job, she's not only been conditioned to think this is okay, she knows that if she fails she's going to be turned into a mindless sex slave for some rich asshole, and yet the entire chase she's like "wow, she's so pretty." Just...really doesn't work for me, man. It's a steep mountain to climb already, but there was just zero effort to even try to make it plausible.

And finally, the Gauntlet itself...so little actually happens, and there's a bunch of stuff with the cameras that is so weird and, again, unearned and contrived, and it doesn't make sense. I'm really trying to not post open spoilers, but it's like fake out after fake out after nonsense fakeout, and then at the end of the book I was like wow, there is ZERO payoff to any of this. Deeply unsatisfying. I gave the book three stars because a. I didn't DNF and b. I did find the first probably third or so of it okay enough, but overall it was a frustrating reading experience.

Pacifica - Kristen Simmons

Initial draw: ✰✰✰✰
Character development: ✰✰
Plot/Writing style: ✰✰✰

Audiobook narration: ✰✰✰
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"For too long our people have suffered, plagued by overcrowding, disease, and lack of work. We have only just survived for too long. Now we must take the next step and thrive. Pacifica. A new beginning. Blue skies. Green grass. Clear ocean water. An island paradise like the ones that existed before the Melt. 

A lucky five hundred lottery winners will be the first to go, the first to leave their polluted, dilapidated homes behind and start a new life. It sounds perfect. Like a dream. The only problem? Marin Carey spent her childhood on those seas and knows there's no island paradise out there. She's corsario royalty, a pirate like her father and his father before him, and she knows a con when she sees one. So where are the First Five Hundred really going?"

I wanted really badly to love this book. The premise is interesting and very relevant right now, there's an introduction from the author that talks about her inspiration for the story being the internment of Japanese Americans in the United States, and I went into it expecting to be blown away. Then I spent about three quarters of the book trying to force myself to get into it. And finally, I gave up. I can't put my finger on what exactly it is about the book that didn't do it for me - more than anything, it just felt like a story that didn't quite know what to do with itself or where it wanted to go. Even when it comes to a synopsis, there doesn't seem to be a consensus, because there's the synopsis I included above, and then there's this alternate synopsis from Goodreads:

"Marin is corsario royalty, a pirate like her father and his father before him. Sailing the ocean to chase adventure is in her blood. But these days no one cares that the island town her people call home is named after her grandfather. They have a new leader, one who promises an end to their hunger – and one who thinks that girls are meant for the kitchen or the brothel. Marin knows she's meant for more than that, and with the sudden influx of weapons on the island, and rumors of a pending deal with the enemy oil nation in her wake, she knows a big score to gain the council's favor is the only way to save her people, and herself.

Ross lives a life of privilege. As the president's son he wants for nothing, but he longs for a life of adventure. On a dare, he convinces his best friend Adam to sneak out to the Docks, the site of local race riots between the poor Shorlings and the upper class. But when Adam is arrested along with the other Shorlings, and not even the president is willing to find him, Ross finds himself taking matters into his own hands. He journeys back into the Docks, ready to make deals with anyone, even a beautiful pirate, if it means Adam's safe return.

When Marin and Ross meet in dangerous Shoreling territory he sees a way to get his friend back and she sees her ticket home. The ransom a president’s son would command could feed her people for years and restore her family’s legacy. But somewhere in the middle of the ocean, Marin must decide if her heart can handle handing over the only person who has ever seen her as more than a pirate."

So...is this book about people being disappeared to a mysterious island that doesn't actually exist? Or is it about Marin finding a place with the corsarios and Ross tracking down his friend? This is a genuine question, because I read a lot of this book and I am still not sure, and I'm not convinced that Kristen Simmons knew for sure either. The plot, like these dueling synopses, was scattered, and that made it hard to nail down the driving action and actually care about anything that was going on. The characters suffered a similar fate - it wasn't clear what they were actually working toward from one moment to the next, and at times I felt a little bit like I had started reading in the middle of the book because there's so little development. Either synopsis would have made a great story, but both of them together was too muddled for me. Which is a bummer, because who doesn't want to read a dystopian novel about a badass woman pirate?

Guest Review - The Grace Year

This week I've got a special guest here to share her thoughts on The Grace Year by Kim Liggett. Just in case my review was not enough to convince you to give it a shot, my sister Molly Whoremon (friends call her Whore) dropped by to provide a second opinion.

From the cover (for anyone who needs a refresher):

"No one speaks of the grace year. It’s forbidden.

In Garner County, girls are told they have the power to lure grown men from their beds, to drive women mad with jealousy. They believe their very skin emits a powerful aphrodisiac, the potent essence of youth, of a girl on the edge of womanhood. That’s why they’re banished for their sixteenth year, to release their magic into the wild so they can return purified and ready for marriage. But not all of them will make it home alive.

Sixteen-year-old Tierney James dreams of a better life—a society that doesn’t pit friend against friend or woman against woman, but as her own grace year draws near, she quickly realizes that it’s not just the brutal elements they must fear. It’s not even the poachers in the woods, men who are waiting for a chance to grab one of the girls in order to make a fortune on the black market. Their greatest threat may very well be each other.

With sharp prose and gritty realism, The Grace Year examines the complex and sometimes twisted relationships between girls, the women they eventually become, and the difficult decisions they make in-between."

💬    💬    💬

I honestly do not know how to even begin to review this book. I don't read synopses for books so I never really know what to expect, but as I made my way through this book it felt like a totally different experience than other books.

It's such a chilling tale of oppression, heartbreak, misunderstanding, love, fear, realization, and so many other emotions. I don't think I've ever been so moved and truly connected to a story before. I felt every emotion of the main character, Tierney, as she did and was briefly a part of her journey through this book.

I know this really doesn't explain what the book was about at all. I don't think I could ever do it justice. I will say though that nothing is ever what it truly seems. 🖤

10/10 would recommend.

The Grace Year - Kim Liggett

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"In Garner County, girls are told they have the power to lure grown men from their beds, to drive women mad with jealousy. They believe their very skin emits a powerful aphrodisiac, the potent essence of youth, of a girl on the edge of womanhood. That's why they're banished for their sixteenth year, to release their magic into the wild so they can return purified and ready for marriage.

But not all of them will make it home alive.

Sixteen-year-old Tierney James dreams of a better life -  a society that doesn't pit friend against friend or woman against woman - but as her own grace year draws near, she quickly realizes that it's not just the brutal elements they must fear. It's not even the poachers in the woods, men who are waiting for a chance to grab one of the girls in order to make a fortune on the black market. Their greatest threat may very well be each other.

With sharp gritty prose, The Grace Year is a story of survival and freedom, about fighting for what's right, no matter the cost, and finding home in the darkest of circumstances."

This book would be a great book to take camping, because it is intense.

Bahahahaha in tents. Get it?

Getting started, I got major Hunger Games/Handmaid's Tale vibes. Like if books could reproduce, this would be their baby. I loved both those books, so in my opinion that's a good thing. But if you hated either/both of them...consider yourself warned.

It takes a bit to establish the world, but before I could really even wrap my head around everything, it was off to the races. There were so many gut-punch moments, and just as many times where I got my hopes up only to have them smashed again. As the mystery of what happens during the grace year unfolded, I found myself reading on the edge of my seat, struggling to close the book anytime I needed to step away from reading and deal with real life. 

"In the county, everything they take away from us is a tiny death. But not here...the grace year is ours. This is the one place we can be free."

It is a mark of how terrible life in the county is that in spite of threat to life and limb, the grace year is still viewed as an opportunity for freedom. I mean sure, you literally might die, but at least there are no men to boss you around, treat you like shit, and abuse you. I think that realization was all the more powerful for me because of how often I saw my world in the pages of this book. It's dystopia...but it's real. The best (worst?) dystopias are, right?

This book was a roller coaster, equal parts inspirational and heartbreaking. You'll be thinking about it long after you read the last page.

Unearthed - Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"When Earth intercepts a message from a long-extinct alien race, it seems like the solution the planet has been waiting for. The Undying's advanced technology has the potential to undo environmental damage and turn lives around, and Gaia, their former home planet, is a treasure trove waiting to be uncovered.

For Jules Addison and his fellow scholars, the discovery of an alien culture offers unprecedented opportunity for study... as long as scavengers like Amelia Radcliffe don't loot everything first. Mia and Jules' different reasons for smuggling themselves onto Gaia put them immediately at odds, but after escaping a dangerous confrontation with other scavvers, they form a fragile alliance.

In order to penetrate the Undying temple and reach the tech and information hidden within, the two must decode the ancient race's secrets and survive their traps. But the more they learn about the Undying, the more their presence in the temple seems to be part of a grand design that could spell the end of the human race..."

Now this is how you do a gradual build-up to big reveals! Amelia and Jules end up thrown together on a strange, hostile planet, working together to navigate their way through a dangerous Undying temple to the secrets within. At first glance, the two couldn't have less in common...Amelia is an orphan who makes a living stealing, scavenging, and doing what she has to in order to survive, on the planet to steal enough alien technology to purchase her younger sister's freedom from a seedy nightclub. Jules is an Oxford-educated genius raised around the kind of opulence people like Amelia couldn't even begin to imagine, come to Gaia to study the secrets and knowledge left behind by the mysterious Undying. As they struggle their way across the planet's surface and begin to work their way past the challenges of the Undying temple, though, they begin to discover that they have more in common than first believed...and that they may have gotten themselves involved in something much more dangerous and insidious than they might first have imagined.

This story hooked me right away, and it had me dying to find out what happened next all the way up to the last page. Amelia and Jules are such easy characters to root for, I was on the edge of my seat over every danger they faced. I'm still a little in shock over the ending, and I don't know if I can wait until December for the next book. I guess it's a good thing I've got plenty of reading to keep me occupied while I wait.

Starflight - Melissa Landers

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Life in the outer realm is a lawless, dirty, hard existence, and Solara Brooks is hungry for it. Just out of the orphanage, she needs a fresh start in a place where nobody cares about the engine grease beneath her fingernails or the felony tattoos across her knuckles. She's so desperate to reach the realm that she's willing to indenture herself to Doran Spaulding, the rich and popular quarterback who made her life miserable all through high school, in exchange for passage aboard the spaceliner Zenith.

When a twist of fate lands them instead on the Banshee, a vessel of dubious repute, Doran learns he's been framed on Earth for conspiracy. As he pursues a set of mysterious coordinates rumored to hold the key to clearing his name, he and Solara must get past their enmity to work together and evade those out for their arrest. Life on the Banshee may be tumultuous, but as Solara and Doran are forced to question everything they once believed about their world—and each other—the ship becomes home, and the eccentric crew family. But what Solara and Doran discover on the mysterious Planet X has the power to not only alter their lives, but the existence of everyone in the universe..."

Great read! Solara and Doran have hated each other since high school, but after they find themselves passengers aboard the Banshee, their close quarters force them to call a ceasefire. They form an uneasy truce, but life on the Banshee isn't always smooth sailing. Will their fledgling friendship survive assassins, pirates, and whatever secret they'll discover on the mysterious planet Doran's coordinates lead them to? More importantly...will they?

Champion - Marie Lu

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"He is a Legend.

She is a Prodigy.

Who will be Champion? 

June and Day have sacrificed so much for the people of the Republic—and each other—and now their country is on the brink of a new existence. June is back in the good graces of the Republic, working within the government’s elite circles as Princeps-Elect, while Day has been assigned a high-level military position. 

But neither could have predicted the circumstances that will reunite them: just when a peace treaty is imminent, a plague outbreak causes panic in the Colonies, and war threatens the Republic’s border cities. This new strain of plague is deadlier than ever, and June is the only one who knows the key to her country’s defense. But saving the lives of thousands will mean asking the one she loves to give up everything. 

With heart-pounding action and suspense, Marie Lu’s bestselling trilogy draws to a stunning conclusion."

Talk about a roller coaster conclusion to this trilogy. The number of times that I yelled, "what the fuck?!" while in my car listening to this was ridiculous. Good god, what an end for this trilogy. I think by now I've made pretty clear that the action in these books is nonstop and awesome...still true. What's more, the ending was, dare I say it...perfect? The closer I got to the last few chapters, the more worried I got that it was going to wrap up in an overly simple way, something either crazy sad and predictable or too happy-ending predictably. But the ending......I didn't see it coming, and I loved everything about it. Beautiful end for an incredible trilogy.

Orleans - Sherri L. Smith

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"After a string of devastating hurricanes and a severe outbreak of Delta Fever, the Gulf Coast has been quarantined. Years later, residents of the Outer States are under the assumption that life in the Delta is all but extinct… but in reality, a new primitive society has been born.

Fen de la Guerre is living with the O-Positive blood tribe in the Delta when they are ambushed. Left with her tribe leader’s newborn, Fen is determined to get the baby to a better life over the wall before her blood becomes tainted. Fen meets Daniel, a scientist from the Outer States who has snuck into the Delta illegally. Brought together by chance, kept together by danger, Fen and Daniel navigate the wasteland of Orleans. In the end, they are each other’s last hope for survival.

Sherri L. Smith delivers an expertly crafted story about a fierce heroine whose powerful voice and firm determination will stay with you long after you’ve turned the last page."

What happens when you replace racial differences with differences in blood? Blood type becomes just another thing that drives people apart. This book is something else. From the first page, it's intense and heart-wrenching. A lot of dystopia is set in places I'm familiar with, but most of the time those places have become unrecognizable. In this case, there was something about the ways Orleans had stayed the same that made the post-fever world feel like it was really happening. Reading descriptions of places like the Superdome especially got me. It made everything seem so chillingly realistic. What's more, in the current political climate, it really hit hard that the tribes were basically waging war with each other because of something as trivial and out of people's control as blood type. I wish that idea felt more farfetched than it does, but it truly drives home that any difference can be used as a wedge to separate people and spur them to hatred.

Prodigy - Marie Lu

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Injured and on the run, it has been seven days since June and Day barely escaped Los Angeles and the Republic with their lives. Day is believed dead having lost his own brother to an execution squad who thought they were assassinating him. June is now the Republic's most wanted traitor. Desperate for help, they turn to the Patriots - a vigilante rebel group sworn to bring down the Republic. But can they trust them or have they unwittingly become pawns in the most terrifying of political games?"

June and Day have escaped Los Angeles, but Day is severely injured and the pair need help. They've put their trust in the Patriots, but something about the group's operation doesn't sit right with June.  Was she right to trade their assistance in the Patriots' latest plot against the Republic for a surgery that would save Day's leg? Or will the two ultimately find themselves in more trouble than they would have been without the Patriots' help? Just like Legend, this book is action-packed. It pulls you in immediately and keeps you hooked through the last page. 

Legend - Marie Lu

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Legend, Marie Lu's debut novel, came out in 2011, and I can't believe it took me this long to read it. From the cover:

"What was once the western United States is now home to the Republic, a nation perpetually at war with its neighbors. Born into an elite family in one of the Republic's wealthiest districts, fifteen-year-old June is a prodigy being groomed for success in the Republic's highest military circles. Born into the slums, fifteen-year-old Day is the country's most wanted criminal. But his motives may not be as malicious as they seem.

From very different worlds, June and Day have no reason to cross paths—until the day June's brother, Metias, is murdered and Day becomes the prime suspect. Caught in the ultimate game of cat and mouse, Day is in a race for his family's survival, while June seeks to avenge Metias's death. But in a shocking turn of events, the two uncover the truth of what has really brought them together, and the sinister lengths their country will go to keep its secrets."

This was my second Marie Lu book, and I enjoyed it so much more than Warcross. I legitimately could not put it down...finished it in less than 24 hours. This pretty much cements my opinion that if the first half of Warcross had been more concise, I would have enjoyed it more, because hot damn, Legend was action-packed from the first page, and I loved every second of it. Day and June both have such compelling stories, and the mystery surrounding how their paths diverged even though they are both so similar has me dying to get my hands on the next book! I can't recommend this book enough to fans of dystopia.