I have conflicted feelings about this book. On the one hand, it's so good. The writing is gorgeous and Greenwood tells the story so well. There are a lot of different narrators and usually that can trip me up a bit, but in this book it worked so well. Everyone had their place in the story and fit in so well that I never felt like I was struggling to keep up. I would highly recommend this.

I cried so hard at the end. I love when books can make me cry so hard that I literally have to stop reading for a minute. I want to feel that level of emotion.

On the other, and this is where it gets a little complicated for me, this book made me feel bad. I don't know why. I frequently read books about sad topics, and in general I prefer it. Happy fluffy books don't hit me emotionally in the same way so I seek out sad books. I knew the Sally Horner story going in, so it's not like that surprised me. And like I said above, I love when books make me cry. But something about this book just hit me wrong and made me feel bad in a way that I didn't enjoy and have never experienced before. It almost left kind of a bad taste in my mouth, and I don't understand why. It wasn't just the topic. I genuinely don't have the words for why and I hate that so much.

The one thing I can talk about that I didn't enjoy was the level of coincidence in this book. It seemed like this book was full of overly convenient coincidences. Her brother in law goes looking for her in Baltimore after she's been kidnapped and just happens in the same convenience store she was in earlier, but forgets to ask if anyone recognizes her. A woman in a circus offers to let Sally run away with them the next day, but then for unrelated reasons they have to pack up in the middle of the night. Sally decides to ask for help from her neighbor, but the neighbor winds up moving out literally that same day. It wasn't that one of these instances bothered me, but there were so many that it continuously felt too convenient and gave the book a sense of unreality.

This was highly worth reading, though. I thought Greenwood's writing style was lovely. All of her characters had so much depth and fully fleshed out this whole story. It was absolutely fantastic and if you can handle such a difficult topic, I think you should give this a go. It's such a well written book.

I read most of this book in 2020, came back a year and a half later and finished the last 120 pages so my thoughts are not great. If I'd read it all together, I could cohesively discuss why I hated this book so much, but I cannot.

The 80s references bugged me. I don't mind it in theory, but they only existed to exist. Like the whole point of the reference was just "hey this thing existed" and that was most of the book. If it had happened less, it wouldn't have bugged me so much and if they had any purpose they wouldn't have bugged me. But just constantly bringing up stuff for the sake of bringing it up annoyed me to no end.

I thought the way Wade treated Art3mis was really gross and weird and creepy, and I don't like the narration seems to justify it. And then it's okay because he thinks she's hot. Like she explicitly tells him multiple times she's uncomfortable with various things, and then he pushes it anyway. And it felt like it was never appropriately called out. Like at the end of the day, he was in right. Even though the way he treated her was gross.

I'm sure there was more, but I don't remember. If I'd cared about this book more, I would have gone back and reread the beginning after such a long hiatus, but experiencing it once was plenty. I just wanted to finish it. It's very popular so I'm in the minority here and you should probably just ignore my thoughts and form your own opinion.

I struggled with this book a lot in terms of the writing style. I actually dnfed it a few years back and only just now convinced myself to return and finish it. It just bored me a lot. There was so much going on, so many unresolved plot threads, that it felt messy.

I was also uncomfortable with how closely this book resembled a real serial killer. I'm from the area where this book was set and it is very obviously based on Timothy Spencer, the serial killer who raped and strangled four women just a few years before this book was released. That comparison alone wouldn't have bothered me so much, but one of the victims in this book is almost exactly the same as one of his real victims, down to the last detail. Just about the only thing changed was the name. It was so unnecessary and it felt disrespectful. She took liberties with the rest of the case, I'm not sure why that one victim needed to be the same.

A big detail at the end of the case also hinges on the fact that a black female victim, in the main character's words, didn't sound "black." There's a whole conversation where she misidentifies the woman's sister and has her clarify that she's black because she just sounds so gosh darned white on the phone. Which is super racist and never really acknowledged.

And then one of the characters is a literal rapist and it's just never really acknowledged? I kept expecting that to go somewhere, but it didn't. Everyone just kind of moved on, including his victim. Like I'm not sure what it had to do with anything in the book, but no one even seemed all that upset by the revelation.

I wasn't really impressed by this. Nothing about it added up for me. I have a later Kay Scarpetta book and I'm curious to see how Cornwell's style changes. Sometimes I find I don't like authors' debuts, but I like them a bit later on. I didn't hate this book, but I am very interested in the series since I'm from RVA as well, so I hope it improves for me.

To be honest, I was thinking this might be one stars for the first couple of stories. There are six in total and I truly hated the first three. They offered nothing in terms of story, character development, world building, or any real purpose. I'm not sure why they existed to be read. Getting through them was such a slog. The last three, while I still didn't enjoy, I did understand why I was reading them. There were some themes or development of worlds that mattered in the larger scheme of the books. So at least there was that.

I didn't like his writing style at all. So many of these stories were just dialogue. Like most of the book was dialogue. And then occasionally there'd be a little narration limited to describing fights. But then right back to the dialogue. I cannot fathom why you'd choose to tell a story that way and why so many people enjoy that writing style. It was indescribably boring.

It was also really sexist. Every single female character, with potentially the exception of Ciri, was treated as an object, both by the characters and by the storytelling. I genuinely don't know when I've read anything so sexist. Maybe never. Like I was warned going in about the sexism, but it was really bad. Two characters didn't speak, weren't even addressed by their real names, and were passed around for sex. One was introduced by describing her breasts. One was fought over repeatedly. None of them were allowed any agency.

I'm planning to continue on and try the first novel to see how that compares to the short stories, but I'm not a fan of these books. I don't understand what people are getting out of them. The one person I talked to basically validated all of my negative points, but said he really enjoyed the game and that was where a lot of his enjoyment of the books stemmed from, so perhaps that's it. But I wouldn't personally recommend them.

I had a bad day so I wanted to pick up a comfort read (YA realistic fiction) and a book I knew I'd like (THUG was fantastic), so I ditched everything I was reading for two days to pick up Concrete Rose. It did not disappoint. This book is so great. It's one of those books I don't even know how to review because everything about it was so good.

The characters were great. I loved Mav's character and his inner struggles. His growth as a person was so well done. I loved the development of his relationships with other characters, and how they all existed separate to him. Like their lives continued offscreen and they had motivations Mav wasn't privy to, but they all made sense as full people.

Thomas's writing style was great. I think it may have been even better than in THUG, which was already so incredibly well done. It flowed so well. I kept sneaking little snippets of reading at work because I didn't want to put the book down.

One thing I really enjoyed was that despite this book being a prequel, it could have existed as a standalone. Like this book works without having THUG as context. It doesn't rely on the connection between the two to tell a good story. It works on its own merits and seems more happenstance than anything that the two are connected.

Like I dunno. It was good. It was so good. How do you review something that's just so good in every way? If you like coming of age realistic fiction, you should probably read this and THUG because Angie Thomas is great.

This book had a lot of interesting information and was very worthwhile to read. Like I'm so glad I picked it up and got through the whole thing. But it was very dry. The author is an academic and it shows. I'm really not used to reading any kind of academic writings, so even though I read a lot of nonfiction, this was a struggle for me. I liked receiving all the information, but because of the fact based nature of it (so many dates, names, locations, numbers, etc) and the dryness of the writing itself, I struggled to keep my focus.

So I'm also struggling quite a bit in this review because I didn't comprehend it or retain the information as well as I would have liked. I'd recommend this if you're interested in the subject matter, though. Well worth the read, even if it was a bit dense for my capabilities.

This is the first thriller that's ever made me cry, so there's that.

I honestly was going to give this book a three star rating because while it was good, I wasn't all that excited to read it. I do much prefer Slaughter's cop thrillers. Her psychological thrillers feel second tier to me (although second tier Slaughter is still better than just about any other thriller author I've read). Reading it felt almost a little meh, despite the great writing and well developed story and characters.

But the further it went, the more I cared. The more real the characters felt. The more human they all were. I love when characters feelso much like real people that you can't help but to connect to them and feel your pain.

Something I really loved about this book was that Slaughter toned down the horror. I feel like some of her books have a tendency to go over the top and feel ridiculous and unreal (Pretty Girls is the obvious comparison,but I think her over the top violence works better in the cop thrillers), but here she kept it real. I bought into everything that was happening. I felt for the characters because she didn't desensitize me. Because she kept that sense of reality, everything that happened hit me really hard and I loved that.

This book is by far my favorite of Slaughter's psychological thrillers. It doesn't rely on plot twists or unraveling mysteries. Instead it's about the characters themselves and it allows them to drive the book, and the characters are so fantastic.

I'd highly recommend this if you like psychological thrillers or have been wanting to try Slaughter. It's great. She definitely stands as my favorite thriller author.


A note for people who may be concerned about animal abuse: One of the main characters works as a vet tech and has a beloved cat,

Spoiler

but it's totally fine no animals are harmed. I spent a great deal of this book waiting for something bad to happen. I generally do not trust thrillers with animals, so I figured I'd spare someone else the stress I felt.

I'm going to be honest, I was all ready to give this book four stars. It's really. It has a few flaws, but it's definitely worth reading if you're interested in journalism, first amendment trials, or prison reform (all somewhat outdated since this book is more than thirty years old, but still worth it). But the longer I read, the more I enjoyed it. I love this kind of thing. I love the topics. The writing, both by Dannie Martin and Peter Sussman, is fantastic. It's just so good and it kept getting better, and I can't deny that this was a full five stars for me.

Some brief flaws. This book glosses over the actual trial a lot. The time period of the trial is only about 35 pages of the book, and most of that is just what Dannie's going through. Apart from a few quotes, Sussman references there's a lot of discussion on abstract constitutional law happening and that's pretty much it. I wish there'd been more concrete information because I really enjoy law cases like that.

I was also a bit taken aback that Martin didn't have a voice in this book outside of his essays. The book is written entirely from Sussman's perspective and he includes a great number of Martin's essay that had been published (and at least one that wasn't), but in the narration, Martin has no voice. I really expected to hear from him some.

But on a whole, I just loved this. It took me an entire week to read because I was savoring it. I'd read a little and want to put it down so I could reflect on what I read. It was just like the perfect book for me.

I genuinely felt every aspect of this book was fascinating. I loved hearing about the behind the scenes of the paper and how Martin's articles came to be published. I loved hearing the behind the scenes about how his articles were written. I loved hearing about his general life, what prison was like for him and his inner thoughts. I loved getting details of the retaliation he experienced at the hands of prison officials because of his journalism. I loved the court case. It was all so fascinating.

There was a lot of discussion on prison reform. Outdated a bit, sure, but still entirely relevant today. He discusses overcrowding and healthcare, which are obvious to people on the outside, but he also discusses the bureaucracy they deal with on a regular basis, the rules that make no sense and change with each prison employee. It's all such worthwhile information and even beyond that, he's a great writer and shares the information so well.

I don't even know how to properly explain my enjoyment of this book. Just fantastic in every way. I expected to enjoy this, but I didn't expect how much. This is a book I could definitely see myself rereading in the future, and I don't often reread books like this.

I would recommend this, but I think you'd have to be pretty interested in journalism to really find this worthwhile. There are better and more timely books on prison reform, and more detailed books on first amendment law cases, but the bulk of this book really is about journalism. I think it's fantastic, though. So well written and compiled. One of the best books I've read so far this year.

Now was perhaps not the ideal time to be reading The Scarlet Letter. Roe v Wade was overturned in the middle of it and I think this book felt a little too on the nose, which definitely affected my experience. It was possibly a lot more raw emotionally than it would have been at another time, and I wish I'd read it a week earlier.

But I did thoroughly enjoy this. I understand why this is assigned to a lot of high school classes (including mine, but I opted to skate by writing absolute nonsense based on thirty seconds of googling and class discussions). There's so much to discuss in terms of themes and characters and author intent.

One really interesting thing that I hadn't known (or possibly just hadn't bothered thinking about) is that this book is historical fiction. It's set around 1650 and published in 1850, which means we're closer to Hawthorne writing this book than he was to the setting. He seems very critical of the puritans, and their treatment of Hester.

But to review this book as a book and not just discuss it like I would in a class, it was great. It was actually a really easy read and I never had trouble following the characters or their motivations. There are really only four that matter and they're all really well fleshed out.

This is a really slow book, and I adore that. I do love when nothing happens for a hundred pages and it's all just buildup. The buildup was so intense. You feel Hester's struggle and her acceptance of her fate. There are men involved in her struggle, but it's really focused on Hester alone. They're kind of inconsequential to a degree.

One thing I struggled with a lot was Hawthorne's introduction, The Custom House. It was so dry and boring and unnecessary to the story and 40 pages long. I genuinely wonder how many people hate The Scarlet Letter because they were forced to read it school and gave up during The Custom House in favor of sparknotes. I can't blame them. If I ever reread this, I'll just be skipping straight to chapter one because it added nothing for me.

It's also a bit short. I found myself wish it was a bit longer and more fleshed out. It just seemed like a little more time and space for the characters to grow would have allowed for a fuller story.

Overall, I'd highly recommend this. I know it's kind of unpopular in terms of classic, but there's so much discussion on womanhood (albeit from a male author two hundred years ago) and so much discussion on society policing morality that is fascinating. This makes me want to read more Hawthorne. The story is great and the commentary is even better. And if you are struggling with The Custom House, try skipping to chapter one and see if you like that better.

I'm choosing not to rate this. I don't read much poetry and don't feel comfortable rating something I didn't understand, because at the end of the day, I really did not understand 90% of what I read here. There were a few poems in this book that hit me really emotionally, but for the most part I just didn't understand the point.

I'm really interested in trying his novel and seeing if Vuong's prose works better for me than his poetry, but I'm still very early in my poetry journey so I'm not going to try to judge something that went over my head. While I didn't dislike it, my enjoyment level was fairly low, but one of the poems almost made me cry so perhaps it evens out.