Winter Crane is a small-town girl who dreams of escaping her small town and becoming a doctor. She spends her days hiding out from her abusive father, tutoring kids to collect money for college, and working at the local doctor's office to gain some experience before she runs off to med school. Winter's relatively simple life is turned upside down when she rescues a city boy she finds in the woods, only to become a object of interest to the man who was stalking him.

When I saw that Kelley Armstrong has a mystery novel out, I was pretty psyched. I really liked her Darkest Powers and Darkness Rising trilogies. I even enjoyed most of her adult PNR novellas. I loved her slow-build narrative, and her slow burn romances. I loved how her stories were thought out, and intricately weaved.

Like most novels that have pissed me off lately, Missing falls into the Telling-Not-Showing trap very, very often. Winter Crane spends her entire time breaking every thing down for us, and voicing her every thought, I just felt like I was reading the transcripts to a bad mystery documentary. It felt like Ms. Armstrong couldn't decide what kind of character she wanted Winter to be. Winter went from mind-numbingly stupid

(see: crawling into an underground bunker alone when being chased by a murderous psychopath)

, to a super-sleuth

(see:finding FIBERS from cloth used to pad rope used to hang a corpse with??? Are you kidding me with this shit?)

in the space of just a few paragraphs. It was disorienting.

Also, a lot of information we were given about Winter seemed pointless. Her ability to use a bow and arrows, for instance. Apart from the moment this skill is introduced, and one inconsequential moment after that, SHE NEVER USES IT. Instead, she opts to carry a switchblade and a knife that she doesn't know how to use. Which, to be fair, was her being practical. It wasn't like she could carry around a bow and arrow, but why tell us about the ability to shoot? Why make it seem important if it's never going to come into play when it really matters??

*shrugs*

The other characters were about as bad as Winter. Lennon was a joke. Two-dimensional and forced-woke. Every time he said something that COULD have been admirable and made him likable had he been written better, I just cringed. Pro-tip for writers everywhere. Woke is good. Just give your character enough personality so that he doesn't come off like a robot who's been commanded to say these things. Like, God.

Jude was probably the only character I ... sorta liked? Tolerated? The character who least made me want to slam my head against a wall? Yes. Let's go with that. But even he felt wooden and two-dimensional - put in place just so that Winter could have a love interest who didn't disappear twenty pages after he'd been introduced.

Missing was also predictable as hell. I figured out the entire plot about a hundred pages in. Yeah, Winter, I watched CSI too, even Miami. And Criminal Minds. You're not the only one who can piece together a few clues. Actually, no. You can't. I mean

when a creepy man corners you in a dark room at a big party and tells you that you aren't like your sister (who you've never mentioned to anyone) why isn't your first thought, "maybe he's the dude who's been stalking me and killing animals and making my life a general shitfest these past few days"??? WHY

All in all, this book was incredibly disappointing. It felt like the mystery and suspense (the little of it there was) was only an excuse to bring Winter and Jude together. Because ultimately that's what this book felt like - a weak romance with a feeble mystery subplot to tacked on to spice things up.

It got an extra star for not being so bad that I had to DNF. But bleh.

I expected more from you, Ms. Armstrong.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley and Crown Books for Young Readers in exchange for an honest review.

THIS REVIEW AND MORE here

Talk about unrealized potential, man

Ida is the story of a bisexual, Vietnamese-Australian girl named, you guessed it, Ida. Ida has no idea what she wants to do with her life, but that's okay, because she's got a little trick up her sleeve that'll help her fix things until she figures it out. You see, she's a time traveler, and can just flip back in time whenever she needs to.

At least, that's what she thinks.

Things are a tiny bit more complicated than Ida thinks they are, and general chaos ensues.

As a book about time travel and alternate universes and timelines, Ida had a LOT of potential to be a great, great book. But, like I said earlier, a lot of this potential went unrealized. The pacing and the writing were incredibly choppy - one minute really damn good, and the next, slow and lackluster. The characters, despite being wonderfully diverse - bisexual, biracial MC; genderfluid established love interest (they/them pronouns); transgender cousin (Frank, for anyone who missed the clue)- weren't given the chance to become whole.

The only character that went through some sort of growth (and not very much) was Ida. And personally, I found her a little hard to root for throughout this entire novel. Maybe if she'd shown some substantial growth by the end of the story? But what growth she did go through was barely even a step in the grand scheme of things.

Even the conflict didn't pack as much of a punch as it could have. Because of the rushed writing and the lack of a build-up of suspense, everything sorta fell flat. If Ida spent less time telling us what clothes she was wearing and what food she was eating and all of the other mundane things she did, and more more time showing us what she was slowly starting to discover and realize, then this would have been a much better book.

Yes, the Show VS. Tell problem. Again.

I usually rip my 2 star books apart. I don't want to do this with Ida because, here's the thing. I enjoyed the book. The premise was, honest to God, amazing. The fact that Evans decided to make it as diverse as it was, was brilliant. With a little more time and editing, and maybe a few extra pages, this could have easily been a four star review. Which is what makes me so mad.

To paint you a clearer picture of how I felt about this book, let me tell you this: I read the author's note at the end, and I think that, as the basis of a short film this story works incredibly well. But as a full length novel about time travelling and alternate universes? It needs a ton of work.

In case you've forgotten, here's reminder #28294: contemporary romance isn't usually my thing. Don't get me wrong, I love a good love story as much as the next rabid shipper (Just look at my Kanej and Dizzie love) but there's only so much of the "boy-meets-girl-and-they-fall-in-love-despite-Problems" schtick I can tolerate, you know?

I'm glad to say that Instructions For A Second-Hand Heart didn't follow this same formula. Not completely, at least.

The book follows Jonny, a teenage boy who's never had a real childhood because he's spent most of his life in hospital due to some severe cardiac issues, and Niamh, a girl whose life gets knocked inside out when her twin brother Leo meets with a fatal accident. Their lives suddenly become entwined when Jonny becomes the lucky patient who receives Leo's heart. (WHAT? That's not a spoiler! READ THE BLURB!)

Anyway, what follows is a series of events that are more or less what you'd expect out of a book like this, but with a few twists. Without going too detailed and (really) spoiling anything for you, here's a breakdown:

THE ROMANCE:
I... wasn't a fan of this, tbh. A lot of the time it felt really forced, in a "I intended this to be a romance, and dammit, it's gonna be a romance" sort of way. Nothing about Niamh and Jonny's relationship, save the Issues they faced in the climax, felt very organic.


THE WRITING:
Decent. I especially liked the way the two POVs were so different from each other. Niamh and Jonny's narrative voices felt completely different from each other - and they way each of them described things was different. I liked that. It could, however, get a teensy bit tell-not-show from time to time - but overall, I liked the writing.

THE PREMISE:
The premise of this book is what actually got me interested in the first place. It sounded like the kind of book that would leave me emotionally compromised for a while. It didn't exactly hit me the way I hoped it would, but the premise was still great. The obsession! The lies! The refusal to deal with emotions! I was here for it all.

Also: I'm going to take this moment to appreciate all the research the author put into this book. Well done.

THE PLOT:
The plot surprised me. I really like the way it dealt with the emotions, the pain and the grief that a situation like this would stir. Especially towards the end, when all the main players sort of... let loose and chose to be honest. That was very well done, and I liked the turn it took there.

I would have preferred if it had ended a little more ambiguously than it did - maybe with Niamh and Jonny considering giving their relationship another chance, instead of magically getting past everything and getting back together. But whatever

THE CHARACTERS:
The characters were real. Not necessarily likable, a little bland at times, but definitely real.

THE PACING:
Ah. Yes. This I didn't like.
Listen, I read this book in one sitting, in just a few hours. The story just whoosed by. From start to finish, the pacing just went on at a mile a minute, that everything just sort of... blurred. Leo died. His organs were donated. Jonny got his heart. He met Niamh. Etc. etc. etc. I wasn't given any time to feel anything; to care about these characters. And this really upset me in the case of Emily. She was a character I could have really cared about, but I wasn't given enough time to give a damn. Such a shame.

I think this is where the book did things wrong - forced romance aside. (Let's face it, it's a surprise when I like the romance in romance books). But I could have liked this book more if I just had time to absorb everything that happened. But it just felt like I was watching a flip-book story. Cute, with the potential to be something really enjoyable, but not something that could really sink its hooks in you.

Oh well.

If you liked The Fault in Our Stars and wish it had been 1000 times less tear-jerky than it was, then this book is for you.


This review and more here

As is the case with most of the middle grade novels I go into, I didn’t expect more than a quick enjoyable read when I picked up The Blackthorn Key. A story about a boy who finds himself smack in the middle of a mystery, and needs to unravel its secrets before time ran out? Murder cults! Apothecaries! 17th century London?! It sounded like a swell time.

The Blackthorn Key, I was delighted to discover, wasn’t your regular ol’ children’s book. It’s written in the vein of a Stroud novel, or a Patrick Ness one (minus, like, 40% of the feels and gross sobbing). It’s complex, wonderfully written, and doesn’t dumb anything down for its audience. It’s definitely the kind of book adults could enjoy, too, because the mystery is woven so well that unless you’re paying close attention, you don’t figure out the pieces of the puzzle until Christopher does.

Any time I reached a conclusion before this kid, it was because I was going with my gut.

The cast of characters wasn’t as vast or as diverse as I’d have liked it to have been? Middle grade books have been stepping it the heck up, you guys, don’t look at me like that. They’ve raised the bar. Don’t look at me funny for having high expectations for a cast from a children’s book set in the 1600s. POC existed. Girls existed. Where they be? The cast consisted almost entirely of two boys in their mid-teens, and buncha older men who, if I’m being completely honest, sorta lacked personality. Eh. Hangups.

Despite my nitpicking, I have to admit that Christopher and Tom were great characters. They were lovable and dynamic and you just couldn’t help but root for them. Christopher was a trouble-maker and a schemer and I loved him dearly. It pained me to see him go through everything he did. And Tom. Good, loyal Tom. Heart emoji.

And their friendship! God! Two boys! Who loved each other! And weren’t afraid to show fondness! Who were there for each other! WHO PUT THEIR LIVES AT RISK FOR EACH OTHER! God. My heart weeps for joy. Friendships are so incredibly important, especially in fiction, and it was lovely to see these two just be so unashamed of their friendship. It was so wholesome. So good. I want more of it.

I could go on for a while about how much I enjoyed this book. The mystery was great. I could give it five stars on entertainment factor alone. I really enjoyed it, and cannot wait to see what the next book has in store for Christopher. I will, however, say that a part of me really wishes that

: Benedict wasn’t killed off in this book. It would have been so great to have an entire first book that just focused on his relationship with Christopher, and let us grow to love him as Christopher’s father figure. AND THEN have him killed off in the second book.

It would have been a great way to rip out the hearts of readers everywhere. But I have no idea where this story’s gonna go, so what the heck do I know, right?

Anyway. If you like middle grade novels that are appropriately feel-y, and are filled with old-timey science and adventure, then definitely check this one out.

This review and more here.

I loved this. I really really loved this.

review to come

Many, many thanks Usborne Publishing for giving me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review


Black Moon is the wonderful, and I do mean wonderful, conclusion to The Broken Trilogy, aka the series that I've been foaming at the mouth over for being one of the freshest things I've read in a while.

I'm glad to say that this book did much better things for me than it's predecessor. No withholding-of-information as a plot device, no jerky pacing, better sense of character. It was a dream!

Black Moon opens right in the thick of things - with Amity and Ingo working of the resistance, and with Collie working as an inside man in the enemy camp. It was the first and only book in the series to give me flashbacks to another very popular book - Suzanne Collins' Mockingjay, in this case. But here's where it gets interesting: Black Moon does so much better than Mockingjay, especially in terms of being a war novel. It was very well paced, fantasically well-woven, and the main character didn't sit around completely useless for half the book.*

But I digress. The point is that, in Black Moon, the ball was always rolling. There was always something going on, and each narrator had an active role in how the story progressed. I literally read 95% of this mammoth book in one sitting, and only had to stop because I had a load of assignments randomly dumped into my lap. It was that engrossing.

I also love, love, loved the characters in this one. They all disappointed me a little in Darkness Following, but man, their development was solid. Collis Reed, in particular, just kind of blew me away with his developmental arc. Like, listen. I know he isn't everyone's favorite character. As a person, he's kind of messed up. I get it. But as a character? He was the best thing in Weatherly's arsenal.

Collis Reed was the grey character of my dreams. He was wonderfully complex and flawed. A character whose hubris turned out to be his determination to be better, all because he didn't really understand what it meant to be a better person - not really. It was brilliant. I adored where he left him in the second book; at a cross-roads where his character could either step over fully to the dark side, crawl back to the light, or waffle about in the grey zones. His arc in this book was probably my favorite thing about this series. His journey was wonderful.**

Really, I could go on and on about how much I loved this book. But in the interest of remaining mostly spoiler-free (turns out there is no real way to review a sequel/series conclusion without spoiling the other books) I'm not going to.

I will however tell you about the three tiny things that made me dock a star from this otherwise fabulous read.

1) It could get a little predictable
Not in a way that had me calling every single plot line, mind. But just... You know how you can tell how certain things are going to go, just because you've read enough books in the same genre to have an idea about their patterns? Yeah. That. But listen, like I said with the first book, Weatherly still manages to make even the most predictable twists come with a surprise.

2) I didn't like the way Collis and Amity SUDDENLY didn't have as much in common as we all thought.
I can understand WHY it was done? The author probably wanted to make it clear that there was absolutely no love triangle in the book, just a woman who rightfully had a change of heart. I understand. And I'm beyond thankful that Amity never got back together with Collis. But here's the thing. These incompatibilities in their relationship that just randomly sprung up? They sorta... cheapen the relationship. No matter what Collis did, he and Amity did love each other.

And yes, she eventually does move on, and she and Ingo grow to love each other very much.

So making Collis and Amity's relationship suddenly mean less that it originally did takes away from the emotion of it all. Amity moving on from Collis meant more when they were they were compatible and real. SPOILER:

Amity's love for Ingo meant more, when her relationship will Collis was stronger

. You take away the foundation of Collis and Amity, and you make everything else sort of paler than it could have been. Shame.

3) The building of relationship feelings was kinda... eh.
I'm starting to think that the author does better with established relationships than she just with building relationships from the ground up? Mac and Sephy were always the pairing to beat. Ingo and Amity were kinda... boring when they first started falling for each other. But when they got together? Good shit, man. Shippable shit.

Those were my issues. As I said, tiny in the grand scheme of things. This book was an honest delight to read. Riveting from beginning to end. And I recommend it to EVERYONE who loves YA Dystopia.

READ IT!!!!!!!!

*Okay, okay. In all fairness to Katniss, she was suffering from severe PTSD. I get it. Her grief was believable. But while she was laying about useless, we never got to see action happening outside of her bubble of misery, which is where I think Mockingjay went wrong.

**

There's also a small part of me, the writer part, that kind of wishes he died? I feel like that would have been the perfect ending for Collis? But idk, I just love the journey he made, man.

When I first started this book, I didn’t like it.

Deraniyagala’s description of the horrors she faced on that dreadful morning were, surprisingly, dull. Now, this is not me saying that I expected to be entertained by the tragedy she went through. Of course not. What I mean is that, at the beginning, this memoir was a little bit devoid of any palpable emotion. Numb. And that concerned me. How would I feel something if the narrator, the person who went through all this, doesn’t seem to be feeling anything, herself?

I kept going, because friends (Thanks, Dash!) who I have a lot in common with in terms of our tastes in books told me that this was incredibly emotional. So I took their advice and kept reading, and I’m beyond glad that I did.

As the book progressed, as we watched Deraniyagala heal and allow herself to remember the people she’d loved and lost, Wave became so painfully beautiful – almost unbearable in how emotional it got. I suspect that Deraniyagala wrote most of this in real time – as she felt these emotions washing over her, as these memories of her family came to her – because it’s all so so raw.

A lot of the reviews I’ve read about this book are… interesting, to say the least. Most reviewers claim to not like how cold Deraniyagala came off in the initial stages of the book – they didn’t like how she treated people, what she thought about people in her state of grief. The others were upset that this didn’t end on a more hopeful note.

And okay, while I’ll admit to not liking the way the author treated people just after her tragedy, I can’t judge her for it. I won’t. We all deal with grief and loss very differently – She was angry, she was hurt beyond conceivable repair, and she’d lost the people she loved the most in the world. She wasn’t the nicest person in the world after it – but would you have been? I probably would have been the same way, if I’d been in her shoes. I can’t even compute having to deal with that much loss and heartache. Her behaviour may not have inspired many people to root for her, but you know what? It was real, it was honest, and it could be any one of us in that same situation.

And for the people failing to see hope or a journey in this? Guys, take a look. She’s mending. This is something some people NEVER recover from. She lost her children, her husband and her parents. She lost her entire world. She was scared, she was angry, and she didn’t want to live. It may have taken her seven years, but she healed. Maybe she’s still healing, I don’t know. But as with the grief thing, people also heal in their own ways and their own times. Your mileage may vary, etc etc.*

All in all, Wave was a raw, haunting read, about life after incredible tragedy. This is a memoir about someone’s personal experience with tragedy that some people can’t even begin to imagine. It’s not here to be your lesson about tsunamis, depression, or how to move on with your life. There are other books for that, I’m sure. But if you must take some sort of lesson away from Wave, let it be this: It is possible to leave grief behind – it is possible to heal. Not everyone’s methods are the same.

*Sorry for the big speech. Some people just need to stop being so judgy and be a little compassionate. This is not fiction! These are real things that happened to a real person. Can we stop trying to presume that we’d do better than her if we were in her shoes?

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review

You're Welcome, Universe was like nothing I'd ever read before, and I mean this in the absolute best way possible.

The book follows Julia, a Deaf Indian-Irish girl who can lay down some siiiick tags like nobody's business. She's kicked out of her private school for deaf kids when her supposed best friend narcs on her for tagging school property (to be fair, Julia was only doing it to protect the girl but whatever), and is forced to start all over at a, quote-unquote mainstream school in the suburbs.

It goes about as well as you expect. And as if being the new girl - the Deaf new girl - wasn't bad enough, Julia also finds herself in the middle of a turf war with someone who keeps messing with her tags.

I loved this. So much. Julia is such an angry, angsty heroine. And never in a unbearably bratty way that makes her unlikable. She's relatable. She could be rude and make stupid decisions, but Julia loved her mothers, and she honestly tried her best.

This novel was basically about finding yourself - finding your voice. And it's about friendship. Both Julia and YP, the friend she reluctantly makes at her new school, both go through a journey of self-discovery within the pages of this book. They both deal with their issues and come out stronger in the end. I would have liked to have seen YP's (and Julia's) issues talked about a little more, but maybe that's just me.

Overall, I loved this book. It broke stereotypes, was well-written, was wonderfully diverse, effortlessly tied art and prose together, and, most importantly for me, I think, it put friendships first. It isn't often that I find a book that puts chicks before dicks, and I loved this one for it.
You're Welcome, Universe was an absolute treat to read, and I fully recommend that you pick it up.

This review and more here

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