This was absolutely phenomenal.

 

It started kind of slowly, let me admit. I was a little worried at first that it was going to remain slow and that it was all going to suddenly spike to an unsatisfactory conclusion, like many a thriller/horror I have read. These fears were completely unfounded. The pacing was perfect, and the thrills and scares were real. It was a mind-bending story, and in the end, you're left to form your own conclusions about exactly what happened, without every feeling like anything is being withheld from you.

 

It is a found-footage style novel, with diary entries and videotaped segments and interviews, and it is very clear from the beginning that something pretty terrible happened, though what happened is a lot less clear for a very long time. I adore that format, though I often feel like it is not done well. This utilized it perfectly to tell a complex story without the reader feeling like an outsider but without forcing a specific understanding on you.

 

The characters were fascinating studies. I'm still toying in my head with how I feel about each of them, and with what was really going on with several of them in the end. Additional details about their lives were very carefully scattered throughout the novel that would shine a light on another aspect of each that I had never considered, so my understanding would suddenly shift. Who was crazy? Was anyone crazy? Is something paranormal happening? What on earth was going on?

 

It was a good kind of confusion, however: I became desperate to know what kind of ending we were heading towards, and who was going to come out of this in the end. Kaitlyn's diary is absolutely compelling once things start to get creepy. This would probably make a great movie, but it scared me enough just as a book that I was reading it in the car (I couldn't put it down, okay?) and my boyfriend unlocked the doors on his way back out from the grocery store and the sound made me drop my Kindle in sheer fright. I was positive something was coming to get me.

 

I don't want to spoil any of the surprises, so I'm trying to be very careful with what I say, but if you are interested in YA horror and the idea of found-footage style sounds intriguing, this is absolutely a book you need to read. I'll be watching  Dawn Kurtagich very closely and seeing what else she comes out with, because I'm extremely impressed. I've been looking for scares, and I finally found something that delivered.

 

This book was provided to me for free by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. 

 

I was really hoping this was going to be one of those zippy books that I get sucked straight into and can't put down. The premise is interesting, I do like dual-narration, especially when there are secrets involved, and it sounded a bit unusual.

 

I felt let down.

 

The characters never drew me in at all. It started badly, with a "best friend" interaction that would have had me putting out an ad on Craig's List for a new one, because wow, that is not how you treat your best friend of many years. Or your friend. Or your acquaintance, even. Or, for that matter, anyone that you don't want to hate you forever. It was treated as a normal interaction, too. From there, we moved straight into the insta-love to end all insta-loves.

 

Now, I would like to digress a moment and state that "love at first sight" books are not the abomination to me that many in the book community feel they are. I'm a fan of the old Cinderella story, and I'm willing to accept moving fast in bookish relationships. Heck, my parents got married very quickly (if you're reading this, hi Mom! Love you guys!) and have been happily married for many years. It happens. It can work. It is sometimes adorable to watch people fall head-over-heels very fast. 

 

Not these people.

 

I don't really understand what they saw in each other, which is particularly problematic for two main reasons. Firstly, we get the viewpoint of both "love interest" characters, so how do I not understand their attraction to each other? Even if I can't see it from one character's point-of-view, I should be able to see it from the point-of-view of the person in love with them, no?

 

Secondly, the center of the story is not really the plot, it is their love. I find this problematic in itself, given it was the plot that originally drew me into the story, but to have two characters I don't really feel anything for going through the motions of a potentially interesting plot while telling this love story that is incomprehensible as such except for all of the cutesy nicknaming and immediate declarations of complete adoration is rather horrifying to wade through to get to the parts that I care about.

 

And in the end, the plot wasn't that great, either. That's probably the worst part, the biggest letdown: I forced myself to continue through to see how things would end up, and there are no surprises, no shades of grey, nothing to make me understand the thinking behind this other group even a little bit.  Why are they doing these things? I'm not sure it even makes sense in the context of the book, and the convenient plot holes are rather alarmingly numerous.

 

I was hoping to be thrilled and willing to allow an awful lot if the book gave me that, but in the end it didn't. It gave me a dry, overblown love story with simple main characters, simple dialogue, simple villains, and secondary characters that completely fall out of the plot occasionally they are so impersonal.

 

The author left a hook for the next book, and while I'm kind of interested in the plot, I think I'll be leaving that one alone, because it will be just packed to the brim with moments of mushy teenage love fest, and I just don't want to bother trying to struggle through to the interesting bits.

 

This book was provided to me for free by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. 

 

 

This was dark and lovely.

 

I think this book turned me from being intrigued by Jennifer McMahon to being moderately obsessed with her storylines.

 

She definitely does "family" horror, if that term makes any sense. There is a sense of belonging that acts beyond the grave in the novels of hers I have read, and this is no different in that regard.

 

I loved the jumping back and forth between time periods so that you, as the reader, could slowly link things together and see the patterns forming. I did make a few valid guesses on what was going on, but not all of them were correct, and I did not quite see the ending coming, which is always fun.

 

On some level, Amy is the central character, but she is certainly not the main character in any real sense. The story starts with her gone, and then fills things in around that event, both before and after. The ramifications of the whole plot, of the effects it has had on Margo and Piper and the whole community, are the other central focus.

 

There was a beautiful moment where everything came together, one of those "lightning bolt" moments that I have always loved so much when reading, where the past and the future connect with the present and you realize there is only one possible way the book can explain things. Those moments are one of the things that continue to drive me to read, and this novel, like the previous McMahon book I read, had that moment hit at just the right time.

 

This is absolutely a creepy story. I'm not sure how terrified you'll be reading it, but it is the sort of story that makes you look over your shoulder and consider what that small noise is while you're reading. Jennifer McMahon realizes that what you hide in the shadows is just as important as what you actively reveal, and also generally much scarier, and it's nice to see a creepy book where the scariest moments don't involve any real gore.

 

I enjoyed this quite a bit, and it's something that will stay with me for quite some time, I think, much as her The Winter People did. I'll be interested in seeing what she does next.

 

 

This series always manages to throw me for a loop.

 

It was the first Elise Sandburg book that caused me to become an Anne Frasier fan (and I'll admit to being an Anne Frasier fan up-front in case I get all fan-girly later), and this delivers more of the same, in the best possible way.

 

Elise and David are always fun to read about. I like their banter and their relationship, and I like that they are both haunted by their pasts to some degree, but that it makes them better police because of it.

 

Their pasts are front and center in this one, with both of them dealing with serious (but old) family issues, and not always in the best way.

 

Watching Elise struggle to handle the bombshell that was thrown at her in the last book was intriguing, and I felt for her, even when I thought she was being overly dramatic about certain things.

 

David's problems broke my heart, perhaps because they hit closer to home than Elise's. The thought processes felt extremely real, and watching him try to pull himself together (with a few tears in my own eyes at times) and handle everything else that was going on (because do these two ever catch a break? No, they do not.) was heart-wrenching.

 

The introduction of a few new characters was fun, although the characters themselves were not always. I had very close to Umbridge-level hatred for one of them, though how much of that was due to said character's dislike of a character I did like I don't know.

 

I totally called the killer at 15%, and I feel brilliant because of it. I don't think I was supposed to catch said murderer that early, and it was one of those odd moments where things come together and I suddenly felt like a cop myself. It was beautiful.

 

Even knowing early on who I was pretty sure did it (I never completely trust my instincts on such things, given everything going on in a novel like this), this was an enjoyable ride with a hefty number of twists and turns. I doubted myself again and again, as did the characters, and having everything come together in the end the way it did was wonderful.

 

I can't wait to read the next in the series, given how things ended, and I will be eagerly anticipating it. If you haven't dived into this series, start with the first book, Play Dead, but do start if you like atmospheric crime thrillers with well-developed characters and lots of hilarious one-liners thrown in for even more charm.

 

This book was provided to me for free by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. 

 

This was a solid and absolutely British book.

 

I don't mean that in a bad way at all; I have a bit of Anglophilia (like most bibliophiles, I guess), and I really enjoyed it, but it requires some immersion in the culture that might be difficult for some people.

 

It's hard to say much about the characters that doesn't sound like complaining. It's not that I didn't kind of like them, but I can't really be sure what it was that I was rooting for at almost any point. Some of them were complete bastards throughout, some of them were okay people with huge, alarming blind spots that caused no end of bad things in their lives. I suppose, in the end, they were probably pretty normal people, and that is why I was rooting for them, but I can't really say that I had a favorite character or that I really ever quite liked any of them.

 

The story is intriguing because it does that back-and-forth-in-time thing that I love so much. Not time travel, no, the other one, where we get bits and pieces of the backstory as time goes on. I've always found that fun, and I enjoyed piecing things together, given it is unclear at the beginning what exactly it is that has caused all of these relationships to fracture.

 

This is very much a book about fractured relationships. Not primarily romantic relationships, either, which was refreshing. This is a story about handling the past in a rational way that makes sense personally, and about putting yourself together again after tragedy strikes.

 

All of this makes it sound like the book is either more depressing or more uplifting than it actually is. It is not a tragic story, I don't feel, but it is not one of those "everything is for the best" stories, either. It's a story about people. People who mess up and then have to deal, often long-term, with the ramifications of their messing up. People who make bad decisions that aren't life-ending, but do affect them. It's an everyday kind of story, but that's not a bad thing.

 

I enjoyed the way it was written. Not just the going back-and-forth bits, but the voice of Cameron and the little footnotes. I love footnotes in fiction. They are rare, but oh-so-fun, and these were often the kind of little sarcastic asides that helped to flesh out his personality and make him feel real.

 

The ending kind of came out of the blue a bit, and I'm still not sure how I feel about it. I don't mind where and how things ended up, but the abruptness with which everything happened felt off after the rest of the pacing of the book.

 

All in all, though, I quite enjoyed the read and I'll probably be picking up some more books by Sophie Duffy.

 

This book was provided to me for free by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. 

 

I think I somehow went into this with a few misconceptions, which made a middle chunk of the book a little odd for me, let me tell you, but in the end everything turned around and I raced through the ending to find out what was happening.

 

I had not previously read anything Amy Miles had written, so it was an interesting experience getting used to her style. This reads a bit like what I had hoped (and keep on hoping) Interview with the Vampire will read like--dark and intriguing and a little bit lyrical.

 

Rosaline was an acceptable enough main character. I did feel for her situation (which was absolutely horrid), but I never really connected properly with her. She felt (and obviously was) victimized throughout the story, and while that does allow for sympathy, it isn't enough to make me really feel for her the way I wanted to. Her transformation was a bit too quick for me, as was the romance.

 

Don't be frightened off by the romance. It is not as bad as you are probably thinking it is going to be, and it was well-handled in that aspect, at least. It could have gone somewhere dark and awful. It was still a little bit too quick given the situation, however, and I'm not completely sure I really understood it. Actually, I take that back--I did understand it, but I didn't really feel it, and as it becomes an important aspect of the story, it makes it that much rougher to really love the novel.

 

This is dark. Do not go into this expecting it to be light and fluffy vampire romance. The novel starts with a warning on the subject, and it is a valid warning. Bad things happen. Bad people are prevalent. The title is not a joke.

 

With all of that said, I did quite enjoy it and will be picking up some more of Amy Miles' work. Her world, as dark a place as it is, is an interesting one, and I'd like to see what else happens there.

 

This book was provided to me for free by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. 

 

This was a solid "children's gothic" book, and I enjoyed reading it.

 

I unfortunately guessed early on what was actually going on (I'm not sure if that says something about the book industry that this is almost passé or if it says something about me?), but it was still...I don't want to say a "fun" read, but a good read, certainly. I enjoyed getting to the ending and seeing how everything was wrapped up.

 

Jimmy is a comfortable sort of main character in that he isn't brilliant, but he isn't an idiot, either. He behaves in a rational manner throughout, is worried about the things he should obviously be worried about, and even those things he does not wish to believe are rational things for him to reject. He never deeply impressed me, but he never annoyed me, and I did feel something for him regarding his past.

 

The side characters were a little more faintly sketched, although there was little time to really fill them out, and the focus was absolutely on Jimmy and on his attempts to figure out the secrets of the house in which he found himself. I might have liked to see more of the other supporting characters, but it was a tightly-written story that didn't have time for subplots that didn't lead to further information on the main story.

 

The best aspect of the whole novel was definitely the atmosphere--Maynard Sims nailed that, and the eeriness in which the house was presented and the apparent kindliness of characters that turn out to be complete snakes made for a fun read. I read it straight through without coming up for a breath, and it is always nice to have something to do that with.

 

In the end, it was a fun, quick read that is probably worthwhile for those that enjoy children's/middle-grade horror/thrillers.

 

This book was provided to me for free by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. 

 

This is a pretty dark version of Peter Pan, and I loved that about it.

 

I have heard tell that originally, Peter himself was supposed to be the villain of the piece, and the entire premise of the original novel, with someone coming to the window and taking children away to a land full of some seriously dangerous stuff, is actually a lot creepier as an adult than it seemed as a child. This novel capitalizes on that creepiness and turns it up to eleven.

 

I'm a sucker for re-tellings of stories. I came into it through Arthurian legend and stuck around through fairy tales and fanfiction and everything under the sun, because I love having a new viewpoint on familiar ideas. Watching how things are going to be twisted away from the original and then back again brings me great joy, and that is one of the levels on which I enjoyed this novel.

 

The other primary level was as a piece of dark fantasy. This is not Disney's Neverland. It's not even really J.M. Barrie's. It is a dark and primal place, part Lord of the Flies, even, and full of magic and things to discover. The discoveries are rarely good things in the end.

 

Playing up the entire idea of the Lost Boys was a brilliant idea, and it worked to make the book eerie on several levels. They are lost, both because they have lost their homes and identities and because they have lost their humanity, almost; they are not working towards growing up, as most children are, but almost away from the idea, or at least taking "growing up" down a darker route than most do.

 

The concept that something has happened to Neverland peeks its head out just often enough to remind you that there is something stranger going on through here, but the characters really get center stage throughout. It is not strictly a character study--there is certainly a plot, and quite a bit of adventure--but sorting out how the characters interact and the motives of each seems to be the main point of this particular arc in Wendy's story.

 

Because this is Wendy's story. Peter Pan certainly co-stars, and his history will probably be explained further throughout the series, but Wendy is the primary focus here, especially in her relationships.

 

I don't want to suggest this is a love story. It is not. There are some elements of that here, but her relationship with her brothers and even her parents are just as important, if not more so, than her relationships with any potential love interests.

 

Wendy herself is easy to root for--she is more self-aware than a lot of YA heroines, and even her moments of slipping are easily explained through plot mechanisms or just plain the fact that she is young and scared. She develops a bit more of a backbone throughout the novel, but she does not start as a shrinking violet, and it is nice to see that her care for Michael and the other boys is not undervalued or depreciated in any way--it is a part of her character, and a solid part, but not all of it, and not even all she is valued for. She is more than just a nursemaid and motherly character, as she often seems to end up.

 

As a heads up, the ending is a bit dangling. There's a clear enough stopping point to the story arc that it didn't feel completely out of the blue, but this is very clearly the beginning of a series (and I must admit I didn't realize that going in), so you will have a bunch of unanswered questions at the end. I'm excited about picking up the next one, though; seeing where this goes should be quite fun.

 

This book was provided to me for free by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. 

 

This was an extremely rough read, and dark as hell, so I'm not sure "enjoyed" is the correct term to use for how I feel about it, but I am glad I read it.

 

This starts out extremely twisted and quite violent and never lets up. It reads quite a bit like a horror movie (I mean that in a flattering way), and would honestly make an excellent one. I rarely venture into psychological horror because it is hard to do well, and when done well tends to be extremely disturbing. This was done well, and thus the corollary rings true. I ended up glued to it, and thinking about it quite a bit when I wasn't reading it. 

 

I'm not sure what precisely I think of the characters. An interesting point is raised regarding how much leeway to give based on past horrific experiences (and there are a lot of those in this novel), and I'm not sure where precisely I fall on the line. I can't defend the actions of...probably anyone in this novel, at any point, but I feel like I understand them rather well in most cases. 

 

That's actually the disturbing part--the fact that I understand the horrific actions that are the center of existence for this entire family's (extremely messed up) lives. Not completely (don't get the idea I'm an insane murderer or anything, anyone. I'm not, promise!), but enough to feel awful about the events leading up to their monstrous actions. That takes some serious writing chops, right there. 

Michael makes a good protagonist in that he is in the middle of these horrible things, but having doubts that we can understand. His own behavior in perpetrating what the family is doing is outrageous, but his doubts provide us with the link back to humanity that we need to get into the plot. We feel involved because of him, even when we don't particularly feel fond of him.

 

I did see bits and pieces of the ending coming, but not all of it. It was cleverly wrapped-up, though extremely dark, and the conclusion was satisfying, if horrific to actual read. 

 

At some point, I will want to pick up more books by Ania Ahlborn, but I'll probably require a few light and fluffy things before I start. She can certainly write, and write well, but the darkness that she does so well is not a place I want to spend lots of consecutive time, even as we approach Halloween. 

 

This book was provided to me for free by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.