Originally posted to I Should Read That

I hadn’t read much YA crime, however Truly Devious got me interested in the genre and I devoured a ton of it in October. One of the books I read during this binge was One of Us is Lying, one of the most popular books in this genre. Having heard so many mixed opinions on it,  I was super curious to see what the story was. One of Us is Lying is a delightfully twisted tale that reads like The Breakfast Club, but with more murder.

One of Us is Lying is split into four perspectives -- our four suspects -- and each character has their own unique voice. I really enjoyed the switching between voices -- it was very smooth and didn’t feel jarring like it can in other multiple POV books. McManus does a good job of holding back certain facts and feeding the reader a trickle of information. Because of this, the book is very well-paced and tense. Although I preferred the setting of Truly Devious, which takes place at a remote Vermont boarding school, I thought the standard high school setting worked really well for this plot. I’m not usually a fan of contemporary YA books, however the crime elements were strong enough for me to really enjoy this story.

The four POV characters -- Bronwyn, Addy, Cooper, and Nate -- all fit into high school stereotypes, but McManus turns what could have been flat characters into vivid and well-fleshed out people. Each person’s character arc is incredibly vital to the story and unraveling of the mystery, so I don’t feel like I can say much about them without spoilers. However, I will say that there was one person I thought was a little weaker and more dull than the others, and I was very surprised by who my favourite character was.

My only real complaints about the book are that I wish it was a little darker and, while I enjoyed the resolution of the mystery, I thought there could have been a little more oomph to it. These things could have elevated a good, fun mystery book into a sensational crime thriller. However, I ended up really enjoying this book and would highly recommend picking up the audiobook -- all four narrators are fantastic and you wont be able to stop listening!

CW: homophobia

Originally posted to I Should Read That

This is a spoiler-free review for Queen of Nothing, but will contain spoilers for The Cruel Prince and The Wicked King.

There were few books more highly anticipated in the YA fantasy genre than The Queen of Nothing. The concluding book in Holly Black’s highly successful Folk of the Air trilogy, every fan of the series has been desperate to get their hands on Queen of Nothing to find out how Jude's story ends. I thought the first book in the series was a huge mess and the second book was absolutely fantastic, so I was very curious to see what I'd think of the concluding novel. I didn't love Queen of Nothing, but thought it was a satisfying conclusion to the series.

It will be really tough to review this book without spoilers, but I'll do my best. However, this may end up being a short review! There were some aspects of the book that I was disappointed by because I felt that Black didn't deliver. The thing that jump to mind is the resolution of Cardan's banishment of Jude -- this felt like it was being set up to be more complex or important to the plot than it actually was.. Jude's banishment after becoming the Queen of Faerie just fell completely flat because it felt like Black was cutting corners.

In addition, I feel like my enjoyment of The Wicked King was due to the scheming and backstabbing and plotting, which was pretty absent from Queen of Nothing. My favourite Jude is scheming Jude, and I love the tension and sense of immediate danger that surrounds our devious couple in that book. Pretty much of that evaporated in Queen of Nothing and it felt more in line with The Cruel Prince, a book I didn't particularly enjoy, because everything felt so toned down due to the changes in the plot.

On the more positive side, I really enjoyed the dynamic between Jude and Taryn in Queen of Nothing. Their relationship is nothing if not complicated, and I think Black did a good job of resolving their story line. I also really enjoyed the overall arc between Jude and Cardan. I've been reserving judgement on the relationship in the series until this final book and I thought the completed arc between the two is really fantastic and well done.

I don't want to say any more, but please feel free to message me if you've read this book and want to talk about it! While I didn't love Queen of Nothing, it was an incredibly fun, fast-paced, and satisfying conclusion to one of the biggest YA fantasy series of the past few years. It just didn't have the same depth as The Wicked King.

Originally posted to I Should Read That

This is a spoiler-free review for Thunderhead, however it will contain major spoilers for Scythe.

I make no secret of the fact that I was hugely let down by Scythe, one of the major YA releases of 2018. I loved the world and society, the concept of the Scythedom, and the secondary characters Faraday and Currie. However, I absolutely could not stand our protagonists Citra and Rowan. They are so boring, so flat, so wildly uninteresting and their romance is about as exciting as watching paint dry. However my friend encouraged me to take a chance on Thunderhead, the second book in the trilogy, because Citra and Rowan continue to be separated after the events of the first book. And wow, I really owe her for telling me this because I really enjoyed Thunderhead, contrary to all my expectations!

The best thing Schusterman could have done for this story was separate our protagonists -- this really made the book work for me. The two of them working for the good of the Scythedom in two very different ways added so many layers to the story and made things a whole lot more interesting. Were there things that I didn’t like about the book? Sure! Rowan is still an obnoxious edge lord who could honestly be cut from the entire trilogy without making a huge difference (or at least from this book). There some unintentionally comedic moments, particularly at the en (possibly courtesy of the audiobook narrator, who was mostly good but sometimes a little overly dramatic). And most importantly, I didn’t love the big reveal. However, the changes in the Scythedom, the shifts in society, and Citra’s own acceptance of her new life were absolutely fascinating. The inclusion of the Thunderhead’s thoughts was my favourite part -- I’m a sucker for AI and I absolutely loved the Thunderhead. In many ways, Schusterman elevated Thunderhead to a much better story than Scythe by cleverly building on the strengths of the first book.

I didn’t love Citra’s character in Scythe because I thought she was so dull. However, she grows so much as a character between these two books and I absolutely adore her now. I really loved the way she settled into her new identity, from her gleaning practices to her right to keep the Scythedom honorable, and she becomes such an interesting and compelling person -- it's like she came to life in Thunderhead. She feels like a great match for Scythe Currie and you begin to understand what Currie saw in Citra in the first book. Citra is clever, she is compassionate, and she proves it over and over again.

The less said about Rowan the better. He continues to be the worst.

Overall, Thunderhead may take the prize as the most surprising sequel of the year! I’ve purchased a copy of The Toll, the final book in the series, and I am actually really excited to read it! I’d highly recommend the audiobook of Thunderhead, although it did take me awhile to get into it, because the narrator does a really great job with all the characters and conveying all of the conflicting emotion.

Okay, time to fess up. I don't remember a single damn thing from this book. This is what happens when I read books in a series back to back! They mush into one single entity and I can't remember what happened.

I remember I was planning to rate it 4 stars.

I remember I liked it more than the first one.

What actually happened? No clue?

My thoughts? I guess I have none.

Whoops.

Anthologies are really tough to rate! With different stories from different authors, it's really difficult to figure out what to rate the actual collection.

This book is, as the title implies, a collection of stories based on Alice in Wonderland. Some of the stories are continuations of the original book, some are inspired by Alice's adventures, and some are very loosely connected to the ideas of Wonderland. There were some hits and some misses in this book, as to be expected. My favourite was one called 'About Time', in which a 14 year old girl feels she is finally ready to grow up and goes down the rabbit hole to say goodbye to her friends in Wonderland.

If you're a fan of Alice in Wonderland, it's definitely worth skimming through this book and seeing if anything jumps out at you!

A cool and creepy story! This book follows two different timelines in two different formats. The first is a set of diary entries from a girl living at the Thornhill orphanage in the 1980's -- she lives a very lonely and unhappy life. The second storyline is told only in images and follows a girl in 2017 who lives in a house near the abandoned Thornhill. I really enjoyed this book and flew through it in a single evening.

Somebody sedate me

Originally posted to I Should Read That

I’ve been wanting to pick up more classic science fiction lately, so I pulled Day of the Triffids off my shelf. It had been sitting there for well over a year and I had never picked it up. Despite it being a famous novel and film, I didn’t know anything about Day of the Triffids before I started it. I ended up really loving this classic dystopian novel!

First, a fun fact. If you read that first sentence of the book's description, it may sound a little familiar. The opening scenes of the film 28 Days Later was directly inspired by Day of the Triffids , from our protagonist waking up in the hospital having missed the apocalyptic event to him wandering through a completely changed and emptied London. Having only seen the film a day or so before I picked up this book, it was a total delight to recognise the parallels between the two!

I loved Wyndham’s depiction of a post-apocalyptic England. Not only was it incredibly inventive, he did a great job of investigating how both sighted and blind people would actually survive. Some of the book is uncomfortable, particularly the capture and essentially enslavement of sighted people to guide the blind, but I was very pleased to see it didn’t go into some of the ickier ideas around women in a post-apocalyptic society (see: 28 Day’s Later). This book is more about survival of small groups than of society as a whole, and I thought that was a really interesting perspective. There are, of course, some people with their own ideas of how humanity should survive, but Bill’s story really dominated the book.

Where are the triffids, you may be asking? Well, I was actually really surprised to see that the triffids don’t play as big of a role as I had thought. In the first half of the book they’re more of a sinister presence, however they begin to play a larger role in the second half. I absolutely loved the triffids not only as a weird presence, but as a way of showing how nature seizes back its power from mankind. More triffids, I say! 

I thought this book was surprisingly modern in some of its ideas, however it does show its age in some ways. There’s a fair bit of sexism, however it was something that I can chalk up to being a product of its time rather than something truly malicious.

Day of the Triffids is a ridiculously fun take on the post-apocalyptic genre and I can absolutely see why it has had such a strong cultural impact. If you’re interested in a classic of the sci-fi genre, you should absolutely pick it up! I’m very much looking forward to seeing the film and checking out more of John Wyndham’s books.

4.5 out of 5 stars

In many ways, The ABC Murders is a quintessential Poirot story. I enjoyed the mystery itself — what criminal thinks it’s a good idea to taunt Poirot? — and really enjoyed everything until the very end. For me, this was probably the most far fetched solution that I’ve ever read. The reason I love Christie’s books is that the puzzle is so clever and plausible, but this one was just clever. Is there a chance this could happen in real life? Probably not. I liked this book, but I didn’t end up loving it.

This book is interesting because it doesn’t follow the pattern I’ve come to associate with Christie’s mysteries. A body is discovered within the first chapter or so, Poirot arrives and investigates, then he solves the crime. In Murder in Mesopotamia, the murder occurs about 100 pages into the book and it takes even longer for Poirot to show up. I really enjoyed the plot, the mystery, and the solution! However, this book had some pacing issues and really shows its age. It’s pretty alarmingly racist, as well as sexist. If those are things you tend to avoid, you may want to choose a different Christie novel to read.