Rating: 3/5

Genre: YA Sci-Fi

Recommended Age: 13 (violence, slight gore, death)

I received a free copy of this book courtesy of KidLitExchange for reviewing purposes. All opinions are my own.

If an impending invasion by savages threatened to destroy your home, would you risk your life to save it?
Millennia ago, an alien race granted the citizens of Levitor a stone of vast energy that saved their race from tyranny. They built a dome to shield their city from the dangers outside. But now the stone is unstable. A crack has appeared in the shield, a looming threat to the city's ruin.
Seventeen-year-old Kallum Farron is no hero. He wants nothing more than to win the heart of the girl he loves and lead a normal life. But, after a simulation test unexpectedly leaves him reeling and he loses his guardian, what is normal takes a whole different meaning. He fears he's turning into his worst nightmare -a Crazy. He discovers he's gifted with a powerful legacy, and he alone can save Levitor.
But his cursed gift comes at a cost. When Levitor's rulers and the alien race hunt him, Kallum must choose: where he belongs, and what is really worth sacrificing for the greater good.- Amazon.com



I never really got into science fiction until I met my husband. When he heard of my lack of reading in the genre, it became his mission in life to get me to read at least one science fiction novel. The novel? Ender’s Game. Read it, loved it, and now I love reading science fiction. While I enjoy the genre I do feel like I’m still a newbie in the field and I consider myself very picky on the science fiction books I choose to read. When I read the excerpt of this book I thought it would be very enjoyable. And for the most part it was a very well written book and an excellent beginning book to a series. The plot was very well developed, the characters were also developed and there were plenty of strong female characters, and the pacing was also perfect for the plot. The author has a genuine knack for describing a setting as well, as this world is amazingly well detailed.

However, even the most well developed book can have errors. From the beginning of the book I was very lost and extremely confused. The author just throws you into the story and you’re left wondering what the crap is going on for a good portion of the novel. I prefer for a sci-fi novel to gently ease me into the setting so I become accustomed to it. The writing was also very weird in my opinion. It wasn’t very easy to follow and it made following along in the novel very hard.

Verdict: I honestly would have enjoyed this book more if the first chapter was a bit slower and “dumbed down” for the audience to get accustomed to the world and if the wording was altered a bit. However, this book is very well done and is beautiful. Any sci-fi fan would love this book!

Rating: 4.5/5

Genre: YA Sci-Fi/Dystopian

Recommended Age: 13+ (slightly mature scenes, trigger warnings for one bombing scene that might be upsetting to someone)

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Marie Lu—when a game called Warcross takes the world by storm, one girl hacks her way into its dangerous depths.

For the millions who log in every day, Warcross isn’t just a game—it’s a way of life. The obsession started ten years ago and its fan base now spans the globe, some eager to escape from reality and others hoping to make a profit. Struggling to make ends meet, teenage hacker Emika Chen works as a bounty hunter, tracking down Warcross players who bet on the game illegally. But the bounty-hunting world is a competitive one, and survival has not been easy. To make some quick cash, Emika takes a risk and hacks into the opening game of the international Warcross Championships—only to accidentally glitch herself into the action and become an overnight sensation.

Convinced she’s going to be arrested, Emika is shocked when instead she gets a call from the game’s creator, the elusive young billionaire Hideo Tanaka, with an irresistible offer. He needs a spy on the inside of this year’s tournament in order to uncover a security problem . . . and he wants Emika for the job. With no time to lose, Emika’s whisked off to Tokyo and thrust into a world of fame and fortune that she’s only dreamed of. But soon her investigation uncovers a sinister plot, with major consequences for the entire Warcross empire.

In this sci-fi thriller, #1 New York Times bestselling author Marie Lu conjures an immersive, exhilarating world where choosing who to trust may be the biggest gamble of all.- Amazon.com

Do you play Warcross? It’s all the new rage! You plug yourself into the NueroLink and you’re then totally immersed into a virtual world. Play the game enough times and you can become good enough to compete in the international championships! Or just glitch into the game like Emika does. Our rainbow haired hero had my attention and love from page 1. Determined, brave, and courageous, while those aren’t different from any other characteristics from any other YA novel Emika is just wrote differently and can definitely stand on her own in the YA field. Beyond my gushing over Emika, I thought the rest of the characters were not only so well developed, but also diverse and complex. Even the secondary characters were amazingly described. Every character was so vivid I could easily picture them in my mind. The plot was also extremely well done. I didn’t expect the twists I saw coming and now I’m left with more questions than answers! I also thought the pacing was very well done and the writing was as well. For this being my first Marie Lu book I didn’t realize what an amazing author she was until this novel. Now I totally see why people pine over her books! Her writing was so well done! I could gush about it for days!

However much I loved this book, I had a few issues with this book. While I loved how Marie Lu included a very diverse cast of characters, I had some questions with one of the characters. One of the characters is wheelchair-bound and I never really got answers as to how this effects his avatar in the game. Does his avatar walk around or is the wheelchair still apart of the avatar? I also felt that the background could have been described better. I feel bad that I was comparing this book until it was nearly complete to Ready Player One. They’re on two different levels. However, since I did compare the two quite frequently, I felt that Ready Player One excelled in scene setting while Warcross didn’t. The setting was still good in my opinion, but I feel like there could have been more. I did like that Marie Lu did incorporate real world internet “sites” (if you know what I mean) and I loved the description of that world. I just wish I could have seen that throughout the novel.

Verdict: Overall, an amazingly well done book that’s for gamers and n00bs alike! I felt inspired by Emika and I’m completely upset that I have to wait for the next installment of this book to come out. I feel that the technology incorporated wasn’t completely beyond realistic means of what could be one day and I loved all the internet and gaming references that Marie Lu hid throughout the book. I felt like a child collecting Easter eggs on Easter Sunday! Seriously an amazing read that any lover of games or YA sci-fi would absolutely fall in love with.

Rating: 3/5

Genre: YA Fantasy

Recommended Age: 16+ (language, violence, gore, mature content, trigger warnings for rape and torture. This book is also controversial in that it contains several instances of poaching. Be warned.)

Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky.

In a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grown dangerously low.

And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherwordly war.

Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she's prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands"; she speaks many languages--not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she's about to find out.

When one of the strangers--beautiful, haunted Akiva--fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself? – Amazon.com
Earlier this year I finished a little (I say sarcastically) book called Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor. I absolutely loved this book and I have a review of it here if you want to check that out. Since I’m in the interlude waiting for Taylor to publish the sequel to Strange the Dreamer, I’d thought I’d pick up one of her other works and “read” it as well (or if you’re one of those people, I listened to it on audiobook). The book? Daughter of Smoke and Bone. While I have some issues I want to definitely discuss with you, I want to present what I thought this book was good at. I thought the book was very done and unique. It’s a bit of a retelling in that it kind of retells the story of the ultimate battle of good versus evil all the way back from the Bible, but Taylor managed to make this story completely its own by weaving in other unique elements I’ve never read about before. There are monsters that have horns, hooves, different colored skin, and heads like other animals but bodies of another… and yet they might be good? And angels who fight with awesome swords for an endless battle until the world ends… but are they really bad? This is what I have grown to love Taylor the most about: she makes you think. The good isn’t always good and the evil isn’t always evil. Sometimes they are and sometimes they aren’t. She also manages to weave in sociopolitical issues in these fantastic ways that make it feel like you’re not being taught about war, racism, prejudice, or the arms race. She’s almost like the Dr. Seuss of the YA Fantasy genre. Aside from that, she manages to construct these amazingly written characters. They, even the smallest of characters, are amazingly well developed and complex and the same can be said for the plot as well.

However, I did have a lot of issues with this book. I thought the whole book was predictable and cliché. I figured out the whole plot by the middle of the book and from there the book felt slow and boring to me. It may not have been predictable to others (and I have a really good track record when it comes to figuring out the plot points of books) it was to me and it made the book uninteresting to me. I also could see where the controversy lies in this book and possibly this whole series. And I’m conflicted. Taylor almost made the controversial act seem ok or good in this book. Maybe this changes throughout the series, but for me I did not like how it was presented in this book. I liked that it was used in a book because I think more attention needs to be brought to it, but I don’t like the presentation of it in this book. Lastly, while I love Taylor’s writing and highly praise it I do think she gets lost in her words throughout the novel. There were sections of this book that I could zone out and when I zoned back in I could easily follow along with what was going on. My husband deems this as “fluff writing” and I couldn’t agree more with the description. What can be said in three or four paragraphs gets stretched into chapters. While some fluff writing isn’t a bad thing (because as a reader I’m wanting to know what the room looks like, what the atmosphere is, etc.) too much of it can be harmful to a book in my opinion.

Verdict: While this book wasn’t a perfect fit for me, I did still enjoy it and I will continue with the series if only for the sake of finishing the series to see if some of the issues I pointed out in this review, especially the controversial one, is solved by the end of the series. I do recommend if you are a fantasy lover or loved Taylor’s other book (especially if you liked her writing style in Strange) then definitely check this book out as long as you can handle the warnings I pointed out at the beginning of the review.

Rating: 5/5



Genre: YA Sci-Fi/ Horror



Recommended Age: 16+ (mature content, language ((censored)), violence, gore, jump scares, a usual Jay Kristoff book).



Moving to a space station at the edge of the galaxy was always going to be the death of Hanna’s social life. Nobody said it might actually get her killed.
The sci-fi saga that began with the breakout bestseller Illuminae continues on board the Jump Station Heimdall, where two new characters will confront the next wave of the BeiTech assault.
Hanna is the station captain’s pampered daughter; Nik the reluctant member of a notorious crime family. But while the pair are struggling with the realities of life aboard the galaxy’s most boring space station, little do they know that Kady Grant and the Hypatia are headed right toward Heimdall, carrying news of the Kerenza invasion.
When an elite BeiTech strike team invades the station, Hanna and Nik are thrown together to defend their home. But alien predators are picking off the station residents one by one, and a malfunction in the station’s wormhole means the space-time continuum might be ripped in two before dinner. Soon Hanna and Nik aren’t just fighting for their own survival; the fate of everyone on the Hypatia—and possibly the known universe—is in their hands.
But relax. They’ve totally got this. They hope.
Once again told through a compelling dossier of emails, IMs, classified files, transcripts, and schematics, Gemina raises the stakes of the Illuminae Files, hurling readers into an enthralling new story that will leave them breathless. – Amazon.com



Hey look I finally read GEMINA! And OMG I AM WRECKED! I NEED THE NEXT BOOK IN THE SERIES! PLEASE JAY AND AMIE?! Anyways, on with the review! While this book is in a strictly mixed media format like Illuminae, it’s different. You get excerpts from a trial in this book and excerpts from a character’s journal that are in a scanned format and the way that the characters communicate to each other are very different from Illuminae. I don’t want to go into detail about it, but I will say that the difference in the communication worked for these characters very well in my opinion. I considered how Illuminae was wrote and tried to see in my mind if Gemina could have been wrote the same way, but I think the way the authors wrote it was very true to their characters, which I would rather have then equal writing styles. The characters included, while not all of the side characters were well defined, was very well done overall and I was surprised by the characters motives and actions throughout the book. I thought that plot was also very different from Illuminae. In Illuminae you have 4 main arcs in the book, while in this book you have 3 major arcs. This book spent more time on two of the arcs and it felt more drawn out, which I thought did well to accentuate the horrors in this book. This book also dealt with a topic that I am extremely picky on. I think that this “thing” that the book did is very hit or miss in books and in my opinion makes or breaks a book for me. I think that I might need to do a reread of it in order to get a better opinion of it, but from the first read through I think it was pretty well done.



However, even the best books that I read have some issues. The pacing in this book is slower than in Illuminae and while I thought the pacing was very well done I can see where other people might get put off by it. I think that it worked well to keep the reader in suspense, but others might not think the same as I do. I also think that there were some plot points in the book that were just done away with way too early and easily in the book then I believe they should have been. I don’t want to go into detail about it, but if you read the book then you might know what I’m talking about. Also, the “thing” described up above might be a breaking point for some readers because it depends on people’s interpretations of the theories surrounding the “thing”.



Verdict: I love this series and I love how it is written. Since starting a readalong of Illuminae I do realize that a lot of people don’t like this format style, but I do and I think it’s very well done. I’ve read books where mixed media is used and the book is just… bad and doesn’t do justice to the format, but this book isn’t one of those bad books. Amie and Jay make this book work and make these characters come alive through the screens of their palmpads or computers. Definitely will still recommend for sci-fi lovers and horror book lovers.

Rating: 2/5



Genre: YA Fantasy/Horror



Recommended Age: 15+ (gore, murder, violence, nightmares)



After escaping a harsh school where punishment was the lesson of the day, seventeen-year-old Louisa Ditton is thrilled to find employment as a maid at a boarding house. But soon after her arrival at Coldthistle House, Louisa begins to realize that the house’s mysterious owner, Mr. Morningside, is providing much more than lodging for his guests. Far from a place of rest, the house is a place of judgment, and Mr. Morningside and his unusual staff are meant to execute their own justice on those who are past being saved.

Louisa begins to fear for a young man named Lee who is not like the other guests. He is charismatic and kind, and Louisa knows that it may be up to her to save him from an untimely judgment. But in this house of distortions and lies, how can Louisa be sure whom to trust?

Featuring stunning interior illustrations from artist Iris Compiet, plus photo-collages that bring Coldthistle House to chilling life, House of Furies invites readers to a world where the line between monsters and men is ghostly thin. - Amazon.com



I was reading this book in the car and when I would take a nap or two I would legit have nightmares. So this book was the perfect choice of my October TBR! It was so gory and haunting that it would be an injustice to the book to read it in any other month. I thought the character development was fairly well done and the pacing was very well done as well. I liked that the character wasn’t handed the secret to what she was in the first few chapters and she and the reader were left to guess the secret until almost all the way through the novel. Unfortunately this is all that I really liked about the novel.



I thought that the book was told in a very discombobulated manner. While the plot was very well done and it could have been a good book, I thought that the way it was told was not streamlined at all. It made it very hard to keep reading this book. I thought there was room for improvement on the characters backstories as well. We never do find out some of the more important details of the book and a lot of the magic of the book is not explained. I also had issue with the way the book was wrote. The mix of internal monologue and talking made it difficult to follow throughout the book and it made the book not very easy to read.



Verdict: Would I read this book again? No I don’t think I will. In my opinion while it was very gorey and Halloween appropriate, it reminded me more of a B-rated horror film. However, you might feel different! If you do or read this book later on and love it please tell me in the comments below! I’d love to hear someone who thought this book was good!

Rating: 5/5



Genre: YA Dystopian



Recommended Age: 16+ (language, violence, gore, mature content)



When Calamity lit up the sky, the Epics were born. David’s fate has been tied to their villainy ever since that historic night. Steelheart killed his father. Firefight stole his heart. And now Regalia has turned Prof, his closest ally, into a dangerous enemy.
David knew Prof’s secret, and kept it even when Prof struggled to control the effects of his Epic powers. But facing Obliteration in Babilar was too much. Once the Reckoners’ leader, Prof has now embraced his Epic destiny. He’s disappeared into those murky shadows of menace Epics are infamous for the world over, and everyone knows there’s no turning back. . . .
But everyone is wrong. Redemption is possible for Epics—Megan proved it. They’re not lost. Not completely. And David is just about crazy enough to face down the most powerful High Epic of all to get his friend back. Or die trying. – Amazon.com



I finished another series! And I’ve figured out why I’m not a series finisher. I’m totally dead inside after reading this book and I have SO MANY QUESTIONS!!! Anyone else who has read this book can you help me in bombarding Brandon Sanderson with requests for a fourth Reckoners book? Pleaseeee? Anyways, on with the review!



Okay so this is going to be a hard review to write without giving spoilers so it’ll probably be very short. I thought the character development really built on the previous books and the plot was very well developed as well. The pacing was also very well done. It never waned and the action was constant throughout the book. Sanderson’s writing is a very good example of how to build tension and action in a story without having moments where there is no action. He’s also a good example to use when one needs to know how to do transitional scenes. I also thought that the writing was phenomenal and the book is very true to how David (the main character) would narrate a story of his. Sanderson not only writes dialogue from his characters well but he writes in his characters voice well even when they’re not actively thinking or talking.



While I loved the book overall I did feel like the book, for being a final book in the series, had a ton of plot holes that were not solved by the end of the book. I really feel that Sanderson left the books this way in order to build onto the universe if he so pleased and he is writing a book in which could be a companion triology to the Reckoners series, but there are a ton of questions I have left over from this book that I want answered. FOR THE LOVE OF CALAMITY CONTINUE THIS SERIES SANDERSON! I WILL GIVE YOU MY FIRST BORN CHILD FOR ANOTHER RECKONERS SERIES! I NEEEEEDDDDDDDD IT!



Verdict: Overall I am in love and I feel like my love just walked out on me and left me hung to dry. In a way David would say it I feel like a taco that’s not been eaten by a starving linebacker. I really hope I’m back with another book from the Reckoners universe and I know there is a companion novel that I’ll be for sure reading and reviewing come Spring 2018…. But I want something from David. If anyone knows how to contact Brandon Sanderson please tell me so I can beg and grovel at his feet.

Rating: 3/5

Genre: YA Thriller/Mystery

Recommended Age: 16+ (language, violence, slight mature content).

I received this book for free courtesy of KidLitExchange. All opinions are my own.

Jamie is a 16-year-old math whiz. Summerlee, his older sister, is in the grip of a wild phase. Tensions at home run high. When Summerlee wins a 7.5-million-dollar lottery, she cuts all ties with her family. But money can cause trouble—big trouble. And when Jamie's younger sister Phoebe is kidnapped for a ransom, the family faces a crisis almost too painful to bear. Jamie thinks he can use game theory—the strategy of predicting an opponent's actions—to get Phoebe back. But can he outfox the kidnapper? Or is he putting his own and his sister's life at risk? An astute, page-turning novel from a superb storyteller. – Amazon.com

So I read recently that people who like to read do not usually like math. So when I was presented with a book heavily involving math and theorems I was a bit concerned that I wouldn’t enjoy this book. And while I didn’t enjoy it as much as I do others I still found this book to be pretty awesome. The characters were developed well and the plot was complex but not too complex that it loses its readers. I have read that the author was an English teacher and you can really tell by the writing.

However, I can’t really say much good beyond that. I found while the book was perfectly written the structure was all over the place. It would start off in present day and then proceed to talk about an event sometimes in the present tense that occurred months prior to the original present day. The book’s pacing was thrown off by this constant shift in present and past and I felt the story was lost in the shuffle. I also found the book‘s main theory to be a bit ambitious. It states that you can accurately predict your opponents movements by thinking ahead in some logical and overly complex way. It’s basically the same theory used in chess and this book did well to mimic a chess game. However, humans are unpredictable by nature and thus this theory would never have a true 100% success level. Also, I found the way the main character talked to the young sibling very awkward. In the book he calls her hot and refers to her “other bits” as a prize that some boys are to win in their made-up bedtime fairytale. I’m not sure if this is an Australian thing, but it made me very uncomfortable as a reader.

Verdict: While I thought the story was good overall I had some concerns with the structure of the story, the main element, and the way one character refers to the other. This might be a cultural thing or it might just be me since I’ve never had siblings and this I wouldn’t know what a comfortable way of talking to them would sound like. If you enjoy math or enjoy thrillers and enjoy sherlockian characters then I recommend you check this book out!

Rating: 5/5

Genre: YA Contemporary/Verse Poetry

Recommended Age: 16+ (violence,

I received this book for free courtesy of KidLitExchange. All opinons are my own.

An ode to Put the Damn Guns Down, this is National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestseller Jason Reynolds’s fiercely stunning novel that takes place in sixty potent seconds—the time it takes a kid to decide whether or not he’s going to murder the guy who killed his brother.

A cannon. A strap.
A piece. A biscuit.
A burner. A heater.
A chopper. A gat.
A hammer
A tool
for RULE

Or, you can call it a gun. That’s what fifteen-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. That’s where Will’s now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brother’s gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who he’s after. Or does he? As the elevator stops on the sixth floor, on comes Buck. Buck, Will finds out, is who gave Shawn the gun before Will took the gun. Buck tells Will to check that the gun is even loaded. And that’s when Will sees that one bullet is missing. And the only one who could have fired Shawn’s gun was Shawn. Huh. Will didn’t know that Shawn had ever actually USED his gun. Bigger huh. BUCK IS DEAD. But Buck’s in the elevator? Just as Will’s trying to think this through, the door to the next floor opens. A teenage girl gets on, waves away the smoke from Dead Buck’s cigarette. Will doesn’t know her, but she knew him. Knew. When they were eight. And stray bullets had cut through the playground, and Will had tried to cover her, but she was hit anyway, and so what she wants to know, on that fifth floor elevator stop, is, what if Will, Will with the gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, MISSES.

And so it goes, the whole long way down, as the elevator stops on each floor, and at each stop someone connected to his brother gets on to give Will a piece to a bigger story than the one he thinks he knows. A story that might never know an END…if WILL gets off that elevator.

Told in short, fierce staccato narrative verse, Long Way Down is a fast and furious, dazzlingly brilliant look at teenage gun violence, as could only be told by Jason Reynolds. – Amazon.com
In the future this time period will be studied in English Literature classes as the period of amazing own voices YA literature. Why I say this is because this is the second book I’ve read that discusses what it’s like to be African American in modern day (the first being Dear Martin and there is another one named The Hate U Give that I own but not read yet). Where Dear Martin focuses on being considered guilty before proven innocent this book focuses on the need to avenge, the need to honor, and follow these rules that are passed down throughout the community. These rules include no crying, no snitching, and revenge. This book is also an excellent read for males of any ethnicity because being a male in this society means that certain things are expected of you and this book goes to prove that even the strictest rules can be broken. If you can’t tell from how much I’ve already wrote then I’ll tell you right now that I LOVED this story. I have only read verse poetry once before and it was the Ellen Hopkins books, but I only lasted until through the first book before I got tired of it. With this book I didn’t feel like the writing style was overwhelming or too different. It felt very natural to how someone would think or speak in my opinion, which worked very well for this book. The character development was very well done in the way that it was written. The plot was very uniquely told and unique in its invention as well. The pacing was also very well done and I fell that each “level” was equally discussed.

The only thing I had issue with in this book was that I felt the ending was very open-ended and I’m not a huge fan of that. While I thought the book needed an open-ended ending and it works well for this story, I’m just personally not a fan of it. I did expect it, but I didn’t like it.

Verdict: If you were a fan of The Hate U Give or Dear Martin I would highly suggest this book. It’s an amazing read for those looking for diverse or own voice novels and it’s a story that needs to be told. I can’t really describe how important this novel and others like it are important for people to read in this day and age because if I go on about all the reasons I would end up spoiling the novel for you. But if this book isn’t on your TBR it needs to be.

Rating:3/5

Genre: Adult Historical Fiction

Recommended Age: 16+ (racial issues, mental illness, natural disaster)

I received a free copy of this book through GrownUpReads, an off-shoot of KidLitExchange. All opinions are my own.

In this dazzling debut about family, home, and grief, C. Morgan Babst takes readers into the heart of Hurricane Katrina and the life of a great city.

As the storm is fast approaching the Louisiana coast, Cora Boisdoré refuses to leave the city. Her parents, Joe Boisdoré, an artist descended from freed slaves who became the city’s preeminent furniture makers, and his white “Uptown” wife, Dr. Tess Eshleman, are forced to evacuate without her, setting off a chain of events that leaves their marriage in shambles and Cora catatonic—the victim or perpetrator of some violence mysterious even to herself.

This mystery is at the center of Babst’s haunting and profound novel. Cora’s sister, Del, returns to New Orleans from the successful life she built in New York City to find her hometown in ruins and her family deeply alienated from one another. As Del attempts to figure out what happened to her sister, she must also reckon with the racial history of the city and the trauma of a disaster that was not, in fact, some random act of God but an avoidable tragedy visited on New Orleans’s most vulnerable citizens. Separately and together, each member of the Boisdoré clan must find the strength to remake home in a city forever changed.

The Floating World is the Katrina story that needed to be told—one with a piercing, unforgettable loveliness and a vivid, intimate understanding of this particular place and its tangled past. – Amazon.com

This book was beautiful from beginning to end. It was a very intimate look at the aftermath of Katrina in a way that no one really discusses. Usually people focus on the damage the hurricane did, but this book focuses on the effect the hurricane had on the people. It was a very emotionally heavy book. I thought the character development was very well done. You learn about these characters through their emotional issues. I also felt the book did a great job making the book feel very realistic.

Unfortunately I did have some dislikes about this book. I felt the writing was a bit everywhere and thus I had some issue following the book and the plot. The pacing was also very weird in spots. The book might have been wrote that way on purpose because it reflects the thinking process of the characters, but for the reader it makes for a very hard read.

Verdict: This is a beautiful book that needs to be read, but the way it was wrote is not my style. I think if you can get into this type of writing then this will be a 5 star for you and if you’re into historical fiction then you’ll love this book.

Rating: 3/5

Genre: Thriller

Recommended Age: 18+ (violence, language, and gore. Trigger warnings for school shootings, a characters recount of being buried alive, and rape)

Two girls are forced into the woods at gunpoint. One runs for her life. One is left behind…

Twenty-eight years ago, Charlotte and Samantha Quinn's happy small-town family life was torn apart by a terrifying attack on their family home. It left their mother dead. It left their father — Pikeville's notorious defense attorney — devastated. And it left the family fractured beyond repair, consumed by secrets from that terrible night.

Twenty-eight years later, and Charlie has followed in her father's footsteps to become a lawyer herself — the ideal good daughter. But when violence comes to Pikeville again — and a shocking tragedy leaves the whole town traumatized — Charlie is plunged into a nightmare. Not only is she the first witness on the scene, but it's a case that unleashes the terrible memories she's spent so long trying to suppress. Because the shocking truth about the crime that destroyed her family nearly thirty years ago won't stay buried forever… - Amazon.com

Usually I love anything that has to deal with crime and thrillers. My masters’ degree was in Criminal Justice and I love figuring out what to do in legal dilemmas. I thought this book would be an excellent one for me considering my background and for the most part it was okay. I thought every character was especially well developed and very realistic. I thought the plot was excellent and complex. But while the book was constructed well, it had some issues to it.

The author’s writing style is very descriptive and detailed. This in itself isn’t a problem, but the author tends to go into too much detail for my personal tastes. The author also likes to extend dialogue for much longer then I thought was necessary. Thus, the pacing in the book felt very slow almost to the point of being painful. While I listened to the book I found myself drifting off, only to come back minutes later and not miss a plot point. I also felt that there was a lot of unnecessary build up and tension in the book where maybe there shouldn’t have been, or maybe because of how the scenes were wrote it felt that way. Lastly, the book is told from multiple POVs and it could be a little confusing for some readers as the characters frequently have flash backs and tons of dialogue that can make the reader a little confused at times as to who they are reading from.

Verdict: If you are someone who likes crime dramas and thrillers with detail, multiple POVs, and dialogue, this book is for you. If you’re someone who likes their books to be a bit more concise, this book may not be for you. It’s an excellent thriller, but be weary of your dislikes in books if you decide to look into this one for a read.