Tag: ARC

ARC Reviews, Reviews

The Lucky One

A Morrow

From the acclaimed author of Under A Dark Sky comes an unforgettable, chilling novel about a young woman who recognizes the man who kidnapped her as a child, setting off a search for justice, and into danger.

As a child, Alice was stolen from her backyard in a tiny Indiana community, but against the odds, her policeman father tracked her down within twenty-four hours and rescued her from harm. In the aftermath of the crime, her family decided to move to Chicago and close the door on that horrible day.

Yet Alice hasn’t forgotten. She devotes her spare time volunteering for a website called The Doe Pages scrolling through pages upon pages of unidentified people, searching for clues that could help reunite families with their missing loved ones. When a face appears on Alice’s screen that she recognizes, she’s stunned to realize it’s the same man who kidnapped her decades ago. The post is deleted as quickly as it appeared, leaving Alice with more questions than answers.

Embarking on a search for the truth, she enlists the help of friends from The Doe Pages to connect the dots and find her kidnapper before he hurts someone else. Then Alice crosses paths with Merrily Cruz, another woman who’s been hunting for answers of her own. Together, they begin to unravel a dark, painful web of lies that will change what they thought they knew—and could cost them everything.

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I’m a sucker for a good kidnapping tale.  But this was the first book I’ve tackled where the kidnapping is all in the past.  Everything is about what happens years and years after the fact.  We meet our victim as an adult, still struggling with the trauma of an event that she can barely remember.  Alice is flawed and complex, which I found made her a more believable character that readers truly care about. You *want* to know what happened to her, you *feel* her pain and heartbreak.  It’s so easy to take her side and see everything in the black-and-white that she does. That is, until we meet our second main character, Merrily.  Even though Merrily and Alice live in the same city, they are a world apart.  Merrily’s traumas are more relatable to the average reader- stressing about an overbearing mother and struggling to pay the bills. The bottom begins to fall out of her world, and everything she thought she knew slowly changes. There isn’t some big reveal that sends her life spiraling; instead it slowly falls away piece by piece, lie by lie. Like Alice, Merrily is a character that is imperfect and accessible, bringing the reader to truly care about everything happening to and around her.

I liked the way the author tackled the dual-narrative as a plot device.  Something that I found worked really well is that Alice and Merrily don’t really interact with each other much.  We see two very different versions of a story that are moving along two different timelines.  They interact with different secondary characters very differently, learn information in varying times and in completely different ways.  I really like the experience this created for me as I was trying to solve the various mysteries along with the characters (and no, I wasn’t even close!)

All that being said, the pacing was a little off for me.  It made it hard to sit and devour the book all at once as I prefer to do.  The plot felt very hot and cold, moving quickly at some places then stuttering to a crawl for several chapters.  Some clues are delicately crafted, while others are just suddenly dumped on the reader with little explanation.  There were a few places where I felt like I needed to back up and reread paragraphs looking for something I thought that I missed.

Overall, I am really glad I finished The Lucky One.  It’s a tense, dark mystery whose twists and turns will keep you guessing all the way to the final pages.  And it will be up to you to decide- is the titular lucky one really so lucky after all?

See you all at the weekend!

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ARC Reviews, Reviews

The Return

A Morrow

An edgy and haunting debut novel about a group of friends who reunite after one of them has returned from a mysterious two-year disappearance.

Julie is missing, and the missing don’t often return. But Elise knows Julie better than anyone, and she feels in her bones that her best friend is out there, and that one day she’ll come back. She’s right. Two years to the day that Julie went missing, she reappears with no memory of where she’s been or what happened to her. 

The Return by Rachel Harrison was un-put-down-able.

I had so much fun reading this and stayed up way too late more than once to reach the end of the story. The Return was everything that I wanted in a modern horror, mystery novel: it’s murky, compelling, hypnotic, and slowly ratchets up the tension with a masterful hand. If you like horror, or even if you like thrillers or mysteries and want to try something new that isn’t too gory, this is the book for you. I highly recommend it.

This book is ultimately about friendship. As dark, mysterious, and grisly as it gets, what makes this book so great is the emphasis of the strength of female friendships through it all. If you’ve had a group of girlfriends for a long time, you know how far you would go for them. Or do you? Regardless, The Return makes you face this question over and over and over again as Elise, Julie, Molly, & Mae have to figure out the answer to this question themselves.

The friendships and characters alone were enough to keep me reading. The book shifts POVs occasionally, but I most loved and related to the primary POV character: Elise. She was broke and a little bit judgemental, sarcastic and a little crass sometimes, while giving in too much in others. She was, more than anything, just so relatable. All of her feelings, thoughts, and choices that she has to face in the story after her missing friend returns after so many years, they felt real and natural, like how I would probably react myself. Their friendships are real and deep, despite their struggles and so much time apart. Anyone who’s tried to reconnect with an old friend after too many years will find so many of their most painful moments so relatable. Mostly, I enjoyed that a group of women friends were center-stage for this story. Especially in the horror genre, I find that to be a beautiful and powerful thing in its own right.

More than anything, The Return was just engaging as hell. Even if I hadn’t known it was a thriller, each page felt like it turned itself as I couldn’t stop reading. Reading about them trying to reconnect after such an odd and all-consuming trauma was fascinating in its own right, before anything spooky even begins. After that– well, I couldn’t have put the book down then if I’d tried. Once the shadows start to recede in this mystery, this book breaks out the insane, dark and deadly in such fine form and it was a real treat to read.

Check out The Return when it releases on March 24th, 2020!

Thanks so much to Edelweiss+ for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

See you all on Tuesday! x

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ARC Reviews, Reviews

Rules for Vanishing

A Morrow

In the faux-documentary style of The Blair Witch Project comes the campfire story of a missing girl, a vengeful ghost, and the girl who is determined to find her sister–at all costs.

Once a year, the path appears in the forest and Lucy Gallows beckons. Who is brave enough to find her–and who won’t make it out of the woods?

It’s been exactly one year since Sara’s sister, Becca, disappeared, and high school life has far from settled back to normal. With her sister gone, Sara doesn’t know whether her former friends no longer like her…or are scared of her, and the days of eating alone at lunch have started to blend together. When a mysterious text message invites Sara and her estranged friends to “play the game” and find local ghost legend Lucy Gallows, Sara is sure this is the only way to find Becca–before she’s lost forever. And even though she’s hardly spoken with them for a year, Sara finds herself deep in the darkness of the forest, her friends–and their cameras–following her down the path. Together, they will have to draw on all of their strengths to survive. The road is rarely forgiving, and no one will be the same on the other side.

Well, what can I say? I enjoyed the hell out of this book.

I had no expectations when I picked up Rules for Vanishing by Kate Alice Marshall. I had never read anything by Marshall before, YA horror was a genre I hadn’t read for years, and I had won this book in a contest before it was published, so- at the time, I didn’t even really know what it was about. I can now say that absolutely none of that mattered. I picked up Rules for Vanishing on a Tuesday night and finished it on a Wednesday afternoon. And not on purpose, mind you, but something about the eerie beginning of this story swept me up almost immediately.

Rules for Vanishing was everything I want around this time of year: eerie, mysterious, spooky, and full of questions.

There were so many things I liked about it that I’m just going to make a list:

One. The format of this book was so much fun to read. Rules for Vanishing is sometimes written like a traditional, first-person novel, but only in some chapters. Most chapters are something different: transcripts from videos found on various characters’ phones, interviews with police, school assignments. This changed the angle of perspective constantly throughout the book which only added a deliciously disorienting effect to an already mysterious story. If this was an homage to the trend of found footage in horror movies in the last few years, it was executed with a very thoughtful eye. It was compelling as hell.

Two. I liked all of the characters. Okay, some of them more than others, but- given they’re a group of teenagers, I feel like that’s only fair. I really felt for all of the main circle though and I feel like Marshall did a great job at giving each of them a unique and relatable vulnerability. They were teenagers, to put it quite simply. Some of them were vain or pretentious or dramatic, but they were also great friends. Their histories were varied and riddled with complications and old wounds and, because of this, their reunion through the story had a sentimental, electric effect. This book made me remember running around with a group of kids at that age, only never in such dire circumstances. I rooted for them.

Three. The main character, Sara, was particularly competent in a way that just makes me so happy. I love reading a character, especially when she’s a woman, that does the best they can and generally doesn’t do anything supremely stupid, barring normal human error anyway. People are flawed, and so is Sara, but it can also be refreshing to read about a character who is driven, prepared, and competent to do what they’re doing. Or- for the most part, at least. Especially in YA, I liked seeing her fortitude and drive being front and center.

Four. Damn, Kate Alice Marshall did a fantastic job of rendering The Road in all of its mysterious, terrifying, glory. The environments in this story are often shrouded in darkness or lost to the unknown, but the way that the author chooses to render them to the reader was done particularly well. Marshall’s descriptions were focused on all the right things to bring you right into the moment that these characters are living and forget about the world around you. I couldn’t put the book down, mostly because I just couldn’t stand not knowing what insane, spooky obstacle would come up next. The plot and the atmosphere are drenched in fog and confusion and malevolent spirits and I loved every twist.

Five. I love horror, scary movies, scary books, and all things Spooky Season so I’m not an easy scare. While I wouldn’t say this book “scared” me per se, it kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time, wanting more. Too often with YA horror/thriller it feels like something is being held back, either in the writing or in the topics, but I didn’t feel that here. Marshall took me to some dark places, both in the story and conceptually, and I genuinely enjoyed myself along the ride. I commend her for taking those risks because they paid off.

So- I guess I really recommend this book. Especially if YA is your thing and/or spooky books are your thing! This book had a little bit of all of that and then a little more, and a ghost story on top of the whole thing. Rules for Vanishing is on shelves now! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Thank you so much to BookishFirst who provided me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

See you tomorrow! x

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ARC Reviews, Reviews

The Furies

A Morrow

In 1998, a sixteen-year-old girl is found dead.

She’s posed on a swing on her boarding school’s property, dressed all in white, with no known cause of death. Whispers and rumors swirl, with no answers. But there are a few who know what happened; there is one girl who will never forget.

One year earlier: a new student, Violet, steps on the campus of Elm Hollow Academy, an all-girl’s boarding school on the outskirts of a sleepy coastal town. This is her fresh start, her chance to begin again in the wake of tragedy, leave her demons behind. Bright but a little strange, uncertain and desperate to fit in, she soon finds herself invited to an advanced study group, led by her alluring and mysterious art teacher, Annabel.

There, with three other girls–Alex, Grace, and Robin–the five of them delve into the school’s long-buried grim history: of Greek and Celtic legends; of the school founder’s “academic” interest in the occult; of gruesome 17th century witch trials. Annabel does her best to convince the girls that her classes aren’t related to ancient rites and rituals, and that they are just history and mythology. But the more she tries to warn the girls off the topic, the more they drawn to it, and the possibility that they can harness magic for themselves.

Violet quickly finds herself wrapped up in this heady new world of lawless power–except she is needled by the disappearance of a former member of the group, one with whom Violet shares an uncanny resemblance. As her friends’ actions take a turn for the darker and spiral out of control, she begins to wonder who she can trust, all the while becoming more deeply entangled. How far will these young girls go to protect one another…or to destroy one another?

I am loving the “female rage novel” trend, aren’t you??

The Furies by Katie Lowe is another compelling addition to this developing genre. Following the new girl at the notorious Elm Hollow Academy, the Furies reads like The Craft, Mean Girls, and The Secret History all had a meeting and wrote a book together. It’s dark, explores the intense sides of humanity and female friendship, throws in a dash of witchcraft, and all for an enthusiastic Young Adult crowd.

I am always fascinated when a book explores female relationships as a primary plot point and this book definitely does that in spades. The girls in this book are sometimes brutal, mean, or downright wild but they are all one thing at their core: human. I loved the way the author played with mortality and fear and the ways we compete with each other whether we’re in competition or not.

Lowe’s writing style sets the perfect tone for this kind of story. Her descriptions are detailed and full, the plot is tight and interesting all the way through, but what I liked most was the way she wrote characters. Lowe’s eye to humans and their relationships is nuanced and examined and thoughtful, which gives the whole book an eerie speculative feel. The Furies does an excellent job of making the reader wonder what is going to happen next and if we really know the characters as well as we think we do.

Overall, The Furies was a great debut and an excellent contribution to the recent growth of “rage-lit.” It was fun, brutal, twisted, and consistently kept my attention on every page. I enjoyed feeling, raging, and going wild with the girls in The Furies, and I very much hope you will too.

Happy reading, friends! x

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WWW

It’s “What are you reading?” Wednesday!

A Morrow

I’ve seen a lot of bookish memes and list ideas here on the book-blogging circuit, and I wish I could do all of them! One of my favorites has been a trend of bloggers posting their current reads on Wednesdays.

This week I’ll be taking inspiration from Taking On a World of Words, and trying out their “WWW Wednesday!”

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

What I’m currently reading:

Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky

I somehow ended up reading a ton of horror this week…huh. I wonder why? *coughHalloweencoughcough* Halloween isn’t over till I say its over, so…it’s not over till I finish these next couple of books. This is the book everyone has been talking about and I have finally gotten my hands on a full copy instead of just a handful of chapters. I plan to be sucked into this huge beast of a novel every second I can be this week.

The Hunger by Alma Katsu

My second scary story of the week! This is a somewhat-retelling of what could have happened to the Donner Party that was lost on their journey west all those decades ago. I’ve always been morbidly fascinated with this story, just because of the wild mystery of it all, so I’m eagerly looking forward to see what crazy explanation this author brings to the table. Plus I’ve heard this book recommended to me so many times that it’s about time I finally read it. Started it last night and am loving it so far!

The Return by Rachel Harrison

Haha I was reading this last week too and I thought I would finish it in a day. Honestly, I would have, it’s riveting! Except I have things that interrupt my reading like work and dinner and feeding the cat, and generally just adulting in general. So far this is still a great read though! Creepy and eerily confusing, I am having fun trying to work out the puzzle. Look for my review a little later, and this release date in March of 2020.

What I’ve recently finished:

Ruthless Gods by Emily A. Duncan

I don’t want to say much here. This book was so so so highly anticipated by me after its predecessor, Wicked Saints, and I’m currently writing a full review for it. For now, needless to say, it was a wild, crazy, magical ride. I can’t wait to tell you more about it. (Am I being enough of a tease here?)

The Necromancer’s Prison by Alec Whitesell

I am so excited to have finally finished this wonderful little gem of a book. Its author, Alec Whitesell, reached out to me a while ago to take a look at this and I am only just now getting around to it because of life’s crazy whims (sorry, Alec!). I really enjoyed this though, it was fresh, original, kept me engaged and reading all the way till the end, and I can’t wait to share more of my thoughts in my full review within the week!

What I think I’ll read next:

Twice in a Blue Moon by Christina Lauren

I have been waiting for this book for so looooooong!! Or at least it feels like forever, but really it wasn’t all that long ago that I became a ride-or-die CL fan. I love their writing and their ability to make romance feel as sweet, layered, complex, simple, interesting, and sometimes tragic as it is. Reading a CL book means something light, something that’s going to make me feel happier all through the day, something that I can’t drag my nose out of. My copy arrives in the mail tomorrow. It’s going downnnnn, fam.

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Mayhem in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe

It is Non-Fiction November, after all, so I am going to try and knock out some of the NF books I’ve been dying to get to! This is at the top of my list. If you don’t know this about me already, I’ve always had a bit of a passion for the conflict between Ireland and Northern Ireland, and its history. I’m a redhead of Irish and Scottish descent, but more than that it was just a period of time that’s fascinated me ever since I can remember. When I was in college, I studied abroad in Belfast, Northern Ireland for a year, on a program designed to teach us first-hand about the history there and it was an incredible learning experience. I’ve read a lot on this subject, but this book has been lauded so highly this year and I am dying to dig into it. I’ll report back when I finish!

What are YOU reading this week?? Drop me a line in the comments letting me know! x

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WWW

It’s “What are you reading?” Wednesday!

A Morrow

I’ve seen a lot of bookish memes and list ideas here on the book-blogging circuit, and I wish I could do all of them! One of my favorites has been a trend of bloggers posting their current reads on Wednesdays.

This week I’ll be taking inspiration from Taking On a World of Words, and trying out their “WWW Wednesday!”

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

What I’m currently reading:

The Return by Rachel Harrison

I really should have waited to pick this one up, since its release date isn’t for quite a while, but I couldn’t help myself. The premise was just so intriguing: Julie, the main character’s best friend, goes hiking and doesn’t return. For two years. Until she’s back again, with supposedly no memory of where she was. Um. What?? Yeah, I had to read this, and its perfect for the spooky season too. I’m moving through this book so quickly and I don’t want it to end, which all bodes so well. Look for a review of this one as the release date approaches.

Ruthless Gods by Emily A. Duncan

First, let me just say, that I was so excited and proud and surprised when I was approved to read an ARC of this book through Netgalley. Wicked Saints, the first novel in this YA fantasy trilogy, was one of the most talked about YA novels of the last year and its sequel is highly anticipated as well. I liked Wicked Saints, though it wasn’t perfect, but the world that these books take place in is utterly fascinating to me. The mix of magic and religion is so intriguing, and I for one am really looking forward to seeing where this series takes us. I just started this one, so expect me to report back soon.

Love Her or Lose Her by Tessa Bailey

I’ve been reading mostly horror or thrillers this month (cause duh, it’s October) but at one point I needed to take a break and this ARC fell into my lap. Taking place in the same world as Fix Her Up, Tessa Bailey’s debut novel, this Adult Contemporary novel is so many things. It’s about romance, how it starts and how it can fall to the wayside when life becomes difficult. It’s about falling back in love with yourself and with a partner you have drifted from. It feels so fresh to read a book that starts with a married couple and works through them finding a new romance together, instead of most romances that tend to end with a wedding. I am loving this so far and I’ll report back soon.

What I’ve recently finished:

No Exit by Taylor Adams

Holy hell. I will definitely be writing a full review of this book because I just loved it that much. I started it one morning and then…the whole day disappeared. I did laundry, I worked, I lived my life that day, but every single second I could grab in between all the adulting, I was sticking my nose back into this story. What. A. Book. No Exit starts off fast and intense and never, ever, once, lets up. I was tense, I was anxious, I was so attached to the characters and immersed in this world that I didn’t even notice it got dark while I was reading. If you’re looking for an adult thriller to make your day disappear, this is the book for you. Just make sure you don’t have anything else important to do that day, because all you’ll want to do is read.

The Escape Room by Megan Goldin

I also enjoyed this, but given I read it right after No Exit (which I just talked about how much I loved) it was a little bit of a letdown. Some of that is my comparison between the two, which is unfair, but some of it was earned by The Escape Room. Ultimately, I did enjoy this story. It was tense, mysterious, and something about it did keep pulling me back until I got to the end. I just needed to know what had happened to one of the characters. This book is told in alternating chapters of present day and the past and while I loved this format immensely, The Escape Room suffered from the unfortunate fact that- well, one of those storylines was just more interesting than the other. And I don’t think it was the one the author intended, given the title of the book refers to the present day timeline. Those chapters weren’t un-enjoyable, but I kept wanting to hurry through them just to get back to the much more intriguing story behind it all. If you like thrillers, I would still recommend this one. While it wasn’t perfect, I had a great time reading it and I felt satisfied at the end. Check it out.

What I think I’ll read next:

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

I have been hungering after this book for SO long that all I want to do is start it. It’s been a battle to really focus on the books I’m reading now (which I’m enjoying) and not just jump right into this one. Leigh Bardugo is an author I highly enjoy and this is her first Adult Fantasy novel. Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom, also written by Bardugo, are two of my favorite books in the world and I am so excited to read her debut into the world of Adult fiction. Looking forward to this immensely!

Imaginary Friend by Steven Chbosky

This is another spooky novel I’ve been trying to get my hands on all month. A total departure from his previous work (The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which is a YA contemporary) this work is pure Adult horror and I cannot wait to dive in. I’ve read the first chapter of this book through Amazon and I am already hooked. Hopefully it’ll be just as spooky, creepy, and scary as I want it to be.

The Deep by Rivers Solomon with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, & Jonathan Snipes

Black mermaids!!! This has been one of the most anticipated books of the season, at least for me, but I also see it being talked about everywhere. Mermaids and other magical sea-creatures have been a big trend as of late but the diversity in these books has been seriously lacking. This book is the answer to that unmet need and I couldn’t be more excited to see what’s in store in The Deep.

What are YOU reading this week? Drop me a line in the comments! x — A

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