Claire Stevens's Blog, page 34

Waiting On Wednesday - The Thousandth Floor by Katharine McGee

Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jill over at Breaking The Spine and it’s a chance for us all to highlight the upcoming releases we’re eagerly anticipating.  This week, my Waiting On Wednesday pick is The Thousandth Floor by Katharine McGee.
 
Here’s the blurb:

New York City as you’ve never seen it before. A thousand-story tower stretching into the sky. A glittering vision of the future, where anything is possible—if you want it enough.

Welcome to Manhattan, 2118.

A hundred years in the future, New York is a city of innovation and dreams. But people never change: everyone here wants something…and everyone has something to lose.

Leda Cole’s flawless exterior belies a secret addiction—to a drug she never should have tried and a boy she never should have touched.

Eris Dodd-Radson’s beautiful, carefree life falls to pieces when a heartbreaking betrayal tears her family apart.

Rylin Myers’s job on one of the highest floors sweeps her into a world—and a romance—she never imagined…but will her new life cost Rylin her old one?

Watt Bakradi is a tech genius with a secret: he knows everything about everyone. But when he’s hired to spy by an upper-floor girl, he finds himself caught up in a complicated web of lies.

And living above everyone else on the thousandth floor is Avery Fuller, the girl genetically designed to be perfect. The girl who seems to have it all—yet is tormented by the one thing she can never have.

Debut author Katharine McGee has created a breathtakingly original series filled with high-tech luxury and futuristic glamour, where the impossible feels just within reach. But in this world, the higher you go, the farther there is to fall….

This sounds awesome!  It's definitely going on my TBR list!

What about you?  What are you waiting for this week?

There Will Be Lies by Nick Lake

This book was kind of bonkers.  Good-bonkers, and I enjoyed it, but still one of the craziest books I’ve read for a while.

So the story opens with Shelby Cooper, a seventeen year old girl who lives possibly the most sheltered life with her overprotective mum.  She’s homeschooled, isn’t allowed to go out alone, she rarely speaks to anyone other than her mum and her life is strictly planned with the same routines every week.  

Did I say she rarely speaks to anyone other than her mum?  Okay, she does sometimes speak to Mark, a boy at her local library.  He’s super hot and mysterious and, when Shelby gets hit by a car right outside the library, it's no coincidence that he was on the scene.

Despite her smothery upbringing, Shelby is refreshingly (and surprisingly) well-rounded.  She reads, she plays baseball (on her own, in a batting cage, which is like the saddest thing I’ve read all year) and she thinks almost entirely in sarcasm.

Gym Rat doesn’t say, You feel like hooking up? but he does say, You feel like hanging out? so I was close.
I shake my head as I walk past, and I see his mouth say, Bitch, silently.
So yeah, sad face. I really missed out there.

I really enjoyed her narration and I think the way she looked at some pretty freaky events with such side-eye made me like this book an awful lot more than I would have otherwise.    Now, I’m not saying that without Shelby I wouldn’t have enjoyed There Will Be Lies at all.  It was still a pretty decent read.  But her narration gave it at least one extra star.  

The book was a mixture of contemporary, mythology, spec fic and thriller.  I say mixture rather than blend because it felt just like that: a mixture.  Part of the book was set in the real world, where a pretty thrilling mystery was unravelling, and part was set in The Dreaming, this before-time-began dreamworld full of Native American mythology.  Both were good, and I got how events in The Dreaming had resonance in the real world, but it left me feeling like I was reading two separate books.

I had virtually no prior knowledge of Native American mythology, so I’m not really in a position to comment of the accuracy of its portrayal in The Dreaming, but it’s inclusion was really interesting and engaging.

I do, however, have a lot of prior knowledge of contemporary and thrillers and the real life plotline was excellent.  It had me on the edge of my seat - it was real thrills and spills stuff and some events had me reading with my mouth hanging open unattractively.  Coupled with the brilliant narrative it made for a story that had me reading way past my bedtime.

It’s not often I say that the narration was absolutely crucial in a book; in fact, I can’t think of a book I’ve read recently where this was the case, but with this book it was true.  Shelby as a character really papered over any cracks this book might have had and made it a really decent read.

4 stars

The List by Siobhan Vivian

The List happens every year.  Every September, eight ‘lucky’ girls at Mount Washington High School are picked: the prettiest and ugliest from each grade - and the list is posted all over the school.
 
Abby lives in her sister’s shadow intellectually and loves that she’s on the list as prettiest freshman.
 
Danielle a.k.a. Dan the Man finds that her relationship with her boyfriend is shaken by her inclusion on The List.
 
Homeschooled Lauren has no idea what The List is, but if it helps her make friends in a strange new school, then who is she to argue?
 
Candace is pretty.  She shouldn’t be on The List as ugliest sophomore.  But, as everyone knows, beauty is only skin deep.
 
Bridget has lost weight over the summer and her inclusion on The List is a direct result of this.  Now she just needs to keep the weight off....
 
Sarah is a social outcast and when she’s declared ugliest junior, she decides to give her critics exactly what they want.
 
Jennifer is on the list for the forth time as ugliest in her grade, but when Margo’s friends start sticking up for her, she finds she might get to be beautiful just for one night.
 
Margo is not a fan of the attention Jennifer is getting.  She’s going to be homecoming queen if she has to stomp on everyone in her path to do so.
 
The eight-way narrative worked in some respects and I felt like I got to know the girls relatively well, but I also thought the book could have investigated the full impact of The List a lot better if it had just concentrated on just two or three MCs.  A lot of issues felt skated over and it was only through some pretty skilful writing that the plot didn’t turn into a big old mess.
 
The narrative was really engaging and kept me wanting to read more.  Some pretty serious issues were raised (bullying, eating disorders) in an accessible, relatable way and although the levity didn’t really allow the full impact of these issues to be explored fully, it did allow a glimpse as to how this sort of prank can wreck lives.
 
Because one of the most striking things about this book is that you can totally imagine a list like this being published.  As a society, we are completely, unhealthily obsessed with looks, and women’s looks especially.  And it does no one any good.
 
The only thing that prevented this book from rating higher was the ending.  Obviously I’m not going to say what the ending was, but suffice to say it left me thinking that the last thirty or so pages were missing from my edition.  I clicked backwards and forwards on my Kindle, but no.  The story just sort of ... stopped.  And it left several storylines completely hanging in mid-air.  I’ve not heard about any planned sequels, so it just seemed like a really odd way of finishing a book.  Like the author got bored of writing, or something.
 
Up until this point, though, I actually really enjoyed it.  It’s not deep enough to be considered a femininst tract but it’s an engaging read and it does give an interesting perspective on the obsession society has with female beauty (and if you want to read a book that comes at female beauty from the opposite direction - i.e. a totally misogynistic direction - read Arthur Marwick’s A History of Human Beauty).
 
4 stars

Waiting On Wednesday - The Witch's Kiss by Katharine and Elizabeth Corr

Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jill over at Breaking The Spine and it’s a chance for us all to highlight the upcoming releases we’re eagerly anticipating.  This week, my Waiting On Wednesday pick is The Witch's Kiss by Katharine and Elizabeth Corr.
 
Here’s the blurb:

Sixteeen-year-old Meredith is fed-up with her feuding family and feeling invisible at school – not to mention the witch magic that shoots out of her fingernails when she’s stressed. Then sweet, sensitive Jack comes into her life and she falls for him hard. The only problem is that he is periodically possessed by a destructive centuries-old curse. Meredith has lost her heart, but will she also lose her life? Or in true fairytale tradition, can true love’s kiss save the day?

This sounds great!  I love a nice, dark, twisty fairy tale and this sounds like it's going to hit the spot.

What about you?  What are you waiting for this week?

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

Todd and his dog Manchee live in Prentisstown.  Prentisstown is a funny old place.  About twelve years ago a virus killed all the women and left the men with Noise, the ability to hear everyone’s thoughts but also the curse never to be able to stop them.  Then one day, Todd and Manchee find a patch of silence in the swamp near his home and with it they discover a secret so terrible they have to run for their lives.

This book failed to blow me away as much as I’d hoped.  And that makes me sad.

The plot started off really well.  Loads of little clues were dropped in the first chapter or two that made me want to keep reading and find out more about the world.  It sounded dystopian, but there were psychic powers, so then I started thinking it was fantasy.  Then a scout spaceship gets chucked in - so ... sci-fi?  Well, actually, it’s all three.  I’ve only seen this kind of cross-genre thing done a few times (most notably in Peter Hamilton’s Nights Dawn Trilogy) and I decided it boded well.  I love a nice, messy, overblown plot with loads of stuff thrown in.  I started rubbing my hands in anticipation.

Well, like I said, it did start off well.  The first quarter or so was pretty action-packed with loads of surprising revelations, but after that it just seemed to tail off a bit.  I came to the conclusion that the level of action that’s crammed into the first quarter was just unsustainable and after that the plot just meandered into a big long walk.

It does pick up right at the end and there’s a huge twisty cliffhanger in the last few pages which made me think about picking up the second book, but I’m not sure if I can be bothered.  That sounds awful, but I’m just not invested enough to plough through a thousand-odd more pages to find out what happens.  

I’ll tell you something I did like, though: two MCs that don’t end up having a romantic relationship.  Instead, they develop a platonic friendship based on trust and loyalty.  It was really lovely to see their friendship develop to the point where they can’t be without each other, and while I’m sure a romantic element will come into the plot somewhere along the line, this was a really good start.

Todd was an okay character.  Only okay.  He’s very resourceful and brave but sadly he did suffer from the old Wilful Ignorance trope.  Early on, he gets given a book that could basically hold the key to the universe, oodles of backstory and clues about what he should do next to officially fix the world.  Todd doesn’t read that well, though, but that’s okay because his best friend does.  So does he ask his friend to read the book out to him?  No, of course not.  He keeps refusing - for no good reason, as far as I could tell - to even contemplate translating the book, even though they both know that the book is really important.

And Todd's overuse of double-negatives!  AAARGH!  It made me want to jump out the window.  ‘You can’t trust no one!’  I wanted to tock him on the forehead with a pencil and say, ‘That means you CAN trust SOMEONE!’

Unfortunately, one major criticism of this book is that it overuses the trope, Baddies That Don’t Die.  There are two baddies chasing Todd and even though he manages to get into numerous fights with them, they just keep popping back up again, like a Whack-A-Mole.  It should have been tense, but it ended up being a bit annoying.

I know a lot of people who have really enjoyed this book and I’m kind of bummed that I didn’t love it.  I liked it just well enough to carry on through to the end, but ultimately wasn’t excited enough to follow up with t he next two books.  Oh well.  Onwards and upwards.

3 stars

Summer Days and Summer Nights edited by Stephanie Perkins

When I heard Stephanie Perkins had edited another anthology of short stories, I immediately put it on my TBR list. I adored My True Love Sent To Me, and I had high hopes for this one.

And I wasn’t disappointed. As with any anthology, not every story was a hit. Some were spot-on, most were good and only a couple were only-okay. I don’t really read short stories that often, but I think Stephanie Perkins has the knack for collating a great collection. Some of the stories are contemporary and some are fantasy, but each story was so summery, it was so evocative.

A breakdown of my ratings for each story.....

Head, Scales, Tongue, Tail by Leigh Bardugo - 4 stars
The End of Love by Nina LaCour - 4 stars
Last Stand at the Cinegor by Libba Bray - 3 stars
Sick Pleasures by Francesca Lia Block - 2 stars
In Ninety Minutes, Turn North by Stephanie Perkins - 4 stars
Souvenirs by Tim Federle - 4 stars
Inertia by Veronica Roth - 4.5 stars
Love is the Last Resort by Jon Skovron - 2 stars
Good Luck and Farewell by Brandy Colbert - 3 stars
Brand New Attraction by Cassandra Clare - 5 stars
A Thousand Ways This Could All Go Wrong by Jennifer E Smith - 4 stars
The Map of Tiny Perfect Things by Lev Grossman - 5 stars

My favourite was Brand New Attraction by Cassandra Clare - I think she’s one of those authors who I just click with because I’ve never read anything of hers that I didn’t like. Brand New Attraction is the story of a girl who lives in a dark fairground with her dad. They have tons of creepy attractions and the whole fairground is powered by a demon (obviously).

Another really good story was The Map of Tiny Perfect Things by Lev Grossman. It’s kind of a pastiche of Groundhog Day, but every day is 4th August and the boy it’s happening to is pretty content to spend every day for the rest of his existence just sitting reading books, until he goes to the swimming pool one day and meets a girl also stuck in the time loop. It’s funny but also really emotional.

The only story I couldn’t get into was Love Is The Last Resort. It was written in a style that made it feel like it was set in the 1940s; I could imagine Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy were playing the lead roles. There was nothing specifically wrong with it, it just wasn’t for me.

I’d definitely recommend this for anyone’s summer reading list - it’s a great book to take to the beach.

4 stars overall

Waiting On Wednesday - Unscripted Joss Byrd by Lygia Day Penaflor

Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jill over at Breaking The Spine and it’s a chance for us all to highlight the upcoming releases we’re eagerly anticipating.  This week, my Waiting On Wednesday pick is Unscripted Joss Byrd by Lygia Day Penaflor.
 
Here’s the blurb:
 
 Hollywood critics agree. Joss Byrd is "fiercely emotional," a young actress with "complete conviction," and a "powerhouse."

Joss Byrd is America's most celebrated young actress, but on the set of her latest project, a gritty indie film called The Locals, Joss's life is far from glamorous. While struggling with her mother's expectations, a crush on her movie brother, and a secret that could end her career, Joss must pull off a performance worthy of a star.

hen her renowned, charismatic director demands more than she is ready to deliver, Joss must go off-script to stay true to herself.
 
What about you?  What are you waiting for this week?

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

“There is not always a good guy. Nor is there always a bad one. Most people are somewhere in between."

A Monster Calls is a story by Patrick Ness inspired by an idea Siobhan Dowd had before she died.  Patrick Ness took Siobhan’s idea and ran with it and has created a beautiful, unique story.
 
Just after midnight, a monster visits Conor.  It’s something ancient and wild.  But Conor is dealing with so much in his life at the moment - bullies, his mum’s illness, his annoying gran coming to stay - that maybe the monster isn’t that scary. 
 
I really enjoyed this book.  It was emotional without being mawkish and dealt with grief and acceptance in a relatable way, interweaving Conor’s everyday life with fairytale stories that help him deal with the stuff he’s going through.  I actually listened to it as an audiobook, so I missed out on the amazing illustrations and I think this media might have impeded a little of the emotional delivery.
 
Conor is one of those characters who really grabs you - he’s dealing with awful stuff in literally every aspect of his life.  His dad has moved to America, his Gran (who he doesn’t get on with) has moved in and his mum’s cancer treatment just seems to be taking forever to work.  School offers no escape - he constantly dodges the school bullies and the teachers who give him pitying looks.  Even his sleep is plagued with nightmares.
 
A Monster Calls has some really ideas about what constitutes a monster and how some people are dealing with such scary things in their lives that a monster made of an old yew tree might not be that frightening in comparison
 
Unlike pretty much everyone else I’ve spoken to, I didn’t cry.  Maybe I’m cold and hard (in fact, I know I am) but I could see Conor’s denial and kind of saw where the story was going.  I was still a very emotional journey, though.
 
4 stars

Asking For It by Louise O'Neill

They are all innocent until proven guilty. But not me. I am a liar until I am proven honest.
 
I received a copy of Asking For It in exchange for  an honest review.  Many thanks to Quercus and Netgalley.
 
***Trigger Warning: this book deals with rape, sexual assault and victim blaming***
 
Emma O’Donovan is eighteen years old, pretty and confident.  One night, she and her friends go to a party.  Emma drinks plenty, takes some drugs, flirts and generally has a great time.  The next morning, however, she wakes up on her front porch with no memory of the second half of her evening.  Luckily for Emma, though, there are plenty of photos to tell her exactly what happened to her the night before.
 
I read this book in one sitting, ignoring pretty much everything around me as I devoured it.  Emma’s story is harrowing and uncomfortable, but it’s such an important book in today’s climate of slut-shaming, victim-blaming, rape culture and the explosion of social media.  I received t a review copy of this book a little while ago, and in light of the recent media commentary surrounding Brock Turner’s conviction for sexual assault, it seemed relevant to read it now.
 
Louise O’Neill describes a situation where a young woman goes to a party with her friends, gets trashed, and can’t remember what happened to her the morning after.  The aftermath is almost as horrific as the attack itself.  Not only does she have to deal with only having a series of sickening photos as her memories of the night, but she is shunned and harassed by her friends and acquaintances and suffers the ordeal of having her case discussed on television, radio and social media.
 
And the most horrific thing about this book?  It’s not even fiction.  Emma might just as well be the pseudonym for any number of sexual assault or rape survivors who have decided that it’s not worth pursuing their attackers, or if they do press charges (and only 15% of those who experience sexual violence do), they find how astonishingly low the actual rate of conviction in these cases is (5.7% of reported cases in the UK end in conviction).
 
Emma herself isn’t a likeable girl. She’s deeply disloyal to her friends, she steals, she’s vacuous and has an overinflated sense of self-importance combined with cripplingly low self-esteem, judging all the women she knows (including herself) in terms of their looks as opposed to their personalities.  So, pretty toxic.  And this makes things very difficult as a reader.  After all, it’s hard to empathise when bad things happen to bad people.  And this in turn leads to the uncomfortable realisation that in thinking this we, as readers, are no better than the townsfolk and acquaintances who have ostracised Emma.  No matter how rotten the person, non-consent is rape.
 
So: Emma’s acquaintances.  Not a nice bunch of people.  The only decent people as far as I could tell were Emma’s brother and her next door neighbour.  The girls and women she knows, who you might expect to have some empathy for her, are amongst the worst of the lot, but I think in some respects it was the attitude of her parents that angered me the most.  As a parent myself, I seriously cannot imagine anyone being so concerned by their social standing that they would encourage their child to not report an attack like this.  Seriously, if this happened to my daughters, I would be round her attacker’s house with a baseball bat and pair of scissors to beat the shit out of them and cut their knackers off.  Sadly, I do realise that some people are so weak they would put their own happiness before justice for their child.
 
There is a lot of discussion around slut-shaming, victim-blaming and the rise of social media.  There’s also discussion about the nature of consent and how hard it is to gain a criminal conviction when the victim is promiscuous, has no memory of the events knows the perpetrator(s) and has previously consented to sex.  This discussion is summarised in a very good online video by Emmeline May likening sexual consent to offering someone a cup of tea (you can tell I’m British, can’t you?).
 
I wavered between 4.5 and 5 stars for this book.  Ultimately, I reserve five stars for books that I will definitely be re-reading, and I just don’t think I can read Emma’s story again.  The harrowing nature of it is made even worse by the knowledge that every day rape survivors are facing the crippling pressure that Emma herself faces.  I will, however, be recommending it to everyone I know.

4.5 stars

Waiting On Wednesday - 100 Days by Nicole McInnes

Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jill over at Breaking The Spine and it’s a chance for us all to highlight the upcoming releases we’re eagerly anticipating.  This week, my Waiting On Wednesday pick is 100 Days by Nicole McInnes.
 
Here’s the blurb:
 
 Agnes doesn't know it, but she only has one hundred days left to live. When she was just a baby, she was diagnosed with Progeria, a rare disease that causes her body to age at roughly ten times the normal rate. Now nearly sixteen years old, Agnes has already exceeded her life expectancy.

Moira has been Agnes’s best friend and protector since they were in elementary school. Due to her disorder, Agnes is still physically small, but Moira is big. Too big for her own liking. So big that people call her names. With her goth makeup and all-black clothes, Moira acts like she doesn’t care. But she does.

Boone was friends with both girls in the past, but that was a long time ago—before he did the thing that turned Agnes and Moira against him, before his dad died, before his mom got too sad to leave the house.

An unexpected event brings Agnes and Moira back together with Boone, but when romantic feelings start to develop, the trio’s friendship is put to the test. 
 
What about you?  What are you waiting for this week?