Claire Stevens's Blog, page 62

The Memory Hit by Carla Spradbery

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.  Many thanks to Hachette Children’s Books and Netgalley.

Bit of an odd book this one.  I quite enjoyed it and it only took the best part of a day to read, but...yeah.  Bit odd, really.

The premise revolves around a new hallucinogenic drug that’s out on the streets called Nostalgex.  Take one or two pills and your memory is enhanced so that you can pass any test.  Take more and you can relive the best memories of your life like you’re really there. 

On New Year ’s Eve, Jess discovers that her best friend, Scarlett, and her boyfriend, Luke, are cheating and that Luke is also dealing Nostalgex, but before she can confront them a house fire breaks out.  Meanwhile, a few streets away, Sam Cooper, Jess’s ex, has wandered into the path of a local Nostalgex dealer and finds himself entangled far further than he ever imagined possible.  Jess and Cooper’s worlds collide again as they work together to sort the whole mess out.

The plot took a little while to get into and seemed to move quite slowly at first, but once it got going it rattled along nicely and there was a superb twisty-type ending that I didn’t see coming but made total sense.  There were a few leaps of logic but nothing too serious, so yeah, the plot was pretty good and all added up to a decent YA thriller.

The writing was nice and gritty, which suited the subject matter and added to the who’s-gonna-die-next suspense.  Fans of purple prose should probably look away now, because this book won’t be your kind of thing!

My main issue with the book was the characters.

I liked Cooper.  He was my favourite.  He was kind of goofy and charming and he did some dumb things (crashing a party to steal booze is rarely a good idea), but he had a good heart and was loyal, so yeah, I liked Cooper.  Jag, too, was a lot of fun and he and Cooper seemed to have this slightly comedy double-act thing going on which was really nice to read.

Jess annoyed me a bit, though.  She was a clever girl, and dedicated to her studies, but apparently this intelligence didn’t extend to her choice of boyfriend.  Luke was an absolute cockwomble!  Seriously, now, does anyone actually think that gaslighting is ever acceptable in a relationship?  Or grabbing your girlfriend’s arm so hard it leaves bruises?  Or smashing your fist through a car window to get her attention?

It was weird, but when the book started, I got the impression that Luke was a really nice guy, but then Jess started dropping these little hints about how rotten he was to her, leaving me thinking, ‘Well, what were you DOING with him, then?’  Because it’s not like Jess doesn’t have options.  Like I said, she’s bright, she comes from a relatively happy, non-abusive home, she’s got loads going for her.  I didn’t get why it took her so long to realise that Luke’s behaviour was abusive and the fact that she didn’t just kick Luke to the curb once she did realise it, confused me a lot.

Still, the plot and writing held the book together and although I’m still going to be tutting over Jess’s poor taste in men for a couple of days, this was still a pretty good read.

7/10

Interview with Jody Gehrman, author of The Truth About Jack

Jody Gehrman, author of the recently released The Truth About Jack, as well as Babe In Boyland and the Audrey's Guide series, joins us today to talk a bit about writing books, casting the characters in her books and why she'd secretly like to live in Essex (yeah, I couldn't believe it either!)  Check out the interview below and my review of The Truth About Jack.  It's definitely one to look out for!

BBB:  When did you decide to become a writer and what was the first thing you wrote?
JG:  I don't even know if it was a conscious decision. I just can't stop myself from writing; I feel less alive if I'm not working on a novel or a script of some sort. On the other hand, I definitely made a choice to pursue writing as a career, to seek publication. Even if I didn't do it professionally I'm pretty sure I'd do it for fun. The choice to get a book or play out there is pretty simple: I'm a writer, so I crave readers. I want to share the worlds that spring from my imagination.

BBB:  Tell us about how you work as a writer.  What inspires you?  Are you a meticulous planner, or do you fly by the seat of your pants?
JG:  I’m kind of a reformed pantser turned plotter, though I still love being surprised. I’m big on outlines and I have structural templates I work with to be sure the plot’s moving forward at a brisk pace. My technique varies from book to book, but I do have a general idea of where I’m going at the very least. I generally write an organic first draft that is steered only by vague notions of the big picture. Later I usually write detailed outlines and revision to-do lists. It’s a delicate balance between knowing where I’m going and allowing myself to roll with inspiration when it strikes. For me that’s a lot of where the pleasure lies--in the unexpected.

BBB:  What books and authors have influenced you the most?
JG:  This is a hard question for me; so many writers have influenced me at different times in my life. Some of my favorites in the realm of “classics” include Nabokov, both of the Brontes (especially Charlotte) and Jane Austen. Southern writers like Ellen Gilchrist made a big impression on me as a young writer. When I found Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones Diary, Nick Hornby's High Fidelity and Sophie Kinsella's Shopaholic series I became fascinated with British comic geniuses. I read a lot of mysteries and thrillers these days; I’m trying to understand the fundamentals of suspense. Some of my favorite writers in that world are Gillian Flynn, Donna Tartt, Laurie R. King and Megan Abbott.

BBB:  What's currently in your To Be Read pile?
JG:  I’m excited to check out Ophelia London’s Aimee and the Heartthrob, another Crush release. I also have a copy of Between Worlds by Alexis Alex on my bedside table. Oh, and I’m been meaning to tackle the Song of Ice and Fire series.

BBB:  One of your books, Babe in Boyland was optioned by the Disney Channel!  If the same happens for The Truth About Jack, which actors would you like to see play Jack and Dakota?
JG:  I mentally cast all my main characters, but when I play that game, time doesn’t exist. I refuse to acknowledge someone is too old to play the role; I just cast their younger selves. In that world, Jack’s a young James Franco. Dakota’s Anna Sophia Robb; if we hurry up and make this movie, she’s still in the right approximate range (hello, producers! Come and get it!) In terms of actual actors who are age-appropriate for Jack, I think I’d go with Logan Lerman.

BBB:  And finally, I live in Essex, an area of England that could give the Olympic Peninsula a run for its money in terms of average annual rainfall.  Jody, what's the best thing about living where you do in California and how does it influence your writing?  Go ahead, make us all jealous!
JG:  First, I’m the one who’s jealous! I adore the rain! I went to grad school in Bellingham, Washington, which isn’t far from the Olympic Peninsula. It rained for 90 days straight one of the years I lived there--bliss! That said, I do love Mendocino County, my current home. It’s moody but not soggy, if you get what I mean. We have our share of rain, though not quite often enough for my taste. In the summer it’s all dry, golden grass and blue skies. I like going outside at night and thinking about what comes next in my stories. I find open air and the rhythm of the seasons inspiring.

The Truth About Jack was released on the 14th April and is available here:
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Jack-Entangled-Crush-ebook/dp/B00URW6ERE/ 
B&N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-truth-about-jack-jody-gehrman/1121455793 
Kobo: https://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/the-truth-about-jack-entangled-crush

About Jody:
Jody Gehrman is a native of Northern California, where she can be found writing, teaching, reading, or obsessing over her three cats most days. She is also the author of ten novels and numerous award-winning plays. Her Young Adult novels include The Truth About Jack, Audrey's Guide to Black Magic, Audrey's Guide to Witchcraft, Babe in Boyland, Confessions of a Triple Shot Betty, and Triple Shot Bettys in Love. Babe in Boyland was optioned by the Disney Channel and won the International Reading Association's Teen Choice Award. Her adult novels are Bombshell, Notes from the Backseat, Tart, and Summer in the Land of Skin. Her plays have been produced in Ashland, New York, San Francisco, Chicago and L.A. She and her partner David Wolf won the New Generation Playwrights Award for their one-act, Jake Savage, Jungle P.I. She is a professor of English and Communication Studies at Mendocino College.

Find Jody Online:
Website: http://www.jodygehrman.com/ 
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jodygehrman 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jody.gehrman

The Truth About Jack by Jody Gehrman

I received a copy of the Truth About Jack in exchange for an honest review.  Many thanks to Entangled Publishing.

Dakota lives in an artists’ colony in California.  She has her own yurt, works in an herbalist’s shop, drinks a bunch of chai and isdesperate to get into the Rhode Island School of Design so that she can join her boyfriend, Cody, and her best friend, River, and start her professional life as an artist.  When her acceptance comes through, she thinks everything is falling into place.  Only trouble is, she then receives an email from River, telling her that she’s hooked up with Cody and that they’re now an item.  In one instant, all of Dakota’s plans seem to be shot down in flames.

In her rage and hurt, she storms down to the beach and pours her heart out in a letter to no one in particular, which she then puts in a bottle and throws out to sea.  What she doesn’t realise is that the bottle just washes back onto the shore, where it is picked up by Jack, who had been watching her from down the beach.  Too shy to answer her letter as himself, Jack adopts an alternate persona and begins writing to Dakota.

I have to say, I really enjoyed this book.  Maybe it helped that I was in the mood for a decent romance, but The Truth About Jack certainly ticked all the boxes for me.  It was funny and sweet and romantic and left me with the warm glowies after I’d finished it.

The story is told from dual viewpoints - Dakota’s and Jack’s.  We get to see Dakota working through her hurt and betrayal at Cody and River’s behaviour and how she slowly starts to fall for Jack, both as his letter-writing alter-ego and in real life.  I liked Dakota a lot - considering she’s a girl who grew up on an artists’ commune, was homeschooled and is an artist herself, she is refreshingly un-flakey and down-to-earth and grows up a lot through the story.

Jack was really sweet, too, and kind of awkward despite all his talent and dashing good looks.  At the bit where he picks up Dakota’s bottle on the beach and decides on writing to her as this alternate persona, the arrow on my Skeeve-O-Meter rocketed upwards.  But actually when you read on a little bit and see how adorably socially inept he is, you kind of understand why he does it.  I really liked Jack and it was interesting to see him grow as a character and start to throw off his isolation as the book progressed.

The plot read like a good romantic comedy.  The sort where there’s the boy-meets-girl, there’s some kind of misunderstanding, a few obstacles thrown inn the way and you spend the whole time in a state of ‘Will they, won’t they’.  There are some places where it’s actually really funny.  There’s this one bit where one character is trying to convince another that the boy she likes is a meth user, and it had me laughing out loud.  Okay, when I say it it doesn’t sound that funny, but trust me, it was very amusing.  Jody Gehrman has a lovely way of writing that flows well and manages to be descriptive enough without bogging the plot down and keeps a light touch throughout.

All in all, I thought this was a really sweet romance novel and well worth a read.

8.5/10

This Is Not A Test by Courtney Summers

I have to say, I do like a zombie apocalypse novel every now and then.  I don’t know what it is about the mental image of hordes of undead swarming about the place that appeals to me so much, but yeah, I'm a fan.

This Is Not A Test is a pretty good addition to the canon.  It follows six students in the days after a zombie plague has broken out.  They’ve found a safe place - their old high school - to barricade themselves into.  They’ve got water and food and now they’re just waiting.  For rescue?  For the undead to finally break in and slaughter them all?  Only time will tell.

I really enjoyed This Is Not A Test.  While it’s obviously a zombie apocalypse book, it looks more at the six characters and how they deal psychologically with the threat outside and their plans for the future rather than being an action-filled road trip to the secret government base or whatever (there’s always a road trip in zombie apocalypse novels.  Why?  Surely it would be the worst possible time to go trekking across country).

So the six teens are stuck in their old high school, waiting for whatever’s going to happen to just happen already.  They start to go a bit stir-crazy and snipey with each other.  Poor decisions are made - obviously, because it wouldn’t be fun unless someone was making the obvious wrong choice in a situation - but these tended to add to the tension rather than just irritate me.

This Is Not A Test is a character-driven rather than plot-driven book, which is unusual in this sub-genre.  We see a lot about the main character, Sloane’s desperately unhappy home life before the plague broke out, and also the interactions and relationships between the six characters.

One interesting thing I noticed, was that it basically reads like The Breakfast Club meets The Walking Dead.  Seriously.  You’ve got The Athlete, The Brain, The Basket Case, The Princess and The Criminal.  In case you were wondering, Sloane is Ally Sheedy’s character!  The sixth This Is Not A Test cast member, Rhys, is The Swoony One (a role not originally filled in The Breakfast Club) and I think he was inserted to provide the love interest.  And that’s fine - he does the job well.

I wonder if the author realised she was writing The Undead Breakfast Club?  She probably did.  Or maybe she’s just watched too many John Hughes movies.

The ending to the book was a definite ending, although it did feel a little bit rushed and slightly deus-ex-machina-ey, but I’d still recommend it as it’s a lot more thoughtful than the usual zombie stuff out there.

8/10

The Mad Scientist's Daughter by Cassandra Rose Clarke

I picked this up on a complete whim in Waterstone’s one day, based purely on the title, and I was so glad I did.

Cat is the daughter of two eminent scientists.  She lives a pretty carefree existence, studying what she pleases and playing in the garden of her family’s isolated house, until one day her father brings home Finn, whom he introduces as Cat’s new tutor.  Over time, she and Finn develop a bond, and eventually their friendship turns into love.  The only problem is, Finn  isn’t human.  He’s the first and only one of a new breed of incredibly advanced robots.

The story spans thirty years, from when Cat is a young girl, through her adolescence and into womanhood.  I don’t think a year is ever actually specified - artificial intelligence is common, the earth’s climate has changed and there is space exploration and colonisation - but the feel of the book is very current, in the way people speak and the things they do.

The writing in this book is beautiful and melancholy.  I’m not really one to cry over books, but I did feel myself misting up on occasion and Cat and Finn’s story stayed with me for ages after I’d finished the book.

Cat is a flawed protagonist, and all the better for it.  She is selfish and makes some really bad choices and she’s annoying as hell in some places, but you still find yourself cheering her on.  And Finn...  I kept having to remind myself: he’s a robot.  But I think that’s the whole point of the book.  I guess really the author is asking us: at what point does something stop being a machine and start being a living entity?  Is it with self-awareness?  The ability to think and learn independently? The ability to love?

This book is so many things: romantic without being schmaltzy, sci-fi without being overly technical and philosophical without being inaccessible.  I’d recommend it to anyone.

10/10

The Duff by Kody Keplinger

I read The Duff ages ago, but I keep seeing posters for the film everywhere, so I thought I’d give it another look.

Seventeen-year-old Bianca is whip-smart and cynical to the bone.  She’s also painfully aware that she’s not the ‘hot one’ in her group of friends.  When she gets told on a night out that she’s a DUFF - designated ugly fat friend - by the school’s resident man-whore, Wesley, she goes ballistic at him, but Wesley and Bianca are both about to find out that ugly is as ugly does and that attraction isn’t always skin-deep.

I really liked Keplinger’s style of writing: it’s very no-nonsense and down to earth, much like Bianca herself.  The plot flows well and it’s not all about the growing attraction between Bianca and Wesley: there’s plenty else going on as well, especially in Bianca’s home life.  It’s also an interesting look at how attraction isn’t always about someone’s face.  The plot is really relatable, because, let’s face it, we’ve all felt like the DUFF at some point.

The only gripe I have with it is...well, it’s the main premise of the book, actually.  Bianca can’t stand Wesley and he’s just called her fat and ugly, so she throws a drink in his face and then starts kissing him.    What??  Sorry, by ‘kissing’, did you actually mean ‘kneeing him in the junk’?  No, you actually meant ‘kissing’, didn’t you?  This progresses fairly quickly to sex.  Again, why would you have sex with someone who has such a negative image of you?  And I get that people do things for bad reasons, low self-esteem and so on, but although Bianca has problems in her life, she seems such a wise, clued-up character that I wanted to reach into the book and poke her.  Hard.  In the middle of her forehead.

Poor kissing/sex choices aside, I really liked Bianca.  She could be frustrating in her actions, but she was refreshingly honest and her narrative made me laugh out loud.  She was cynical and bitchy enough to keep me laughing, but had enough vulnerability to make me care about her.

Wesley was a bit of a knob, but that’s exactly what he was supposed to be.  He does grow as a character through the book, but he’s still a little bit of a knob at the end, and I quite liked the fact that he doesn’t do a complete one-eighty.

So yeah, in all this was a pretty good read.

And by the by, have you seen the girl who plays Bianca in the film?  In what alternate reality is she fat and ugly?   Shut the front door.  Talk about fodder for giving girls a negative body image.

7/10

We Were Liars by E Lockhart

We Were Liars tells the story of Cadence, Johnny, Merrin and Gat, four friends/cousins who spend each summer on their family’s private island.  The wealth and privilege of the Sinclair family hides underlying tensions and rivalries until one summer when everything erupts...

I did enjoy We Were Liars and I thought it was a fairly sophisticated piece of YA fiction, but there were aspects that took me a while to get into.

The book is written in a kind of dreamy and slightly confusing way, and left me with the feeling that I never really knew what was going on.  A lot of things are alluded to and hinted at, but nothing is properly explained until right at the end.  I’m sure this was the author’s intention - after all the description of the book mentions secrets and lies and the narrator is a self-confessed liar and amnesiac - and once I decided to just stop fretting about it, I enjoyed the experience a lot more! 

In addition to the dreamy plot, the writing was very choppy and fragmented and does that thing that you see in poetry sometimes

where the writer

fragments sentences over different lines

to lend their words

more depth

than they in fact

possess.

This was where We Were Liars lost a star because I actually think the book would have worked better without this mechanism.  The way the author had of describing people and situations and the vocabulary she used was powerful enough without doing this and it just made me want to fiddle with my Kindle to see if the settings had gone wonky.

The relationship between the cousins was very interesting, especially the way their friendship only existed on the island and they never saw each other throughout the rest of the year.  It gave the book a nice claustrophobic feel that added to the tension.  It did take a little while for me to engage with the cousins - they were kind of pretentious and spoilt (Gat excepted).  I get that you don’t have to be poor to have bad things happen to you, but with the sort of level of privilege where you get to spend your summer on a private island it takes a lot for an author to get you to really care about what their characters are going through.  I did warm up to them after a while, though.

The characters I found really interesting were the three mothers and the grandfather.  There was this whole King Lear dynamic going on which was all tense and alcoholic and nightmarish.

All in all I think this is one of those Marmite books.  You’ll enjoy it or it'll irritate the pants off you.  I’d recommend this book for anyone who likes a lot of intrigue and reads a lot of poetry.  If you like your books fast-paced and straight-talking, I’d give it a miss.

7.5/10

The Edge of Never by J A Redmerski

The Edge of Never tells the story of Camryn and Andrew, two strangers who meet on a bus headed to Idaho, via Wyoming.  Camryn is trying to escape her unfortunate past (the fates have dumped a lot in her lap over the past couple of years) and Andrew is travelling across country to visit his dad, who is dying of cancer.

I quite enjoyed this book.  It’s told from the dual POV of Camryn and Andrew and although it’s primarily a romance, the author steered clear of instalove - the two characters do some quality sniping at each other when they first meet, which was very amusing.  She also didn’t fall back on a love triangle to create tension, and I was so glad.  Love triangles are starting to absolutely do my head in.  Seriously, if you read much YA or NA fiction, you’d be forgiven for thinking that every girl out there is constantly having to make the tough decision between two hot guys.  Because that happens to me, like, every day.

Anyway, that’s what the author doesn’t do.  Instead, she builds in tension with Andrew and Camryn’s sad back stories.  One of Camryn’s ex-boyfriends died in a car accident and the other turned out to be a bit of a scumbag, so before she meets Andrew she has sworn off men.  Andrew, on the other hand, has never met a girl he likes enough to commit to and is now travelling across the country to visit his dad, who is dying of cancer.

I have to say, there was a point in the first few chapters where I thought that this was going to be my first DNF of the year.  I didn’t connect with Camryn very much in the early part of the story and I think she made some odd choices, but I’m really glad I stayed with it because she grew a lot as a character once she got on the bus and I started to really enjoy her POV.

There was a twist at the end that I didn’t see coming and I thought the ending was maybe a little bit rushed because of it and everything surrounding the twist was wrapped up a bit quickly.  Other than this, though, I thought The Edge of Never was a really enjoyable read and a very sweet romance.

7.5/10

My Daylight Monsters by Sarah Dalton

I received a copy of My Daylight Monsters from the author in exchange for an honest review. 

A while back I read Mary Hades by Sarah Dalton.  My Daylight Monsters is actually a novella that prologues Mary Hades.  Mary Hades works just fine on its own and I really enjoyed it, but I kind of wish I’d thought to read this book first as it gives a lot of background to Mary’s ability and everything she went through. 

The story opens as Mary arrives at the psychiatric ward of her local hospital.  She is being admitted voluntarily as she is hoping to get to the bottom of the visions of ‘skull men’ she’s been having.  As her stay progresses, she starts to realise the true nature of her visions, makes some friends and tries to get to the bottom of the mysterious increase in deaths on the palliative care ward....

I really enjoyed this novella.  It was a fairly quick read, the plot rattled along nicely and included the creepiest ghost story I’ve read for a while.  Mary is a very realistic, likeable MC, and I liked the other people she meets on the ward a lot.  The Evil Baddie is suitably creepy, too!

Sarah Dalton writes fluently and engagingly and I’ll certainly be reading more of her work in the future.
9/10

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

I realise that this is probably going to be a minority opinion, but I just found this book a bit meh.  It wasn’t atrocious, but it wasn’t very good either.

The Girl on the Train is a murder mystery told from three viewpoints.  Every day, Rachel takes the train into London and due to a faulty signal her train is often delayed right next to the back gardens of Blenheim Road.  From her seat on the train, Rachel sees Megan and Scott, a young married couple, going about their lives and imagines to herself what their lives must be like.  She also sees Tom and Anna, her ex-husband and his new wife.

Let me start by saying what I thought was good about it.  I liked the characterisation.  Rachel, Anna and Megan were interesting women.  Superficially they were all very different - the drunk, the mother, the ditz - but when you looked a bit closer you could see the similarities between all three, which, in the final denouement, made a lot of sense.  The writing, too, was very good.  The author managed to keep her three narrators’ voices very distinct and there was a nice narrative flow.

My biggest problem was with the plot itself.  The pace was incredibly slow and the twists were fairly predictable.  It wasn’t creepy.  I had to keep reminding myself that I was reading a murder mystery.  I never felt shocked.  I was never on the horns of a dilemma, wondering who could possibly have done it.  Instead, I found myself spending 350 pages vaguely waiting for something to happen.  There was an awful lot of repetition, especially in Rachel’s commentary.  Her depression over the collapse of her marriage, her alcoholism, her inability to have children and her overwhelming obsession with her ex-husband are the major plot points and the murder itself just seems to be sidelined at times.

I think the main problem was that this book needed more tension.  I’ve read a few murder mysteries in my time, and the best ones have you constantly wondering.  Who did it?  Who’s going to be bumped off next?  Who can you trust?  The best murder mystery I’ve ever read - And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie - was as creepy as hell and had me absolutely hooked for the two days it took me to read it.  On the odd occasion I managed to put it down, I still found myself thinking about it.  Unfortunately, with The Girl on the Train, I had to keep forcing myself to pick it up.

I suppose one of the problems was that it’s almost impossible to read a book in a vacuum; almost always we’ve had a book recommended to us, we read blurbs and reviews.  I’d seen so many outstanding write-ups of The Girl on the Train that maybe I just set my expectations too high.  The biggest surprise I got was a few pages from the end, and by that time I’m afraid I’d given up caring.

4/10