Claire Stevens's Blog, page 7

One Of Us Is Lying by Karen M McManus

“A sex tape. A pregnancy scare. Two cheating scandals. And that’s just this week’s update. If all you knew of Bayview High was Simon Kelleher’s gossip app, you’d wonder how anyone found time to go to class.”

One Of Us Is Lying is a murder mystery about five highschoolers who go into detention, but only four come our alive.  The dead guy, Simon, runs a notorious school gossip app and it transpires that he was just about to publish life-wrecking dirt on all four of his co-detentionees.  All four are under suspicion, but is the real killer still at large?

Okay, I've seen this book advertised everywhere and usually over-marketing would put me right off a book, but I won a copy of this in a raffle at school, so I decided to give it a go.

Murder mystery isn't something I read a lot of generally, but I have read nearly every one of Agatha Christie's books, so I have a certain appreciation for a well-crafted plot that keeps you guessing as to the identity of the killer.  And this book certainly did that.  I kept changing my views on who had killed Simon until the final reveal.

I think the multiple viewpoints let the book down a bit.  I found it hard to distinguish between the different characters - their voices weren't individual enough - and it made me think that none of the four narrators could possibly be the killer because of certain things they revealed (obviously I won't reveal who the killer is - I guessed it near the end, but I was kept guessing for a long while).

Also, I'm kinda over books riffing on the Breakfast Club.  The 'Ragtag Band of Misfits who Come Together to Defeat a Common Threat' trope wasn't even original when John Hughes made the film and I'm starting to roll my eyes every time I read straplines that start 'The Breakfast Club meets ..... '.

There was some romance in the book (because hey, if you're writing a YA novel you gotta shoehorn some romance in!).  I don't think it really added to the plot and I think it would have worked better if the two characters had just been friends.

All in all this was a fairly good book, but it's been a few weeks since I finished it and I had to get my copy out to flick through before I wrote this review, so it obviously hasn't made a huge impression on me!

3 stars

On Hiatus

I've been on hiatus for the last few weeks as a result of work going bugfuck crazy.  On top of that, I made the mistake of reading 11/22/63 by Stephen King, which is about as long as The Stand, doesn't really go anywhere and takes a bloody long time doing it.  So I've not exactly been reading at peak speed.  It's the summer holidays now, so i'm hoping to get back into the swing of things with some new reviews.

Ask The Passengers by AS King

Astrid Jones is carrying a lot of secrets and doesn't feel able to confide in anyone.  Instead, she lies on the picnic bench in her garden and talks to the passengers of the aircraft flying overhead.  She asks them about her abrasive family and the secrets her two best friends are asking her to keep and she asks them what it means that she's falling in love with a girl.

But obviously - OBVIOUSLY - secrets that remain safely stashed away don't make for interesting plotlines, so Astrid's secrets all come tumbling out.

I really liked Astrid.  I liked how angry she was about being shoved into one of society's little boxes, like why should she have to put a label on who she was?  Some people want to wear labels about who they are, and that's great and all, but not everyone is comfortable with labels and no one seemed to get that.

I liked (and by liked, I mean despised) the portrayal of small town life and the toxicity of Astrid's family life.  Because she has no one to talk to about the things she is bottling up and because she doesn't feel comfortable telling the world that she's in love with a girl, she sends 'love' up to the passengers in the airplanes flying over her house.  The 'love' hits the passengers and makes them reflect on the paths their own lives are taking.  It was a tiny bit magic realism, but actually quite sweet.

If I had one criticism of this book it was it wasn't hugely original.  Sending her love into the sky aside, this is a story about a girl coming to terms with her sexual identity and the backlash she gets from her small-minded community.  It's a story that's been done a bunch of times before, but it's an important message so I guess I can let it slide.

I really enjoyed this book and I'm definitely going to look out for others by this author.

4 stars

Toxic by Nicci Cloke

Toxic is the story of a group of friends - all lads plus one girl - who go on holiday to Crete for a booze-fuelled holiday, only to have the events of the holiday cause their friendship circle to turn toxic and implode over the following weeks like a slow-motion car crash.

This book was really readable and I had no problem finishing it.  It dealt with some really relevant issues, including, but not limited to: male mental health, drug and alcohol abuse, sexuality, toxic masculinity and sexual assault.  All this was wrapped up in a plot that moved really quickly.

Disclaimer: I've never went on the type of holiday depicted in this book.  However, I have seen TV programs like Ibiza Uncovered and Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents and the depiction of the holiday in this book was very realistic.  It seemed completely horrible and literally the last place on earth I'd choose to go for a holiday, but yeah.  Realistic.

The book is written in several parts, each narrated by a different character and while I often enjoy this structure I didn't feel that it worked very well here.  The plot felt really disjointed and I put that down to the narration.

There were some interesting characters, but slightly flat.  There was no one I really rooted for, but at the same time there was no one I really hated.  I didn't really feel like I got to know them enough and again that was something to do with the narration.  All three narrators told their story  like a simple series of events and there was very little back-story or explanation as to why certain events might have been significant.

The book delved into some really meaty topics, but I wanted more closure from the events of the holiday.  The plot moved along really well but the story arc wobbled and then fell flat once the group had returned to the UK.   The awful things that happened on the holiday were barely referenced when they should have been the basis for the remainder of the story arc.

All in all this was an okay read but it didn't blow me away.

3 stars

A Million Junes by Emily Henry

If I'd known this book was all magic realism bollocks before I started it, I probably wouldn't have picked it up.  As it was, the magic realism didn't irk me *too* much and this ended up being a fairly good romance with a bit of family curse / magical high jinx thrown in.

The best bit of this by far is the romance.  All her life, June / Jack / Junior o'Donnell has been warned not to go near the Angert family who live on the other side of the forest.  So when she literally bumps into the beautiful Saul Angert (in a House of Mirrors at the carnival - where else?  This is a magic realism book, after all) and she feels an attraction to him, she knows it's not going to end well.  

I really liked the romance in this book.  It was paced exactly right and the two characters were exactly the right amount of sarcastic with each other.  Like they weren't all swoony and shit.  Obviously theirs is The Love That Will End In Disaster, because this is magic realism, and if love doesn't have the power to literally break the world in half, then what good is it??

The actual bit about the curse and the history of why the two families hated each other rambled on a bot and I lost interest after a while.  I didn't really care about the cherry tree or some old dudes hating each other and the events of the feud unfolded a bit too slowly for me.  

Also, magic realism.  Have I said how much I dislike magic realism?  It all just feels so ... artificial.  It's like a big plastic cherry on your banana split.  Bleugh.  There was a tree that had its own silly name and wasn't always in the same place (of course) and ghosts and tiny floating memories that settle on your skin and show you a slice of the past.  It's all so twee and annoying.  

Despite this, I found the book to be pretty good and the romance has lifted the score right up to a decent three stars.

3 stars

Stung by Bethany Wiggins

So, I'm going to be quite snarky here, because over the last ten years I've read so much dystopian / post apocalyptic fiction that I'm at  the stage where, when I'm reading them, all I can think of is the author sitting at their desk putting a plot together and spinning a big Wheel of Fortune randomiser:

'And the apocalypse is going to be brought about by ........ bees!'  (Could just as easily have been plague, aliens, zombies, war, eco disaster, declining birth rates or cybernetic revolt)

Because the point in these books is never really *how* the apocalypse came about, but how society reacts.  And how much society needs a seventeen year old girl to come along and put everything right.

The seventeen year old world saviour in Stung is Fiona Tarsis.  She wakes up in her (partially demolished) house unable to recall the events of the previous few years. It soon becomes apparent that a major world catastrophy has occurred and she's being hunted by a whole host of  unsavoury characters.

Honestly?  The plot of this book ran pretty much the same as every other dystopian I've read.  However, I really quite enjoyed this one.  The narration was fresh and interesting, the characters were well rounded and there was a lot of tension, which kept everything rocking along quite nicely.  Everything was wrapped up a little too well at the end, and plenty of seeds were sewn for a sequel, but other than that this was really good.

4 stars

Romeo Redeemed by Stacey Jay

WHHOOP! WHHOOP! INSTALOVE ALERT!

I picked this book up because I'd loved the idea of the first book in the duology, Juliet Immortal, and even though I had some reservations about the actual execution of the book I wanted to see what the author did with the sequel.

Like Juliet Immortal, this was an okay book.  And like Juliet Immortal, this one left me feeling like some vital facts were being withheld from me.  I'm now starting to think that this is just the author's style of writing, so I don't think I'll be reading anything else of hers (although there's nothing inherently wrong or offensive about it, so I'm sure other readers may really warm to her style).

My main bugbear with this one was the massive, crashing instalove-attraction between Romeo and Ariel.  It made me die inside a little bit, I've gotta say.  One of the tropes I love most is two friends who've known each other forever falling in love (especially if there's Some Kind Of Misunderstanding, or possibly An Important Reason They Can't Be Together) and instalove is the literal opposite of this.  

Romeo was pretty annoying in this book: he fancies himself in love with Ariel, but really all he wants to do is bone her.  That's not love, dude.  It's exactly how he acts in Romeo and Juliet and I thought he was a towering twat in that as well.

It's not that I'd say give this duology a swerve - I'm sure lots of readers will like it - it's more that I'd say, go into it with your eyes open. Manage your expectations.  My expectations were, I think, a bit too high and the reality didn't quite measure up.

3 stars

Juliet Immortal by Stacey Jay

Yeah.  This was a fairly good read, but I think I liked the idea of it more than the execution.  I'm struggling to put my finger on exactly why this didn't score higher with me.

So, what I loved was the broad concept of the book.  The idea that Romeo and Juliet weren't victims of fate or their parent's controlling ways, but of higher powers locked in an eternal war: the Ambassadors and the Mercenaries.  Romeo is convinced by the Mercenaries to murder Juliet as a kind of gang initiation, and Juliet becomes one of the representitives for the Ambassadors.  And for the last seven hundred years, they've been battling it out, trying to get people to either fall in love with their soul mate (Juliet) or to kill them (Romeo).

So far so good.  And honestly, I'm  trying hard to work out what really went wrong with this book.  I think most of it lay in the style of writing.  The prose just wasn't very clear.  I never really felt like I got to grips with exactly why Juliet was supposed to be getting these soul mates together, or why Romeo was supposed to be driving them apart.  I didn't understand the background of the Ambassadors vs Mercenaries war.  

There were swathes of text where the narration when very waffley and it left me feeling like I was standing on the wrong side of a misty window, trying to work out what was going in inside.  I'm not saying I need to have everything spelled out for me - ambiguity can lead to a lot of fun in books - but for me this book raised a hell of a lot more questions than it resolved.

The book deals with soul mates, which is a concept I find a bit weird.  The whole thing where there's literally only one person in the world who is a perfect match for you?  That love drives us to do stupid, violent things?  It all just screams domestic abuse to me.

I didn't really root for Ben, the love interest.  He was okay, I guess, but just a bit vanilla.  I kind of wanted Romeo to have a big epiphany and to become the leading man but sadly it never happened.  I might check out the sequel and see if it happens there.

2.5 stars (maybe 3, if I'm feeling generous)

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Burrows

This was one of my favourite books of the year so far.  It's the story of a writer in post-war London who has had some success with a book she published during the war but is now struggling to find a subject for her second book.  She receives a note in the post from someone in Guernsey, of all places, who has just bought a second-hand book that used to belong to her and the two of them strike up a correspondence.  The book unfolds as a series of letters, between Juliet and the Society members and her London acquaintances.  

I liked this book a lot.  The plot is varied enough to keep things interesting but it's very leisurely and there's no real peril or high drama.  It's more character-driven than anything.  Luckily, I adored the characters - it was a real mixed bag of folks and there was a nice contrast between the smart, slightly hard, London crowd and the group of oddballs from Guernsey.

Fact: I never realised that the Channel Islanders had such a rough deal during the Second World War.  I knew that they were occupied by German forces, but I had no idea that many of them were on the brink of starvation, or that they had literally no news from Britain for nearly five years.  Five years!  Let's just take a moment to think about that.

I'm not usually a huge fan of epistolary novels, as I find it too hard to imagine what is going on behind the letters and I find it an oddly impersonal way of writing considering that letters are such an intimate item, but in this case the format absolutely worked and in fact I couldn't imagine what the novel would have been like if it had been written in normal prose.

I would  completely recommend this book to anyone.  I finished it a couple of weeks ago and even now when I think of it, it gives me a little warm glow.

5 stars

A Court of Frost and Starlight by Amanda J Maas

Yes.  This was awesome.  I keep wondering if Sarah J Maas will ever scale the dizzying heights of wordsmithery that she achieved in ACOMAF and I seriously don't think she will because that book broke me in half, but that doesn't mean to say that the other books in  her series are bad.  They're brilliant and still five star books.  It just so happens that ACOMAF was six stars.

I an *loving* getting to know Nesta a bit more and really like that she has totally gone off on one and is drinking and shagging her way around Velaris.  I guess the series is going in the direction of a Cassian-Nesta plotline and I don't mind that at all.  I mean, I'd rather it went in a Rhys-permanently-naked direction, but I guess you can't have everything.

Things I want to see happen in the next installments of the series:

- Mor to get herself a girlfriend
- Azriel to actually say some stuff once in a while
- Elain to kick Lucien to the kerb once and for all (seriously, he reminds me of this guy I went to school with who was a complete letch and is now a vacuum cleaner salesman)
- More shagging from Feyre and Rhys (although I think the series is going to move away from focusing on them, which is a shame)

Fair warning:  I was reading the Kindle edition and I got to 80% before Feyre and Rhys managed to get together for sexy time.  80%!  

5 stars