Matthew Anthony Kojo Telles's Blog
November 26, 2022
Date Night
'Date Night' is another instalment into the evergrowing collection of mystery thriller books that Samantha Hayes has published. It isn't part of the most recent releases but it is only a few years old. We are first given the hook, drawn into the book through what we see first, and that is our main character, Libby, in the back of a police car, being arrested on suspicion of murder. We are then quickly given an unofficial run down on the other characters in this book, those being Sean, her husband, Dan his son, Sean's ex-wife Natalie, and Marion her mother-in-law. And on her side there is her daughter Alice and then here is Sasha, the murder victim. I don't know if these are going to be all the important characters, but they are the only ones mentioned while Libby was being arrested.
From a formatting point of view, I did find it pretty interesting that Samantha decided to switch from the first-person POV that we were introduced to in the first chapter to the third-person one we received once the book actually started. I can definitely see it being something to get the reader more attached to the main character before the actual book starts, but I can also see it being used because there are so many characters so we aren't meant to be living through the protagonist, but alongside them, watching them. It isn't really something that I've seen before so I found it interesting.
While going to her car Libby ends up finding a note that had been recently left on the front windshield saying that her husband is cheating. Although this shakes her she obviously isn't going to believe a random person who she doesn't know, as it could be a lie, a prank, them putting it on the wrong car or really anything, as she doesn't know. So instead of doing anything drastic about it her friend, Fran, convinces her to observe and watch him, not following or stalking him but at home paying closer attention to his habits, where he goes, or if there is a time that he specifically isn't available at the same time every day, or once a week or something like that. It isn't even definitive what she is looking for, just that she wants to believe her husband isn't cheating on her she isn't going to do anything drastic about finding the note, but she also isn't just going to pretend it doesn't exist as it is already in her mind and something that she is thinking about. She tries the more subtle approach, checking where he has been, calling his work to check that the time he said he'd left was correct (it wasn't) and also checking in his jacket pocket to see if there was something suspicious in there but she ends up finding nothing except the receipt for lingerie that she had bought together with Sean.
With how she is though she isn't able to hold it in for long, and instead of being offended Sean seems to like the fact that she is concerned and confronted him over the note because to him it shows that she cares. With how much she was struggling already I'm not surprised at all that she ended up confronting him so early and didn't wait and just observe for longer.
This book flips between after she was arrested and before it happened as well. Before, we can see that there is something wrong with Sasha the night Libby and Sean go for their date night. Not only is she more reserved than she usually is, which is something that Libby notes, but she is also on the verge of telling Libby what is going on, and what is wrong when the taxi arrives and she clams up. While on their date when she brings up the weird behaviour from Sasha, Sean seems a bit nervous and tries to dismiss it as if nothing is wrong, even though it very clearly is. Even after coming back from their date night, which was ruined because Sean's phone kept going off and when Libby asked to check it, it showed no signs of all the texts and calls that should have been there, Sean acts extremely weird especially once they realise that Sasha has disappeared and left Alice alone. They try for a bit, but Sean wants to almost instantly give up, and even says something along the lines o, "Whatever happened to her wasn't our fault." as if he already knew she was potentially in danger or was the cause of whatever happened to her happening, which would explain his erratic behaviour and insistence to move on without investigating further.
What we do know about Natalie, Sean's ex-wife is that she is a bit crazy. He mentioned, early on in their relationship that the reason Natalie knew so quickly that they were dating is because she was watching them. Now, while we are getting a flashback and Libby is over at Marion's house, Natalie arrives. Not only does she arrive but we get to see the family dynamic and see that although Marion likes Libby when talking about her father-in-law he much prefers Natalie. Another thing that is built on here as well is that Alice had previously mentioned some kind of commotion that happened earlier and how a woman had scared her before. After seeing Natalie she says that Natalie was the one who scared her last night when she came by, which would have been after Sean and Libby left and while Sasha was alone with Alice.
Some suspicion also starts to fall on Fran, the person who told Libby to keep everything a secret in the first place, as she knew where the note is, something that not only did Libby not tell her but she didn't see either (those were the two things Fran claimed might have happened, her not remembering which one it was). And then we start to get deeper insights into who Sean is as a person, and how he changed after some kind of accident from a sweet boy to someone who hides himself and his emotions. Well, there is also the fact that he slapped Libby across the face and then managed to blame it all on her and even got her to apologise, and the fact that she slapped a glass cup out of her hand when she was questioning all the weird things that had been going on, on his end, and how he quickly made love to her as if it were a distraction. I wasn't sure about him at first, but with how abusive he is, not only physically where he slapped her, but also mentally where he is dismissing all her points, making her think that she is crazy (when talking to her lawyer she doesn't believe that her lawyer is actually there to help her and keeps hearing Sean's voice, even though he isn't there). It is horrible to see how quickly she is willing to accept anything that he says, even being fine in the end with him trying to lie to the police about her going out after drinking in search of Sasha. There is definitely something more to his story and something that is causing all this behaviour, even though that doesn't excuse it. There was also a point where Sean mentioned how Marion, his mother, was the one who set him and Natalie up, and how his previous girlfriends broke up with him after meeting his mother.
Libby is really weird. I do trust her and don't think she had anything to do with Sasha's disappearance (famous last words!) but she is an unreliable narrator, and some of the things she is doing and the way she is answering questions just don't make sense while being interrogated. The police also don't really make any sense as they question if she is having an affair, or if Sean was having an affair, how their relationship was in the past, and how her past relationships were. They even spoke to her previous boyfriend. Libby doesn't answer simple questions though, such as why she used cash to pay in the restaurant, how she paid for the taxi, or even what time they arrived back home. It is almost to the point where I question if there is someone intentionally trying to make her seem crazy and unreliable so that she will go away for the murder of Sasha, even though she didn't do anything. Or she is actually crazy, which although less likely to me is still an obvious possibility.
It very much seems like Libby and Sean knew what happened with Sasha and tried to cover it up, as the police mentioned how they found Sasha's blood in the back of her car, and there is one point where she is having an in the now flashback where she says something along the lines of, "I didn't know I'd be driving around looking for a dead girl." and Sean gets her to repeat after him that they don't know that Sasha is dead. That is not something you need to do if you actually don't know unless you do know and are trying to hide it.
Almost every time we'd see the events of that night that Sasha disappeared we'd get some new small piece of information that changed things. The latest piece, however, was that Marion was seen collapsed outside their house when she said that she couldn't babysit. The police also confirmed that the event that she said she couldn't babysit for had been cancelled. Marion was then seen later that night driving Sean home.
Sean, in the present, has been arrested after Libby was released, and Marion is very shaken, having been found by Libby mopping the same spot over and over again while singing but without noticing anything in her surroundings. Marion did mention that when Sean got the knee injury that prevented him from joining the army and caused him to have the falling out with his father, he had some sort of blip. We still don't know what this is, but I'm beginning to assume that it has something to do with violence or murder. Marion, in this state, goes back to mopping and Libby sees some blonde hairs from one of the cooler things that they have after opening it she sees Sasha inside. Marion talks about how Sean told her to put her there, and how it is taking longer than Sean said for her body to be dissolved by the chemicals that she is using.
So, here is what actually happened. Marion went to visit, Natalie had been by but it wasn't her that killed Sasha. Sasha had somehow found out that Sean was having an affair, which is why she was acting so strangely when Libby and Sean were leaving for their date. She was hysterical and after Marion made her some food she still didn't calm down Marion ended up pushing her down and she'd hit her head. That wasn't what killed her though, it was the fact that she went into anaphylaxis after being fed the meal by Marion and when she was reaching for her epi-pen Marion ended up taking it away from her, which is the thing that Sean ended up throwing into the fireplace because he knew it had his mother's fingerprints on it. He then blamed Libby, using his already put-in-place mental abuse to make sure that she believe it was all her fault, and that she gave her the wrong food and was the cause of her death. When they came back home they had actually found the body, not the house empty, and Sean had manipulated Libby into helping him and successfully used her fear, including bringing their daughter into it.
The accident wasn't an actual accident it was just Sean's father beating him with a shovel for something he did. It wasn't something like paedophilia like I had first assumed, and it wasn't him killing or hurting someone beforehand. It was because he was gay. He was, and is, gay and in a relationship with Sasha's father. His father found out and is extremely homophobic so he severely beat him and his mother while trying to protect her son, ended up setting him up with Natalie to try and basically placate her husband. It wasn't the ending I was expecting, although because he was with Phil when he was arrested and they told said aloud the reason he was being arrested, Phil punching him wasn't unexpected, the rest didn't really hit the spot that I wanted. It was excellently written, and yes, it does make sense, but at the same time, it doesn't really feel satisfying as I look for in mystery thriller books. Compared to how shocked I was when I read, 'The Reunion' this is nothing but child play by comparison. I am not going to dismiss the rest of the book that was excellent just because the ending wasn't that good though, as there is of course merit to looking at the journey and taking that into account as well.
It is definitely an intricately woven book, where all the pieces tie in together but one thing that I am still wondering about is how his father brutally beating him warped his mind that much. He went from a sweet boy, as his mother said, to being someone willing to cover up the death of his lover's child, cheat on his wife who he has a child with, and throw her under the bus in exchange for his mother and other relationship and do it all with no remorse as he thinks he's completely justified in his action. I think those would need, and do need, more explanation as to how they arose from just a kind person when he was younger.
Some things were done excellently though, which were the parts where we were struggling to see if Libby was crazy or not. She isn't but Samantha did a damn good job trying to convince us that she was, and also trying to convince us that we could trust nothing about what we read with how much everything changed all the time.
Overall I liked this story, the ending let it down though, unfortunately, but it is still a well-written book.
7.8/10
From a formatting point of view, I did find it pretty interesting that Samantha decided to switch from the first-person POV that we were introduced to in the first chapter to the third-person one we received once the book actually started. I can definitely see it being something to get the reader more attached to the main character before the actual book starts, but I can also see it being used because there are so many characters so we aren't meant to be living through the protagonist, but alongside them, watching them. It isn't really something that I've seen before so I found it interesting.
While going to her car Libby ends up finding a note that had been recently left on the front windshield saying that her husband is cheating. Although this shakes her she obviously isn't going to believe a random person who she doesn't know, as it could be a lie, a prank, them putting it on the wrong car or really anything, as she doesn't know. So instead of doing anything drastic about it her friend, Fran, convinces her to observe and watch him, not following or stalking him but at home paying closer attention to his habits, where he goes, or if there is a time that he specifically isn't available at the same time every day, or once a week or something like that. It isn't even definitive what she is looking for, just that she wants to believe her husband isn't cheating on her she isn't going to do anything drastic about finding the note, but she also isn't just going to pretend it doesn't exist as it is already in her mind and something that she is thinking about. She tries the more subtle approach, checking where he has been, calling his work to check that the time he said he'd left was correct (it wasn't) and also checking in his jacket pocket to see if there was something suspicious in there but she ends up finding nothing except the receipt for lingerie that she had bought together with Sean.
With how she is though she isn't able to hold it in for long, and instead of being offended Sean seems to like the fact that she is concerned and confronted him over the note because to him it shows that she cares. With how much she was struggling already I'm not surprised at all that she ended up confronting him so early and didn't wait and just observe for longer.
This book flips between after she was arrested and before it happened as well. Before, we can see that there is something wrong with Sasha the night Libby and Sean go for their date night. Not only is she more reserved than she usually is, which is something that Libby notes, but she is also on the verge of telling Libby what is going on, and what is wrong when the taxi arrives and she clams up. While on their date when she brings up the weird behaviour from Sasha, Sean seems a bit nervous and tries to dismiss it as if nothing is wrong, even though it very clearly is. Even after coming back from their date night, which was ruined because Sean's phone kept going off and when Libby asked to check it, it showed no signs of all the texts and calls that should have been there, Sean acts extremely weird especially once they realise that Sasha has disappeared and left Alice alone. They try for a bit, but Sean wants to almost instantly give up, and even says something along the lines o, "Whatever happened to her wasn't our fault." as if he already knew she was potentially in danger or was the cause of whatever happened to her happening, which would explain his erratic behaviour and insistence to move on without investigating further.
What we do know about Natalie, Sean's ex-wife is that she is a bit crazy. He mentioned, early on in their relationship that the reason Natalie knew so quickly that they were dating is because she was watching them. Now, while we are getting a flashback and Libby is over at Marion's house, Natalie arrives. Not only does she arrive but we get to see the family dynamic and see that although Marion likes Libby when talking about her father-in-law he much prefers Natalie. Another thing that is built on here as well is that Alice had previously mentioned some kind of commotion that happened earlier and how a woman had scared her before. After seeing Natalie she says that Natalie was the one who scared her last night when she came by, which would have been after Sean and Libby left and while Sasha was alone with Alice.
Some suspicion also starts to fall on Fran, the person who told Libby to keep everything a secret in the first place, as she knew where the note is, something that not only did Libby not tell her but she didn't see either (those were the two things Fran claimed might have happened, her not remembering which one it was). And then we start to get deeper insights into who Sean is as a person, and how he changed after some kind of accident from a sweet boy to someone who hides himself and his emotions. Well, there is also the fact that he slapped Libby across the face and then managed to blame it all on her and even got her to apologise, and the fact that she slapped a glass cup out of her hand when she was questioning all the weird things that had been going on, on his end, and how he quickly made love to her as if it were a distraction. I wasn't sure about him at first, but with how abusive he is, not only physically where he slapped her, but also mentally where he is dismissing all her points, making her think that she is crazy (when talking to her lawyer she doesn't believe that her lawyer is actually there to help her and keeps hearing Sean's voice, even though he isn't there). It is horrible to see how quickly she is willing to accept anything that he says, even being fine in the end with him trying to lie to the police about her going out after drinking in search of Sasha. There is definitely something more to his story and something that is causing all this behaviour, even though that doesn't excuse it. There was also a point where Sean mentioned how Marion, his mother, was the one who set him and Natalie up, and how his previous girlfriends broke up with him after meeting his mother.
Libby is really weird. I do trust her and don't think she had anything to do with Sasha's disappearance (famous last words!) but she is an unreliable narrator, and some of the things she is doing and the way she is answering questions just don't make sense while being interrogated. The police also don't really make any sense as they question if she is having an affair, or if Sean was having an affair, how their relationship was in the past, and how her past relationships were. They even spoke to her previous boyfriend. Libby doesn't answer simple questions though, such as why she used cash to pay in the restaurant, how she paid for the taxi, or even what time they arrived back home. It is almost to the point where I question if there is someone intentionally trying to make her seem crazy and unreliable so that she will go away for the murder of Sasha, even though she didn't do anything. Or she is actually crazy, which although less likely to me is still an obvious possibility.
It very much seems like Libby and Sean knew what happened with Sasha and tried to cover it up, as the police mentioned how they found Sasha's blood in the back of her car, and there is one point where she is having an in the now flashback where she says something along the lines of, "I didn't know I'd be driving around looking for a dead girl." and Sean gets her to repeat after him that they don't know that Sasha is dead. That is not something you need to do if you actually don't know unless you do know and are trying to hide it.
Almost every time we'd see the events of that night that Sasha disappeared we'd get some new small piece of information that changed things. The latest piece, however, was that Marion was seen collapsed outside their house when she said that she couldn't babysit. The police also confirmed that the event that she said she couldn't babysit for had been cancelled. Marion was then seen later that night driving Sean home.
Sean, in the present, has been arrested after Libby was released, and Marion is very shaken, having been found by Libby mopping the same spot over and over again while singing but without noticing anything in her surroundings. Marion did mention that when Sean got the knee injury that prevented him from joining the army and caused him to have the falling out with his father, he had some sort of blip. We still don't know what this is, but I'm beginning to assume that it has something to do with violence or murder. Marion, in this state, goes back to mopping and Libby sees some blonde hairs from one of the cooler things that they have after opening it she sees Sasha inside. Marion talks about how Sean told her to put her there, and how it is taking longer than Sean said for her body to be dissolved by the chemicals that she is using.
So, here is what actually happened. Marion went to visit, Natalie had been by but it wasn't her that killed Sasha. Sasha had somehow found out that Sean was having an affair, which is why she was acting so strangely when Libby and Sean were leaving for their date. She was hysterical and after Marion made her some food she still didn't calm down Marion ended up pushing her down and she'd hit her head. That wasn't what killed her though, it was the fact that she went into anaphylaxis after being fed the meal by Marion and when she was reaching for her epi-pen Marion ended up taking it away from her, which is the thing that Sean ended up throwing into the fireplace because he knew it had his mother's fingerprints on it. He then blamed Libby, using his already put-in-place mental abuse to make sure that she believe it was all her fault, and that she gave her the wrong food and was the cause of her death. When they came back home they had actually found the body, not the house empty, and Sean had manipulated Libby into helping him and successfully used her fear, including bringing their daughter into it.
The accident wasn't an actual accident it was just Sean's father beating him with a shovel for something he did. It wasn't something like paedophilia like I had first assumed, and it wasn't him killing or hurting someone beforehand. It was because he was gay. He was, and is, gay and in a relationship with Sasha's father. His father found out and is extremely homophobic so he severely beat him and his mother while trying to protect her son, ended up setting him up with Natalie to try and basically placate her husband. It wasn't the ending I was expecting, although because he was with Phil when he was arrested and they told said aloud the reason he was being arrested, Phil punching him wasn't unexpected, the rest didn't really hit the spot that I wanted. It was excellently written, and yes, it does make sense, but at the same time, it doesn't really feel satisfying as I look for in mystery thriller books. Compared to how shocked I was when I read, 'The Reunion' this is nothing but child play by comparison. I am not going to dismiss the rest of the book that was excellent just because the ending wasn't that good though, as there is of course merit to looking at the journey and taking that into account as well.
It is definitely an intricately woven book, where all the pieces tie in together but one thing that I am still wondering about is how his father brutally beating him warped his mind that much. He went from a sweet boy, as his mother said, to being someone willing to cover up the death of his lover's child, cheat on his wife who he has a child with, and throw her under the bus in exchange for his mother and other relationship and do it all with no remorse as he thinks he's completely justified in his action. I think those would need, and do need, more explanation as to how they arose from just a kind person when he was younger.
Some things were done excellently though, which were the parts where we were struggling to see if Libby was crazy or not. She isn't but Samantha did a damn good job trying to convince us that she was, and also trying to convince us that we could trust nothing about what we read with how much everything changed all the time.
Overall I liked this story, the ending let it down though, unfortunately, but it is still a well-written book.
7.8/10
The Serial Killer's Daughter
'The Serial Killer's Daughter' is the second instalment into the anthology series by Alice Hunter, perfectly titled 'The Serial Killer's Family Series'. We are given a prologue where we are introduced to a little girl and we watch on as she dismembers a butterfly, quickly and efficiently, before letting the remaining parts fly away. A gust of wind blows her collection of insect parts from the table and she sighs in resignation, knowing that she will now have to dissect another butterfly. Like, don't you just absolutely hate when you're dismembering something/someone and their limbs are taken away so now you have to go back to dismembering more things/ones. It's so tiring, especially since it happens all the time.
I don't know whether Alice wants us to think that it is Jenny as a child and this is foreshadowing of something she is going to do, as it is common knowledge that animal mutilation has links to murderers/serial killers, or if she knows that we think that, and it is actually someone we are going to get introduced to later on. Well, with all these questions I think I just need to read further to get some of them solved, otherwise I am never going to find anything out. This memory is attributed to a blackout episode that Jenny has and we know it has happened to her before, but the memory is something that she isn't willing to even think about, as it sounds like something pretty bad happened the last time she blacked out.
This book is shown through 2 POVs which is one thing that makes me think that this book is leading up to Jenny being the one killing people. It would be pretty obvious, but if done well enough it can easily be justified, and work well. We are able to see things through Mark's perspective, who is Jenny's husband, which gives us a greater insight into her character. One thing that she mentioned was the missing wedding ring from her finger when she came too from her blackout, and it is also something that Mark mentions when he says that all hell broke loose the last time it happened.
As she is about to start driving their two kids to school she notices that there is a black binbag outside their house. She only buys white ones so she is a little confused, and when she opens it that confusion turns to disgust and shock as there is a dead cat inside. She is ready to cross it off as some weirdo who left it there for whatever reason, but when she sees a butterfly on the top, if we believe that the person at the start is her, then there is now a connection being formed between what happened to the cat and Jenny.
One thing that really stuck out to me was how short the chapters were, as they were sometimes going as low as 2 - 4 pages which is extremely small when talking about overall chapters, and the fact that they didn't go back and forth all the time. It means that Alice is allowed more flexibility and is also something that she did in the first instalment of this anthology series, so she has experience with this method. She is a part owner of a veterinarian practice, which is symbolism which ties into the fact that she has been known to kill animals in the past, so it is like the direct opposite thing.
Then there is a big reveal, in that the woman, Olivia Edwards, that Mark previously had an affair with, has gone missing. This happened on the same night that Jenny had her blackout and doesn't remember what happened, only that she came to in dirty clothes in the morning not knowing what happened before. It would be a crazy coincidence, although the setup is way too obvious for it to actually be a coincidence. In one of her previous books after her husband was having an affair with another woman, he is the one who kills her. So I know it isn't going to be the husband as that is way too easy to guess. If it isn't the husband or the wife then who could it actually be? The only thing that would make sense is if Alice is trying to throw us off the scent by making it seem too obvious that it might be the wife while she is blacked out, but she wasn't in fact blacked out and intentionally killed her, maybe as some kind of alternate personality? Or it could be someone from her past, as her father is obviously a serial killer.
Through every chapter, a little more is revealed. I'm not sure if I like this method of writing, where there are very small pieces of the overall story revealed in each chapter, and each chapter is also really short. It is something different and something I haven't seen much, but the overall feeling of the story leaves me feeling disconnected from the characters as I am not really able to get into their psyches or empathise with them and their situations because I don't really understand their situations.
When she was younger, Jenny was known as Jane before she found out who her father was. One thing I did notice was the constant use of 'she' to describe the person that ruined Jenny's life in the past. Yes, this could have easily been her mother, Claire, but there is something that sticks out to me about Alice not addressing the person by name that makes me think that it might be an alter ego of Jenny's, her childhood self, Jane. The reason she changed her whole identity might not have been because she was running from her mother, but because she was running from having murdered her mother. Or at least that is where my thoughts are starting to go so far.
One curious thing is that when Mark, seeing that policemen are going door to door to ask questions of the occupancy, has his blood run cold. Why would that happen unless he has something to hide? I'm not saying that he was the one who killed Olivia I think that would make so sense, but, from this reaction, he is hiding something and that something isn't trivial in the slightest.
Whoever is leaving the bin liners out is trying to frame Jenny. I'm not certain, but it really seems like that is what is happening as they at first left dead animals, which happened literally the night after Olivia died, and then more dead animals including the butterfly which has something to do with her past as Jane, as the daughter of a serial killer, and then after that, she finds that Olivia's bracelet has been left in one of the bin bag liners. Not only that, but her husband is starting to doubt what happened as the previous time that she blacked out at night, and he wasn't able to stop her from going where she wanted, he found her outside Olivia's house with a rock in her hand. Obviously, that would make anyone paranoid that their partner isn't who they say they are, but his doubt is another thing going into breaking her down mentally. Maybe this is her mother vying for revenge after being left alone, and she is trying to make all the people turn against her, including herself, before revealing her master plan when it is too late and she can't stop the punishment she is about to receive for a crime she did not commit.
We get small insights into her father's reasons for doing what he did, and how his crimes were committed as the book progresses. One thing that I found very intriguing was the reveal that the last victim of her fathers was someone who was having an affair. Someone who was having an affair eh, much like Mark was having an affair with Olivia. The style of writing is slowly starting to grow on me as while it isn't as anxiety-inducing (and after reading, 'Reminders of Him' by Colleen Hoover, I think I need that break badly) but it still has the want, need, craving for more information about what happened. And it is one of those books where if you just know how it ends it won't really feel that fun, or good as an ending, but if you read through the whole thing and get all the context, and the interpersonal relationships then you'll enjoy this book a lot more.
An actual shocking reveal is that the first person Paul, Jenny's father, attacked, when he was 10 years of age, was a young girl who had been making fun of him, while also unintentionally emulating his trauma with his mother (she was an escort) by taking boys and kissing them, was a woman called Claire. A woman who, 15 years later, would go on to marry Paul and birth his child Jenny.
The snippets that seemed like they were from a book beforehand are actually from someone who seems to have a stake with something to do with Paul. They say that they're doing this out of love which pushes me towards certain people but every time I try and piece together whether it is actually plausible that those people would be doing this I am brought back to reality as their motives don't make sense, or haven't been explained yet. I do think that the person who is trying to frame Jen is probably also the person writing about Paul, and meeting with him. Maybe one of the victim's family members? Or maybe Paul accidentally ended up uncovering something massive in that implicated Jen as Jane of hurting people. Who knows yet though.
All I do know is that I am seething that Alice thought it was a good idea to include a scene where she is willing to tell Mark, but then when the police come and are a bit more intrusive than expected she clams up again and doesn't want to tell him. I just know that this is probably going to bite her in the butt later on and be the cause of her downfall if a downfall does occur for her.
One person that I suspect, and probably wrongly as it really makes no logical sense, is Ella, their daughter. Mark mentions her going out a lot at night, which she knows she hasn't been doing, Ella has been very standoffish and wants to avoid her mother seeing something so says she doesn't want her to go to school with her, and to just drop her off at the gate. Yes, she most likely didn't have anything to do with Olivia disappearing as she is a young kid, but as we know from Paul's story a child is perfectly capable of hurting someone and feeling good for doing that. Additionally, the constant mention of having a serial killer's blood could mean that maybe it skipped one step and is in her daughter instead of her, and she hasn't noticed it because she is too focused on herself and her husband. It is definitely my wildest theory about this book, and probably my wildest ever, but it does fit with some of the things, just not other parts that are crucial to making it all tie together. At least not yet. She does find CCTV of her own car arriving at a time she found no evidence she had left the house or even saw herself on the cameras, just the car while deleting other footage of herself and deleting that footage. This is an absolutely horrible mistake as although she looked a bit guilty she could explain what was going on to the policemen and then go from there, but with the footage missing, and the fact that deleted footage can be recovered, things aren't looking good for her now. Especially since Mark has just found Olivia's bracelet that was stored in the floorboards after she found it outside their house.
One thing that I think could be a pretty interesting twist is if the person interviewing and trying to get information from Paul is Jenny, his own daughter. She mentioned she was a woman earlier, which is how I know that this is even a possibility. Yes, I haven't figured out the reason for this, but if executed well could be a really nice twist, and maybe could have something to do with her learning how to kill people properly and get away with it. Mark then takes the letter and the bracelet to the police, having been feeling guilty over something that happened with one of his previous girlfriends where he didn't step up ad she got hurt, and Jenny is taken in for questioning and later arrested, but released on bail shortly after. She realises that this person is copying the killings of her father, something I had mentioned before, and we do know that this person is around right now as they are talking about Jenny, and about how she didn't appreciate the 'love' her father was giving her. One person I do suspect a bit is Abi. She not only mentioned how similar she and Jenny were, but the person visiting Paul was an attractive young woman and her calculating, observant, nature, which was something Jenny picked up on, later on, are things that link these two people together. Although there is one theory that I am thinking, and that would be pretty amazing but also horrifying, and that is if the real young, attractive woman who was going to visit Paul, and who set this whole thing up, including getting her to have a motive because she had an affair with her husband, is Olivia.
And yes, the reveal is great and the person wasn't actually Olivia, it wasn't Mark, it wasn't Jenny, but it was someone who I had suspected previously, Jamie. Actually, you won't know her by that name, you'll know her by the name, Abi, with Jamie being her real name, and her mother being Claire, Jenny's mother. They are half sisters and you can understand the resentment that built up over Jenny being someone that Claire continued to focus on, leaving Jamie to be neglected by her mother and instead of blaming the person that deserves it, she wanted to blame everyone else as well, and that included the object of Claire's obsession, Jenny. Everything gets sorted and Mark and Jenny's relationship is more than over as while she might have been able to come back from his cheating, him keeping her kids away from her and giving her to the police without even talking to her is just something that I don't think anyone would be able to get over.
I had thought that the scene at the start of the book had been Jenny, and that was a hint to us that she was going down some of the same routes as Paul, but after the last scene in the book where we are able to see who it really was that was slowly picking apart butterflies and destroying them to make them special, which is why I had never doubted it to be Jenny as that was something her father used to say, but the reveal at the end shows that this is happening in real-time and that my previous assessment that something was wrong with Ella had been correct as she is the one mutilating butterflies. She is the one who has, on her own, started to think an awful lot like Paul and it is like I said, with psychopathy, it happens when your brain isn't working correctly and that you're getting reduced signals between two parts that are conductive and vital to having empathy, fear, sentimentality etc. and yes, you're right in that we don't know if there is a hereditary link in psychopathy, it doesn't seem like that much of a farfetched suggestion to assume that diminishing communications between certain parts of the brain can be carried over through DNA into a child. But the difference between her father and Ella is that her daughter has a whole support system, while her father was left and neglected severely by his mother.
Overall I liked it, and I did think that the writing style ended up growing on me somewhat. I did end up liking this more than her first instalment into this anthological series and even though there were parts I disliked, such as how some hints could be perceived in a lot of different ways. It wasn't in a way where you could just only get it if you got everything else, it was left in an open way that literally could mean a lot of different things. Hints like that don't really add much to the book as they just make more confusion and can leave the reader feeling unsatisfied with the ending, although that wasn't exactly the case here (I do think it brought it down a little as one of the most fun things, as you can probably see from my constant, outlandish guesses, is to try and guess who the killer is and finding it out beforehand, while it might seem anti-climatic, doesn't take anything away from the book and finding out everything surrounding that is what makes the book fun in the end). An example of this being done well is in this book as well as with Abi, there were clear hints towards her being related to Jenny, with all the reference to her mother, and how it was really the only thing that had in common. It was cleverly done and I just wish all the reveals and mysteries were done like that.
8.1/10
I don't know whether Alice wants us to think that it is Jenny as a child and this is foreshadowing of something she is going to do, as it is common knowledge that animal mutilation has links to murderers/serial killers, or if she knows that we think that, and it is actually someone we are going to get introduced to later on. Well, with all these questions I think I just need to read further to get some of them solved, otherwise I am never going to find anything out. This memory is attributed to a blackout episode that Jenny has and we know it has happened to her before, but the memory is something that she isn't willing to even think about, as it sounds like something pretty bad happened the last time she blacked out.
This book is shown through 2 POVs which is one thing that makes me think that this book is leading up to Jenny being the one killing people. It would be pretty obvious, but if done well enough it can easily be justified, and work well. We are able to see things through Mark's perspective, who is Jenny's husband, which gives us a greater insight into her character. One thing that she mentioned was the missing wedding ring from her finger when she came too from her blackout, and it is also something that Mark mentions when he says that all hell broke loose the last time it happened.
As she is about to start driving their two kids to school she notices that there is a black binbag outside their house. She only buys white ones so she is a little confused, and when she opens it that confusion turns to disgust and shock as there is a dead cat inside. She is ready to cross it off as some weirdo who left it there for whatever reason, but when she sees a butterfly on the top, if we believe that the person at the start is her, then there is now a connection being formed between what happened to the cat and Jenny.
One thing that really stuck out to me was how short the chapters were, as they were sometimes going as low as 2 - 4 pages which is extremely small when talking about overall chapters, and the fact that they didn't go back and forth all the time. It means that Alice is allowed more flexibility and is also something that she did in the first instalment of this anthology series, so she has experience with this method. She is a part owner of a veterinarian practice, which is symbolism which ties into the fact that she has been known to kill animals in the past, so it is like the direct opposite thing.
Then there is a big reveal, in that the woman, Olivia Edwards, that Mark previously had an affair with, has gone missing. This happened on the same night that Jenny had her blackout and doesn't remember what happened, only that she came to in dirty clothes in the morning not knowing what happened before. It would be a crazy coincidence, although the setup is way too obvious for it to actually be a coincidence. In one of her previous books after her husband was having an affair with another woman, he is the one who kills her. So I know it isn't going to be the husband as that is way too easy to guess. If it isn't the husband or the wife then who could it actually be? The only thing that would make sense is if Alice is trying to throw us off the scent by making it seem too obvious that it might be the wife while she is blacked out, but she wasn't in fact blacked out and intentionally killed her, maybe as some kind of alternate personality? Or it could be someone from her past, as her father is obviously a serial killer.
Through every chapter, a little more is revealed. I'm not sure if I like this method of writing, where there are very small pieces of the overall story revealed in each chapter, and each chapter is also really short. It is something different and something I haven't seen much, but the overall feeling of the story leaves me feeling disconnected from the characters as I am not really able to get into their psyches or empathise with them and their situations because I don't really understand their situations.
When she was younger, Jenny was known as Jane before she found out who her father was. One thing I did notice was the constant use of 'she' to describe the person that ruined Jenny's life in the past. Yes, this could have easily been her mother, Claire, but there is something that sticks out to me about Alice not addressing the person by name that makes me think that it might be an alter ego of Jenny's, her childhood self, Jane. The reason she changed her whole identity might not have been because she was running from her mother, but because she was running from having murdered her mother. Or at least that is where my thoughts are starting to go so far.
One curious thing is that when Mark, seeing that policemen are going door to door to ask questions of the occupancy, has his blood run cold. Why would that happen unless he has something to hide? I'm not saying that he was the one who killed Olivia I think that would make so sense, but, from this reaction, he is hiding something and that something isn't trivial in the slightest.
Whoever is leaving the bin liners out is trying to frame Jenny. I'm not certain, but it really seems like that is what is happening as they at first left dead animals, which happened literally the night after Olivia died, and then more dead animals including the butterfly which has something to do with her past as Jane, as the daughter of a serial killer, and then after that, she finds that Olivia's bracelet has been left in one of the bin bag liners. Not only that, but her husband is starting to doubt what happened as the previous time that she blacked out at night, and he wasn't able to stop her from going where she wanted, he found her outside Olivia's house with a rock in her hand. Obviously, that would make anyone paranoid that their partner isn't who they say they are, but his doubt is another thing going into breaking her down mentally. Maybe this is her mother vying for revenge after being left alone, and she is trying to make all the people turn against her, including herself, before revealing her master plan when it is too late and she can't stop the punishment she is about to receive for a crime she did not commit.
We get small insights into her father's reasons for doing what he did, and how his crimes were committed as the book progresses. One thing that I found very intriguing was the reveal that the last victim of her fathers was someone who was having an affair. Someone who was having an affair eh, much like Mark was having an affair with Olivia. The style of writing is slowly starting to grow on me as while it isn't as anxiety-inducing (and after reading, 'Reminders of Him' by Colleen Hoover, I think I need that break badly) but it still has the want, need, craving for more information about what happened. And it is one of those books where if you just know how it ends it won't really feel that fun, or good as an ending, but if you read through the whole thing and get all the context, and the interpersonal relationships then you'll enjoy this book a lot more.
An actual shocking reveal is that the first person Paul, Jenny's father, attacked, when he was 10 years of age, was a young girl who had been making fun of him, while also unintentionally emulating his trauma with his mother (she was an escort) by taking boys and kissing them, was a woman called Claire. A woman who, 15 years later, would go on to marry Paul and birth his child Jenny.
The snippets that seemed like they were from a book beforehand are actually from someone who seems to have a stake with something to do with Paul. They say that they're doing this out of love which pushes me towards certain people but every time I try and piece together whether it is actually plausible that those people would be doing this I am brought back to reality as their motives don't make sense, or haven't been explained yet. I do think that the person who is trying to frame Jen is probably also the person writing about Paul, and meeting with him. Maybe one of the victim's family members? Or maybe Paul accidentally ended up uncovering something massive in that implicated Jen as Jane of hurting people. Who knows yet though.
All I do know is that I am seething that Alice thought it was a good idea to include a scene where she is willing to tell Mark, but then when the police come and are a bit more intrusive than expected she clams up again and doesn't want to tell him. I just know that this is probably going to bite her in the butt later on and be the cause of her downfall if a downfall does occur for her.
One person that I suspect, and probably wrongly as it really makes no logical sense, is Ella, their daughter. Mark mentions her going out a lot at night, which she knows she hasn't been doing, Ella has been very standoffish and wants to avoid her mother seeing something so says she doesn't want her to go to school with her, and to just drop her off at the gate. Yes, she most likely didn't have anything to do with Olivia disappearing as she is a young kid, but as we know from Paul's story a child is perfectly capable of hurting someone and feeling good for doing that. Additionally, the constant mention of having a serial killer's blood could mean that maybe it skipped one step and is in her daughter instead of her, and she hasn't noticed it because she is too focused on herself and her husband. It is definitely my wildest theory about this book, and probably my wildest ever, but it does fit with some of the things, just not other parts that are crucial to making it all tie together. At least not yet. She does find CCTV of her own car arriving at a time she found no evidence she had left the house or even saw herself on the cameras, just the car while deleting other footage of herself and deleting that footage. This is an absolutely horrible mistake as although she looked a bit guilty she could explain what was going on to the policemen and then go from there, but with the footage missing, and the fact that deleted footage can be recovered, things aren't looking good for her now. Especially since Mark has just found Olivia's bracelet that was stored in the floorboards after she found it outside their house.
One thing that I think could be a pretty interesting twist is if the person interviewing and trying to get information from Paul is Jenny, his own daughter. She mentioned she was a woman earlier, which is how I know that this is even a possibility. Yes, I haven't figured out the reason for this, but if executed well could be a really nice twist, and maybe could have something to do with her learning how to kill people properly and get away with it. Mark then takes the letter and the bracelet to the police, having been feeling guilty over something that happened with one of his previous girlfriends where he didn't step up ad she got hurt, and Jenny is taken in for questioning and later arrested, but released on bail shortly after. She realises that this person is copying the killings of her father, something I had mentioned before, and we do know that this person is around right now as they are talking about Jenny, and about how she didn't appreciate the 'love' her father was giving her. One person I do suspect a bit is Abi. She not only mentioned how similar she and Jenny were, but the person visiting Paul was an attractive young woman and her calculating, observant, nature, which was something Jenny picked up on, later on, are things that link these two people together. Although there is one theory that I am thinking, and that would be pretty amazing but also horrifying, and that is if the real young, attractive woman who was going to visit Paul, and who set this whole thing up, including getting her to have a motive because she had an affair with her husband, is Olivia.
And yes, the reveal is great and the person wasn't actually Olivia, it wasn't Mark, it wasn't Jenny, but it was someone who I had suspected previously, Jamie. Actually, you won't know her by that name, you'll know her by the name, Abi, with Jamie being her real name, and her mother being Claire, Jenny's mother. They are half sisters and you can understand the resentment that built up over Jenny being someone that Claire continued to focus on, leaving Jamie to be neglected by her mother and instead of blaming the person that deserves it, she wanted to blame everyone else as well, and that included the object of Claire's obsession, Jenny. Everything gets sorted and Mark and Jenny's relationship is more than over as while she might have been able to come back from his cheating, him keeping her kids away from her and giving her to the police without even talking to her is just something that I don't think anyone would be able to get over.
I had thought that the scene at the start of the book had been Jenny, and that was a hint to us that she was going down some of the same routes as Paul, but after the last scene in the book where we are able to see who it really was that was slowly picking apart butterflies and destroying them to make them special, which is why I had never doubted it to be Jenny as that was something her father used to say, but the reveal at the end shows that this is happening in real-time and that my previous assessment that something was wrong with Ella had been correct as she is the one mutilating butterflies. She is the one who has, on her own, started to think an awful lot like Paul and it is like I said, with psychopathy, it happens when your brain isn't working correctly and that you're getting reduced signals between two parts that are conductive and vital to having empathy, fear, sentimentality etc. and yes, you're right in that we don't know if there is a hereditary link in psychopathy, it doesn't seem like that much of a farfetched suggestion to assume that diminishing communications between certain parts of the brain can be carried over through DNA into a child. But the difference between her father and Ella is that her daughter has a whole support system, while her father was left and neglected severely by his mother.
Overall I liked it, and I did think that the writing style ended up growing on me somewhat. I did end up liking this more than her first instalment into this anthological series and even though there were parts I disliked, such as how some hints could be perceived in a lot of different ways. It wasn't in a way where you could just only get it if you got everything else, it was left in an open way that literally could mean a lot of different things. Hints like that don't really add much to the book as they just make more confusion and can leave the reader feeling unsatisfied with the ending, although that wasn't exactly the case here (I do think it brought it down a little as one of the most fun things, as you can probably see from my constant, outlandish guesses, is to try and guess who the killer is and finding it out beforehand, while it might seem anti-climatic, doesn't take anything away from the book and finding out everything surrounding that is what makes the book fun in the end). An example of this being done well is in this book as well as with Abi, there were clear hints towards her being related to Jenny, with all the reference to her mother, and how it was really the only thing that had in common. It was cleverly done and I just wish all the reveals and mysteries were done like that.
8.1/10
November 9, 2022
Reminders of Him
Within the second sentence, we are slightly introduced to the tragedy that occurred when someone called Scotty died and Kenna was convicted of something. What that is yet? I don't really know, but from the rest of the page, I can gather that it has something to do with Scotty dying, and Kenna being there when he died (although her involvement seems to be no involvement at all instead of an action that caused his death) although all we actually know is that she pled guilty because her feelings of guilt, and not wanting to have to relive whatever it was that happened, rather than her actually being guilty of a crime. Her focus at the start seems to be on things that really don't matter, and she even delays her cab driver to fix something that really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. While that may seem mundane, and as if it doesn't matter, to me it is almost like she is trying to distract herself from inevitably seeing her daughter, and how she probably knows that the people who took her in, in the meantime, are going to act once she returns. I do hope that in the end not only has she healed, but she has also got her daughter back, because (and I don't know if this is an actual adoption) sometimes it can be better for a child to stay with their adopted family, and it doesn't seem like what happened was much of Kenna's fault either. Honestly, it is probably the part of the book that I am most hesitant about, and one of the main reasons I have put off reading this book for a few weeks (the other is that I have exactly 45 books to read, not including this one, which might be causing some of that delay. Who knows, though, could be anything).
She moves into a pretty bad apartment, one that doesn't even have a contract written up, and the rent is paid in cash. Not only is she struggling to come up with the amount needed to pay the deposit, which is needed soon, but she is also entrusted a kitten to look after by the landlord, who seems a not very nice person. Going and doing things like giving the kitten to someone who just moved in, not writing up contracts, and not really seeming to put any care at all in the rotation of tenants.
I wasn't expecting more than one POV, and at one time in my life I would have hated that there is more than one point of view, but now I relish it. Seeing the POV of another character, and not only being able to see their view of situations that occur in the book, but also their world view and how they differ from the other character we are able to see.
I think that there is more of a connection between Kenna and Ledger than I first imagined. I had thought that the link mentioned in the description would only be something like, he was acquainted with the people now looking after her daughter, or someone he knew was a friend, not that he was close enough to interact with her. He talked about how he was playing dress up with a little kid, someone who was suspiciously 4 years old, the same age that Kenna's daughter would be (she spent 5 years in prison and had her kid in there). You can see the effect that being in prison has had on Kenna as she ends up crying at something as simple as a cup of coffee from a bar.
But what did surprise me was that Ledger was someone she knew of before she went to prison. Ledger was Scotty's best friend that she never ended up meeting as he didn't show up to meet them when he was supposed to. And just as she learns this he kisses her, which is just two massive shocks after the other. It is the first time that she has kissed someone that she was actually attracted to, and yet just before that, the bombshell that he dropped has reduced her to tatters. Much more than any kiss would be able to.
Kenna is constantly writing new letters to Scotty, although most of them, so far, have been about how her past is affecting her feelings in the present. Giving this gateway to the past is something that Colleen loves to do and has done in her most popular book, 'It Ends With Us'. I liked how it worked in that one, and I am liking how it is working in this one because I am already starting to feel the loss of Scotty as we are getting to see him through her eyes, and linking him to the current time that we are in. We do get some insight into how Scotty and Kenna first met, and how much of a whirlwind romance it was as he literally broke up with his girlfriend after asking her out, which is why he ends up turning up late. There is also the reference to the future, as she is going to meet Scotty's parents for the first time since his release, and he has previously commented on the fact that his mother liked his old girlfriend, but how Kenna wasn't the kind of girl that his mother would love.
One thing that I think is going to have a massively negative effect on everything, including any sort of trust she is able to build up between Grace and Patrick (Scotty's parents), is that they will wrongly assume that she is maliciously trying to get to Diem, her daughter (I think that Ledger might think this as well) through Ledger and that she isn't meant to be trusted at all. As we can see inside her head we know that she can be trusted, but because they can't there is no world that they trust her straight away, especially since they don't know the full story of what happened, didn't like her much in the first place, and also she felt guilty so didn't defend herself from all the accusations.
And as she is going to see Grace and Patrick, hoping that they will let her see her daughter she comes across Ledger, and he realises who she is, incorrectly assuming that she knew who he was when they first met, and dragging her over to his house, telling her that he is going to drive her home. He is obviously very annoyed and still, based on what he knows about how Scotty died, is entitled to be angry over what happened. Later Roman, thank god for him, puts things into perspective to give him an idea of how hard Kenna's life has been so far. Not only has she lost the man she loved, but she is convicted on manslaughter charges, sent to prison while pregnant, gives birth to the child and then stays there for 5 years until she is able to come back and meet her child. Yes, on the information he knows it might be hard to see her in any other light than that, but she is a human too, and it isn't like she murdered anyone or intentionally did anything to harm someone, even from his perspective.
Luckily Ledger isn't heartless and actually realises that if he has everything wrong about Kenna because he had assumed that she was a cold and heartless person, then what if she is just a grieving mother who has no one to rely on, and no one to care about her so he gets in his truck and actually goes back over to her place to check up on her. I am glad that I didn't have to start skipping and of the Ledger parts, as if he had been too callous on that part I wasn't sure if I would be able to handle it if it was resolved without him facing some kind of retribution in accordance to how little he cared about someone who cares too much.
Kenna didn't have a good home life when she was younger, having been taken away twice and put into foster care until her mother could win custody back and prove that she was a fit parent to parent her again. Although Once Kenna realised how bad her mother was they basically stopped having a relationship, although Kenna did contact her once when she found out that she was going to be losing her baby to request that her mother applies for grandparent visitation rights so that she could at least see her child once she got out, and instead of any sort of comfort or agreement, or even a compromise, she basically laughed in her face and said that since she didn't get a thank you from Kenna for getting her back from the foster sister (like it wasn't entirely her fault in the first place that she was even there) that Kenna now deserves to experience the same kind of pain, although Kenna's mother doesn't actually know what pain is since she thinks that the world revolves around her, and she thinks that consequences don't apply to her either.
Kenna does get to see her daughter, although it is only through videos, and as we see it from Ledger's point of view instead of Kenna's it is even more heartbreaking. Watching her break down as she watches these videos, a mother who has never been able to see the child that she and her first love created, knowing how much of a horrible person her own mother was towards her and how she wanted to be a better person for her daughter but hasn't got to apply that yet.
The romance between Kenna and Ledger is like a rollercoaster. It is up, and down constantly and sometimes not even they know, really, what they're doing, but they still do it. This romantic interest brings forth Ledger's ability to trust that she is being authentic and it starts to get to a point where he is taking back almost everything he said and assumed about Kenna. He even retracts his statement, although this is only in his thoughts and not something he rectified to her, that having her in her daughter's life wouldn't bring Diem any benefits. He now believes that to be untrue and that no one, especially him, isn't in any place to judge whether a mother is fit for her child.
The sex scene, which is an accumulation of all the feelings that they have had, is pretty meh and I think some of the words used, like, 'We moved to a new position and somehow he was able to stab me deeper' is, like, not very nice sounding at all. I get that she was trying to not fall completely into the new adult territory and that she was interested in finding a balance between the YA sex scenes and the NA sex scenes but sentences like those just aren't it, like come on.
And then we move on to the next part of the story, which is where we can finally learn what actually happened that night, and what Kenna's side of the story is (which is the only one that matters since she is the only one who knows what really happened). It all makes sense too, from the point where they took 12 beers, and went drinking by the lake, which was one of their favourite things to do, and then since Scotty was more drunk than Kenna she drove. They were on a gravel road, and Scotty told Kenna to slow down a bit, but since she wasn't expecting him to speak so loudly she ended up slamming on the brakes which caused the car to flip and Kenna to fall into complete shock. I wouldn't be surprised if she had also been suffering from a concussion too, as when she thought that Scotty was dead, couldn't find their phones to call help and tried to kill herself 3 different times, she woke up back home on the floor with blood on her head, her blood. Not having anyone in her corner, and having her partner's parents only having a bad impression of her because of some coincidences, meant that she was all alone during this time and could only try and deal with the shocking incident on her own, which is the worst way possible for her, specifically, to deal with this situation. I don't blame her at all for this, as not only did she not kill anyone by hitting them while driving (and her passenger was more than willing to drive while even drunker) but all the bad things joined together at the exact wrong moment and she was left without anything and anyone to help her.
Patrick and Grace end up finding out, and not only does Patrick beat Ledger up, but he also gives him an ultimatum of Diem, or Kenna and after Kenna learns about this she forces Ledger to pick Diem. Ledger isn't going to just give up on her that easily, thank god, and he shows them the letter about the night Scotty died and about how it happened and then we switch to Kenna's POV where not only does Ledge come over, but Grace also comes over, which is, of course, shocking to her, and they end up talking. Now, knowing what Kenna had gone through and knowing that she can stop the pain Kenna is experiencing, she wants her to see Diem. Patrick is also on board and it is anti-climatic, but I think that works as that are how it would be in real life, especially with a child as hyperactive as Diem. It is only then that Kenna is able to forgive herself for what happened and move past every memory of Scotty bringing back the sadness and pain that she was always experiencing before.
And the final epilogue acknowledges that she doesn't need to write to him as much because she doesn't feel the need to explain everything to Scotty as if she is guilty of all actions even while he isn't alive. I think it ends in the perfect place, with Diem knowing that she is her mother but still living mostly with Patrick and Grace (although I am sure that she will want to live with her mother when she gets old enough for it to matter more) and then we get to the final part, where before it had taken months for her to come up with a name for Diem, and even Iy her cat, it took her three days. But now, with her new baby boy placed onto her chest, she is able to know what name to call him straight away. 'Scotty'.
Overall this book wasn't at the pinnacle of writing prowess, it had very in-depth characters but it wasn't made up of the most complex ever seen but what this book had, and is probably the best out of all the books I have read thus far, is the emotional heartstrings that it tugs and how much anxiousness is created at all times because you just want her to get her child back and be in her life. I was struggling to put this book down, but I was also having to take short breaks to make sure that I wasn't putting myself in too much duress. This is the exact kind of story that I hate but love at the same time because it is about a mother who is being kept from her child unfairly, and it isn't even like the people who are keeping her are bad people, they really aren't, and that only adds another layer to the story as who don't really know what to feel.
This book was great, and while I don't think that people will objectively agree with the rating I am going to give it, the fact that it was able to hit me that deeply, while being well written, while having deep characters, while having a story that makes sense is just something that I cannot ignore. This is the exact kind of book that I would usually avoid as I know how much it would annoy me, but that is only because I know that if it is written well, then I am going to be emotionally wrecked and it is going to be hard to read another book for a little while without comparing it to this one.
9.5/10
She moves into a pretty bad apartment, one that doesn't even have a contract written up, and the rent is paid in cash. Not only is she struggling to come up with the amount needed to pay the deposit, which is needed soon, but she is also entrusted a kitten to look after by the landlord, who seems a not very nice person. Going and doing things like giving the kitten to someone who just moved in, not writing up contracts, and not really seeming to put any care at all in the rotation of tenants.
I wasn't expecting more than one POV, and at one time in my life I would have hated that there is more than one point of view, but now I relish it. Seeing the POV of another character, and not only being able to see their view of situations that occur in the book, but also their world view and how they differ from the other character we are able to see.
I think that there is more of a connection between Kenna and Ledger than I first imagined. I had thought that the link mentioned in the description would only be something like, he was acquainted with the people now looking after her daughter, or someone he knew was a friend, not that he was close enough to interact with her. He talked about how he was playing dress up with a little kid, someone who was suspiciously 4 years old, the same age that Kenna's daughter would be (she spent 5 years in prison and had her kid in there). You can see the effect that being in prison has had on Kenna as she ends up crying at something as simple as a cup of coffee from a bar.
But what did surprise me was that Ledger was someone she knew of before she went to prison. Ledger was Scotty's best friend that she never ended up meeting as he didn't show up to meet them when he was supposed to. And just as she learns this he kisses her, which is just two massive shocks after the other. It is the first time that she has kissed someone that she was actually attracted to, and yet just before that, the bombshell that he dropped has reduced her to tatters. Much more than any kiss would be able to.
Kenna is constantly writing new letters to Scotty, although most of them, so far, have been about how her past is affecting her feelings in the present. Giving this gateway to the past is something that Colleen loves to do and has done in her most popular book, 'It Ends With Us'. I liked how it worked in that one, and I am liking how it is working in this one because I am already starting to feel the loss of Scotty as we are getting to see him through her eyes, and linking him to the current time that we are in. We do get some insight into how Scotty and Kenna first met, and how much of a whirlwind romance it was as he literally broke up with his girlfriend after asking her out, which is why he ends up turning up late. There is also the reference to the future, as she is going to meet Scotty's parents for the first time since his release, and he has previously commented on the fact that his mother liked his old girlfriend, but how Kenna wasn't the kind of girl that his mother would love.
One thing that I think is going to have a massively negative effect on everything, including any sort of trust she is able to build up between Grace and Patrick (Scotty's parents), is that they will wrongly assume that she is maliciously trying to get to Diem, her daughter (I think that Ledger might think this as well) through Ledger and that she isn't meant to be trusted at all. As we can see inside her head we know that she can be trusted, but because they can't there is no world that they trust her straight away, especially since they don't know the full story of what happened, didn't like her much in the first place, and also she felt guilty so didn't defend herself from all the accusations.
And as she is going to see Grace and Patrick, hoping that they will let her see her daughter she comes across Ledger, and he realises who she is, incorrectly assuming that she knew who he was when they first met, and dragging her over to his house, telling her that he is going to drive her home. He is obviously very annoyed and still, based on what he knows about how Scotty died, is entitled to be angry over what happened. Later Roman, thank god for him, puts things into perspective to give him an idea of how hard Kenna's life has been so far. Not only has she lost the man she loved, but she is convicted on manslaughter charges, sent to prison while pregnant, gives birth to the child and then stays there for 5 years until she is able to come back and meet her child. Yes, on the information he knows it might be hard to see her in any other light than that, but she is a human too, and it isn't like she murdered anyone or intentionally did anything to harm someone, even from his perspective.
Luckily Ledger isn't heartless and actually realises that if he has everything wrong about Kenna because he had assumed that she was a cold and heartless person, then what if she is just a grieving mother who has no one to rely on, and no one to care about her so he gets in his truck and actually goes back over to her place to check up on her. I am glad that I didn't have to start skipping and of the Ledger parts, as if he had been too callous on that part I wasn't sure if I would be able to handle it if it was resolved without him facing some kind of retribution in accordance to how little he cared about someone who cares too much.
Kenna didn't have a good home life when she was younger, having been taken away twice and put into foster care until her mother could win custody back and prove that she was a fit parent to parent her again. Although Once Kenna realised how bad her mother was they basically stopped having a relationship, although Kenna did contact her once when she found out that she was going to be losing her baby to request that her mother applies for grandparent visitation rights so that she could at least see her child once she got out, and instead of any sort of comfort or agreement, or even a compromise, she basically laughed in her face and said that since she didn't get a thank you from Kenna for getting her back from the foster sister (like it wasn't entirely her fault in the first place that she was even there) that Kenna now deserves to experience the same kind of pain, although Kenna's mother doesn't actually know what pain is since she thinks that the world revolves around her, and she thinks that consequences don't apply to her either.
Kenna does get to see her daughter, although it is only through videos, and as we see it from Ledger's point of view instead of Kenna's it is even more heartbreaking. Watching her break down as she watches these videos, a mother who has never been able to see the child that she and her first love created, knowing how much of a horrible person her own mother was towards her and how she wanted to be a better person for her daughter but hasn't got to apply that yet.
The romance between Kenna and Ledger is like a rollercoaster. It is up, and down constantly and sometimes not even they know, really, what they're doing, but they still do it. This romantic interest brings forth Ledger's ability to trust that she is being authentic and it starts to get to a point where he is taking back almost everything he said and assumed about Kenna. He even retracts his statement, although this is only in his thoughts and not something he rectified to her, that having her in her daughter's life wouldn't bring Diem any benefits. He now believes that to be untrue and that no one, especially him, isn't in any place to judge whether a mother is fit for her child.
The sex scene, which is an accumulation of all the feelings that they have had, is pretty meh and I think some of the words used, like, 'We moved to a new position and somehow he was able to stab me deeper' is, like, not very nice sounding at all. I get that she was trying to not fall completely into the new adult territory and that she was interested in finding a balance between the YA sex scenes and the NA sex scenes but sentences like those just aren't it, like come on.
And then we move on to the next part of the story, which is where we can finally learn what actually happened that night, and what Kenna's side of the story is (which is the only one that matters since she is the only one who knows what really happened). It all makes sense too, from the point where they took 12 beers, and went drinking by the lake, which was one of their favourite things to do, and then since Scotty was more drunk than Kenna she drove. They were on a gravel road, and Scotty told Kenna to slow down a bit, but since she wasn't expecting him to speak so loudly she ended up slamming on the brakes which caused the car to flip and Kenna to fall into complete shock. I wouldn't be surprised if she had also been suffering from a concussion too, as when she thought that Scotty was dead, couldn't find their phones to call help and tried to kill herself 3 different times, she woke up back home on the floor with blood on her head, her blood. Not having anyone in her corner, and having her partner's parents only having a bad impression of her because of some coincidences, meant that she was all alone during this time and could only try and deal with the shocking incident on her own, which is the worst way possible for her, specifically, to deal with this situation. I don't blame her at all for this, as not only did she not kill anyone by hitting them while driving (and her passenger was more than willing to drive while even drunker) but all the bad things joined together at the exact wrong moment and she was left without anything and anyone to help her.
Patrick and Grace end up finding out, and not only does Patrick beat Ledger up, but he also gives him an ultimatum of Diem, or Kenna and after Kenna learns about this she forces Ledger to pick Diem. Ledger isn't going to just give up on her that easily, thank god, and he shows them the letter about the night Scotty died and about how it happened and then we switch to Kenna's POV where not only does Ledge come over, but Grace also comes over, which is, of course, shocking to her, and they end up talking. Now, knowing what Kenna had gone through and knowing that she can stop the pain Kenna is experiencing, she wants her to see Diem. Patrick is also on board and it is anti-climatic, but I think that works as that are how it would be in real life, especially with a child as hyperactive as Diem. It is only then that Kenna is able to forgive herself for what happened and move past every memory of Scotty bringing back the sadness and pain that she was always experiencing before.
And the final epilogue acknowledges that she doesn't need to write to him as much because she doesn't feel the need to explain everything to Scotty as if she is guilty of all actions even while he isn't alive. I think it ends in the perfect place, with Diem knowing that she is her mother but still living mostly with Patrick and Grace (although I am sure that she will want to live with her mother when she gets old enough for it to matter more) and then we get to the final part, where before it had taken months for her to come up with a name for Diem, and even Iy her cat, it took her three days. But now, with her new baby boy placed onto her chest, she is able to know what name to call him straight away. 'Scotty'.
Overall this book wasn't at the pinnacle of writing prowess, it had very in-depth characters but it wasn't made up of the most complex ever seen but what this book had, and is probably the best out of all the books I have read thus far, is the emotional heartstrings that it tugs and how much anxiousness is created at all times because you just want her to get her child back and be in her life. I was struggling to put this book down, but I was also having to take short breaks to make sure that I wasn't putting myself in too much duress. This is the exact kind of story that I hate but love at the same time because it is about a mother who is being kept from her child unfairly, and it isn't even like the people who are keeping her are bad people, they really aren't, and that only adds another layer to the story as who don't really know what to feel.
This book was great, and while I don't think that people will objectively agree with the rating I am going to give it, the fact that it was able to hit me that deeply, while being well written, while having deep characters, while having a story that makes sense is just something that I cannot ignore. This is the exact kind of book that I would usually avoid as I know how much it would annoy me, but that is only because I know that if it is written well, then I am going to be emotionally wrecked and it is going to be hard to read another book for a little while without comparing it to this one.
9.5/10
November 7, 2022
She Drives Me Crazy
'She Drives Me Crazy' is a relatively new, YA, LGBT romance book from Kelly Quindlen. It came out in 2021 on kindle, but the actual paperback edition (the one I have) was only released recently. I have read one book from Kelly before, that being 'Her Name In The Sky' which I loved but also experienced constant pain when reading because after the inciting incident, until around the last 20 or so pages it was just constantly painful interactions and thoughts from all our characters. It was well written though to be able to create those kinds of feelings so while I am hoping for something more upbeat from this (I still want the drama, obviously) I am confident that it is going to be provided.
We are first introduced to Scottie as she is playing a basketball game. She is playing a preseason game, but it actually has meaning as she is playing against their rival school, and against her ex-girlfriend (the 'getting embarrassed in a sports game and then coming back at the end with friend and family support and winning' is incredible cliche, but it would also definitely be satisfying to see after how much she was getting used and abused).
Seeing her ex through her eyes, there is a lot to unpack there. Including, but not limited to, how much she values her image over her supposed 'love' for Scottie. She used an example where a person got her car towed as a 'prank' (what kind of prank is getting someone to pay money to get their car back? Where is the funny?) and as she tried to chase after it she tripped and fell, cutting herself and starting to cry. Seeing how Tally, instead of just comforting her or being vexed about someone getting her girlfriend's car towed, she instead tried to quiet her down and tried to join the popular kid's group even more. That lack of care is what makes her a bad person. Her intentions obviously aren't going to be to hurt the person that she loves, but actions always speak louder than consequences, and the fact that she chose to act in that way shows that she, even if recognised, isn't the best as a person. I do think that her breaking up with Scottie, as we know that she cares more about her image and social standing than her, is commendable. Staying in an unhappy relationship and leading someone on when you actually aren't romantically interested in that person is a horrible thing to do so I am definitely glad that she was able to see that the feelings she had weren't going anywhere and break up with Scottie before it was too late.
Irene then, by comparison, is the same as Tally in a lot of ways, but different in the ones that actually matter. She doesn't really care for her image or is as meticulous with it as Tally is and she definitely seems like an annoying person when we are first introduced to her, but at the same time, with this being an enemies-lovers trope I am all for it. They have a car crash, where funnily enough both of them weren't paying attention, and for some reason, Scottie covers for Irene about the tow truck incident and that covering creates a misunderstanding where their mother's now both think that they're friends.
From the other book that I have read from Kelly, 'Her Name In The Sky' this one is definitely set with a lot of different ideas in terms of conflicts and all that. For one, coming out (I don't know about with Irene) is something that Scottie doesn't have to do as she has already done it and has a loving and accepting family. Something does tell me though, that Irene's parents who aren't even happy with her being a cheerleader, wouldn't be the happiest to have a bi/lesbian daughter. Additionally, this story is going to revolve around the angry, painful, loving, interactions between Scottie and Irene, rather than the other book being about the angsty, painful and sad, interactions between the other characters. That book being set in a smaller, more conservative town, meant that they were much less accepting, and the bullying that some of the people who came out as gay faced was horrible. Sometimes, however, you just want something lighter, and although this definitely is going to be a rollercoaster, it definitely won't reach the highs and lows of the other one, which is perfectly fine and doesn't mean that the overall story or book is going to be worse.
Irene is a much nicer person compared to Tally, and even when she is serious, or joking around trying to rile up it is never that serious or horrible. Meanwhile, Scottie is taking things way too seriously, and I can almost feel the horrible mistake she is going to make later on when they have grown closer, that she is going to have to beg for forgiveness for.
After overhearing that Irene is gay and that she needs money to pay for the insurance Scottie decides that she wants to make a deal with her. She will give her the one grand that she needs, and in exchange, Irene will 'date' Scottie. Of course, it won't be real, because two girls who are both lesbians and both good-looking could never date. That would be preposterous. Hot girls and dating each other, no that could never mix.
Anyway, moving on to the next sequence in the story, the one where the stakes are raised (what is going to happen if their deal is revealed? What happens once they actually develop feelings for each other? What happens when Irene's parents find out? etc) are we are meant to suspend our disbelief as paying someone 1k to come out of the closet, especially as the most popular person at a school, isn't really something that would happen in real life and is only meant for the book. It isn't too outlandish that I am taken from the story world though, so I don't really mind it too much.
There is something going on with Charlotte and Irene, something that ruined their friendship and something that made Charlotte not even want to let her on her property. We are just about to find out what this is when Charlotte is caught passing notes but luckily for Irene (and not for us) Scottie destroys the note before anyone can learn what happened between the two and Irene and Scottie start to grow closer. This is ruined by Scottie's constant thoughts of Tally, as you just know that she is going to mess something up somehow to do with Tally. Something like Irene and Scottie are basically dating and then Scottie gets too close, either intentionally, or more likely, manipulated by Tally, and then that causes drama between them where Scottie is going to have to apologise. I think that this drama will be good, as obviously just having Scottie give up on Tally towards the end of the book will remove all the drama from it, and make it a lot more boring, no matter how much I hate Scottie's obsession with Tally.
At Charlotte's party, which Irene was only convinced to go to because of Scottie's act of heroic note scrunching, Charlotte reveals a video of Irene, from over a year ago while really drunk, basically saying that she wasn't gay and while she would sleep with a woman it would mean nothing to her. This is of course something that Charlotte baited her into saying, by basically trying to either force her to come out, or get her to slip and say something homophobic (which obviously didn't work since she isn't homophobic). I dislike Tally, moreso because of her obsession with Scottie and the obsession that Scottie has back towards her, but that feels like child's play compared to how far Charlotte is willing to go. It heightens the stakes even more because if Charlotte found out about their arrangement she'd instantly out it, and that would make even more people convinced that Irene wasn't actually gay.
Honey-belle, apart from Irene, is probably my favourite character. She is sort of naive, but really sweet and genuinely just an overall lovely person. She is sociable, and being Irene's best friend cannot be easy with how many things she is going through, and yet she is able to do that with a smile on her face all the time. I do hope her character gets expanded throughout the second half of the book, as right now, although I like her character a lot if it remains this way for the whole book then it will feel a bit shallow.
Anyway, after this, they end up going over to Honey'belle's house and having a sleepover. Irene and Scottie are given Honey-belle's bed by Honey-belle herself and so end up sleeping together in the same bed, without doing anything obviously. Although they aren't at a stage to even start admitting their feelings for each other, I can definitely tell that this moment made them grow closer, and with how much they keep hanging out after this (such as going on a double date with Honey-belle and Gunther) and then I looked at how many pages there were left in the book, and that both the Charlotte storyline, the Tally storyline, the cheerleading storyline, and the basketball storyline have all not been resolved.
I looked at saw over a hundred pages left in this book and my heart started to hurt already. I threw fits, tried to do magic, or even summon ancient beings from other worlds, but none of it worked, and I was left reeling as I now had to plough on with the rest of the book, no matter how much I already knew it was going to hurt me.
And then, with them still being unable to admit their feeling for each other, after getting revenge on Tally by winning the basketball game against them in the actual season Honey-belle basically makes a drunken toast, and it ends with her wanting to see the two be affectionate, and that results in them kissing. It was done in the heat of the moment, but at least right now they do now care and just enjoy the feeling of each other, savour it, because it doesn't feel like it is going to last for a very long time (even if, yes, they are back together by the end of the book, and there is under 100 pages left, that still isn't a long time). There is an emphasis by Scottie's sister, Thora, since the start of the book that Irene is going to be the one to hurt Scottie but I, as I have stated numerous times, definitely think that it is going to go in the opposite direction and that Scottie is going to hurt Irene. No way can she be that obsessed with Tally and still have her love life ending without drama.
I was sure that they weren't going to admit their feeling for each other that quickly, but on Christmas, after going back to Irene's house she gives her a present and then end up kissing. Irene says she is over Charlotte, but Scottie still says she isn't over Tally so they decide to take a break. This is better than the alternative of her never dealing with her feelings and issues with Tally and the fact that she is actually, actively, trying to get past those feelings so that she can be with Irene is probably the healthiest thing that she has done in this book. Or I would say it is the smartest thing that she has ever done if she didn't decide to not only visit Tally but also go to a party hosted by Charlotte's boyfriend with her. One that Charlotte is actually at!
She has already seen what Charlotte is willing to do, and how she was planning the downfall of Irene for over a year and yet she still doesn't take this into account and goes around like nothing is wrong. This girl needs a good slap to get her head on straight. Not in that way though-you get what I mean. Anyway, I can't wait to see how Scottie is going to mess this up and cause Irene a lot of pain and then have to make it up. And how her friends are going to look at her differently, including her parents, and are going to be very disappointed in her too.
Tally kisses Scottie while upstairs in Charlotte's boyfriend's house and you just know that this is going to be the thing that is going to come back to bite her, especially since she kissed her back for a little bit, like the naive idiot that she is. If she, after the incident, went up to Irene and told her that Tally kissed her, everything would be fine, and even though she hasn't seen her since I still know that she isn't going to tell her the next time she sees her. Or she is going to delay it to a point where the reveal holds a lot more weight.
Or not because it is revealed literally in the next scene. It is heartbreaking to see Irene act so calmly as if she doesn't care while we know that she does deeply. This isn't something Scottie is going to be able to fix halfheartedly and she is not only going to have to give her space and time, but she is also going to have to show Irene that she is worth it and that she can actually trust her again. She doesn't start instantly, although she does talk to her about her feelings and they do come to some sort of agreement where Scottie is going to try and rectify her feelings over Tally, by healing from the damage she did, while Irene is just going to be doing her normal thing, I guess. I didn't really like how quickly the sadness and anger were resolved on Irene's side, especially since she was literally throwing up after seeing a picture of Tally kissing Scottie.
There is something that she is going to do for Irene though, as she is finally over Tally, but it doesn't really have the same feeling as in the first half of the book and while this may be unfair, it also feels like their relationship is now tainted by what Scottie did, especially since Irene didn't even tow her car on purpose, and it was a complete accident and coincidence that it was her car (as she was trying to tow Charlotte's boyfriend's car, who had a rental that was the exact same model and colour as Scottie's car).
After sitting out of the first half of the final basketball game, Scottie's grand gesture (taking into account that Irene doesn't like grand gestures that don't really have anything to do with the other person, and are all about the person trying to make that grand gesture) she does a cheer routine and having invited Irene's mother, basically wanted to show that cheerleading is a sport and that the people who do it should be considered athletes. It works, they kiss, and then they get back to the game where Danielle ends up hitting the game-winning three, after some Russell Westbrook-esc free throws from the opposing PG (she went 1 - 4) and everything is back to how it was supposed to be. The final chapter is just about Irene doing another grand gesture, but for themselves, even if it did include a boombox, and then updates about all the other characters' lives.
So, the book in its entirety, did I like it? Yes, I really liked how light-hearted this book was, and the characters in this book did feel relatively realistic (I do still stand by my stance that Honey-belle could have used more development. Yes, you don't need to have all characters have development, but with the kind of person she was, and maybe it was just wishful thinking as she was my second favourite character, I wanted to see more from her and more on her characterisation).
And then talking about the parts I disliked, because there were definitely some. Starting off with how quickly Irene forgave and got over the hurt from seeing Scottie kissing her ex even if they weren't technically together during that time. It felt like Scottie was getting excused from her behaviour because she hadn't healed from her previous relationship with Sally, which she definitely hadn't, but she also didn't deserve to be forgiven that quickly (yes, Irene can do what she wants but it doesn't mean that I have to accept it because it is a book character, not a real person).
Secondly, once that was resolved it didn't really feel like there was anything going on after that. I know that as you move towards the end of a book you're not going to get as much action (once you're past the resolution) but it definitely did feel like it was wrapped up too neatly. There was nothing from Charlotte after posting the Instagram photo of Tally and Scottie kissing except for when she appeared at the end and threw a fit over losing the student-athlete prize. She needed more, and it felt like there was going to be more but then it was like the tone of the book shifted to them, the characters, focusing instead on themselves. That could be, and probably was, intentional to show how Scottie started to care less about what other people's opinions of her, but just because it has meaning behind it, and that meaning makes sense, doesn't mean that the actual media produced is good (I learnt this the hard way when I recently went to Goldsmiths university and watched a movie called, 'Begotten'. If you see this and are thinking about maybe watching that movie, don't and if you have already watched it, my deepest condolences. It is basically a contemporary, artistic, narcissistic, pretentious, elitist, weird combination that is all thrown into one and then loved by the movie purists, 'because it has a message' while also not taking into account that it is just a shocking awful movie). Sorry for the rant but I needed to tell someone and get this off my chest somehow.
Now, back to the book, the diversity was great, and Kelly didn't make the characters act a certain way just because they were a certain colour or certain gender which was nice. Although Gunther and Kevin (?) were a bit shallow, and didn't feel really needed in the story.
This is an enemy to lovers, a fake dating scheme and in these, you usually have a lot of drama, angst, and pain which is what I was expecting. Not having that, I still can't decide whether I am unhappy with that, or actively dislike that aspect of the book.
Overall, a cute romance story, with some frustrating moments where Scottie act's really dumb (normal) Irene is badass, Danielle is amazing, and Honey-belle is so damn happy all the time. It was cute, but it wasn't grounded, which is what I like from a story more (I'm not saying that I don't like fantasy or sci-fi novels) I prefer books where the family isn't extremely close to the point where it is kind of weird, I prefer books that have a longer, drawn out drama and an ending that actually felt like there was some tension in it until the last couple of pages of the book, and this one didn't really check those boxes, no matter how much I actually did like this book overall for what it was.
7.4/10
We are first introduced to Scottie as she is playing a basketball game. She is playing a preseason game, but it actually has meaning as she is playing against their rival school, and against her ex-girlfriend (the 'getting embarrassed in a sports game and then coming back at the end with friend and family support and winning' is incredible cliche, but it would also definitely be satisfying to see after how much she was getting used and abused).
Seeing her ex through her eyes, there is a lot to unpack there. Including, but not limited to, how much she values her image over her supposed 'love' for Scottie. She used an example where a person got her car towed as a 'prank' (what kind of prank is getting someone to pay money to get their car back? Where is the funny?) and as she tried to chase after it she tripped and fell, cutting herself and starting to cry. Seeing how Tally, instead of just comforting her or being vexed about someone getting her girlfriend's car towed, she instead tried to quiet her down and tried to join the popular kid's group even more. That lack of care is what makes her a bad person. Her intentions obviously aren't going to be to hurt the person that she loves, but actions always speak louder than consequences, and the fact that she chose to act in that way shows that she, even if recognised, isn't the best as a person. I do think that her breaking up with Scottie, as we know that she cares more about her image and social standing than her, is commendable. Staying in an unhappy relationship and leading someone on when you actually aren't romantically interested in that person is a horrible thing to do so I am definitely glad that she was able to see that the feelings she had weren't going anywhere and break up with Scottie before it was too late.
Irene then, by comparison, is the same as Tally in a lot of ways, but different in the ones that actually matter. She doesn't really care for her image or is as meticulous with it as Tally is and she definitely seems like an annoying person when we are first introduced to her, but at the same time, with this being an enemies-lovers trope I am all for it. They have a car crash, where funnily enough both of them weren't paying attention, and for some reason, Scottie covers for Irene about the tow truck incident and that covering creates a misunderstanding where their mother's now both think that they're friends.
From the other book that I have read from Kelly, 'Her Name In The Sky' this one is definitely set with a lot of different ideas in terms of conflicts and all that. For one, coming out (I don't know about with Irene) is something that Scottie doesn't have to do as she has already done it and has a loving and accepting family. Something does tell me though, that Irene's parents who aren't even happy with her being a cheerleader, wouldn't be the happiest to have a bi/lesbian daughter. Additionally, this story is going to revolve around the angry, painful, loving, interactions between Scottie and Irene, rather than the other book being about the angsty, painful and sad, interactions between the other characters. That book being set in a smaller, more conservative town, meant that they were much less accepting, and the bullying that some of the people who came out as gay faced was horrible. Sometimes, however, you just want something lighter, and although this definitely is going to be a rollercoaster, it definitely won't reach the highs and lows of the other one, which is perfectly fine and doesn't mean that the overall story or book is going to be worse.
Irene is a much nicer person compared to Tally, and even when she is serious, or joking around trying to rile up it is never that serious or horrible. Meanwhile, Scottie is taking things way too seriously, and I can almost feel the horrible mistake she is going to make later on when they have grown closer, that she is going to have to beg for forgiveness for.
After overhearing that Irene is gay and that she needs money to pay for the insurance Scottie decides that she wants to make a deal with her. She will give her the one grand that she needs, and in exchange, Irene will 'date' Scottie. Of course, it won't be real, because two girls who are both lesbians and both good-looking could never date. That would be preposterous. Hot girls and dating each other, no that could never mix.
Anyway, moving on to the next sequence in the story, the one where the stakes are raised (what is going to happen if their deal is revealed? What happens once they actually develop feelings for each other? What happens when Irene's parents find out? etc) are we are meant to suspend our disbelief as paying someone 1k to come out of the closet, especially as the most popular person at a school, isn't really something that would happen in real life and is only meant for the book. It isn't too outlandish that I am taken from the story world though, so I don't really mind it too much.
There is something going on with Charlotte and Irene, something that ruined their friendship and something that made Charlotte not even want to let her on her property. We are just about to find out what this is when Charlotte is caught passing notes but luckily for Irene (and not for us) Scottie destroys the note before anyone can learn what happened between the two and Irene and Scottie start to grow closer. This is ruined by Scottie's constant thoughts of Tally, as you just know that she is going to mess something up somehow to do with Tally. Something like Irene and Scottie are basically dating and then Scottie gets too close, either intentionally, or more likely, manipulated by Tally, and then that causes drama between them where Scottie is going to have to apologise. I think that this drama will be good, as obviously just having Scottie give up on Tally towards the end of the book will remove all the drama from it, and make it a lot more boring, no matter how much I hate Scottie's obsession with Tally.
At Charlotte's party, which Irene was only convinced to go to because of Scottie's act of heroic note scrunching, Charlotte reveals a video of Irene, from over a year ago while really drunk, basically saying that she wasn't gay and while she would sleep with a woman it would mean nothing to her. This is of course something that Charlotte baited her into saying, by basically trying to either force her to come out, or get her to slip and say something homophobic (which obviously didn't work since she isn't homophobic). I dislike Tally, moreso because of her obsession with Scottie and the obsession that Scottie has back towards her, but that feels like child's play compared to how far Charlotte is willing to go. It heightens the stakes even more because if Charlotte found out about their arrangement she'd instantly out it, and that would make even more people convinced that Irene wasn't actually gay.
Honey-belle, apart from Irene, is probably my favourite character. She is sort of naive, but really sweet and genuinely just an overall lovely person. She is sociable, and being Irene's best friend cannot be easy with how many things she is going through, and yet she is able to do that with a smile on her face all the time. I do hope her character gets expanded throughout the second half of the book, as right now, although I like her character a lot if it remains this way for the whole book then it will feel a bit shallow.
Anyway, after this, they end up going over to Honey'belle's house and having a sleepover. Irene and Scottie are given Honey-belle's bed by Honey-belle herself and so end up sleeping together in the same bed, without doing anything obviously. Although they aren't at a stage to even start admitting their feelings for each other, I can definitely tell that this moment made them grow closer, and with how much they keep hanging out after this (such as going on a double date with Honey-belle and Gunther) and then I looked at how many pages there were left in the book, and that both the Charlotte storyline, the Tally storyline, the cheerleading storyline, and the basketball storyline have all not been resolved.
I looked at saw over a hundred pages left in this book and my heart started to hurt already. I threw fits, tried to do magic, or even summon ancient beings from other worlds, but none of it worked, and I was left reeling as I now had to plough on with the rest of the book, no matter how much I already knew it was going to hurt me.
And then, with them still being unable to admit their feeling for each other, after getting revenge on Tally by winning the basketball game against them in the actual season Honey-belle basically makes a drunken toast, and it ends with her wanting to see the two be affectionate, and that results in them kissing. It was done in the heat of the moment, but at least right now they do now care and just enjoy the feeling of each other, savour it, because it doesn't feel like it is going to last for a very long time (even if, yes, they are back together by the end of the book, and there is under 100 pages left, that still isn't a long time). There is an emphasis by Scottie's sister, Thora, since the start of the book that Irene is going to be the one to hurt Scottie but I, as I have stated numerous times, definitely think that it is going to go in the opposite direction and that Scottie is going to hurt Irene. No way can she be that obsessed with Tally and still have her love life ending without drama.
I was sure that they weren't going to admit their feeling for each other that quickly, but on Christmas, after going back to Irene's house she gives her a present and then end up kissing. Irene says she is over Charlotte, but Scottie still says she isn't over Tally so they decide to take a break. This is better than the alternative of her never dealing with her feelings and issues with Tally and the fact that she is actually, actively, trying to get past those feelings so that she can be with Irene is probably the healthiest thing that she has done in this book. Or I would say it is the smartest thing that she has ever done if she didn't decide to not only visit Tally but also go to a party hosted by Charlotte's boyfriend with her. One that Charlotte is actually at!
She has already seen what Charlotte is willing to do, and how she was planning the downfall of Irene for over a year and yet she still doesn't take this into account and goes around like nothing is wrong. This girl needs a good slap to get her head on straight. Not in that way though-you get what I mean. Anyway, I can't wait to see how Scottie is going to mess this up and cause Irene a lot of pain and then have to make it up. And how her friends are going to look at her differently, including her parents, and are going to be very disappointed in her too.
Tally kisses Scottie while upstairs in Charlotte's boyfriend's house and you just know that this is going to be the thing that is going to come back to bite her, especially since she kissed her back for a little bit, like the naive idiot that she is. If she, after the incident, went up to Irene and told her that Tally kissed her, everything would be fine, and even though she hasn't seen her since I still know that she isn't going to tell her the next time she sees her. Or she is going to delay it to a point where the reveal holds a lot more weight.
Or not because it is revealed literally in the next scene. It is heartbreaking to see Irene act so calmly as if she doesn't care while we know that she does deeply. This isn't something Scottie is going to be able to fix halfheartedly and she is not only going to have to give her space and time, but she is also going to have to show Irene that she is worth it and that she can actually trust her again. She doesn't start instantly, although she does talk to her about her feelings and they do come to some sort of agreement where Scottie is going to try and rectify her feelings over Tally, by healing from the damage she did, while Irene is just going to be doing her normal thing, I guess. I didn't really like how quickly the sadness and anger were resolved on Irene's side, especially since she was literally throwing up after seeing a picture of Tally kissing Scottie.
There is something that she is going to do for Irene though, as she is finally over Tally, but it doesn't really have the same feeling as in the first half of the book and while this may be unfair, it also feels like their relationship is now tainted by what Scottie did, especially since Irene didn't even tow her car on purpose, and it was a complete accident and coincidence that it was her car (as she was trying to tow Charlotte's boyfriend's car, who had a rental that was the exact same model and colour as Scottie's car).
After sitting out of the first half of the final basketball game, Scottie's grand gesture (taking into account that Irene doesn't like grand gestures that don't really have anything to do with the other person, and are all about the person trying to make that grand gesture) she does a cheer routine and having invited Irene's mother, basically wanted to show that cheerleading is a sport and that the people who do it should be considered athletes. It works, they kiss, and then they get back to the game where Danielle ends up hitting the game-winning three, after some Russell Westbrook-esc free throws from the opposing PG (she went 1 - 4) and everything is back to how it was supposed to be. The final chapter is just about Irene doing another grand gesture, but for themselves, even if it did include a boombox, and then updates about all the other characters' lives.
So, the book in its entirety, did I like it? Yes, I really liked how light-hearted this book was, and the characters in this book did feel relatively realistic (I do still stand by my stance that Honey-belle could have used more development. Yes, you don't need to have all characters have development, but with the kind of person she was, and maybe it was just wishful thinking as she was my second favourite character, I wanted to see more from her and more on her characterisation).
And then talking about the parts I disliked, because there were definitely some. Starting off with how quickly Irene forgave and got over the hurt from seeing Scottie kissing her ex even if they weren't technically together during that time. It felt like Scottie was getting excused from her behaviour because she hadn't healed from her previous relationship with Sally, which she definitely hadn't, but she also didn't deserve to be forgiven that quickly (yes, Irene can do what she wants but it doesn't mean that I have to accept it because it is a book character, not a real person).
Secondly, once that was resolved it didn't really feel like there was anything going on after that. I know that as you move towards the end of a book you're not going to get as much action (once you're past the resolution) but it definitely did feel like it was wrapped up too neatly. There was nothing from Charlotte after posting the Instagram photo of Tally and Scottie kissing except for when she appeared at the end and threw a fit over losing the student-athlete prize. She needed more, and it felt like there was going to be more but then it was like the tone of the book shifted to them, the characters, focusing instead on themselves. That could be, and probably was, intentional to show how Scottie started to care less about what other people's opinions of her, but just because it has meaning behind it, and that meaning makes sense, doesn't mean that the actual media produced is good (I learnt this the hard way when I recently went to Goldsmiths university and watched a movie called, 'Begotten'. If you see this and are thinking about maybe watching that movie, don't and if you have already watched it, my deepest condolences. It is basically a contemporary, artistic, narcissistic, pretentious, elitist, weird combination that is all thrown into one and then loved by the movie purists, 'because it has a message' while also not taking into account that it is just a shocking awful movie). Sorry for the rant but I needed to tell someone and get this off my chest somehow.
Now, back to the book, the diversity was great, and Kelly didn't make the characters act a certain way just because they were a certain colour or certain gender which was nice. Although Gunther and Kevin (?) were a bit shallow, and didn't feel really needed in the story.
This is an enemy to lovers, a fake dating scheme and in these, you usually have a lot of drama, angst, and pain which is what I was expecting. Not having that, I still can't decide whether I am unhappy with that, or actively dislike that aspect of the book.
Overall, a cute romance story, with some frustrating moments where Scottie act's really dumb (normal) Irene is badass, Danielle is amazing, and Honey-belle is so damn happy all the time. It was cute, but it wasn't grounded, which is what I like from a story more (I'm not saying that I don't like fantasy or sci-fi novels) I prefer books where the family isn't extremely close to the point where it is kind of weird, I prefer books that have a longer, drawn out drama and an ending that actually felt like there was some tension in it until the last couple of pages of the book, and this one didn't really check those boxes, no matter how much I actually did like this book overall for what it was.
7.4/10
November 5, 2022
Nothing More to Tell
'Nothing More to Tell' is another instalment into the YA mystery/thriller from Karen McManus and one that starts by putting the main character Brynn into a new town, her old one, and having her life plans thrown out of wack by things outside of her control (such as her father's job moving them back, and someone posting a bunch of d*ck pics on the news site she was working for on her account without her permission). Going into the interview at this new news place she is gunning for, we learn that she has gone a different route than is usually taken. Rather than just sending her CV, and a personal statement, she decides to send what got her fired from her previous job, however unfairly, which usually wouldn't make someone look good but because this new place is looking for more hungry new writers and crime enthusiasts because they are a smaller company they cannot rely on more prominent people or the more experienced but monotonous people who know what they are. They need to find someone before they explode, so they have someone way above what they would usually be able to get, for so little.
You can definitely tell that Carly Diaz is going to either be a crucial figure involving helping Brynn or is going to be extra pressure on her to get a good story quickly which might lead her into more danger. The second one is a lot more common, so I am hoping that she doesn't fall into that and go for it. She knows that she is good at journalism, but she also puts a lot of pressure on herself as her father, mother and sister have something that they specialise in, and she feels like the odd one out. It is definitely very hard to hold yourself in high regard when everyone around you is doing something amazing, especially when it is people you care about because it isn't going to manifest as something like jealousy (most of the time) and will usually manifest as a sort of inferiority complex where the person doesn't see themselves as good enough no matter what they do.
The murder this is going to be centred around is a teacher called Mr Larkin, Brynn's teacher when she was younger. He was murdered, and they classed it as a killing by some drifters and then there was nothing more mentioned about it once a few weeks had passed. As if they were just now trying to brush everything under the rug and rid themselves of the tragedy that happened. There are a lot of details in the story that doesn't make sense, and that were just brushed under the rug without any sort of investigation. Things such as money stolen from Mr Larkin being found in Charlotte's locker, one of the people who found him, or how Shane (another person who found him) had his fingerprints on the murder weapon. There is also another twist in the tale, that being Tripp telling Brynn to leave him alone and stop stalking him when they had been all fine and dandy just the day before. It doesn't look like it means anything at first, but when you factor in that it happened the day before Mr Larkin was murdered and that Tripp was one of the three people who found him it starts to make it a little suspicious.
As with other Karen books she likes to include other POVs, with this one being from the perspective of Tripp. Unlike Charlotte and Shane, Tripp isn't rich and so has to rely on things like scholarships to get where he wants. His mother isn't in his life and his father seems sort of absent from what he needs as a parent, meaning the only parental figure he really has in his life is a woman called Regina. And we get a glimpse into his mind about how he has definitely done some horrible things *wink wink*.
We also get flashbacks to the past, very short and sweet as Karen doesn't want to give too much away too quickly. Having your audience know something that the characters don't is fine, but when the whole book is based on that it really doesn't work. We only get these from the perspective of Tripp as, no offence to her, but Brynn's life is boring in comparison. Going back to the school that Brynn was once in there is now a class divide between some students as they have let more students in that aren't rich, meaning the rich want to create that gap and feel better than poor people. It is establishing another thing that Brynn is going to have to start keeping track of, and something she has to avoid becoming. I think the inclusion of her sister, Ellie, is another trick to make that system inside the school hold more weight. If she lets her social standing go then her sister is going to be looked at in a less than favourable light once she has left.
At the new term assembly, while unveiling a portrait of Mr Larkin there are worse written over his face, 'Asshole' which obviously causes quite the stir and brings to light that there may be more than meets the eye to the beloved teacher. I mean it is the way I always loved to start my school year. Desecrating a dead teacher's portrait. Just a normal Monday morning.
While out on his normal morning run when he is hit by a quick 1-2 as a grey Sedan that seems familiar drives past, and then he gets a text message saying, 'Murderer' which really freaks him out. This shows that whoever it is that is doing this if it is even one person, is just going after Mr Larkin, but also after the 3 people who found him. Either for the actual secret they are hiding, or because they think they know the secret that the three of them are hiding. I'm confusing myself there, so hopefully you're not feeling the same way.
There was definitely a romantic connection between Brynn and Tripp, especially on his end, before she left as while he can't point out anything specific that makes Charlotte beautiful he is easily able to do it with Brynn, which is all I need to know that the feelings that were there once haven't fully disappeared. Or maybe they never disappeared in the first place, which still begs the question as to why he pushed her away that that specific time. (That could also be the thing he feels horrible about, because he had to, for whatever reason, push her away to get something vital to him living a normal life). Meanwhile, the relationship between Shane and Charlotte isn't going as well as it could be. Not on her side, because it seemed like she has liked him for a long time and is content with their relationship (always wanting to be close to him, goes with him almost everywhere) but on Shane's side as I can see that she is a lot to handle and if he doesn't really love her it would be hard to put up with. She is very particular about the things that she likes and is almost like a perfect princess but she hasn't been shown to be that bad in terms of being mean or horrible to people so I feel a bit bad for her, knowing that Shane isn't content and even seems annoyed when she isn't paying attention to her particular way of doing things.
After being rebuffed on her story by an old school executive, Carly comes out in private and supports her efforts, leading her to do some more research and finding out that Shane's family not only donated $100k to the school but also donated $250k to the police department (kind of suspicious timing when their son was one of the people who found a dead body).
After seeing Mr Solomon, who said that Mr Larkin got what he deserved, there is some more weirdness because Brynn wants to go and see Tripp Charlotte says he is having a bad day. And once she does find him and he is just starting to open up about how he doesn't hate her, and his reason for feeling like he had to get her to hate him, Shane comes over and says he is having a bad day (parroting what Charlotte said) and then drags him away as if he is trying to keep Tripp from spilling some kind of secret.
Hm, how curious. (Although this doesn't really seem related to the murder and has more to do with the reason why he wanted her to hate him, the further I get into this book the more I realise that him wanting her to hate him and the murders are two separate incidents altogether. This is more in the vein of him finding out that his father and her mother are having an affair or something of the sort).
One thing that I definitely know is going to cause any kind of relationship that Brynn and Tripp start to build to crumble is the fact that she is reporting on the story that involves him and his two best friends. The end result might not show them in the best light and might bring up old traumas, even if they had nothing to do with the actual murders. I will also say that I can see something happened where she chooses not to release the information (because then it would be pretty hard to forgive her character) but it gets out somehow anyways and like with the d*ck pic story has her name attached to it so they think that she was the one who released the story and then she might go through some life-threatening situation where she is finally able to dispel any doubts about her loyalty while learning what it was that Tripp is keeping from her, and then having a relatively happy ending after they are saved from that situation.
We do learn that Tripp heard a scream while in the woods on the day that Mr Larkin died. That could be a long of things, including a fake out, Mr Larkin attacking someone, him being attacked by someone, or it could even then him and someone else (Charlotte or Shane) being attacked by someone else. This is a bit further explored when Brynn and Tripp go again to visit Mr Solomon and find his dead body (with his money box missing). Tripp falls into a kind of PTSD (?) trance where instead of being in that exact moment he is in the past and asking someone why they did something and asking them to stop screaming. Brynn calls the police, they get questioned separately and then the personal drama starts as the police officer interviewing Tripp tells him that Brynn is working for 'Motive', which he knows is the other organisation working on a story about Mr Larkin's death, which causes his fist to clench. Wow, so scary (but at the same time I am dreading seeing Brynn, who was so happy, realise that because she kept this secret for so long and because other things happened in the meantime that made this news a lot worse than it previously would have been, it isn't going to be easy for Tripp to get back to how he was before. Although she hadn't accepted her feelings for Tripp she was at least starting to realise that they existed, just a bit. And it is also going to prove Charlotte right, that she was someone he should have just stayed away from and not got involved with in the first place. Especially since she doesn't know about their past relationship).
The next thing we learn, even though it doesn't have a place within our mystery in regards to solving it right now, is the biggest bomb of them all. Mr Larkin moved to Brynn's school to be closer to his brother. We don't know who his brother is, and we don't know how that relates to his death but we do know that it has something to do with it, being such a massive bomb. I had forgotten about that call, that she had made to his old school (and about her getting shut down quickly) so I hadn't at all assumed that he actually was going to pass on the message to a teacher who knew him, but he did. The brother, it turns out, is someone in the same age group as Brynn, Tripp, Charlotte and Shane. It could potentially be the person who first shared the video around in class that called Shane a murderer.
It is then that the pieces start to click into place and everything starts to make sense (at least from the perspective of why Tripp was being so secretive and cut off his friendship with Brynn). Tripp's dad was the one who stole the money, (although he could have returned it if Tripp hadn't taken it) and Tripp wanted to put it back after learning that his father was being threatened by Mr Larkin but waited too long and Mr Larkin had already noticed. Although we don't know for certain who it was (we think it was Tripp's father) we do know that Shane and Charlotte weren't threatening Tripp, even if they must still be involved in the murder. That is instead of it being them threatening him to keep his mouth shut like we thought, well, at least how I thought, it is Tripp who coordinates everything and gets them to keep their stories consistent.
Tripp and Brynn are great together, even back then, which is why him keeping everything from her and cutting her off while assuming a lot causes this massive misunderstanding to happen where all this time he thought he was protecting his father but his father had nothing to do with the murders as he was with Brynn from before the murders happened to when the police called to tell him that his son had found a dead body. If only he had shared that with Brynn earlier, she would have been able to get rid of his doubts over who his father was. At the start, I talked about a wedge that was put between them, him and his father, and how his father wasn't the parental figure that he needed (even though he seemed like a relatively good parent who was trying his hardest) but learning that the reason for this is that he thought his father was a murderer makes much more sense but is also a lot sadder.
This then leaves the question as to who the real killer is and how the young, Tripp age student who was Mr Larkin's younger brother fit in together. It also now raises fresh questions about Shane, especially when talking about his behaviour leading up to Tripp seeing Mr Larkin dead. Brynn and Tripp start to try and put their information together and figure out who it is, but if I have learnt anything about reading a Karen McManus book it is that trusting that her characters are going to figure things out is the wrong thing to do. They only ever figure things like this out after it is already too late, which is what I think is most likely going to happen here. I don't think the killer is going to be revealed as Shane, it is way too obvious as well and would be a pretty anticlimactic ending to the novel. One person who I hadn't considered (who, the ages don't make sense to be the brother but it would be a pretty interesting twist) is if the killer was her Uncle Nick. It was mentioned off-handedly by Tripp but it actually holds some merit in my opinion, even if that merit is more wishful thinking rather than based on any concrete evidence.
Ellie sets a trap for the one defacing the posters of Mr Larkin by using a magic kit and putting ink on them that can only be seen under a certain light. Since moving back Brynn has had two different constant friends. One being Nadia and the other being the one who was defacing the posters of Mr Larkin, Mason, who turns out to be Dexter's son, and Mr Larkin's brother. (He wasn't the one who killed him though).
What we do learn. from Shane, is that Mr Larkin was arguing with someone in the forest about money. That someone being Nick Gallagher, Brynn's Uncle. It also wasn't him who killed Mr Larkin (how can we trust him? Because Brynn knows, for certain, for sure, for everything, that he didn't do it just by looking at him. Sure) which is another fakeout and means the actual reveal has to be good (which I'm not sure if it can) otherwise the ending isn't going to live up to what it has been building up to.
Dexter also ends up jumping into the fray, having tracked down Brynn through her number plate, and kidnaps Ellie. They end up having a nice little conversation while being held at gunpoint and end up escaping with their lives, although they are all injured and Dexter has vanished (Sike, he died).
The actual, real (maybe) person who killed Mr Larkin?! Drum roll, please. It was (maybe) Charlotte!
The theory is that she thought that Shane was Mr Larkin's brother, not Mason, so when she heard Mr Larkin threaten his brother she devised a plan to report him to the principal, which backfired on her as Nick found the letter. After seeing his change in the woods she acted on instinct and ended up killing him accidentally before hiding and then pretending that nothing happened. It would explain why she was the one who was most freaked out about Mr Larkin being dead.
Do I believe it? Yes
Do I think that she did it? Yes
Do I think that Mr Larkin was a horrible person? Maybe
Do I think he deserved it? Yes
It might be horrible to say, but the fact that he was about to bring his abusive father back into his mother and brother's life just is a horrible thing to do. Charlotte stopped a more horrible thing from happening by doing that and I commend her on that. Additionally, before you go and say that he was being groomed since birth, and was probably mentally abused a lot by his father, yes I do agree but since he was 25/26 when he died that makes all of his actions inexcusable. At some point, you have to have responsibility for your own actions, and since he didn't I have no sympathy.
Overall, I liked this book. It was a fun read, one that was a lot more cohesive in the middle parts than some of Karen's other books, but one where the reveal wasn't anything crazy but did make complete sense and still was relatively satisfying. It was an overall success, and one I would definitely recommend to you, especially if you liked some of her previous books. I can tell that she is getting better as a writer and hope she continues on this upward trajectory, getting to a point where she can include twists like in 'One of Us is Lying' and 'One of Us is Next' where the ending twists had me rethinking my life, even if less 'realistic' (I always hate the term realistic being used in books because if an event occurred, as long as it can or has happened, (or even if the likelihood of it happening is so small it is basically impossible) we can be thrown into a situation where we are following the only time it happened in history, which I why I love books and how 'unrealistic' they are).
8.6/10
You can definitely tell that Carly Diaz is going to either be a crucial figure involving helping Brynn or is going to be extra pressure on her to get a good story quickly which might lead her into more danger. The second one is a lot more common, so I am hoping that she doesn't fall into that and go for it. She knows that she is good at journalism, but she also puts a lot of pressure on herself as her father, mother and sister have something that they specialise in, and she feels like the odd one out. It is definitely very hard to hold yourself in high regard when everyone around you is doing something amazing, especially when it is people you care about because it isn't going to manifest as something like jealousy (most of the time) and will usually manifest as a sort of inferiority complex where the person doesn't see themselves as good enough no matter what they do.
The murder this is going to be centred around is a teacher called Mr Larkin, Brynn's teacher when she was younger. He was murdered, and they classed it as a killing by some drifters and then there was nothing more mentioned about it once a few weeks had passed. As if they were just now trying to brush everything under the rug and rid themselves of the tragedy that happened. There are a lot of details in the story that doesn't make sense, and that were just brushed under the rug without any sort of investigation. Things such as money stolen from Mr Larkin being found in Charlotte's locker, one of the people who found him, or how Shane (another person who found him) had his fingerprints on the murder weapon. There is also another twist in the tale, that being Tripp telling Brynn to leave him alone and stop stalking him when they had been all fine and dandy just the day before. It doesn't look like it means anything at first, but when you factor in that it happened the day before Mr Larkin was murdered and that Tripp was one of the three people who found him it starts to make it a little suspicious.
As with other Karen books she likes to include other POVs, with this one being from the perspective of Tripp. Unlike Charlotte and Shane, Tripp isn't rich and so has to rely on things like scholarships to get where he wants. His mother isn't in his life and his father seems sort of absent from what he needs as a parent, meaning the only parental figure he really has in his life is a woman called Regina. And we get a glimpse into his mind about how he has definitely done some horrible things *wink wink*.
We also get flashbacks to the past, very short and sweet as Karen doesn't want to give too much away too quickly. Having your audience know something that the characters don't is fine, but when the whole book is based on that it really doesn't work. We only get these from the perspective of Tripp as, no offence to her, but Brynn's life is boring in comparison. Going back to the school that Brynn was once in there is now a class divide between some students as they have let more students in that aren't rich, meaning the rich want to create that gap and feel better than poor people. It is establishing another thing that Brynn is going to have to start keeping track of, and something she has to avoid becoming. I think the inclusion of her sister, Ellie, is another trick to make that system inside the school hold more weight. If she lets her social standing go then her sister is going to be looked at in a less than favourable light once she has left.
At the new term assembly, while unveiling a portrait of Mr Larkin there are worse written over his face, 'Asshole' which obviously causes quite the stir and brings to light that there may be more than meets the eye to the beloved teacher. I mean it is the way I always loved to start my school year. Desecrating a dead teacher's portrait. Just a normal Monday morning.
While out on his normal morning run when he is hit by a quick 1-2 as a grey Sedan that seems familiar drives past, and then he gets a text message saying, 'Murderer' which really freaks him out. This shows that whoever it is that is doing this if it is even one person, is just going after Mr Larkin, but also after the 3 people who found him. Either for the actual secret they are hiding, or because they think they know the secret that the three of them are hiding. I'm confusing myself there, so hopefully you're not feeling the same way.
There was definitely a romantic connection between Brynn and Tripp, especially on his end, before she left as while he can't point out anything specific that makes Charlotte beautiful he is easily able to do it with Brynn, which is all I need to know that the feelings that were there once haven't fully disappeared. Or maybe they never disappeared in the first place, which still begs the question as to why he pushed her away that that specific time. (That could also be the thing he feels horrible about, because he had to, for whatever reason, push her away to get something vital to him living a normal life). Meanwhile, the relationship between Shane and Charlotte isn't going as well as it could be. Not on her side, because it seemed like she has liked him for a long time and is content with their relationship (always wanting to be close to him, goes with him almost everywhere) but on Shane's side as I can see that she is a lot to handle and if he doesn't really love her it would be hard to put up with. She is very particular about the things that she likes and is almost like a perfect princess but she hasn't been shown to be that bad in terms of being mean or horrible to people so I feel a bit bad for her, knowing that Shane isn't content and even seems annoyed when she isn't paying attention to her particular way of doing things.
After being rebuffed on her story by an old school executive, Carly comes out in private and supports her efforts, leading her to do some more research and finding out that Shane's family not only donated $100k to the school but also donated $250k to the police department (kind of suspicious timing when their son was one of the people who found a dead body).
After seeing Mr Solomon, who said that Mr Larkin got what he deserved, there is some more weirdness because Brynn wants to go and see Tripp Charlotte says he is having a bad day. And once she does find him and he is just starting to open up about how he doesn't hate her, and his reason for feeling like he had to get her to hate him, Shane comes over and says he is having a bad day (parroting what Charlotte said) and then drags him away as if he is trying to keep Tripp from spilling some kind of secret.
Hm, how curious. (Although this doesn't really seem related to the murder and has more to do with the reason why he wanted her to hate him, the further I get into this book the more I realise that him wanting her to hate him and the murders are two separate incidents altogether. This is more in the vein of him finding out that his father and her mother are having an affair or something of the sort).
One thing that I definitely know is going to cause any kind of relationship that Brynn and Tripp start to build to crumble is the fact that she is reporting on the story that involves him and his two best friends. The end result might not show them in the best light and might bring up old traumas, even if they had nothing to do with the actual murders. I will also say that I can see something happened where she chooses not to release the information (because then it would be pretty hard to forgive her character) but it gets out somehow anyways and like with the d*ck pic story has her name attached to it so they think that she was the one who released the story and then she might go through some life-threatening situation where she is finally able to dispel any doubts about her loyalty while learning what it was that Tripp is keeping from her, and then having a relatively happy ending after they are saved from that situation.
We do learn that Tripp heard a scream while in the woods on the day that Mr Larkin died. That could be a long of things, including a fake out, Mr Larkin attacking someone, him being attacked by someone, or it could even then him and someone else (Charlotte or Shane) being attacked by someone else. This is a bit further explored when Brynn and Tripp go again to visit Mr Solomon and find his dead body (with his money box missing). Tripp falls into a kind of PTSD (?) trance where instead of being in that exact moment he is in the past and asking someone why they did something and asking them to stop screaming. Brynn calls the police, they get questioned separately and then the personal drama starts as the police officer interviewing Tripp tells him that Brynn is working for 'Motive', which he knows is the other organisation working on a story about Mr Larkin's death, which causes his fist to clench. Wow, so scary (but at the same time I am dreading seeing Brynn, who was so happy, realise that because she kept this secret for so long and because other things happened in the meantime that made this news a lot worse than it previously would have been, it isn't going to be easy for Tripp to get back to how he was before. Although she hadn't accepted her feelings for Tripp she was at least starting to realise that they existed, just a bit. And it is also going to prove Charlotte right, that she was someone he should have just stayed away from and not got involved with in the first place. Especially since she doesn't know about their past relationship).
The next thing we learn, even though it doesn't have a place within our mystery in regards to solving it right now, is the biggest bomb of them all. Mr Larkin moved to Brynn's school to be closer to his brother. We don't know who his brother is, and we don't know how that relates to his death but we do know that it has something to do with it, being such a massive bomb. I had forgotten about that call, that she had made to his old school (and about her getting shut down quickly) so I hadn't at all assumed that he actually was going to pass on the message to a teacher who knew him, but he did. The brother, it turns out, is someone in the same age group as Brynn, Tripp, Charlotte and Shane. It could potentially be the person who first shared the video around in class that called Shane a murderer.
It is then that the pieces start to click into place and everything starts to make sense (at least from the perspective of why Tripp was being so secretive and cut off his friendship with Brynn). Tripp's dad was the one who stole the money, (although he could have returned it if Tripp hadn't taken it) and Tripp wanted to put it back after learning that his father was being threatened by Mr Larkin but waited too long and Mr Larkin had already noticed. Although we don't know for certain who it was (we think it was Tripp's father) we do know that Shane and Charlotte weren't threatening Tripp, even if they must still be involved in the murder. That is instead of it being them threatening him to keep his mouth shut like we thought, well, at least how I thought, it is Tripp who coordinates everything and gets them to keep their stories consistent.
Tripp and Brynn are great together, even back then, which is why him keeping everything from her and cutting her off while assuming a lot causes this massive misunderstanding to happen where all this time he thought he was protecting his father but his father had nothing to do with the murders as he was with Brynn from before the murders happened to when the police called to tell him that his son had found a dead body. If only he had shared that with Brynn earlier, she would have been able to get rid of his doubts over who his father was. At the start, I talked about a wedge that was put between them, him and his father, and how his father wasn't the parental figure that he needed (even though he seemed like a relatively good parent who was trying his hardest) but learning that the reason for this is that he thought his father was a murderer makes much more sense but is also a lot sadder.
This then leaves the question as to who the real killer is and how the young, Tripp age student who was Mr Larkin's younger brother fit in together. It also now raises fresh questions about Shane, especially when talking about his behaviour leading up to Tripp seeing Mr Larkin dead. Brynn and Tripp start to try and put their information together and figure out who it is, but if I have learnt anything about reading a Karen McManus book it is that trusting that her characters are going to figure things out is the wrong thing to do. They only ever figure things like this out after it is already too late, which is what I think is most likely going to happen here. I don't think the killer is going to be revealed as Shane, it is way too obvious as well and would be a pretty anticlimactic ending to the novel. One person who I hadn't considered (who, the ages don't make sense to be the brother but it would be a pretty interesting twist) is if the killer was her Uncle Nick. It was mentioned off-handedly by Tripp but it actually holds some merit in my opinion, even if that merit is more wishful thinking rather than based on any concrete evidence.
Ellie sets a trap for the one defacing the posters of Mr Larkin by using a magic kit and putting ink on them that can only be seen under a certain light. Since moving back Brynn has had two different constant friends. One being Nadia and the other being the one who was defacing the posters of Mr Larkin, Mason, who turns out to be Dexter's son, and Mr Larkin's brother. (He wasn't the one who killed him though).
What we do learn. from Shane, is that Mr Larkin was arguing with someone in the forest about money. That someone being Nick Gallagher, Brynn's Uncle. It also wasn't him who killed Mr Larkin (how can we trust him? Because Brynn knows, for certain, for sure, for everything, that he didn't do it just by looking at him. Sure) which is another fakeout and means the actual reveal has to be good (which I'm not sure if it can) otherwise the ending isn't going to live up to what it has been building up to.
Dexter also ends up jumping into the fray, having tracked down Brynn through her number plate, and kidnaps Ellie. They end up having a nice little conversation while being held at gunpoint and end up escaping with their lives, although they are all injured and Dexter has vanished (Sike, he died).
The actual, real (maybe) person who killed Mr Larkin?! Drum roll, please. It was (maybe) Charlotte!
The theory is that she thought that Shane was Mr Larkin's brother, not Mason, so when she heard Mr Larkin threaten his brother she devised a plan to report him to the principal, which backfired on her as Nick found the letter. After seeing his change in the woods she acted on instinct and ended up killing him accidentally before hiding and then pretending that nothing happened. It would explain why she was the one who was most freaked out about Mr Larkin being dead.
Do I believe it? Yes
Do I think that she did it? Yes
Do I think that Mr Larkin was a horrible person? Maybe
Do I think he deserved it? Yes
It might be horrible to say, but the fact that he was about to bring his abusive father back into his mother and brother's life just is a horrible thing to do. Charlotte stopped a more horrible thing from happening by doing that and I commend her on that. Additionally, before you go and say that he was being groomed since birth, and was probably mentally abused a lot by his father, yes I do agree but since he was 25/26 when he died that makes all of his actions inexcusable. At some point, you have to have responsibility for your own actions, and since he didn't I have no sympathy.
Overall, I liked this book. It was a fun read, one that was a lot more cohesive in the middle parts than some of Karen's other books, but one where the reveal wasn't anything crazy but did make complete sense and still was relatively satisfying. It was an overall success, and one I would definitely recommend to you, especially if you liked some of her previous books. I can tell that she is getting better as a writer and hope she continues on this upward trajectory, getting to a point where she can include twists like in 'One of Us is Lying' and 'One of Us is Next' where the ending twists had me rethinking my life, even if less 'realistic' (I always hate the term realistic being used in books because if an event occurred, as long as it can or has happened, (or even if the likelihood of it happening is so small it is basically impossible) we can be thrown into a situation where we are following the only time it happened in history, which I why I love books and how 'unrealistic' they are).
8.6/10
October 17, 2022
Let Down Your Hair
A first introduction into the YA fiction realm and Bryony is throwing off the deep end, not starting with something more straightforward, but trying to tackle social media and alopecia through a beloved fairy tale. Worst of all, however, she is writing about a teenager! I know, the horror is unimaginable.
Repunzel is leant into as when we view Barb she tells us how she hasn't been to school or seen her friends in months. And instead of moving the 'captured up in a castle' into a more emotional journey, rather than the physical one that happened in the fairy tale, we are told that she is trapped in a modern tower and it is still for her hair that is the cause of them wanting her. Although it is more the marketing side, and the social media side that they want her for, rather than the more recent adaptation where it had healing powers or the original where her father offered her in exchange for forgiveness over stealing (the adaptation really was Disneyfied compared to the original).
From the descriptions, I can tell how much she is being affected by not being able to live her normal life. When I first read the blurb from this book I assumed her being lonely would be a bit exaggerated. But judging by the fact that it seems like she is actually just reduced to a content-making machine, and can do nothing else, I don't feel that way at all anymore. Barb is living with her aunt, who is the one who wants her to continue her content creation, comes up with all the ideas, videos and posts, she has to create for the day and has invested a lot in her. It adds another element as now it isn't some stranger who is basically forcing her to continue posting content, it is someone who is supposed to care about her who can't even see that she is wallowing in misery because she is being forced to create this content. Anyone who is forced to do something they don't really want to do would hate it, but when applied to a situation like this where she hasn't had that normal teenage experience, and she hasn't been able to explore herself (because she hasn't really seen what the norm for people is a lot, and she doesn't know if she wants to fall in and make up the majority or go against the majority). This isolation is especially prevalent because her friends don't know about her struggles but do know that she doesn't hang out with them anymore so they, correctly based on the knowledge they have, assume she is stuck up. If they knew what was actually happening then they wouldn't be saying that but they don't so I don't blame them for assuming the worst. This is especially important as most people will assume that content creation online is a dream job that everyone wants, and while it is true that a large majority would love to have it, you cannot always assume that another person wants what you do, and would be happy when you would be.
Judging by the tone of the story there is going to be some kind of reconciliation between them later on in the book when she is allowed to finally explain herself, which is going to be satisfying and nice especially since Jess is a friend from her childhood.
When she actually starts recording a video and then notices the bald stop that we all knew she was going to find (unless you didn't read the back of the book for some reason, in which case you're brave) it doesn't feel like how a normal teenager would react to something like that. It is like she instantly knows, even if she doesn't know it consciously, that this is going to be a way for her to break from her aunt's control and regain her life. It is the key to unchain yourself and escape the kidnapper, the gun to apprehend the burglar, it is the main action we are going to have to focus on in the book because I think most of the interesting parts are going to be based on the growth of Barb on her journey to rid herself of the constant pressure to post on social media.
We are then sent 6 months back and can then get more context over how things became like this. Things like her leaving school after doing her GCSEs and how she wanted to and assumed it was going to be a better life than the one at school. One of the reasons for that is that her relationship with Jess soured before she left school. We aren't really given much insight into why this happened but there are some things to pick up on, namely that Barb acts kind of arrogantly. I had thought that they had both been assuming, wrongly, that she was stuck up, but after listening to some of her inner thoughts (or the actions that have come from those inner thoughts moreso) it is easy to see why they would think that. Inside she is nervous but on the outside, she tries to protect herself from those feelings by projecting a NGAF attitude, and thinking that the grass is greener on the other side, when we know it isn't now.
I had predicted their reunion, Barb and Jess, but after seeing the kind of treatment she was receiving from her and Serena I'm unsure if I actually want them to have a relationship anymore. It seems like the hatred runs deep for some reason, and that she actually holds a lot of disdain towards Barb. An additional internal conflict is brought forth by the fact that Barb's aunt said that the doctors and nurses got distracted by her hair when she was born and didn't notice her mother dying until it was too late.
Sorcha is pretty obviously vicariously living through Barb. She is getting her to do things that only appeal to her and that Barb has no clue about such as getting her an appointment with a woman called Anna G who Sorcha seems to look up to. What is more, is that Sorcha also doesn't really know what she is doing and is a complete novice at everything brand-management based. This is accentuated by them going to visit a brand that Sorcha set up an appointment with, but knowing nothing about what their building looked like, or what their values were, which led to a bit of embarrassment.
Barb is also experiencing that overwhelmed anxiety as she is thrown into the world of fame, celebrities and fakeness without being told that the fame comes with a lot of hate, celebrities come with a lot of things being made up for the cameras, and the fakeness with people not sticking to what they said in public once they're in private. She even asked her aunt, who had the nerve to complain about Anna G only caring about Barb's hair, to come along with her to help with her anxiety but she refused. Barb goes through joining a creator house once one of the members gets kicked out over cocaine use, only to be kicked out herself once that member escapes the rehab facility and she then has to move in with her aunt.
Through this, she does have one friend, named Zel who is blind and has been the only celebrity she has met so far that is kind to her and thought of their interactions as more than just a business relationship, or something to move them further in their career. It is nice that Bryony isn't one of those people who just says, 'Social Media Bad' and then leaves it at that as there is nuance to it and not everything you see on social media is fake. (I think I did finally find out why I was instantly drawn to Jess and wanted her to make up with Barb. It is because she is a Chelsea fan. A woman after my own heart. Still hate her though).
The reason for her calm ability to deal with the fact that she is losing hair is that she thinks it is something she deserves. She believes she killed her mother, ruined her aunt's life and betrayed Jess. She believes it all to be true (it definitely isn't) and so once her hair starts falling it is as if she is finally receiving all the bad things that she thought should have happened to her earlier. She calls the doctor, who does think it is alopecia but specifically mentions stress as one of the main causes. When her aunt finds out instead of comforting her she asks Barb, 'why are you ruining my life?!' as if it was a choice, and that she, 'Isn't going to get away with it' whatever that means. I can't imagine how horrible it would be to have so many things going on at the same time, so many horrible things you blame yourself for and having all the adults, and people your age blame and bully you for everything, as if you aren't already doing that to yourself. They're only perpetuating her thoughts and making them worse, which is the exact opposite of what they should be doing, especially at her age.
It was a bit cliche having all the people who were helpful towards her being different from the norm. Zel being blind, and Amy (someone who deals with hair and ends up telling her how it actually is by planting the seed that maybe the people around her focusing on her hair so much is what has made her put too much value into that as her only identity and that she isn't the cause of all the misfortune that happens to the people around her like she thinks she is) who had a lot of plastic surgery done. But it worked at breaking down the final barrier that she had put up which is why I don't really mind it.
We then finally, finally get the reveal of what caused Jess and Barb to stop being friends. They were going to create a YouTube channel together but because of their ages, they needed permission from their guardians. Jess's dad had allowed her to, but when Barb asked Sorcha she basically ranted about how Jess is nothing and that the channel she was going to create was going to be done without Jess and managed by Sorcha. But what was hidden behind this, and had been hinted at in a previous scene where after the month-long break she only had one person message her and it is someone who had the same picture up on their account as the one of her mother which is when we learn that her mother isn't dead but gave her up because of drugs. It was obviously something that hit close to home with Jess so the only thing she could think is that Barb was lying to her to get close to her or gain sympathy points or something like that, which even her father wasn't suspecting but she was hurt. Doesn't excuse her actions though.
I thought the reunion between Jess and Barb was a bit rushed, and it felt like there could have been more apologising Jess's side and reluctance to accept from Barb's side. It felt like she got off relatively easy for the things she did, no matter the motive. The Serena thing being left unfinished is fine as she really only was there to show how much Barb grew throughout the book. The rest being left unfinished is completely fine as we know the most important parts. That being Barb and Jess have made up, her mother supports her (shown by her smiling as she finishes her story and goes to cut the rest of her hair off), Zel is still as kind as ever and the most important thing is that Barb's mindset is completely different and we know that she isn't going to fall into the same traps that she did before.
There were a few problems I had with this book, such as inconsistent dialogue with Barb saying things that sounded completely out of character based on everything that we know about her and then reverting right back to that previous self right after. There was also the part which I mentioned literally just before about how Jess and Barb resolved their relationship too quickly. It just feels like a recipe for disaster and something that is going to ruin their relationship at a later date because they never fully resolved the grievances between them but other than that I thought that it was solid and although there were definitely some cliches, the overall message was lovely and the actual execution of putting that message into a story without it feeling like it was forced. It felt like the story was written and then the message was lovingly woven into the already good on its own storyline.
8.3/10
Repunzel is leant into as when we view Barb she tells us how she hasn't been to school or seen her friends in months. And instead of moving the 'captured up in a castle' into a more emotional journey, rather than the physical one that happened in the fairy tale, we are told that she is trapped in a modern tower and it is still for her hair that is the cause of them wanting her. Although it is more the marketing side, and the social media side that they want her for, rather than the more recent adaptation where it had healing powers or the original where her father offered her in exchange for forgiveness over stealing (the adaptation really was Disneyfied compared to the original).
From the descriptions, I can tell how much she is being affected by not being able to live her normal life. When I first read the blurb from this book I assumed her being lonely would be a bit exaggerated. But judging by the fact that it seems like she is actually just reduced to a content-making machine, and can do nothing else, I don't feel that way at all anymore. Barb is living with her aunt, who is the one who wants her to continue her content creation, comes up with all the ideas, videos and posts, she has to create for the day and has invested a lot in her. It adds another element as now it isn't some stranger who is basically forcing her to continue posting content, it is someone who is supposed to care about her who can't even see that she is wallowing in misery because she is being forced to create this content. Anyone who is forced to do something they don't really want to do would hate it, but when applied to a situation like this where she hasn't had that normal teenage experience, and she hasn't been able to explore herself (because she hasn't really seen what the norm for people is a lot, and she doesn't know if she wants to fall in and make up the majority or go against the majority). This isolation is especially prevalent because her friends don't know about her struggles but do know that she doesn't hang out with them anymore so they, correctly based on the knowledge they have, assume she is stuck up. If they knew what was actually happening then they wouldn't be saying that but they don't so I don't blame them for assuming the worst. This is especially important as most people will assume that content creation online is a dream job that everyone wants, and while it is true that a large majority would love to have it, you cannot always assume that another person wants what you do, and would be happy when you would be.
Judging by the tone of the story there is going to be some kind of reconciliation between them later on in the book when she is allowed to finally explain herself, which is going to be satisfying and nice especially since Jess is a friend from her childhood.
When she actually starts recording a video and then notices the bald stop that we all knew she was going to find (unless you didn't read the back of the book for some reason, in which case you're brave) it doesn't feel like how a normal teenager would react to something like that. It is like she instantly knows, even if she doesn't know it consciously, that this is going to be a way for her to break from her aunt's control and regain her life. It is the key to unchain yourself and escape the kidnapper, the gun to apprehend the burglar, it is the main action we are going to have to focus on in the book because I think most of the interesting parts are going to be based on the growth of Barb on her journey to rid herself of the constant pressure to post on social media.
We are then sent 6 months back and can then get more context over how things became like this. Things like her leaving school after doing her GCSEs and how she wanted to and assumed it was going to be a better life than the one at school. One of the reasons for that is that her relationship with Jess soured before she left school. We aren't really given much insight into why this happened but there are some things to pick up on, namely that Barb acts kind of arrogantly. I had thought that they had both been assuming, wrongly, that she was stuck up, but after listening to some of her inner thoughts (or the actions that have come from those inner thoughts moreso) it is easy to see why they would think that. Inside she is nervous but on the outside, she tries to protect herself from those feelings by projecting a NGAF attitude, and thinking that the grass is greener on the other side, when we know it isn't now.
I had predicted their reunion, Barb and Jess, but after seeing the kind of treatment she was receiving from her and Serena I'm unsure if I actually want them to have a relationship anymore. It seems like the hatred runs deep for some reason, and that she actually holds a lot of disdain towards Barb. An additional internal conflict is brought forth by the fact that Barb's aunt said that the doctors and nurses got distracted by her hair when she was born and didn't notice her mother dying until it was too late.
Sorcha is pretty obviously vicariously living through Barb. She is getting her to do things that only appeal to her and that Barb has no clue about such as getting her an appointment with a woman called Anna G who Sorcha seems to look up to. What is more, is that Sorcha also doesn't really know what she is doing and is a complete novice at everything brand-management based. This is accentuated by them going to visit a brand that Sorcha set up an appointment with, but knowing nothing about what their building looked like, or what their values were, which led to a bit of embarrassment.
Barb is also experiencing that overwhelmed anxiety as she is thrown into the world of fame, celebrities and fakeness without being told that the fame comes with a lot of hate, celebrities come with a lot of things being made up for the cameras, and the fakeness with people not sticking to what they said in public once they're in private. She even asked her aunt, who had the nerve to complain about Anna G only caring about Barb's hair, to come along with her to help with her anxiety but she refused. Barb goes through joining a creator house once one of the members gets kicked out over cocaine use, only to be kicked out herself once that member escapes the rehab facility and she then has to move in with her aunt.
Through this, she does have one friend, named Zel who is blind and has been the only celebrity she has met so far that is kind to her and thought of their interactions as more than just a business relationship, or something to move them further in their career. It is nice that Bryony isn't one of those people who just says, 'Social Media Bad' and then leaves it at that as there is nuance to it and not everything you see on social media is fake. (I think I did finally find out why I was instantly drawn to Jess and wanted her to make up with Barb. It is because she is a Chelsea fan. A woman after my own heart. Still hate her though).
The reason for her calm ability to deal with the fact that she is losing hair is that she thinks it is something she deserves. She believes she killed her mother, ruined her aunt's life and betrayed Jess. She believes it all to be true (it definitely isn't) and so once her hair starts falling it is as if she is finally receiving all the bad things that she thought should have happened to her earlier. She calls the doctor, who does think it is alopecia but specifically mentions stress as one of the main causes. When her aunt finds out instead of comforting her she asks Barb, 'why are you ruining my life?!' as if it was a choice, and that she, 'Isn't going to get away with it' whatever that means. I can't imagine how horrible it would be to have so many things going on at the same time, so many horrible things you blame yourself for and having all the adults, and people your age blame and bully you for everything, as if you aren't already doing that to yourself. They're only perpetuating her thoughts and making them worse, which is the exact opposite of what they should be doing, especially at her age.
It was a bit cliche having all the people who were helpful towards her being different from the norm. Zel being blind, and Amy (someone who deals with hair and ends up telling her how it actually is by planting the seed that maybe the people around her focusing on her hair so much is what has made her put too much value into that as her only identity and that she isn't the cause of all the misfortune that happens to the people around her like she thinks she is) who had a lot of plastic surgery done. But it worked at breaking down the final barrier that she had put up which is why I don't really mind it.
We then finally, finally get the reveal of what caused Jess and Barb to stop being friends. They were going to create a YouTube channel together but because of their ages, they needed permission from their guardians. Jess's dad had allowed her to, but when Barb asked Sorcha she basically ranted about how Jess is nothing and that the channel she was going to create was going to be done without Jess and managed by Sorcha. But what was hidden behind this, and had been hinted at in a previous scene where after the month-long break she only had one person message her and it is someone who had the same picture up on their account as the one of her mother which is when we learn that her mother isn't dead but gave her up because of drugs. It was obviously something that hit close to home with Jess so the only thing she could think is that Barb was lying to her to get close to her or gain sympathy points or something like that, which even her father wasn't suspecting but she was hurt. Doesn't excuse her actions though.
I thought the reunion between Jess and Barb was a bit rushed, and it felt like there could have been more apologising Jess's side and reluctance to accept from Barb's side. It felt like she got off relatively easy for the things she did, no matter the motive. The Serena thing being left unfinished is fine as she really only was there to show how much Barb grew throughout the book. The rest being left unfinished is completely fine as we know the most important parts. That being Barb and Jess have made up, her mother supports her (shown by her smiling as she finishes her story and goes to cut the rest of her hair off), Zel is still as kind as ever and the most important thing is that Barb's mindset is completely different and we know that she isn't going to fall into the same traps that she did before.
There were a few problems I had with this book, such as inconsistent dialogue with Barb saying things that sounded completely out of character based on everything that we know about her and then reverting right back to that previous self right after. There was also the part which I mentioned literally just before about how Jess and Barb resolved their relationship too quickly. It just feels like a recipe for disaster and something that is going to ruin their relationship at a later date because they never fully resolved the grievances between them but other than that I thought that it was solid and although there were definitely some cliches, the overall message was lovely and the actual execution of putting that message into a story without it feeling like it was forced. It felt like the story was written and then the message was lovingly woven into the already good on its own storyline.
8.3/10
October 12, 2022
The Hating Game
I liked how this book started. Explaining the similarities between love and hate with the main differences being the actual emotions experienced rather than the outcome of that emotion. An example used here was how every interaction with that person you either love or hate is filled with adrenaline that doesn't allow you to be yourself (in this the only difference is that one comes from anger while the other comes from happiness).
I also liked all the imagery. When talking about the two companies merging, Sally made reference to two people getting married, which was an image that certainly helped us learn how our main character, Lucy, felt about merging with the other company (hint: she hated it). A clear line is drawn between the two companies, Gamin and Bexley and this doesn't only go for how the actual companies function but also applies to the workers at each company. And although not introduced yet, with how the book is described I can imagine that Joshua is going to be from Bexley which is where the hate will first come from.
But when he does get introduced we learn that he is the executive assistant to Mr Bexley (the CEO of one of the companies) while she is the assistant to Helene Pascal (the CEO of the other company) and now both those people are running the company together, meaning that Lucy and Joshua have to work together a lot. The name of this book, 'The Hating Game' also relates to what they do a lot. Play games. Things such as mirroring each other while in the office that they now share. Their obsession with the other is childish, and it is not the kind of dislike that people usually associate children bullying each other as a form of endearment, it is childish and petty things, such as Lucy having her password as a variation of her hating Joshua.
I could see a lot of small little bits of humour at the start, although some of it definitely felt like it was forced, it did give an idea of who Lucy was as a person, and who Joshua was. They're extremely petty, having reported the other to HR for minor infractions, having petty little games where they try and one up the other, and Lucy also feels wronged and like he has something on her because she smiled and him once and he didn't return one back to her. At this point it definitely is a fun childish, the only thing that I hope doesn't happen is that this continues at this level of pettiness throughout the whole book. I can only imagine how much annoyance I would feel if I got into the last quarter of the book, or even halfway and their pettiness is getting in the way of their relationship. Because even if that goes away in the end I wouldn't be sure if I could trust them to stay together after if all I have seen between the two is most petty jabs and vindictive behaviour over the smallest possible slight, and then a little bit of romance. The only way that I'd accept their relationship after so much unneeded bitterness between the two is if when things got serious, say she was on the verge of being fired, or she logged a complaint about Richard Bexley for sexual harassment (that hasn't happened but he definitely seems like a creepy person), and he helped her out while dismissing all their past petty behaviour towards the other which does seem to be something that he'd do as when he seeing his boss attempting to look down her shirt (she knows he is trying but there is nothing she can really do against the owner of the company at this moment while still keeping her job) he doesn't rib her like I was expecting him to and instead seems to actually want her to stand up for herself. Proving that if things got serious, he would most likely be on her side and help out, instead of not believing her or making insensitive jokes about it.
There definitely are hints that this hate she is feeling towards him stems from some sort of want to get to know him better, but thinking that he thinks he is too good for her. And there is also the aspect of her losing one of her best friends as a lot of people were cut in the merger and Val Stone was one of them. She was furious at Lucy for not giving her a heads up, even though Lucy didn't even know that she was getting cut, and she didn't believe Lucy when she told her that she knew nothing about it. So that resentment that she feels towards someone who is untouchable and would fire her if she said anything less than one hundred per cent positive about him, Richard Bexley, is moved onto the next person in power and the one with who she interacts all the time, Joshua.
Their conversations do become funnier as the book starts moving forward, and I even smiled and exhaled out of my nose at Joshua talking to himself after Lucy asked him to ask anyone and they will tell him that she is nice. One thing that Joshua mentions at this time that is actually true is how she lets the people below her take advantage of her. She doesn't have to be horrible, but when the same employees don't finish the work they were assigned and then dump it on her and she doesn't reprimand them it means that they're going to do it again without hesitation. Why? Because she lets them get away with it.
A little while later Joshua starts his usually teasing of her except he takes it too far and hits a nerve as he starts talking about her parents and about how lonely and homesick she must be (she is lonely and homesick) which makes a few tears drop and Joshua instantly stops his goading and stays silent as they both go into their bosses separate rooms, reminding them that they have a meeting. Lucy really looks up to Helene and wants to be like her when she is in her 50s (which Helene is). She talked about how she even changed her make-up to resemble her boss more.
A knew position opens up in the company, a position just below Helene and Bexley and as the two highest in the company apart from those two, Joshua and Lucy are the two in the running. It would mean that whoever wins is going to end up being the boss of the other person. Which means Lucy or Joshua would probably end up quitting if they were forced to be below their rival. We get to see kind of the only gripe she has with her parents, that being that her mother left her dream job of being a journalist to work on a farm because of her father. She can't understand how her bother was able to leave that dream job just becasue of a man (I hope this doesn't happen in this story/ Fingers crossed).
One day as they're going to the basement together to go to their cars, Joshua presses the emergecy button that stopps the elevator which causes Lucy to think that this is going to be the end of her and that Joshua has finally snapped but instead he lifts her up against the wall and starts kissing her. Starting a new game, which he lovingly calls the kissing game. After learning that her date is actually real he ends up saying some hurtful things while she is already feeling down and makes it worse. All he can do is apologise, which he does the next day, and this gives them a chance to start over. Not as adverseries, but as colleages, friends, or maybe even more. Not matter how much Lucy thinks that she just wants someone like Danny (her date from the previous night) even she struggles to fool herself into thinking that is what she wants.
Now that Lucy and Joshua have moved past their actual destructive relationship and onto more gentle ribbing (and that the seed has been planted in her mind that she might like him and he might like her) we can focus more on her inability to say no to anyone. This is first illustrated by Julie asking if her niece can intern with her because her niece if very opinionated and has drug problems. She requests this because she says Lucy has the most patience out of anyone she knows. Although it is clear to see that she is taking advantage of her kindness.
Because she only viewed Joshua as someone who was mean to her and not as a potential partner (as in boyfriend/husband) she is oblivious to his angry, indignant behaviour and just views it as weird, missing that he is jealous as it coincides with her interaction with Danny (who she has started to get to know better casually).
While doing the team activity that Joshua convinced Bexley and Helene was a good idea, she gets shot a lot while protecting Joshua and also realises that she is sick at the same time. This sickness carries on and leaves her in a semi-lucid state (cliche, I know) where Joshua starts to become protective of her and helps her get back.
While recovering from whatever it was that was causing her to throw up and pass out, she 'meets' Joshua's brother. I say meets in quotes because she was half out of it, so while we were able to see what happened with their conversations fully I am not sure if it fully stuck in her head. When she wakes up next, she hasn't fully recovered and uses this opportunity to talk to Joshua about anything and everything, getting sexual, talking to him about if he thinks Helene and Bexley hook up in elevators as they did, and then about the strawberry farm that their parents run. After going to sleep and waking up once against she freaks out and ends up basically kicking him out of her apartment without so much as joking like she had been making all night. She then sleeps AGAIN and when she wakes up she realises that she actually doesn't hate Joshua. The whole world knew and she is only just realising it herself. Shocking.
But as with anything like this in these kinds of books, if you're not close to the end and things look like they're heading up for the main couple you need to hold your horses. Danny comes to pick her up in the morning (the 'hold' in the 'hold your horses' saying. Although now that I am thinking about it that would make Lucy the horse. But, oh well).
And oh, what do you know. Danny starts in on Josh once they reach the office, obviously having expected Lucy to join him as, as far as he knows, she hates him. She isn't even sure that he sees her as anything but a little sister as well (mostly because of Danny as well). But judging by the rose she finds on her desk, and that he claims he doesn't know how appeared there (she knows he's lying) there was more to his feelings than that but Danny had to come and ruin everything, as expected. And because, surprise, surprise, she views Joshua as attacking Danny with his 'callous' comments (especially once Danny had left) she becomes defensive and starts going after him verbally. He is called away by Bexley and she ends up cutting herself on the rose she tries to keep when he takes it once he has fully gone into Bexley's office she ends up finding a note that went together with the rose from Joshua telling her that she is always beautiful. Her inpatients and irrational hatred towards him ended up stalling their relationship which is something that I did enjoy because she needed a kick in the ass to realise that he did care for her, but at the same time, the drama happening in any romance book is a tale of two stories. You can it happen because it's interesting, but you also don't want it to happen as you want the two characters to get together.
Lucy's unable-to-say-no nature comes up again while she is apologising to Josh and telling him things she could do to make up for her mistake she is called by Danny and convinced to go on a date with him that night. I do really like how, so far, the character flaws are being used in a constructive way, instead of it just being something she has that isn't really mentioned until she rids herself of it. The main conflict between the two is solved quickly but Josh still wants her to go on the date with Danny and kiss him to make sure that she actually wants to be with him rather than Danny. I don't really care about this action towards Danny as he hasn't really shown anything to me that suggests he is a nice person, and his actions just seem very self-serving and as if he is the stereotypical 'Nice Guy Finish Last' kinda guy, which is an awful personality to have.
I think this behaviour from him has something to do with why he doesn't talk to his family, and especially his brother, much. I think this has something to do with his brother getting the girl he liked, or his girlfriend leaving him for his brother and so he obviously has those trust issues that are completely understandable. His disdain for 'Nice Guys' also seems to stem from his brother probably being one as well.
The date with Danny ends up being fine, adequate, okay, alright, acceptable. Perfectly tolerable, but not great, heartstopping, knee-weakening, pass-out-in-the-middle-of-the-street good that she experiences with Josh, which is when she goes over to his place, kisses him and then convinces herself to leave, right that second, so that she can wake up in her own apartment the next morning. Although Josh instantly squashes that thought as he picker her up and takes her up to his apartment but instead of going at it, like Lucy is craving, they sit down and he puts on a few episodes of a TV show and then tells her that he will walk her out. Her horniness is overloading as she doesn't catch onto the fact that he actually likes her so wants to take things slower, and her behaviour is understandable but definitely a bit on the cringy side.
Their relationship definitely is starting to change, thankfully, and my fears at the start of the book are slowly being moved away. Joshua isn't the cold-hearted person that I first thought he was, I was only seeing him through Lucy's eyes, and it doesn't look like they're both going to be disappointed by not getting the job as at least with Joshua it seems like being some kind of doctor is something that he ca fall back on (not only because his father and brother are doctors, but also because of previous scenes where it seemed like he had been one in the past, or given up the dream for whatever reason). Although throughout this whole 'growing closer together' phase she is the closest thing to Quagmire since, well, Quagmire.
After another night of increase sexual appetite and want between the two, Joshua is finally able to convince Lucy to say something back, instead of taking on the workload, when one of the employees asks her if she can leave for the day. It's amazing to see her finally growing a backbone, and since the only thing that happened during this doormat phase was her being slightly used and slightly abused, no harm no foul.
They do get into a little fight because they obviously can't reveal their relationship while they still work so closely together, so Joshua hides it at first, and then Lucy hides it next, each getting angry at the other. But this moves us onto the part where I think their relationship will evolve the most. Her going with him to his brother's wedding. While on the four-hour drive to the place they need to get to, Lucy cannot run away from any conversation like she usually would and is forced to talk with Josh. They end up revealing things to each other, mostly on her end such as how she didn't actually have a date and only got one because of him, and how she had a wet dream about him.
Obviously, at the wedding, we can't just have them growing closer, so it is finally revealed by Mindy, the bride, that she used to date Josh and broke up with him not long before the merger between the two companies was confirmed. Obviously upset she has a heart-to-heart with his mother but it doesn't really help her at that moment, and she ends up going to leave, calling Danny (her impulsive nature is one thing that I grew to disdain about her behaviour as although she told Danny that she only wants to be friends she is giving mixed signals. That can obviously lead to something more as he will now (fairly) think that he has a chance with her. Maybe it won't happen with him, but what about the next guy, or the one after that?)
He then tells her about how his dad basically ignored him his whole life and focused on Patrick, his brother, even when he was achieving the same as him. This is the last thing that was between them and breaks down the final wall which is when we move on to the sex. It was okay. It was cathartic to finally see them join together after all that time when we were being teased but more than that it was nice to see them being completely open with each other, not even from the physical standpoint, but baring themself emotionally to the other.
When they go down for breakfast and Lucy moves away for only a moment Josh and his father start arguing. Or, rather, his father starts going after him which is when Lucy interjects, making him realise that he is perpetuating a cycle that was damaging to him and his brother in the past and that he knows absolutely nothing about Josh and his job.
It's cliche, especially a scene where they don't have to pay because it was entertaining to the worker (I'm, definitely one hundred per cent, definitively, sure someone would risk their job after experiencing a little bit of drama) but since it was cute I will let it slide.
Barely.
You're on thin ice Sally.
Anyway, moving on to the final few things in the book that were a little less cliche than I was expecting. You're lucky Sally. She finds out she's in love with Josh, and what she also finds out is that he has already resigned from the company and is now going to work with their direct rivals (keeping the competitive spirit up) and that one of the reasons he gave when he was resigning was that he loved Lucy and had one last week to make her fall in love with him, which he did, and that's how the story ends.
Some flaws, such as the opening being something you have to push through, and the fact that their will-they-won't-they romance was the focus so there wasn't really any point in reading on after they left the wedding (it was sweet, but I wasn't really as invested as before). I definitely did think a few of the lines were a bit cringy, an example being when Patrick came over to help her when she was sick and he said something about her being cute. The way in which it was said just made me put the book down for a second. There was also the fact that the humour was hit or miss. Sometimes I smiled wide, and other times I sighed when reading the jokes and teasing between the two, but overall it wasn't so bad that it put me off reading the book. Obviously, because I ended up finishing the book.
I would say that this book is worth reading, and it did have a lot I liked in it, such as breaking the horny stereotype, where she was the constantly horny one. Or the motivations being very believable, and their character flaws being shown in different ways, so it wasn't just one-dimensional. If you're into romance books, office romance specifically in this case then this is one for you.
7.9/10
I also liked all the imagery. When talking about the two companies merging, Sally made reference to two people getting married, which was an image that certainly helped us learn how our main character, Lucy, felt about merging with the other company (hint: she hated it). A clear line is drawn between the two companies, Gamin and Bexley and this doesn't only go for how the actual companies function but also applies to the workers at each company. And although not introduced yet, with how the book is described I can imagine that Joshua is going to be from Bexley which is where the hate will first come from.
But when he does get introduced we learn that he is the executive assistant to Mr Bexley (the CEO of one of the companies) while she is the assistant to Helene Pascal (the CEO of the other company) and now both those people are running the company together, meaning that Lucy and Joshua have to work together a lot. The name of this book, 'The Hating Game' also relates to what they do a lot. Play games. Things such as mirroring each other while in the office that they now share. Their obsession with the other is childish, and it is not the kind of dislike that people usually associate children bullying each other as a form of endearment, it is childish and petty things, such as Lucy having her password as a variation of her hating Joshua.
I could see a lot of small little bits of humour at the start, although some of it definitely felt like it was forced, it did give an idea of who Lucy was as a person, and who Joshua was. They're extremely petty, having reported the other to HR for minor infractions, having petty little games where they try and one up the other, and Lucy also feels wronged and like he has something on her because she smiled and him once and he didn't return one back to her. At this point it definitely is a fun childish, the only thing that I hope doesn't happen is that this continues at this level of pettiness throughout the whole book. I can only imagine how much annoyance I would feel if I got into the last quarter of the book, or even halfway and their pettiness is getting in the way of their relationship. Because even if that goes away in the end I wouldn't be sure if I could trust them to stay together after if all I have seen between the two is most petty jabs and vindictive behaviour over the smallest possible slight, and then a little bit of romance. The only way that I'd accept their relationship after so much unneeded bitterness between the two is if when things got serious, say she was on the verge of being fired, or she logged a complaint about Richard Bexley for sexual harassment (that hasn't happened but he definitely seems like a creepy person), and he helped her out while dismissing all their past petty behaviour towards the other which does seem to be something that he'd do as when he seeing his boss attempting to look down her shirt (she knows he is trying but there is nothing she can really do against the owner of the company at this moment while still keeping her job) he doesn't rib her like I was expecting him to and instead seems to actually want her to stand up for herself. Proving that if things got serious, he would most likely be on her side and help out, instead of not believing her or making insensitive jokes about it.
There definitely are hints that this hate she is feeling towards him stems from some sort of want to get to know him better, but thinking that he thinks he is too good for her. And there is also the aspect of her losing one of her best friends as a lot of people were cut in the merger and Val Stone was one of them. She was furious at Lucy for not giving her a heads up, even though Lucy didn't even know that she was getting cut, and she didn't believe Lucy when she told her that she knew nothing about it. So that resentment that she feels towards someone who is untouchable and would fire her if she said anything less than one hundred per cent positive about him, Richard Bexley, is moved onto the next person in power and the one with who she interacts all the time, Joshua.
Their conversations do become funnier as the book starts moving forward, and I even smiled and exhaled out of my nose at Joshua talking to himself after Lucy asked him to ask anyone and they will tell him that she is nice. One thing that Joshua mentions at this time that is actually true is how she lets the people below her take advantage of her. She doesn't have to be horrible, but when the same employees don't finish the work they were assigned and then dump it on her and she doesn't reprimand them it means that they're going to do it again without hesitation. Why? Because she lets them get away with it.
A little while later Joshua starts his usually teasing of her except he takes it too far and hits a nerve as he starts talking about her parents and about how lonely and homesick she must be (she is lonely and homesick) which makes a few tears drop and Joshua instantly stops his goading and stays silent as they both go into their bosses separate rooms, reminding them that they have a meeting. Lucy really looks up to Helene and wants to be like her when she is in her 50s (which Helene is). She talked about how she even changed her make-up to resemble her boss more.
A knew position opens up in the company, a position just below Helene and Bexley and as the two highest in the company apart from those two, Joshua and Lucy are the two in the running. It would mean that whoever wins is going to end up being the boss of the other person. Which means Lucy or Joshua would probably end up quitting if they were forced to be below their rival. We get to see kind of the only gripe she has with her parents, that being that her mother left her dream job of being a journalist to work on a farm because of her father. She can't understand how her bother was able to leave that dream job just becasue of a man (I hope this doesn't happen in this story/ Fingers crossed).
One day as they're going to the basement together to go to their cars, Joshua presses the emergecy button that stopps the elevator which causes Lucy to think that this is going to be the end of her and that Joshua has finally snapped but instead he lifts her up against the wall and starts kissing her. Starting a new game, which he lovingly calls the kissing game. After learning that her date is actually real he ends up saying some hurtful things while she is already feeling down and makes it worse. All he can do is apologise, which he does the next day, and this gives them a chance to start over. Not as adverseries, but as colleages, friends, or maybe even more. Not matter how much Lucy thinks that she just wants someone like Danny (her date from the previous night) even she struggles to fool herself into thinking that is what she wants.
Now that Lucy and Joshua have moved past their actual destructive relationship and onto more gentle ribbing (and that the seed has been planted in her mind that she might like him and he might like her) we can focus more on her inability to say no to anyone. This is first illustrated by Julie asking if her niece can intern with her because her niece if very opinionated and has drug problems. She requests this because she says Lucy has the most patience out of anyone she knows. Although it is clear to see that she is taking advantage of her kindness.
Because she only viewed Joshua as someone who was mean to her and not as a potential partner (as in boyfriend/husband) she is oblivious to his angry, indignant behaviour and just views it as weird, missing that he is jealous as it coincides with her interaction with Danny (who she has started to get to know better casually).
While doing the team activity that Joshua convinced Bexley and Helene was a good idea, she gets shot a lot while protecting Joshua and also realises that she is sick at the same time. This sickness carries on and leaves her in a semi-lucid state (cliche, I know) where Joshua starts to become protective of her and helps her get back.
While recovering from whatever it was that was causing her to throw up and pass out, she 'meets' Joshua's brother. I say meets in quotes because she was half out of it, so while we were able to see what happened with their conversations fully I am not sure if it fully stuck in her head. When she wakes up next, she hasn't fully recovered and uses this opportunity to talk to Joshua about anything and everything, getting sexual, talking to him about if he thinks Helene and Bexley hook up in elevators as they did, and then about the strawberry farm that their parents run. After going to sleep and waking up once against she freaks out and ends up basically kicking him out of her apartment without so much as joking like she had been making all night. She then sleeps AGAIN and when she wakes up she realises that she actually doesn't hate Joshua. The whole world knew and she is only just realising it herself. Shocking.
But as with anything like this in these kinds of books, if you're not close to the end and things look like they're heading up for the main couple you need to hold your horses. Danny comes to pick her up in the morning (the 'hold' in the 'hold your horses' saying. Although now that I am thinking about it that would make Lucy the horse. But, oh well).
And oh, what do you know. Danny starts in on Josh once they reach the office, obviously having expected Lucy to join him as, as far as he knows, she hates him. She isn't even sure that he sees her as anything but a little sister as well (mostly because of Danny as well). But judging by the rose she finds on her desk, and that he claims he doesn't know how appeared there (she knows he's lying) there was more to his feelings than that but Danny had to come and ruin everything, as expected. And because, surprise, surprise, she views Joshua as attacking Danny with his 'callous' comments (especially once Danny had left) she becomes defensive and starts going after him verbally. He is called away by Bexley and she ends up cutting herself on the rose she tries to keep when he takes it once he has fully gone into Bexley's office she ends up finding a note that went together with the rose from Joshua telling her that she is always beautiful. Her inpatients and irrational hatred towards him ended up stalling their relationship which is something that I did enjoy because she needed a kick in the ass to realise that he did care for her, but at the same time, the drama happening in any romance book is a tale of two stories. You can it happen because it's interesting, but you also don't want it to happen as you want the two characters to get together.
Lucy's unable-to-say-no nature comes up again while she is apologising to Josh and telling him things she could do to make up for her mistake she is called by Danny and convinced to go on a date with him that night. I do really like how, so far, the character flaws are being used in a constructive way, instead of it just being something she has that isn't really mentioned until she rids herself of it. The main conflict between the two is solved quickly but Josh still wants her to go on the date with Danny and kiss him to make sure that she actually wants to be with him rather than Danny. I don't really care about this action towards Danny as he hasn't really shown anything to me that suggests he is a nice person, and his actions just seem very self-serving and as if he is the stereotypical 'Nice Guy Finish Last' kinda guy, which is an awful personality to have.
I think this behaviour from him has something to do with why he doesn't talk to his family, and especially his brother, much. I think this has something to do with his brother getting the girl he liked, or his girlfriend leaving him for his brother and so he obviously has those trust issues that are completely understandable. His disdain for 'Nice Guys' also seems to stem from his brother probably being one as well.
The date with Danny ends up being fine, adequate, okay, alright, acceptable. Perfectly tolerable, but not great, heartstopping, knee-weakening, pass-out-in-the-middle-of-the-street good that she experiences with Josh, which is when she goes over to his place, kisses him and then convinces herself to leave, right that second, so that she can wake up in her own apartment the next morning. Although Josh instantly squashes that thought as he picker her up and takes her up to his apartment but instead of going at it, like Lucy is craving, they sit down and he puts on a few episodes of a TV show and then tells her that he will walk her out. Her horniness is overloading as she doesn't catch onto the fact that he actually likes her so wants to take things slower, and her behaviour is understandable but definitely a bit on the cringy side.
Their relationship definitely is starting to change, thankfully, and my fears at the start of the book are slowly being moved away. Joshua isn't the cold-hearted person that I first thought he was, I was only seeing him through Lucy's eyes, and it doesn't look like they're both going to be disappointed by not getting the job as at least with Joshua it seems like being some kind of doctor is something that he ca fall back on (not only because his father and brother are doctors, but also because of previous scenes where it seemed like he had been one in the past, or given up the dream for whatever reason). Although throughout this whole 'growing closer together' phase she is the closest thing to Quagmire since, well, Quagmire.
After another night of increase sexual appetite and want between the two, Joshua is finally able to convince Lucy to say something back, instead of taking on the workload, when one of the employees asks her if she can leave for the day. It's amazing to see her finally growing a backbone, and since the only thing that happened during this doormat phase was her being slightly used and slightly abused, no harm no foul.
They do get into a little fight because they obviously can't reveal their relationship while they still work so closely together, so Joshua hides it at first, and then Lucy hides it next, each getting angry at the other. But this moves us onto the part where I think their relationship will evolve the most. Her going with him to his brother's wedding. While on the four-hour drive to the place they need to get to, Lucy cannot run away from any conversation like she usually would and is forced to talk with Josh. They end up revealing things to each other, mostly on her end such as how she didn't actually have a date and only got one because of him, and how she had a wet dream about him.
Obviously, at the wedding, we can't just have them growing closer, so it is finally revealed by Mindy, the bride, that she used to date Josh and broke up with him not long before the merger between the two companies was confirmed. Obviously upset she has a heart-to-heart with his mother but it doesn't really help her at that moment, and she ends up going to leave, calling Danny (her impulsive nature is one thing that I grew to disdain about her behaviour as although she told Danny that she only wants to be friends she is giving mixed signals. That can obviously lead to something more as he will now (fairly) think that he has a chance with her. Maybe it won't happen with him, but what about the next guy, or the one after that?)
He then tells her about how his dad basically ignored him his whole life and focused on Patrick, his brother, even when he was achieving the same as him. This is the last thing that was between them and breaks down the final wall which is when we move on to the sex. It was okay. It was cathartic to finally see them join together after all that time when we were being teased but more than that it was nice to see them being completely open with each other, not even from the physical standpoint, but baring themself emotionally to the other.
When they go down for breakfast and Lucy moves away for only a moment Josh and his father start arguing. Or, rather, his father starts going after him which is when Lucy interjects, making him realise that he is perpetuating a cycle that was damaging to him and his brother in the past and that he knows absolutely nothing about Josh and his job.
It's cliche, especially a scene where they don't have to pay because it was entertaining to the worker (I'm, definitely one hundred per cent, definitively, sure someone would risk their job after experiencing a little bit of drama) but since it was cute I will let it slide.
Barely.
You're on thin ice Sally.
Anyway, moving on to the final few things in the book that were a little less cliche than I was expecting. You're lucky Sally. She finds out she's in love with Josh, and what she also finds out is that he has already resigned from the company and is now going to work with their direct rivals (keeping the competitive spirit up) and that one of the reasons he gave when he was resigning was that he loved Lucy and had one last week to make her fall in love with him, which he did, and that's how the story ends.
Some flaws, such as the opening being something you have to push through, and the fact that their will-they-won't-they romance was the focus so there wasn't really any point in reading on after they left the wedding (it was sweet, but I wasn't really as invested as before). I definitely did think a few of the lines were a bit cringy, an example being when Patrick came over to help her when she was sick and he said something about her being cute. The way in which it was said just made me put the book down for a second. There was also the fact that the humour was hit or miss. Sometimes I smiled wide, and other times I sighed when reading the jokes and teasing between the two, but overall it wasn't so bad that it put me off reading the book. Obviously, because I ended up finishing the book.
I would say that this book is worth reading, and it did have a lot I liked in it, such as breaking the horny stereotype, where she was the constantly horny one. Or the motivations being very believable, and their character flaws being shown in different ways, so it wasn't just one-dimensional. If you're into romance books, office romance specifically in this case then this is one for you.
7.9/10
September 18, 2022
The Cheerleaders
The dark tone of the book is the first thing I noticed. Coming home from practice, Monica tells us about her family life, how her mother and stepdad's marriage is on the verge of collapsing, and how they had an unwanted baby a few years after deciding they didn't want anymore. Additionally, in the same vein as that news, it isn't said explicitly, but is basically revealed to us through her actions, and the conversation she has with her mother, that she was having a baby. Was, as they talked about it in past tense, indicating that she had an abortion. She isn't with her boyfriend anymore (and didn't even tell him that she was expecting, even claiming to her mother that the baby wasn't his, which I don't believe to be true and believe is only being used as an excuse) but it is never a nice thing to not know that you were having a child and having it aborted before you can even have the choice.
Five different girls are dead, including Monica's sister and her sister's best friends. They were all cheerleaders, but within one year they were all dead. It is something that Monica is constantly trying to forget, and instead of confronting her feelings, she is trying to hide behind them and avoid confronting her feelings for as long as possible. The pain is too much for her and she knows that if she tries to deal with it, she is going to be hurting more than she is now, as looking deep inside yourself at your painful feelings is going to make them worse before they have the chance of getting better.
The death of those five girls isn't only affecting her as the school's morale is lower, and it seems to be a lingering feeling that doesn't go away, hanging over the whole book and bringing everyone's feelings down. It is like a dark cloud, constantly infringing on everyone and constantly making it hard for the school to carry on like nothing is wrong, no matter how much they want to, and how much they try. Some of the girls were murdered first, and then a few months after this Jen committed suicide, although Monica doesn't believe that it is something that Jen would have willingly done.
Brandon, who we can only assume is involved her either her pregnancy, or trauma, is the new coach for the football teams, and she has an instant visceral reaction to him, showing that maybe he could have been involved in both one of her traumas and pregnancy. Especially since he is much older than her, and not at an age where he would be in school anymore. And only a few pieces of text later it is confirmed that he was the one who got her pregnant (proving what I thought about it being Matt, her ex's kid, wrong).
Jack Canning was the one who killed the girls, or at least he was the one that suffered the consequences for killing them as he was killed by Tom, Monica's stepfather and a police officer. Tom gets lettered all the time, on the anniversary of Jen's suicide talking about how they knew that Jack wasn't the one who killed them. This doesn't do much more than plant a seed of doubt inside Monica's head though.
One thing that I am really liking about the composition of this story is that not everything is said explicitly, and if it is it has definitely been hinted at beforehand. Like the fact that she became pregnant with someone's child and is having an abortion, even up to this point isn't explicitly mentioned (although within the last few chapters it is all but confirmed). It makes reading a more interesting task as you're always looking for more information, and maybe some hints on what is going to happen in the future. It definitely makes for a more engaging experience, even if it also leaves room for interpretation as well.
Jen's life wasn't as perfect as Monica made it out to be. She wasn't living it so, of course, she didn't know everything about her sister's life including her struggles with being tall and strong rather than athletic and nimble. There were also the breaks that were starting to form in the triad friend group of Jen, Juliana, and Susan. Juliana was starting to become good friends with another girl, Carly, which of course only added to the apprehension Jen was already feeling. Losing her friends on top of everything else that she was already feeling might have been the final straw.
Meanwhile in the present Monica has been texting a number that she found on her sister's phone. She found the phone in her stepfather's desk, which is a very weird thing considering the police department should have it, or it at least should be known to them all that her phone is in the house. This number gets her to question her stepfather in her head and wonder whether he was really telling the truth about everything that happened, or it if was just something he made up because he was the actual perpetrator of the crime. This number also tells her not to trust anything that her stepfather says. At this point, I am still unsure whether this is the actual truth, and the stepfather is covering everything up (because that does look likely) or if it isn't true as it is really early on in the book and it isn't a horror book but a mystery book. It seems way too obvious that it is the stepfather, so at the moment I am not going to believe what the person Monica was texting has to say.
The person that Monica found out about on her sister's phone starts telling her more, including saying that they were one of her sister's friends. They also tell her to go to an abandoned house to learn more about whatever it is that they want to tell her. She does end up finding a letter containing her sister's handwriting. This handwriting matches the handwriting of a creepy stalkerish letter that she finds in her sister's things, which raised alarm bells and could potentially be linked to all the murders.
After this, we get more insight into what Ethan was like before, and how he had been Jen's first kiss but she was too embarrassed to say that he was. Not only that but one time when her group of friends was bullying him and they had all looked away she saw him move his fingers into the form of a gun.
The three main people (with one I am a little suspicious of) I suspected at this point were Jake, who was the person actually concluded to be the actual killer, Ethan, who had a lot of weirdness surrounding his character including getting expelled for writing people's names down in a book (specifically the people who had died) and Carly, who I don't really have a good reason for suspecting other than that she eventually drew Jen's best friend away from her and instead of that being a coincidence it could have been planned (I don't know this, so she is the person I have the least amount of evidence pointing towards being the actual killer). Additionally, maybe this is because of how anxiety-filled this book is, but I hold some suspicion toward Ginny. Maybe its the fact that she is mostly finding out everything they need to know while they're apart, so it could easily be faked, or maybe it is because she was so willing to help (maybe to throw Monica off the scene of who the actual killer was) but it is something that I am taking into consideration and wondering whether I could be right or not.
Moving back into the future, we can see the time that Ethan got expelled and that it was the same day that Jen slid the note back into Ethan's locker. But she is starting to become involved because Susan, the one who saw her put the note in the locker, reports it to the principal and she starts to be not believed, even by her own stepfather. She is obviously confused as she doesn't know that Susan has brought suspicion to her, but when she does find out she doesn't speak to her for over a week.
What we also learn in this flashback is that Carly was giving some pills to Jules (although we don't know what kind of pills they are) and getting into the car of a random male who Jen doesn't get to see, but doesn't recognise from the voice.
I do think that the pace of this book is too slow at some points. It sometimes felt like I was wanting to put this book down, which is never something that you want to happen with your readers as an author. A lot more could have happened, and there was too much, 'going to this place, and then off to that place, and talking to this person, and then having to confront that person.' Because we are getting the story from two different perspectives, with one having the correct information and the other just trying to gather it, it makes some of the interactions that happen, useless. There was a lot of anxiety created in this book, especially because Monica was going around a lot of different places that she really wasn't supposed to be, and asking hard-hitting questions that most people wouldn't want to answer. Additionally, anxiousness came from the past, where we know that all the girls die, so we are just left looking for clues about why it happened or waiting or it to happen. Even though that is the case, it definitely felt like that was relied on too much to carry the story, as there definitely could have been other, more cohesive elements in this story that brought it all together instead of relying on the fact that five girls died in the past, and in the present, the killer may still be lurking about.
Around this time in the book, there are changes in Ginny that make my earlier statement about not trusting that she didn't have a hand in murdering all the girls more true. Thinks that even Monica is starting to notice. Like how she has, in the space of a month changed from a normal and quiet girl to someone who is willing, or even eager, to break into a police station and find evidence that they need to help move along their investigation. Or how Monica's mother looked weirdly at her when she wasn't looking, or how she smiled once she thought Monica couldn't see her face after Monica called her a badass. Or even her forceful nature when trying to remain in on the plan of breaking and entering, and not entertaining Monica by saying that she will just go on her own. Her excuse, 'that the girls deserve better' doesn't ring true to me of what we know bout her character.
I could be looking too deep into this, and it could be nothing, but the suspicion has obviously been intentionally created, so I'm not going to kick myself too bad if I am wrong about her having some involvement.
They call the police and report a suspicious man near Marks's house, the only officer on duty that night and Tom's partner, and the fact that it seems so easy for Ginny, while Monica nearly cancels the plan multiple times only further adds to my suspicion. They get the witness statements and in one of the first ones they find out that someone else did see the pickup truck that was outside the girl's house, Juliana arguing with the driver before they were killed. The person described getting in the pickup is a petite, dark-haired girl, which they assume is Juliana, but I personally think could be someone else (namely Ginny).
This Ginny theory I've got going on is even further pushed so as to not make Monica seem suspicious she asks Mike if he can look for a person, Ginny's father, who Ginny said she already knows the location of. Mike ends up calling her back the next day, after confirming that his family was completely fine, and tells her a lot of new things about Ginny's father. Namely that he had been arrested a lot, he skipped out on a court date meant for three days after the girls died, and that court date was related to something that would put him behind bars for a long time. That theory starts to fall down next though, as Ginny is actually honest with Monica, and I can feel the sincerity in her words.
At this point, Carly blocks them when Monica asks to meet up again and with two different people (Patrica and Allie who were both on or involved with the cheerleading team) who give her little bits, but both feel like they're either leaving things out, in Allie's case, or do not know enough to properly help, in Patrica's case.
They do eventually get Carly to talk to them again, but going under a fake account and inviting her out as a kind of university-related thing. Once there she actually opens up more, telling them about how she used to buy drugs from one guy who went to a posh university and that he could have been involved in her murder. But she refused to elaborate, rightly so, because people like that (the rich and privileged) get away with things as 'minor' as murder.
One rumour that was going around before was that Allie's boyfriend was cheating with Carly, but what we find out instead is that Allie's boyfriend is the one who got Monica pregnant and the one who she kissed mere days ago, Brandon.
my theory about who it was ended up being completely wrong, and I should have looked at the first person who committed a crime in the whole book if I wanted to find out who the person who killed the two girls was. Brandon, who committed statutory rape on Monica had also done the same thing in the past. Someone who walked away from that so easily isn't someone that I should have previously overlooked so easily as not being the killer. This wasn't some massive master plan, it was just some sick, deranged sub-human who thought panicked after learning that he would be going to jail for sleeping with a 15-year-old. Obviously, he didn't learn and did it again with Monica. He never deserved a second chance in the first place, but once given one he didn't learn anything at all.
The link between Ginny's father and the girls is that he was most likely the person who crashed into them, his car falling into the lake and him dying. He was already facing domestic violence charges, and also a DUI. The DUI especially links in with what actually happened with her dad. And the reason she knows this so well, we learn, is because she was in the car with her father when it crashed into the two girls. But what did give a little more, say, spice to this part of the story is that she had a chance to save him, he wasn't dead after the crash, but after everything that he did, all the beatings, all the hate, killing two innocent kills because he was drinking, she left him. She left him to die and he did. When she was talking about the fact that she knew where he was, she was saying that she knew he was dead and was no longer living.
Overall there were parts of the book that I didn't really enjoy as much. A lot of it felt like it was just going to one person, talking to them and getting a little bit of information, and then moving on to the next person who the previous person told them about. That isn't the greatest makeup of a book, and I would have given this book around 3 stars if it carried on that way. But once Monica started suspecting Ginny, and they started doing illegal things it started to turn around and the book was much more enjoyable. The dialogue was good and immersive throughout the whole book, that wasn't something I worried about at all, it was moreso the movement of the story that I didn't like as much until more than halfway through the book. In the end, the second half made up for the first and it did bring it up from my previous assessment.
7.8/10
Five different girls are dead, including Monica's sister and her sister's best friends. They were all cheerleaders, but within one year they were all dead. It is something that Monica is constantly trying to forget, and instead of confronting her feelings, she is trying to hide behind them and avoid confronting her feelings for as long as possible. The pain is too much for her and she knows that if she tries to deal with it, she is going to be hurting more than she is now, as looking deep inside yourself at your painful feelings is going to make them worse before they have the chance of getting better.
The death of those five girls isn't only affecting her as the school's morale is lower, and it seems to be a lingering feeling that doesn't go away, hanging over the whole book and bringing everyone's feelings down. It is like a dark cloud, constantly infringing on everyone and constantly making it hard for the school to carry on like nothing is wrong, no matter how much they want to, and how much they try. Some of the girls were murdered first, and then a few months after this Jen committed suicide, although Monica doesn't believe that it is something that Jen would have willingly done.
Brandon, who we can only assume is involved her either her pregnancy, or trauma, is the new coach for the football teams, and she has an instant visceral reaction to him, showing that maybe he could have been involved in both one of her traumas and pregnancy. Especially since he is much older than her, and not at an age where he would be in school anymore. And only a few pieces of text later it is confirmed that he was the one who got her pregnant (proving what I thought about it being Matt, her ex's kid, wrong).
Jack Canning was the one who killed the girls, or at least he was the one that suffered the consequences for killing them as he was killed by Tom, Monica's stepfather and a police officer. Tom gets lettered all the time, on the anniversary of Jen's suicide talking about how they knew that Jack wasn't the one who killed them. This doesn't do much more than plant a seed of doubt inside Monica's head though.
One thing that I am really liking about the composition of this story is that not everything is said explicitly, and if it is it has definitely been hinted at beforehand. Like the fact that she became pregnant with someone's child and is having an abortion, even up to this point isn't explicitly mentioned (although within the last few chapters it is all but confirmed). It makes reading a more interesting task as you're always looking for more information, and maybe some hints on what is going to happen in the future. It definitely makes for a more engaging experience, even if it also leaves room for interpretation as well.
Jen's life wasn't as perfect as Monica made it out to be. She wasn't living it so, of course, she didn't know everything about her sister's life including her struggles with being tall and strong rather than athletic and nimble. There were also the breaks that were starting to form in the triad friend group of Jen, Juliana, and Susan. Juliana was starting to become good friends with another girl, Carly, which of course only added to the apprehension Jen was already feeling. Losing her friends on top of everything else that she was already feeling might have been the final straw.
Meanwhile in the present Monica has been texting a number that she found on her sister's phone. She found the phone in her stepfather's desk, which is a very weird thing considering the police department should have it, or it at least should be known to them all that her phone is in the house. This number gets her to question her stepfather in her head and wonder whether he was really telling the truth about everything that happened, or it if was just something he made up because he was the actual perpetrator of the crime. This number also tells her not to trust anything that her stepfather says. At this point, I am still unsure whether this is the actual truth, and the stepfather is covering everything up (because that does look likely) or if it isn't true as it is really early on in the book and it isn't a horror book but a mystery book. It seems way too obvious that it is the stepfather, so at the moment I am not going to believe what the person Monica was texting has to say.
The person that Monica found out about on her sister's phone starts telling her more, including saying that they were one of her sister's friends. They also tell her to go to an abandoned house to learn more about whatever it is that they want to tell her. She does end up finding a letter containing her sister's handwriting. This handwriting matches the handwriting of a creepy stalkerish letter that she finds in her sister's things, which raised alarm bells and could potentially be linked to all the murders.
After this, we get more insight into what Ethan was like before, and how he had been Jen's first kiss but she was too embarrassed to say that he was. Not only that but one time when her group of friends was bullying him and they had all looked away she saw him move his fingers into the form of a gun.
The three main people (with one I am a little suspicious of) I suspected at this point were Jake, who was the person actually concluded to be the actual killer, Ethan, who had a lot of weirdness surrounding his character including getting expelled for writing people's names down in a book (specifically the people who had died) and Carly, who I don't really have a good reason for suspecting other than that she eventually drew Jen's best friend away from her and instead of that being a coincidence it could have been planned (I don't know this, so she is the person I have the least amount of evidence pointing towards being the actual killer). Additionally, maybe this is because of how anxiety-filled this book is, but I hold some suspicion toward Ginny. Maybe its the fact that she is mostly finding out everything they need to know while they're apart, so it could easily be faked, or maybe it is because she was so willing to help (maybe to throw Monica off the scene of who the actual killer was) but it is something that I am taking into consideration and wondering whether I could be right or not.
Moving back into the future, we can see the time that Ethan got expelled and that it was the same day that Jen slid the note back into Ethan's locker. But she is starting to become involved because Susan, the one who saw her put the note in the locker, reports it to the principal and she starts to be not believed, even by her own stepfather. She is obviously confused as she doesn't know that Susan has brought suspicion to her, but when she does find out she doesn't speak to her for over a week.
What we also learn in this flashback is that Carly was giving some pills to Jules (although we don't know what kind of pills they are) and getting into the car of a random male who Jen doesn't get to see, but doesn't recognise from the voice.
I do think that the pace of this book is too slow at some points. It sometimes felt like I was wanting to put this book down, which is never something that you want to happen with your readers as an author. A lot more could have happened, and there was too much, 'going to this place, and then off to that place, and talking to this person, and then having to confront that person.' Because we are getting the story from two different perspectives, with one having the correct information and the other just trying to gather it, it makes some of the interactions that happen, useless. There was a lot of anxiety created in this book, especially because Monica was going around a lot of different places that she really wasn't supposed to be, and asking hard-hitting questions that most people wouldn't want to answer. Additionally, anxiousness came from the past, where we know that all the girls die, so we are just left looking for clues about why it happened or waiting or it to happen. Even though that is the case, it definitely felt like that was relied on too much to carry the story, as there definitely could have been other, more cohesive elements in this story that brought it all together instead of relying on the fact that five girls died in the past, and in the present, the killer may still be lurking about.
Around this time in the book, there are changes in Ginny that make my earlier statement about not trusting that she didn't have a hand in murdering all the girls more true. Thinks that even Monica is starting to notice. Like how she has, in the space of a month changed from a normal and quiet girl to someone who is willing, or even eager, to break into a police station and find evidence that they need to help move along their investigation. Or how Monica's mother looked weirdly at her when she wasn't looking, or how she smiled once she thought Monica couldn't see her face after Monica called her a badass. Or even her forceful nature when trying to remain in on the plan of breaking and entering, and not entertaining Monica by saying that she will just go on her own. Her excuse, 'that the girls deserve better' doesn't ring true to me of what we know bout her character.
I could be looking too deep into this, and it could be nothing, but the suspicion has obviously been intentionally created, so I'm not going to kick myself too bad if I am wrong about her having some involvement.
They call the police and report a suspicious man near Marks's house, the only officer on duty that night and Tom's partner, and the fact that it seems so easy for Ginny, while Monica nearly cancels the plan multiple times only further adds to my suspicion. They get the witness statements and in one of the first ones they find out that someone else did see the pickup truck that was outside the girl's house, Juliana arguing with the driver before they were killed. The person described getting in the pickup is a petite, dark-haired girl, which they assume is Juliana, but I personally think could be someone else (namely Ginny).
This Ginny theory I've got going on is even further pushed so as to not make Monica seem suspicious she asks Mike if he can look for a person, Ginny's father, who Ginny said she already knows the location of. Mike ends up calling her back the next day, after confirming that his family was completely fine, and tells her a lot of new things about Ginny's father. Namely that he had been arrested a lot, he skipped out on a court date meant for three days after the girls died, and that court date was related to something that would put him behind bars for a long time. That theory starts to fall down next though, as Ginny is actually honest with Monica, and I can feel the sincerity in her words.
At this point, Carly blocks them when Monica asks to meet up again and with two different people (Patrica and Allie who were both on or involved with the cheerleading team) who give her little bits, but both feel like they're either leaving things out, in Allie's case, or do not know enough to properly help, in Patrica's case.
They do eventually get Carly to talk to them again, but going under a fake account and inviting her out as a kind of university-related thing. Once there she actually opens up more, telling them about how she used to buy drugs from one guy who went to a posh university and that he could have been involved in her murder. But she refused to elaborate, rightly so, because people like that (the rich and privileged) get away with things as 'minor' as murder.
One rumour that was going around before was that Allie's boyfriend was cheating with Carly, but what we find out instead is that Allie's boyfriend is the one who got Monica pregnant and the one who she kissed mere days ago, Brandon.
my theory about who it was ended up being completely wrong, and I should have looked at the first person who committed a crime in the whole book if I wanted to find out who the person who killed the two girls was. Brandon, who committed statutory rape on Monica had also done the same thing in the past. Someone who walked away from that so easily isn't someone that I should have previously overlooked so easily as not being the killer. This wasn't some massive master plan, it was just some sick, deranged sub-human who thought panicked after learning that he would be going to jail for sleeping with a 15-year-old. Obviously, he didn't learn and did it again with Monica. He never deserved a second chance in the first place, but once given one he didn't learn anything at all.
The link between Ginny's father and the girls is that he was most likely the person who crashed into them, his car falling into the lake and him dying. He was already facing domestic violence charges, and also a DUI. The DUI especially links in with what actually happened with her dad. And the reason she knows this so well, we learn, is because she was in the car with her father when it crashed into the two girls. But what did give a little more, say, spice to this part of the story is that she had a chance to save him, he wasn't dead after the crash, but after everything that he did, all the beatings, all the hate, killing two innocent kills because he was drinking, she left him. She left him to die and he did. When she was talking about the fact that she knew where he was, she was saying that she knew he was dead and was no longer living.
Overall there were parts of the book that I didn't really enjoy as much. A lot of it felt like it was just going to one person, talking to them and getting a little bit of information, and then moving on to the next person who the previous person told them about. That isn't the greatest makeup of a book, and I would have given this book around 3 stars if it carried on that way. But once Monica started suspecting Ginny, and they started doing illegal things it started to turn around and the book was much more enjoyable. The dialogue was good and immersive throughout the whole book, that wasn't something I worried about at all, it was moreso the movement of the story that I didn't like as much until more than halfway through the book. In the end, the second half made up for the first and it did bring it up from my previous assessment.
7.8/10
August 26, 2022
The Fill-In Boyfriend
Kasie West introduces us to the conflict of this book straight away by showing the breakup between Gia and Bradley. She also presents another conflict in the friend group because a newly indoctrinated person has now begun poisoning her friends against her, using the fact that they have never met her boyfriend to try and claim that he doesn't exist. He breaks up with her outside her prom, which is when we learn more about him and her, namely that he is twenty-one years old and she is seventeen. Not wanting to let Jules make even more of a mockery of her she goes up to the first person around her age she sees and asks him to be her date. He agrees after much back and forth (which, there being no repercussions for him if they're found out, isn't that unrealistic) and he goes to change and this is the start of her confrontation with her relationship which Bradley. How it was never as good as she thought, and how they were happy, not in love (or even at a point where they had strong feelings for each other).
He's only in the area because his sister is going to the same prom and he says that she will be cool with what is going on. However, after she realises what is happening they realise that she isn't at all cool about it (especially since she seems to know of Gia from somewhere else) and they stage a quick breakup, where he acts like he was cheating, and then they go their separate ways, with Gia feeling worse from this 'breakup' than she did when Bradley broke up with her.
While Gia is trying to get in contact with fake Bradley through his sister (a person called Bec who had intentionally made herself unrecognisable on prom night) we learn about the reason that Bec doesn't like her. It is because while she wasn't an active bully to her friends, she was a passive one, not stopping her other friends when they did things, and even sometimes laughing along. This is a pretty fair reason for you to not want your sibling in contact with someone, and I think that Bec's response is perfectly reasonable, even if I don't like it because it goes against the main character.
Gia's friendship with Claire is obviously a lot stronger than with the other girls, but with Jules digging her claws into them all, and the fact that Gia is keeping secrets from her (like the fact that her boyfriend broke up with her just before prom and the person she came with was a stand-in) only pushes the narrative that a wedge is going to be driven between them once Bradley eventually reveals what actually happened and that she lied. Gia, however, doesn't view this secret as much of a big deal, and was even going to tell Claire about what happened but only didn't because she was interrupted by a text to Claire from Jules and Laney. Although it isn't viewed as a big deal to her, the fact that Claire is already receiving poisonous words from Jules, combined with the fact that she had started to believe those words (the relief on her face once she realised that Gia actually came to prom with her boyfriend that Jules claimed was made up) only further shows the disconnect starting to be sown between the two.
What I really liked about Gia's behaviour here was that even while lying about how she broke up with her boyfriend, she still was able to tell mostly the truth about what she was doing. For example, instead of saying that she was going on a 'date' with fake Bradley because she owed him, she said that his sister, Bec, set them up on a blind date. It is a lie, but it is one where there isn't going to be any chance of failure and massive betrayal-like feelings like if she had just told them that she was visiting a friend, or her brother or something. Lies that are based on a lot of truth hurt fewer people, and also have a higher chance of being kept as secrets.
Bec was deciding between two different options, and those were whether Eve, Hayden's (fake Bradley) ex-girlfriend, wants him back, or is trying to show off in front of him and hope that we will be jealous. When they get there it turns out to be the second option, as she is dating his former best friend of many years, which is what causes the change from him maybe wanting to get back together with her, to using her as his fake girlfriend. Although with everything she feels when he is doing that, and how Hayden comments on how good at acting she is, it is clear that she has already started to develop feelings for him, even though it doesn't look like (from an outside perspective at least) he has the same feelings as of yet.
After making Hayden jealous and seeing that one of his friends was someone who she knew to be previously rude she doesn't tell him, but they do leave shortly after. When they get to his house she sees just how different his family dynamic is from hers, and comes to the conclusion - after she arrives home - that maybe her family isn't as perfect as she had previously thought it. This is attributed by me to a difference in what she viewed as a perfect family, versus what she got. She realises after only a few minutes with Bec, Bradley and their mother that she likes the openness they have and the light teasing that happens between each of them. Things like telling their mother about the plan and the fake date, which is something that she could never consider doing with her parents, but is something that she'd like.
Jules, ever the one to cause as much drama as possible, while they are getting taught by a pro surfer, starts planting even more seeds in her friend's heads. Insisting that Gia was flirting with Claire's boyfriend, Tyler, Claire doesn't even deny it and instead just insists that 'it is nothing' which obviously means that she was convinced that Gia was flirting with her partner.
Drew, her brother, wins an award but since he is three hours away he doesn't want any of them to come down, and instead of insisting on going, his parents just obey and even after she asks, is shut down quickly by her mother. Hayden, after hearing this, offers to take her down and although she first rejects it, eventually comes around and accepts his generosity. His presentation shows her a lot, and her talks about her social media. How society nowadays is addicted to social media and I would have to wholeheartedly disagree with his assessment.
There are studies that show the increase in self-harm, suicide, and mental health issues as social media rose, but that shows correlation, not causation. What is more interesting to look at is how much the internet and social media has helped people to first realise that maybe something isn't quite right in their mind, or that they aren't alone in their thoughts, no matter how much it will sometimes feel like they are. The internet and social media, in my opinion, something that gave light to a lot of mental health issues, and just like the people who argue that violent games cause violence, these people are arguing that mental health issues are caused by social media when I'm sure the difference is only in openness and diagnosis.
Gia believes that what he is saying is the truth, but from what we have seen of her in this book, she doesn't focus on social media and real life, things like college, friends, and relationships, are much more her focus. So while she might attribute a little too much of her self-worth to social media, she isn't someone who relies on social media, or at least that is what we have seen up to this point.
Their relationship slowly starts to grow, and they are even getting close to expressing their feelings for each other when one of Hayden's friends, Spencer, who he had told somewhat of their arrangement thinks that she is some sort of hooker and offers her money in exchange for being his date to an event to try and make his ex jealous.
She is of course appalled, and once she sees Hayden laughing along with Eve, and Spencer says to her that she helped them get back together she leaves in tears. Hayden comes and finds her, but instead of taking in her side of the story and comforting her, he believes Spencer because he says she has a history of lying (referencing the first time they met when he pretended to be Hayden which just isn't fair at all considering he was also lying at that moment as much as she was. And he continued lying to try and make Eve jealous after that). He also argues that his story fits better, which is just mightily hypocritical as he had no problem lying until it started to affect his friendships. She leaves without him and called her dad to come and pick her up and once she is in the car she breaks down, and it is revealed that her dad is much more sympathetic than he had seemed before (this was hinted at when she asked about going to her brother's presentation and he was considering it, but only rejecting it because his wife said she didn't want to).
Drew comes along, when she is just starting to realise things about herself that she never knew, and brings along Bradley. Real Bradley, in front of all the girls and they find out that she had been lying to them the whole time. Claire and Laney leave instantly, and it is revealed that Jules's whole goal was to get Claire away from Gia because she thought she deserved better. This seems like she was just trying to do the right thing because she suspected Gia of lying until you realise that she was trying to separate them before she had even started lying to them. This context changes things and means that she isn't a saint like she tries to portray herself to be, and is actually someone worse than Gia. Additionally, Gia only started lying because of Jules's pressure. I'm not saying that this is an excuse for lying for such a long time, but Jules acts like she did something good when she was the driving force behind all Gia's actions even if she overall did have control over what she did and the fact that she lied.
Because the drama was so close to the end of this book the finale felt abrupt. It felt like there was more needed to expand on everything and clean up some of the things that had happened. Obviously, not everything needs to be cleared up and some things can be left up to the reader's imagination, but it felt like too many things were left up to the reader to decide. Questions like, are Claire and Gia going to make up? Are Jules's intentional sabotages going to ruin her friendship with Claire? How does Laney feel in all his? What is Hayden's dad like? How long is Gia's mother going to be able to retain her emotional openness?
All these questions, and more, were left unanswered and I think at least half of the ones listed there could have been easily answered if the ending was further away from the final bit of drama. And also, the drama was revealed on the back of the book in the blurb so we knew it was going to happen but for it to happen only a few pages before the ending of the book was a really weird oversight. It felt like everything was just being dumped onto us and then we were supposed to be happy adding our own spin to the rest.
Overall I did like this book, and the character growth shown by Gia was amazing. Hayden's character growth was basic as hell, and Claire, Laney and Jules didn't have one. That didn't mean that the book didn't have a lot of ups in it though and I would definitely recommend this book If you're interested in the YA-Romance genre.
7.8/10
He's only in the area because his sister is going to the same prom and he says that she will be cool with what is going on. However, after she realises what is happening they realise that she isn't at all cool about it (especially since she seems to know of Gia from somewhere else) and they stage a quick breakup, where he acts like he was cheating, and then they go their separate ways, with Gia feeling worse from this 'breakup' than she did when Bradley broke up with her.
While Gia is trying to get in contact with fake Bradley through his sister (a person called Bec who had intentionally made herself unrecognisable on prom night) we learn about the reason that Bec doesn't like her. It is because while she wasn't an active bully to her friends, she was a passive one, not stopping her other friends when they did things, and even sometimes laughing along. This is a pretty fair reason for you to not want your sibling in contact with someone, and I think that Bec's response is perfectly reasonable, even if I don't like it because it goes against the main character.
Gia's friendship with Claire is obviously a lot stronger than with the other girls, but with Jules digging her claws into them all, and the fact that Gia is keeping secrets from her (like the fact that her boyfriend broke up with her just before prom and the person she came with was a stand-in) only pushes the narrative that a wedge is going to be driven between them once Bradley eventually reveals what actually happened and that she lied. Gia, however, doesn't view this secret as much of a big deal, and was even going to tell Claire about what happened but only didn't because she was interrupted by a text to Claire from Jules and Laney. Although it isn't viewed as a big deal to her, the fact that Claire is already receiving poisonous words from Jules, combined with the fact that she had started to believe those words (the relief on her face once she realised that Gia actually came to prom with her boyfriend that Jules claimed was made up) only further shows the disconnect starting to be sown between the two.
What I really liked about Gia's behaviour here was that even while lying about how she broke up with her boyfriend, she still was able to tell mostly the truth about what she was doing. For example, instead of saying that she was going on a 'date' with fake Bradley because she owed him, she said that his sister, Bec, set them up on a blind date. It is a lie, but it is one where there isn't going to be any chance of failure and massive betrayal-like feelings like if she had just told them that she was visiting a friend, or her brother or something. Lies that are based on a lot of truth hurt fewer people, and also have a higher chance of being kept as secrets.
Bec was deciding between two different options, and those were whether Eve, Hayden's (fake Bradley) ex-girlfriend, wants him back, or is trying to show off in front of him and hope that we will be jealous. When they get there it turns out to be the second option, as she is dating his former best friend of many years, which is what causes the change from him maybe wanting to get back together with her, to using her as his fake girlfriend. Although with everything she feels when he is doing that, and how Hayden comments on how good at acting she is, it is clear that she has already started to develop feelings for him, even though it doesn't look like (from an outside perspective at least) he has the same feelings as of yet.
After making Hayden jealous and seeing that one of his friends was someone who she knew to be previously rude she doesn't tell him, but they do leave shortly after. When they get to his house she sees just how different his family dynamic is from hers, and comes to the conclusion - after she arrives home - that maybe her family isn't as perfect as she had previously thought it. This is attributed by me to a difference in what she viewed as a perfect family, versus what she got. She realises after only a few minutes with Bec, Bradley and their mother that she likes the openness they have and the light teasing that happens between each of them. Things like telling their mother about the plan and the fake date, which is something that she could never consider doing with her parents, but is something that she'd like.
Jules, ever the one to cause as much drama as possible, while they are getting taught by a pro surfer, starts planting even more seeds in her friend's heads. Insisting that Gia was flirting with Claire's boyfriend, Tyler, Claire doesn't even deny it and instead just insists that 'it is nothing' which obviously means that she was convinced that Gia was flirting with her partner.
Drew, her brother, wins an award but since he is three hours away he doesn't want any of them to come down, and instead of insisting on going, his parents just obey and even after she asks, is shut down quickly by her mother. Hayden, after hearing this, offers to take her down and although she first rejects it, eventually comes around and accepts his generosity. His presentation shows her a lot, and her talks about her social media. How society nowadays is addicted to social media and I would have to wholeheartedly disagree with his assessment.
There are studies that show the increase in self-harm, suicide, and mental health issues as social media rose, but that shows correlation, not causation. What is more interesting to look at is how much the internet and social media has helped people to first realise that maybe something isn't quite right in their mind, or that they aren't alone in their thoughts, no matter how much it will sometimes feel like they are. The internet and social media, in my opinion, something that gave light to a lot of mental health issues, and just like the people who argue that violent games cause violence, these people are arguing that mental health issues are caused by social media when I'm sure the difference is only in openness and diagnosis.
Gia believes that what he is saying is the truth, but from what we have seen of her in this book, she doesn't focus on social media and real life, things like college, friends, and relationships, are much more her focus. So while she might attribute a little too much of her self-worth to social media, she isn't someone who relies on social media, or at least that is what we have seen up to this point.
Their relationship slowly starts to grow, and they are even getting close to expressing their feelings for each other when one of Hayden's friends, Spencer, who he had told somewhat of their arrangement thinks that she is some sort of hooker and offers her money in exchange for being his date to an event to try and make his ex jealous.
She is of course appalled, and once she sees Hayden laughing along with Eve, and Spencer says to her that she helped them get back together she leaves in tears. Hayden comes and finds her, but instead of taking in her side of the story and comforting her, he believes Spencer because he says she has a history of lying (referencing the first time they met when he pretended to be Hayden which just isn't fair at all considering he was also lying at that moment as much as she was. And he continued lying to try and make Eve jealous after that). He also argues that his story fits better, which is just mightily hypocritical as he had no problem lying until it started to affect his friendships. She leaves without him and called her dad to come and pick her up and once she is in the car she breaks down, and it is revealed that her dad is much more sympathetic than he had seemed before (this was hinted at when she asked about going to her brother's presentation and he was considering it, but only rejecting it because his wife said she didn't want to).
Drew comes along, when she is just starting to realise things about herself that she never knew, and brings along Bradley. Real Bradley, in front of all the girls and they find out that she had been lying to them the whole time. Claire and Laney leave instantly, and it is revealed that Jules's whole goal was to get Claire away from Gia because she thought she deserved better. This seems like she was just trying to do the right thing because she suspected Gia of lying until you realise that she was trying to separate them before she had even started lying to them. This context changes things and means that she isn't a saint like she tries to portray herself to be, and is actually someone worse than Gia. Additionally, Gia only started lying because of Jules's pressure. I'm not saying that this is an excuse for lying for such a long time, but Jules acts like she did something good when she was the driving force behind all Gia's actions even if she overall did have control over what she did and the fact that she lied.
Because the drama was so close to the end of this book the finale felt abrupt. It felt like there was more needed to expand on everything and clean up some of the things that had happened. Obviously, not everything needs to be cleared up and some things can be left up to the reader's imagination, but it felt like too many things were left up to the reader to decide. Questions like, are Claire and Gia going to make up? Are Jules's intentional sabotages going to ruin her friendship with Claire? How does Laney feel in all his? What is Hayden's dad like? How long is Gia's mother going to be able to retain her emotional openness?
All these questions, and more, were left unanswered and I think at least half of the ones listed there could have been easily answered if the ending was further away from the final bit of drama. And also, the drama was revealed on the back of the book in the blurb so we knew it was going to happen but for it to happen only a few pages before the ending of the book was a really weird oversight. It felt like everything was just being dumped onto us and then we were supposed to be happy adding our own spin to the rest.
Overall I did like this book, and the character growth shown by Gia was amazing. Hayden's character growth was basic as hell, and Claire, Laney and Jules didn't have one. That didn't mean that the book didn't have a lot of ups in it though and I would definitely recommend this book If you're interested in the YA-Romance genre.
7.8/10
August 21, 2022
The Midnight Star (The Young Elites #3)
I write these reviews at the same time as I read the books so some of the things I say end up being wrong. One thing that I think might happen, that is screaming out to me, is that Adelina is going to die sometime around the end of the book. I do not know if this is actually going to happen but she has already gone too far to be redeemed. This is especially true as after taking over as the queen she has started branding the unmarked with a hot iron to make them feel the same as the malfetto's did; to remind them of what they did (keep in mind that she is doing this indiscriminately. So even the people who never abused, who tried to help out are getting the same treatment).
Usually, books about overthrowing someone in charge are about the final act, the final person to take over and change everything for at least a few hundred years and make their country prosperous. This, however, doesn't feel the same at all and feels more like the second to last ruler who took over from the previous one but then was the same while thinking of themselves as better. Someone who is always looking for revenge isn't going to successfully be a good leader as they aren't going to be looking after their people properly (1/3 of her army was killed while invading another country because she wants to rule as much as possible). She also has a hard time understanding that love and compassion together with ruthlessness is what makes a good leader. Only having one or the other is always going to cause massive problems and make a horrible leader.
She is taking a herbal concoction to try and manage the voices in her head, and it is working, but the fact she is having to resort to that shows how far her mental deterioration has gone.
Raffaele senses energy similar to Adelina's in the water. It is killing things but it cannot be her actual energy as she is nowhere near that place. Doing some research to try and find out why this could be happening he looks and find that the world isn't as it first seemed. The fever that made all the elites malfetto's is described to be because an angel in the immortal world, called Denarius - the angel of greed - sent his brother Laetes - the angel of joy -down to the moral world as punishment for his arrogance. From what Raffaele can find the dates between when this happened and when the blood fever started killing people. It is when he starts putting more together, about how the important world and the mortal world were never meant to connect, and all the connections between them are only harming the mortal world (as it is the weaker and more vulnerable of the two).
Now, with the same energy taking over the sea he is realising that the reason this is happening is because of Queen Maeve and how power. Ripping someone who didn't have powers back wouldn't really do anything, they weren't as important in the grand scheme of things, but someone who already had part of the god's powers then being taken forcefully, that person being Enzo, is the cause of everything.
As he goes to find Violetta he sees that she is now being affected by the power and is now getting the side effect that all the young elites got when they first gained their powers, the scars covering a lot of her skin. Hers, however, seem worse than normal, as they as described as 'completely covering her arms' and also 'disappearing down her nightgown' implying that the markings are now covering her whole body and that she is being affected more brutally, for some reason, than the others.
After receiving the letter from Raffaele she doesn't believe it at first and thinks that they are just trying to trick her. And the voices perpetuate this, even if she doesn't fully believe that they are trying to trick her, the voices most definitely do.
Magiano is starting to get through to her, as she had initially dismissed the thought of ever letting someone off for something they did - not able to see the hypocrisy in her words - and yet after the guards bring her people who had committed the ultimate sin, saying the word malfetto (the horror!) she lets them off without any punishment, shocking all the people around her before using her invisibility to disappear and then fighting with the voices in her head who are now able to appear without her permission and torment her.
She ends up fighting them because the voices and the people around her convince her that it is a set-up, and it is hard to believe that it isn't in her position. But as Violetta is brought into her line of sight she loses focus and one of her own soldiers betrays her and knocks her out before she is able to react. She is told about what is happening, but even after seeing her own sister, the reason she started the conquest in the first place, she cannot agree to the terms so is thrown into the dungeon.
Enzo, being an elite, is deteriorating quicker than Tristan, who Queen Maeve had to kill because he wasn't listening to her anymore, and he breaks into Adelina's cell and she instantly realises that he isn't the same man she once knew. He has changed, and it is almost like the goddess of death is controlling him herself. Once Raffaele comes they end up defeating him and he dies and that is when Adelina realises that she really doesn't want to die and decided to help the elites protect the world as long as certain conditions she sets are met and they agree to them all. The voices still talk, but she is now having a much easier time rejecting them now that she and Raffaele are both grieving the death of Enzo.
To fight against this goddess of death merging between the two worlds they need all 12 different types of elites. Their energies, which commingle and differ, are needed and one person who they need (apart from the obvious Adelina) is someone with war energy; that person being Teren. He is quickly convinced by Adelina's words, although they still keep him chained. After an incident where he saves Magiano and Adelina's life, she decides that they can trust him a bit and assigns him to be her guard.
Through finally spending time with the people that care about her, and having experienced the fruitlessness and loneliness of leading without anyone else to lean on, having everyone around her finally is helping drag her back from her place of misery and the voices and nightmares start to dwindle.
However, days only last so long and Violetta, who had been growing weaker and weaker every day, finally succumbs to her malfetto 'defect' and perishes. All the voices, the illusions, the self-hate, starting to return. She loses track of time, and only exists physically, but mentally she can't bring herself to care much anymore. She also starts to reminisce on things that she wished she had done, things that would have meant her sister still being alive such as listening to her about the malfetto's powers slowly killing them, or not arguing with Raffaele over terms as much. But that doesn't matter, because her sister is alive and nothing she had done in the past can change that.
They enter the underworld, unsure what to expect and find monsters, which they fight off. Going through they are led through the underworld and are told that in exchange for their powers they can rectify the mortal world and seal the rift opening up between them. Adelina isn't considering doing that until she realises that her sister should also be revived as they all entered the underworld, including her sister's soul but after giving up her power she is told that her sister is dead and isn't going to be given back her life.
Adelina asks what she can do, and is given the choice of a soul for a soul. She only hesitates for a second before giving up her life for her sisters. It is the final climax to her character arc and her realisation that family and friends are better than all the power in the world, even if it was too late to save herself. She had been unwilling to part with her power at all, and the fact that her sister could do that to her scared her, yet she gave up her powers for good to save her sister. She had always valued her life over everyone else's, especially after madness started to take effect and was always trying to protect herself even from invisible threats that didn't exist, or ones that she was creating herself with her terrible leadership decisions, and yet she chose to give hers for her sister.
It was touching, to see her in her last moments with her sister reminiscing about the past, and thinking about everything she would miss. Bittersweet, I should say. It was always going to happen, she had done too many horrible things to be left alive (which is why in YA books I wish they would have more MC being the villain full time because it makes it more unpredictable over what is going to happen in books of the same genre but by other authors).
Marie Lu is excellent at making endings that tug at the heartstrings and the thoughts of Violetta, who ends up taking over a queen, and with her compassion and lack of anger at the world she is most definitely going to be a better queen than Adelina, even if it is going to take a long time to convince everyone that she is actually better, after and how she herself made a bargain with the angel of compassion about putting Adelina in the sky, as a star like she had done for her lover before. The story tells of the star lover coming down with the immortal and the two spending time together.
As we enter the last part of this book we get a letter, one that is similar to one previously in the series although this is about a star coming down from the sky, a queen, a sister, a lover, and a boy who loves that star, taking her away on horseback into the night.
Overall I really like this conclusion, a lot more than I liked the previous two instalments. It felt like the stakes were higher, and the emotions were much more profound. The change between Adelina hating everything and then by the time her mortal life ended she came to love and appreciate life is lovely. Would recommend the whole series, even if it is just to get to the ending of this book as it definitely elevates the series as a whole up a tier in my opinion.
8.3/10
Usually, books about overthrowing someone in charge are about the final act, the final person to take over and change everything for at least a few hundred years and make their country prosperous. This, however, doesn't feel the same at all and feels more like the second to last ruler who took over from the previous one but then was the same while thinking of themselves as better. Someone who is always looking for revenge isn't going to successfully be a good leader as they aren't going to be looking after their people properly (1/3 of her army was killed while invading another country because she wants to rule as much as possible). She also has a hard time understanding that love and compassion together with ruthlessness is what makes a good leader. Only having one or the other is always going to cause massive problems and make a horrible leader.
She is taking a herbal concoction to try and manage the voices in her head, and it is working, but the fact she is having to resort to that shows how far her mental deterioration has gone.
Raffaele senses energy similar to Adelina's in the water. It is killing things but it cannot be her actual energy as she is nowhere near that place. Doing some research to try and find out why this could be happening he looks and find that the world isn't as it first seemed. The fever that made all the elites malfetto's is described to be because an angel in the immortal world, called Denarius - the angel of greed - sent his brother Laetes - the angel of joy -down to the moral world as punishment for his arrogance. From what Raffaele can find the dates between when this happened and when the blood fever started killing people. It is when he starts putting more together, about how the important world and the mortal world were never meant to connect, and all the connections between them are only harming the mortal world (as it is the weaker and more vulnerable of the two).
Now, with the same energy taking over the sea he is realising that the reason this is happening is because of Queen Maeve and how power. Ripping someone who didn't have powers back wouldn't really do anything, they weren't as important in the grand scheme of things, but someone who already had part of the god's powers then being taken forcefully, that person being Enzo, is the cause of everything.
As he goes to find Violetta he sees that she is now being affected by the power and is now getting the side effect that all the young elites got when they first gained their powers, the scars covering a lot of her skin. Hers, however, seem worse than normal, as they as described as 'completely covering her arms' and also 'disappearing down her nightgown' implying that the markings are now covering her whole body and that she is being affected more brutally, for some reason, than the others.
After receiving the letter from Raffaele she doesn't believe it at first and thinks that they are just trying to trick her. And the voices perpetuate this, even if she doesn't fully believe that they are trying to trick her, the voices most definitely do.
Magiano is starting to get through to her, as she had initially dismissed the thought of ever letting someone off for something they did - not able to see the hypocrisy in her words - and yet after the guards bring her people who had committed the ultimate sin, saying the word malfetto (the horror!) she lets them off without any punishment, shocking all the people around her before using her invisibility to disappear and then fighting with the voices in her head who are now able to appear without her permission and torment her.
She ends up fighting them because the voices and the people around her convince her that it is a set-up, and it is hard to believe that it isn't in her position. But as Violetta is brought into her line of sight she loses focus and one of her own soldiers betrays her and knocks her out before she is able to react. She is told about what is happening, but even after seeing her own sister, the reason she started the conquest in the first place, she cannot agree to the terms so is thrown into the dungeon.
Enzo, being an elite, is deteriorating quicker than Tristan, who Queen Maeve had to kill because he wasn't listening to her anymore, and he breaks into Adelina's cell and she instantly realises that he isn't the same man she once knew. He has changed, and it is almost like the goddess of death is controlling him herself. Once Raffaele comes they end up defeating him and he dies and that is when Adelina realises that she really doesn't want to die and decided to help the elites protect the world as long as certain conditions she sets are met and they agree to them all. The voices still talk, but she is now having a much easier time rejecting them now that she and Raffaele are both grieving the death of Enzo.
To fight against this goddess of death merging between the two worlds they need all 12 different types of elites. Their energies, which commingle and differ, are needed and one person who they need (apart from the obvious Adelina) is someone with war energy; that person being Teren. He is quickly convinced by Adelina's words, although they still keep him chained. After an incident where he saves Magiano and Adelina's life, she decides that they can trust him a bit and assigns him to be her guard.
Through finally spending time with the people that care about her, and having experienced the fruitlessness and loneliness of leading without anyone else to lean on, having everyone around her finally is helping drag her back from her place of misery and the voices and nightmares start to dwindle.
However, days only last so long and Violetta, who had been growing weaker and weaker every day, finally succumbs to her malfetto 'defect' and perishes. All the voices, the illusions, the self-hate, starting to return. She loses track of time, and only exists physically, but mentally she can't bring herself to care much anymore. She also starts to reminisce on things that she wished she had done, things that would have meant her sister still being alive such as listening to her about the malfetto's powers slowly killing them, or not arguing with Raffaele over terms as much. But that doesn't matter, because her sister is alive and nothing she had done in the past can change that.
They enter the underworld, unsure what to expect and find monsters, which they fight off. Going through they are led through the underworld and are told that in exchange for their powers they can rectify the mortal world and seal the rift opening up between them. Adelina isn't considering doing that until she realises that her sister should also be revived as they all entered the underworld, including her sister's soul but after giving up her power she is told that her sister is dead and isn't going to be given back her life.
Adelina asks what she can do, and is given the choice of a soul for a soul. She only hesitates for a second before giving up her life for her sisters. It is the final climax to her character arc and her realisation that family and friends are better than all the power in the world, even if it was too late to save herself. She had been unwilling to part with her power at all, and the fact that her sister could do that to her scared her, yet she gave up her powers for good to save her sister. She had always valued her life over everyone else's, especially after madness started to take effect and was always trying to protect herself even from invisible threats that didn't exist, or ones that she was creating herself with her terrible leadership decisions, and yet she chose to give hers for her sister.
It was touching, to see her in her last moments with her sister reminiscing about the past, and thinking about everything she would miss. Bittersweet, I should say. It was always going to happen, she had done too many horrible things to be left alive (which is why in YA books I wish they would have more MC being the villain full time because it makes it more unpredictable over what is going to happen in books of the same genre but by other authors).
Marie Lu is excellent at making endings that tug at the heartstrings and the thoughts of Violetta, who ends up taking over a queen, and with her compassion and lack of anger at the world she is most definitely going to be a better queen than Adelina, even if it is going to take a long time to convince everyone that she is actually better, after and how she herself made a bargain with the angel of compassion about putting Adelina in the sky, as a star like she had done for her lover before. The story tells of the star lover coming down with the immortal and the two spending time together.
As we enter the last part of this book we get a letter, one that is similar to one previously in the series although this is about a star coming down from the sky, a queen, a sister, a lover, and a boy who loves that star, taking her away on horseback into the night.
Overall I really like this conclusion, a lot more than I liked the previous two instalments. It felt like the stakes were higher, and the emotions were much more profound. The change between Adelina hating everything and then by the time her mortal life ended she came to love and appreciate life is lovely. Would recommend the whole series, even if it is just to get to the ending of this book as it definitely elevates the series as a whole up a tier in my opinion.
8.3/10
