You by Caroline Kepnes
My rating: 5 of 5 stars What's the last book that you read where the protagonist was also the antagonist? The last one that I can remember personally is a creepy thriller called By Blood by Ellen Ullman. Where By Blood feels almost like literature, You is a little more brain candy. If I'm being honest, it took me about fifty pages to really get sucked into the novel. The structure the author chooses, which is to have the main character speak to the object of his affection directly in his head is at first jarring and off-putting. There are plenty of stories that involve a copious amount of internal dialogue. With the main character speaking directly to his obsession, it's almost as though his thoughts are yours. Interested yet? Joe fails in love with Beck at first sight and dives into a deep obsession with her. He systematically stalks her, removing all perceived obstacles to their togetherness. Despite the occasional mention of time passing, it's difficult to discern exactly how much time passes during the story. It's forever. It's no time at all. Joe is clearly "crazy", but the inner monologues are (for the most part) calm and considered. I held out hope that the ending wouldn't be the ending, despite its inevitability. Even having guessed the end, it did not detract from the overall effect. Perception is a funny funny thing and it's readily apparent that our perceptions can differ greatly. I hesitate to call it a murder mystery. There's no mystery here. Just an intensely self-aware obsessive stalker. My only critique would be that I wanted more back story as to how Joe ended up the way he did. He discusses being kept in the cage prior to the novel's beginning, but I'd love to dig in to the whys of it all. I eagerly look forward to the next in the series. View all my reviews
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Lord of Shadows by Cassandra Clare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars I've read nearly everything Cassandra Clare has written at this point. Lord of Shadows is one of her larger novels. Sitting here looking at all her books on my shelf, it's clear that this particular section of the world of Shadowhunters is going to be the longest. I spent the first part of the book wondering how on earth I was going to get through 700 pages of storyline. Clare packs it in this time. She takes on countless side journeys with different pods of characters. Ty and Livvie have side adventures with Kit. Dru has her own tiny storyline. This on top of literally everything else that's going on. It felt overstuffed. There's an impending war with the faeries, there's the love between Julian and Emma to contend with. The use of Jace and Clary in the beginning of the book is completely forgotten by the end. There's a LOT going on in this book. This one made me feel all kinds of things. I was frustrated, angry, sickened, amused, and by the end? Practically in tears. OK. Actually in tears. Lord of Shadows left me conflicted. I loved it, like I do all her novels, but I felt like she took on too much. Yet at the same time part of the reason why I love what she does is because she takes the time to dig in to all the side characters. She's not just a character builder, but a world builder. She teases backstory and then moves forward leaving you wishing you had an entire book about THAT. I wanted to give the book five stars but I just felt like there was too much going on. For fans of Clare, you're already in regardless. For those who are new? This isn't the best one, but it's still pretty damn good. View all my reviews
Geekerella by Ashley Poston
My rating: 5 of 5 stars I picked up this book because of the title. Honestly, anything that operates on the fringes of a life that I am familiar with (the geek and nerd culture) is of interest to me. I feel like despite the fact that it has become more acceptable to love the nerdy stuff, we're still relatively under-represented in literature. That likely has a lot to do with the current culture of instantaneous digital everything, but I digress. One would think that the Cinderella trope would be played out. One would be right, however, despite the fact that it's the overused the author manages to make it fresh. In this version you have Elle who is a blogger and fangirl of the cancelled sci-fi show Starfield. A love of which she shared with her father who passed away. He started a convention for the show that they used to attend every year together with her mother. Cut to current day where her stepmother and stepsisters are just as awful as you would imagine them to be. The secondary storyline is of the actor who is going to be playing the lead role in the reboot of Starfield. Darien is a closet super fan and teen heartthrob whose life is controlled by his father/manager. There's even a Magic Pumpkin in the form of a vegan food truck where Elle works. One fun distance from the original trope is the accidental texting relationship that occurs between Darien and Elle. They end up failing for each other long before they actually meet. There's a trip to a con described in delightful detail. I genuinely loved the voice of this novel. Even though it was about teenagers, I felt as though I could relate to the emotional needs of Elle, in which she just wanted to be understood by the people around her. Where she struggled with opening up because she felt alone. While I may not feel that way currently, I definitely felt that way when I was a teenager. Any nerd/geek who enjoys reading about the world in which they live, would enjoy this novel. It's a familiar and predictable story, but I still really liked it. I'd be willing to read a sequel too (hint hint). This one was Rainbow Rowell-esque and I dearly love that voice. View all my reviews
Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
My rating: 5 of 5 stars I'm a fan of Trevor Noah's, even though I've not seen any of his Daily Show stuff. I watched the first episode but never followed up. It's not that I have been a hold out because I miss John Stewart, I just never really went out of my way to watch him either. I’ve always enjoyed his standup. One routine had me laughing so hard I nearly fell off the treadmill laughing. This memoir is magical as an audiobook and at this point I don't just slap 5 stars on any old thing. Trevor Noah has a delightful voice in general but when he speaks as his younger self to his mother it’s downright adorable. The book chronicles his youth in South Africa towards the end of apartheid. He chronicles his time in school and how race played a part in everything he tried to do in life. With the way the races were segregated in South Africa there was nowhere for him to fit in. He discusses church-hopping with his mother and hustling pirated music to people desperate for something new. He also takes you through the details of the violence he and his family endured at the hands of his step-father. When describing grief (and I’m paraphrasing here), he describes a specific kind of grief that I’ve personally felt like this: “I cried so hard that it made every other time I cried seem like a waste of crying.” He explains visceral grief with humor and humility in a way that even though you know how it feels, you find yourself chuckling along with him. The main take away from this memoir is that Noah is a born storyteller. He has a unique way of bouncing from time to time and place to place in seemingly haphazard manner that ends up paying off in the end. The memoir is charming, funny, touching, and fascinating. Noah has led what some would consider an extraordinary life, but he presents it as though it is the most normal life in the world. I’ve included a link below to a transcript of an NPR interview that he did which adds a little more to the story as well. I highly recommend you check this one out. http://www.npr.org/templates/transcri... View all my reviews
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars I’m not sure if I can fully describe a Court of Thorns and Roses for you in a way that will be sufficient. I picked it up because I was told that if I liked the Throne of Glass series, then the author’s other series would blow me away. I finished this book feeling not blown away but definitely entrenched in the new world. One of Maas’s biggest strengths is in creating dynamic female protagonists who don’t need men to rescue them. Unlike the majority of the teen romance and adventure novels, Maas’s girls are strong and independent thinkers. They love deeply but they don’t spend the entire book analyzing or whining about that love. Once the love of another character is realized, it is a determined fact. There’s no will they/won’t they. There’s no “he couldn’t possibly love me” or “I couldn’t possibly love him”. It’s incredibly refreshing in a genre of overly analytical and irritating female leads. I often had trouble remembering that she’s writing about someone who is essentially a teenager. These girls (and I use girl loosely because they come off the page as grown women) are not like they are in Twilight or Divergent or even to an extent Hunger Games. In this world there are faeries and there are humans. The two worlds rarely collide. Feyre is struggling to feed her family after the death of her mother and the disabling of her father. While hunting one day in the woods she encounters a wolf whom she kills and skins in an effort to survive. The wolf turns out to be a faeire in shape-shifting form. The High Lord of the Spring Court comes to collect Feyre to take her back to the faerie realm and forces her to live there cut off from her family as punishment. The faerie realm is being ruled over by an evil woman who wants to destroy everything. Adventures occur and tasks must be completed to survive. I can’t give away too much but it’s one of the more intense conflicts I’ve read in these sorts of books in a while. If you like the Throne of Glass series, you’ll like this book. I imagine that the follow ups in the series will be just as detailed, vivid, and intense as the first one. I’m interested to see where Maas takes Feyre next. View all my reviews
Scion of Conquered Earth by Michael J. Allen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars Full disclosure, I received a free copy of this book for an honest review. Alright, let's get down to it. Scion of Conquered Earth is by Indy Author Michael J Allen. You know this because you're already looking it up. The book centers around a post-invasion Earth where aliens are manipulating humans into rounding up other humans to put them into slavery. The protagonist of the story is a young man with amnesia. He doesn't remember who he is or where he came from, but he understands what it takes to survive the invasion. One of the excellent things about this author is his ability to flesh out the ancillary characters. Too many writers throw a character in simply to move the plot along instead of taking the time to round them out. Even the characters that don't speak feel as though they have depth. The boy is on the run and trying to survive. He meets others along the way. Some are good and some are not-so-good. There is a disturbing scene that occurs when he is captured towards the beginning of the novel that makes me cringe every time I think about it. And even though I'm cringing, I'm impressed by the style of writing that brings that memory back to me. There are a few times when it felt like we jumped from scene to scene without too much build up. He's running! He's in a museum? On a spaceship? What is happening? Once you give in a let the story take you where it wants you to go, you're in for an interesting ride. There are a couple of instances in which the author overuses a word or phrase in a short span, but nothing so conspicuous that it would distract. So why four stars instead of 3 with this much critique? Honestly, I don't much care for the alien genre. I guess you would classify this as sci-fi, but considering I don't care for the genre but I liked the book itself? I gave it an extra star for keeping me interested. View all my reviews
A is for Alibi by Sue Grafton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars When I was young, I always wanted to get new novel from the grocery store. There was a local bookstore but we didn't frequent it like we did the grocery store there were always shiny, crisp, new paperbacks just sitting there on the shelves waiting for me to purchase them. Stephen King, Nora Robert, John Grissom. Everyone called to me. Read me. Read me. READ ME. None more so than Sue Grafton. Her Kinsey Millhone series which I dubbed the Alphabet series was well into it's circulation at this point. The first book, A or Alibi, was published in 1982. I was one at the time so I was clearly unable to start it from the beginning. Along the way I decided that I did not possess the patience to wait year after year for each new book to arrive. I would wait until they were complete or nearly complete to get started. Here we are. 35 years later. Y is for Yesterday will be released in August and the last book will be released the year after (I assume). I decided it was finally time to start. I decided to go with the audiobook. For a series this lengthy, I wanted to hear the main character's voice. Kinsey Millhone is a private detective who has recently killed someone. She tells you this at the start. How this plays in to the book itself is part of the story. Kinsey is hired to clear the name of a woman who was convicted of killing her husband. She's already served her time, but knowing that she's innocent, she is determined to have the truth come out. There were a series of murders surrounding the death of the woman's husband. Kinsey sets out to uncover who killed everyone. I've read a ton of murder mysteries in my life. Few were as intricate as this one. It wasn't terribly suspenseful but it did keep me guessing until the end. As a story in general, considering it was written in 1982, it holds up pretty well. Aside from the occasional mention of Kinsey packing up her typewriter or having her answering service handle her calls, everything more or less could transfer to present day. I don't think I would have minded if it hadn't. I'm all for nostalgia. I gave it 3 stars because while it didn't wow me, it was a strong first novel. It'll keep me hooked at least until the next one. View all my reviews |