"I am Theta born. Theta bred. And when I die, I'll be Theta dead."
I find sororities fascinating because they're so paradoxical. The bond of sisterhood and friendship is very affirming, very feminist; but the upholding of stereotypical gender norms and extreme femininity is kind of the opposite of feminism. Naturally, whenever I find something fascinating, I try to read about it as much as I can. PRETTY, NASTY, LOVELY is the second sorority-themed book I've managed to get my grubby mitts on. The first was called RUSH, and it was straight-up chick-lit that captures perfectly the party culture mentality of the mid-2000s. PRETTY, NASTY, LOVELY, on the other hand, is a thriller cast in the mold of Megan Abbott's girl noir fiction.
Emma Danelski joined a sorority because she was looking for that bond of sisterhood. She sort of found it, but only with the other outcasts; her relationship with the other girls is fraught with tension and a sense of betrayal. She was courted during Rush, only to be shoved aside as soon as she began paying her dues. Not only that, but Emma quickly realizes that the other girls have problems of their own that run the gamut from eating disorders to blackmail, and have no time for her own issues. And Emma does have issues. She is guarding a terrible secret that some of the other girls lord over her, and that secret threatens to come to light when one of her sisters, a troubled girl named Lydia, is found dead.
Everyone thinks it's suicide. But is it, really?
PRETTY, NASTY, LOVELY doesn't have a lot of reviews or hype, which shocked me, because books like these - thrillers about troubled women - have become so trendy with the success of titles like THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN and GONE GIRL. PRETTY, NASTY, LOVELY is more Megan Abbott than Gillian Flynn, and I was honestly shocked that the publisher didn't jump at the opportunity to tout that similarity in the blurb (even though I loathe such "If you liked X, then you'll just loooooove Y!"-type comparisons). The problem, I think, is that it has no clear audience. The parts narrated by Emma (and, occasionally, some of the other girls) are very much new adult. But then, bizarrely, some of the adults have POVs too, like Dr. Finn, who is dealing with an obsessive and emotionally manipulative wife as well as his guilt over being unable to prevent Lydia's death, and Dean Cho, who wants to create a suicide prevention task force, as well as help the cops with the investigation to the best of her ability, but whose heavy-handedness harms more than it helps.
There are a lot of great subjects in here, important, controversial subjects - suicide, abortion, mental health, racism, classicism, psychological disorders, family, sisterhood, friendship, marriage, etc. - and for the most part, I felt that the author handled them pretty well, which made me think of Megan Abbott again because she handles a lot of those dark, unpleasant sides of girlhood and womanhood, the grit underneath the glamor, so to speak, no matter how unpleasant it is to read about.
This book would have scored a higher rating for me, if it weren't for the fact that (1) I felt like it attempted to accomplish too much, and ended up glancing on a lot of stuff it should have fleshed out more and wallowing in material that could have been cut; (2) the predictability of the ending and the villain(s); and (3) the bad way the POV swaps were handled. They were not labeled, and sometimes occurred mid-chapter, so it could be difficult to keep track of who had the floor at the moment.
That said, I think if you enjoy Megan Abbott's work, you'll probably enjoy this. I know I did.
Thanks to Netgalley/the publisher for the review copy!
S.T.A.G.S. is the type of book that you remember as being better than it actually was because the premise is so good that you want to forgive it for any tactical errors. It was a strange creature, a blend of cheesy horror cast in the vein of the old Point Horror novels I used to devour as a preteen, but also hauntingly Gothic with passages so dramatic that I reread them a second time.
I've been wanting to read S.T.A.G.S. ever since I heard it was about a deadly party. I'm a sucker for books about deadly parties, and Point Horror had a lot of them, with titles like HALLOWEEN PARTY, THE INVITATION, and SKI WEEKEND, often with letters written in cartoonishly dripping blood. I love them so much, I wrote a deadly party book of my own that ballooned into a crazy OTT wtfest. Deadly parties, man. I can't get enough.
Greer is an outcast at her snobby private school, in which she is a scholarship student. She goes about her days snarking about the privileged Elite and their creme de la creme, "the Medievals." The Medievals are the lords and ladies of their snub-nose courtiers; all of them are the descendants of Somebody Important and they eschew modern technologies, preferring the times of droit du seigneur and divine right, when the peasants could be fucked by the upper-class - in more ways than one - and having a title basically meant that you were a step removed from god; they basically think that the Medieval age was the best age; hence their name. Charming.
As much as Greer hates these little shits, she is delighted when she receives an invitation from their leader, Henry, for a weekend of "huntin' shootin' fishin'." Maybe they weren't so bad after all, she thinks, foolishly, if they're willing to accept her into their ranks. But when she arrives at Henry's sprawling manor, deep in the heart of the woods, she learns that the other kids invited aren't exactly prime material. They've also invited a distastefully nouveau riche girl named Chanel and an Indian boy named Shafeen who they've been viciously bullying all year. Then the accidents start happening and the story takes a sinister turn as Greer discovers just how much the Medievals relish power.
The book's blurb compares S.T.A.G.S. to PRETTY LITTLE LIARS and THE SECRET HISTORY, but I've read both of those and this book is nothing like either. If anything, it's basically a modern retelling of THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME. Maybe they didn't want to call it that because of the spoilers (although that teaser on the cover and the blurb on the back are far more spoiler-ish), or because they feared nobody would know what THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME was (they made me read it in high school, and it was one of the few forced-readings I actually didn't mind).
Had this been a more straightforward story, I think I would have liked it more, but it was often silly. Greer keeps comparing critical narrative scenes to movies, which feels lazy. Rather than saying that this scene reminded you of X movie or Y movie, I would rather you just describe it to me. It kept jerking me out of the narrative and quickly became annoying. There were also some attempts to make this book seem "fresh" by name-dropping brands, but that is also a mistake because it dates the book. Quick example: the author references iTunes, which was killed by Apple just a month or two ago. The last act of the book also becomes a little shark-jumpy. It's hard to write about secret societies without sounding like a conspiracy theorist from The History Channel and this book doesn't succeed.
Overall, though, this was a fun read. I read it on several bus trips throughout Portugal and it passed the time well. I see that the author is planning a sequel called D.O.G.S. and I imagine I'll probably be reading that also, since I'm a sucker for stories about deadly parties and psychotic children. Hopefully it will be even better than this one, although if it's more crazy cheese, I won't mind.
THE NIGHT SHE WON MISS AMERICA is "loosely" based on a true story, and written by an author who is an editor at Vanity Fair. (It's funny that he's actually a journalist, because I was thinking to myself that this has the spare, matter-of-fact style of writing you see in books like THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS.) When I read the summary, this didn't seem like something I would normally pick up for myself, but I really loved the cover and the prospect of a beauty pageant derailed by scandal was just too great to resist.
***WARNING: SPOILERS***
THE NIGHT SHE WON MISS AMERICA is set in 1949. The heroine, Betty Jane, is blackmailed by her mother into signing up for the pageant. She doesn't expect to make it to finals, let alone win, but obviously...she does. It's all terribly exciting for a girl who comes from Delaware, and she is dazzled and excited to find out that the male escort selected for her is as handsome as a movie star, and falls for him instantly.
What follows is a whirlwind romance between Betty Jane and Griffin, as Betty rises higher in the ranks of the competition. There's just one small hitch in her happiness: Griffin tells her that if she wins, he won't have anything to do with her anymore: that he doesn't want to be known as "Ms. America's Boyfriend." Betty Jane doesn't take him seriously, but when she wins, and he's more than ready to call her bluff and leave, Betty Jane is forced to give up her crown and abscond with him -
The only problem? Griffin has paranoid schizophrenia.
The moment I realized what was going on, I'll admit that I held my breath. Mental illness is often demonized in thrillers and horror novels, and schizophrenia especially gets a bum rap. Callahan does treat Griffin's character with care. Yes, he's scary, but the reader feels sorry for him - especially since this was written to characterize a time when mental health treatments were still in their infancy, and what was available often fringed on cruel and unusual. Griffin is a tragic figure, instead of an evil one, and as he slips deeper into his episodes, the book winds to its devastating finish.
The end of the book is so different from the beginning of the book in tone that it's almost like two separate stories. The first story is a small town girl making friends and enemies as she competes against girls who can be catty, sneaky, encouraging, and friendly by turns, all of them knowing that only one can win. It has a fun, snarky chick-lit vibe to it that I really enjoyed. The second story is about a doomed romance founded on instant attraction between two young characters. Also, in the background, set in the modern day, is a reporter who is determined to hunt down this isolated woman who was involved in some great scandal...hmm, I wonder who that was.
Overall, I thought THE NIGHT SHE WON MISS AMERICA was a pretty good book. I can see why it has low ratings, because the story is inconsistent in tone, but I thought the writing was quite good and the story kept me entertained, and the book went by rather incredibly quickly. If you enjoy reading about beauty pageants or tragedies (or both!), I think you'll enjoy this one.
My reactions while reading this book can basically be summed up in a single word: Okay! Okay. Okay? Okay...
Spoiler alert: this book was not okay.
Dear people who read this book and gave it five stars - what the hell? Did you get a different book than I did? What is this so-called brilliant homage that you read, because I got a really lame story about this boy in the friend-zone who ends up obsessed with this manic pixie dream girl stereotype who's in love with the bad boy AND a story about this old man whose name is LITERALLY "Eggs" and his relationship with his passive aggressive wife as he struggles to rectify his cringe-worthy resentment towards his severely disabled son and utter denial of his own health problems.
Oh, and there's some supernatural stuff thrown in there and the book tries to pretend it's so meta but it's completely half-assed. Basically, this is a "supernatural" story the way McDonald's new Szechuan sauce is Chinese food.
Also, let me assure you that I did not hate this book because it was not another YOU. I get that authors don't want to write the same story over and over again and I don't just respect that, I love that. Sometimes it pays off. This didn't. This was a major backslide. If I didn't know better, I would have thought that this was Kepnes's debut effort, and not YOU, because it seems so much more undeveloped and unpolished by comparison.
Part of the reason that I loved YOU so much was the smart writing, the cutting insights on society, the smart pop culture references, and the chilling way that she made reality itself seem just as horrifying as the sociopathic main character (in fact, I may have deactivated some of my own social media accounts after reading that book). This book plodded. It didn't really have much of a plot. The characters were about what you'd expect in one of those airport bookstore-type novels aimed at middle-aged women written by someone who knows nothing about women. And the pop culture references were painful. I think there were references to the movie, Big Eyes, and Colleen Hoover? One of those references is already dated and the CH reference just felt like a "Heyyyyy, buddy!"
I'm really disappointed by this book. I don't want to say anything else because I don't want to spoil too much, but yeah, if you're expecting this to be on par with YOU, just save yourself the trouble right now and lower your expectations by about 200%.
P.S. It's not just me. I buddy-read this with my friend Heather, and I just checked out her review, and it looks like we were disappointed for roughly the same reasons. I feel validated.
Thanks to Netgalley/the publisher for the review copy!
Nobody was more excited than me to get their hands on THE ROSES OF MAY, the sequel to the amazing thriller, THE BUTTERFLY GARDEN. I'm picky about thrillers and think a lot of the ones out there are crap, but THE BUTTERFLY GARDEN was that 1 book out of 100 that stayed with me, haunted me, and kept me on the edge of my seat, desperate to know what happened next. When I found out there was a sequel, I was stoked as a stoat.
ROSES OF MAY isn't really a direct sequel and I think it could be read as a standalone, although there's some insider information and side character cameos that might be confusing for people who haven't read THE BUTTERFLY GARDEN. Priya is a seventeen-year-old girl suffering from grief and depression and an eating disorder, exacerbated by her sister's gruesome murder several years before. Now, it looks like her sister's killer has found her yet again and she's going to be the next target.
The killer is actually pretty creepy and reminded me of a Criminal Minds episode. S/he thinks that women should be innocent and pure, and watches the various young girls who catch their eye to ensure that they adhere to their standards of purity. The ones who do die gently, so s/he can take care of them forever and keep them "good girls." The ones who exhibit wanton behaviors are brutally raped and violently murdered, as punishment. S/he's a highly messed-up individual.
Unfortunately, the process of catching the killer is hindered by department politics as the policemen's new supervisor kind of has it in for them and is reluctant to connect previously unrelated cases without solid evidence of Blues Clues-level obviousness. One of the cops is a family friend of Priya, so he takes this especially hard. Also complicating things is the trial for the Garden, where many of the ex-Butterflies are having trouble adapting to the "real world" and exhibiting obvious post-traumatic stress in the wake of the Gardener's trial and his one surviving son's arrest.
THE ROSES OF MAY isn't really a very good book. Even if it hadn't been connected to one of my favorite mystery-thrillers of all time, I still don't think I would have been super pleased with it. There are too many POV swaps, and apart from the killer and his creepy and unusual way of displaying the bodies, there wasn't much to make it stand apart from the many other serial killer novels out there. I did like Priya a lot, though. I'm a sucker for books that write about damaged women in a way that still portrays them as whole beings who are full of agency. Priya had a lot of issues but they didn't define her, and I really liked that. I also liked her relationships with the war veterans she played chess with and Inara, one of the Butterflies who reached out to Priya because of their shared tragedy.
I'm not sure I'm as eager to read the third book now, since this one was such a disappointment. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't nearly as good as I was expecting, and felt like it was an entirely different subgenre of mystery-thriller, which makes it extra weird that they're linked in a series.
I'm going to be honest, I liked the beginning of this book twice as much as I liked the end, which I despised. The beginning of this book follows the typical "psycho becomes obsessed with a girl" formula, of books like Caroline Kepnes's YOU and John Fowles's THE COLLECTOR. Teo is a medical student who lives with his mom and is a Norman Bates psychotic stuffed shirt type, buttoned up with mommy issues and personal hang-ups. Luckily, he doesn't kill his mom in this one - but he does kill her dog (spoiler).
One day, he meets a carefree and beautiful bohemian type at a party. Her name is Clarice, which maybe is a nod to SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, as well, since Hannibal Lector was also a doctor. Clarice is writing a screenplay called Perfect Days, which sounds a bit like THE BEACH - it's about a bunch of flaky young women with issues who end up going on an adventure across Brazil with a mysterious and darkly handsome stranger.
Teo, naturally, falls in love with her - if by "love," you mean, he stalks her, drugs her, and then kidnaps her, taking her by force across the same road trip in her screenplay. He's determined to make her love him, but Clarice has an iron will and things take an odd turn after several weeks of captivity, when she seems to give in.
This is a brutal story and there's trigger warnings across the board. Apart from the druggings and abductions and animal death, there's also rape and medical gore and a whole bunch of unpleasant and disgusting narrative descriptions. I actually found myself cringing at certain points in the book, which I don't do too often, and haven't done since reading A LITTLE LIFE. I also didn't like the ending at all. Until I got to the end, I was going to praise this book for empowering the heroine, Clarice, and making her such a flawed and dimensional heroine, but the ending felt like a slap in the face. I'm not going to say anything else, but if you think you know what happens, you probably don't.
In the beginning of this book, I thought it would be an easy four stars. By the time the last sixty pages were rolling along, I was considering giving this book a two. I'll average them and give a three.
When I was in middle school, I was addicted to those trashy Point Horror stories for kids. They always had a similar premise: a group of kids get together for a party. Everything's fun and games until someone gets murdered. The kids, rather than being sensible and going to the authorities, take it upon themselves to solve the murder themselves, acting totally surprised when more murders happen. The book ends when the murderer, usually the last person you would expect and therefore the person you totally suspect, finally gets caught, and everybody else lives happily ever after. THE WOMAN IN CABIN 10 was just like that, except for adults.
I'm a bit skeptical of these dysfunctional lady thrillers. The popularity of Gillian Flynn, specifically GONE GIRL, has had all these other mystery writers clamoring and going, "Me too! Me too!" The last one I read was GIRL ON THE TRAIN was so disappointing to me (seriously, what the eff?) that I gave up on these mysteries for a while. The only reason I picked this one up was because it was chosen for my book club.
To my surprise, I actually really enjoyed THE WOMAN IN CABIN 10. It has that throwback Agatha Christie feeling to it (or that Point Horror feel to it, if you're cheesy and camp, like me), which I loved. The fact it takes place on a ship instead of an isolated mansion makes it unique and even more claustrophobic-feeling, because you can escape from a mansion somewhat easily - it's hard to escape from a boat that's traversing through freezing-cold water.
The heroine, Lo Blacklock, finds that out firsthand when she witnesses what she thinks is a murder aboard the luxury ship she's supposed to be reporting on for the paper she writes for. The only problem is that the cabin she saw the murder in isn't occupied and nobody has laid eyes on the woman that Lo claims to have seen. She begins to doubt herself - and the fact that she has been drinking and has anxiety and PTSD does not help with her credibility - but then sinister things start happening to Lo, almost like someone is warning her off. The journalist in Lo is fatalistically intrigued. Who was the girl in cabin 10? And why would someone want her dead?
Comparisons to GIRL ON THE TRAIN are inevitable, because they are both about dysfunctional ladies with poor credibility who see something that they oughtn't to have seen and try to raise the alarm without being murdered themselves (somewhat unsuccessfully). Both heroines are also very unlikable and feature in storylines where suspension of disbelief is necessary. The difference is that GIRL ON THE TRAIN wallows in the unlikability of its main character and relies on relationship drama and emotional manipulation to keep the story moving, whereas THE WOMAN IN CABIN 10 winks heavily at the audience as it checks off cliche after cliche, and has some genuinely suspenseful moments. My biggest gripe was the abrupt ending, which seemed far too neat. If you, like me, were disillusioned by GIRL ON THE TRAIN, I recommend that you pick this one up.
This was so dark and disturbing, but in the best way?? I'm not quite sure how to rate this because there were parts I loved and at its core, this is a five-star book for execution and story-telling. The "banter" went on too long and at some points, the story felt repetitive, but it never dragged me out of the plot and never kept me from desperately wanting to know what happened. I ended up devouring half of this book in a single sitting and went to bed wondering what would happen next. I finished the second half in another sitting and now that I'm done, all I can think to myself is, "Wow, she went there."
The heroine and the villain don't have names. They aren't really described physically and neither is their setting, the heroine's remote house. The details are spare. All we know is that the heroine wakes up to find a man in bed with her. A man who tells her that "they" have hired him to break her. And then the book is about him proceeding to do exactly that, with the heroine relying on her wiles and intelligence to fight him every step of the way. Which sounds like the plot of basically any other so-called "dark" fiction out there, but trust me: this one is different.
At times, this book is philosophical, even existential. I'm honestly amazed at how much character study was packed into this short work. Even though it's just two people in a room, it's tense and interesting. I felt so involved. Every time the author let something slip, I wanted to know more. By the time the book was over, it had become a hydra-headed monster of unanswered questions. I found myself thinking over everything I read, frustrated by the intentional lack of closure on so many levels. I want to say tons more, but it's best to go into the book cold. I will say that if you cannot read books about rape, do not read this book. Ditto if you don't like reading books with icky sex scenes. This is not a work for the squeamish. At times, I found myself incredibly disturbed and upset while reading this, but the author worked to handle her difficult subjects with gravitas and care. And the ending--
Wow.
I'm not ready to accept that this author wrote only *ONE* book. I feel like it has to be a pen name. I hope she decides to share her other name (if she has one) because I would gladly read her other works.
You know how some people like to politely warn you before they tell you something incredibly disturbing? They'll try to act all coy, like, "Are you sure you want to know? Once I tell you, I can't untell you." And of course, that only makes you want to know more, because curiosity is the devil, and you tell yourself that it couldn't possibly worse than what you're imagining - but then they tell you and it is so much worse, and they're like, "Told you!" ONLY DAUGHTER is that...in book form.
As far as publishers go, Mira doesn't tend to be that brutal. I've read several thrillers published by this imprint and most of them were light. Good - but inoffensive and forgettable. ONLY DAUGHTER is different. It's got a plot that's akin to something Gillian Flynn or Mary Kubica might think up.
ONLY DAUGHTER is about a young woman who looks very similar to a girl who's been missing for ten years - Rebecca Winter. When she's about to be arrested for shoplifting, she decides to capitalize on this uncanny resemblance, claiming to be the missing girl. Instead of being arrested, she's delivered into the arms of her 'parents,' and reimersed into the lives of the missing girl's friends and family.
What started out as an impulse quickly becomes a tangled nest of thorny lies, as the imposter attempts to trick everyone around her into believing that she is Rebecca, avoiding any missteps, blood tests, and exams that could reveal the lie. But the more she pretends, the more she begins to realize that someone might have had a good reason for making Rebecca disappear. And she might be next.
Wooo, I just gave myself the shivers.
Honestly, this is a tricky book to rate. The premise was difficult to buy, because I couldn't imagine someone just impulsively deciding to pretend to be a missing person just to avoid shoplifting charges. The premise hinges on us willing to buy that, because that's how it all goes down like a house of cards, and I was very skeptical. Once we get over that hump-a-dump, though, the story becomes pretty addicting. I wanted to find out what happened to Rebecca and what would happen to the impostor, and what she was running from (not all that much as it turned out).
Rebecca's story, though - man...that was, well. I have no words. Sickening? Disturbing? WTF? To be honest, I'm still not 100% sure what happened because the story started to get a little vague around the 200-page mark. Also, I should point out that there is a brutal, sadistic animal death in here that made me so upset. It was very difficult to read. Not to sound like a weenie, but I got choked up. Next time I go out to see my kitties, I'm going to have to hug them both extra tight. :(
I liked this book, in spite of its flaws. It was interesting, and heaps better than GIRL ON THE TRAIN. This was much more in tune with Gillian Flynn's style - although nobody can do Flynn like Flynn. Still, for what it was, it was more than decent and surprising in more ways than one. If you don't mind opening up a six-pack of the creepies, and like your thrillers with a heavy splash of WTF, you'll probably enjoy ONLY DAUGHTER. Just remember: once you read it, you can't unread it.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC!
I went through this period where if a book looked even remotely interesting, I'd buy it/request it from Netgalley/borrow it from the library. As you can imagine, this was problematic for several reasons - book clutter, for one. It also resulted in some very serious buyer's remorse. Take JACK KNIFE.Two government agents go into Victorian England to collect a rogue scientist who is hell-bent on reenacting the plot of Tomorrow Never Dies? Please.
I brought this book along with me to read while on a very long bus ride, so maybe it's the fact that I was essentially a captive audience, but I didn't dislike this book merely enough as I felt I ought to have. The writing quality was on the poor side - pulpy - and the characters of Sara and David, the government agents, were two-dimensional. David is your typical tough army guy with the heart of gold and Sara is the ball-busting feminist who everyone is attracted to, in spite of (because of?) the fact that she can kick their butts.
Sara and David find out that Jack the Ripper is running rampant, but for whatever reason, he's killing way more and far more bloodily than he ever did in their time. On the case is detective Jonas Robb, who is the son of a duke when he's not a cop, and who is also very attracted to Sara. He's suspicious of them, though, and he knows enough to know that something about their alibis doesn't match up.
I found JACK KNIFE entertaining, but it's a throwaway read. Not something I'd ever pick up again, unless I were marooned on a long bus ride and had no other reading materials present. There were a lot of plot holes and things left unexplained at the end, and I didn't really care for the characterization of any of the people in here. Or the use of science. Honestly, it seems like the more the characters stress how essential it is to preserve the timeline, the more they do their best to f*ck it up.
I applied for an advance copy of THE MANY on a whim. The idea of a woman going crazy after hooking up with a strange, too-good-to-be true kind of guy on a dating site seemed like the perfect formula for a horror story. I'm a sucker for the malicious stranger trope, you guys. Just wave a book under my nose that promises doom and destruction delivered by a sinister out-of-towner, and I swear to you, I will fall over myself trying to grab it.
At first, THE MANY is pretty decent. We're introduced to the stories of two women, Isobel and Stacey, and their families. At first, their stories seem totally unrelated. Isobel is a lesbian who lives with her teenage daughter. Stacey is a vivacious twenty-something who lives with her down-on-his-luck brother. The two have pretty much nothing in common, except for the fact that they both had dates with people who seemed way out of their league...and they both came back from their dates NOT QUITE RIGHT.
The build-up is great. If Field does one thing right, it's how he holds the mystery above the reader's head until the very end. Even when the third act began to crumble around the story and I began to lose interest, it was the mystery that kept me turning the pages, desperate to get closure. It was a good mystery. I was leaning towards something out of Disturbing Behavior, which is probably my favorite "bad" horror movie. I love that movie, plot holes and all. I was hoping THE MANY would be just as unapologetically cruel and cunning in its execution, but the execution was something out of an episode of The Twilight Zone. A bad episode of The Twilight Zone. It was just way too cheesy.
This is the second disappointing thriller I've picked up this year. First it was I'M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS. Now it's THE MANY. Neither book was awful, mind - both had some genuinely creepy moments and great suspense to keep their respective plots moving. The problems came from bad plotting, terrible third acts, and some questionable character motives. But at the risk of spoiling the ending, I'll just say that it's the kind of book you need to pick up and read for yourself to see if it's right for you. If the beginning doesn't rope you in, it'll only be downhill from there.
All too often, compassion is taken for weakness with female heroines. It's often what causes their downfall, creating snafus that the other characters must work to resolve. Compassion is not Lola's weakness. It's a part of her character, and one she sometimes has to set aside in order to do her work. Because Lola is not the docile gangbanger girlfriend she pretends to be; she's secretly the leader of the Crenshaw Six, and she's damn good.
What really makes LOLA is...Lola. I loved Lola's character - she's tough, and does incredibly brutal things that strike terror into the hearts of men; she's strong and indomitable; she can compartmentalize, stowing her kind nature away to do business with the gangs; and she's clever. I loved her cunning, and the way she pitted cartel against cartel in order to come out on top and survive. You don't often see cunning female protagonists in fiction, but Lola was that, and a very successful example, at that.
Lola gets into hot water when her gang - specifically her younger brother - screws up a heroin drop. But it turns out that the effort was skewed from the get-go. Someone made off with the drugs way too quickly, and when they finally get hold of the cash, it turns out to be colored paper. What ensues is a tangled plot of rivalries and betrayal, and a ticking clock that ultimately results in Lola's death.
As calculating and cunning as she is, she's also fiercely protective of younger women who are sexually abused by older men. Later on in the book, you meet a little girl named Lucy, whose mother sells her to adults for drug money. Lola bonds with Lucy, and their relationship is an oasis of cuteness in the midst of all this violence.
I think fans of Orange Is the New Black will really like LOLA. The politics and drama are balanced well, and Lola is an awesome heroine who is also a person of color. She's one of the strongest, most complicated, interesting heroines I've encountered in a while, and I can't tell you what a breath of fresh air it was to see one who didn't just talk the talk, but also walked the walk.
Would I read another book by this author? Oh, heck yes. Sign me up right now! And thank you so much to the publisher for handing me this copy for review!
I liked this a lot more than I thought I would. Flawed, but a definite improvement over this author's earlier work.
Maggie Sparkes is a super rich heiress who works in nonprofit. When she finds out her childhood friend/the daughter of her maid is dead, supposedly by suicide, she jets out to New York. No way Celine killed herself, Maggie cries to anyone (and I mean anyone) who will listen. But fear not! Detective Dip is on the case, and she's bought friends. She immediately starts going through all of her friend's things and finds items that...disturb her.
For the first 60% or so, this book has a definite IF I WERE YOU vibe. Maggie discovers a notebook in which her friend lists all of her sexual adventures before she died. She starts taking up with the man who might have killed her friend. She wears her dead friend's clothes and lives in her apartment. It's very awkward.
Is this a rip-off of IF I WERE YOU? No. They're very different stories. IIWY was erotica with a mystery thrown in. HWBMR is a mystery with some erotica thrown in. The focal point of this story is the mystery, and I was pleased to see that when it came down to brass tacks, the heroine was more interested in getting closure than sleeping with the hot, potentially murderous dudes (eventually).
At the 60% mark, the pacing picks up dramatically. Instead of slogging through tedious descriptions of Maggie attempting to play Nancy Drew/Gossip Girl, we're presented with even more subjects, interesting evidence, and some truly tense scenes as Celine's diary entries reveal clue after damning clue. Also, I loved the descriptions of old antiques and Chinese pottery. I actually didn't know how "new" bone china was, or how it got its name.
I probably would have enjoyed this more except for the fact that Maggie was a bland character, who didn't really have a personality apart from being rich and harboring an obsessive need to pour huge sums of money into finding out how her friend died. Why? An answer for this wasn't really provided, and I was given the impression that they were somewhat estranged.
I also thought that both she and Celine had definite TSTL tendencies. When they should have asked themselves, "Gee, maybe this person is a little too eager to install this camera into my house" or "maybe I shouldn't mix vodka and sleeping pills while in a fragile emotional state" they threw caution to the wind instead, leaving me shaking my head and muttering, "Really, lady? Really?"
HE WILL BE MY RUIN is mystery "light" with some sexual stuff thrown in. Not really my cup of tea, but I enjoyed it despite that, and found myself pleasantly surprised by this book's readability. Honestly, if you liked IF I WERE YOU, you'll probably like this, as the mystery is a lot better and it doesn't have quite as many long sex scenes. I'm not mad at it. Especially with its $1.99 price tag.
Remember those Point Horror books that were so popular in the 80s and 90s? R.L. Stine, Christopher Pike, Diane Hoh? When I was in middle school, my school library had a little bookshelf crammed with these trashy gems, and I checked them out by the dozen. I think by the time I had my commencement ceremony, I'd read all of the titles they had in circulation.There were various themes, but my favorite was always The Deadly Party - a throwback to parlor murder mysteries and escape the room puzzles, the deadly party was all fun & games until it wasn't.
THE ASSASSIN GAME is a modern version of The Deadly Party. Set in a Welsh boarding school, it is about a game of Assassin that goes horribly wrong. I took one look at that summary and instantly requested this as an ARC, which I then proceeded to forget about until a couple days ago. I downloaded THE ASSASSIN GAME and promptly read it in a sitting.
"Killer" is their more sophisticated version of Assassin and is kind of like a cross between Assassin and Mafia. Cate, our main protagonist - who also happens to own the island the school is built on, has been angling to participate for years - membership is highly exclusive and members can only be chosen - and now, she finally has her chance, thanks to her friends Marcia and Daniel.
Her school provides the perfect gothic backdrop with its patchy wi-fi and misty shores. The rules are simple. One person is the killer. The game ends when everyone is "killed" or the killer is discovered. Players have multiple chances to guess the killer's identity, but if they're wrong, they're dead. Deaths are supposed to be funny pranks, but since this is a spin-off of The Deadly Party trope, you know that someone is going to take things too far. Which they do, obviously, with a very fatal turn.
I really found myself enjoying this book far more than I thought I would have. I'm kind of jaded when it comes to YA. I think I'm getting too old. It's harder to relate to younger characters and their decisions. I often finding myself muttering, "crazy young whippersnappers..." and shaking my head over underage tomfoolery. I was able to shelve that for this book. Killer actually sounds fun - well, not the Too Far bits, but the premise of the game itself. I could understand why Cate got caught up in the thrill of it, and why nobody wanted the game to end. The suspense was TERRIBLE.
I mean that in the best way.
However, as much as I enjoyed THE ASSASSIN GAME I have to admit, it has its flaws. The romance elements in this book seemed forced. Cate is torn between two boys - a manic genius who might also be dangerous and a mopey nerd who can't take "no" for an answer. I was not impressed with either boy - especially when one of them commits what was pretty much an act of sexual assault. The villain in this book was also cringeworthy. I'd guessed who it was halfway through. Finally, Cate's narrative is emotionless and wooden. I would have liked to have seen some genuine emotion - fear, passion, something - from her, and instead was treated with...nothing.
THE ASSASSIN GAME is a light, fun read that I think will appeal to younger teens and twenty-year-olds who are feeling nostalgic for the trashy mysteries of their youth. Honestly, getting to relive the fun of reading a book that's meant to be pure thrill and nothing else was really great. Perfect for summer. Don't go into this expecting a whole lot of suspense, but do expect to be entertained.
09/28/17: This book is currently $1.99 for Kindle (and so is the sequel!)
Huge thank yous to the author and publisher for putting this book up on Netgalley. It's probably one of the best books I've received for review from that site this year. I'm rather desperate to get my hands on A WOUNDED NAME now. Authors who excel at doom and gloom are so few and far between
But Hutchison does. Oh, boy, she does.
I would be very surprised if Hutchison never read John Fowles's THE COLLECTOR - the parallels are numerous. Both are about obsessive men who compare women to butterflies and see them as sexual fetish objects to be owned and collected. Both are about women held captive who are desperate to escape. That said, I am not implying that THE BUTTERFLY GARDEN is derivative in the slightest. It is possible to be influenced by other work(s) and still make your story your own - something Hutchison does with great skill. Honestly, it reads like Gillian Flynn decided to rewrite THE COLLECTOR as a dysfunctional harem in the style of James Patterson's Alex Cross books, and it's darned good.
Maya was taken from the Garden. FBI agents Victor Hanoverian and Brandon Eddison are interviewing her to find out about the other girls and also about the man who called himself the Gardener. As the interview unwinds, we are left with bits and pieces of the story. The Gardener kidnaps young women and tattoos butterfly wings on their backs. He keeps them locked away in a glass harem, until they turn twenty-one-years of age. All the girls are marked with death the moment they come into his "care."
Maya had a dysfunctional childhood that forced her to become street smart at a young age. She knows how to read people and how to manipulative people, and she's not above using either of these skills in order to help escape. But as she gets to know the women she's trapped with the walls come down, and she finds herself more emotionally involved than she ever wanted to be - especially when some of her friends end up dying.
The writing in THE BUTTERFLY is gorgeous. The pacing is also really good. I found myself reading large chunks of this at a time without getting bored, which is often a good indicator of how good the author is at spinning out tension. I also loved the gritty realism in this book. One of the reasons I love Gillian Flynn's work, for example, is because she isn't afraid to write flawed female heroines or anti-heroines. Hutchison is much the same - she's damaged and can be a little cruel herself, which I appreciated, because given what she's gone through, why shouldn't she be?
I also really liked how The Gardener wasn't a stereotypical villain. He had moments of kindness, and even though he murdered and did terrible things to his Butterflies...it was chilling, because you could tell that he didn't think he was doing anything wrong. He really believed what he was doing was love. His sons, Avery and Desmond, were also interesting characters - Desmond, especially.
Anyone looking for a good psychological thriller/mystery will do well to read THE BUTTERFLY GARDEN. It's clearly influenced by a lot of great writers, but does an amazing job standing on its own two feet. Would love to see a movie version of this book one day! Think of the costumes!
Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨
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