Disclaimer: I received this ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The Murderer’s Daughter (3.5 stars) is an enjoyable, well-plotted thriller fronted by an intelligent protagonist named Grace Blades. It’s structured so that we learn about her backstory concurrently while she’s solving a murder and, in fact, protecting herself, since she is connected to the victim. Grace, we learn, was born into a dirt-poor, abusive family, and one of her parents ends up murdering the other. Grace is bounced around in foster care […]
Shut up, Juliette
Shatter Me is a silly, overblown book that reads like the literary journal the kids in your 1990’s middle school published out of the public library and distributed in front of a local Hot Topic. I’m not going into a lot of plot detail here, because if you’ve read any dystopian YA novel in the past five years, you’ve read this one. I’m also going to be mildly spoiling the book, so, you know, beware. Juliette has been locked up in a solitary psych ward […]
An underwhelming collaboration from some greats
Disclaimer: I received this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Black Trillium was first published in the early nineties, a joint effort of three respected fantasy authors now turning their collective attentions toward a trio of three royal sisters who are fated to restore balance to the world. It’s now being republished with a neat new cover but, unfortunately, the formulaic story with three heroines who may as well be stock characters for all of the depth they do not possess is […]
To sleep, perchance to dream
Night Beach (4.5 stars) is about a one very simple thing. A girl surfer-slash-artist has a crush on a boy surfer who sees her — sometimes. But it’s also about a few other very complicated, possibly unreal things, which make this book overall very hard to define. Abbie likes Kane; this much is clear. In fact, she’s obsessed with him, in that painfully teenage way that grovels for the tiniest morsel of acknowledgement and acceptance. This kid, Kane, is a few years older, stays in […]