Tag Archives: Murder

Review: How We Fall Apart by Katie Zhao

Book Review and Content, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , , ,
How We Fall Apart by Katie Zhao

How We Fall Apart
Katie Zhao
Bloomsbury
Published August 3, 2021

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About How We Fall Apart

Students at an elite prep school are forced to confront their secrets when their ex-best friend turns up dead.

Nancy Luo is shocked when her former best friend, Jamie Ruan, top ranked junior at Sinclair Prep, goes missing, and then is found dead. Nancy is even more shocked when word starts to spread that she and her friends–Krystal, Akil, and Alexander–are the prime suspects, thanks to “The Proctor,” someone anonymously incriminating them via the school’s social media app.

They all used to be Jamie’s closest friends, and she knew each of their deepest, darkest secrets. Now, somehow The Proctor knows them, too. The four must uncover the true killer before The Proctor exposes more than they can bear and costs them more than they can afford, like Nancy’s full scholarship. Soon, Nancy suspects that her friends may be keeping secrets from her, too.

My Review

One of the things I feel like this book captured really well or conveyed really well is the high-pressure experience of being a student at an elite school. Nancy not only feels the pressure of her school program and being a scholarship student surrounded by rich kids from privileged families, but also feels intense pressure from her parents to do well and make all their sacrifices worth it.

At first I found it difficult to connect with Nancy because she’s bitter and aloof. As I started to see more and more of her life, I felt like it made a lot of sense that she acted the way she did. Her relationship with Jamie was complicated and pretty toxic, but it made sense that they stayed kind of bound up in each other. So that was another thing that I ultimately felt was strong about the story.

Some of the scene changes felt abrupt to me. It sometimes felt like the writing was a little rushed, so I read the beginnings of scenes sometimes more than once trying to figure out if I’d missed something. Or maybe there was a flashback or timeline change that happened quickly. Sometimes I struggled to follow those, but maybe that was just me.

I think all in all there are some really strong things about the story– and I really enjoyed the experience of reading a suspense story with an Asian cast. Hopefully HOW WE FALL APART does really well and paves the way for other books like this!

I think readers who enjoy suspense stories will like this one, especially early high school readers, like freshman and sophomores.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
Major characters are Asian. Two female characters are in a romantic relationship.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Strong profanity used very infrequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between boy and girl. References to sex. Kissing between two girls.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
Some descriptions of bullying. References to a girl found murdered. Description of a confrontation that leads to a head injury. A fire causes injuries.

Drug Content
A girl offers her friends a drink of juice and puts vodka in it without telling them. They realize what she’s done and drink the juice anyway.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support running this blog. I received a free copy of HOW WE FALL APART in exchange for my honest review.

Review: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

Book Review and Content, Coming of Age, Historical, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, , , , , , ,

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Flavia de Luce #1)
Alan Bradley
Delacorte Press
Published April 24, 2009

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | Indiebound | Goodreads

About The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

It is the summer of 1950–and at the once-grand mansion of Buckshaw, young Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, is intrigued by a series of inexplicable events: A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Then, hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath.

For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. “I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.”

My Review

A long time ago, after I reviewed and enjoyed a mystery featuring a young narrator, someone suggested the Flavia de Luce series to me. I borrowed THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE from the library but only got maybe halfway through before having to return it. I liked what I’d read, but got sidetracked by other things and didn’t pick it up again until now.

Flavia is spunky and whip-smart. She has an interesting relationship with her two older sisters which mostly consists of giving each other a hard time and playing tricks on one another. There’s an undercurrent of protectiveness and caring in there, too. Sort of the only-I-can-mess-with-my-sister type of thing. It was kind of sweet.

I thought Flavia cleverly followed the thread of the mystery, having her own child-like moments here and there between highly analytical research, experiments and deductions. I feel like it should have been harder to believe that she’s eleven years old, but for some reason, I wasn’t really bothered by that as I was reading.

One section shows her listening to a long recounting of her father’s life at school. It’s interesting because it’s some of the only real interaction we see between them, but it goes on for a long time and sort of shifts the focus of the story to be about him from there on out.

Another thing to note is that there are a couple of racially insensitive (at best) situations or comments in the story. I’ve listed them below in the contents. To be honest, these are the kinds of things I have the most trouble with as a reviewer. This book is set in the 1950s and published in 2009 (which isn’t that long ago). I feel like the face-painting and Flavia’s comment could have been easily left out. They may have been historically accurate representations of ideas at the time, but including them feels insensitive to me, and none of them were critical to the story.

I enjoyed the mystery elements, and felt like the characters are believable and interesting. I wish it hadn’t included those few references.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 12 up.

Representation
Takes place in England.

Flavia’s father and a friend had a performance routine in which they dressed up as a Chinese man using make-up and an unflattering accent. Flavia later makes an off-hand comment about colonization “civilizing” the indigenous people– though it’s unclear if she says this sarcastically. These things may have been historically accurate representations of feelings and behavior at the time the story takes place, but are at the least racially insensitive and prejudiced.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Mild profanity used infrequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Flavia sees a young man kiss a young woman.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content – Trigger warning for bullying, suicide and murder.
Flavia is the youngest of three sisters, and her older sisters boss her around and bully her sometimes. Flavia also commits pranks against her sisters. She also learns of a student her father knew who was bullied.

Description of a man throwing himself from a rooftop. Flavia discovers the body of a stranger in the garden who appears to have been murdered.

Contains situations of peril. Two scenes show Flavia tied up and locked away.

Drug Content
Adults drink alcohol socially.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support the costs of running this blog.

Review: The Wickerlight by Mary Watson

Blogger's Favorites, Book Review and Content, Fantasy, Paranormal, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , , , , ,

The Wickerlight (The Wren Hunt #2)
Mary Watson
Bloomsbury YA
Published November 26, 2019

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | Goodreads

About The Wickerlight

It’s been two months since Laila was found lifeless on Kilshamble village green, not a mark on her. Rumour says she died of an overdose. Or maybe it was suicide? The autopsy found nothing, but somebody must know what happened.

Now Laila’s sister Zara is ready to pick up the trail. But retracing her sister’s footsteps takes her to David, a Judge at the dangerous heart of an ancient magical feud. All too unwittingly, she begins to tread the same path that led her sister to the village green .

Mary Watson’s sequel to THE WREN HUNT is an eerie, magical thriller about a dead girl, her sister and the boy who can unlock the truth of what happened the night she died. Perfect for fans of Frances Hardinge and Emily Bain Murphy’s THE DISAPPEARANCES.

My Review

In the book THE WREN HUNT, the story follows Wren, a young Augur who’s caught in the middle of the war between her people and the Judges, her enemies. THE WICKERLIGHT is told by two people: one of the Judges who hunted Wren named David (and get ready, because there’s so much more to this guy than you thought there was in the first book!) and an outsider named Zara who simply wants to know what happened to her sister.

I had a much easier time connecting with the story this time through– I think maybe because I was already a bit familiar with the story world. I also LOVED getting to see a whole different side of David, who was in the first book. And seeing the community from an outsider’s perspective also gave the story a lot more intrigue, too. Right off the bat, the reader knows so much more than Zara does, and it added a lot of tension to many of the things she did, because we knew the danger she was placing herself in, even when she didn’t.

Some of the other characters from THE WREN HUNT appear in THE WICKERLIGHT, too. Cassa Harkness, Wren, and Tariq all appear on the page here and there. It was cool to read about them again and find out what had happened to them since the end of the first book.

Would I read a third book in this series? Um. YEAH. Especially after the way THE WICKERLIGHT ends, yes, yes, YES! Please tell me more. I can’t wait to dive back into this really delicious, dark Irish storyworld.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 16 up.

Representation
Zara and her family are Indian and from Australia. Other characters are Irish.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used infrequently by one character.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between boy and girl.

Spiritual Content
Use of magic and curses.

Violent Content
Some graphic violence and brief scenes of torture.

Drug Content
Some reference to experimentation with drugs.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support the costs of running this blog. I received a free copy of THE WICKERLIGHT in exchange for my honest review.

Review: For Such a Time as This by Sharon Risher with Sherri Wood Emmons

Book Review and Content, Nonfiction, , , , , , , , ,

For Such a Time as This
Sharon Risher with Sherri Wood Emmons
Chalice Press
Published June 11, 2019

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | Goodreads

The instant her phone rang, Reverend Sharon Risher sensed something was horribly wrong. Something had happened at Emanuel AME Church, the church of her youth in Charleston, South Carolina, and she knew her mother was likely in the church at Bible study. Even before she heard the news, her chaplain’s instinct told her the awful truth: her mother was dead, along with two cousins. What she couldn’t imagine was that they had been murdered by a white supremacist.

Plunged into the depths of mourning and anger and shock, Sharon could have wallowed in the pain. Instead, she chose the path of forgiveness and hope – eventually forgiving the convicted killer for his crime. In this powerful memoir of faith, family, and loss, Sharon begins the story with her mother, Ethel Lee Lance, seeking refuge in the church from poverty and scorn and raising her family despite unfathomable violence that rattled Sharon to her core years later; how Sharon overcame her own struggles and answered the call to ministry; and how, in the loss of her dear mother,

Sharon has become a nationally known speaker as she shares her raw, riveting, story of losing loved ones to gun violence and racism. Sharon’s story is a story of transformation: How an anonymous hospital chaplain was thrust into the national spotlight, joining survivors of other gun-related horrors as reluctant speakers for a heartbroken social-justice movement. As she recounts her grief and the struggle to forgive the killer, Risher learns to trust God’s timing and lean on God’s loving presence to guide her steps.

Where her faith journey leads her is surprising and inspiring, as she finds a renewed purpose to her life in the company of other survivors. Risher has been interviewed by Time Magazine, Marie-Claire, Essence, Guardian-BCC Radio, CNN, and other media sources. She regularly shares her story on American college campuses and racial-reconciliation events. “To Forgive a Killer,” her essay as told to Abigail Pesta published in Notre Dame Magazine, won the 2018 Front Page Award for Essay published in a Magazine, awarded by the Newswomen’s Club of New York .

My Review

When I heard about FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS, I knew I needed to read it. I remember hearing about the shooting in Charleston and feeling deeply disturbed at the boldness and actions of the killer. Rev. Risher tells the story of her family and her journey through grief toward healing with courage and very straight talk. This isn’t a flowery, feel-good story. It’s raw and real, full of struggle, humanity, and faith.

Risher wades into political waters as she describes her personal evolution into an advocate for sensible gun laws and for racial equality in the United States. Hearing her perspective on why she travels the country speaking and how she developed her message moved me, too. It made me think about the way I have conversations with people.

She suggests beginning with a common ground. What is something that both parties agree on? Find that common ground and then build on it. I’m hoping to put this into practice in my own life as I have conversations about social issues with people I care about.

Risher’s frank discussion of racism in America left me with chills. Her calls to action to learn to have difficult conversations, to keep talking about racial issues even when we’re uncomfortable, stick with me even after the pages of the book are closed. I agree with her, and I want to find appropriate ways to be part of those conversations, too.

All in all, I think FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS is a must-read for anyone in America. This shooting happened here, perpetrated by a man with abhorrent ideas, ones shared by too many other people. After an event like that, I find myself wondering what to do, or how to respond. I think this book does a lot toward equipping people to do those very things.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
Sharon Risher’s mother, two cousins, and a childhood friend, who are all black, were killed by a white supremacist at their church in Charleston.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Strong profanity used near a dozen times throughout the book.

Romance/Sexual Content
Brief recollection of falling in love and getting married.

Spiritual Content
Risher herself is a chaplain and calls on her faith to help herself and others through deep grief and anger.

Violent Content
Some brief descriptions of the mass shooting at the AME church in Charleston.

Drug Content
Simon and his friends drink alcohol, which is legal at eighteen in Australia.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support the costs of running this blog. I received a free copy of FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS in exchange for my honest review.

Review: Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart

Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, New Adult 18up, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , ,

Genuine Fraud
E. Lockhart
Delacorte Press
Published September 5, 2017

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads | Book Depository

From the author of the unforgettable New York Times bestseller We Were Liars comes a masterful new psychological suspense novel–the story of a young woman whose diabolical smarts are her ticket into a charmed life. But how many times can someone reinvent themselves? You be the judge.

Imogen is a runaway heiress, an orphan, a cook, and a cheat.
Jule is a fighter, a social chameleon, and an athlete. 
An intense friendship. A disappearance. A murder, or maybe two. 
A bad romance, or maybe three.
Blunt objects, disguises, blood, and chocolate. The American dream, superheroes, spies, and villains. 
A girl who refuses to give people what they want from her.
A girl who refuses to be the person she once was.

My Review

Wow. I was not expecting this book to be as dark as it was. From the description, I think I expected there to be two points of view, Imogen and Jule. There’s not– the whole story is told from Jule’s perspective. It’s also told in a choppy timeline, where each chapter jumps backward a bit and then runs forward to end where the previous chapter began. (Like the movie Memento with Edward Norton.)

I think the timeline totally worked. It created this choppy, suspenseful story where Jule’s completely in control of the narrative. I suspected a few of the twists before they happened, but some things took me completely by surprise.

Some of the book reminded me a little bit of a poem I read once by Robert Frost, which I think is about a boy killed with an axe. The words create this kind of aloof, calm sense, but somehow that makes what the poem tells all the more shocking and disturbing. That’s how I felt about some of the scenes in the book.

I felt like I couldn’t look away. Even when I didn’t want to know what happened, I felt like I had to finish the story. The writing was pretty compelling. It’s definitely one of those stories that looks at the darker impulses of being human: selfishness, obsession, greed.

If you’re into darker lit, GENUINE FRAUD is probably right up your alley. If you prefer stories where you like the characters and grow to like them more as the story progresses and you understand them more, GENUINE FRAUD is not likely to be the kind of book you’d enjoy. I’d recommend WE WERE LIARS by E. Lockhart instead, or WE ARE THE GOLDENS by Dana Reinhardt.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 16 up.

Representation
Jule’s sexual orientation is unclear. At times it seems like she has feelings for Imogen, but it’s hard to tell whether those feelings are sexual.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity and some crude language used often throughout the book.

Romance/Sexual Content
Jule witnesses Imogen having sex in the pool with her boyfriend. Imogen references walking in on two female roommates having sex.

Spiritual Content
Jule listens to a man singing “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” at a bus station and wonders whether she’s too lost for a savior. She concludes that she is.

Violent Content
Scenes show two young women bashed in the head with heavy, blunt objects. In two other scenes, a young woman attacks someone who’s following her. Details are a bit disturbing. A young man is found after having apparently hanged himself.

Drug Content 
Imogen drinks alcohol at a bar in Puerto Rico with Jule (where it’s legal).

Note: This post contains affiliate links which cost you nothing but which help support this blog.

Review: Wild and Crooked by Leah Thomas

Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , ,

Wild and Crooked
Leah Thomas
Bloomsbury USA Children’s
June 4, 2019

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads | Book Depository

About WILD AND CROOKED

In Samsboro, Kentucky, Kalyn Spence’s name is inseparable from the brutal murder her father committed when he was a teenager. Forced to return to town, Kalyn must attend school under a pseudonym . . . or face the lingering anger of Samsboro’s citizens, who refuse to forget the crime.

Gus Peake has never had the luxury of redefining himself. A Samsboro native, he’s either known as the “disabled kid” because of his cerebral palsy, or as the kid whose dad was murdered. Gus just wants to be known as himself.

When Gus meets Kalyn, her frankness is refreshing, and they form a deep friendship. Until their families’ pasts emerge. And when the accepted version of the truth is questioned, Kalyn and Gus are caught in the center of a national uproar. Can they break free from a legacy of inherited lies and chart their own paths forward?

My Review

I’m a huge fan of Leah Thomas, specifically the way she writes these deep, complex, unusual characters. I’m always drawn in and fascinated by the way she gets me to love people that at first I’m not sure if I can like.

Kalyn was tough for me. I tend to struggle with characters who use crude language or gratuitous swearing. Or in this case, both. And that was definitely a struggle for me. Lots of times I feel like authors use language like that to show that a character is a bad kid or is cool, and it gets redundant and feels lazy to me. Like, there are other ways to get that point across.

In this case, I felt like a lot of the word choices were really deliberate. They were meant to make us uncomfortable and remind us that Kalyn and Gus live in entirely different worlds, even though they’re in the same small town. It called sharp attention to the difference in the way her family and Gus’s family were treated by the town.

She also does learn that people will treat her differently when she acts differently. It’s a bit of a mixed message, because she feels like she’s not being true to herself when she acts all sugar and no spice. But it created an interesting moment when she stopped to realize that. It’s kind of one of those growing up moments, right? We want the world to be a place where we don’t get judged based on the way we dress or talk, but the truth is it doesn’t work that way most of the time. (Which doesn’t make it right.)

Anyway, WILD AND CROOKED gave me a lot to think about. I got invested in solving the mystery of what really happened to Gus’s dad and why. And I think the story really nailed it on the lesson that even when people use profanity and crude language, they still have the same value as anyone else. I want to pretend I didn’t need that reminder, but the truth is, I think I did.

If you like Leah Thomas books, you’ll find the same complex, great cast of characters and LGBT+ representation in WILD AND CROOKED. I think fans of LAST SEEN LEAVING by Caleb Roehrig may also enjoy this book for its murder-solving elements. The tone is different, but it has some of the same intensity.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 15 up.

Representation
Gus has Cerebral Palsy and struggles with finding the right word as well as some physical handicaps. Gus identifies as pansexual. Kalyn comes from a poor family and identifies as lesbian. Gus’s best friend believes he has no empathy resulting from a brain injury. Gus has two moms.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity and some crude language used often throughout the book.

Romance/Sexual Content
Two girls kissing. References to sex. One character references memories of conversion therapy camp in which a priest made her look at pornographic images of a man and woman together.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
A teenager shoots and kills someone. Another teen brutally attacks someone with no feelings of remorse.

Drug Content 
Scenes include teens smoking cigarettes.

Note: This post contains affiliate links which cost you nothing but which help support this blog.