Tag: advanced reader copy

Sadie

7 Comments

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Courtney Summers
Genres: Young Adult, Fiction
Pub date: Sep. 4th, 2018 (read July 2018)

I have a copy of one of Courtney Summers other books, All the Rage, that’s been sitting on my shelf waiting for me for awhile, but I’ve been hearing a lot of hype about this book and St. Martin’s Press was so kind as to send me an advance electronic copy in exchange for an honest review, so I decided to read this one first.

As usual, I barely read the synopsis for this one and picked it up mostly based on the hype, so I went into this blind. Sadie is the story of 19 year old Sadie Hunter and her younger sister Mattie. The book starts with Sadie’s disappearance after Mattie is found murdered. The girls mother was a drug abuser and did little parenting of her two daughters. They grew up with their surrogate grandmother, May Beth, but Sadie ultimately took on the responsibility of raising Mattie. She loved her sister with every fibre of her being, even though Mattie sometimes drove her crazy, so her death tears Sadie apart.

Sadie believes she knows who murdered Mattie and runs away from their home in Cold Creek to find him. The story is told from two different perspectives and played a big role in why I liked this book. Half of the story is told from Sadie’s perspective, but the other half is the transcript of an 8-part podcast called the girls, narrated by journalist and radio personality, West McCray. I thought the podcast transcript was brilliant and totally set the scene for this book. I literally never listen to podcasts, but my partner does and this read just like Serial, which I’ve heard him listening to on occasion, and reminded me of the old town crime mystery documentaries that I used to watch on TLC growing up.

So we get two very different perspectives from this novel. Sadie’s perspective is deeply personal and emotional. She is very much a girl who’s entire world has been torn apart and she starts to damn the consequences in her desperation to find her sister’s killer. Then there’s the other perspective from West McCray, who is more clinical about Sadie’s disappearance and is always two steps behind Sadie as he tries to track her down (side note: I know West is a man, but for some reason I pictured him as a woman throughout almost my entire reading. Anyone else get that vibe?). I thought that both narratives were incredibly strong and together made this a strong novel. Most of the double narrative books I read are split timeline historical fiction novels and I almost always find the modern day timeline boring compared to the historical one, but with this book, I found both narratives extremely compelling. Sadie’s story had depth and McCray’s was intriguing. I just felt so transported during every “podcast episode” that I couldn’t help but love it. Plus it was different from anything else I’ve read.

That said, parts of this book are tough to read. “Girls disappear all the time”. It’s a sad statement, but a true one. There is child abuse in this novel and Summers tackles some disturbing topics. I appreciated though that while Summers didn’t hold back the punches, she’s not graphic. “I’ve decided the gruesome details of what was uncovered.. will not be a part of this show,.. it’s violence and brutality do not exist for your entertainment.” Many books and shows are needlessly gratuitous when it comes to describing violence, so I’m glad she left it out. What she’s not afraid to tackle though are Sadie’s brutal thoughts. She shocked me several times, but she was determined that no one else suffer what she and her sister suffered, even if she had to destroy herself in the process.

The ending killed me. I won’t give any spoilers. It’s brutal, but it’s also exactly how it should be. I flew through this book in a single long weekend camping trip and I would definitely recommend it. I’m feeling a bit more of an itch now to finally pick up my copy of All the Rage.

Sadie’s publish date is Sept. 4th, 2018 if you want to pick up a copy!

The Death of Mrs. Westaway

2 Comments

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Author: Ruth Ware
Genres: Mystery
Pub Date: May 29, 2018 (read Apr. 2018)

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster Canada for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. 

Okay, first off I love Ruth Ware and I don’t know why! I generally give her books 3 stars and yet I find them so compulsively readable that I always come back for more. I should probably start rating them higher because I cannot say no to a Ruth Ware mystery.

The Death of Mrs. Westaway was quite different from all of her other novels. It still features a young English woman as the protagonist, but the mystery element was structured differently in this book and I wouldn’t call this one a thriller. At times the central mystery seems quite obvious, but you’re never really sure what is going on or if you have it right.

The Death of Mrs. Westaway tells the story of Hal Westaway and the Westaway family. Hal is just 21 years old and after losing her mother 3 years prior in a hit and run, she is very much alone in the world. She has no family and in her struggle to make ends meet and pay the bills, she has lost contact with any friends she once had. Her mother was everything to her and she takes over her mothers booth as a tarot card reader on the Brighton Pier to survive. But Hal is falling further and further in debt and they are starting to catch up with her.

Then one evening she receives a letter about the death of Mrs. Westaway, her grandmother, and that she has been named in the will and requested at Mrs. Westaway’s estate. The problem is that Hal’s grandparents have been dead for 20 years and she believes she must have received the letter in error. But the promise of a handout is too alluring and Hal wonders if she can trick this estranged family and walk away with enough money from the will to pay off her debts.

Things are definitely off with the rest of the Westaway family though and Hal quickly starts to wonder whether everything is actually as it seems. I think Ware does an excellent job writing Hal in this story. She is totally believable and I could totally empathize with the financial mess she’s found herself in and the desperation of trying to do whatever she can to pay her bills. I enjoyed her story arc and growth throughout the novel.

I didn’t like the rest of the Westaway family though, which I guess is kind of the point because they’re all flawed and their flaws make you wonder what is actually going on with this family and what is their real history. But I found it hard to connect with any of the other characters and I didn’t find the main twist very surprising. It’s more of a “wtf is going on in this book” moment and when the twist is finally revealed it’s not really that shocking – it was totally what I was expecting, I just wasn’t really sure how the author would take me there. I also thought the red herring was super obvious, although still pretty ominous and I do think it added to the story.

Overall not my favourite Ruth Ware book, but don’t doubt for a second that I won’t still be first in line to read whatever she writes next!

Thunderhead

2 Comments

 

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Author: Neal Shusterman
Genres: Science Fiction
Read: Jan. 2018 (Pub. date: Jan. 9, 2018)

 

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Canada for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I read Scythe at the end of 2017 and had somewhat mixed feelings on it. I found the first half kind of boring, but the book tackled a lot of complex concepts and themes and it really made me think, so I was interested to keep going with the series, even if I wasn’t totally in love with the writing.

Thunderhead is the sequel to Scythe and they are both set in a world in which humans have perfected technology and achieved immortality. Government has been replaced with an all-knowing “cloud” called the Thunderhead who maintains world order and essentially controls everything. The only thing outside the control of the Thunderhead is the Scythedom. Scythes are people who have been tasked with “gleaning” or killing people in order to somewhat maintain population growth. Scythes are supposed to be humble and just, but over the years the Scythedom has split in to two factions: the new-order scythes who envision a different way of doing things, and the old-guard, who want to maintain the original ideals of the Scythedom.

Scythe introduced us to all the different Scythes and their opinions on the best ways to glean. I liked Scythe because it introduced a lot of ethical issues concepts and it really got me thinking. It was mostly an introduction to the world Shusterman has created and sets us up for a much larger story. Thunderhead delves more into the story of the struggles and conflicts between the two Scythe factions and the fight to keep the Scythedom honest and ethical.

I’m thrilled to get an advanced reader copy of this book, but unfortunately I was disappointed with Thunderhead. The story definitely progresses in this book, but like the first book, I didn’t love the writing and I found it another slow moving story. My copy was 500 pages and I feel like I got a lot of info I didn’t care about. Like in the first book, each chapter is separated by a short note, but instead of excerpts from the Scythes journals, it’s brief thoughts from the Thunderhead. I thought Shusterman introduced some more interesting concepts in these excerpts, but they weren’t really developed any further in the actual plot and I found them less meaningful.

The Thunderhead is supposed to be a perfect artificial intelligence, but it’s terrifying how emotionally sentient it is. It becomes evident that the Thunderhead is just as prone to love and anger as humans, which is terrifying in an all-governing robot. Shusterman explores some ideas about what it might be like to live in a society governed by an all-knowing computer, but I found the main plot of the story, which was the continued clashes between the new order and old guard, to be a bit repetitive. Side note: the synopsis on goodreads is not very accurate. Citra does not risk going deadish to talk to the Thunderhead in this book.

The story still follows Rowan and Citra, but expands to include the viewpoints from other Scythes as well. It was constantly changing viewpoints, which I somewhat liked, but also found distracting. Again, the last 100 pages of the story were very eventful and went in a totally different direction than I was expected, but it wasn’t enough to redeem the first half of the book for me. Overall I found it slow moving and it didn’t make me think as much, which is what I enjoyed most about the first book.

Still a 3-star book though and it ends of a pretty big cliffhanger, so I’ll probably keep going with the series because I do really want to know what’s going to happen.