Tag: fiction

Book Review: The Blackbird Season, by Kate Moretti

In a small Pennsylvania town, a thousand dead starlings fall from the sky, landing on the baseball field. The town is in an uproar, wondering what caused the birds to die, and fearing for their safety. The dead birds are the biggest news to hit town for years. Until a reporter sees everyone’s favorite teacher, Nate Winters, embracing bad girl student Lucia Hamm in front of a no-tell motel.

Despite Nate’s denials, he’s soon being investigated, and Lucia adds fuel to the fire by claiming they are having an affair. Nate’s wife, Alecia, wonders if her husband is telling the truth. With the whole town hurling accusations, other rumors start to surface about Nate. Then Lucia disappears, and Nate is the only suspect. But there’s more going on in this small town than meets the eye, and with only one person on his side, Nate may never find out the truth.

The Blackbird Season was not what I expected at all. The portrayal of small-town life is so vivid and realistic, with the gossip and back-stabbing and secrets. As someone who grew up in a small town, this felt completely believable. I spent most of the book wondering, like the characters, if Nate was guilty and just what Lucia was hiding. There are a lot of twists and unexpected turns in this novel, and it’s a riveting read.

Kate Moretti is a scientist and New York Times bestselling author. Her newest novel is The Blackbird Season.

(Galley provided by Atria Books via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.)

Book Review: The End of the World Running Club, by Adrian J. Walker

Edgar Hill is a “meh” father at best: he’s content to let his wife take care of the kids while he avoids responsibility and contemplates his dreary life. Until the sky begins to fall, and he only has a few hours to prepare. With a rain of asteroids imminent, Edgar is catapulted into motion, trying to scrape together everything he can to help save his family from the apocalypse. They are trapped in their basement for two weeks, and emerge into a world almost totally devastated.

With a few other survivors, they attempt to sort out their lives. When Edgar is out on a supply run one day, his family is rescued and taken all the way across the country in preparation for evacuation. Now he has only weeks to make it to them, with no vehicles, no supplies, and crazy, power-hungry scavengers who want to rule their own territories between him and his family. Running is the only answer. And Ed has never been much of a runner—more of a couch potato—so the lack of supplies isn’t even his biggest obstacle. Will his ragtag group make it to safety in time?

This novel mixes a dystopian, end-of-the-world feel with literary prose to achieve an adventure that focuses on the outer obstacles, but also a man’s struggles with his own inner ugliness. Ed isn’t a nice guy. He loves his family, but he’s kind of—okay, definitely is—a jerk. The end of the world doesn’t change that, but it does shake loose something in Ed and make him realize how precious his family is. Ed’s friend, Bryce, is a fantastic supporting character, injecting humor and attitude that Ed is decidedly lacking. This was a good read that gave me a bit to think about.

Adrian J. Walker was born in Australia, but now lives in London. The End of the World Running Club is his newest novel.

(Galley provided by Sourcebooks via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.)

Book Review: The Long Ride Home, by Tawni Waters

Harley lost her mother a few months ago, and she hasn’t even begun to recover. But it’s summer now, and summer is a time of change. So, Harley sets off on a road trip to come to terms with her loss, find out more about her mother’s past, and scatter her mother’s ashes. Her best friend, Dean, goes along for the ride, but Harley doesn’t know what to do about their relationship—which caused her to shut Dean out when they became more than friends.

Soon enough, Harley realizes she’s pregnant with Dean’s child. Hiding her secret as she learns more about her mother’s life, she realizes her mother faced the same choices she now does. If she is ever to know what the right decision for her is, she’ll have to find out the truth about her mother’s past.

From the first page, Harley’s voice drew me into this story. She’s hurting so badly from her loss, and she’s shut everyone out as a result, but she wants to change. Her internal journey is as compelling as it is painful, and the reader is dragged along for the ride, over the bumps and through the bruises, until Harley finds clarity.

Tawni Waters grew up near an abandoned hippie commune in New Mexico. The Long Ride Home is her newest novel.

(Galley provided by Sourcebooks via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.)

Book Review: The Salt Line, by Holly Goddard Jones

In the future, life in the United States has contracted behind a wall of scorched earth—The Salt Line—that keeps citizens safe from deadly ticks that carry a horrific disease. Social media is ever-present, and life isn’t too different from now. Instead of going on big-game safaris to Africa, the wealthy pay to travel outside the safe zone, into the America outside the salt line.

A pop star’s girlfriend, Edie; tech genius Wes, and housewife Marta are all part of the same excursion, but once through their three weeks of survival training, they realize their vacation trip has more in store than they ever suspected. Ending up as hostages to a group of outer-zone survivors, they discover the darker secrets holding up their world, and find themselves at the mercy of everyone who wants to keep those things secret.

At first the idea of a tick causing everyone to retreat behind walls was a little bit hard for me to adjust to, but yeah, I’d run from these things, too. The world of The Salt Line is just familiar enough to make the idea of killer ticks even more scary, with social media a constant focus of every life (sound familiar?). This is a novel about an ensemble cast, which can be hard to pull off, but Jones nails it, and the backstories and motivations of her characters kept me just as engaged as the “current” action.

Holly Goddard Jones’ newest novel is The Salt Line.

(Galley provided by Penguin Group/Putnam via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.)

Book Review: Bitter Past by Caroline Fardig

Pageflex Persona [document: PRS0000038_00074] — Image belongs to Caroline Fardig.

Ellie Matthews teaches forensics at a private college now, but she used to be a crime scene investigator, until one horrifying murder case turned personal. Now she teaches aspiring CSI students, and dotes on her young nephew. Then she finds the body of a murdered student, and suddenly her world is in chaos.

Ellie’s mentor asks her to consult on the case, and soon Ellie is in the thick of a murder investigation in which her closest academic colleague is the chief suspect. While Ellie races to make sense of the evidence and identify the killer, more bodies pile up, and soon Ellie has no idea who she can trust.

I’ve read—and loved—all the Java Jive books, so I was excited to read Caroline Fardig’s newest endeavor, and I was not disappointed. Ellie is a complex character, and her past haunts her, no matter how much she tries to pretend otherwise. She likes her quiet life as a professor, but her past as a CSI calls to her as well. I had to keep changing my guesses as to who the murderer was, and I didn’t quite get it right. I loved the premise, and the setting, and I look forward to reading more of Ellie’s adventures.

Caroline Fardig is the best-selling author of the Lizzie Hart Mysteries and the Java Jive Mysteries series. Her newest novel, Bitter Past, is the first book in the Ellie Matthews series.

(Galley provided by the author in exchange for an honest review.)

Book Review: The Girl with the Red Balloon, by Katherine Locke

For Ellie Baum, being in Berlin on a school trip is little unsettling: she’s grown up listening to tales from her grandfather, who escaped from a death camp in 1942. She loves her grandfather, but his stories don’t always make sense. Like the ones of the balloons carrying people to safety. She’s heard his stories, she just doesn’t believe them. Until she catches the string of a red balloon, and ends up in East Berlin in 1988, before the Berlin Wall fell.

Stranded in the midst of an oppressive regime, Ellie meets Kai, one of the Runners who help balloon passengers escape over the wall. But no one knows what happened to Ellie’s balloon; they just know its real Passenger is dead. With the help of Kai and Mitzi, Ellie must unravel the mystery of her time travel if she’s ever to return to her own time. But someone want to use time travel to change history. And that person doesn’t care who has to die to do so.

At first, I wasn’t too sure about this book and Ellie herself, but I ended up really loving it. This is such a unique concept, and I’ve personally not read much—if anything—set in East Berlin while the Wall was still up. The tale of Ellie’s grandfather is just as enthralling as Ellie’s is, and Kai and Mitzi are so intriguing I wanted to know much more about them. A very compelling book, set in a bleak time in history.

The Girl with the Red Balloon is Katherine Locke’s first YA novel.

(Galley provided by AW Teen via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.)

Book Review: Mask of Shadows, by Linsey Miller

*Just to be clear, the main character of Mask of Shadows is gender-fluid, and the author would like reviews to use they/them pronouns for continuity, so that’s what I’m doing.*

Sallot Leon is the only survivor of a shadow war that sacrificed their entire nation years ago. More than anything, Sal wants revenge. When one of the Left Hand—the queen’s elite quartet of assassins—dies, Sal decides to stop being a thief and become Opal.

But competition for the spot of Opal is fierce. It’s more than fighting. The competition also includes lessons in healing, poisons, and even reading—where Sal meets Elise, a scribe who’s also frustrated with the status quo at court. Only one apprentice becomes Opal. The rest die. And meals and lessons are the only violence-free times, so Sal must be alert always if they want to stay alive, while trying to find out just who was behind the massacre of their people so they can finally have their revenge. And winning would be nice, too.

There’s been a big deal made about Sal being gender-fluid, and the novel itself shows a dichotomy of sorts. 1) The characters in the novel really don’t make a big deal about this. Sort of Oh, you’re gender fluid? Cool. Whatever. 2) Sal gets emotional when someone treats them like the gender-fluidity is no big deal, as if it has normally been a big deal in the past. Which one of these things is accurate? Because I don’t think they can both be accurate: it’s either a big deal, or it isn’t. I noticed the dichotomy, but it didn’t detract from the story for me.

That issue aside, I enjoyed this book immensely. I’ve also seen a ton of “Oh, this is just like The Hunger Games” comments. Yes, there’s the whole there-can-be-only-one-survivor competition angle that’s the same, and…that’s the only similarity I saw, so I wouldn’t say just like The Hunger Games. The history in the novel wasn’t super clear to me—I did not get a clear picture of the political climate and what happened with the destruction of Sal’s nation—nor did I find out as much as I wanted to about the shadows, but the book was a great read, with plenty of action and conflict, and a unique main character that I liked a lot.

Linsey Miller is a former biology student turned MFA candidate. Mask of Shadows is her debut novel.

(Galley provided by Sourcebooks via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.)

Book Review: All the Wicked Girls, by Chris Whitaker

The small town of Grace, Alabama might be highly named, but it’s a little short on its follow-through. Populated by rednecks, people haunted by regrets, and economic depression, the town is full of hurting people shadowed by darkness. Then bright spot Summer Ryan goes missing, and the entire town fears she’s been taken by The Bird, believed responsible for the disappearances of five other local, church-going good girls.

But as Raine Ryan—Summer’s twin sister—investigates her sister’s disappearance, she discovers that Summer wasn’t quite the good girl everyone thought. With the help of Noah, a local boy who adores Raine, she starts asking questions, and soon the darkness that’s been hidden in Grace is visible to the whole world.

All the Wicked Girls shows a good picture of life in a small Southern town: the town busybodies who want to know everyone else’s business, the good ol’ boys who think they know more than the guys in charge, the teenagers yearning to get out of town. In fact, the Southern gothic feel of the novel is so spot-on, that I was surprised to learn the author is English, not Southern. The setting is fantastically well-done.

I love how the story is told in alternating points of view, including the missing Summer telling of thing that happened before. Raine is a force of nature, and Noah is endearing as he struggles with his health issues as well as the loss of his father. There’s a lot of twists in this novel, and the suspense will keep the reader gripping the pages to find out what’s really going on.

Chris Whitaker was born in London and worked as a financial trader. All the Wicked Girls is his newest novel.

(Galley provided by Zaffre in exchange for an honest review.)

Book Review: The List, by Patricia Forde

Ark is the last safe place on Earth, and every resource is utilized fully. After the polar ice melted and the seas rose, the world changed, and Noa was smart enough to create Ark and hold it in his iron fist. He doesn’t allow art. Or music. And there’s a list of 500 words that are the only ones allowed to be used.

Letta is an apprentice Wordsmith, and can read all words, not just those on the list. When her master vanishes and Letta is made the new wordsmith, she’s told to cut even more words from the list. Then Letta meets a boy who knows all the old words, and he warns her that Noa intends to take language from people forever. Letta must decide between fighting for words and art and music, or facing banishment in the wilds.

As an avid reader and writer—and as a former environmental biology major—the premise of The List horrified me. The environmental disasters that led to the changed world are not far-fetched to me, but the idea of forbidding almost every word is horrifying beyond belief. While I’ve seen a lot of comments that this book is middle-grade, I don’t really agree with that. It’s not written on a middle-grade reading level, and it deals with much deeper issues than most middle-grade books I’ve seen. I would classify it as solidly YA, and while the premise isn’t totally unique, the worldbuilding and characters are solid enough to make it worth reading…even if the idea of someone who controls spoken words is terrifying.

Patricia Forde lives in western Ireland and has written children’s books, plays, and television drama series. The List is her newest novel.

(Galley provided by Sourcebooks via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.)

Book Review: The Innkeeper’s Sister, by Linda Goodnight

Grayson Blake and his brother have come home to Honey Ridge, Tennessee to turn an old gristmill into one of their up-and-coming restaurants. Grayson has a strict schedule he plans to stick to, no matter what. Time is money, after all. But when an old skeleton is found in the basement of the mill, his schedule comes to a screeching halt.

Valerie Carter is a former ballet dancer and now co-owner of a charming inn in Honey Ridge. The secrets from her past haunt her, as does the love of the dance she still yearns for. Regret and memories threaten to overwhelm her, when she meets Grayson and finds herself swept into a Civil War-era mystery that ties the skeleton in the mill with her beloved Peach Orchard Inn.

I didn’t realize The Innkeeper’s Sister was part of a series when I started reading. Fortunately, it’s also a standalone, so readers who haven’t read the other books will be fine. I’m from the South, and this novel is Southern through-and-through, from the sweet iced tea to the everything-is-perfect façade put on by Valerie’s mother. Both Grayson and Valerie have faced tragedy in their lives, tragedy they are still struggling to overcome. There are two storylines here: the modern-day one of Valerie and Grayson, and the Civil War one that tells the story of the skeleton in the mill. Both lend depth to each other, and strengthen the family bonds of the Carters. An uplifting story about characters that are flawed and struggling to find their strengths while overcoming their weaknesses.

Linda Goodnight is a best-selling and award-winning fiction writer. Her newest novel is The Innkeeper’s Sister, part of the Honey Ridge series.

(Galley provided by Harlequin via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.)

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