Book Review- Final Girls

Title- Final Girls
Author- Riley Sager
Published-  July 13th 2017
Genre- Thriller, mystery
Length- 352 pages
Rating- 4.25/5
Synopsis (Goodreads)-  Each girl survived an unthinkable horror. Now someone wants them dead…

They were the victims of separate massacres. Grouped together by the press, and dubbed the Final Girls, they are treated like something fresh out of a slasher movie.

When something terrible happens to Lisa, put-together Quincy and volatile Sam finally meet. Each one influences the other. Each one has dark secrets. And after the bloodstained fingers of the past reach into the present, each one will never be the same.

Review- I received an ARC of this from the publisher so thank you to them.

This is a pretty standard thriller I would say. It has the usual plot twist at the end and in this case I guessed half of it very early on. It is written in a way that makes you guess it, there were a lot of clues. Yes some of those clues tried to misdirect you in terms of the other half of the twist, but I think they gave away too much too soon.

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Book Review- All the Good Things

Title- All the Good Things
Author- Clare Fisher
Published-  June 1st 2017
Genre- Contemporary, literary fiction
Length- 240 pages
Rating- 4/5
Synopsis (Goodreads)- Twenty-one year old Beth is in prison. The thing she did is so bad she doesn’t deserve to ever feel good again.

But her counsellor, Erika, won’t give up on her. She asks Beth to make a list of all the good things in her life. So Beth starts to write down her story, from sharing silences with Foster Dad No. 1, to flirting in the Odeon on Orange Wednesdays, to the very first time she sniffed her baby’s head.

But at the end of her story, Beth must confront the bad thing. What is the truth hiding behind her crime? And does anyone-even a 100% bad person-deserve a chance to be good?

Review- I received an ARC of this from the publisher so thank you to them.

This story is told from Beth’s perspective, mostly as if she is talking to her child. The majority of it is told in the past tense but that is interspersed with present day therapy sessions and time in prison. It is well done and easy to follow.

Book Review- Emma

Title- Emma
Author- Jane Austen
Published-  1816
Genre- Classic
Length- 392 pages
Rating- 3.75/5
Synopsis (Goodreads)- Beautiful, clever, rich – and single – Emma Woodhouse is perfectly content with her life and sees no need for either love or marriage. Nothing, however, delights her more than interfering in the romantic lives of others. But when she ignores the warnings of her good friend Mr. Knightley and attempts to arrange a suitable match for her protegee Harriet Smith, her carefully laid plans soon unravel and have consequences that she never expected. With its imperfect but charming heroine and its witty and subtle exploration of relationships, Emma is often seen as Jane Austen’s most flawless work.

Review- I think with classics like this there isn’t really a lot to say. Overall I liked it. I thought it was better than Sense and Sensibility, but not as good as Pride and Prejudice. The movie Clueless is apparently based on this book. Knowing that going in I did see the similarities, but if I hadn’t been told beforehand I don’t think I would have picked up on it.

Book Review- All Our Wrong Todays

Title- All Our Wrong Todays
Author- Elan Mastai
Published-  February 2017
Genre- Science fiction, time travel
Length- 393 pages
Rating- 5/5
Synopsis (Amazon)-  When Tom loses the love of his life, time travel seems like the only answer. . . what could possibly go wrong?

So, the thing is, I come from the world we were supposed to have. That means nothing to you, obviously, because you live here, in the crappy world we do have. But it never should’ve turned out like this. And it’s all my fault – well, me and to a lesser extent my father. And, yeah, I guess a little bit Penelope. In both worlds, she’s the love of my life. But only a single version of her can exist. I have one impossible chance to fix history’s greatest mistake and save this broken world. Except it means saving one Penelope and losing the other forever – and I have absolutely no idea which to choose . . .

Review- I received an ARC of this from the publisher so thank you to them.

This isn’t the type of book I normally read but that didn’t stop me from loving it! I don’t know if it not being my usual genre makes my rating more or less valid? Maybe those that read a lot of science-fiction wouldn’t like it, I don’t know, or maybe the fact that I loved it despite not normally liking science fiction shows just how amazing it is?

Book Review- The Book of You

Title- The Book of You
Author- Claire Kendal
Published-  2014
Genre- Thriller/crime
Length- 385 pages
Rating- 3.25/5
Synopsis (Goodreads)- A terrifying psychological thriller about obsession and power, perfect for fans of Gone Girl and Before I Go to Sleep.

Clarissa is becoming more and more frightened of her colleague, Rafe. He won’t leave her alone, and he refuses to take no for an answer. He is always there.

Being selected for jury service is a relief. The courtroom is a safe haven, a place where Rafe can’t be. But as a violent tale of kidnap and abuse unfolds, Clarissa begins to see parallels between her own situation and that of the young woman on the witness stand.

Realizing that she bears the burden of proof, Clarissa unravels the twisted, macabre fairytale that Rafe has spun around them – and discovers that the ending he envisions is more terrifying than she could have imagined.

Review- For a thriller this is nothing special.

The narrative switches between a weird version of second person, and third person, it takes a bit of getting used to and I think a different style would have made the book better. 

Book Review- This is Where it Ends

Title- This is Where it Ends
Author- Marieke Nijkamp
Published-  2016
Genre- YA
Length- 285 pages
Rating- 2.75/5
Synopsis (Goodreads)- 10:00 a.m. The principal of Opportunity High School finishes her speech, welcoming the entire student body to a new semester and encouraging them to excel and achieve.

10:02 a.m. The students get up to leave the auditorium for their next class.

10:03 a.m. The auditorium doors won’t open.

10:05 a.m. Someone starts shooting.

Told from four different perspectives over the span of fifty-four harrowing minutes, terror reigns as one student’s calculated revenge turns into the ultimate game of survival.

Review- I didn’t really enjoy this book, not because of the topic, but because it was badly done.

Firstly, some really basic things were annoying. Right at the start a lot of characters were introduced in quick succession, there were also several brother/sister combos, so when they were all introduced so quickly it was tricky to remember who was related to who. Also two of the characters had names that could be confusing, “Far”, and “Autumn”. Yes capital letters were used but with “Far” particularly, it wasn’t until his name was used three times that it was clear he was a person rather than a distance. The name of the school and town, “Opportunity”, was also just ridiculous. 

Book Review- Everything I Never Told You

Title- Everything I Never Told You
Author- Celeste Ng
Published-  2014
Genre- Contemporary, literary fiction
Length- 305 pages
Rating- 5/5
Synopsis (Goodreads)- Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet . . . So begins this debut novel about a mixed-race family living in 1970s Ohio and the tragedy that will either be their undoing or their salvation. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee; their middle daughter, a girl who inherited her mother’s bright blue eyes and her father’s jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue—in Marilyn’s case that her daughter become a doctor rather than a homemaker, in James’s case that Lydia be popular at school, a girl with a busy social life and the center of every party.

When Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together tumbles into chaos, forcing them to confront the long-kept secrets that have been slowly pulling them apart.

Review- It is difficult to know what to say about this book. When a book is this good it’s hard to find any faults with it, meaning that other than gushing praise, there isn’t much to say.

Book Review- Feral

Title- Feral
Author- James DeMonaco and B. K. Evenson
Published-  April 4th 2017
Genre- Science fiction, dystopian, post apocalyptic, horror
Length- 320 pages
Rating- 4/5
Synopsis (Goodreads)- Allie Hilts was still in high school when a fire at a top-secret research facility released an air-borne pathogen that quickly spread to every male on the planet, killing most. Allie witnessed every man she ever knew be consumed by fearsome symptoms: scorching fevers and internal bleeding, madness and uncontrollable violence. The world crumbled around her. No man was spared, and the few survivors were irrevocably changed. They became disturbingly strong, aggressive, and ferocious. Feral.
Three years later, Allie has joined a group of hardened survivors in an isolated, walled-in encampment. Outside the guarded walls the ferals roam free, and hunt. Allie has been noticing troubling patterns in the ferals’ movements, and a disturbing number of new faces in the wild. Something catastrophic is brewing on the horizon, and time is running out. The ferals are coming, and there is no stopping them.

Review-  I received an ARC of this from the publisher so thank you to them.

I haven’t been having the best luck with books lately so I was a bit worried about picking this up as it isn’t the type of thing I normally go for. When I read another review of this however, the reviewer mentioned that one of the authors was the writer of The Purge movie which I thought was well done so that gave me hope with this book.

This was a quick and easy read, a couple of other reviews that I’ve read claim that as this book went on it became really slow. I disagree. The pace does slow a little, but early on it is very fast so even slightly slower it is still well paced, you are never bored, there is no “down time” filled with long unnecessary explanations or descriptions, something interesting is always going on. The chapters are also quite short which I think most people agree makes a book quicker to get through.

Book Review- The End of the Day

Title- The End of the Day
Author- Claire North
Published-  April 6th 2017
Genre- Contemporary, literary fiction
Length- 416 pages
Rating- 1.5/5
Synopsis (Goodreads)- Charlie has a new job. He gets to travel, and he meets interesting people, some of whom are actually pleased to see him. It’s good to have a friendly face, you see. At the end. But the end of all things is coming. Charlie’s boss and his three associates are riding out, and it’s Charlie’s job to go before. Sometimes he is sent as a courtesy, sometimes as a warning. He never knows which.

Review- I received an ARC of this from the publisher so thank you to them.

I have read The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August and really enjoyed it so was excited to read this. I have been hugely disappointed. Reading this was a waste of my life. It was a huge struggle to get through and I nearly DNF-ed it so many times. In fact I wrote an entire post about DNF-ing books, and it was inspired by this book.

Do you DNF books?

So, I find it really difficult to not finish a book. Why? I’m not really sure. I think it’s mostly because I keep hoping that it will get better and I don’t want to miss out.

With ARCs there is an added factor, the publisher is expecting a review, and I don’t want to let them down. I also want to get future ARCs. I am totally fine writing bad reviews for ARCs, which last month in particular shows, but I feel like I have to at least write a review. I know some people still write reviews if they DNF a book but I think it is better to be able to do a full review, which to me means finishing the book. What if the ending is amazing and changes how you feel about the whole book?