A Monday Mystery! Closed Casket by Sophie Hannah

I will freely admit that is impossible for me to be unbiased when it comes to Agatha Christie. I love everything Dame Agatha, and I could not have been more excited when Sophie Hannah received permission from Christie's estate to write new Hercule Poirot books. Hannah is a brilliant writer in her own right, and her first Poirot, The Monogram Murders, was a great read.

Closed Casket tells the story of Lady Playford, who has invited Hercule Poirot and Inspector Edward Catchpool to join her family gathering at her mansion. She has changed her will, a revelation that is sure to spark outrage--and possibly murder. But why would she take this step, and what does it mean?

Hannah spins a great mystery for Poirot and Catchpool, with lots of twists and turns, and the spirit of Christie and her country home murder mysteries throughout.

Review: As I Descended

Title: As I Descended
Author: Robin Talley
Publication Date: September 6, 2016
Genre: Young Adult Horror/Supernatural/Paranormal
Recommend If You Like: Macbeth, Shakespeare retellings, lgbt stories, really creepy suspense

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book or my review itself.

The Book:

Maria and Lily are a couple on the rise, but Delilah is always one step ahead of them. At their boarding school, Delilah seems a shoo-in for the prestigious Kingsley Prize, an award Maria and Lily desperately want so they can attend the same college and stay together.

So Maria and Lily decide to do something to take back what they see as rightfully theirs. But they stir up spirits that would have been better left alone, and set in motion tragic events that will lead to death and madness.

What I Liked:

I just really, really liked this book. First, the Shakespeare retelling was brilliant. As an English major and Shakespeare fan, I had so much fun seeing how Talley took the classic tale of Macbeth and rewrote it with a modern setting and a lesbian Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Talley really made the story her own, while still paying a brilliant homage to the original source material.

The characters are all so complex and multilayered, and the relationships feel painfully real. Every teenage emotion is heightened, but not in a way that reads as hysterical teenage dramatics. Rather, these characters read as truly human, caught up in forces within and without that they are unable to control.

This is a very creepy book too. The spirits, whatever you believe about their actual presence (depending on your personal beliefs and how reliable you find certain characters), haunt and meddle in insidious, frightening, and deadly ways that carry throughout the entire story.

Anything I Didn't Like?

I didn't feel like the epilogue was necessarily needed. It's always nice to have a bit of a concluding wrap up to tie things together (and I'm one of those people who craves resolution), but I feel like the book would have been even more haunting if it had ended with the last chapter before the epilogue.

So...?

Read this book. I strongly recommend it, and I couldn't put it down. It was so unique, so well-written, and so, so creepy. This is how a young adult novel should be done.

Review: The Cabin

Title: The Cabin
Author: Natasha Preston
Publication Date: September 6, 2016
Genre: Young Adult Mystery/Thriller/Suspense
Recommended If You Like: young adult reads, romance, the killer is one of us, teenage drama

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book or my review itself.

The Book:

Mackenzie thinks this will just be a weekend with her group of friends, off in a cabin drinking and having fun. But when two of them are murdered, suddenly all of them are under suspicion, and all their secrets are coming out.

What I Liked:

I love the "the killer is one of us" trope, done to absolute perfection by Agatha Christie in And Then There Were None. So any time a book tackles that, I'm going to appreciate it.

The book starts out strong. Preston builds a lot of suspense as the characters get settled in the cabin, and we pick up on tension that hints at a big event from the past.

Anything I Didn't Like?
Unfortunately, yes. I was really excited about this book, because of the trope it was centered around. And it did start out strong.

But the romance feels cliched, and to me that was because of the writing style. The way Preston describes the way the two characters feel about each other is very hearts in the eyes and butterflies in the stomach, which is fine, but I was looking for more from the writing.

The revelations from the characters' pasts also seem to come completely out of left field. I understand that the idea is that you never really know a person and what they're hiding behind their facade, but the secrets just don't seem to fit with what we have been shown about the characters and their relationships. This makes the ending twists seem rushed and out of left field as well.

So...?

I had been really excited to read this book since I first heard about it, and unfortunately, it just didn't deliver for me.

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten TV Shows I Wish Had Never Been Canceled

As always, Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by the wonderful The Broke and The Bookish!

This week's theme was any TV-themed topic in honor of Fall TV, and I chose Ten TV Shows I Wish I Had Never Been Canceled.

1) Siberia 

2) The River

3) The Mole

4) Whodunnit

5) Harper's Island

6) Ringer

7) Haunted 

8) American Gladiators

9) Murder in Small Town X

10) Cult

Did you watch any of these shows? Do you have a show you loved that got canceled?

Review: You Will Know Me

Title: You Will Know Me
Author: Megan Abbott
Genre: Psychological Suspense
Publication Date: July 26, 2016
Recommended If You Like: any of Abbott's previous books, competitive gymnastics, psychological suspense, complex characters, twists and turns, insight into the human mind

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book or my review itself.

The Book:

Devon Knox is a young gymnast on a set track, heading towards the Olympics. Her family has essentially centered their whole life around Devon's hopes and dreams, and the community at their gym has pinned all their own desires on Devon's rise to the top.

But when someone dies, it brings out all the secrets everyone has been desperately pushing deep inside.

What I Liked:

This book. I just absolutely loved this book. I'm a huge fan of Abbott's previous books (she writes the kind of books where I want to own hard copies of them all for my bookshelves), and she did not disappoint with her latest novel.

The characters are all so complex, and so layered. Abbott is an absolute master at slowly building up the suspense by letting little hints about what her characters are hiding expertly slip out.

The revelations in this book are brilliant--they are always shocking, but always make sense when you look back at the previous pages.

Abbott's writing style is just gorgeous. She gets at the heart of humanity, and writes about it so beautifully and deliberately.

Plus, I've always been fascinated by the world of competitive gymnastics, so to have one of my favorite authors set her book in that world was a special bonus.

Anything I Didn't Like?

Honestly, there was nothing I didn't like about this book. I've felt the same about Abbott's previous books. She is brilliant.

So...?

Read this book. Then go get all of Abbott's other books and read them too.

August Reading Roundup and Two Mini Reviews

This August, I read 16 books. 

Two of those counted for Bout of Books, and seven for ARC August.

My favorites of the month were: 

 

________________

Mini Review #1:

This was a decent young adult thriller surrounding a group of very different teenagers connected by a single death. It read a lot like an updated version of Killing Mr. Griffin, and it was fun to be brought back to those books I remember reading and swapping among my friends when we were younger. 

I liked that Morgan really tried hard to make characters that everyone saw as stereotypes have layers, and for the most part she succeeded. The suspense was really taut in places, and dragged some in others, but on the whole, this was a quick read that kept me interested.

Mini Review #2

As the title suggests, Presley tackles the unsolved murders in Texarkana. These murders have inspired countless speculation as well as two movies.

Presley expertly lays out the history of Texarkana, the murders, the people involved, and the chief suspect. He also has gained access to previously unreleased information, which helps make his book what I suspect will the definitive tome on the subject. 

I definitely recommend this book for true crime readers.

Review: Surrender, New York

Title: Surrender, New York

Author: Caleb Carr

Publication Date: August 23, 2016

Genre: Psychological Mystery

Recommended If You Like: dark, twisty mysteries; settings as plot points; profiling; complex characters

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book or my review itself.

The Book:

In rural New York, multiple "throwaway children" (children abandoned by their parents and left to fend for themselves) have been found dead, their bodies left posed. Trajan Jones and Michael Li find themselves drawn into the case, with the assistance of Lucas Kurtz (a "throwaway child" himself), who brings his older sister (and guardian) into the mix.

What I Liked:

I'm a big fan of Caleb Carr--his books The Alienist and The Italian Secretary are favorites of mine. So I was really excited to see he had come out with a new book.

Surrender, New York has some really great twists (especially a big one in the third act that really shocked me), and a lot of exciting action sequences full of suspense and tension.

I also loved the character of Lucas--he's funny, complex, and real.

Anything I Didn't Like?

For having a lot of twists and action, this is a book that moves slowly. For me, quite a few parts felt repetitious, and it read like a book that could have used some serious parring down. 

A lot of the bigger theories and parts of the solution surrounding the mystery also felt way too out there, which kept taking me out of the story.

So...?

I wanted to love this book, but I didn't. I liked it fine, but it was nowhere near as good as I was hoping it would be. There were even one or two times early on when I thought about not finishing it. The problem for me was it just moved so slowly, and a lot felt extraneous, or even outlandish. 

But Carr kept me going with some expertly-plotted twists, including a big reveal that will definitely stay with me for quite a while. The last third of the book was action-packed and absolutely kept me hooked.

If you haven't read Carr before, start with The Alienist. Then go on to The Italian Secretary. Then decide if you want to try Surrender, New York.