ARC Review: She's Too Pretty to Burn

 

I've 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:

Where Veronica, Nico, and Mick collide, chaos sparks.

Nico and Veronica have been best friends for as long as they can remember. Nico is an installation artist consumed by his plans to truly make a statement, while Veronica is a photographer looking for her inspiration. Then Veronica meets Mick at a party, and sparks fly immediately. But Mick is a girl who hates having her photograph taken.

As Veronica and Mick fall in love, they are pinned in on all sides by Nico's fevered determination, Veronica's desire for fame, and Mick's desperate hope to find somewhere she truly belongs. This is not a trio meant to live life peacefully...or possibly to live at all.

What I Liked:

I love the book The Picture of Dorian Gray, which the author credits as an inspiration, and I thought centering around a photograph instead of a painting was a really clever and unique take. 

This book is full on suspense, with heightened emotions and situations on almost every page. I truly did not know what to expect from one chapter to the next, let alone one word to the next.

The look into the different aspects and impacts of being an artist was fascinating, as Heard truly takes the readers on a ride into the extreme possibilities of what this world can hold.

Anything I Didn't Like?

I had a really hard time liking the main characters at many points in the book. They felt self-centered, or cold, or cruel. But to Heard's credit, I think this was truly the point, and the ones you need to be redeemed really are as you get to understand more of their motivations and internal struggles.

So...?

This book is like a wild fever dream, you truly never know where it is going to go next. I got completely lost in it and could not put it down.

ARC Review: The Lost Village

 

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.

This book had my attention from the very start. The premise is absolutely fascinating, and the kind guaranteed to hook me right away. An entire village disappeared in 1959, and now a documentary filmmaker with familial ties to the village's past has arrived to try to make the film that will save her career. 

Though the village has supposedly been completely abandoned, Alice and her ragtag crew with complicated pasts keep seeing shadows out of the corners of their eyes, and would swear they are not the ones breaking their filming epuipment. And then someone goes missing.

This is one scary eerie creepy book. Sten does an amazing job of setting the scene, and I really felt like I was right there with the characters. The use of the occasional flashes of "Then" that build to a crescendo as you near the end of the story served to heighten the suspense and keep you guessing. 

Ok, so this is definitely a strange book, but Sten makes it work. In the hands of someone else, I really think this story would have fallen apart, but Sten makes it all come together.

ARC Review: Forget Me Not

 

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.

When I had just started this book, and was trying to explain what I was reading to a librarian friend, I prefaced the description by saying "I know this sounds like a very different book than I usually read", a statement that is definitely true. My desire to read this particular book stemmed from how much I loved Oliva's previous book The Last One.

Forget Me Not is definitely a book that makes me very glad I tried something new.

From the start of the book, readers are immediately thrust into Linda's difficult and overwhelming world. She was raised completely isolated from the rest of the world, and after even the only family she had ever known left, she climbed the wall and found herself out in a brand new world. Every facet of life outside her previous home is baffling, frightening, and anxiety provoking, especially the realization that her mother had carefully crafted her birth in an attempt to genetically resurrect her dead daughter.

Social media (hashtag #CloneGirl) continues to make Linda feel hunted and afraid, and her tenuous connection with her biological father doesn't bring her much comfort. So when her childhood home suddenly catches on fire, Linda finds herself drawn back into a reckoning of what happens when the past you thought you understood suddenly meets the truth.

This book is fascinating and completely gripping. There is a mysteriousness to it that calls what readers and Linda think they know into question constantly, which is what grabbed me the most about this book. There were also these strange chapters that seemed to be completely disconnected from the rest of the story, but came back to matter in a big way, and I liked the guessing game of trying to figure out where those fit in.

 Oliva does not pull her punches when it comes to the big twists, and this book had them in spades-I was completely shocked by the way things unfolded, but everything made sense looking back. The ending also left me feeling really satisfied. 

ARC Review: The Postscript Murders

 

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.

What I think I loved most about this book is that Griffiths has managed to create a mystery that feels cozy but also has a lot of thriller elements. There are small country inns, and cups of tea, and lots of books, but there are also masked gunmen and threatening postcards. It's the kind of book that has been perfect for the current weather here, rainy and overcast and gloomy, just the kind of story you want to curl up with under a blanket and have a cup of tea yourself.

The main premise is the death of an elderly woman who, it turns out, has been thanked by numerous mystery and thriller novelists in their dedications or postscripts. When a masked gunman then appears in her apartment to steal a book, and authors start turning up dead themselves, a small group of unlikely friends deem themselves amateur sleuths and begin working closely with a local police woman.

The cast of characters is such a great group. The main three "amateur detectives" are a wonderfully eclectic found family: a former monk who now runs a cafe, a young woman from Ukraine who now works as a carer for the elderly, and an elderly man who dresses impecably and used to work for the BBC. The police woman is complex and funny, and makes a great addition to the group with the three others.

I love Griffiths playing with the idea of people who read and write murder mysteries suddenly being pulled into one of their own that has a very direct impact on their lives (and in some cases, deaths). This is a really clever fun book with great locations, great characters, and lots of surprises.

ARC Review: Every Last Fear

 

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.

It is hard for a book to live up to the hype surrounding it, especially so in today's world where the many forms of media make it so the hype can be literally everywhere.

This is a book that absolutely lives up to the hype.

As perfectly described by other authors and publicists: 

"One of the most anticipated thrillers of 2021, Every Last Fear is about a family, made infamous by a true crime documentary, found dead. A mourning son risks his life to uncover the truth about their final days. A must-read!"

Finlay has created a gripping psychological thriller that itself employs multiple types of media woven throughout the text. We never see the videos, but they are described so that we feel like we do. The same is true for social media posts, a Netflix documentary, and various websites and internet searches. A poster (see above) was even created for the documentary (which does not actually exist outside the world of the book).

This is what I want every book centered around a fictional true crime documentary or podcast to be like (and there are many out there). There was so much suspense, so many shocking moments, and everything was weaved together expertly. The ending completely shocked me, and worked so well. I'm really excited to see what Alex Finlay does next.

ARC Review: Too Good to Be True

 

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 premise of a love triangle-married man, wife, and girlfriend-is one that has been explored a lot in many psychological thrillers in the last few years. But Lovering expertly manages to create and explore a brand new take on this concept.

What works most effectively here are the twists and turns. I was completely shocked by every single expertly laid surprise. There was one in particular at the beginning of the second part that made me actually gasp out loud and just stare at the book for a minute. And when I looked back, every bit of the twist made sense.

I love that not only the big storylines, but the small details, all end up mattering. The beginning of the book moved a little slowly for me, but I was still intrigued. Once the story really got going, I couldn't put the book down.

ARC Review: A Pho Love Story

 

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.

Bao and Linh are teenagers whose families have been feuding for as long as they can remember, even owning competing Vietnamese restaurants across the street from each other. Bao feels like he is nothing special, Linh feels like her dream of being an artist is impossible. But a chance encounter sets events in motion that could bring the past to the light and bring hope to the future.

This was a really good read. At first glance, it seems like it would be a lovely light romance book, about two teenagers who find each other and fall in love despite the obstacles. And that is definitely part of the story, and a very enjoyable part-Bao and Linh are well-written, complex characters whose motivations and feelings ring real, and I was definitely rooting for them.

But there is also such a depth that Le has created, weaving in culture, tradition, familial ties, and the deep lasting impact a painful history can continue to have on those who lived it and those who now feel the reverberations of it. Le has written a really layered book here that I would definitely recommend.

ARC Review: Whisper Island

 

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:

A group of college friends, four female artists, take a trip to an isolated island to spend months creating together. But it isn't long before they start realizing that their retreat has led them right into a trap, and into the path of a murderer.

What I Liked:

This is definitely a suspenseful book. I am always excited about a plot involving an isolated location where a group is trapped with an unknown murderer, and that horror aspect is definitely amped up here with lots of quick short chapters, a small group of characters, run down buildings and mysteriously locked spaces. Once the book got going, it really got going, and I couldn't stop reading.

Anything I Didn't Like?

Chapters switch back and forth between different characters' points of view, and this could get a little confusing. The story also took a while to get started for me, with a lot of exposition. Things felt a little repetitive sometimes in the beginning, when each character would reference their own sort of mysterious secret or mysterious difficult situation multiple times in a similar way.

So...?

This was a quick, suspenseful read that kept me turning pages, but it definitely wasn't the best version I've read of this type of plot.