My Review: How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon
I feel like I should have remembered more about this book than I did. I would go back and read my review of it, but honestly, I like these wrap-ups because they're a good indicator of how much a specific book has stayed with me. Occasionally, I'll go back and revise some of my ratings if I find I can't remember anything about a specific book. I mean, it's a sad truth, some books just have more staying power in my mind than others. Despite the fact that this book, about the shooting of a black guy by a white guy and everything that comes after, is a Very Important Book and thus should have stayed with me forever and ever, it didn't stick as much as it should have. And that makes me sad, because I did like this book very much when I read it. Still, the things that did stick with me- the convenience store owner thinking about how nothing ever changes while looking at the newspapers, the old woman looking at all the little children, the relationship between the pastor and the girl with low self-esteem- those were really great parts, and my memories of them alone let me keep this book's ratings at 8-8.5 out of 10.
I have no idea what to say about this book except that it was strange and brilliant and I will be definitely picking up more Vonnegut in the future. Maybe Breakfast of Champions? Or one of his short story collections? Let me know which Vonnegut you'd personally recommend.
My Review: Paperweight by Meg Haston
This was the first out of two eating disorder books I read this month, and the far superior one in my opinion. I was surprised to discover that this is not a fictionalized memoir like Believarexic by JJ Johnson, because it feels like one. This book felt real, and hopeful, and everything that is so necessary when writing a book about the subject matter it is about. Essentially, this book is about a girl who is trying to kill herself through starvation after the death of her brother, who she blames herself for. Her father panics and checks her in an eating disorder clinic where she is forced to confront her disease and her past. The writing is so beautiful I'd never guessed it was a debut novel. Recommended.
My Review: Sekret by Lindsay Smith
I like the idea of this novel more than the actual execution. Don't get me wrong, I didn't hate the execution, but I just thought the idea the plot is based around is so fantastic it would be hard to actually live up to. Basically, this book is about a group of Soviet teenagers in the 60s who all have mind control powers and who are recruited by the KGB as part of a special program. How cool is that?! (yes, I used the dreaded interrobang. Fight me.) There's a fairly useless love triangle, too, but the book is a lot of fun. I'm not super pumped for Skandal, but the fact that it's a duology makes it a lot easier for me to want to continue on.
My Review: Silent Child by Sarah A Denzil
Ah yes, the beginning of my bad book streak. Well, I guess technically Don't Look Back would be the real beginning, but in my eyes this is the first one. I was in a mystery mood, and got this book cheap off Kindle so I read it. Supposedly, this book is about a woman who's trying to figure out what happened to her son, who has mysteriously reappeared after being missing for 10 years. The book ends up derailing around the middle part and by the climax has become just straight up comedy. To me at least. I'm sure if you loved Girl on the Train you would love this, but I personally didn't find it too appealing hence the low score.
My Review: Pretty Little Things by Jilliane Hoffman
This was another Kindle buy, and I'm happy I did get it. The prologue kind of turned me off the book, but quickly I found myself intrigued by the characters and the plot and everything. It is about a girl who went missing, and the police discover that her disappearance may have something to do with the man she often talked to online and even agreed to meet up with in real life. While Hoffman's no Tana French, she knows how to write an addictive, realistic crime novel, and I definitely want to pick up her first series.
My Review: Don't Look Back by Jennifer L Armentrout
I think this book actually pained me to read. Armentrout's writing style makes me feel like someone is pulling out my fingernails one by one. Slow and excruciating. I mean, the idea is decent- a rich girl is found after having been missing for like 3 days with a killer case of amnesia and apparent brain transplant. Her best friend has gone missing, and over the course of the novel she slowly begins to rediscover exactly what happened the night her friend disappears. But really, that's only about 10 percent of the book. The rest is basically contemporary shit about friends and boyfriends and drags like you wouldn't believe. Armentrout is honestly the one writer whose popularity I don't understand. I get John Green and Courtney Summers and authors like that, but Armentrout? She comes across to me as very dime-a-dozen, like anyone could have written this novel (and honestly probably would have done a better job than she did).
My Review: A Good Idea by Cristina Moracho
Another book I just didn't like. This book promised to be a creepy rural noir- hell, it even got blurbed (though I take those with a grain of salt) by Laura Ruby of Bone Gap fame. What this book actually was, was a fairly boring run of the mill revenge thriller that attempted to be creepy and good and interesting but just wasn't at the end. I found the main character hypocritical and insufferable, the portrayal of small town life to be small-minded and stereotypical, and the relationship toxic. Okay, so what was it about? Well, it's about a girl whose friend died, and she believes it was her (the friend's) boyfriend who did it, as he confessed but his confession was thrown out. So she, and this other chick she just met but is fucking anyway, decided to ruin everything just for the sake of revenge. I have such a hard time writing off revenge thrillers, because some can be really good (like Daughter of Deep Silence by Carrie Ryan) but so many of them just have such insufferable, self-righteous heroines I have a hard time seeing their quests for revenge as anything but petty. Of course, that might just be because I don't really hold grudges myself- in my personal opinion, it's kind of a waste of energy, really.
I didn't write a full review for it because I didn't really feel like getting far enough to write a full review and honestly, I didn't really want to write one anyway. I should have given this book more of a chance than I did, because it really did interest me and it got a ton of hype and it sounded really cool- about a girl from the Congo in Kenya who wants to take revenge on the man who killed her mother with some organized crime action, too. But I couldn't shake the feeling that I had read this book before. And then I realized that I had indeed read this book before- but it was called Six of Crows then. Seriously, the main chick is this small and ultra stealthy thief (it's really trendy to have thieves in books now; they're the new assassins) and the rules that would randomly show up just felt like the tired cliches they were and told me nothing new and this book was just trying so hard. Perhaps I would have stuck with it for longer if I was having a better reading month, but I knew this book would just end up pulling me deeper and, besides, I felt like I already knew everything that was going to happen anyway (the thriller aspects reminded me of A Good Idea, and I really do not like those types of mysteries). In short, this book was not working for me the way it should have, so I abandoned it at about 60 pages in.
My Review: Sad Perfect by Stephanie Elliot
The second of the eating disorder books and the mediocre one. It is about a girl named Pea who has a whole lotta issues, and her family life and angelic new boyfriend. While I did appreciate the insight into Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder, the second person narrative felt clunky and ultimately unsuccessful- I would have preferred straight-up first person. Still, I didn't hate it and felt in a nice mood because I was sick of hating everything, so it got a higher score than it probably deserved.
My Review: Everything Beautiful Is Not Ruined by Danielle Younge-Ullman
This was probably the hardest book to rate this month, as I wasn't quite sure how to feel about it. It's one of those wilderness survival camp stories that are so trendy right now, about a girl whose ex-opera singing mother has signed her up for the camp so that she could prove she was capable of going to some special snowflake school up in England. My thoughts towards the main character ping ponged a lot- sometimes I would be annoyed deeply by her, sometimes I would kind of like her, mostly, I just felt nothing. I think I preferred the parts outside of camp- the flashbacks and the like- the parts that were actually about the camp, if that makes sense. Overall, I mean, it's a summery contemporary. What harm could it do?
My Review: Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Fun fact about this book: I thought it was a mystery when I got it. It wasn't, but that didn't lessen my enjoyment of it at all. Actually, I don't think I can say enjoyment, because what this book is is deeply sad. The dysfunction of this family just weighed on me, and yet, like I was watching a car accident, I couldn't put this book down until it was over. Just one more chapter became my mantra. This book is about the golden girl of a family who is found dead, drowned in a lake, and the ways her parents pushed her that influenced her horrible final decision. Seriously, read this book, and then go hug your parents. That's what I did, anyway.
I reread Gatsby this month, because it's been a few years since my last reread of it and I needed something flawless. My thoughts haven't changed- Fitzgerald's still a genius in my eyes, the ending is easily one of the greatest ever written, and I still love the story. I think it's one of those rare perfect books.
My Review: Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt
This was the sleeper hit of this month, the book I expected to only think was okay but ended up blowing me out of the water. This book is about a young girl whose uncle, who she is very close to, dies of AIDS and his boyfriend, who her parents hate because they think he gave the uncle AIDS, ends up befriending her because they are were both the closest to the uncle. That's a crap summary for a really fantastic book about love and AIDS and everything that goes along with it. Highly recommended.
My Review: Broken Harbor by Tana French
The redemption of Tana French! After being underwhelmed with Faithful Place because it wasn't really a crime novel the way I wanted it to be, French's Broken Harbor knocked it out of the park. This book followed Det. Mick "Scorcher" Kennedy as he investigates the murder of a family- everyone but the mother, who lives- after they have been slaughtered in their McMansion development. It's an interesting story about the madness brokeness can bring upon a family, and how keeping up with the Joneses can ultimately prove fatal. I loved it.
Page total: 5,181
Average rating: 6.5-7/10
Genre breakdown: 7 mystery-thrillers
5 contemporaries
3 historical fiction
1 science fiction
Of those, 7 were adult and 9 were YA
So I read 16 books this month, which isn't horrible- my worst month is still January, when I only read 13 books. Still, I feel like thanks to that week of crap books, the entire month was kind of ruined. Ah well, here's to a better May! Hopefully...
*e-books
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