book review

This month in literature…

| cgkinnett

weekend-is-all-booked

Well hello there. I haven’t seen you in a while….totally my fault. Man, the past month has been crazy. To further interrupt the regular rotation of posts I’d like to tell you all about the amazing time I have had in the literary world over the past five weeks.

To kick off the month of October, the Texas Teen Book Festival was held. The day long celebration of the YA genre hosted 35 authors on the Saint Edward’s University campus. As I was volunteering, my day started just before 7 am putting up parking signs and helping to make sure school bus traffic went smoothly. Mindy Kaling’s book signing was the first event of the day which was to begin at 8:30 am. When I arrived (before the sun) there was already a crazy line waiting filled with so many amazing fans. Working book signings is one of my favorite things to do because the people are always excited to see these authors. YA fans are so appreciative of the authors in this genre and vise versa. Each author is so willing to converse with readers and makes sure that their experience in those two minutes is genuine. They have the rotation of these lines down to a science and know how many signatures they can do in x amount of time. It’s amazing. Another reason that this festival is fun is because of the games! Authors play trivia games, have races and contests. In addition to the panels that are held, many of them gather in the university’s gym and by the time you leave your stomach and face hurt from laughing so hard for so long. The Texas Teen Book Festival has been in operation and in a state of growth and evolution since 2009. The TTBF “fosters a community effort to celebrate and promote reading and writing by connecting teens to local and award-winning authors, whose writing spans across genres and interest level.” It is a wonderful experience to witness this first hand. While working a signing this year I overheard a conversation with Kirkus Prize nominee Traci Chee (The Reader) and a young reader who was probably in 7th or 8th grade. She told Chee that she wanted to be a writer and asked her very earnest and well put questions. How she flushed out characters. How to create a foil. This conversation went on for probably 20 minutes or so altogether. When another fan would walk up, the girl would move to the side and then come back and continue inquiring. Seeing this exchange made me so happy and that is the whole goal of such a festival: to inspire young minds and encourage them to keep reading, keep asking questions, and keep imagining.

The next big event: the Kirkus Prize. To read the full list of nominees and articles about each, visit the Kirkus Reviews website. When I was a young reader of about 10 or 12 I fell in love with this series that was about princesses and dragons. I have since forgotten (much to my annoyance) the name of the series and instead remember that the Kirkus review that was on the back of the book had been high praise. From that book on I didn’t buy a book unless it had a review from Kirkus. Imagine, then, how amazingly, stupendously, wonderfully awesome it is that I now work for Kirkus and speak with independent authors and small presses all day every day. Being part of the team who put together the ceremony for the Kirkus Prize was an experience almost beyond words. The ceremony was held in downtown Austin, Tx with a view of the skyline and a view of the river. Six authors in fiction, six in non-fiction, and six in youth literature (YA, middle grade, and picture books) were nominated for outstanding work in their genre. Making my way in and around the crowd, I spoke with several of the nominees and people within the industry that I have admired for so long. When I found myself in the presence of Jason Reynolds (who later in the evening won the award for YA) I totally fangirled on him. I was able to speak to him about his process, his upcoming projects, and about how great his work is. Again I witnessed the wonderful generosity of authors who want to talk about books just as much as you or I. The Kirkus Prize is the largest monetary prize in the literary world and as the first award of the season, it tends to set a precedent for nominations for awards that follow. The prize is $50,000 to each winning author and is awarded to the title that the judges feel displays exceptional merit.

The following evening was the 21st annual Literary Gala which is hosted by the Texas Book Festival. The gala serves as a fundraiser and is the driving factor in keeping the large festival free and open to the public. This was the first time I had been to anything that was coined black tie. Attending the gala this year was an amazing personal accomplishment for me as it was at this exact function the year prior that I met my future boss and started my path to Kirkus. Last year I interned for the festival and was on the outside for the whole gala. This year I was sitting at the Kirkus table and got to wear a fancy dress, eat an delicious three course meal, and listen to some pretty great speeches. One of my favorite aspects of the festival is the Reading Rock Stars program which goes into underprivileged schools in South Texas. They schedule author talks at these schools, bringing in authors and illustrators to talk to kids about what it means to them to be able to write/draw for them and how they too can do it! Each child receives a book of their own to keep and a lot of the time it is the first time that they are given a brand new book of their very own. To hear this program talked about at length during the gala was heart warming and inspiring. First Lady Laura Bush started the festival in 1995 and it has grown exponentially each year in both author and public attendance.

This month has been hectic and stressful and rewarding. It has been long and involved multitasking on a whole different level. And it was so worth it. Never before have I felt so satisfied with myself. I have worked hard for many years now to become part of this world and now that I am, I can’t imagine being anywhere else.

Thank you for reading my ramblings and for visiting my site. Next week we will return to our regularly scheduled programming.

 

The Girl in the Spider’s Web-David Lagercrantz

| cgkinnett

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Hello there book lovers. Today we will be diving into The Girl in the Spider’s Web which is book four in the Millennium series. Before diving into the review and analysis, however, I would like to discuss the amazing journey that has transpired behind the scenes over the course of this series’ existence.

Stieg Larsson created the world in which the magazine Millennium exists. It is run by  Mikael Blomkvist and a savvy team of reporters in Sweden. Blomkvist, over the course of the first book, meets Lisbeth Salander who is a hacker and an amazing one at that. Larsson stated initially that he had enough material for the series to span 10 novels though his untimely death in 2004 seemingly put a halt to this idea. After his death, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was published in 2005 and was incredibly well received. The following two  years, in 2006 and 2007,  The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest were published respectively. The ’07 publication of Hornet’s Nest was the last of the complete manuscripts Larsson left behind.

It was at this time that Larsson’s publishing house Norstedts Förlag was at a cross roads. Leave the Millennium series as is or continue the work that Larsson began by passing the torch onto another writer. However, it was not as simple as that and it is here where the literary soap opera gets juicy. You see, Larsson’s longtime partner Eva Gabrielsson was in possession of all of Larsson’s outlines and notes and partial manuscripts. The two had never married due to safety issues stemming from Larsson’s activism and journalism.  The will Larsson left behind had not been witnessed or documented properly and because of this, his estate fell into the hands of the deceased’s brother and father. They were on board with the continuation of Larsson’s series however Gabrielsson staunchly opposed the idea. A very public dispute ensued. In the end, the Larsson’s gave permission to Norstedts to proceed with a fourth installation of Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander’s escapades and at the very end of 2013 it was announced that David Lagercrantz would pen the title. In August 2015 The Girl in the Spider’s Web was published worldwide followed by a release the following month in the United States.

That being said, let us now dive into the title in question:

This was the first time that I listened to an audiobook. I know, I know, get with the times. I am a huge podcast fan and love talk radio, but for some reason I had never listened to a book on tape file. Man I loved it!

The Girl in the Spider’s Web was written by David Lagercrantz and was recorded by Simon Vance. I was apprehensive about this title because I have been such a fan of the series and to hear that another author would be taking over is enough to make anyone skeptical. I think Lagercrantz did a really good job though! There are a lot of negative reviews on the title and so that only added to my apprehension but I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was of a different mind.

Firstly, Lagercrantz did something that I noticed fairly quickly in that he made Mickael Blomkvist much more believable as a real person. How did he do this, you might ask. Well, for starters, he did not have every woman Blomkvist encounters throw herself immediately at our main character. This was so refreshing. Previously, Blomkvist had been such a ladies man that by the second and third book it was almost farcical. Every. Woman. Like, what? I know he is charismatic and that he is a reporter so he has a certain je ne said quo but cooooome ooooon. So that was a definite improvement.

This was a super important shift that I found very refreshing and humanizing.

But it wasn’t only this detail that made for an obvious departure of Larsson’s writing. The story itself unfolded in an interesting way. Before I dive into that, however, let us get a brief overview of The Girl in the Spider’s Web. 

There has again been a lapse in time from where the previous title left off, as has been the pattern for the series. We open with Millennium magazine not doing too well and rumors run wild that Mikael Blomkvist is now a washed up journalist who is feebly riding on the waves of his past success. Timing is everything though and a scandal soon begins to unfold. Scientist Frans Bolder is murdered in front of his autistic son and it is later determined that one of his computers is missing along with the A.I. technology that he had been working on. At the same time, the NSA in America is hacked. Something no one thought possible. The hacker players in Spider’s Web are very interesting and it is here that we learn that Lisbeth Salander just cannot escape her past and the family that she so deeply despises. You see, it is revealed early on that Lisbeth’s twin sister is in on the plot. This I loved and will get into more detail on in a second. Blomkvist gets involved because the night that Bolder was killed he had called the journalist saying that he had information that needed to be shared and that he was nervous about who wanted this knowledge and what lengths they might go to to get it. Thus begins the unraveling of what his technology did, who wanted it (both criminal and government), and how Lisbeth Salander fits into the equation.

There is a writing technique that Lagercrantz employs frequently and with great affect. He goes through a scene/time frame from one character’s point of view and then he alternates this view and retells the same moment from a different perspective. For example, Bolder’s death scene. We are outside the house with the police officers who have been assigned as protective detail for Bolder. They encounter someone outside and are speaking with him when Blomkvist arrives. The next passage is seen from inside the house as the murder is taking place. The killer runs out of the house and slams into the newly arrived Blomkvist as he makes his way up to the house. This happens again and again throughout the book and it is very well done. These time frame parallels enable us to have a fuller understanding of a particular scene and point in time. This is also a great tool because it allows a tense moment to play out from different vantage points and then it is easy to cut away from the tension and switch to another which creates cliffhangers in interesting spots. Very exciting.

As we dive into the hacker aspect of Spider’s Web we get further insight to Lisbeth’s past; something that I always enjoy and which was a particularly important through line of Hornet’s Nest. In book three we gain a deeper understanding of Lisbeth’s father and the terrible things he did to her and her mother that formed the Lisbeth we all know. Closed off, man-hating, curious, incredibly smart, and somewhat on the spectrum (not that her dad caused her to be on the spectrum but how his behavior impacted her). So then in Spider’s Web we meet and get more info about her sister Camilla who had briefly been mentioned in titles past. Camilla is described as a polar opposite of Lisbeth. She glows with beauty, has charm for days, and is able to persuade anyone to pretty much do anything. She is their father’s heir to his criminal empire and she is a cold and nasty piece of work. Seeing the contrast of the sisters becomes a big part of the third act as we find out more and more what Camilla is capable of. At the same time, we see a more tinder side of Lisbeth than has been expressed so far.

After his murder, Lisbeth takes Bolder’s son August into hiding as he was a witness to the crime. Despite the fact that he doesn’t speak, he is a savant in numbers and drawing. He saw the face of his father’s killer. While on the road with the boy, Lisbeth begins trying to open him up. Lagercrantz does this in a very real way. Lisbeth does not speak down to August, does not try to pander to a child. She speaks to him like a fellow human and it is very refreshing and eventually something comes of it in that he draws his father’s murderer. In true Lisbeth fashion, she just wants what is best for the boy and his mother and there are parts of the story that transpire between the three of them that are solely known by these three characters. It is special and I really enjoyed seeing how that part played out.

Going back to Lisbeth’s sister, we see how deep seeded their hatred for each other is and are taken back to their childhood. It is here, in the past, that Lisbeth’s hacker name Wasp is given explanation. The Marvel universe is brought into play and we learn how important the Janet van Dyne character and the Avengers are to Lisbeth. As Camilla becomes more nemesis than sister, she begins to call herself Thanos. This pull from pop culture was the only thing that stuck out as odd to me and while it is interesting to hear about the psychology behind this, it took me out of the story a bit to have something so American mentioned. I am not sure if that was always the origin of the Wasp handle; it makes a lot of sense when the backstory is given but I wonder if that was Lagercrantz’s doing or taken from notes of Larsson’s.

Overall, The Girl in the Spider’s Web was a really great listen and Simon Vance does a great job with all of the Swedish that occurs throughout. I am really interested to see if he continues on with the series or if the publishing house will do each title by a separate author. The sales for book four have been pretty good and the title stayed on bestsellers lists for 16 weeks where it sold over 200,000 copies in it’s first week! Lisbeth Salander is such a compelling and stimulating heroine who stands up for the rights of women, what is right and just, and doesn’t take any shit from anyone. I hope that these numbers will parlay into a book five and that we won’t have to wait eight more years for it!

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The Girl on the Train- Paula Hawkins

| cgkinnett

I was very proud of myself for going as long as I did without reading The Girl on the Train while simultaneously avoiding any spoilers of the twist and the reveal. After Gone Girl‘s twisty turny ride and the onslaught of similar twisty turny plots came out, I resisted the trend. It is something that really bothers me, market flooding. I get that imitation is the best form of flattery however if an author does something truly spectacular in a genre that does not mean that every title in the six months following needs to follow the same pattern (read my pseudonym article to see how Stephen King solved this problem). That being said, I resisted the raves that came out following the release of The Girl on the Train (hence forth seen as GotT). However, with the movie coming out soon, I had to adhere to my policy of book reading before movie viewing even though this does from the trailer to seem to be more of a “based on” than “adapted from”. This is more of an overview of my thoughts on the novel as I wish not to spoil this book as it was not spoiled for me. So, here it is:

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The tale of the GotT is told to us through the perspective of three unreliable narrators. We have Rachel (who is the title character) who commutes to London every morning on the same train and it is on this train that Rachel observes Megan and her husband Scott (Rachel doesn’t know their real names at the start). The observations seem harmless, she sees them from the train everyday and creates a mental profile of their lives; seeing them as characters more than people. It is made abundantly clear to us from the second page onward that Rachel is an alcoholic. Like full on day drinking, all the time drinking, alcoholic. Hence, her unreliability.

Our second narrator is Megan. There aren’t so much chapters, the way the book is laid out, but with each perception shift, the woman whose view it is in  is up in the chapter heading space and there are notations of dates and times of day. Somewhat diary/snapshot like however the timeframes are restrained to morning and evening. Why am I detailing this? Well, it is from this that we see that these view points are nonlinear. This is important later on as events unfold and you gather details out of order and piece them together. It makes the puzzle engaging and you quickly realize that every piece of the story matters. We learn slowly that Megan is not happy with her life. She feels agitated and stuck; like there is something else that is just beyond her reach that would complete things for her. A former gallery owner, she is restless and while she seems to think she is good at hiding this from everyone…that is not always the case.

Lastly, we gain pieces of our story from Anna who is married to Tom. Their courtship and family beginnings are unfolded at a nice pace and we slowly learn that these three women are separated by a small number of degrees and that makes their web even tighter than you might at first realize. Anna has snooty opinions of other women and so her views of our two fellow narrators is a bit colored for her own personal reasons. She is no more reliable that the alcoholic or the pretender. So, it all trickles down to the fact that everyone has secrets and none of us are as completely fine as we might present.

These three women’s lives unfold over the course of the novel and it is not just their degrees of separation that shrink, so too does the fact that you really do not know who to trust. Who is giving the whole story or at least the story closest to the truth? Everyone has motive. Everyone has opportunity. When someone goes missing, there is no way to know who is trying to keep the biggest secret of them all.

That being said, the twist at the end was very good and pretty pyscho. However, if you pay really close attention you are able to figure it out pretty far ahead of the reveal. I wasn’t 100% sure I knew…but I was rewarded with being right which is always so satisfying, don’t you think?

Now, the last thing that I would like to follow up with is the that of the treatment that each  these ladies extend to their fellow females. None of the women in this book are nice to each other. While some of it is for understandable reasons (like Rachel being piss drunk and walking out of a house with a baby that isn’t hers) most of it is a bit exaggerated. The women are mean and sneaky and snide. Even the female detective is just downright rude and untrustworthy. It is apparent from the get go that none of them are besties but at times I feel like it was a bit unnecessarily hateful.

I flew through this book in a matter of days; couldn’t put it down. It is very fast-paced and has a really quick flow because of how it is broken down. GotT would be the perfect book to put in your pool/beach bag and tear through as the warm sun shines down on you. I highly recommend it!

The Fireman by Joe Hill

| cgkinnett

Well y’all. I did it. I finished the behemoth tome that is Joe Hill’s latest, The Fireman.

What. A. Journey.

<<Spoilers ahead. You’ve been warned.>>

Tapping out at 747 pages, The Fireman follows Harper Grayson née Willowes as an airborne spore destabilizes the world. We sit with Harper and Jakob in their New Hampshire living room in the first chapter and watch as the Space Needle in Seattle burns on the news, watch people jumping out of windows to escape the all encompassing fire that makes up these pages. The sickness is Draco Incendia Trychophyton and it creeps into you without causing any harm at first. You breathe in the infected air and slowly, lines begin inking themselves in intricate patterns; one here, one there. At first. Then it covers your whole body and your insides reflect your outsides; the Dragonscale begins impacting your very make-up.

If you paid any attention in Latin, or have any Harry Potter knowledge you recognize the first word in the disease’s name. Draco, dragon. It’s pretty easy to infer Incendia after that. When the spore begins feeling (feeling?) that the host is threatened (anxiety, sickness, fear) it begins to save itself. The host, the human, the body combusts and burns from the inside. Our lovely Harper is a school nurse who, after schools shut down and institutions begin crumbling (which happens pretty quickly as this book spans a little over nine months…) begins volunteering at the hospital where the sick and infected are asked to stay/are corralled and kept. It is in this setting that we first meet three of the four people with whom Harper will primarily share this journey. First is the Fireman.

Our title character is charming and aggravating (as most are) and British (think Rufus Sewell). And as the world is breaking down and falling apart this fireman is bringing in an injured, deaf boy Nick to the hospital (the whole time I pictured Ben from Stepmom). Neither of them seem to show any visible signs of the ‘scale, are not complaining about the usual symptoms. After much debate, they are waved through to the small portion of the hospital still seeing non-‘scaled individuals. We don’t see them again for a bit but fret not fellow swooners, the Brit comes back. Next, we meet Ms. Renee Gilmonton who is the just the absolute sweetest lady. She reads to her fellow infected hospitalmates, primarily the children; keeping them calm and relaxed (Renee reminds me of Oprah, not glam Oprah, but the Oprah of that famous camping trip with Gale).

Anyways, now that you’ve got some visuals, let us move right along.

We quickly discover with Harper as our guide that she is not only pregnant but she is also infected and boy howdy let me tell you, Jakob is not happy about this combo. So not happy, in fact that he actually blames her for having a Florence Nightingale type syndrome in which she can’t leave people be. Yeah, because that’s a bad thing. Jakob is a grade-A-Scott-Disick-type-douche; something that is apparent from the first time we see how his name is spelled. After he leaves Harper alone for in their house for days (weeks?) he comes back and suggests they kill themselves. Yup. She has it, so he infers that he has it. There is no conversation of should we or shouldn’t we, no concern for the fact that there is also their unborn child to consider, nada. Let’s just do the damn thing is pretty much his attitude. The reader is able to very quickly realize that not only is Jakob an ass but he is also legit crazy. His decision on the matter has been made up and as Harper tries to get away from this nutcase, with whom she has very quickly fallen out of love, she runs UPSTAIRS to escape him. Because that always works so well in the movies, right? I won’t say anymore on the manner of her escape because it is super tense and I would like you to feel that anxiety along with Harper as you read for yourself the measures she takes to get away from him.

And obviously she escapes because there are still 700 pages left in the novel.

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After our heroine ditches the psycho we arrive at Camp Wyndham which is where the second act begins. Where better to hide a growing group of infected than an abandoned summer camp? It really is a great setting. Here we meet Ally, Nick’s older sister. Ally, Nick, and their family began bringing in infected to the safe haven of Wyndham pretty early into the epidemic and this is where Harper finds community, safety, and a chance to breathe…and sing. This is a community that is no great risk of burning up for they have found refuge in harmony.

Throughout history, fear has always inspired hatred and that is incredibly prevalent in the world of The Fireman. Society very quickly devolves into an “us and them” type divide and the small bits of news we hear on the mostly static filled radio demonstrate this. Cremation Crews are formed and murder goes from frowned upon to commonplace. Throughout the whole book, Hill keeps his characters very black and white making bad guys and good guys very easily discernible (with an exception towards the end of the second act). The divide between good and evil and right and wrong is prevalent throughout. This is something that goes beyond the characters and extends to morals and beliefs. What is right to a “bad guy” is not what is right to a “good guy” but who is to say which is which? If you were not infected and viewed those who were as a threat to your well being and that of your family’s, then you would protect yourself in whatever way possible, right? If you are infected but not dangerous you would want to live and not be put down/out of your misery because you wouldn’t be miserable. Perspective is very important in this tale despite the fact that ours as readers never shifts.

Sprinkled through the middle of the book are mentions of an island that has remained under the care of the CDC despite the collapse of all other official acronymed orgs. Martha Quinn’s island (yes, that Martha Quinn) promises safety and developments and doctors. Sounds too good to be true; a point made by several in the Wyndham community. However as time goes on and disastrous events occur, it is clear to our little band within the camp that they need to get to this island one way or another. Harper is particularly keen to get there as it is unknown what the ‘scale will have done to the baby. And so, as the second act closes with a bell tolling, the final act opens with our heroes on a somewhat forced and hasty journey to the mysterious island. Miles and miles are crossed and mishap after tragedy follow our travelers.

Up until now there have been some pretty good plot twists, real solidly developed characters, and fairly good pacing despite the book’s page count. There are amazing pop culture references throughout (his description of how J.K. Rowling meets her end is gut wrenching). However, towards the end, the last 100/150 pages or so, things begin to get pretty predictable. While this is an obvious bummer, you’ve got to give Hill props for keeping things exciting and juke filled for as many pages as he does. The Fireman offers readers adventure and romance, heartache and danger, terror and hope. There are factions of mankind that turn into despicable monsters and there are those who are able to keep their compasses pointed North in hopes that not all is ruined.

Hope burns fiercely in Joe Hill‘s The Fireman. 

 

Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy

| cgkinnett

Murphy cover

I have had Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy on my shelves since last summer when I was given a proof copy at work. It has been sitting there unread ever since and every time my eye would pass over it I would think to myself, “that one is next.” But then it kept not being next. Last week I made it a point to put everything else on pause and read it since Murphy is giving a talk that I wanted to attend. I am so glad I was finally able to dive into these pages because once I did I could not put them down.

Willowdean Dickson lives in a small Texas town that is so accurately cultivated, I kept expecting to encounter someone from my own high school within the pages. Be it football or beauty queens, most small towns have a focus like nothing else on hype. In Dumplin’ the latter is the be all end all of not only the town but of Willowdean’s life. You see, her mother is in charge of the Miss Teen Blue Bonnet pageant (a title which she herself won back in the day) and as such, Will’s life is overrun year after year by glitter and sewing machines as their house becomes ground zero for pageant planning.  Until now, Willowdean has not thought too much about the pageant except for maybe that her mother cares a little more for the glitz and glam than she does about her daughter. But that hasn’t really bothered her too much as she’s left to go about her life without the pressure of worrying about wether she fits in an evening dress or can define what her “talent” is. Until now, that is…because now, Willowdean is tired of being the fat best firend and the dumpy sidekick. She’s tired of the school bully picking on not just her but other members of the lower social tier. In a decision that she makes concrete by telling her best friend Ellen (so now she can’t back out) Willowdean is going to enter the Miss Teen Blue Bonnet pageant. Not because she wants to prance around on stage being the center of attention. Not because she thinks she has a shot at winning. Not even to have something to put on her college transcript. It is a decision she makes for herself; a decision that takes the power away from everyone who has discounted her her entire life.

What I loved about Willowdean was that she didn’t wallow in self pity or cop out of things because of she was ashamed of herself. In fact, one of the first places we go with Willowdean and Ellen is a swimming pool and she dons her swimsuit without any apology and gets in that cool cool water.

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Dumplin’ was such an easy read because Willowdean is so charming. I was able to relate to her on a level I was surprised by as I too have been on the receiving end of teasing about things I can’t help about myself. Willowdean is strong and stubborn and so encouraging to others.

When a group of fellow misfits (a girl who wears corrective shoes, a girl who is mercilessly teased because of her teeth, and the only lesbian in their high school) join Willowdean in her pageant mission she is shocked that she has become a source of inspiration. She is completely unaware of the impact she has on those around her. These girls develop a bond that is deeper than simply being pageant buddies. They band together and support each other when there is no one else to tell their secrets to, no one else to confide their worries in. This is an aspect of the story which I absolutely loved. Yes, the main plot point driving the story is a beauty pageant, but it is about so much more than that!

Throughout the story we experience several firsts with Willowdean that do a great job in taking the reader back to those nerve-wracking days of self doubt known as high school. We are with Will when she receives her first kiss and when she is asked on her first date. We are with her to experience her shock that those two events occur with two separate boys and the self-conscious fear she feels when one of them kisses her and slides his hand down her back (“Beautiful,” he says. “Fat,” I think.). We are there when she fights with her best friend and when she attends her first drag show (something that none of the girls hope their parents find out about). She is an incredibly well rounded (zero pun intended) character and the empathy I was able to feel towards her warmed my heart. I really enjoyed getting to know Willowdean Dixon who like her idol Dolly Parton decides “live big or go home” are words to live by.

Definitely recommend this book to fans of Rainbow Rowell. I hope Julie Murphy continues to write because I cannot wait to meet her next knock out lead.

The Sirens of Titan- Kurt Vonnegut

| cgkinnett

When a good friend recommends a good read, I jump at the chance to see for myself what caught their eye and held it. In the case of The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut, I was definitely not let down and by the end of the book I had so many feels and so many threads of thought. This is what a great piece of work does. It branches and fractures your thoughts well beyond the pages of the book.

That being said, let’s dive into this journey. From the start of the book we are given a somewhat reliable path that our main character will be taking; we are given the dots but they are by no means connected. And as X, Y and Z come to pass, we are taken on a journey whose settings exist from the Sun to Betelgeuse. As the scenery changes, so do the characters. This book contains probably the biggest evolution of a character I have had the pleasure of encountering.  Malachi Constant is one of our mains; beginning his journey with his full name, which is incredibly important to him. His name is his birthright and his claim to millions. As his situation changes, including but not limited to, the planet on which his story continues, he becomes Unk, a man stripped of everything from names to memories. He next becomes the Space Wanderer, nameless, planetless, helpless. He is stuck in his story, a pawn of something far greater.

This becomes a bigger and more important question as the novel progresses. Is something greater occurring? Who is pulling these strings and orchestrating all life on Earth? We think we know. In fact you’re entirely sure you know for the course of the whole work. Except you don’t, not even a little bit. The fact that someone/something could be pulling the strings your/our/my whole life is an intimidating thought. But what if this puppet master has a puppet master of his own? Being omniscient allows you to be all and see all, yes, but why does that become an inherent right? And how do this omni know whether what they are seeing and doing is not an orchestration all its own?

This is what made reading this book so much fun! Despite the fact that fairly close to the inception of the story, we are given a map, there are so many unbelievable twists and shocking turns that I challenge you to plot this course and get it completely right. Vonnegut’s whimsical voice creates a fantastically beautiful narrative. His descriptions of the world are abstractly and concretely breathtaking. .

If you need a read that is both quick and thought provoking, pick up The Sirens of Titan here

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Menagerie- Rachel Vincent

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Former English teacher and YA goddess Rachel Vincent is back with a new story and man is it compelling. Menagerie takes place in a world in which cryptids are out in the open and known to humans. They do not however coexist. Seen as less than human, shifters, succubi,minotaurs and others have less than no rights and are either captured and exploited or captured and hunted on game reservations. They are treated as animals. The vein of capture and exploitation is the one which we explore alongside Delilah Marlow who has grown up her whole life believing she was human. On the night of her birthday, Marlow and friends visit the famous Metzger’s Menagerie and things go horribly, devastatingly wrong. What follows is an expose of sorts on the mistreatment of these “creatures” and the lives afforded to them as subhumans.

Vincent has a real knack for combining detail and emotion, causing the reader to become incredibly invested in Marlow’s plight. We root for her and mourn with her and applaud her bravery. The way Vincent writes is so compelling. Her characters have a true depth to them that will tug on even the hardest of heartstrings. Menagerie puts a spotlight on creature cruelty in a very upfront way as these creatures are capable of shifting into their human forms, putting a face to the cryptid and a soul to the character.

While the storyline occurs in the near present with all the trappings of reality (cell phones, the Internet and YouTube), the feel of the world is very old timey and the story progresses the menagerie itself becomes a character. Like traveling ciruses and freak shows of the past, Metzger’s is all glitz and glam on the outside with loud music churning through speakers and brightly lit bulbs strung from tent to tent. We as readers though, know the whole story. And man is it twisted.

Upon looking Menagerie up on Amazon, it has a parenthetical detailing The Menagerie Series Book 1 and that made me so excited to know that we will get to continue to journey alongside Delilah Marlow who is such a strong and independent female lead. Alas, as I am not an oracle, I will have to wait alongside my fellow mortals to see what the future holds for the Menagerie. 

Four out of five books to Mrs. Vincent. You can get a copy of Menagerie for yourself here.

The Ghost Network- Catie Disabato

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Found footage, or rather found manuscript, is the style of Catie Disabato’s The Ghost Network. Disabato herself is our narrator, using footnotes to communicate with the reader as she pieces together the manuscript which was left to her after the world’s biggest pop star (like Taylor Swift big) vanishes without a trace. What follows is a mystery that unravels at a good pace and leaves no stone left unturned. The premise of the story is incredibly layered and well written and only gets muddy on a couple occasions.

While Molly Metropolis is a fictional pop star, the story is interspersed with references to real events and people like the MTV Awards and Britney Spears (Tay is not mentioned). Additionally, the New Situationists (the Illuminati like group at the heart of the novel) are also a real entity. The story is steeped with the sects history and infused with mystery when it is discovered that Molly herself was obsessed with the super secret organization. The question is, is her disappearance related to the group? Disabato races to track down the sources used in the manuscript to do interviews of her own and as she does so, we as readers are taken along for the ride.

The basis of the New Situationists beliefs is, essentially, that all art has already been created and the only way to make something new is to improve upon something that already exists. Molly’s goal, in keeping with the NS’s beliefs, is to become the world’s biggest pop star (ambitious little tyke) and in so doing she shape the current track of pop culture (think Lady Gaga with all her little Monsters).

As the mystery of what happens to Molly is unraveled we learn that maybe things aren’t as clear as they could be, providing us not with an unreliable narrator but with unreliable sources and witnesses who twist information to suite their needs. This element heightens the mystery as we as readers truly do not know whom to trust as true.

There are many twists and turns in this book and they make for a really good story with many facets. The use of footnotes to incorporate the narrators thoughts was well done. There were no gaping holes in the plot of the mystery however everything is not neatly tied in a bow at the close of the story which is what I was hoping would be the case…because who wants a neat bow?

I award four out of five books to The Ghost Network for a job well done on unraveling a mystery that could have been much more rambling.

The Ghost Network can be purchased on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Network-Novel-Catie-Disabato/dp/1612194346/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1443558849&sr=1-1&keywords=the+ghost+network

Disclaimer- Renee Knight

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Wrapped in mystery and veiled in intrigue, Disclaimer  by Renee Knight wastes no time in hooking the reader into a nonlinear scandal.

Disclaimer takes us on a he-said-she-said to rival all others and with several narrators over the course of the book, it is up to the reader to take everything that is said, and all the events that unfold, with a grain of salt. Who is recounting these events at their truest? This is an interesting way to allow the story to unfold; it fills you in as is seen fit. However, it took me a few pages to get in the groove of the narrative style and realize that I wasn’t as confused as I thought I was. I just didn’t have all the facts. Which is precisely how Knight draws you in.

Catherine Ravenscroft had gone on holiday with her husband and young son to Spain. It is 1993. When her husband is called home for business, Catherine is left to her own devices. Devices that 20 years later are portrayed in a scandalous tell all that starts with the disclaimer, “All events and people portrayed herein…”

The contents of this book within the book tell of a woman and her young lover and the tragic fate he meets. But was it so tragic? The aforementioned unreliable narrators (who shift between Mrs. Ravenscroft and the father of the deceased “lover”) tear the reader back and forth between belief of this poor man and his lost son and the woman to whom these events actually transpired. At times, you despise Cath. At times, you despise the old man (for he truly is cray cray). I really love the doubt that Knight develops in all her characters; their actions are at times capricious, their voice becomes tangled in hearsay.

Through it all however, Catherine Ravenscroft proves herself to be a wonderful leading lady. She is foiled and tarnished from every conceivable direction. And just when you think she has been beaten down to the point of no return she stands up and surprises everyone (characters and readers alike).

I give this book four out of four books. The pacing was good and the mystery had me intrigued through the end. It was so good that even now, two days after finishing it, I’m still thinking about the secret Cath held for over 20 years.

 

Disclaimer can be found on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Disclaimer-Novel-Ren%C3%A9e-Knight/dp/0062362259/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1442156964&sr=1-1&keywords=disclaimer