Dying Truth by Angela Marsons

I received an ARC from Net Galley and publisher Bookouture in exchange for an honest review.

I had yet to read a book by Angela Marsons, although I had heard very good things from her from several people. Unfortunately this perhaps isn't the best book to showcase her talents. This is a perfectly acceptable, fairly interesting crime thriller but I was not blown out of the water by it. The plot starts off quite gripping and I like most of what it does but the biggest problem by far is the writing.

For starters, this book is far too long. It could have easily been condensed without losing anything and that might have helped with me being engaged with the plot. The author also has the annoying habit which I call 'the Goosebumps effect'. That is, often a chapter will end on an artificial cliffhanger, created only by people acting like no one ever has in real life. For example, one point a character says something along the lines of 'And you won't believe what I'm about to tell you'. Who would ever say that? Why wouldn't someone just say the actual thing, especially when both people are part of the police force and working on the same case?

Honestly aside from the writing, there isn't much to fault here. The characters managed to be interesting on the whole, although they all had a slightly unsettling air of apathy to the situation about them. However, if you know you like Marsons' writing then it might be worth checking this out, especially if you are a fan of the series. It hasn't put me off reading her other works and there are definitely some on my list to check out.

Overall Rating:

One Was Lost by Natalie D. Richards

I was so disappointed by this book! I mean look at that gorgeous cover. To be fair, I had forgotten this book was YA going into it so I was expecting more of an actual thriller tone. You can definitely tell that this is a YA book. I also found the first few chapters incredibly hard to get into. Something about the writing style and the way things are introduced is very messy at the start and I was a bit confused until I got settled into it.

Apart from that slight niggle, this really isn't a badly written book in terms of style. The characters were fairly interesting and I was intrigued anytime the story chose to focus on them. Unfortunately, the big weakness of this book is the thriller aspect. I'm not going to spoil anything but the ending is incredibly obvious and it's almost painful how long it takes the main characters to work things out. There are the obvious double-meaning conversations where characters will not say things properly, so the main character will jump to a conclusion which you know as the reader is going to turn out to be false because the conversation was so vague.

The existence of the other camp is a factor I think was greatly underused. It does show up in the plot eventually but only to provide some new suspects, which are promptly abandoned a few pages later. Further exploration of this would have helped the story and potentially made the actual solution a lot less obvious. This also applies to the side characters as well come to think of it. Each character is kind of developed in turn, briefly becomes a suspect and then is pushed to one side. It's a shame because they really had the potential to be interesting characters.

Alas I don't really have much more to say about this book. I may explore other titles from this author because there was nothing wrong with the writing style or the characters, and she may have the potential to write better stuff with a different plot. Sadly the failure of a compelling mystery is too big a flaw for me to ignore.

Overall Rating:

.5

The Retreat by Mark Edwards

I received an ARC from Net Galley and publisher Thomas & Mercer in exchange for an honest review.

I LOVE Mark Edwards. I don't think I've actually reviewed any of his books properly before but I read through all of them about two summers ago. He is one of the few authors where I have consistently loved everything he's done and The Retreat is no different.

For starters, the setting of this book is amazing. I have actually been on a writer's retreat to Wales before and this book captured the creepy atmosphere brilliantly. I also love the basic idea. The main character is a horror writer (whose biggest book is clearly a homage to It) famous for writing about missing children. He accidentally chooses to stay at a place where the woman who runs the retreat had her child go missing. It provides the opportunity for a lot of great character interaction, as well as a solid reason for him to get invested in the mystery.

Before I get too gushy, this book isn't perfect. The story gets a little convoluted near the end, although I still found the ending satisfying. There's also a recurring thing that Mark Edwards does which is he describes female characters somewhat sexually, even when they're not meant to be love interests. It's very minor in this book but I still noticed it to a degree.

On the whole though, I would still very much recommend this book. It has an exciting story and I could not predict where it was going, which was so refreshing. Even if it got a little convoluted, each new hint to the solution was surprising to me and I could not put it down whilst reading it. There are a lot of genuinely creepy moments in here as well, or little atmospheric things which really strengthen the story. Ultimately this is another great book from Edwards and I highly suggest you pick it up.

Overall Rating:

The Good Twin by Marti Green

I received an ARC from Net Galley and publisher Thomas & Mercer in exchange for an honest review.

I was honestly so disappointed by this! So the twin/thriller thing has been done to death and this doesn't exactly have the most original plot. However, that gorgeous cover and the potential for a good story sucked me. After all, I don't really mind how original my thrillers are in premise so long as they keep me entertained. Unfortunately due to a poor writing style, The Good Twin barely did that.

It is ultimately the writing that lets this book down. The characters are very flat and don't feel like actual people at all. It switches between focusing on Mallory and Ben, but Mallory's chapters are written from her POV and Ben's chapters are in third person. This makes for a very jarring reading experience. I can only assume this was done so we could tell who the focus was on without the chapters saying 'Mallory' and 'Ben' all the time, but it's really not a great solution.

You also then get flashback chapters from Charley's POV which don't add much new to the story and you have the whole thing of having to go over events you've already read about. This is a good chunk of the book and it just feels like you're waiting to catch up with the present again. Out of all three of the main characters, Charley is probably the best written but that isn't saying much.

My other major problem with this book is that it swaps plots a fair bit in the standard twisty thriller way. The issue with this is I was far more interested in the story I thought I was getting before the twists happened. I liked the whole 'can I really trust them?' aspect of both Ben and Mallory's interactions, and the same thing at the end part too (not going into detail because I don't want to spoil but it should be clear what I mean if you've read it). The first twist has been done to death in books like this while I haven't really read many books that cover the whole 'can I trust my partner in crime?' thing.

Overall, this book isn't bad enough to really annoy me but it was a bit of a slog to get through. There isn't really anything positive that would make me recommend it. It's passable but there are far better thrillers to pick up.

Overall Rating:

.5

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

Okay, so confession time-I was not expecting to like this book. I have actually been avoiding reading this book for several reasons, the main one being that I'm not the biggest romance fan anyway and I'd heard that the romance in this is one of those where all the problems are caused by stupid teen pettiness. This is definitely not the case. Anyway, what finally made me pick it up is we got it in at work in our £1 sale bin so I caved and decided to try it. I was not expecting to love it as much as I did.

So this is a fairly straightforward story of a boy and a girl who meet on the school bus, fall in love and deal with a lot of family drama whilst doing so. I haven't read anything by Rainbow Rowell before and I was not prepared for the beautiful writing style. This is not written like most YA romances-it is definitely not fluff and the characters are more like mini serious adults, only somehow also realistic and not in the least bit pretentious. The problems dealt with in this book are also very real.

I liked both of the main characters immensely. Eleanor is the kind of character who should annoy me. She picks fights with Park when she has no real reason to and her entire style of thinking is very odd and eclectic. However, I felt like I 100% understood her at all times. The strength of this book really comes from the two protagonists. I never had to deal with anything like what Eleanor goes through but I could recognize my teenage self in her all the same. I also really like Park a lot. His storyline is pretty understated compared with Eleanor's but it is made up of brilliant moments. The whole eyeliner bit is brilliantly done, as is his dad stuff. His mum's attitude to Eleanor is another thing I loved. The family is extremely present in this book for both protagonists and again, every single one of them felt like a real person.

There are a few problems with this book but nothing major. As I said, Eleanor does pick fights and I can understand why people would be frustrated with her. There's a whole scene where she gets mad that Park likes her when she wears makeup, although this makes perfect sense when you consider she is probably playing down her femininity to avoid catching her stepdad's eye even more. Understanding Eleanor stopped stuff like that bothering me personally. There are also a ton of weird metaphors or bits of writing which again, I quite liked but I can see how it would be annoying. They all came from Eleanor's POV.

Overall, I am so happy that I decided to read this book. It has definitely become one of  my favourite YA romances and I will be seeking out more from the author. I would highly recommend it if you're looking for a romance which is low on the fluff but high on the emotional connections and character detail.

Overall Rating:

Three Truths and a Lie by Brent Hartinger

SPOILERS AHEAD.

Oh boy. So I admittedly decided to read this book after seeing it on a Booktuber's 'Worst of 2017' list so maybe it's my own fault that yeah, it kind of ended up sucking. To be fair, this book is definitely not the worst thing I've ever read. It's just that the ending...wow.

So this book is about our main character Rob who goes to a cabin in the woods with his boyfriend Liam, Liam's best friend Mia and her boyfriend Galen. Galen gets murdered, they end up stranded in this cabin and then suspicion falls upon everyone. Blah blah blah, pretty standard thriller story.

First of all, the three truths and the lie listed on the blurb are not three truths and a lie. In fact, technically none of them are true? Also I've always played it as 'two truths and a lie' so I can only conclude that the title was changed to have it fit the story and the final twist.

I can't talk about anything else without discussing this ending. So first twist-Liam is behind everything all along. Big surprise. Rob and Liam have only been together for 3 months and yet Rob never suspects Liam once. In fact, he talks constantly about how Liam is his soulmate and acts shocked that he might not know everything about him. In 3 months? Really? By the end of the book, Mia is also dead so there is really only Rob and Liam left, and the book is told from Rob's perspective.

Now the second twist.

Liam and Rob are the same person. Yeah.

You can tell that Hartinger is trying so hard to be clever here. Admittedly, I like that 'Three Truths and a Lie' ultimately refers to three real people, one fake one. But he has this weird scene at the end where a psychiatrist points out to Liam/Rob that Liam and Rob never spoke to each other around other characters and this just reeks of self-congratulatory behaviour on behalf of the author. Like 'look, look how clever I am! See? It's totally not a nonsensical twist at all'.

Also there's another twist with Liam having hated Mia all along (see what I mean about the blurb?) which just makes him seem like the dumbest character ever. He hates her so he deliberately befriends her for years and years just on the off-chance he'll be able to murder her someday. Ah yes, perfect logic there.

I can't be totally unfair to this book. The writing style isn't the worst and I managed to breeze through it. It's just that the plot is so dumb that it overrides everything else. I picked it up out of curiousity but I'm not sure it's even worth that.

Overall Rating:

Little Monsters by Kara Thomas

I read a lot of YA. I read a lot of thrillers. But something I tend to neglect somewhat in my reading in YA thrillers. Recently I've been in the mood for them so I finally picked up Little Monsters which has been on my TBR list forever. And yeah, it's pretty damn good.

One great thing about this book is it did not go in the direction I expected. It wasn't 100% surprising and I could see a lot of what happened around the middle of the book coming from a mile off, but then the story evolved and went in a slightly different direction again which was surprising. I will say that the very end (as in, literally the last sentence) was confusing for me. I didn't understand what it was trying to do, though it was framed as a last-minute twist of sorts. Maybe someone can explain to me what that meant because yeah, it left things on a weird note.

Little Monsters tells the story of Kacey, the relatively new girl in town who is still struggling to find her place among her friends. The plot kicks off when her two best friends don't invite her to a party one night and, unfortunately, this is also the night where one of the friends mysteriously vanishes. Like most YA thrillers, this book does take some ridiculous turns. They're not awful but they're not exactly the most logical of routes either. Kacey also makes terrible decisions throughout which is very frustrating. I consider both of those features of the YA thriller genre though so I'm willing to let it slide. I get very tense reading about people accused of a murder they didn't commit so perhaps Kacey's poor decisions got to me more than they would most.

Overall, this is a neat little read. The writing style is pleasant enough and I definitely wanted to keep reading to find out what happened next. The ending is satisfying if not perfect, and all the characters are quite well-developed and interesting. If YA thrillers are your thing, you should definitely check this one out.

Overall Rating:

Little Deaths by John F.D. Taff

Now this was a pleasant surprise!

Honestly I wasn't expecting this collection to be great. I haven't had much luck with horror anthologies on Amazon and most of them tend to be either forgettable, weirdly sexual or just entirely gore-based. The stories in this aren't (on the whole) any of those things. Most of them are really unique, very gripping horror stories that manage to be surreal at times without crossing the line into absurd or incomprehensible. Alas not every story in this collection is great and I was slightly put off by the author gushing about his own stories at the end which knocked off a star or two.

So let's start off with the good. 'Bolts' is pretty solid, albeit I was very put off by the weird vibes the main character's relationship had. It felt very forced and read like someone writing about a fantasy relationship. Thankfully this doesn't last and the story is a neat twist on a classic. 'Calendar Girl' was really great and one of my favourites. The suspense is built up well and its not entirely predictable which is great, 'Here' is beautiful and mesmerizing, and again you can't really tell what is going on as the plot sucks you in. It's not really even a horror story but it fills you with dread and the potential for horror keeps you guessing. 'The Mellified Man' was another favourite and, while predictable, I still loved every second. All of these I would give 4-5 stars.

Most of the rest I would give 3 stars each. 'Helping Hands' was one of the more engaging ones, and 'The Lacquered Box' only missed out by not really being very clear in what was going on. I hated 'The Mire of Human Veins' at first but it grew on me as it went on. My main problem was the overly-descriptive writing style which doesn't really fit with the other stories and comes across as pretentious. 'Orifice' was so close to being good for me but it just fell a bit on the weird side.

There were only a couple that I either didn't read properly or actively disliked. They tended to either be more on the sci-fi side or else I hated the format of the story. 'Sharp Edges' was very bland and I skimmed it after the first few pages. I couldn't even read 'Snapback' due to the terrible format of it being emails or reports or whatever it was. 'In Men, Black' was also uninteresting to me and I couldn't engage with the alien plot at all. Assume all the rest that I haven't mentioned are middle of the road for me.

Overall, I was very pleased with this collection. Though this review may seem fairly negative, I was genuinely enthralled by most of the stories and some of them I know will stick with me for a very long time. Taff's writing style is clear, enjoyable and quick to digest which is perfect for a collection like this. I would definitely recommend this for anyone who enjoys horror anthologies and I would love to read more from the author.

Overall Rating:

.5