Aftercare Instructions by Bonnie Pipkin

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

I'm a little confused because I got this book from Net Galley where is is apparently being released on the 3rd May 2018. However, Goodreads says it was published 27th June 2017. Oh well.

This is a bit of an odd read for me. Genesis (I hate that name so much) is a girl with many problems in her life-her dad died of an overdose, her mother is suicidal and her boyfriend ran out and left her at the abortion clinic. This book focuses on her dealing with the latter problem and adjusting to the idea of a life without her boyfriend. Despite the intense subject matter, this is actually a rather detached book which makes it easier reading than it might have otherwise been. The characters are okay but they don't really cross the line into feeling like real people, perhaps with the exception of Gen herself. This isn't necessarily a flaw-in a book like this, too much focus on character would have been very difficult to read and distracting from the main character. On the other hand, anyone who isn't Gen is a bit flat.

There isn't a whole lot of plot here but that's okay. I enjoyed the flashbacks to before the abortion being told through the medium of play scripts. It was a nice touch and it came across like Gen dealing with her pain through distancing herself from it by writing the scripts. I don't know if that was the intention but I appreciated it all the same.

So why isn't this rated higher? Honestly, it's mostly because of things it lacks rather than mistakes it makes. Not much attention is given to things like developing Gen's friends as characters and so when we do get vague details about them, it can be confusing. Ditto Gen's family situation. We know her sister moved out and Gen misses her but only because we are told these things explicitly. We're never shown Gen being close with her sister or missing her particularly. A similar thing happens with Peter's mum hating Gen. We get one script scene flashback but the rest is all told to us.

Overall, I don't regret reading this book. It's an interesting read and I wasn't really sure where it was going, both of which are good. It's a shame I couldn't rate it higher but it just doesn't have that life to it that makes me love a book.

Overall Rating:

.5

Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler

Okay, so this is partially my own fault because this book has been on my TBR list forever and I haven't read the blurb in over two years. But I picked this up expecting a trashy, fluffy romance and I was not prepared for the depth this book goes.

Maybe 'depth' is the wrong word but this book is not about two teenage girls trying to kiss their way through twenty boys in twenty days. It's actually about one girl trying desperately to grieve the death of her boyfriend without letting her best friend know, all while reconciling her guilt with having new romantic feelings for someone. It's still a YA and don't get me wrong, there are plenty of teenage girl moments and fluffy bits. But damn if it doesn't make a decent stab at depicting grief and complex emotions either.

'The hardest thing is that I'll never know exactly what I lost, how much it should hurt, how long I should keep thinking about him.'

I found the main character Anna to be extremely likeable. You understand why she is friends with Frankie, who could so easily have been turned into the horrible, typical YA wild best friend. Instead you get a friendship that feels very real, as well as actual family relationships and proper parental characters. Ockler somehow manages to capture the almost-mundane side of grief and difficult circumstances. What happens when all the desperate mourning stops and you have to return to everyday life?

'There’s not much anger left between us, just a great divide — like best friends in high school who go to different colleges, lose touch, and move on in parallel lives that never cross until years later, in a random bar or grocery store, and after a brief hug and five minutes of small talk, they both realize that the threads that connected them so long ago have frayed and blown away, leaving nothing to discuss.
So they nod and smile.
And bid one another farewell.'

See that? We've all felt that and damn, Ockler describes it perfectly.

So is this book going to change the world? No, of course not. It is YA and there are some excruciating quotes in here too. But I was pleasantly surprised by the way this book handled grief. It also described being a teenage girl in a fairly accurate way, without a lot of the exaggeration often found in YA fiction. Overall I am glad I finally read it and I feel like I got something from it beyond the trashy fluff I was looking for.

Overall Rating:

.5

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

SPOILERS AHEAD.

Good news-the book club I'm a part of has been revived! Expect more random book reviews of things that aren't usually my taste.

So this is the type of thriller I would never pick up, only with a very sciency edge. I was honestly not expecting to enjoy it as much as I did but it turned out to be a pleasant surprise. This book focuses on Jason, a Physics professor with a wife and a son who gets kidnapped by the alternative universe version of himself and sent to a world where his family doesn't exist. Instead he has invented a box that lets him travel to alternative universes. There are essentially three parts to this book-Jason being kidnapped, him universe-hopping to try and find his world and his eventual return to it.

By far my favourite part of this was the last third. I did not expect the twist of there being multiple Jasons and I loved the way this was handled. Up until that part, it was an enjoyable but not particularly engaging story. Jason as a character could have been far more annoying than he was and I was so happy that he didn't cross the line into an unlikeable male protagonist. I was however slightly disappointed with the way his wife was handled. Instead of universe-hopping with some random female scientist, why not make it the alternative version of his wife? It would have added another level to the whole 'do I sleep with her?' dilemma and also given his wife more character depth. Instead we get Jason immediately sleeping with her with barely any moral quandary and then she gets shot. Sure, it might have harmed the last third but she could have died in an alternative universe in some way and then had that bit play out the same.

For a book that isn't usually my taste, I really enjoyed reading this. It posed some interesting questions regarding 'what is the self?', and the ending did not follow the same predictable route as the rest of the book which gave it a breath of fresh air. The characters weren't amazing but they weren't cardboard cut-outs either. Overall, if you like the sound of the blurb then I would definitely give this one a try.

Overall Rating:

.5

White Lies by Lucy Dawson

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

Now this was a good one.

I read a lot of thrillers and yet I haven't really read anything like White Lies. The story starts with our doctor protagonist Alex sleeping with a random guy she meets in Ibiza, only to return home to realise that she has accidentally slept with a teenage patient of hers. The story flips perspectives so you hear her side first, followed by Jonathan's and then some other characters' as well for good measure. This is the kind of thriller that makes you doubt everything the characters say, but in a really enjoyable way that means you can't put the book down. I loved how the reader was made to doubt Alex and how this was mirrored by the doubts of both the media and her husband in-story. I also liked how Alex was kept at a little bit of a distance from the reader in comparison to the other characters, despite her being the first POV we get. Not returning to her head after we hear Jonathan's side continued that doubt and kept the reader guessing in a really effective way.

In general, the writing style here is very good. All the characters are well-developed and have a unique voice to them. The only minor gripe I had was that the author seemed to have certain vendettas which unfortunately leaked their way into the story. For example, at one point a character complains about how people can become famous on Youtube for doing nothing, and this is mentioned again later by a different character. It's not plot-relevant and it seems like Dawson just wanted to rant a little about social media. There are a few little moments like that with the teenage characters as well which just seem a bit off. However, I have read far worse-written teenage characters, especially in thrillers.

Overall, this was a nice little surprise in a genre I am very familiar with. The actual mystery aspect isn't too complicated which bumped down the rating a little, though there was still an unexpected moment or two. The strength of this thriller is the characters and how you get invested in finding out which ones you can trust, and it is this that drives the book rather than lots of surprising twists and dramatic happenings. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would definitely seek out more from the author.

Overall Rating:

.5

The Merry Spinster by Mallory Ortberg

This book was so disappointing! Look at that beautiful cover. It has a cool (if not overdone) premise to match-twisted retelling of fairytales. Alas, many of the stories in this are just not up to scratch.

This is a relatively short collection and so I'm going to do things a little differently to how I normally review short stories. Instead of going over each story in detail, I'm just going to talk about them generally in comparison to each other and similar things I've read.

So the first story is definitely one of the strongest and unfortunately this led to a large part of my disappointment. 'The Daughter Cells' is kind of like if Lemony Snicket retold The Little Mermaid and all the dark joy that implies. It had a bunch of quotable stuff and used the fairytale to make matter-of-fact, humourous commentary on society. I was hoping all the stories would have this tone and while they kind of do, very few have such a coherent and detailed story to go along with it.

'The Thankless Child' is next (a retelling of Cinderella sort of) and I enjoyed it enough until the ending happened. It was very abrupt and I had no idea what it meant, despite reading it twice. This highlights one of the main issues with many of these stories-they don't appear to have a point. This could be because they are all mixes of several tales (the inspiration for each story is listed at the back which is very cool) and so having not read a lot of the original tales, it may be that stuff gets lost for me. However, I don't believe this is a valid excuse as the story really should stand alone.

'Fear Not' was amusing, yet confusing again and forgettable (although it was inspired by the Bible and so felt like one of the more unique tales). 'The Six Boy Coffins' was finally another story that had a decent plot and a clear ending. This was extremely powerful and again, it used the fairytale element to make a comment about society in a very strong way.

'The Rabbit' follows this and was my favourite story in the whole collection. It is a seriously creepy retelling of The Velveteen Rabbit and I think the simplicity of focusing on one story works in its favour. I will not be forgetting that one anytime soon.

'The Merry Spinster' was a very pointless retelling of Beauty and the Beast with an amusing writing style but it really went absolutely nowhere. I don't even remember 'The Wedding Party' (I finished this book two days ago) and the remaining four stories are all very similar in that they are creepy but again, ultimately pointless or unclear in what they are trying to say.

Overall, I wish I could love this collection more. It has a few really good stories and it shows so much promise in terms of Ortberg's writing style. I just wish it wasn't so hit and miss.

Overall Rating:

.5

The Last Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine AND The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

So I have a dilemma. Here are two great thrillers that I read within two months of each other and they both have the exact same twist/plot. This is awkward because I genuinely enjoyed them both. I read The Wife Between Us first and it absolutely shocked me in the best kind of way. I was so happy because I thought I guessed the twist early on, and while I was kind of right I was also very wrong. Which was fantastic because I got the dual benefits of feeling smug and still being surprised. I never got round to writing a review for it but it was one of my favourite thrillers I had ever read.

Then we come to The Last Mrs. Parrish, a book I read in one sitting due to its fantastic writing style. And yeah, I guessed the plot very early on because it is the same plot as The Wife Between Us. If I hadn't read that book first, I no doubt would have been very surprised and I would have raved about this book instead of The Wife Between Us.

Thankfully despite their similarities, both books have enough differences to keep you interested. I would say The Last Mrs. Parrish is arguably better, although the difference is minimal. Even knowing the twist, I couldn't put it down and it has much more focus on the characters. Both Daphne and Amber are fully-fleshed out and you get very invested in reading about them for very different reasons. Meanwhile, The Wife Between Us still has strong characters but the focus is on a twisty story. Honestly, the very last twist of the latter book was a bit hard for me to stomach and I would have enjoyed it a lot more had it not been included. It doesn't add much to the plot and it definitely challenges the reader's suspension of disbelief.

Overall, these are both fantastic thrillers. The Last Mrs. Parrish did come out first but they were released so close together that I doubt anyone ripped anyone else off. Do you need to read them both? Probably not. Which one you reach for is entirely up to you but if you are going to read them both, I would pick The Wife Between Us first as you benefit much more going into that one blind. They are both very well-written and I am not disappointed I read them.

Overall Rating:

The Chalk Man by C.J. Tudor

I have to get this out of the way before I discuss anything else about the book because yeah, it really bothered me. The Chalk Man starts off reeeally reminiscent of Stephen King's It. It has chapters which alternate between 2016 and the 1980s, and in the latter chapters it focuses on a group of kids who like to ride bicycles. These kids are all boys apart from one red-headed girl who is being abused by her father. There is also a kid who likes to do voices (he doesn't actually do them a lot, the narration just tells us he does) and a kid named Eddie. The bullies have walked straight out of a Stephen King novel too, and there is the similar mix of weirdly sexual and also supernatural elements that dominates King's signature style. Thankfully the actual plot has no similarities to anything that I can see but it was deeply unsettling at the start to read something that felt so derivative.

Now that that's out of the way, I can actually talk about whether or not I liked this book. This is a very solid mystery with an engaging writing style and plenty going on plot-wise. I feel like it was very different from what I expected. I'm not sure why but the blurb made me picture a fast-paced intense thriller whereas this is more of a coming-of-age mixed with a murder mystery. I read almost all of it in one sitting which as always, may have influenced my opinion of pacing etc.

At first, I was also apprehensive because it appears like the story is going to take a supernatural turn. Thankfully this doesn't really happen (there is some element of unearthly things going on but it can be easily ignored if you wish) which I was grateful for as I hate not knowing a book is supernatural beforehand. As I mentioned, there is a lot going on in the plot and it is paced pretty well so as not to feel cluttered. The one downfall is the author does a lot of 'breadcrumbing'-that is, dropping cryptic statements about what is about to happen in the 1980s. This would be fine if they weren't stacked quite a lot (as in, you get one cliffhanger comment and then another one before the first one is resolved) and some of them don't get resolved until literally the last few pages. I'm all for building suspense but it was a bit irritating at times and a lot to keep in your mind.

Apart from these minor niggles, I really enjoyed this book. It has solid characters and I really got invested in the story. It genuinely surprised me multiple times and didn't feel like a cop-out. Some of the details are perhaps a little hard to swallow but the author does wrap everything up so kudos to them. It is by no means my favourite thriller ever but it was very unique and I feel like I will remember the story without it bleeding into other ones. Considering the amount of mediocre thrillers I read, this is no small feat.

Overall Rating:

.5

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

SPOILERS AHEAD.

Oh boy. I am not going to win any fans for this one. So this book has been on my TBR list for four years now. One of my closest friends recommended it to me waaaay back in first year of university and I earnestly promised to read it as he said it was one of his favourite books. Flash forward to 2018-the movie is coming out and I am reminded of this book's existence. I excitedly text him to say I'm finally starting to read it and I begin.

Aaaaaaaaah.

This book is bad. Painfully bad. Reading it is like being punched in the stomach by someone you hate only you're not allowed to complain about it because you have only yourself to blame. The only way I can accurately do my hatred of this book justice is to break it down into subtitles so apologies if it seems disjointed. There is just a LOT of ground to cover.

Plot Summary

The setting is 2045 and the world has gone to crap. Our protagonist is a teenage boy named Wade Watts, an orphan who spends all of his time in an online virtual world called the Oasis. That's all everyone does now-that and make endless 80s references. You see, the guy who made the Oasis died and left behind a video saying he would give 240 billion (yes, BILLION) dollars to whoever finds his hidden Easter egg first. In order to have a chance of finding this Easter egg, you have to memorise every piece of pop culture from the 80s ever. No that isn't a joke. Wade is the biggest geek and therefore of course will undertake the quest to find the egg first. By 'quest' I mean spending four years watching and reading stuff, then finally getting off his ass to do something.

Problem #1-SO MUCH EIGHTIES

Many people appear to love this book because of the endless references to everything nerdy. These people are severely misguided. You see, Cline employs the absolute laziness way of referencing stuff which is to just namecheck everything in a massive stream of pop culture vomit. If the reference isn't included as part of an obnoxiously long list, then you can bet it will be inserted into a paragraph of description in the most distracting way possible. Characters, places, even the music in tense scenes is replaced with a reference to a better work of fiction.

'She was so charming. Her geeky demeanor and hyperkinetic speech pattern reminded me of Jordan, my favorite character in Real Genius'

How distracting is that? It fails on two counts because if you don't get the reference, well you suck for not being nerdy enough (more on that later). If you do get the reference however, then you can't possibly think of anything other than the character from that movie from then onward. It ruins any description Cline does bother to write and it jerks you out of the story like a car crash.

Problem #2-Show don't tell

So the finding of the first key is kind of glossed over a bit (I mean, if you can call 10 chapters or so 'glossed over') which I guess is done because finding it is a given. Unfortunately this results in one of the worst narrative mistakes an author can make and that is simply telling the reader about stuff instead of bothering to describe it. It's honestly baffling when Wade finds out the location of the first key, calculates it will take him three days to get there and then just immediately comes up with an alternative plan. Then he teleports there and makes his way through a dungeon in the space of a sentence. Cline literally lists him finding loot until he reaches the big boss of the dungeon and it's such a bizarre decision. I guess it's because if you've played the game he's referencing, that would be rather dull to read about. Alas it is dull anyway and you could have done so much cool stuff with detailing Wade's journey and have him battling things. Even fans of the game could have enjoyed in-depth references.

This is not a one-off either. Too often the author resorts to simply listing things or skimming over certain details. I don't need to read about everything but why bring something up instead of simply using a time skip or a change of scene? This is also linked closely with the next problem...

Problem #3-No suspense allowed

For the first half of this book (and even a bit beyond that) the author seems petrified to let the reader experience any kind of suspense. Finding the first key is told with the knowledge that Wade will succeed but that does not excuse things like this happening:

'I breathed a sigh of relief. (I wouldn’t learn until later that the keys were nontransferable. You couldn’t drop one of them, or give them to another avatar. And if you were killed while holding one, it vanished right along with your body.)'

So throughout this scene we're not sure if he's going to be attacked and lose the key he just gained. Then Art3mis tries to attack him and the above sentence happens, immediately removing any kind of suspense. By telling us so early on that keys can't be stolen, it removes so much potential tension from later scenes. Again, stuff like this happens repeatedly.

Problem #4-Wade is too good

The other major reason the story lacks any suspense is that Wade basically never struggles with anything. It is astonishing how many skills this guy supposedly has. He is one of the first people to work out the location of the first key and gets it immediately, even though Art3mis has been trying for five weeks. Granted he struggles with working out the second key but only with working it out. The actual nerd skills needed to complete any challenge, he has in spades. None of these skills are foreshadowed either (beyond us being told repeatedly how awesome and nerdy he is) so every time it's like 'I approached the place, waiting to see what the next challenge would be. It was this thing. Sweet, I'm awesome at this thing.'. I was just waiting for him to encounter something he wasn't amazing at and it never really happened.

At one point when Wade is in hiding and is all depressed, he becomes incredibly obese. He then installs a fitness program onto his virtual system and within months (literally months) he gains abs and becomes very muscular. I can understand having a computer program help you lose weight making it much easier but it's still ridiculous. It doesn't explain how he loses that weight healthily when it's so much in such a short space of time. It's just another thing that he does effortlessly.

Problem #5-No one has that much time

This book is all over the place when it comes to logic and time. So Wade is poor and we're told right at the start of the book that he has to scavenge and sell computers for food since his aunt steals all of his government-issued food. This is then never mentioned again. He also attends school which presumably follows the usual full-time school structure. Four years have passed since the start of the egg hunt and yet somehow Wade has had the time to consume thousands of hours of films, TV shows, books and videogames. How? For example, just one thing Wade claims to have done is watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail 157 times. That is almost ten days worth of watching just one film.

This continues much later on when we're suddenly told that he has had to take on a full-time 40 hour a week job (with 10 hour shifts) and yet he still has time to go into the Oasis all the time and still hunt for the egg. What??? It doesn't make any sense.

Problem #6-Is this even a romance?

Not gonna lie, I have quite a few issues with how Art3mis and Wade's relationship goes down in this book. He has a crush on her before he meets her and when he does meet her, we get some truly cringe-worthy flirting between them.

'“You’re evil, you know that?” I said.

She grinned and shook her head. “Chaotic Neutral, sugar.”'

That line was so bad that it almost ruined the magical idea of romance a lifetime of watching Disney movies has instilled in me.

It does get marginally better but it still really bothers me. Art3mis makes a lot of good points about how Wade only gets to see what she wants him to see since they've only interacted online. And she repeatedly says she looks nothing like her avatar which he repeatedly ignores. Good thing she was lying right? This discussion also leads to one of the most godawful please-can-I-stop-reading moments in the whole damn book:

'Art3mis: How well do you know Aech?

Parzival: He’s been my best friend for five years. Now, spill it. Are you a woman? And by that I mean are you a human female who has never had a sex-change operation?

Art3mis: That’s pretty specific.

Parzival: Answer the question, Claire'

If some guy spoke like that to me, I would never ever speak to him again. This was written in 2011 for god's sake, there's no excuse for transphobia.

Just after the halfway point, we get the obligatory break-up due to Art3mis wanting to focus on the contest (though she is adamant they were never dating, something Wade repeatedly ignores). Wade then bombards her with messages etc to try and get her back. I honestly don't know how the author meant us to interpret this because he does get her in the end but it's not as a result of his behaviour. However, it's still another point against our hero.

I also dislike the faint 'not like other girls' vibe going on in the narration. Wade takes time to point out how Art3mis has a curvy but normal build, unlike EVERY OTHER GIRL who apparently are all either stick-thin or have porn star bodies. Because of course most girls would choose to look like a male fantasy.

Finally, there's a scene where Art3mis and Wade discuss what they would do with the money. Wade says he'd buy a mansion and cool stuff and Art3mis says she would feed all the starving people in the world. You know, because dystopia. Wade MOCKS her for this. This is never really resolved apart from a glib joke by Wade later.

Problem #7-All the other crap

1. There is so much racism in regards to the Japanese characters.

2. Aech is apparently one of the most famous players in the Oasis at the start of the book, has a really cool hangout and yet has no friends apart from Wade.

3. Why do they hang out with I-r0k? Seriously, no one likes him and he exists only to mess stuff up later. Oh, and also so Wade can prove his knowledge in one of the hardest scenes to swallow (I've dealt with a lot of sucky gatekeeper nerd guys in my time).

'I nodded. “The prizes were all mentioned in the Swordquest comic books that came with the games. Comic books which happen to be visible in the treasure room in the final scene of Anorak’s Invitation, by the way.”

The crowd burst into applause. I-r0k lowered his head in shame.'

Never has a scene made me root for a protagonist less.

4. If Halliday intended the true message to be 'don't waste your life in the Oasis', why did he create an impossibly hard contest designed to make everyone spend their time in the Oasis consuming the exact same pop culture he did?

5. Wade says this stupid insult '“Your mom bought them for me,” I retorted without breaking my stride. “Tell her I said thanks, the next time you stop at home to breast-feed and pick up your allowance.”' followed by 'At this school, the only real weapons were words, so I’d become skilled at wielding them'. Skilled. With dialogue like that. Sure.

6. Halliday sounds like an awful awful person. Wade takes the time to point out he fired people for not understanding his references and yeah, that makes him awful.

7. Name-dropping Revenge of the Nerds as a good movie. Gross.

8. Oh look, more problematic stuff:

'“Stop hitting yourself like Rain Man, OK?”'

9. Stop. Making. Wade. So. Unlikeable.

'When I reached the bar, I ordered a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster from the female Klingon bartender and downed half of it. Then I grinned as R2 cued up another classic ’80s tune. “ ‘Union of the Snake,’ ” I recited, mostly out of habit. “Duran Duran. Nineteen eighty-three.”'

10. The weird blob dancing scene.

Final Thoughts

So after all that, how come this book gets two stars and not one? Well to my utter surprise, after about the halfway point this book improves a lot. Almost all of the references vanish (sadly not quite all) and the actual plot becomes the main focus. It's not a bad plot either, and I even found myself enjoying it at times. Sadly this is not enough for me to recommend this book. It wasn't even enough to cancel out the sheer anger it made me feel.

Mild other positives so this doesn't seem so negative-Art3mis is a pretty cool character. I like how she held her own and she was by far the most sensible and relatable person. Aech isn't bad either really. The plot goes in a weird but not unwelcome direction nearish the end and it was certainly different than what I was expecting.

Overall, I am kind of baffled how this book gets any 5 star reviews. From reading them, they all seem to be written by people who are happy with shallow references and enjoy the gatekeeper aspects. As someone who normally loves a clever reference, I am deeply disappointed by the quality on show here.

It's such a shame because the second half of the book shows how good Ready Player One could have been if it wasn't trying so hard. I would have loved to see more creativity and uniqueness within the world of the Oasis. It also desperately needed a less douchey protagonist.

Overall Rating:

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

I first picked this book up many, many months ago, sucked in by the intriguing blurb and the general good things I'd heard. It then sat on my Kindle until a couple of weeks ago when we got the physical book into my workplace and I was reminded of its existence. I then found out Joe Hill is Stephen King's son and that cemented it. I was going to read this book.

Those of you who have read my Gerald's Game review will know that books don't scare me easily. While I am a complete wuss when it comes to horror movies, books have a harder job. I adore Stephen King but I would say that only one of his books has ever scared me. Maybe I should have been reading his son this whole time instead.

Heart-Shaped Box terrified me. It is ultimately a ghost story and it probably isn't as original as it seemed to me, but something about this elderly ghost relentless hunting down the main character and trying to drive him to suicide got into my head in the way few books do. This book has all the intensity of a Stephen King book but it is streamlined. There is little of the character and narrative quirks that plague King stories, and the result is a very extreme and relentless experience. I think the best part is you genuinely have no idea if the main character will survive or not. There is none of the security that comes from protagonist immunity and I love it for that.

I can't say much more about this book without spoilers sadly, but there are just a few more points I wanted to add. The characters are very complex and grey in their morality, and this is handled very well within the story. You don't dislike them by any means but you're not sure you always agree with them either. There is only one sexual moment that I can think of which makes this a great book to choose if the sex elements in horror stories normally bother you. Finally, the middle of the book does change the tone a little and not really for the better. However, it soon returns back to the scary atmosphere of the earlier sections and it does end very strongly.

If you are a fan of horror, I strongly urge you to pick this book up. It is one of the best examples of how to successfully create an atmosphere and I promise you won't regret it.

Overall Rating:

.5

To Kill a Kingdom by Alexandra Christo

You know, I've heard this book called 'a retelling of The Little Mermaid' by many, many Booktubers and honestly I think this is really unfair. For starters, it isn't even about a mermaid. Apart from sharing the plot elements of a prince and the ocean, there really isn't anything in common between them.

To Kill a Kingdom is the story of Lira, a siren princess who is allowed to steal the heart of a human prince every day on her birthday (a siren tradition). When she breaks this rule and steals a heart early, she gets punished and (after another transgression) transformed into a human. Now she must steal the heart of the richest prince in the land without the use of her siren voice (originally I am pretty sure she is given until her birthday to do so but then this deadline is never mentioned again so...oops?).

The story is told in dual narrative, with chapters alternating between Lira and the prince Elian. This style bothered me at first mainly because, until Lira became human, I didn't have much interest in Elian's story. Don't get me wrong, he is a great character and I liked his crew a lot, I'm just not particularly into adventure stories. I thought this book would be a bit of a drag but it picks up as soon as Lira is human, and ultimately it has a wonderfully solid plot. It is definitely more heavy on the fantasy elements than the books I usually read but this was by no means a bad thing. I loved the world the author created and there was a lot of inventiveness in the detail of the creatures and such.

There was only really one problem for me with this book and while it wasn't handled appallingly, it was quite a large part of it. Once human, Lira arbitrarily avoids murdering Elian for chapters and chapters, purely so they can keep the plot going and eventually fall in love. Everything about the love felt sudden to me, though this is more from Lira's feelings being badly described than not having enough time dedicated to it in the story. I liked their interactions and felt they had an interesting vibe going on, but love? I didn't buy Lira's change in feelings with the amount of description dedicated to her trying to work them out, even with the excuse of newfound humanity.

Having said that, I still really love this book. I found all of the characters compelling, and Lira in particular was very well fleshed-out. The world-building elements of the underwater kingdom were so cool, and the same goes for the actual kingdom as well. As is typical with these books, the ending felt a little rushed and not entirely clear but it wasn't unsatisfying. I would definitely recommend giving this book a try if you enjoy fantasy, and this author deserves more credit than 'a retelling of the Little Mermaid'.

Overall Rating:

.5

Heartless by Marissa Meyer

So this month I have been on a bit of a YA fantasy kick which is quite nice because I haven't felt like that for a while. After reading To Kill a Kingdom, I fancied another alternative origin story type thing so I opted for Heartless, a retelling/origin story for the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland. I must admit, I was a bit apprehensive about how Wonderland could be handled (after all, we all saw what Tim Burton did to it) and while this does make some of the same mistakes as the Tim Burton movie, it actually does a fairly decent job.

The main issue this book has is pacing. Our main character is Lady Catherine, a girl who is about to be proposed to by the King of Hearts but really wants to run off and start her own bakery with her maid. Almost three quarters of the story is her trying to dodge proposals, all the while going on dates and flirting with a court joker named Jest. The actual plot kickstarts just after this point and then finishes abruptly with the end of the book. It would have been far better paced had the plot started earlier and then been the main focus as opposed to her personal drama.

The other issues are all fairly minor. Catherine really could have been Alice under a different name, and I disliked how several Alice quotes were given to her. How does that work in the sense of Alice In Wonderland following this story? It's a little weird to have Catherine go through the mad tea party and the Caterpillar exchanges etc when Alice will presumably do the same. A lot of the Wonderland elements were incorporated very cleverly and there's some neat stuff in here, but unfortunately there is also very mild political elements. It's nowhere near as bad as the Burton film but it was enough to make me doubt how it worked within the world itself. Having said that, I liked the creativity behind things such as the Mock Turtle and Mary Ann, and it is remarkable the amount of detail Marissa Meyer has included.

Apart from slight plot and pacing flaws, this is genuinely a very creative and enjoyable book. I can see some people being uninterested in the whole 'dodging the King' plot point (after all, it is a given that she will become the Queen of Hearts) but as I said, the world of Wonderland is very creative and the characters are similarly quite likeable. The tone of Wonderland is also handled very well, with enough nonsensical elements to feel like the original book but also a coherent story and characters with coherent goals. It may be a bit of a slow journey but this is a wonderful world to be in. I found it to be worth the slower elements for the character-driven story and the ultimate plot at the end. I just wish that ultimate plot had been given the time to be explored properly.

Overall Rating:

.5

Three Sides of a Heart: A Short Story Anthology

From one fantastic cute anthology about love to...well, this. This isn't the worst anthology I've ever read but it's one of the dullest. Most of the stories don't even follow the basic premise and the whole thing is super disappointing. I'm going to do what I've done in the past and go through each short story in turn, only expect a lot less detail for most because I don't actually a) remember what happens or b) like most of them.

Riddles in Mathematics, 2.5/5-One of the better ones, not that that's saying much. It's written in a very dull and kind of hard to follow way. It's also one of the ones that follows the love triangle premise the closest, although yeah, it still doesn't really count as a love triangle. Basically there is a girl, her brother and a girl who is their best friend. Girl fancies best friend girl but thinks she is dating her brother. You can probably guess what happens.

Dread South, 3.5/5-Not. A. Love. Triangle. This was such a weird story to follow the first one but also it was pretty great so I can't fault it too much. It takes place in an alternate timeline where zombies exist after the American Civil War. Black women are trained as warrior servants to protect rich white people, and the main girl gets bought one by her rich fiance. She then falls in love with her servant protector. Bit of a weird context but enjoyable on the whole.

Omega Ship, 2.5/5-Kind of a cool idea? So it's the end of the world and humans are evacuating the earth. However, the ship breaks and only three people manage to escape-one girl and two boys. The girl is overcome by the idea of having to have babies forever and has to choose which boy to have a baby with first. The problem with this is that it could have used more time to explore the emotions of the characters and the themes it was trying to consider. I could totally see this working as a full-length novel or YA series. As it stands, it's a bit weak.

La Revancha del Tango, 1.5/5-I have pretty much no memory of this apart from skim-reading it. A girl dances? Someone gets jealous? Somehow the person she is dancing with symbolises who she is going to be with for the rest of her life. One of the weaker ones.

Cass, An and Dra, 1.5/5-Told sooooo badly. Again, this could have been a cool idea. I'm not entirely sure what the point of the whole 'Cassandra' thing is beyond a reference to Cassandra the fortune teller. Basically Cass (none of the characters have gender in this) is dating An but then is tempted by Dra-or at least, I think that's what this was trying to convey. Cass can see the future and see how each decision they make will result in different options, so each time they have to actively choose An. Obviously the names spell out 'Cassandra' so I was expecting some kind of split personality thing but nope. I don't care enough to try and sort out what this clumsy mess was trying to say I'm afraid.

Lessons for Beginners, 3.5/5-A actual love triangle! The main girl gives kissing lessons to people at school. She gets employed by an old childhood friend and her new boyfriend to try and improve his kissing. The two girls have insane chemistry but aren't sure where it's going to lead. I don't remember just how good this was but it was cute and far more interesting than most of the other stories.

Triangle Solo, 1.5/5-Erm, so this was needlessly sci-fi. It just kind of dropped the sci-fi in there as well, like shoving ham into a vegetarian sandwich. Effectively this is two guys fighting over a girl they used to know who went away for ages and came back hot. I barely skim-read this one.

Vim and Vigor, 4/5-By far the best story in this. There is a love triangle in this but it's not actually part of the story really, just the set-up. These girls were best friends and massively into a fandom when one of them died in an accident. They then stopped speaking to each other and drifted apart, but this story is about them learning to cope with their grief and re-establishing their friendship. A sweet story and a breath of fresh air to the anthology.

Work in Progress, ?/5-I don't even remember this one.

Hurdles, 3.5/5-Another solid one rooted in reality. A girl is set to become a star athlete and has a lovely boyfriend. Her ex boyfriend has just come out of prison for drug use/other bad things. She is trying to decide whether or not to run away with her ex or stay with her new boyfriend and go for an athletic scholarship (or something similar). The only thing holding this story back is you never find out what she chooses. Very disappointing considering one option would be extremely bad for her.

The Historian, The Garrison, and the Cantakerous Catwoman, 3/5-Apart from giving me serious Buffy ripoff vibes, this story was pretty cool. The main character is a girl who helps a superhero-type figure fight demons by basically being his researcher. He then meets another superhero-type girl who he falls in love with. This story is all about the main character's jealousy and feelings of betrayal at this.

Waiting, 1.5/5-I only vaguely remember this story but I definitely know I was not happy with the love triangle resolution. I'm pretty sure the main character ended up picking the worst possible option and treating a perfectly nice guy like crap in the process. This story was clearly going for 'pick passion over companionship' and while I understand that to an extent, they shouldn't have made the other option so appealing. Instead it just seems like she had learned nothing and was making the same bad mistakes all over again.

Vega, ?/5-Erm...this was probably a story in this anthology?

A Hundred Thousand Threads, ?/5-I skipped it sorry.

Before She Was Bloody, ?/5-I also skipped this one. I tried, I really did.

Unus, Duo, Tres, 3.5/5-This was really well-written and quite a cool concept of a story buuuut...polyamory is a thing guys. I don't want to say too much but this is about undead vampire lovers and what happens when they both fall for another human and yeah, polyamory should have been the resolution.

Okay, so as you can probably tell this was a very long anthology and my memory of many of the stories is pretty hazy. I read it only a month ago and even from reading the story descriptions from other reviews, there are some I just can't remember anything about. Overall though I would say it's not worth picking up this anthology. Even the good stories didn't really blow my mind massively, and there are so many that it really drags near the end. It's such a shame because this could be a great premise for a bunch of interesting short stories but that just doesn't happen.

Overall Score:

Meet Cute: A Short Story Anthology

Every now and then, I love to pick up a short story collection. My usual weakness is horror...actually, I've only ever read horror anthologies before. I had heard intriguing things about Meet Cute though from the reviewers I watch on Youtube and since February is the month of love, I decided to give it a try.

Is it cheesy to say I fell in love?

I am a little shocked honestly to tell you the truth. I was not expecting to like this collection as much as I did but here we are. The overarching theme is that this is a collection of stories about two people meeting in adorable ways and (usually) forming a romantic relationship. They are almost all contemporary with only one or two having some kind of fantastical element thrown in. They are also hella gay which I am all for. No male/male romances sadly but the lesbian representation is fantastic. As this is an anthology, I'm going to break down each story with a rating and then do an overall average at the end.

Siege Etiquette, 2.5/5-Sadly one of the weakest ones starts this anthology off. A guy and a girl get stuck in a bathroom together at a party. I didn't really feel any chemistry between them and the cheating aspect unfortunately negated any potential cuteness for me.

Print Shop, 4.5/5-Yesss, getting in early with the cute lesbians. One girl starts working at a print shop and goes above and beyond to help out a girl she likes. A very cute story that I definitely wanted more of. I found the romance a little one-sided maybe but that really is a minor complaint.

Hourglass, 3/5-This is an okay story but it barely meets the criteria. It's not really a romance, it's more a story about friendship. A girl is about to graduate/have prom and she falls out with her best friend. It ended way too abruptly and I would have liked it a lot more if it continued after the end.

Click, 3/5-This was maybe the poorest story in terms of actual writing. I didn't mind the plot (two people get paired up by a futuristic dating app) but I found my interest waning which made it hard to follow. Sadly the couple weren't compelling.

The Intern, 3/5-Again, this romance wasn't very believable for me. An intern gets to show the cute rockstar around and they fall in love. Had some hidden depth and wasn't badly written but still meh.

Somewhere That's Green, 3.5/5-I AM SO TORN. Lesbians! Little Shop of Horrors! Trans people! All great elements. But I really didn't like half the pairing in this story and I felt like she wasn't a very appealing character. The idea was okay but it still made me a little uncomfortable. Ah well.

The Way We Love Here, 2.5/5-Okay no, this was the worst written story. This is one of the ones with fantasy elements but I found it so hard to follow (by which I mean, it didn't make me care enough to get past the clumsy description). Not terrible but a weak link.

Oomph, 5/5-Omg yes. My absolute favourite by a mile. Two girls meet in an airport and aaaaah. I've never read anything by this author but I desperately want to now. This was literally perfect and I won't hear a bad word against it.

The Dictionary of You and Me, 3/5-Eh. The guy in this was so unappealing to me. Basically the girl works in a library and the guy won't return a dictionary so they've been chatting on the phone for four months. It was painfully obvious he was going to turn out to be the cute guy from school and I didn't buy it.

The Unlikely Likelihood of Falling in Love, 5/5-SO GOOD. My second favourite story. A girl who is super into statistics sees a cute guy on a train and then does a project calculating how to see him again. Another couple I would love to read more about and the ending was so satisfying.

259 Million Miles, 2/5-This one is about two people who want to be selected to go to Mars and as part of the selection process, they get put in a room together for 24 hours. Again, I didn't buy the romance and the ending wasn't satisfying at all.

Something Real, 3.5/5-I didn't like the romance in this one but I loved the premise and world-building. Basically there are departments that deal with different kinds of love (Unrequited, Breakups etc) and the main guy goes to try and find out why his last relationship ended. Managed to not be entirely predictable but that wasn't enough on its own.

Okay, so based entirely on maths, this anthology gets 3.5/5. However, I honestly enjoyed it much more than that applies. None of the stories are truly bad and the good ones are so incredibly good that it makes the whole thing worth reading. A nice surprise and a lovely start to the month of love.

Overall Rating:

.5