Love, Unscripted by Owen Nicholls

 

I received an ARC of this book thanks to NetGalley and publisher Headline Review in exchange for an honest review.

Oh boy. I can't believe Holly Bourne's name is right there on the cover promoting this book.

Love, Unscripted is the story of Nick, one of the most insufferable protagonists that I've read about for a while. Nick is a projectionist at a local movie theatre and also a self-destructive, unaware moron.

The blurb of this book frames this as a 'boy gets left by girl and re-evaluates his life' kind of story, but this is actually a massive lie. In fact, it is a 'boy dumps his long-suffering girlfriend because he's too much of an ass to realise that he is dumping her, then mopes about and tells everyone she dumped him' kind of story.

I get that the point of this book is Nick is meant to go through personal growth and realise the error of his ways, but Nick is not a teenage boy. He's a grown man who should know better at his age than making his girlfriend do all his emotional work for him. He is so self-focused that it becomes deeply unpleasant reading about every other character trying to patiently accommodate him and his self-made problems. He is so unaware of their feelings that it makes him completely irredeemable as a protagonist.#

I cannot recommend this book even a little bit. I adore romance books of many shapes and sizes, but I have no patience for the lack of awareness this book seems to have about its own main character

Overall Rating:

My Whole Truth by Mischa Thrace

I received an ARC of this book thanks to NetGalley and publisher North Star Editions in exchange for an honest review.

I have such mixed feelings about this book. My Whole Truth is the story of Seelie, a girl who murders a boy called Shaun after being brutally attacked by him. Seelie is then drawn into a court battle, with half the town thinking she's a cold-blooded killer and the other half turning a blind eye. With perhaps one of the worst mothers I have ever read about barring actual physical abuse, Seelie has only her close friends for support.

So much of this book I really liked. I loved the message of found families being as important (if not more so) than real families. It was really engaging and well-written throughout, I think the pacing was spot on and I couldn't predict exactly where the story was going which kept me hooked. There were however sadly a few issues.

Firstly, there is a female-female romance in this which would be awesome if it didn't come out of nowhere. It genuinely wasn't until a line about halfway through where the character goes 'we could be something more' that I realised this was meant to be a romance and not a friendship. Given I'll ship characters in queer relationships at the drop of a hat, this was a little odd.

Secondly, the main character makes a HUGE dumb decision. I can't talk about it in detail but it is baffling when it happens, continues to be baffling for the rest of the book and is even more baffling at the end. I don't understand the main character's actions at all and so it just comes across to me as a bad decision at every point. And not a bad decision that the narrative acknowledges either. This is the reason this book got a much lower rating than I would have otherwise given it. I could not get over this thing which seemed to happen purely because of plot contrivance.

Overall, My Whole Truth is an excellent attempt to deal with very different subject matter. It doesn't shy away from the topic it has chosen and, for the most part, I was invested in the characters and plot. I just think if the main character's motivations could be described a bit better, that would turn a good book into a great one.

Overall Rating:

.5

If We Were Us by K.L. Walther

I received an ARC of this book thanks to NetGalley and publisher Sourcebooks Fire in exchange for an honest review.

If We Were Us is the story of two teenagers, Sage and Charlie. They have been best friends for years and everyone assumes they will eventually date. This plan is complicated by the fact that Sage actually likes Charlie's brother Nick, whilst Charlie has started to fall for the new boy at school, Luke.

This book was fine but there really wasn't enough to keep me compelled, and I ended up skim-reading half of it. I don't know if it was because I wasn't super invested or whether it was the writing style, but it felt like there was a weird sense of the story skipping over details and scenes kind of blending together. Charlie is not a nice character and his dating patterns were just weird. The whole school thinks he is a ladies man because he only dates girls for two weeks and then dumps them, but this in itself is handled weirdly with none of the girls he dates referring to it. I get that it's meant to be a cover up for him being gay but it seems more suspicious for him to dump his girlfriend when he is falling for Luke, rather than keep dating her. And dating someone new every two weeks without sleeping with them does not seem like it would gain him that kind of reputation.

Overall, this book wasn't really for me. It had potential but I couldn't get invested and it felt like it needed a little more polish. I can see some people getting more out of this but I couldn't get into it.

Overall Rating:

The Other Mrs. by Mary Kubica

I received a free copy of this book for review thanks to publisher Park Row and Edelweiss.

My experience with Mary Kubica has been an interesting one. I have loved almost all of the books I've read by her but I can usually see why a person might not like them as well. Sadly The Other Mrs. proved to be a thriller that just wasn't for me and that's because it commits the cardinal thriller sin-it is extremely predictable.

I will not spoil any 'twists' in this book but it uses one of the more overdone thriller tropes and what's more, it is completely obvious from the start that it is going in that direction. I kept reading hoping I would be wrong but by the time the climax rolls around, I fail to see how anyone would not have worked out what is happening. Though I'm not usually a fan of this trope anyway, I have loved books which have used it in a clever and surprising way. This book does neither of these things.

Putting the lack of a twist to one side, the writing style is competent but also weaker than other Kubica books I've read. There are just some really odd choices, particularly in the first few chapters. A face is described as 'eyepleasing', an adjective is used twice in the same sentence, the structure is just a little off. These are all minor things but they were very frequent and it took me out of the story. I did not find the main character Sadie likeable at all. She was far too quick to suspect her own children of awful things and she didn't have a lot of empathy for anyone. None of the characters were particularly great.

I'm really disappointed I couldn't give this book a more positive review. It might appeal to complete thriller novices but for anyone who likes the genre, this offers nothing new.

Overall Rating:

The Honeymoon by Rona Halsall

I received an ARC of this book thanks to Net Galley and publisher Bookouture in exchange for an honest review.

Oh boy, this was a rough read. If you ever want a textbook definition of 'idiot plot', then sadly this is it. I was pretty excited to read this book because it sounded like a brilliant atmospheric thriller. Having married a man after only two months with him, Chloe goes on her honeymoon and things take a scary dive. I expected from the blurb that this would be a book about a husband holding his new wife hostage and, while that's kind of true, that's not what the focus of the plot is on. Instead of a hostage story you kind of get a back and forth between Chloe being determined to try and make her marriage work and her almost freaking out at her new husband's behaviour.

I say 'almost' because the biggest problem this book has is without a doubt the characters. Not a single character acted how a real person would and it made everything very hard to swallow. So Chloe has just married Dan, a man she doesn't know very well. Immediately after their wedding, he changes their honeymoon destination without telling her. He then takes away her phone, refuses to let her open the windows and behaves very oddly in general. Chloe chronically undereacts to everything. Even when pretty life-altering stuff is happening later on in the plot, she never reacts more than someone would to discovering they were out of milk. This is not, as I first thought, an attempt to accurately portray how some women can act in an abusive situation. This is just poor characterisation.

The same goes for Dan. He repeatedly claims that he needs to 'keep Chloe safe' but refuses to explain anything to her, just so the reader can go on wondering if he's paranoid or if he really is a good guy. There is zero romantically appealing about him and that makes it tough to sympathise with Chloe to any degree. Chloe also has a gran who is possibly one of the most selfish people ever. When Chloe seeks her out having had some pretty awful things happen to her, her gran just waves her off back to her new husband and tells her to leave her alone. Granted her gran isn't meant to be ideal but she's a lot worse than the narrative seems to imply she is.

The real unbelievable nature of it all comes to light with the sheer amount of insanity that happens in the last few chapters. In the space of a few pages HIGHLIGHT FOR SPOILERS Chloe is threatened by a madman, kills him, has a child, gets back together with Dan, Dan murders her gran for the money, Chloe leaves him again and then Dan is hit by a car. You keep expecting the story to end since it feels like it has come to its natural conclusion and then another thing forces the plot to keep on going.

Overall, I would sadly not recommend this thriller. Maybe it could have worked with stronger writing or characterisation but the plot itself is fairly weak and I'm not sure it would be worth salvaging. It's a shame because I love summer-themed thrillers but there are far better examples out there than this one.

Overall Rating:

.5

The Stranger Inside by Laura Benedict

I received an ARC of this book thanks to Net Galley and publisher Mulholland Books in exchange for an honest review.

Oh boy, this was a rough read. And it started off so promising! The Stranger Inside is about what happens when a woman comes home from a long break to discover someone else is living in her house. That alone is a great thriller premise but unfortunately that's pretty much the only great thing about this book.

A lot of other reviews have complained about the main character, Kimber, being incredibly unlikable. This actually didn't bother me much because a) I don't think anyone deserves horrible things to happen to them and so I have a high tolerance for terrible people in thrillers, and b) Kimber was so flat that she didn't have much of a personality for me to dislike. I just could not understand her actions at any point. From the very first chapter, the way she reacts to someone being in her house is just..off.

There is also unfortunately a serious case of the plot only happening because certain people act like morons. Pretty early on Kimber discovers something which could get the stranger out of her house. Does she tell the police? Nope. Instead she keeps it to herself and decides to investigate and continue not being allowed to live in her house. I understand curiousity but what she knows about the stranger isn't intriguing enough at this point for her to want to investigate further. From that point onwards I was just frustrated because everything could be stopped if only Kimber went to the police with what she knew.

The other major problem is that this book really dragged for me. This is a combination of poor pacing, a dull protagonist and a really weird way of doing plot reveals. One spoiler-free example goes like this: Kimber finds out the name of the stranger in her house. A flashback chapter then reveals who that stranger is in regards to her life. Then in the present day, Kimber finds out who that person is through a friend. Then another character tells her who that person is. Then she finds evidence to confirm who that person is. Then another character tells her who the person is. This is the same bit of information talked about again and again with no new details, and we have to sit through characters talking about stuff we already know.

The ending as a whole was a mess. There is one very weak 'twist' which you actually again, get told earlier on through narration. This basically amounts to Kimber going at one point 'Hmm, that mysterious person reminds me of X. But that's silly haha.' and then at the end, 'Omg, that mysterious person is X! Who could have seen this coming?'. I came dangerously close to not finishing reading this and I skimmed the end as a result. The final few pages hold another 'twist' which just erases a pretty major thing and it's about as awful as that sounds.

I really don't feel good when I dislike ARCs that I've requested but sadly, The Stranger Inside just did not do it for me. If characters really aren't important to you and you don't mind not being surprised by a thriller, then you might get more enjoyment out of this than I did,

Overall Rating:

Hunting Annabelle

I received an ARC of this book thanks to Net Galley and publisher Harlequin-Mira in exchange for an honest review.

It is so hard for me to pin down how I felt about this book. On the one hand, I felt it was fairly well-written and I was definitely engaged throughout most of it. On the other hand, I absolutely hated the ending and felt like it got very rambly and repetitive about 50% of the way through.

One thing I would like to make clear is that this should definitely be considered a YA thriller. Hunting Annabelle is about a teenager named Sean with severe mental health difficulties (labelled schizophrenia but as a psychologist, I'm not entirely convinced). Sean meets a girl called Annabelle, goes on a date with her and then sees her get kidnapped in front of his eyes. He goes straight to the police but due to his mental health difficulties and some dark things from his past, they don't believe him. He then decides to take matters into his own hands and investigates her disappearance.

For the first half or so of this book, I was very engaged and intrigued by the story. I don't really enjoy reading thrillers with unreliable narrators anymore because I tend to just switch off and wait until the author reveals what really happened at the end, but Sean's potential hallucinations are sort of kept to a minimum and aren't too intrusive. The mental health rep in this is pretty shocking but then, I don't expect a lot from thrillers. There is a fair amount of accuracy in terms of treatment and that side of things but the actual details about the condition are few and far between. Maybe this was meant to add to the ambiguity aspect but it felt lacking to me. I can definitely see it angering some people.

The problems start to kick in around 50% of the way through. Firstly, the story becomes incredibly repetitive. Sean goes to meet someone from Annabelle's past, he finds out a little more about her and then he gets the name of the next person to go see. Rinse and repeat for like 100 pages. Secondly, Sean discovers something very incriminating about a person in Annabelle's life which seems like it would be important to the investigation. An intense fight happens and Sean escapes with evidence of this incriminating thing and then...nothing happens? It isn't mentioned properly until the very end and it's incredibly distracting to have this plot device just hanging there like the elephant in the corner. I initially expected this encounter to be a hallucination of Sean which would explain why it was just forgotten about but this turns out not to be the case and it's just a really baffling writing decision.

This review is spoiler free but the final and biggest problem with this book is the ending. I found it very unbelievable and frankly a bit of a cop-out, and it soured the tone of the whole book for me. Overall, I can see some people really liking this book but I'm just not convinced it brings anything new to the thriller genre. I think the writing has real potential and there are a lot of nice elements at the start of the book. I would want to read more by the author but I can't really recommend this to people, and the problems far outweigh the good points. Sadly this was not a winner.

Overall Rating:

.5

9 Days and 9 Nights by Katie Cotugno

SPOILERS FOR 99 DAYS AND 9 DAYS & 9 NIGHTS BELOW.

This is really impressive. So my main problem with 99 Days is that I could not understand at all why Molly would be messing around with Patrick when her relationship with Gabe was so great. And in this sequel, I have no idea why Molly would mess around with Gabe when she has a great new partner in Ian.

This book was soooo disappointing. I'm not an idiot, I knew from the start that Molly and Gabe would end up back together. I just wasn't expecting it to be something I really didn't want to happen. The Molly at the start of this book is in her first year of college, she has a new boyfriend and has grown up a lot. And at the end of the book, this is all just thrown away.

Again, all of Molly and Ian's relationship flaws are so non-existent. She gets angry that he isn't seeing the real her when apparently her new college persona is fake and she's just pretending to be someone else. Nevermind that she is no longer upsetting people and has gotten her life together. Apparently that isn't being true to herself and so she should revert back to her teenage self and continuing dating a guy that she has already cheated on once WITH HIS BROTHER.

Once again, I still enjoyed this book for what it was due to the writing style and various other elements. However, I have never been so utterly baffled by a romance series before. Clearly Cotugno and I have vastly different opinions on what constitutes a good relationship if she can make me do a complete 180 on who I ship Molly with between books. I felt sorry for Ian and disagreed completely with how Molly's character arc was handled. If you read the first one though and liked it, this one isn't really much worse. In all likelihood, you'll enjoy this one too.

Overall Rating:

99 Days by Katie Cotugno

It's been a fairly long time since I read a fluffy YA romantic contemporary. It's not my favourite genre but every once in a while (usually when I'm on holiday) I get the craving for some good old-fashioned fluff. This book however turned out to be a lot more interesting than your typical sweet romance.

The premise of 99 Days is that our main character Molly used to date a guy named Patrick until she cheated on him with his brother, Gabe. Now I don't like cheating stories which made Molly a little difficult to sympathise with, something which didn't get easier the more stupid her decisions became. Having been away from her hometown for a year, Molly must return for 99 days before she goes away to college and face the music. You see, Molly's affair was revealed when her mother wrote a best-selling book about it and as a result, everyone in the town hates her. The only person who is still nice to her is Gabe.

This is one of those books that is only fueled by poor decisions and characters behaving stupidly. Molly is the worst offender and she gets stuck in a love triangle between two brothers. I found Patrick deeply unlikable and could not understand Molly's attraction to him at all, especially when Gabe was so sweet and his 'offences' in their relationship so minor. I thought I was going to hate this book but the strong writing style pulled through and I actually quite enjoyed it.

If you can switch off your brain enough to not be bothered by the insanely poor decisions of the characters, then this is a surprisingly complex and interesting examination of the aftermath of cheating. I liked how it didn't shy away from showing what happens when teenagers make poor decisions and the exploration of Molly's relationship with her mother was also fairly interesting, albeit something which could have had more of a focus. Overall I really enjoyed it and I am interested in reading the sequel.

Overall Rating:

.5

Fierce Kingdom by Gin Phillips

I listened to this as an audiobook rather than reading the physical copy.

In an attempt to reduce my ever-growing TBR list, I joined my local library and got some audiobooks to listen to. Fierce Kingdom is the first audiobook I have listened to for years and so my opinion of this book is very much shaped by the audiobook experience, so bear that in mind.

Firstly, I would not actually recommend this as an audiobook. The narrator is quite a prolific one it seems but while her normal voice was fine, the voices she gave many of the characters were unbearable. Fierce Kingdom is the story of a mother and her son who get trapped in the zoo when some shooters come. The little boy voice that this narrator does is honestly one of the most irritating things to listen to. Half of my listening experience was just me getting unbelievably frustrated by how stupid and annoying the child was being. I think if I had read this myself, I would still have been as frustrated by the character but the voice certainly didn't help.

Almost all of the tension from this book comes from the child character messing everything up. I know he is a young child and to be fair, maybe he is acting exactly how a real child would. However, I did not enjoy the fact that he refused to be quiet or do anything his mother said. Honestly it made me want the character to die and no book should have me wishing a child would do that.

The narrator also does extremely annoying voices for the two gunmen. I tried reading some of their dialogue in the book and it came across as far more menacing in the written form compared to her inexplicable decision to use whiny teenage voices for everything they said in the audiobook. Again, I know they were meant to be whiny teenagers. But they weren't scary for even one minute due to the fact that every time they opened their mouths, I wanted to punch one of them.

I can't judge the pacing particularly well from the audiobook (it was over 8 hours long and I read at a much faster rate than that myself) but it did seem that not much was going on, particularly early on. The plot itself is pretty gripping though and it definitely gets more interesting later on. I really liked the main character and I cared about her enough that it balanced out my hatred of her son. The other side characters were also really likeable and compelling. The dynamic between Mrs. Powell and Robbie was great, particularly the way that Joan wants Mrs. Powell to suck up to him and then is disgusted when she does. I feel that overall, the author handled a lot of complex emotions and reactions to such a terrifying situation with a great deal of depth and understanding. Nothing the characters did felt particularly unlikely or unrealistic, even if they didn't exactly always act in the best possible way.

As other people have noted, there are quite a few loose ends. If you're the kind of person that needs definite answers, I would probably avoid this book just because it will frustrate you. For everyone else though, I would still say this is worth a read if you like the sound of the premise. Just avoid the audiobook unless you have a high tolerance for annoying children.

Overall Rating: