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

The Scorch Trials by James Dashner

SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST & SECOND BOOKS.

At the point of writing this review, I have now finished the original Maze Runner trilogy. I'm trying really hard to not let my opinion of the third book affect my review of this one but yeah, it probably is going to. I also read this book in effectively one day so that may also affect things.

I think the thing with The Maze Runner series is that the plot of the first book is essentially completely separate from the plot of the other two. The Scorch Trials is a very different book from the first in terms of both actual story line and also tone. Instead of a contained story about teenagers trapped in a mysterious place trying to work out why they're there, you now get teenagers being given a quest to reach a location by a certain time to...work out why they're there. It still has elements of the first but one of the reasons this series throws me so much is that it does change plot so dramatically.

Anyway, I still really enjoyed The Scorch Trials despite it now kind of being a sci-fi series about zombies. This book continued with the same issues from the first only ramped up. The plot is even more disjointed and (what really bothers me more) you still don't get given answers in a clear way. You sort of find out why they're in the maze but it's such a stupid reason that it really doesn't help to not have it fully explained. Even worse, Teresa's supposed betrayal isn't given an explanation beyond her going 'well, they told me you'd die if I didn't do these exact things'. She behaves appallingly but then Thomas also hates her so instantaneously that it comes across as bad writing. Her character is completely assassinated in this and I'm not really sure why.

This brings me to the next point which is the bizarrely juvenile language. I know, I know-it's YA. But Thomas and Teresa are allowed to make out which is followed by declarations of...'best friendship'? And then at the end when she betrays him and kisses Aris, she loudly declares that he is her best friend now. It's such a weird thing to censor and it stands out like a sore thumb.

I know this is a largely negative review for a book I said I liked but I think my opinion of the third one is making me look back less favorably now. There are a lot of good elements, they're just outweighed heavily by the bizarre ones. Brenda is another character I don't get and don't particularly enjoy having around. The idea of Aris and there having been another maze all along is fantastic but it isn't executed particularly well. When you eventually meet the girls, nothing is actually explored with them. There are some nice dark elements in this and some of the stuff is really cool. It's just a shame that this series ends so badly with the next one.

Overall Rating:

.5

The Maze Runner by James Dashner

I'm gonna be honest, I hadn't heard great things about The Maze Runner. It seemed to materialise near the tail end of the whole Hunger Games dystopian craze, and while it was popular enough for me to have heard of it and to warrant a movie series, I haven't actually met anyone who has seen or read it. That being said, reviewers I admire have not been kind to this book. I had heard it was dull and badly written. However, I was pleasantly surprised.

This is definitely nowhere near being a bad book. It's not brilliant granted but the writing, characters and plot are all decent enough. After finishing this first one I actually sped through the sequel and while I haven't yet read the third and final one, so far I am interested and immersed in this universe. The thing about The Maze Runner is that its biggest weakness might also be one of its strengths. The plot is pretty unique and weird, so much so that it isn't easy to see where it is going. It was refreshing to read a YA dystopian that doesn't info dump and isn't horribly predictable.

Having said that, this book does suffer from being a bit of a mess. The same applies to an even greater extent in its sequel but the plot constantly moves forward at a breakneck pace. You get thrown into the world at the start through the standard device of 'newcomer arrives in established place' but this is one of the most frantic and fast-paced examples I have ever seen. Thomas arrives, has no questions answered, girl arrives, immediately goes into coma for most of the book until she's needed and only then does the novel slow down a teensy bit for some world-building and explanation. Even then, all explanations are extremely limited. This doesn't exactly harm the book (it isn't difficult to follow what's going on for example due to a simplistic style) but it is very unusual compared to other books in a similar genre and it is a little relentless as a reader. You read eagerly to find out what's going on but instead of getting bits and pieces until the ending, you instead get bombs dropped on you which are promptly swept to one side to make room for more action. Maybe this is simply a feature of reading a YA book aimed specifically at boys but it was quite distracting at times.

One thing I did really enjoy were the characters. Dashner succeeded in making each boy feel fairly distinct, and you do become attached to all of them. A minor downside of this is that sometimes the author doesn't bother to explain what's happened to certain side characters (for example, Frypan who I really liked) so you are left wondering if they are okay for several pages until they show up in a scene again. Again, this is a flaw the sequel shares perhaps to an even greater extent because the danger is more frequent in that one.

Despite a few niggles, I still really enjoyed this book. It's easy to read, has a plot which is both unique and interesting and it is a far better series than some people give it credit for. I will definitely be finishing the original trilogy and I will probably even pick up the additional books which have been tacked on. I am keen to see where the story ends up.

Overall Rating:

.5

The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn

SPOILERS AHEAD (Technically. You should be able to figure this one out anyway but yeah)

What do I do with this book? On the one hand, A. J. Finn is a very talented writer and I was completely sucked into the world of this book. On the other hand, the plot absolutely sucked. I mean, for a thriller this was bad. Let me tell you, there is nothing more frustrating than when you're reading a thriller and you've figured out the 'twist' because it's insanely obvious and yet the main character remains painfully oblivious. The Woman in the Window is a particularly bad example of this because there are literally only two possibilities and the character completely glosses over one of them.

So, let me introduce you to the main plot. An agoraphobic drunk woman named Anna meets her neighbour's wife, sees her being murdered a few days later and then is told by the police and everyone else that she has never actually met his wife who is now a completely different woman. The main character insists the new woman can't be his wife, even when papers are produced showing she undeniably is. So the other possibility you immediately come to is that the first woman wasn't his wife and was in fact lying while this new woman is his wife.

Not if you're this main character!

Instead she continues on for hundreds of pages wondering who this new woman is instead of focusing on the identity of the victim. It is very frustrating to read and it means that the first intended 'twist' of her realising the first woman was lying and not the second comes off as anticlimatic and very poorly done. This is especially bad when the second major twist also turns out to be fairly guessable, though admittedly not to the extent of the first. Even so, the reveal that Ethan is the evil killer all along falls very flat and is unsatisfying. It is extremely easy to guess that the person Anna has been talking to online is a fake and is fishing for information, to the point where again you wonder why the supposedly smart Anna isn't making these simple connections.

The other major problem of this book can be defined as a distinct lack of originality. The main character reeks of the protagonist from The Girl on the Train, what with them both being alcoholics who witness a murder through a window and have their testimony doubted due to their substance abuse. This is even more obvious when you consider both protagonists jump to the wrong conclusions about the married couple they spy on. The other obvious influence is Rear Window. Anna is obsessed with old black and white movies and does mention Hitchcock several times, and yet she never draws direct parallels between Rear Window and her own situation. I actually enjoyed the constant use of movie quotes at first and thought it was quite a nice character quirk to include in a thriller, but said quotes quickly become overused near the end and the lack of the connection is honestly baffling. A throwaway line about it might have been cheap but at least it would have been something.

You may have noticed that neither of the things I have mentioned are what you could call small problems. By all rights I should hate this book for being a dumb, derivative, forgettable work.

AND YET.

By god this book is well-written. I didn't think much of it at the time beyond it being really compelling and hard to put down but honestly, this author deserves some kudos. They have an obvious plot with obvious twists and somehow I still enjoyed every minute of the characters and writing style. I guessed the first twist astonishingly early on but I still read eagerly, keen to find out what was going to happen. Then I guessed the second and third twists and yet I still read on. I minded a lot but it didn't make me rush through it or roll my eyes every other sentence like some thrillers I've read. Anna may be a bit of an idiot but she is likeable and has some decent depth to her. Also this book is much longer than the average thriller but it didn't feel like it for one second. I really, really hope this author writes more and writes something with a far better plot because he could go so far.

Overall, I am left with very conflicted feelings about this book. I cannot ignore its very painful and crucial flaws but I can't dismiss it as thriller trash either. Is it worth reading? Maybe. Do I regret reading it? Definitely not. This is the first book of 2018 I'm reading as part of my 'new releases, new reviews' schtick and it seems to be carrying on the noble tradition of not being that great. However, there are some really fantastic elements in here and I can't fault it too hard thanks to those. In terms of thrillers, you could do a whole lot worse.

Overall Rating:

.5

This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab

First blog post of 2018! Also first Victoria Schwab book I've ever read! I have heard such high praise for this author and yeah, I completely understand why now. This Savage Song is often described as a retelling of Beauty and the Beast but it's far less derivative than that. It tells the story of a monster named August and a human named Kate and honestly, I wouldn't even class it as a romance what happens between them. Both characters are the offspring of the people in charge of two sides of the city. Kate's dad is like a mob boss who rules out of fear and makes people pay him for protection from monsters while August's 'dad' is a gentler human who controls the other half of the city. As a result, Kate spends all her time trying to prove herself to be as mean as her father, while August is desperate to not be a monster. They meet when August gets sent to her school to pretend to be a human as there is a fear that the truce between the monsters and the humans will break.

First off, this book is really well-written. The writing style is clear, it flows excellently and it is poetic without being over the top or pretentious. The characters are well-developed and the plot is well-paced-in short, I can see why people rave about this author. The world itself is also very compelling and is built up brilliantly. Schwab skillfully avoids doing a huge info dump and while you might be lost for the first few chapters (particularly August's ones), overall you get information precisely when you need it without it intruding on the story.

Her concept of monsters and the different mechanics of each one is another aspect I really liked. The three species of monster are all very unique and I love how they came to be. Something I am hoping for in the sequel is more development of the other species of monsters beyond Sunai, but this is really a very minor flaw.

Overall, this was an excellent book to kick 2018 off with and I am very much looking forward to reading the sequel. If you're looking for a city-based fantasy book that is grounded in reality, I definitely recommend giving this a try. I suspect this author might become one of my new favourites.

Overall Rating: