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mrs_a_is_a_book_nerd's reviews
456 reviews
McManus is the MASTER of the twisty ending! This was a deeply satisfying follow up to her debut novel, One Of Us Is Lying. Just like with her first, McManus led me down a path where I was sure I had things figured out ... Until she let me realize I really knew nothing at all! Great YA suspense novel!
I enjoyed the book--not nearly as much as Ove, but I liked it.
The main plot of the novel centers on a town where hockey is so important that the residents are willing to overlook anything the players do. Club over individual is the motto. The town's past, present, and future hinge on the success of their hockey club.
Set against this backdrop is a personal quest for justice, a personal quest for identity.
The few sentences that comprise the first chapter set up the ending: two teenagers in the woods, one holding a gun to the other's head. And despite the fact that this ending is known throughout the entire book, I was still surprised by the outcome.
I wasn't in love with the narrative structure of the novel: alternating between characters and time frames in short and long snippets within each chapter. However, there was also brilliant prose, beautiful excerpts contrasting the environment of the story against its main plot lines.
In all, I'm glad I read the book.
The main plot of the novel centers on a town where hockey is so important that the residents are willing to overlook anything the players do. Club over individual is the motto. The town's past, present, and future hinge on the success of their hockey club.
Set against this backdrop is a personal quest for justice, a personal quest for identity.
The few sentences that comprise the first chapter set up the ending: two teenagers in the woods, one holding a gun to the other's head. And despite the fact that this ending is known throughout the entire book, I was still surprised by the outcome.
I wasn't in love with the narrative structure of the novel: alternating between characters and time frames in short and long snippets within each chapter. However, there was also brilliant prose, beautiful excerpts contrasting the environment of the story against its main plot lines.
In all, I'm glad I read the book.
3-3.5
Rachel Hollis is smart, compassionate, sassy, funny, raw, and real in this book, and I appreciated her attention to issues that many of us face, by talking about those issues as she herself has experienced them. As one might imagine, some chapters were remote for me, personally, and some were very real. I particularly liked her focus on "What helped me" (ie. Her) as she dealt with each of the "lies" we tell ourselves...or at least allow ourselves to believe...in the book.
I will watch for more by Hollis, and have already sought out more of her unique insights and tips for life on her social media platforms.
Rachel Hollis is smart, compassionate, sassy, funny, raw, and real in this book, and I appreciated her attention to issues that many of us face, by talking about those issues as she herself has experienced them. As one might imagine, some chapters were remote for me, personally, and some were very real. I particularly liked her focus on "What helped me" (ie. Her) as she dealt with each of the "lies" we tell ourselves...or at least allow ourselves to believe...in the book.
I will watch for more by Hollis, and have already sought out more of her unique insights and tips for life on her social media platforms.
I certainly enjoyed Jesmyn Ward's musical prose, but Sing, Unburied, Sing was a bit much for me. The richness of Ward's language and story telling craft deserve to be praised with every bit of the critical acclaim and accolades it continues to receive, and there are important views into continuing realities for Blacks in the South. It just wasn't really my genre.
Gotta give this one a 4.5-5. This is a story about a young man dealing with grief and guilt after the deaths of all three of his best friends--in an accident he may have caused. This novel is beautifully written! The characters are real, the emotions raw, and the prose is absolutely gorgeous in places.
Sometimes funny, often heartbreaking, Goodbye Days just rocketed to the top of my recommendation list for my students and friends!
Sometimes funny, often heartbreaking, Goodbye Days just rocketed to the top of my recommendation list for my students and friends!
This was an interesting take on the school shooting narrative genre. It's reminiscent of stories that came out of the Columbine shooting.
Overall, the novel was decent. But it wasn't the most riveting read of the year. That said, I found the survivors' stories intriguing. Each had a story from the day of the shooting that they had kept secret, carrying its burden.
I'm glad I read it.
Overall, the novel was decent. But it wasn't the most riveting read of the year. That said, I found the survivors' stories intriguing. Each had a story from the day of the shooting that they had kept secret, carrying its burden.
I'm glad I read it.
This fictional story of 'Chelle, and the smoothly unwinding thread of how she goes from beloved granddaughter of a doting grandfather to endangered target of one predator after another following her grandfather's death is haunting in how incrementally her fate unwinds before she realizes her reality.
This story is harrowing, when you realize just how many runaway, lost young girls-made-women-too-soon Little Peach represents. It is a simple, painful telling of a story that must be read.
This story is harrowing, when you realize just how many runaway, lost young girls-made-women-too-soon Little Peach represents. It is a simple, painful telling of a story that must be read.
I read this one on the recommendation of a student, who had pulled it from my classroom library. She was RIGHT! What a fantastic story! A wonderful blend of genres, Midnight at the Electric has it all: a bit of sci-fi, romance, history, friendship, family, mystery, and self-discovery. The story blends the lives of three young women, in three different places and times, each of whom must make a choice that will take them away from the home they've always known to an unknown future where they've pinned their hopes for happiness. Adri is one of the chosen "colonists" who will make a new life on Mars, but her choice is challenged when she spends her last weeks with an elderly cousin she never knew she had. In Lily's home, Adri finds the journal of Catherine, a girl determined to save her sister's life by fleeing the Oklahoma dust bowl storms that make Beezie quake with dust pneumonia. Catherine's journal entries lead Adri to find a bundle of letters, written to Catherine's mother by her childhood friend Lenore. The letters chronicle Lenore's desire to leave her native England home and join Catherine's mother in the U.S., where she has married and settled down. The letters also reveal a secret that will change everything Catherine knows and believes. As the novel progresses, the threads of their lives are woven together until the three are interlaced across nearly 150 years.
Meeting and getting to know all of these women was captivating, and the story was both original and absolutely lovely.
Meeting and getting to know all of these women was captivating, and the story was both original and absolutely lovely.
Wow. This book was fascinating, haunting, and heartbreaking. Kate Fagan did a remarkable job weaving Maddie Holloran's story together with insightful and enlightening content about the culture of loneliness, depression, and anxiety that can be exacerbated among college athletes specifically and young people in general, with a healthy bit of reflection on the role that social media can play. Without placing blame or over-simplification, and with sensitivity and conscientiousness writing about Maddie's life and death, and about suicide more globally, Fagan sheds light on contributing factors that lead some young people to seek the only escape they can see as a solution.
Wow. Just wow.
First, I loved this book because it was the only book I've ever read aside from The Book Thief that is narrated by a personified "idea," in this case, violence.
Violence begins the story by chronicling the long history s/he and humankind have made more "intimate," so to speak, by the advent of weapons...most notably the gun.
Following this introduction, we are introduced to Zane, the first owner of a specific gun, who then sells it to an unidentified young person following an incident which leaves him wanting to be rid of it.
From there, we get the alternating stories of 6 young people, each of whom is connected in some way to at least one of the others, and each of whom has strong personal reasons for wanting a gun. As we step in and out of each young person's skin, we learn a bit more about his/her story, and his/her desire for the "power" a gun will provide--for revenge, for protection, for malice/violence, for self-harm... All the while, Violence interjects in each person's story, "whispering" into his/her ear, so to speak, fanning the flames of their emotional desire for a weapon.
In the end, one character dies at the hand of the gun we saw at the start, we learn which of the characters had bought it from Zane, and what the repercussions of that choice became.
This novel was INCREDIBLE!
Alternating between conventional narrative and free verse, told from shifting points of view, and interweaving varied stances on timely issues including gun rights, immigration, white nationalism, and more, this was a powerhouse of a novel.
First, I loved this book because it was the only book I've ever read aside from The Book Thief that is narrated by a personified "idea," in this case, violence.
Violence begins the story by chronicling the long history s/he and humankind have made more "intimate," so to speak, by the advent of weapons...most notably the gun.
Following this introduction, we are introduced to Zane, the first owner of a specific gun, who then sells it to an unidentified young person following an incident which leaves him wanting to be rid of it.
From there, we get the alternating stories of 6 young people, each of whom is connected in some way to at least one of the others, and each of whom has strong personal reasons for wanting a gun. As we step in and out of each young person's skin, we learn a bit more about his/her story, and his/her desire for the "power" a gun will provide--for revenge, for protection, for malice/violence, for self-harm... All the while, Violence interjects in each person's story, "whispering" into his/her ear, so to speak, fanning the flames of their emotional desire for a weapon.
In the end, one character dies at the hand of the gun we saw at the start, we learn which of the characters had bought it from Zane, and what the repercussions of that choice became.
This novel was INCREDIBLE!
Alternating between conventional narrative and free verse, told from shifting points of view, and interweaving varied stances on timely issues including gun rights, immigration, white nationalism, and more, this was a powerhouse of a novel.