noun [kee-smash] a random string of letters and symbols typed out on a keyboard or touchscreen, used to signal intense emotion in written communication:
I became a die-hard fan of Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé ever since I picked up her debut novel, Ace of Spades a couple years ago and absolutely fell in love with the way she tells the story of queer, colored teens in the YA thriller/mystery genre. When I heard about her new book Where Sleeping Girls Lie earlier this year, I knew it would be a masterpiece just like her last novel.
And as it is in most cases, I was 100% right.
Flawlessly intriguing, intense and riveting, Where Sleeping Girls Lie is not just another dark academia mystery–it’s a hauntingly beautiful story about girlhood and survival.
In 2022, Belladonna by Adalyn Grace was one of my favorite books of the year. Naturally, I had high hopes for the sequel, Foxglove, to blow me away as well.
And while Foxglove by Adalyn Grace was definitely a fun and engaging read, it lacked the charm, the gothic intrigue, and the sizzling romance that Belladonna did. Here’s my full review
It’s been a while since the last time I picked up a dystopian horror, but even then, I did not expect Orchard of Skeletons by Eli Wilde to be such an unforgettable and incredible survival story! Centered around two teenagers on the run for freedom, Orchard of Skeletons is a dark and gruesome story set in a post-apocalyptic world where most of humanity have died to a pandemic while the rest that are alive would do anything to survive, even if it means resorting to nightmarish violence.
An absolutely jaw-dropping and riveting novel that perfectly tackles all the ugliness of systematic racism, Ace of Spades is a terrifying and addictive story about two talented Black kids trying to survive in a world that is hell-bent on bringing them down.
The River Has Teeth by Erica Waters has been on my most anticipated July release list, and I am so happy that I got the chance to finally dive into this amazing, sapphic horror fantasy last month. It was everything the blurb promised: full of magic, a heaping of gothic horror, and an irresistible thriller/mystery to bind it all together.
This is without a doubt one of the best standalone fantasy novels I’ve read in 2020. Flyaway by Kathleen Jennings is a lusciously dark and mysterious story that follows Bettany Scott as she tries to find answers to the disappearances of her father and brothers.
When a beautiful, aspiring writer strides into the East Village bookstore where Joe Goldberg works, he does what anyone would do: he Googles the name on her credit card.
There is only one Guinevere Beck in New York City. She has a public Facebook account and Tweets incessantly, telling Joe everything he needs to know: she is simply Beck to her friends, she went to Brown University, she lives on Bank Street, and she’ll be at a bar in Brooklyn tonight—the perfect place for a “chance” meeting.
As Joe invisibly and obsessively takes control of Beck’s life, he orchestrates a series of events to ensure Beck finds herself in his waiting arms. Moving from stalker to boyfriend, Joe transforms himself into Beck’s perfect man, all while quietly removing the obstacles that stand in their way—even if it means murder
Trigger warnings: extremely sexual content, violence and stalking
I gotta hand it to Caroline Kepnes–for a debut novel, You is very, very, well-written, especially when considering the subject matter. The narration is the best part about this book–despite the unbelievably and disturbingly sexual language that Joe uses, despite the way he blames everybody but himself for his actions and his choices, despite the cold and calculating way he makes his plans without any thought to who he is harming, there were many instances throughout the story when I forgot that he was the bad guy. I am not gonna say that I ever rooted for him or supported his thoughts, but there were times when I found myself reading the book and thinking of him as just another regular male protagonist who is madly in love with a woman who does not love him back. That is not the story here though, and Joe’s obsession with Beck was something that will probably haunt me for a long time. I also loved the unreliability of Joe’s narration. Because of the way he perceives others and the world itself, and because we are reading the story from his perspective, I often had to figure out myself what the reality really was because Joe’s reality is extremely deluded.
However, despite the strong narration, the plot was flimsy at best. Everything was too easy for Joe–from stalking Beck to being able to interfere in her life the way he did–he was able to do all of it because of the carelessness of both Beck and the other supportive characters. I truly do not mean to blame the victim, but there are certain things you know not to do no matter how screwed up you are or how safe you feel in your neighborhood, especially when you are a twenty-something adult living all by yourself. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize that it wasn’t really that much of a challenge for Joe to do the things that he does in this novel, because all the characters are so incredibly stupid and reckless about their own personal safety.
In fact, this book has a plot simply because the characters lack common sense and intelligence. If the characters here did not make the mistakes that they did, the plot really would not have progressed very far.
Speaking of the plot, although Joe’s narration made it really easy for me to fly through the book, halfway in to the story I became extremely bored because of how repetitive and predictable everything was. I feel like this book should have been shorter, and several chapters here should have been simply cut, because they just were not necessary. The predictability and repetitiveness of the story made it difficult for me to finish this book, because after the 50% mark, every time I picked up the book I put it down again thinking “meh I know what’s gonna happen.” And I did. There really was no element of surprise after the 50% mark.
All in all, this was a good read, but not good enough that I would recommend it to anyone.
Have you ever read a book that gave you nightmares? Or haunted you for a long time? Which one was it and what made you want to read it?
An incredibly brave, kick-ass heroine torn between doing right by her family and pursuing her own dreams? Check.
Struggle for feminism and freedom? Check
A filthy rich, high society family with dirty secrets and skeletons in their closets? Check.
A fast-paced, cardiac arrest inducing mystery? Check.
Swoon worthy, bittersweet romance? Check.
If you like all of the above, then you are bound to fall in love with Jennifer Donnelly’s These Shallow Graves–an epic, thrilling, page-turner story about an elite young woman who gives up all the glamour of her high profile life in the pursuit of truth and justice.
I did. I really did. In fact, this book was so wonderful that I’m having an extremely hard time writing this review. How am I ever going to sum up the perfection this novel is in a 1000+ word review?