Book Review: In Her Skin by Kim Savage

Book Title & Author: In Her Skin by Kim Savage
Published by: FSG on April 17th, 2018
Genre: Thriller
Pages: 304
Format: eARC
Source: Publisher
Goodreads
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Synopsis: Sixteen-year-old con artist Jo Chastain is about to take on the biggest scam of her life: impersonating a missing girl. Life on the streets of Boston these past few years hasn’t been easy, and Jo is hoping to cash in on a little safety, a little security. She finds her opportunity in the Lovecrafts, a wealthy family with ties to the unsolved disappearance of Vivienne Weir, who vanished when she was nine. 

When Jo takes on Vivi's identity and stages the girl’s miraculous return, the Lovecrafts welcome her back with open arms. They give her everything she could want: love, money, and proximity to their intoxicating and unpredictable daughter, Temple. But nothing is as it seems in the Lovecraft household—and some secrets refuse to stay buried. As hidden crimes come to the surface, and lines of deception begin to blur, Jo must choose to either hold onto an illusion of safety, or escape the danger around her before it’s too late.


Review:
I've had some bad luck with Savage's previous two books. One of them I gave 2 stars and the other one I DNFed, so I was worried about giving this book a shot. I generally have a 3 strikes policy with authors, so I was extra nervous about picking this one up.

I am so THRILLED to tell you that my nerves were for naught. This book was her best book yet and I am super stoked to see what is next for her.

Initially, I thought Jo was the manipulative one. The troublemaker, the one to watch out for, but that's before I met Temple and was introduced to a truly manipulative, calculating young lady who was fooling everyone, including me! As much as this story was about Jo and how she wormed her way into the Lovecraft's life, I found myself absolutely fascinated by Temple and the degrees she would go to in order to bring some excitement to her life. Clearly being filthy rich & all that comes with it wasn't enough excitement for her. No, she got into all sorts of crap. Crap I didn't expect from her initially.

There was much more to the Lovecrafts than I initially thought. There were more secrets than I expected. More unexpected twists that involved this family. I wondered how they could so willingly and so quickly believe that Jo was Vivienne Weir. I mean, being gone for as long as she supposedly was, only to have her reappear again and have her immediately welcomed into the Lovecraft's life seemed to be too much too soon.

The one issue I have with this book is that the few male characters, mainly Wolf and Slade, weren't as well developed as the rest of the group was. I was a bit disappointed by that. I wanted more from Wolf especially. I feel like there was more that Savage could have explored with Jo & Wolf's backstory.

Final thoughts: This book surprised me in a great way and it is definitely Savage's best book yet.

Book Review: The Complication by Suzanne Young

Book Title & Author: The Complication (The Program #6) by Suzanne Young
Published by: Simon Pulse on April 24th, 2018
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 464
Format: Hardcover
Source: Purchased
Goodreads
🌟🌟🌟🌟1/2
Synopsis: 
How do you go back to a life you can’t remember? Find out in this sixth novel in the New York Times bestselling Program series from Suzanne Young.

Every cure has a cost.

Tatum Masterson learned this after years of being monitored by The Program. She witnessed it when her boyfriend, Wes, came back changed, erased. And now, even the newest “cure” has a heavy cost—one she and Wes paid.

The Adjustment came into Tatum’s life just when she thought she needed it most, a promise for Wes to get back his forgotten memories. But when the procedure went wrong, a revelation shattered everything Tatum thought she knew.

Now, with no one left to trust, Tatum must find out what really happened last summer. And with the help of the boyfriend she lost, Tatum will have to dig into the past and future of The Program and its handlers.

And discover the true cost of a cure.

Review:
I cannot believe I have to say goodbye to this series. I never wanted it to end and now that I finished the final book in the series, it hurts. It hurts almost as badly as finishing the Harry Potter series hurt. That's how much I loved this series.

I really wish I had reread at LEAST The Adjustment before I read this book. I was having a heck of a time remembering characters and it was driving me insane. I would remember a certain character and then wrack my brain trying to remember where I knew them from. Which timeline? The before timeline with Quinlan McKee or the after timeline with Sloane Barstow. I started to wonder if my memory was still problematic after my health scare in November.

Suzanne Young is an absolute wizard at storytelling. She managed to keep all the threads from all of the books in this series together. I think all of my questions about this world were answered by the end of this book. She wrapped up all the threads of all of of the storylines. It takes a wizard to be able to do that effectively.

By now, I've come to expect bombshell after bombshell in this series and this book did not disappoint me in that way. I got my bombshells. Some of it I guessed and some of it I didn't, but that's another mark of a fantastic storyteller like Suzanne Young.

I was not a huge fan of the romance between Tatum and Weston. I'm trying to remember if I liked them together in The Adjustment, but I don't remember. I mean, they weren't horrible together and they did have chemistry together, but I felt like they were better as friends. Especially once certain things came to light. Especially about how The Program fit into everything concerning Wes & Tatum.

It was so good seeing all the familiar faces. Realm, Dallas, Sloane, James and several others. I think having all these familiar faces make cameos made the book even stronger. I actually want to reread the entire series now because I didn't realize how much I had missed these characters. Especially the ones I hadn't seen in awhile like Sloane, James and Dallas.

Final thoughts: Awesome ending to an awesome series. I am sad to see it end, but I look forward to seeing what Suzanne Young writes next.

Book Review: Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli

Book Title: Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli
Published by: Balzer + Bray on April 24th, 2018
Genre: Contemporary
Pages: 352
Format: Hardcover
Source: Purchased
Goodreads
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Synopsis: 
Leah Burke—girl-band drummer, master of deadpan, and Simon Spier’s best friend from the award-winning Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda—takes center stage in this novel of first love and senior-year angst.

When it comes to drumming, Leah Burke is usually on beat—but real life isn’t always so rhythmic. An anomaly in her friend group, she’s the only child of a young, single mom, and her life is decidedly less privileged. She loves to draw but is too self-conscious to show it. And even though her mom knows she’s bisexual, she hasn’t mustered the courage to tell her friends—not even her openly gay BFF, Simon.

So Leah really doesn’t know what to do when her rock-solid friend group starts to fracture in unexpected ways. With prom and college on the horizon, tensions are running high. It’s hard for Leah to strike the right note while the people she loves are fighting—especially when she realizes she might love one of them more than she ever intended.

Review:

Okay, I'll admit it. I was so super nervous about reading this book. I wanted so much to love it as much as I loved Simon, but I was absolutely terrified that I wouldn't. Simon held such a special place in my heart and reading the synopsis of Leah on the Offbeat made me smile.

Literally two seconds after opening this book I was grinning like a madwoman. Right away, I knew this book was a sequel to Simon. Right away I had the same feelings about this book as I had about Simon. I connected with the voice almost instantly and I just love when that happens. I wasn't expecting to connect with it so quickly, but I loved that I did.

The bisexual rep in this book was A+ I absolutely loved it and definitely connected to it. So many things that Leah said about bisexuality and about being bisexual totally resonated with me and it's rare that that happens and I credit Albertalli for that. There's a scene in this book where Leah is getting mad about a guy who doesn't seem to see another girl as competition for Leah. And that hit me. Hard because bisexuality erasure does exist and anyone who thinks it doesn't is an idiot. 

It's like a person can't be bisexual. You have to be either gay/lesbian or straight. People just don't understand how bisexuality works. And bisexuality is as individual as the person who identifies as bisexual. Take me for example, I used to be more into guys than girls, but now I'd say it's 90% girls & 10% boys. I know other people who identify in a totally different way. And that's okay. It doesn't make them any less bisexual.

Leah struggles with not liking a boy as much as she thinks she should and I totally understood that too. To her, it felt like she should like this guy because he's overall a good person, but of course that's not enough. Not when she's falling for someone else. And she knows it's not fair to the guy to keep stringing him along. She does kinda string him along longer than she should have and that bugged me a bit.

Leah's affinity for calling out racism & all other kinds of discriminatory things made me grin. Especially when she calls out her so-called friend, Morgan for saying something racist about Abby. Yes, the very same Abby who I loved in Simon. Morgan tries to claim it as the truth which Leah promptly shoots down. Again, I love Leah.

Leah's relationship with her mom was really interesting to watch. I loved her mom, even when she said something like "My little prom fetus" Actually that quote made me laugh until I cried. I don't know why, I just loved it. I was worried Leah's mom's boyfriend, Wells, would be a creep, but he wasn't. He actually seemed to be a really cool guy from the little we saw of him. I did understand Leah's hesitancy on getting to know him. It had just been her & her mom for the longest time, and like a toddler, she didn't want to share her mom with anyone. Selfish, yeah probably, but my mom & I have that kind of closeness too so I was able to relate.

Overall, I liked the romance better in Simon, but I did still enjoy Leah's romance in this book. It made me smile & cheer in all the right places. I just love when a romance does that. It makes me happy. I didn't expect Leah to end up with this person, but I enjoyed the progression from friends to a couple.

Final thoughts: So good, especially the bisexual representation. Read it even if you haven't read Simon yet.

Sunday Street Team: Sky in the Deep by Adrienne Young

Sky in the Deep by Adrienne Young
Published by Wednesday Books on April 24th, 2018
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 352
Format: eARC
Source: Publisher
Goodreads
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Synopsis

Seventeen-year-old Eelyn’s world is war. Raised to fight alongside her Aska clansmen in a generations-old blood feud against the Riki, her life is brutal but simple: fight and survive. Until the day she sees the impossible on the battlefield—her brother, fighting with the enemy—the brother she watched die five years ago.

Faced with her brother’s betrayal, she must survive the winter in the mountains with the Riki if she wants to make it back to the fjord after the thaw. But when she begins to see herself in the people she’s been taught to hate, the world Eelyn once knew begins to crumble. And after the village is raided by a ruthless clan many believe to be a myth, Eelyn is given no choice but to trust Fiske, her brother’s friend who has tried more than once to kill her. Together, they must end the blood feud between their clans or watch their people be slaughtered.

A lush, Viking-age inspired fantasy about loyalty, forgiveness, and the definition of family.

Book Information

Goodreads

Amazon
Barnes & Noble

Review

I really wasn't sure what to expect with this book. After all, I had never read a book like this or even close to it. I desperately wanted to love it, even though fantasy is not my go-to genre. It looked interesting enough for me to at LEAST give it a shot. Holy hell, I am SO glad I did!

I love when fantasy books open with an action scene. It always pulls me right in and I love that feeling. It makes me excited to keep reading, excited to visualize the action sequences, visualize the characters within these sequences. I loved getting an early look at Eelyn and her strength, both physical & mental. It's not often that we get such an early look at the fierceness of women warriors.

It's hard to keep up intensity in a book like this, but Young does a great job of it. She manages to keep the intensity going without making the reader feel like it's "too much" Yes, this book is gory. Yes, this book is bloody, but oh man did it surprise me in the BEST way. You all know I don't have a problems with gore in books, but I kept hearing that it was gory, and I was a little worried that I wouldn't be able to handle it. Spoiler alert: I was fine.

With fantasy books, I worry about the problem of info dumping, basically when the author dumps WAY too much information on the reader too soon & too fast. So I was worried about that with this book. Thankfully there was no info dumping with this book. Again, Young did a great job at giving us information about the Riki, the Aska and probably the deadliest group, the Herja.

Final thoughts: If you love fantasy, read this book. If fantasy is not your thing, still read this book.

Author Information

Adrienne Young is a born and bred Texan turned California girl. She is a foodie with a deep love of history and travel and a shameless addiction to coffee. When she’s not writing, you can find her on her yoga mat, scouring antique fairs for old books, sipping wine over long dinners, or disappearing into her favorite art museums. She lives with her documentary filmmaker husband and their four little wildlings beneath the West Coast sun.

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Review - Here’s To Happy Endings

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Book Review: White Rabbit by Caleb Roehrig

White Rabbit by Caleb Roehrig
Published by: Feiwel & Friends on April 24th, 2018
Genre: Contemporary
Pages: 320
Format: eARC
Source: Publisher
Goodreads
🌟🌟🌟🌟1/2

Synopsis: Rufus Holt is having the worst night of his life. It begins with the reappearance of his ex-boyfriend, Sebastian—the guy who stomped his heart out like a spent cigarette. Just as Rufus is getting ready to move on, Sebastian turns up out of the blue, saying they need to "talk." Things couldn’t get much worse, right?

But then Rufus gets a call from his sister April, begging for help. And then he and Sebastian find her, drenched in blood and holding a knife, beside the dead body of her boyfriend, Fox Whitney.

April swears she didn’t kill Fox—but Rufus knows her too well to believe she’s telling him the whole truth. April has something he needs, though, and her price is his help. Now, with no one to trust but the boy he wants to hate yet can’t stop loving, Rufus has one night to prove his sister’s innocence…or die trying.

Review:
I wasn't sure what to expect with this book. I was expecting to really enjoy it, just like I did Roehrig's debut. I was expecting a crazy-pants storyline that offered lots of "what the hell" moments. So, in those respects, I got exactly what I was expecting. I really enjoyed this book and it had an insanely crazy storyline. I didn't remember at what point, but I remember saying (and tweeting) that "I wanted to live inside Roehrig's head because it had to be wild in there for him to come up with this level of mind-fuckery"

Because there was a whole lot of insanity in this book. From April, Rufus's half sister to Hayden, Rufus's half brother, to Rufus's ex, Sebastian and all the other players in between them. Fox, Peyton, Race, Arlo, Lars, Lia, Isabel & Peter. This book had it all. Romance, mystery, complicated families, the whole shebang. Finally someone else had pretty close to my level of complicated family. Complex families are my jam and Rufus, his mom, April & Hayden and their parents finally gave me a family that resembles my own.

I don't know of a lot of people who would willingly drive all over the place at night for their ex, including myself. So either Sebastian has no backbone or I'm a jerk. I'm leaning towards the latter now that I think about it. Sebastian clearly wanted to make things right between Rufus and himself and I admired him for that. Especially when we got some backstory to their relationship. I did enjoy their romance, but the romance in Roehrig's debut, Last Seen Leaving, was my favorite of the two.

I was curious about why Rufus was so willing to clear April's name too. It just didn't make sense to me. They didn't really know each other all that well and April has a full brother that she could go to for help. Never mind that Hayden is a psychopath...actually, that's probably why April went to Rufus instead. That and she had something Rufus desperately needed. That same something ended up being tripled once a certain other person became involved.

I don't think I've ever read a book that took place in one night. Or maybe I have and I just cannot remember? I love unique storytelling and the whole "everything happened in one night" is one of those underused ways of storytelling. There needs to be more of these.

Final thoughts: This book was equally as good as Roehrig's debut, despite me not liking the romance quite as much. If you like dark contemporaries, then you need to pick this one up. 

Book Review: Relative Strangers by Paula Garner

Relative Strangers by Paula Garner
Published by Candlewick Press on April 10th, 2018
Genre: Contemporary
Pages: 368
Format: eARC
Source: Publisher
Goodreads
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Synopsis: Why is there a gap in Jules’s baby album? A wry and poignant coming-of-age novel about finding the truth in lies, salvaging hope in heartbreak, and making peace with missing pieces.

Eighteen-year-old Jules has always wished for a close-knit family. She never knew her father, and her ex-addict mother has always seemed more interested in artistic endeavors than in bonding with her only daughter. Jules’s life and future look as flat and unchanging as her small Illinois town. Then a simple quest to find a baby picture for the senior yearbook leads to an earth-shattering discovery: for most of the first two years of her life, Jules lived in foster care. Reeling from feelings of betrayal and with only the flimsiest of clues, Jules sets out to learn the truth about her past. What she finds is a wonderful family who loved her as their own and hoped to adopt her — including a now-adult foster brother who is overjoyed to see his sister again. But as her feelings for him spiral into a devastating, catastrophic crush — and the divide between Jules and her mother widens — Jules finds herself on the brink of losing everything.

Review:
I don't know what I was expecting from this book. I was expecting to love it, but I know I wasn't expecting to be sobbing a very high percentage of the time it took me to read it. I made a mistake taking the book with me when I knew I was going to wait around for a bit. And I achieved a kinda weird goal: To be reading a book & sobbing publicly. 

Because this book...well it gutted me. In ways her debut, Phantom Limbs didn't. Phantom Limbs made me cry, but Relative Strangers made me bawl like a starving infant pretty much through the entire book. I found myself relating to Jules and I honestly wasn't expecting that. I was expecting to like her, but relate to her? Nah.

But I felt like I was hit with a Mac truck when I realized that I, too have gaps in my family. I mean, I always knew I did, but to feel it slap me in the face like that was startling. I actually have a bit more family than Jules did and I was never in foster care, but like Jules, my father and his side of the family are still a giant mystery to me. Unlike Jules, my mom and I have a great relationship, but I sometimes wonder if it's hard for her to look at me because I look so much like my father...er...sperm donor sounds more accurate.

Like Jules' mother, Abby, my own mom had addiction problems and she too stopped when she found out I was on the way. See, a lot of similarities between my mom & I and Jules and Abby.

Jules had some great friends to turn to when things blow up between her and her mom. Eli, her out and proud co-worker who was also a rat owner. I swear, every time the rats came up, I shivered. I don't generally mind rats, but when you're eleven and see a decapitated rat behind your refrigerator, that sticks with you. My heart broke when I learned that his mother had died when he was little. I couldn't imagine losing my mom. 

Jules also had Gab, a fierce friend and who she had gone to many Jewish celebrations with, including Gab's bat mitzvah. They had been friends since they were both six years old. Gab was more of a risk taker than Jules and definitely more than the third member of the trio.

She also had Leila, the aformentioned third member of the trio. Leila was aggravatingly judgy, especially towards Gab, but we do learn something about the complex nature of their friendship that makes it harder to judge.

Both Gab & Leila had a "normal" family and Jules was often jealous of that. I understood that. Even though my mom and I have always been close, I wanted something a bit more normal too.

As much as I loved the complexity of the relationship between Jules and her mom, what really broke me was the Margolis clan. They really loved her and more than anything, they wanted to add her to their family. Tiny Jules called Mrs. Margolis, Mima, close to Mama, but not quite Mama and Mr. Margolis was called Buddy. And Luke, their son, Jules called him Duke. 

Every time I read about how much they had loved Jules, I sobbed. I couldn't help but think about my dad's family. If they had thought about me as much as the Margolises had thought about Jules. If they missed me at all. I felt things, a lot of things the first time Jules met Mima. Ugh, I cannot believe how beautiful this moment was. They had saved home videos of Jules from the year and a half she lived with them and I sobbed through that part too.

Told you I cried a LOT.

They had so many beautiful memories of Jules when she was little and it just broke my heart. While I know I was supposed to be glad Jules's mother had gotten herself together and had gotten Jules back, my heart was shattered beyond recognition at the realization that she had also been loved by the Margolises. And then, all that did was make me wonder some more about my dad's family. I've met some of them as an adult, but the entire time I was reading this book, I wondered if I had written them off too soon because I wanted to remain loyal to my mom.

The thing with Luke was weird. He had grown up in a "normal" family and had always considered Jules a sister. That's why, when things go too far between them, everything is just decimated. Jules blurred the lines between family & something more. Probably because things between her and her mom were always blurry.

Final thoughts: Read this book if you like stories with complex characters, and examples of different types of families.