Book Review: The Similars by Rebecca Hanover

Book Title & Author: The Similars by Rebecca Hanover
Published by: Sourcebooks Fire on January 1st, 2019
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 352
Format: eARC
Source: Publisher
Goodreads
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Synopsis:When six clones join Emmaline’s prestigious boarding school, she must confront the heartbreak of seeing her dead best friend’s face each day in class.
The Similars are all anyone can talk about at the elite Darkwood Academy. Who are these six clones? What are the odds that all of them would be Darkwood students? Who is the madman who broke the law to create them? Emma couldn't care less. Her best friend, Oliver, died over the summer and all she can think about is how to get through her junior year without him. Then she comes face-to-heartbreaking-face with Levi—Oliver's exact DNA replica and one of the Similars.

Emma wants nothing to do with the Similars, but she keeps getting pulled deeper and deeper into their clique, uncovering dark truths about the clones and her prestigious school along the way. But no one can be trusted…not even the boy she is falling for who has Oliver's face.

Review:
Oh boy, let's see if I can do this crazy-awesome book justice, because it really deserves it. I was nervous about this one because I've been disappointed in the first next year book I've read. I wanted to be totally obsessed with this book, but I was terrified I'd be disappointed. But I wasn't. I was totally thrilled with this book. 

It took me on a wild roller coaster ride that just never let up. I love books where I get pulled into the story immediately and that's exactly what happened with this one. It started off really promising and before I was even a quarter of the way through it, I was hooked! Love when a book can do that. Especially a book that has science fiction elements, murder mystery elements and boarding school elements. Boarding school in particularly is a buzz-phrase for me. If I see a book takes place at a boarding school, I'm gonna wanna read it. That's just the way it is.

Emmaline was a fascinating character. My heart broke when I learned of her losses. Yes, she had lost more than her best friend in her lifetime and that was hard to read about. She seemed to have a good friend in Prudence though, so at least she had someone to turn to when things got really hard. I couldn't imagine how Emmaline was feeling when Oliver's Similar appeared at Darkwood. Obviously it wasn't easy for her and it also wasn't easy for the Similar, Levi, as well. Both of them struggled knowing that Levi's face & his DNA was the same as a dead boy's.

I loved the element of the Ten students. It actually reminded me a little bit of Dead Poets Society, one of my all time favorite movies. It was like a secret society, only it wasn't secret. It was exclusive, only the brightest students who earned the highest "stratums" or scores would be inducted into the Ten. It didn't really surprise me how many of the Ten's family members had also been Tens in their times at Darkwood.

Some of the Similars got really fleshed out, and we got to know them well. Levi, Pippa and Maude were all really fleshed out and I could see them in my mind. Then again, Theodora, Jago & Ansel were not as fleshed out as I was hoping they would be. I don't know a whole lot about those three as opposed to Levi, Pippa and Maude. I wanted more information on Theodora, Jago & Ansel. I wanted to know so much more about them other than who their Originals were.

I really want to just keep talking and talking about this book because it gets even better and crazier as the book continues. But, I want to avoid spoilers and there's a lot that I could spoil about this book.

Final thoughts: If science fiction or boarding school or murder mysteries are you thing, you need to pick this book up when it's released.

Book Review: One Of Us is Lying by Karen McManus

Book Title & Author: One Of Us is Lying by Karen McManus
Published by: Delecorte Press on May 30th, 2017
Genre: Thriller
Pages: 361
Format: eARC
Source: Publisher
Goodreads
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Synopsis: The Breakfast Club meets Pretty Little Liars, One of Us Is Lying is the story of what happens when five strangers walk into detention and only four walk out alive. Everyone is a suspect, and everyone has something to hide. 

Pay close attention and you might solve this.
On Monday afternoon, five students at Bayview High walk into detention.
Bronwyn, the brain, is Yale-bound and never breaks a rule. 
Addy, the beauty, is the picture-perfect homecoming princess. 
Nate, the criminal, is already on probation for dealing.
Cooper, the athlete, is the all-star baseball pitcher.
And Simon, the outcast, is the creator of Bayview High's notorious gossip app.
Only, Simon never makes it out of that classroom. Before the end of detention, Simon's dead. And according to investigators, his death wasn't an accident. On Monday, he died. But on Tuesday, he'd planned to post juicy reveals about all four of his high-profile classmates, which makes all four of them suspects in his murder. Or are they the perfect patsies for a killer who's still on the loose? 

Everyone has secrets, right? What really matters is how far you would go to protect them.

Review:
I desperately wanted to love this book and I was so excited to be approved for it so long ago. Yet, I didn't pick it up until it had already been out in the world for over a year. I still have no idea why it took me so long to pick it up. I love my character driven YA mysteries and I felt sure that this one was gonna fit that bill completely.

I found myself on a pacing roller coaster with this book. It was incredibly slow to start with, and I almost decided to DNF it. Right around 30% of the way through, it picked up, started gaining speed. I started to become more invested in the story, and in the characters. By 50% of the way through it, I was totally into it, coming up with my own crazy theories about what happened to Simon and what, if anything, the Bayview Four, had to do with it.

Sister stories are always a huge draw for me, and I think it's because I have several half sisters that I really don't know well. One Of Us is Lying had two sets of sisters: Ashton & Addy & Bronwyn & Maeve. Both Maeve & Ashton came through for their sisters in really big ways. Despite what was going on in each of their lives, they were able to be sisters to Bronwyn & Addy, both of whom really needed them.

Cooper had a fantastic grandma, Nonny, who was really there for him when shit started crashing down around him. Like the other 3 students involved in this thing, Cooper had his secrets. Secrets he tried so hard to keep for as long as he could. Cooper's dad was a grade A dick and I could not stand him at all. Not once did he seem to care about what Cooper wanted or how Cooper felt. It was all baseball all the time. Even through a murder investigation.

Nate was the outlier. Like it was said multiple times, if it came to it, he would be the scapegoat. He was the only one on probation, whose parents were not involved in his life and who had no money. The other three had crystal clear legal records, had involved parents and were fairly well off. So I wasn't hugely surprised that the police department seemed to zero in on him fairly quickly.

Usually in a book like this, any kind of romance tends to weaken the book for me, but with this book, the romance between Bronwyn & Nate totally improved the book. I actually really enjoyed their romance, and was really excited to watch it progress from burner phone conversations to kissing in the school cafeteria. 

Their romance was a sharp contrast to the controlling one Addy had with Cooper's best friend, Jake. Jake was a total controlling asshole who I had no patience with. Neither did Addy's sister, Ashton. Jake was always telling Addy how to wear her hair, how to dress, where they were going etc. Addy never spoke up for herself. Out of all of the Bayview Four, Addy's character development was the best and I really enjoyed watching it.

There is a subplot where a character is outed, but I didn't see it as a twist. The way the character was outed was horrible and it caused a knot in my stomach and an urge to hug the character, but I didn't see it as a plot twist.

I was so massively disappointed by the ending and how everything was revealed. I could not have been more disappointed if I tried. It felt like the author took the easy way out with the murder reveal. Easily one of the most disappointing endings of the year, if not the most disappointing. I wanted so much more from the murder reveal and I didn't get it.

Final thoughts: Aside from the uneven pace & the massively disappointing ending, I did enjoy the book. I really liked the characters and the particular mode of death was interesting. 

Book Review: People Like Us by Dana Mele

Book Title & Author: People Like Us by Dana Mele
Published by: G. P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers on February 27th, 2018
Genre: Contemporary
Pages: 384
Format: Hardcover
Source: Purchased
Goodreads
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Synopsis:
Kay Donovan may have skeletons in her closet, but the past is past, and she's reinvented herself entirely. Now she's a star soccer player whose group of gorgeous friends run their private school with effortless popularity and acerbic wit. But when a girl's body is found in the lake, Kay's carefully constructed life begins to topple. 
The dead girl has left Kay a computer-coded scavenger hunt, which, as it unravels, begins to implicate suspect after suspect, until Kay herself is in the crosshairs of a murder investigation. But if Kay's finally backed into a corner, she'll do what it takes to survive. Because at Bates Academy, the truth is something you make...not something that happened.

Review:
I was massively excited for this book. I mean, anytime someone says the words "boarding school murder mystery", I perk up my ears. Those are buzzwords for me. I was nervous though. I was so excited about another book recently and that one ended up disappointing me in a huge way. So, I was very apprehensive about starting this book.

I was hooked less than 50 pages into it and I couldn't have been more excited about that. Now this book was what I'd call a psychological thriller and by now, you all should know that psychological thrillers are my favorite thrillers of all time.

Oh my god, I was totally obsessed with this book and ended up reading the majority of it in one day. I love when I can do that because it means that I'm enjoying the book and that it's a compelling book. It's hard to find a compelling thriller sometimes, but oh boy, this ticked all the boxes.

And hello, I loved all the lesbian romances in this book. I wasn't expecting it, but it only made me love the book more. There were some lesbian love triangles too. Normally, I cannot stand love triangles, but I was so obsessed with the murder mystery aspect of this book that the love triangles were a minor annoyance for me.

I'm trying to remember where I read that this book was a cross between Pretty Little Liars & Mean Girls (Goodreads, maybe?) because that was a pretty accurate comparison. It had the Mean Girls aspect with Kay, Brie, Tai, Tricia & Cori and it had the Pretty Little Liars aspect with someone taunting someone else through technology, whether it was a computer or a cell phone.

Those girls were important to the story, but my obsession was with Nola. Oh my god, I was so obsessed with her. She was the "weird girl" who Kay enlisted to help her crack Jessica's website, where all the taunts began. I am a sucker for complex characters and although Kay was complex, so was Nola. Incidentally I called Nola, Nala for a good chunk of the book. I blame my longtime love of The Lion King for that.

The book was so creepy and atmospheric and that was one of it's many pluses. Mele did a great job at setting the scene. I could see myself at Bates. I could visualize all of the girls in my head.

I had no idea who the murderer was. I had my suspicions of a few people, but nothing totally concrete. The reveal was excellent though and although I know some people had some issues with the end, it was the end that boosted this book to a five star rating for me.

Final thoughts: This book was so atmospheric, set in a boarding school, with a murder mystery. It was totally an Alexia book, so YES you need to pick up a copy.