It’s been a while but I’m back with another reading wrap up of what books I’ve been flicking through over the past few weeks as I slowly pace towards my goal of reading 30 books by the end of the year.
Noise | Brett Garcia Rose *c/o Book Publicity Services
After the disappearance and apparent suicide of his adopted sister Lily, Leon has been searching for answers. Guided by a handwritten postcard, his quest for answers takes him to New York City and cold-hard truths that send him into a spiral of hatred and on the trail of a sadistic Russian crime lord.
I already reviewed this for Blogger’s Bookshelf recently but in essence this was a pretty gritty crime drama. The story itself is pretty intense, but ultimately it’s a very good character novel solely focused on Leon and his search for Lily. Not only great for character development it’s also cool to read a book with a deaf african american protagonist who’s story isn’t defined by his race or disability.
The Helios Disaster | Linda Bostrom Knausgaard
The story of a father and his daughter, separated at her birth. Anna is placed into foster care and starts speaking in tongues, she’s admitted to a psychiatric ward. But Anna longs to be reunited with her father, running away with him into other worlds.
When I first picked this up I’m pretty sure I assumed it would be a modern retelling of a greek myth, what I got was a more of a psychological piece which focuses on the slightly darker and confusing side effects of schizophrenia and mental illness. If I’m being honest, I’m not completely sure what I’d read by the end of the book.
On one hand the plot line and focus of the book shifted wilding throughout the whole time I was reading it, on the other hand I feel like this was the point of the novel. Anna is our delusioned protagonist – if we can even call her that – her mind wanders into the realms of the original Greek mythology as she deals with being sectioned in a mental institution. I’m not sure I actually enjoyed this but it was certainly something a little bit different to get myself into.
Rumors | A.C. Arthur *c/o NetGalley
It’s been 10 years since the case of Landy Connor, a young girl murdered a mere two weeks before her College graduation, hit the small town of Tanner. Her murder not only became legend as one of the town’s biggest mysteries but drove her group of friends apart and her accused ex-boyfriend, Nathan, out of town.
Now Nathan’s back in Tanner ready to clear his name. But with his arrival coinciding with Landy’s memorial service and the reunion of her old school friends, rumours and secrets start to spread through the town like wildfire once more and the original killer is more than willing to keep this mystery buried deep in the ground.
The first thing I noticed when reading Rumors is that there’s very little focus on one single plot line – which is weird because you’d expect that plot to be pretty simple as a murder mystery. With so many different characters involved in the case, all of whom are interlinked with each other in some form or another, it’s a bit of a brain workout to figure out who’s who and how they fit within Landy’s story. This approach ultimately made the ending super frustrating, as when the focus did finally shift towards the whodunit aspect of the story, it did the worst thing…it cliffhanger-ed. *shakes fist*
You guys can decide whether that’s a good or a bad thing for yourselves should you decide to read it, but I will also point out a lot of the book was much steamier than I expected – there were definitely some pretty NSFW sex scenes that pushed it into the New Adult territory rather than an middle-grade/YA novel (despite being pitched as a YA novel?). As a crime drama Rumors definitely kept me on my toes to try and figure out who killed Landy, but in the end there were just too many characters and story lines flying all over the place to keep up with.
Currently reading…
What should we tell our daughters by Melissa Benn
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart
R.xoxo
