Nov 5, 2021
The Unexpected Bookmark
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The Unexpected Bookmark
The Night Shift by Alex Finlay
My Review (5*) I loved Every Last Fear and I think it’s one of the most original and gripping thriller I read in 2020. The Night Shift is even better and it’s got a high rate in both “Sleep deprivation” and “Read it as fast as I could” scale, I started it yesterday afternoon and didn’t switch the light off till I turned the last pages. It’s breathtaking reading experience: it’s one of those “Another chapter” type of book and this becomes a sort of mantra till you read the last chapter. There a complex story and there’s multiple POVs: Ellie the survivor, Sarah the FBI investigator, Chris the brother of the main suspect. Each of them is working to catch a multiple killer, each them is related to two massacre for differen reasons. I loved all of them, was moved by their story and rooted for them hoping they could find peace or simply discover who did it. It’s a complex thriller, I was surprised by the solution and couldn’t guess any twist. I’m also starting to think that Alex Finlay can’t write a book that will surprise me and force me to read it in one setting. Gripping, compelling, riveting: there’s a long list of adjectives that could be used for this book. I will be short: read it! Highly recommended. Many thanks to Aries and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine
Synopsis: What connects a massacre in a Blockbuster video store in 1999 with the murder of four teenagers fifteen years later? It's New Year's Eve of 1999 when four teenagers working late are attacked at a Blockbuster video store in New Jersey. Only one inexplicably survives. Police quickly identify a suspect, the boyfriend of one of the victims, who flees and is never seen again. Fifteen years later, four more teenagers are attacked at an ice cream store in the same town, and again only one makes it out alive. In the aftermath of the latest crime, three lives intersect: the lone survivor of the Blockbuster massacre, who is forced to relive the horrors of her tragedy; the brother of the fugitive accused, who is convinced the police have the wrong suspect, and FBI agent Sarah Keller, who must delve into into the secrets of both nights to uncover the truth about the night shift murders...
Book page: https://headofzeus.com/books/9781800245327
The Author: Alex Finlay is the pseudonym of Anthony Franze, an author who lives in Washington D.C. As Alex Finlay, he writes gripping psychological thrillers such as Every Last Fear. As Anthony Franze, he writes compelling legal thrillers including The Advocate's Daughter, The Outsider and The Last Justice. He's garnered national praise for his work as a lawyer in the Appellate and Supreme Court practice of a prominent Washington, D.C. law firm and he has been a commentator on high-court issues for The New Republic, Bloomberg, and National Law Journal.
Social media links: Alex Finlay: Author Website: alexfinlaybooks.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AlexFinlayAuthor Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alexfinlayauthor/
Aries Twitter: @AriesFiction Facebook: Aries Fiction Website: http://www.headofzeus.com
The Raven Cycle
(The Raven Boys, The Dream Thieves, Blue Lily, Lily Blue, The Raven King & Opal)
By Maggie Stiefvater
I was reluctant to read a book about a group of boys, but the dream elements in The Raven Cycle echoed some of the themes in my own book so I decided it would be valuable research. I tend to eschew male protagonists because I surfeited on a diet of them growing up when I longed to read about intelligent, daring, creative women.
But The Raven Cycle not only boasts a menagerie of multidimensional nuanced male characters, but also fierce, dynamic, wild females as well. I am so glad that Maggie Stiefvater lured me in with her brilliant premise, lyrical prose and unexpected landscape so that I could appreciate this gorgeous gritty tapestry of teen male kinship (and dare I say the sensuality of cars?) through not just a trilogy, but a quartet of books - plus a bonus short story. Oh, and for all of us that curse the end of a good series, guess what? There is a spin-off called The Dreamer Trilogy which I am enjoying now narrated by the brilliantly pliant Will Patten.
Blue Sergeant chronicles the names of the dead as the pass on the ley line each year. A seemingly ungifted seer in a house of talented female clairvoyants, Blue never seems to “see” anything until she sees the ghost of Gansey. This encounter catapults Blue into an adventure with a group of misfit prep school boys in search of a legend king.
With the kind of grand reveals that make a reader do a double take, Stiefvater builds a wholly unique world full of fantastical nightmares and earnest possibility that exists just a stumble away from our own.
Written with the intelligence of an adult but the poetry and wisdom that we lose as we age, this southern gothic tarot phantasm has the imagination of Erin Morgenstern and the dark possible magic of Melissa Albert’s The Hazel Wood.
So, let’s hear it for the boys, and for an author who has rendered such vivid multidimensional heroes - and heroines - to add to the canon of YA literature.
ONCE UPON A time, there was a king who had three beautiful daughters. He loved each of them dearly. One day, when the young ladies were of age to be married, a terrible, three-headed dragon laid siege to the kingdom, burning villages with fiery breath. It spoiled crops and burned churches. It killed babies, old people, and everyone in between. The king promised a princess’s hand in marriage to whoever slayed the dragon. Heroes and warriors came in suits of armor, riding brave horses and bearing swords and arrows. One by one, these men were slaughtered and eaten. Finally the king reasoned that a maiden might melt the dragon’s heart and succeed where warriors had failed. He sent his eldest daughter to beg the dragon for mercy, but the dragon listened to not a word of her pleas. It swallowed her whole. Then the king sent his second daughter to beg the dragon for mercy, but the dragon did the same. Swallowed her before she could get a word out. The king then sent his youngest daughter to beg the dragon for mercy, and she was so lovely and clever that he was sure she would succeed where the others had perished. No indeed. The dragon simply ate her. The king was left aching with regret. He was now alone in the world. Now, let me ask you this. Who killed the girls? The dragon? Or their father?
E.Lockhart: We Were Liars
Our advice: Don't read Maile Meloy's 'Do Not Become Alarmed' after dark.
Meloy, who grew up in Montana and now lives in Southern California, is interested in delivering more than just a first-class international literary intrigue. She ups the ante by focusing on the inherent racial and class issues that inform the story, from the shipboard staff to the kidnappers' housekeeper, Maria, and her son Oscar, to Nora's husband, Raymond, who, unlike almost everybody else on the cruise, is black. While the Argentines are well-to-do, they don't, when push comes to shove, share the preferential status accorded by the local populace and police to the American families. No one escapes the novel unscathed, but Meloy's message about the privilege, and naïveté, that Americans of means enjoy is unmistakable. It gives this fast-paced thriller, with its alternating adult and child perspectives, an extra layer of complexity.
Do Not Become Alarmed is in stores next Tuesday, June 6!!!
Recursion
by Blake Crouch
Could Blake Crouch please write more books so I can start a novel and then read until the wee hours of the morning every single night of my life?
For some reason, I keep on thinking, If Blake Crouch told me to jump off a bridge, I just might. Though it’d have nothing to do with peer pressure. I think I’d step off that bridge just because I wouldn’t be surprised if his concept of time, space and reality so far transcends mine that that small time continuum disturbance would save the world in some way.
Crouch is simply a master sci-fi storyteller. Do you love slightly alternative worlds to ours? Check. Love near-plausible catastrophic worldwide scenarios? Check. Love books that blow your mind with their theories? Check.
Recursion starts with a world that is suffering from False Memory Syndrome, a seemingly isolated disease in which people experience “false memories” of a life they never lived while simultaneously living the life they do. This naturally causes many a psychotic break. Because what if you remembered a world where you had a spouse and child and rewarding job and suddenly find yourself single, childless and bankrupt?
I almost don’t know how to write about Recursion because there comes a time while reading Crouch’s books where my meager astrophysical understanding of the world collides with reality to create a fissure through which I can peek into a distinct possibility that he is not the storyteller of a fictional tale, but rather a harbinger of a real impending doom.
I read Dark Matter in one sitting. I opened it at bedtime. I turned the last page before I fell asleep. Recursion I savored over the course of a 24-hour period, though from self-control or fear for our precarious world, I cannot say which.
In some way, Blake Crouch writes the stuff of nightmares: science, power, playing God. The problem is: sometimes it’s hard to tell whether or not we’re awake.
The Farm
by Joanne Ramos
At one day past my due date, I am currently in either the best or the worst position to review Joanne Ramos’ thought-provoking page-turner The Farm.
At the moment, the slightly-too-plausible premise of farming out pregnancies via pricey surrogacy does not seem so bad. Having endured morning sickness occurring all times of day that does not cease after 1st trimester, exhaustion tantamount to being hit repeatedly by a bus, never-ending constipation and pains in places I didn’t know existed, might I hire someone to trade places? Tell me where to VENMO.
And yet, in a way, this isn’t even what The Farm is about. The bookstore employee suggested it was like The Handmaid’s Tale, perhaps in an effort to warn my obviously gestating self that it might not be the best time to read it. In fact, it is only really like The Handmaid’s Tale in that there are pregnant women at its center.
It’s also not about the price of motherhood, the high-achieving women who are penalized at work for having children, nor about the fact that the US is the only developed country without paid maternity leave. These topics could have doubled the size of the book - and I would have gladly read more.
What The Farm is about is far more personal and insidious - a sort of collective history and culpability woven into the fabric of the American flag - Betsy Ross stitching in her trinity kitchen all the while going blind.
The story follows Jane, a young Fiipina mother, trying to survive in NY. Her cousin presents her with an opportunity: interview at Golden Oaks, a resort-style surrogate facility, where the wealthiest clients pay top dollar to outsource their pregnancies. The facility provides comprehensive nutrition, weekly prenatal massages, yoga, wellness tracking and ...alpacas. There she meets Reagan and Lisa, two caucasian “hosts,” who pull her into their orbit. With the payouts for healthy babies so huge, each “host” has her own reasons for signing up for 10 (yes, look up how long pregnancy actually is) months of incarceration, so to speak.
In addition to a brilliantly-paced speculative fiction thriller, what starts to unfold is a social commentary about opportunity, access, immigration, and skin tone. And by the end of the novel, as Jane marvels at her own brave smart daughter, I start to wonder about the American Dream - who has been duped and who is benefitting from doing the duping. We expect it to pay its dividends in one lifetime. Come “your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” not well,...three generations down the road. And when my own great-grandmother emigrated, gnawed family photo in hand, I wonder if she ever thought about three - and any day now, four - generations down the line, and where her sea voyage would lead.
And perhaps it’s not that the American Dream is dead - perhaps we just always thought it was free. What if it’s always been pricey? And the questions are: how much are you willing to sell? And how much are you willing to pay?
Let the bidding begin.
BOOK REVIEW: INTO THE DARK by J.A. Schneider
A chance encounter with a handsome stranger, a whirlwind romance resulting in an unplanned pregnancy and a hasty marriage – four years later art history professor, Annie Lamb, begins to wonder if she really knows her husband, psychiatrist Ben Lamb, at all. Ben’s first wife, Susannah drowned in the bathtub, an apparent suicide. At the time of her death, Ben and Susannah’s 14-year-old son, Colin,…
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