Category: Contemporary Fiction

Two Truths and a Lie

by April Henry, Pub Date May 22, 2022

4.5 Stars. Best Enjoyed when you need a fast paced ya thriller set during a snowstorm that has a lot going on–like, a lot.

The Synopsis:

Nell and her drama club classmates are on their way to a national drama competition that they have been working very hard for. This competition could lead to awards, scholarships, and opportunities for them and they are excited and confident. What they were not prepared for was the winter storm of the century catching the California teens and their teacher to be stranded a strange, worn-out hotel far from their intended destination. As they hunker down for the night, they meet other storm-bound people who have found themselves equally stuck at the Travel Inn & Out, including another group of teens who had a competition of their own to attend.

As the storm rages on outside, the teens decide to meet in the common room to socialize in front of the fire. However, their gathering begins to take on a sinister tone as a creepy message appears in the slips of paper they are using to play a seemingly innocent game of Two Truths and a Lie. As a sense of unease settles on the group, they also find out that the hotel is the sight of a 20 year-old unsolved double murder, one that took place in room 238. They decide to do a séance and it goes about as well as one can expect a séance to go in a creepy hotel. And then the power goes out.

The next morning, Nell and a few others in their party group stumble upon the body of one of the girls they had hung out with the night before, apparently hung sometime in the night, a sign pinned to her chest saying “THIS IS THE FIRST.” Was it suicide or something more sinister? As another girl disappears and they find her room splattered in more blood than one could survive losing, with another sign scrawled in blood on the bathroom mirror reading “THIS IS THE SECOND,” all hell breaks loose. Not only are they stranded far away from home and safety without heat, phone service, and power, but they also may be stuck in a hotel in the middle of nowhere with a murderer. Is this the same killer who 20 years ago killed the couple in 238, or is this someone new who has only just begun?

The Review:

I definitely finished this one quickly. The plot throughout is fast-paced and it had everything in it. Suspicious hotel guests, possible supernatural phenomena, unsolved murders, and teenage hormones run rampant. The setting was well described and plays a huge roll throughout the entire book. It’s like the setting is another character entirely, moaning and creaking around its inhabitants.

The storm also adds a ton to the overall atmosphere of the book and if you have ever experienced a blizzard, you know exactly the feelings they have. The isolation, the disorientation when you find yourself in a world that has turned the outside into a black and white alien landscape where the white and fluffy snow becomes an icy desert of drifts and plains, some which may even hide other dangerous creatures. It creates a stark and unforgiving backdrop for a story of people desperately clawing their way to the truth.

There is a cadre of red herrings and strange happenings that make you question the evidence and what might be true verses what might be coincidental. Many of the characters show their true colors throughout the book, which makes them seem all the more real. It’s also always fun to read about people who are tied intrinsically to technology go through an experience where they don’t have any available and have to find ways to survive varying circumstances, like how to unmask a killer while trying to stay warm and fed in a place not meant to be run without electricity. It’s one reason I absolutely love fictional survival stories set far in the wilderness, especially ones where dumb mistakes are made that the protagonist has to survive. Although there aren’t many of those in Two Truths and a Lie, there is still plenty of unpreparedness to keep a reader feeling like this book is both a survival story and a mystery-thriller.

If you’re in the mood for a quick and thrilling read, I would advise picking up a copy of Two Truths and a Lie.

Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown books for a copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Contemporary Fiction Fantasy Mystery

Burn Our Bodies Down

By Rory Power. Release Date 7/7/2020

4 Stars. Best enjoyed during the daytime with the windows open.

Margot has been secretly searching for her past behind her emotionally distant mother’s back for as long as she can remember. That’s a hard task to accomplish when you have to walk on egg shells in a tiny, run-down apartment in a city you hate. However, when buying back some of her mother’s possessions from the local pawn shop with squirreled away money, she finds a clue tucked away in an old bible on the back of a photo.

Phalene.

Margot plots an escape to the small farming town. Seeking her family and the story of her past, everyone seems to know who she is, but no one can tell her much of anything. Things turn hostile when she finds a dead girl who shares her own face in a blazing field fire. A girl no one seems to have ever seen before. A girl her grandmother also ever knowing.

As Margo dives deeper and deeper into the mystery of her own origins and searches for answers to who this doppelgänger girl could be, she finds herself in the middle of a dark, deep mystery spanning generations. As she spirals into the horrors of her family’s history, she struggles with the choice between keeping the family and sense of belonging she has finally found or the rabbit hole that is the past.

Burn Our Bodies Down was an unexpected ride. It was a slow, aching build up of intertwined mysteries that overflowed in a rush of blood and horror. It was one of those horror stories that keeps you guessing until the bitter end. The ideas were original, the setting and plot were well fleshed out, and the larger themes were made clear in the end.

I highly recommend this to any YA horror fans out there who want a summer mystery to sink their teeth into.

Contemporary Fiction Horror Mystery Romance

The Shape of Night

By Tess Gerritsen, Pub date 10/1/2019

4 Stars. Best enjoyed at night. Alone.

Tess Gerritsen has been one of my favorite authors for the last 15 years, so I was super excited to be approved for this one–thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the advanced copy of this book in exchange for the below fair review!

Ava is a food writer who trades a few months in Boston for a new backdrop in Brodie’s Watch, a large, beautiful rental house on the coast of Maine. It’s the perfect place to finish her latest book on New England coastal cuisine, and also far enough away to try to escape the secrets that have haunted her since New Year’s Eve. However, it soon becomes clear that she is not the only resident haunting the stately home perched on the seaside cliff outside of Tucker’s Cove, Maine. It seems that the master of the house, Captain Jeremiah Brodie, also walks the halls of the historic home, and has his sights set on being more than just a spectral presence to Ava. However, it soon becomes apparent that there are dangerous forces at play both inside and outside of the cliffside estate…and that Ava is not the only person in Tucker’s Cove with deadly secrets.

The Shape of Night is a much different fare than I am used to coming from Gerritsen, but it was nonetheless a wonderful escapist read. It was part mystery/thriller, part paranormal romance. As always, she wrote characters that were well fleshed-out, places that I felt I could step into, and described smells and flavors that lifted themselves off the pages. I found my mouth watering at some of the descriptions of the food that Ava created for her book. There are other scenes that are delicious, hot, and completely unrelated to roasting meats and simmering soups. I also really felt for Ava. Her need for redemption for her heinous secret was palpable, and it was clear that no matter how much she tried to bury herself beneath empty wine bottles and distance herself from the place it happened, she couldn’t escape the pain on her own, and, not to give too much away, the house seemed to be well aware of that fact.

Gerritsen also proves that she remains a master of mystery–there were so many different questions that needed to be answered that it was enough to keep the reader guessing at every turn until the epilogue. The imagery lent a creepy, fall-worthy vibe to the entire story, absolutely perfect for the season.

Contemporary Fiction Science Fiction

The Girl Who Could Move Sh*# With Her Mind

Post author By Lady Nightwolf
Post date May 29, 2019
No Comments on The Girl Who Could Move Sh*# With Her Mind

By Jackson Ford. Pub date: June 18, 2019.

3 out of 5 stars. Best enjoyed with a black coffee and some good sushi or Phó.

MY FIRST ARC! Thanks, Netgalley! I received an advanced copy of this book in exchange for a fair & honest review. Paying the reaper in spades:

The Girl Who Could Move Shit With Her Mind focuses on our protagonist, Teggan, a devil-may-care-Deadpool-esque early-twenty-something who somewhat mysteriously has an X-Men-level mutation in her genetics that causes her to have PK, or psychotelekinesis–the title says it all: she can move sh*# with her mind. She works for a super secret military organization that goes after bad people while fronting as a moving company called China Shop. Her rag tag team of what basically amount to the Expendables includes Reggie, a super smart hacker whose time in the military left her as a paraplegic, clean-cut office manager Paul (or as Teggan calls him “Agent Whiteboard”), Teggan’s best work friend Carlos, the Mexican ex-pat getaway driver outrunning his past, and Annie, a street tough former inmate who is super secretive about her personal life, and for good reason. The teams works for Moira Tanner, who is honestly a conspiracy nut’s wet dream/worst nightmare, and whom is seemingly obsessed with the greater good.

When their current mark is found dead in a way that only someone with PK could have accomplished, all eyes are on Teggan. But she knows it wasn’t her, which means she has to prove she’s not the only one out there with these abilities–a prospect that is both exciting and terrifying to her. However, Tanner has put an expiration date on her head–prove in 24 hours that there’s another person who could have done this, and she and the team are spared. Fail, and end up in the darkest hole the government can drill. Commence the superhuman-charged high-octane detective story you didn’t even know you needed in your life.

I will admit, it took me a couple of chapters in to really adjust to the writing style and get absolutely hooked, but I did. Ford does a good job at keeping the reader on their toes. Like every book, though, it had is pros and cons:

PROS:

I don’t usually enjoy more than one POV in a story, but the bounce between Teggan and Jake, the other person with PK abilities who is only committing the murders because he wants to know where he comes from (not giving anything away with that, it’s pretty clear from the first perspective change), is actually really engaging. They’re both anti-heroes who have been dealt a seriously messed up hand. Teggan was experimented on as a kid while Jake has been bounced around the foster system. Life is tough even with superhuman abilities. You really want to root for both sides on this one. I love the level of grey we get with these characters.
There’s something that Jackson Ford absolutely nails that even grizzled veteran writers don’t always hit on, and that is that his characters are really well fleshed out, even the auxiliary ones. I could almost see the corded muscles on Annie’s arms, the glint on Reggie’s glasses, and hear Africa’s laugh. That’s a huge plus. I felt invested in what happened to these people. Even Jake. Some characters, like Tanner & Chuy, were purposefully elusive. The only character I have a real complaint about is Nic. I really wish he had been more fleshed out. He didn’t even seem like that important of a character when we first encounter him, so when he comes back into the picture it’s kind of like “um…okay? Who is this guy, again?”
The banter between the characters is seriously hilarious at times. As much as it seems that Teggan got on a lot of people’s nerves, she didn’t get on mine. I get why her personality is the way it is. She’s just super jaded with life and is absolutely limited on choices with very short leash and little free will. Of course she’d end up being a smarta$$–her words are the only way she can actually rebel and she’s got to keep that cushion of humor going or it’ll let the despair in. It’s very clear as the book goes on that she really does care about the people around her, even if she is sarcastic and exhausting at times. It just makes her feel more real to me.

CONS:

As much as I liked the book overall, the beginning really was difficult to get into. It felt a bit like it was trying too hard, which made it a bit of a slog until you get to the high-stakes part. It also makes you question some of the better parts of the book. I won’t mention anything super specific because *spoilers* but ***SPOILERS***: suffice it to say that the weight limits on her powers are a tad questionable when you add velocity into the mix. Why was she able to stop two people from falling from the sky yet no one questions why she only has a 300# weight limit on her powers? However, this requires a cursory knowledge of physics so not every reader will be as keen on this. It’s also not a deal breaker–this is a work of fiction, not a textbook.
There’s a slight romance between two characters but it honestly fell super flat. However, not the focus of the book. I just wish that relationship had been a little more well laid out or just ignored all together. It just seemed really hasty and felt like it was a last minute addition to reach a different audience. I am a stickler for romance, but this one I couldn’t care less about.
(Also may change in the final copy edit:) There were a couple of moments when I think the writer might have made an editing mistake that was missed in post. There was a particular situation where it seemed like an entire paragraph of dialogue was missing because one character asked a question and then the next character responded and the response was clearly for something else that should have be said. It was only blatantly obvious one time and it was a minor situation that I just kind of glossed over, but there were also a couple of situations where words were omitted which kind of messed with the sentence structure. These items are very minor and although they are jarring when you’re trucking along enjoying an action packed book, they weren’t enough to make me stop reading.

Although it took me a bit to get into it, I’m super glad I did. It was a seriously wild ride. However, there was also a cliff hanger ending that has made me really wonder where else the author plans to go with it. It also seems kind of hastily written, but it nonetheless has left me intrigued.