“You…” Her eyes fluttered as her skin turned pale. Thea could see from here that the (spoiler)’s leg was bent at an unnatural angle. “You could have been great.” Thea’s lips curled. “I’d rather be good.”

Welcome back to Reading, Reading, Reading!

I am SO happy to share that my first 5-STAR READ OF 2019 is… THE BLACK COATS by Colleen Oakes! This book exceeded my highest expectations, and I am so thankful that I received an ARC from HarperCollins Canada/HCC Frenzy of this book!

TW: Rape, abuse, murder, violence.

Synopsis (Goodreads.com):

Roses are read, violets are blue, if you hurt us, we’re coming for you.
The deeply secretive Black Coats have been exacting vengeance on men who hurt girls and women for years. And Thea has just received an invitation to join them. This is the opportunity she’s been waiting for to finally get justice for her cousin Natalie, whose killer went free.
Thea dives head first into the group, training every day with other girls whose stories rival hers. Together they carry out Balancings—acts of revenge guaranteed to teach a lesson. With every predator threatened, every blackmailer exposed, and every date rapist punished, Thea can feel herself getting closer to avenging Natalie’s death.
But then the Balancings begin to escalate in brutality, and Thea discovers that the Black Coats are not all they seem to be. Thea must confront just how far she’s willing to go for justice—and what kind of justice Natalie, and Thea herself, deserve. Because when the line between justice and revenge is razor thin, it’s hard not to get cut.

This book was phenomenal. I loved the writing style and vocabulary used in this book. I was hooked in from the very first page.

While this book is marketed as a contemporary novel, I would say that it’s more of a dark contemporary novel. There is a lot of killing and abuse talked about in this book, so it is definitely not like a fluffy contemporary book that you may be used to reading. There was no magic in this book, but it read almost like a book with paranormal realism in it.

The Black Coats was filled with some fierce and bad-ass female characters. They were all brought together because of past grief and tragedy, and slowly bonded because of their shared experiences. At first, they didn’t like or understand each other, but slowly their characters went through a lot of development, and considered each other family at the end of the novel. Thea, the main character, experiences her first love in this story with a boy named Drew. While the romance is definitely present in this novel, it is not overwhelming by any means. It does not impact the plot line and influence any of Thea’s decisions, which I really appreciated. Quite frankly, their relationship does not majorly impact the story until the last 100 pages. Thankfully and fortunately, I have not experienced any similar events that the main characters in this novel have experienced, but that does not mean I could not sympathize and connect with the characters.

The setting in this novel did not play a major role within the plot line, but it was definitely an important part of this novel. Many of the events in this story take place in Mademoiselle Corday, a huge mansion that the Black Coats group schemes in. I loved reading scenes that were set in this mansion, since I thought it was a really cool place for everyone to meet up in.

The plot/storyline in this novel is incredibly unique and unlike anything I have ever read before. To be honest, I thought that the plot would be quite problematic. Fighting fire with fire is never a good idea, and can be written/read quite poorly in books. However, as the characters developed, they realized this themselves, which opened their eyes to a lot of the problems within The Black Coats society (sorry if that was vague, I try not to include any spoilers in my reviews!), and further developed both the plot and their character. I thought that the plot flowed very nicely and was paced to perfection. Something that I appreciated Colleen writing about was the fact that women can abuse other women and man can be abused by both women and men. I thought that this book would just zone in on men abusing women, but it was much more expansive than that.

After the epilogue and acknowledgements, Colleen wrote a beautiful letter talking about the #MeToo movement and women’s abuse/freedoms. The letter alone is worth purchasing and reading the book, as it gives you a preview of Colleen’s wonderful writing style and story. I thought the letter was a very thoughtful touch and a stunning way to close off her book.

Overall, I absolutely adored this book and gave it 5/5 stars. I did not expect this book to be my first 5-star book of 2019, but the bigger the surprise, the better the rating feels!

I highly encourage you to pick up this book at a bookstore near you, since I think it is a great book to read in today’s day and age. Thank you to Harper Collins Canada/HCC Frenzy for an ARC of this book!

Good Night Book Owls!

Welcome back to Reading, Reading, Reading!

One of my reading goals this year was to read more diverse books and books that I do not connect with personally. Quite a few months ago, I was approved for an eARC of Roam by C.H. Armstrong on NetGalley. Roam is a remarkable story about a homeless teenager, who struggles to find comfort in her surroundings with her suddenly homeless family, while still trying to live the life of a teenage girl in high school.

Synopsis (Goodreads.com):

Seventeen year-old Abby Lunde and her family are living on the streets. They had a normal life back in Omaha, but thanks to her mother’s awful mistake, they had to leave what little they had behind for a new start in Rochester. Abby tries to be an average teenager—fitting into school, buoyed by dreams of a boyfriend, college, and a career in music. But Minnesota winters are unforgiving, and so are many teenagers.
Her stepdad promises to put a roof over their heads, but times are tough for everyone and Abby is doing everything she can to keep her shameful secret from her new friends. The divide between rich and poor in high school is painfully obvious, and the stress of never knowing where they’re sleeping or where they’ll find their next meal is taking its toll on the whole family.
As secrets are exposed and the hope for a home fades, Abby knows she must trust those around her to help. But will her friends let her down the same way they did back home, or will they rise to the challenge to help them find a normal life?

This book read very easily, but had many deep and important messages in it. Since I am a full-time high school students, I could not help but think about how hard her life must have been while trying to keep her secret safe. I could never imagine going through all of the hardships that Abby experienced.

I really enjoyed the high school setting, as well as all of Abby’s fantastic friends. Her friends always had her back, and were very willing to help her through all of her emotions, even though they didn’t really know where those emotions came from. The love story in this book is very sweet, but also felt real. You could feel the love and care that Zach showed for Abby at all times throughout the book, which I obviously loved reading.

At the beginning of this book, I was afraid that it would be a very predictable story. Within the first few chapters, she meets and falls for a boy and has a typical “high school mean girl” encounter, however the book shifted in a better direction after that. The book was not solely focused on her friends helping her get through rough incidents with her bully, but it focused more on her living situation and family, which I really enjoyed.

When reading reviews on this book, I noticed a top review on Goodreads that had an issue with one of the beginning scenes in this book. Abby and her family came from a small town in Omaha before moving to Rochester. In this scene, Josh (one of Abby’s first friends at her new school), confesses to Abby that he is gay. Abby had never met a gay person before, and makes some pretty naive comments to him about his sexuality. After this scene, Abby shares this news to her mother, who makes some more very naive comments. While many readers may find this scene slightly offensive, I believe that C.H. Armstrong wrote it in this book for a purpose. By Abby moving to a new school, she was exposed to new and different people than she was used to in Omaha. She had to accept Josh and his sexuality, and realized that it had nothing to do with her at all. She had her own secrets (homelessness), and if anything, this scene may encourage her to share her secret with others, eventually (no spoilers here!).

While I really enjoyed this book, nothing “blew me away”. It was a very sweet YA contemporary with a deep storyline, which was exactly what I was expecting.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading this book and gave it 4/5 stars. Thanks to NetGalley for the eARC!

Good Night Book Owls!

Welcome back to Reading, Reading, Reading!

If you are active on the bookstagram community, you have most likely seen a lot of pictures of “Golden State” by Ben H. Winters. It was one of the January Book of the Month picks, and has been receiving a lot of buzz from the book community. I cannot even remember the last time I read a dystopian novel, and I was very excited to receive an ARC from Hachette Book Group Canada in the mail last month to read and review!

Synopsis (Goodreads.com):

A shocking vision of our future that is one part Minority Report and one part Chinatown.
Lazlo Ratesic is 54, a 19-year veteran of the Speculative Service, from a family of law enforcement and in a strange alternate society that values law and truth above all else. This is how Laz must, by law, introduce himself, lest he fail to disclose his true purpose or nature, and by doing so, be guilty of a lie.
Laz is a resident of The Golden State, a nation resembling California, where like-minded Americans retreated after the erosion of truth and the spread of lies made public life, and governance, increasingly impossible. There, surrounded by the high walls of compulsory truth-telling, knowingly contradicting the truth–the Objectively So–is the greatest possible crime. Stopping those crimes, punishing them, is Laz’s job. In its service, he is one of the few individuals permitted to harbor untruths–to “speculate” on what might have happened in the commission of a crime.
But the Golden State is far less a paradise than its name might suggest. To monitor, verify, and enforce the Objectively So requires a veritable panopticon of surveillance, recording, and record-keeping. And when those in control of the truth twist it for nefarious means, the Speculators may be the only ones with the power to fight back.

I’m a truly at a loss for words, and not in a good or bad way.

This book started off extremely strong. Laszlo, a man who has the power to detect when another human was lying, starts to work with a black female cop to try and solve the mystery of a man who fell off a roof and died. From there, some strange things happen to him that make him question his life and the society he lives in. While that may seem simple, this book was incredibly, incredibly complex. At some points in the book I was fully invested and enthralled in this story, while at other points I was so confused and had absolutely no clue as to what was going on. Although, I feel like those points of confusion and questioning were supposed to happen. By the end of the book, I was left with more questions than I began with.

The concept of the novel was phenomenal and definitely ranks among the most unique dystopian books I have EVER read. Novels that include an element of eliminating fiction or other aspects of life that are very common in our world and society (lies, money, power, etc.) are things that I love to read about in novels since they make me think so much about the world and the way we live every day. I also loved the 1984 vibe I felt from this novel, since the parts I enjoyed in 1984 were somewhat present in new ways in this novel. 

The characters in this novel were phenomenal and written wonderfully. I loved reading about all of them, and felt especially connected to Lazslo. His emotions and the way he spoke felt so real to me as I was reading it, and I believe only the best authors can write very well read, believable characters. I also formed quite a liking to Charlie, although he was only a minor major part in the story (does that make sense…?). 

Like I previously shared, I loved the setting of this story. So much of the novel is dedicated strictly to world-building and trying to make readers understand the complexity and rigidness of their dystopian world. No matter what part of the story I was reading about, I could always clearly visualize the space they were in, even if Ben had only described it in a few sentences. The way he described the main setting was absolutely incredible, and made the story that much richer.

Overall, I gave “Golden State” by Ben H. Winters a 3.75/5 stars. I highly recommend this book to those of you who enjoy adult dystopian and sci-fi.

Thanks again to Hachette Book Group Canada for an ARC of this book! Make sure to pick up your copy in a book store near you TODAY!

Good Night Book Owls!

“One said that literature was more important than human life so what was the problem if a few people had died in the pursuit of excellence?” – pg. 358, ALTTS

Welcome back to Reading, Reading, Reading!

A few months ago, I found out that John Boyne was publishing a new literary fiction novel about a story stealer (among other things). And while I had not read John’s recent novel, I had loved “The Boy In The Striped Pajamas” when I was younger, so I was eager to pick up the novel and start reading it. Fortunately, I received a finished copy of the book from Penguin Random House Canada, which was unbelievably amazing!

NOTE: Some of this review may be sort of spoiler-y, as you don’t meet many of the main characters until the second section of the novel. I would encourage you not to read much about this book until after you have read it, as I feel that this story reads better when you do not know much about it. So, comeback and read my review when you have finished the book!

Synopsis (Goodreads.com):

The new novel from the beloved New York Times bestselling author of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and The Heart’s Invisible Furies , a seductive Highsmithian psychodrama following one brilliant, ruthless man who will stop at nothing in his pursuit of fame.
Maurice Swift is handsome, charming, and hungry for success. The one thing he doesn’t have is talent – but he’s not about to let a detail like that stand in his way. After all, a would-be writer can find stories anywhere. They don’t need to be his own.
Working as a waiter in a West Berlin hotel in 1988, Maurice engineers the perfect opportunity: a chance encounter with celebrated novelist Erich Ackermann. He quickly ingratiates himself with the powerful – but desperately lonely – older man, teasing out of Erich a terrible, long-held secret about his activities during the war. Perfect material for Maurice’s first novel.
Once Maurice has had a taste of literary fame, he knows he can stop at nothing in pursuit of that high. Moving from the Amalfi Coast, where he matches wits with Gore Vidal, to Manhattan and London, Maurice hones his talent for deceit and manipulation, preying on the talented and vulnerable in his cold-blooded climb to the top. But the higher he climbs, the further he has to fall…

WOW. This story was shockingly beautiful. Although this book was 400 pages long, it read extremely quickly. I find that many times when I read books, I glance at the page number while reading every so often, but while reading this novel that rarely happened. I also enjoyed how it was written kind of as an anthology that came together in the end. Each part of the book was narrated by a different person and had a different focus on a certain point/event in Maurice’s life. I enjoyed that his POV was not written until the last part of the novel, as it was easier to see how people saw him and how he viewed himself.

Throughout this story, I felt very connected to all of the characters. While most of the main characters are only present throughout one part of the story, John did a great job developing them within a limited space in the novel. I felt that I had read a lot about the characters and understood them, even if they were only a large part of 100 pages of the novel. I appreciated John’s writing style especially when it came to the characters, because we weren’t introduced to them all at the beginning of the novel, but rather learned and read about them during every few 100 pages.

During the first part of the novel (and carried through the story a bit), there was a large realistic historical fiction aspect, which I greatly enjoyed. From reading just the synopsis, I did not know that there would be a focus on WWII. When I was younger, I loved reading books about the holocaust and WWII, although I haven’t read much historical fiction throughout the past five years (a.k.a. when I started my blog). Reading about this aspect made me want to read more historical fiction novels, so I hope to pick up a few sporadically throughout the year!

One of my favourite things to read about is publishing/writing/authors in a fictional book. Since the main character, Maurice, was a story stealer and a well-acclaimed author, this meant that the book had a strong focus on the publishing industry and writing novels. I have always thought about working in publishing, so I really enjoyed reading the small conversations between Maurice and his publisher and editor, as well as seeing exactly how he brought the stolen stories to life.

The one and only thing I did not love about this book was that I found many of the events very predictable, and there was not a shocking plot twist at any point during the book (the ending did not shock me, but it did slightly surprise me). I understand that this book is not supposed to be full of shocks and 180° plot twists as it was a literary fiction book and not a thriller, but I feel like I would have enjoyed it even more if there was a spike of surprise in the novel.

Overall, I loved this book and gave it 4.75/5 stars.

Thanks again to Penguin Random House Canada for sending me a finished copy of this novel! It was superb!

Have any of you read this novel yet? Let me know in the comments and we can discuss!

Good Night Book Owls!

Welcome back to Reading, Reading, Reading!

As I featured last month in my “In My Mailbox: Winter 2019 Edition“, “Winter Vacation Reading Plans“, and “December 2018 Wrap-Up“, I recently read “Looker” by Laura Sims. The cover definitely drew me to this book, and I was really excited to read a 2019 thriller release. However, this book definitely did not meet my expectations.

Synopsis (Goodreads.com):

I’ve never crossed their little fenced-in garden, of course. I stand on the sidewalk in front of the fern-and-ivy-filled planter that hangs from the fence—placed there as a sort of screen, I’m sure—and have a direct line of view into the kitchen at night. I’m grateful they’ve never thought to install blinds. That’s how confident they are. No one would dare stand in front of our house and watch us, they think. And they’re probably right: except for me.
In this taut and thrilling debut, an unraveling woman, unhappily childless and recently separated, becomes fixated on her neighbor—the actress. The unnamed narrator can’t help noticing with wry irony that, though she and the actress live just a few doors apart, a chasm of professional success and personal fulfillment lies between them. The actress, a celebrity with her face on the side of every bus, shares a gleaming brownstone with her handsome husband and their three adorable children, while the narrator, working in a dead-end job, lives in a run-down, three-story walk-up with her ex-husband’s cat.
When an interaction with the actress at the annual block party takes a disastrous turn, what began as an innocent preoccupation spirals quickly, and lethally, into a frightening and irretrievable madness. Searing and darkly witty, Looker is enormously entertaining—at once a propulsive Hitchcockian thriller and a fearlessly original portrait of the perils of envy.

I wouldn’t say that I particularly enjoyed this book. Was it the worst book I’ve ever read? No. But I did not like it.

One of my biggest complaints I have relating to this book is not actually about the book itself, but rather the way it’s being marketed and publicized. This book is NOT a thriller. There are no unbelievable plot twists, and no thrilling aspects to it. To be honest, I found the plot line quite dry and flat, therefore it was no way a “thrilling” book. I would categorize this book as a suspense novel, as I found it to be very suspenseful and hard to put down. The writing was very fast paced, and since this book is quite short, I was able to read it in one sitting. And to me, that would make this book a suspense novel, rather than a thriller. Had I known this before going into the book, I most likely would not have requested it in the first place.

Another thing I didn’t enjoy was the characters. The narrator, for example, was hard to understand. I was confused as to whether she was written to be a likeable character or not, or whether we were supposed to feel sorry for her or not. I am not the type of reader that dislikes a character that is “bad” or “mean”, especially if they were intentionally written that way. However, this character was just confusing to me. She didn’t really have one personality type, but rather showed that she was sensitive, carefree, and independent, while also seeming like nothing bothered her and was very needy during certain parts of the novel. Along with the narrator, I also found that none of the characters had any substance or went through any development, which I found very disappointing.

Along with the characters, I found the plot line very confusing. There was no set opening, conflict, climax, or solution. It seemed like everything just “happened”, and there was no real order in all of the chaos that existed in this story. The ending was also very random and out of the blue. I feel like there was a better way to end this story, especially because it didn’t really wrap anything up. But then again, how could it when there was no real conflict in this story? *sigh*

Perhaps my favourite thing in this novel (and the reason I am giving it more than one star) was the writing style. Most of the time, whenever I read a debut novel, it is easy to tell that the person who wrote the book is a new author. Whether they may it make take them twenty words to describe one object in the protagonists house, or make the story hard to follow, normally their are obvious indications. However, I really enjoyed the way this book was written. I thought the narrators thoughts were written concisely and to the point. It was also less than 200 pages, which made it a very easy read.

Lastly, I wanted to include my short Goodreads review of this book, as I believe it sums up my initial thoughts just after finishing this book perfectly…

I finished this book and still have no clue as to what it’s about. Is she obsessed with her neighbour? Is she obsessed with her cat? Is she mad at her ex (what happened between them anyways?)? What is happening between her and that student of hers? This book was too confusing and had no plot line whatsoever. I’m giving it two stars because I couldn’t put it down… so take that for what it’s worth. Also, the writing was very good for a debut novel.

Overall, I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I had hoped and gave it two out of five stars.

Thanks to Simon and Schuster Canada for providing me with an ARC of this book!

Good Night Book Owls!