Category: Mental Health

‘Going Dark’ – Melissa de la Cruz

Going Dark begins with Josh Reuter returning from his trip to Rome without his girlfriend, influencer Amelia Ashley. This might seem innocuous…but they argued before Josh left Rome and nobody has heard from Amelia since.
When Josh’s missing suitcase is returned, the police discover Amelia’s blood on a T-shirt inside. Suddenly Josh has gone from concerned boyfriend to suspect in a missing person’s case. He seems stunned by this twist in events, but there’s niggles of doubt from those around him.

Just as we have the shock news of Amelia’s blood revealed, we then shift viewpoints and start to learn a little more about Amelia. She is not who we thought…and sometimes going dark may be done for a very specific reason.

It was at this point that things become a little less predictable. While the story itself hinted at a darker and much more interesting focus – the way the media report on missing person’s cases and how easy it is for money to buy you anonymity – this shift in events made a tenser read than that which I originally thought we were in for.

The premise for this story really was absorbing, and it might have been nice to have some elements examined in greater depth. However, this was a tense and neatly plotted read, if a little predictable.

Thanks to NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read and review this before publication.

 

‘The Sharp Edge of Silence’ – Cameron Kelly Rosenblum

The Sharp Edge of Silence examines toxic masculinity and its impact from the perspectives of those it affects.

Set in the privileged Lycroft School, students are accustomed to being asked who they want to be. Their alumni take up powerful positions in society, which makes this a read that you can’t help but notice.

Our story focuses on a number of students, among them Quinn who has returned to school having been raped by one of the star athletes at the end of the previous year. We also experience life at school through the eyes of her roommate, girlfriend of one of the rowers implicated, a scholarship student inducted into the rowing team and his best friend. There are also snippets on interactions between key staff which allows us to examine this culture from a number of positions.

Although we know from early on that Quinn was raped, the book opens by focusing on her unusual behaviour upon returning to school. You’d think people would notice and they do, eventually, but my goodness is she put through the wringer before things start to get done.

Having read the synopsis of this book I was under the impression that the focus would be firmly rooted on the reaction to the event. It is, but in a much more drawn-out way than you might think. This is not a bad thing, just quite different to what I predicted, which took a while to adjust to.

Once we move into the closing stages of the book, we see more than one or two students examining their assumptions. The way the lid is blown on this sordid experience is nothing short of spectacular. Though there are repercussions for the key player involved it frustrated me no end that we never gain any insight into his mind after the truth comes out. While this might be the grim reality, part of me wants more hope from our fictional explorations of such behaviours.

I’m hugely grateful to NetGalley for giving me the chance to read this before publication, and I can’t wait to see how it’s received upon publication next year.

 

‘The Weight of Blood’ – Tiffany D. Jackson

Carrie for the modern era, and what a read!

Maddy is a biracial teenager who has lived her life following the rules of her deeply religious father. She passes as white, but when she is caught in a storm during cross-country, her peers learn the truth about her identity. This shouldn’t be a big deal, but in their town it is.

The ingrained racism was tough to read about. This was a town where students were educated together, but any attempts to challenge racial stereotyping are ignored and separate events are held for teens of different backgrounds. While Maddy’s secret caused a fuss, it’s the bigger secret that she’s kept from everyone that is going to cause more of a scene.

Those familiar with Carrie will know the plot. Those who aren’t, may have to suspend their disbelief for the paranormal elements…but this was a solid retelling of a much-loved story.

 

‘Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow’ – Gabrielle Zevin

 

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a book about gaming but it is also a book about friendship, and a rather unconventional love story.

Our key characters are Sadie Green and Sam Masur. Both reserved, they have a shared love of gaming. Their bond is almost obsessive, and from the moment they meet in hospital to the closing pages of the book, we see the role gaming has in their lives.

While in college they design a best-selling game…and with some help from Sam’s room-mate, Marx, game design becomes their world. A start-up created through shared passion, and though there were sections of the book where the gaming talk became a little much there was plenty to keep our interest.

While we’re immersed in the world of gaming, Zevin’s focus is also the dynamics between the key characters and the relationship shared by Sam and Sadie. Complicated, fragile and prone to over-reactions, these two seemed to have a closer relationship than most lovers. Marx’s role seemed to be to bridge the gaps between the two, and yet it seemed rather cruel to dispose of him in the way Zevin did.

This was a solid 3.5 star read for me, but I’ve rounded it up because there were some moments within the book that resonated. Of all the games mentioned within the book I’m surprised that they went with the Emily poetry one to help generate interest…

Thanks to NetGalley for giving me the chance to read and review this.

‘At the Table’ – Claire Powell

A glut of recent releases feature a character face down on the cover. This one really tickled me when I saw it, but the subject matter is a lot less humorous than it might appear.

At the Table is a debut novel focusing on characters and their interactions with one another. Though major life events take place, this novel focuses primarily on the little moments that make up the mosaic of our lives.

Our focus is a family comprising Gerry and Linda and their grown-up children, Jamie and Nicole. Their lives have been marked by meals, and this focuses on a year in their lives at different moments. We start with a meal where the parents reveal they’re getting divorced and we end with a meal shared with mother and daughter who are, due to the events they’ve been through, forging a new relationship. Along the way we have celebratory meals, catch-up meals, drunken meals but our focus is always the family and their gradual discoveries about themselves and each other.

Powell paints a frank yet tender picture of people at their lowest. The events felt, on occasion, as if they were washing over me but I found myself touched by the attempts of the author to show the characters shifting and developing.

Thanks to NetGalley for giving me the chance to review this prior to publication.

 

‘Sundial’ – Catriona Ward

Sundial is a curious read, where I admit to feeling things were eluding me at key moments. This wasn’t a bad thing, but it was a mercurial read and I’m still not wholly certain that I fully understood some of the finer details of our characters’ situations.

Ward creates a delightfully menacing environment in which our characters exist, but there were too many instances in which I found myself puzzling over exactly what was happening to feel quite as enamoured of this as I did The Last House on Needless Street. However, it is a story that explores some troubling scenarios and definitely encourages us to consider how our environment shapes us.

Our main character is Rob, mother to two young girls – Callie and Anne. There are hints that she is in an abusive relationship and it appears that Callie has rather disturbing tendencies. As a means of trying to help her daughter, Rob takes her to Sundial…the home of her childhood.

Alongside the story of Rob and her family, we have flashbacks to Rob’s past. It soon becomes clear that Rob came from a less than healthy environment, and that there are plenty of questions about her family.

I found myself perplexed by the details given about Rob’s younger life. The horrors she experienced as a child seem to have been swapped for other awful things…and yet she seems drawn to the darker elements of her experience. Without giving crucial plot details away, I am still convinced that Rob is not who we think.

By the time we draw close to the end of the story it is obvious that there will be deeply unsettling revelations. There’s an attempt to misdirect us somewhat, but the details of Rob’s past hint at what might be happening. I liked that the ending remained ambiguous in some ways though I can’t help wishing we’d got other viewpoints.

Thanks to NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read this before publication.

‘A Lesson in Vengeance’ – Victoria Lee

A Lesson in Vengeance is a twisted story, which will probably warrant a reread to appreciate fully.

Set in the Dalloway School, a remote academic establishment mired in rumour and stories of witchcraft. None of the staff talk of these rumours, but the girls do. Secret societies devoted to spells and the study of the dark arts thought to be responsible for the death of five students of Godwin House abound, and they draw the attention of students such as Felicity Morrow, our narrator.

Felicity was present on the night her girlfriend, Alex, disappeared and has now returned to the school to complete her studies. Certainly emotionally vulnerable, Felicity has a record of erratic behaviour and her conduct gives cause for concern. She is convinced she is haunted by the spirit of her ex-girlfriend, and we watch as strange events occur.

This year sees the arrival of new girl Ellis Haley, a published writer, and a character very keen to learn more of the hidden past of the school. She befriends Felicity in an attempt, she says, to debunk the older girl’s belief in magic and witches. But it’s clear that Ellis has other ideas in mind.

Initially rather slow, I found myself intrigued by the school and its depiction while also feeling rather disassociated from events. As the story develops and we start to see more of Ellis in action I found myself quite gripped. The relationship between Ellis and Felicity felt like something from Donna Tartt herself, and as events built to their climax I could not quite get my head around exactly which character I disliked more. To make you like and hate a character in equal measure is quite something, and Lee certainly toys with our perception of the two leads. My main issue with this – and the only reason I didn’t award 5 stars – was the sense of remove I felt at the beginning and the sense of the secondary characters/school environment being rather underdeveloped.

Thanks to NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read this in advance of publication, and this is certainly one I’ll bookmark for a re-read at some point.

‘The Final Girl Support Group’ – Grady Hendrix

As someone who can’t watch horror movies or read horror unless it’s light outside, I’m surprised by how much I enjoyed this.
In The Final Girl Support Group we get to see a little of what happens after the bloodbath. We get to see how these final girls – the ones who survive indescribably horrific experiences – cope once normal life resumes. Having to live with the knowledge that you (probably) killed someone to survive and (usually) watched close family members and friends murdered in increasingly brutal ways is going to have an impact. I can’t imagine how you pick yourself up and carry on after this.
When we’re first introduced to the group – a disparate group of women whose only link is they are known by the ‘final girl’ moniker – we can see many of them are not able to let go. Our main narrator is Lynette, who clearly is struggling to feel safe in real life. When she learns that one of their group has been murdered we start to think she may have been right to express reservations about how they’re managing.
The book focuses on Lynette’s increasingly bizarre attempts to make the others think she’s right to be scared. They react badly, and things get very awkward. There’s some darkly amusing moments as Lynette and the other survivors attempt to get to the bottom of these attacks and take on – for one last time – their bogeyman.
Initially a little slow as we establish the characters and the setup. There was a section once things started kicking off where the water got very muddy as the characters got sidetracked by a manuscript telling their stories and I wondered how this would sustain my interest. Then Hendrix lets us a little deeper into these women, fleshes them out a little and has them barrelling towards the ultimate fight for survival. At this point I couldn’t wait to see who was behind things and how events would be resolved.
While it seems Hendrix is a huge fan of the slasher movie, and clearly knows the conventions, it feels a little dated and I’m not sure how you can move past this. The reliance on stock characters/moments lends a sense of familiarity, and we’re encouraged to see these characters as real people, but ultimately it’s more of the same misogyny. I concede there’s some challenging of these attitudes but the characters remain trapped by our expectations for the genre. As a result, it feels like more of the same. I’m sure that someone, somewhere, will express this more articulately than I have.

 

‘You’ve Reached Sam’ – Dustin Thao

You’ve Reached Sam is a book that will impact some people hugely, and even if you don’t find yourself a blubbery mess once it’s over then you will at least recognise how valuable this is to get people thinking about death and how we deal with it.

Julie is our main character and we learn that she has become something of a recluse since the death of her boyfriend, Sam. It frustrated me that for a character who plays such a pivotal role we know so little about him, but it was clear that he’d left his mark on the world somehow.

For reasons we never have explained, Julie finds herself able to talk to Sam on her mobile. There appear to be strict rules to follow, but these conversations allow Julie to say the things to Sam that she never had the opportunity to in life.
Only she can’t tell anyone what she’s doing or it will break their connection.

Slowly, and with the help of her friends, Julie learns to live again. By the end, things are settling back to a new reality but Julie is showing signs of accepting what has happened, learning to value the time she had with Sam and recognising the influence he has had on her life.

I personally found Julie quite irritating at times. Many of Sam’s friends and family were grieving but they rarely factored into her thought process. This is, probably, quite realistic – but it was nice to see there was no hard and fast approach to how someone should be seen to grieve. However, the steps she took allowed her to move gradually closer to accepting her new reality.

 

‘Mayflies’ – Andrew O’Hagan

When we first meet James and Tully they are music-obsessed teens railing against the world. Their group of friends squeeze the life out of every experience, helped by alcohol and whatever they can get their hands on. Their defining moment is a trip to Manchester for a gig at the new G-Mex. We follow them on their weekend as they visit places they’ve heard about and are desperate to experience.

This section of the book was important in order to establish the bond between the group, but particularly between James and Tully.

The friendship between the two is maintained throughout adulthood. They support one another in their attempts to navigate their adult years, and the bond between them is clearly strong.

While I enjoyed this from the perspective of someone who’d visited many of the places mentioned, it didn’t strike me as particularly memorable. I wondered why so much was made of the book…but then came the second part.

Set thirty-one years after their trip to Manchester the two men remain firm friends. James is a writer and Tully a teacher. They are both successful, and in relationships that appear to be good. It also signals the beginning of the end for these two.

When Tully texts James to ask him to call, we know it’s not going to be good. He announces he has cancer, has four months to live and that he wants help to manage the last months of his life. James, out of respect for their friendship, agrees to support him.

What follows was an unsentimental account of one man’s determination to end his life as he lived it…controlling his narrative. There were rather mawkish scenes as each comes to accept what’s happening, but it explored attitudes to death and the extent to which we might influence the lives of others. The final scene had an understated exuberance to it that left me feeling a peace I wasn’t expecting to.