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‘Five Total Strangers’ – Natalie D. Richards

 

A solid scare that ratchets up the tension, has some terrific jump moments but doesn’t go all-out with gore.

Our main character in this YA thriller is Mira, a girl travelling home for the Christmas holidays. Bad weather causes problems, and Mira needs to get home to be with her mother as it’s a year since a close relative died of cancer. So, even though the safest thing would be to wait it out, we have a plausible reason to explain what comes next.

Mira makes a plan to get a lift with Harper, the young woman she sat next to on the plane, and her friends. The journey begins smoothly enough, but the weather quickly becomes more threatening and as the journey progresses Mira realises that every single one in the car is a stranger to the others. Objects start going missing and before we know it every one of those in the car – and even some of those they encounter along the way – is a potential threat.

As we follow the journey we see the increase in tension. Fascinating to watch how they turn on each other as they gradually realise that someone is lying.

Interspersed with the narrative are excerpts from another voice – someone who has been watching Mira and who is determined that she’ll notice them. Naturally, this means we know Mira has good reason to feel uneasy, and we get caught up in the game of trying to work out just who is responsible before they get too close.

Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this in exchange for my thoughts. It might not stick with you, but in the moments you’re reading it’ll definitely get under your skin. Scheduled for release in October 2020, it’s a perfect read for those darker nights.

‘The Vanishing Half’ – Brit Bennett

This was a story that I’m so pleased I had the opportunity to read thanks to the publishers and NetGalley, and I can’t wait to see what others make of what I genuinely feel is a must-read story.

Desiree and Stella Vignes are twins, and the main focus of our story. When they were little they witnessed their father dragged from his home by white men and killed. They live in a small town called Mallard that cannot be found on any map, where anyone with dark skin is looked down upon. Is it any wonder that after such a beginning they might not feel comfortable here?

The girls leave Mallard for a new life. Together, they feel they can take on anything, no matter how difficult it gets. Illegal work in a laundry and sleeping on a friend’s floor is not ideal, but they’re managing. Then one day Desiree comes home to discover Stella has gone.

Our story is told through the viewpoints of a number of characters (Desiree, Stella, and their respective daughters) and piece by piece we establish what each has done and how their early life has set up their present. From Desiree escaping an abusive marriage to return home with her dark-skinned daughter, to Stella living in constant fear that she will be found out for passing as white for so long. We watch Jude leave the racist taunts for a new life in California where she finds love with Reese, a man facing his own battles, and we follow Kennedy as she tries to find herself and come to terms with the truths she learns about her mother.

We are set in a changing world where race and attitudes to it remain something to examine. There were so many painful stories, and though I understood the choices Stella made it still felt unbearably hard that she should feel that was necessary.

The main characters of the twins had a complex relationship, but it was their daughters who I found fascinating. In these two girls there were signs of shifting attitudes on a number of subjects, and their stubborn refusal to ignore each other gave an indication that family connections run deeper than we might think.

 

From the Shadows (Monica Kennedy 1) – G.R. Halliday

From the Shadows is one of those books that throws a lot at you, and you can’t help but become immersed in the world described. It’s not pleasant reading, but it’s a tense experience.

Our story really begins with the discovery of a body of a young man. A serious attack, and the autopsy reveals the boy has had a stone lodged in his throat. DI Kennedy (as the main investigator) is our focus, and we get enough snippets to know her back-story is an intriguing one. Perhaps as the first in the series we’re not told everything, but certainly enough to know that Monica Kennedy has a little more to her than meets the eye.

Set in and around the Scottish Highlands, this beautiful setting forms a macabre backdrop.

Nobody is sure what they’re dealing with. The boy who was found was at home, fine, and had then disappeared by the morning. Before long, we’re starting to see links with other disappearances.

There’s a lot of characters involved, and some suspects are set up as quite deliberate red herrings. We get the voice of the killer but very little to identify them until late on. There’s evidence of police corruption, and Kennedy has to rely on some rather unconventional methods to get results.

Suffice to say there’s some parts that could have been refined but this was a solid introduction to a new character, and definitely had me keen to read more. Thanks to NetGalley I have a copy of Dark Waters (the second in the series) to read before its scheduled July 2020 publication.

 

‘Just My Luck’ – Adele Parks

Reading stories in the press about huge lottery wins always concerns me. I know it makes good news, but you never hear of someone winning a life-changing amount of money and enjoying it. You only hear of those who squander the winnings or how people become a target for all manner of scams. Though we know this, and how low the chances of winning actually are, there’s probably a good number of people who think about what they’d do if they had such a win.

In Just My Luck we follow a regular couple who suddenly find themselves nearly £18 million better off. Lexi is fairly cautious, wanting to invest wisely and use the money to make a difference. Her big indulgence is to buy some Teapigs tea! Her husband, Jake, is the ultimate stereotype. His first act – even before they have the money – is to buy a top Ferrari and to buy his way out of whatever comes up. It’s not hard to take quite a dislike to him, and as the story progresses he was increasingly infuriating.

One of the first issues this seemingly normal couple has is the insistence from some friends that they were a syndicate and, as such, should be sharing the money. From this point on we see the money drives a wedge between the family.

Most of the family has secrets, some of which have more of an impact than others. The story took something of a detour with the character of Toma, but the links are outlined eventually. Things got awfully dark, and a substantial part of this book had me wondering whether people really could be so awful in reality. Even the characters we were meant to root for were secretive, and some of them were so horrendous that it made me want to ban the lottery forever.

Thanks to NetGalley for granting me access to this before publication, and I’d definitely recommend this read – even as a salutary lesson to readers.

‘Harrow Lake’ – Kat Ellis

Lola Nox has always found it difficult to live her own life. Daughter of celebrated film director Nolan Nox, she has got used to someone watching her every move and not getting completely free choice over her actions. She knows there are secrets in her family, but when we first meet her it’s evident that Lola has secrets of her own.

The opening was not immediately engaging. Lola appeared to have had some kind of falling out with her father, her behaviour indicates daddy issues and she really was not very likeable. However, when she is taken home and finds her father bleeding in his study we can’t help but feel some sympathy for her.
Suddenly Lola is sent to Harrow Lake, her mother’s hometown and the setting for her father’s seminal movie. It’s a weird place, and the strange behaviour of certain characters does little to make Lola comfortable.

Before we know it there’s a creepy movie festival taking place, weird goings on and Lola is having all manner of odd occurrences. She knows that someone in the town may hold the key to what happened to her mother, but few are willing to divulge their secrets.

During the story, as Lola becomes more and more akin to one of the characters in one of her father’s slasher movies, we begin to piece together fragments of the stories being told. We learn about the darkness of Harrow Lake, the secrets Lola has and the events that have led her to this moment.

There’s a dark undercurrent to this, and though elements were undeveloped it was – on the whole – a creepy tale that will entrance horror fans.

Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this prior to publication, scheduled for August 2020.

 

‘The Great Godden’ – Meg Rosoff

Thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for granting me access to this prior to publication, and I’m curious to see what people make of this.

The Great Godden is a story about a turning point in someone’s life, where they foresee something will happen but feel powerless to resist it even though it will cause discomfort.

What stood out to me after finishing this was the ambiguity of the book. I read this as if the narrator was female, but I don’t think we’re ever actually explicitly told this. It doesn’t make any difference as the book really focuses on the reactions to events. What we do know, though, is the narrator comes from one of those families that seems to be bursting with life, setting up experiences but perhaps overlooking the damage caused by their lifestyle.

Our time span is a summer, a summer where everything shifts. Every year the family have gone to their beach home and effectively lived wild. There’s a fondness and whimsical quality to the writing. We focus on this specific year as this is the year that their cast is joined by Kit and Hugo, the Godden brothers.

Our first sighting of Kit reveals the depths of adoration he seems to inspire in others. He toys with those around him, and our narrator is warned about him by Hugo but to no avail. We watch as one by one those present fall under Kit’s spell, unaware of the chaos he will wreak.

While I loved the idea and style of writing there was a detached quality to this that made it hard to really engage with the story or characters.

 

‘Hideous Beauty’ – William Hussey

Even though one of the characters dies early on, this is a love story through and through. It’s the love story of Dylan and Ellis, but it’s also about the love between friends and the love we need to have for ourselves to really live.

The book opens with Ellis and Dylan making a big coming-out statement at their school dance. There’s a very positive vibe – until we learn this situation has been somewhat forced on them after someone anonymously posted a clip of them being intimate online. It seems they’ll overcome this – but as they leave the dance Ellis seems to be acting oddly. Something has upset him. He is distracted. Then, before we know it, they have crashed and plunge into a local lake. Ellis drowns, and Dylan is convinced someone rescued him but nobody seemed to be around when paramedics arrived at the scene.

Dealing with such grief would be awful at any age, but the doctor who treats Ellis makes a comment that shows even though things may still not be quite as accepting as they could be it’s still a huge improvement on the past. Perhaps not unexpectedly, Dylan struggles with his feelings after this – convinced someone left Ellis to die, so he determines to investigate and try to find out why.

Though there is an element of mystery to this, the fact we don’t really know what happened in the aftermath of the crash means we’re never sure what the mystery is to solve. Strange drawings turn up in Dylan’s mail and they seem to offer clues as to who might have played a part in Ellis’s abrupt change of behaviour.

As we watch Dylan piece together what happened I was very glad he had his best friend, Mike, looking out for him. An odd dynamic but, when it counted, they totally had each other’s back.

The last part of the book, where Dylan finally confronts the hideous truth about what happened to Ellis did come slightly out of nowhere. That’s not to say it didn’t ring true, but it was hard to reconcile the image we’d been given up to this point with the truth.

I liked the fact that Dylan was, eventually, able to start looking as if he would look back on his time with Ellis fondly. At times uncomfortable reading, but there was also a lot of positivity that I found quite uplifting.

Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to read this prior to publication.

 

‘The Fascinators’ – Andrew Eliopulos

The Fascinators was one of those reads that I’m not quite sure what to make of.

The prologue opens by getting us to see young Liv picked up by a group that we know nothing about and hints at something awful happening before completely switching focus. The story then shifts to a trio made up of Sam, James and Delia. They practise magic and are definitely something of an oddity in their hometown. We don’t know where their magic comes from or why it’s such a big deal to them, and this lack of detail was part of the issue with the book for me.

These characters live in a world where magic is fundamental to the story unfolding for us, yet we are never shown how we come to this position. With the arrival of new guy Denver we can see there’s a shift in the dynamics but it’s unclear just why this comes about.

A key factor in this story is the focus on Sam coming to terms with his feelings for James and how this impacts on their group dynamic. There’s clearly been tension for some time before we encounter the group but we don’t really get to understand this until a lot later on, by which time we’ve probably decided our views on them all and what we want to happen.

In terms of plot, it’s actually quite straightforward – but without really getting a full picture of the world/attitudes to magic it was quite hard to really understand the significance of details until quite late on. Sam was infuriating at times, but the end result was actually quite positive and suggested that his relationship with James could have been held up to closer scrutiny.

 

‘Growing Up for Beginners’ – Claire Calman

In some ways, a quite uncomfortable book to read, but as we dig deeper into the lives of the characters I was able to find some heartwarming moments. This is the kind of story that will resonate with some readers, but the focus on a variety of characters allowed us to focus on the myriad ways in which people can find themselves trapped in situations.

Our cast is large, and this is a little daunting at times. Certainly initially it took some time for the voices and experiences of each character to really develop. We have Eleanor, daughter of Conrad. She is married to Roger, the kind of man it’s all too easy to loathe and despise. We have Andrew, a man in his thirties who works with Conrad and who has recently been dumped by his girlfriend so he’s moved back in with his parents. Andrew develops a relationship with Olivia, the daughter of a neighbour. She has a vibrant mother, Cecilia, who has a secret love – but circumstances never quite made it a safe option to reveal her feelings.

These seemingly disparate stories are obviously linked and, as we read, the links start to become clearer. Each of these characters is searching for something and has some growing up to do. They help each other (albeit unwittingly) through these shifting times and as we learn more about each it becomes just that little more significant. Perhaps the resolution is somewhat cliched, but it would take someone quite churlish not to find it appealing.

Thanks to Netgalley for granting me access to this prior to publication.

 

‘The Gravity of Us’ – Phil Stamper

Cal dreams of being a reporter. He has his life planned out, so it throws him a little when his dad drops a rather major piece of news…he’s applied to NASA to be one of those involved in the planned travel to Mars. This means the whole family has to move from New York to Houston, where their every move will be reported on as Cal Sr prepares for his once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

This would be something of a shock to anybody, but for Cal – whose growing fanbase on social media is one of his passions – the threat of not being able to voice his opinions online is not one that goes down well. His mother is scared of moving across country and losing the link she has to her past. However, in the pursuit of such passion their needs are somewhat ignored – this never really gets touched on fully, and it seems like a glaring attempt to sweep some quite important things under the carpet in pursuit of ‘the story’.

I’ll admit to having only a glancing interest in the story of space travel, but the passion and enthusiasm shown for the subject here shone through and drew me in far more than I was expecting. I may never get as excited over ‘space dirt’ as some of the characters we see here did, but it’s clear to see the reverence such a program is held in and how much it means to many. Does it justify so many others having to shelve their dreams, or the costs involved? I’d find it hard to agree with.

A substantial part of our story focuses on the romance between Cal and Leon Tucker, son of one of the other astronauts. Things got set in motion ridiculously quickly, but the developing relationship between them was only a part of the focus. Watching how they worked together to figure out how to support their loved ones actually worked pretty well.

Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to read this prior to publication.