Siren Queen by Nghi Vo - A stunningly, hauntingly beautiful story.

I'm not sure I like Luli Wei, but I'm 100% sure that I love her. 

The minute Luli steps into a theater for the first time as a child she knows that what she sees on that screen is what she wants out of life, that the magic in front of her is beautiful and she wants to be able to make it her own. And after a chance encounter on a movie set, she sees her pathway to stardom. But, she sees the other young girls around her who started out with the same stars in their eyes and are now used up, husks of who they were. Luli vows not to become one of them, she'll make her own path and if she has to become a monster to do so she will. 

I started reading this about a week ago now and at first, I really couldn't get into it. I'm not really into movies and I'm even less into books about movies so it was hard for me to understand Luli's desperate need to become a movie star. However, I've never read one of Vo's books and I've wanted to so I was determined to "get through it". I'm so glad I made that decision. Luli is such an interesting character, reckless but in a way that is absolutely inspiring. The kind of recklessness that people say that you are either brave or really stupid and Luli was not stupid, at all. What I thoroughly enjoyed about her though is I'm really not sure if liked her; admired her absolutely. Inspired by her most definitely, Loved her in a way that I wanted to hug her and tell her everything was okay. But liked her? I'm just not sure. 

In terms of the progression of the book at first, I thought it was moving a tad bit too slow but as I read farther into it I realized the pace was necessary. There are a lot of issues that arise that Luli has to confront and you need time to process what's going on. Any faster pace and I think a lot of important points the author was trying to convey would get lost. I also found that Luli's character development was spot on to the story progression as well. I find that with stand-alone books you sometimes will have a character progressing faster than the book is going or vice versa. One minute you've got a reckless and ambitious character the next minute they are a little tamer and you have absolutely no idea how it happened. There was none of that here. 

As I said this is my first time reading a book by Vo and I have to say that her writing is magical. There is no other way to put it. Magical in a way where you find yourself so lost in the spell that she's weaved that when you finally look up you are momentarily surprised that you aren't in some backlot of a film studio watching the organized chaos that is the business of making films because you were absolutely sure that was where you had just been. Vo is a storyteller, through and through which is a truly rare and wonderful gift.

Overall, I don't have one complaint about the Siren Queen, it was spellbinding and hauntingly beautiful and I pre-ordered my physical copy as soon as I was done reading it.

The Pineys Book 1: My cousin, The Piney by Tony DiGerolamo - A New Twist on an old favorite!

 

If you are into the paranormal you've probably heard of the Jersey Devil, I think I was probably in third or fourth grade when I read my first version of the tale. It's always been one of my favorites and whenever my dad who was a truck driver had to go anywhere near Jersey he'd come back with some sort of "sighting" or that he'd heard of some sort of sighting. And as a Mom today I can absolutely understand poor Mrs. Leeds finding herself pregnant with her 13th child and accidentally laying a curse on it, hell I'd be the next Mrs. Leeds if I found myself pregnant again and I only have four! So when the DiGerolamo asked me to review this I was all over it, he had me at The Jersey Devil.

Lewis is 100% sure that even though he's failed at a lot of other things being a professional gambler is his true calling, so he's borrowed a thousand dollars from an unsavory source and is on his way to Atlantic City to make his mark on the world of professional card sharks. Unfortunately, he runs out of gas on the way there and has to make a pit stop in the "backwoods" of Southern New Jersey. Sure, he finds it weird that the cashier at the local convenient store he found himself at told him to just grab his gum and throw his money on the counter, but hey when in Rome right? But when a boy exits from the forest across the way and the cashier and his friend pull out a sword and gun and point them directly at the boy Lewis decides he is decidedly not Roman. As he dashes out to save the boy from the crazy hillbillies he quickly realizes that maybe he should be armed as well because he is looking straight at the infamous Jersey Devil and it looks hungry. 

If you've ever wondered what Supernatural would have been like if Sam and Dean had been from Jersey, this is a good book for you! The Piney's takes the idea of "The Family Business" and expands it to include a whole town of Devil Hunters who are all loosely related. I really enjoyed the twist on the tale that the curse becomes a generational thing as well. It gives a reason for sightings of the Devil(s) to still occur even today.  

This was a shorter book than I normally read and I've found I dislike reviewing those at it's not my usual thing, I feel like every short story would be significantly better if the author just had a hundred more pages and The Piney's is no exception. I found the plot progressed too quickly and that we find ourselves getting to know the characters through the dialogue, so we are getting to know the characters strictly through what they are saying, not what they are thinking as well so it's very superficial. That being said we do get to dive a little further in-depth with Lewis towards the end of the book which was very helpful to get a more complete picture of who he is. 

The quality of the dialogue and its content really started to get to me towards the end and I honestly considered not finishing it. A lot of the dialogue feels unnatural or an under/overreaction to something another character said. Exclamation points were in spots I didn't feel warranted them or missing where I felt like they should have been. I also often found myself cringing for some of the characters because their lines were just weird. It also felt like the author was *trying* to be politically incorrect but mostly failing because even that was awkward. It was like when your child swears the first time but uses it in the wrong context and on the one hand, you are like, "okay we don't say that." But what you really want to say is, "Look, let's practice this so the next time you don't embarrass me by using it wrong." 

Overall, I'm on the fence about it. I think it has an original plot and a set of characters that are deeper than what we get to see in the first book (hopefully). I'm just not sure if I'm intrigued enough to want to continue the series. Connecting with characters is one of my main motivations for reading and while I found that I enjoyed Lewis's character at the end slightly more than I did at the beginning I didn't get to that point with the rest of them. I probably will go ahead and read the second one though, to see if this cast of cousins gets a little bit more fleshed out.

A Daydream a Day by Ivan Tu - My day is just a little better because I read this

 

I planned to give this book to my kids after reviewing it, it is an inspirational collection of poems directed towards children and teens so who better to have it than my children? I decided after reading it that I'm keeping it and they can get their own copy! 

I found these to be much deeper than I had expected and Tu accomplishes what the book set out to do: Be Inspiring. And for children or teens, that's exactly what it is. As an adult I found many of the poems to be a pleasant reminder of the person I set out to be when I was young. So this copy is headed to my bookshelf right next to my old beat-up copy of The Last Lecture and I have a feeling it will be read as often as Pausch's book is. And yup, I have a favorite, actually a few but if I had to pick one it would be Tied Down, which is in the first section of the book. 

Overall, I would recommend picking this up for yourself or your children if you are in need of a little inspiration.

I'd also like to sincerely thank the author for my copy of the book in exchange for this review!

A Stranger From The Storm by William Burton McCormick - The Perfect Mystery for People Short on Time

 

The "good" guys were definitely as bad as the bad guy in this one. 

Tasia and Eleni help their mother run a boarding house in Odessa, business however has not been kind to them recently and when a stranger with a terrifying scar on his face shows up at their door one stormy night against their better judgment the girls agree to let him a room. When their mother returns later that evening she informs them that another murder has taken place, the 5th in a series that has plagued their little community recently. Now the girls are even more terrified of their strange new lodger and as his behavior grows more and more peculiar the girls set out to prove that he's the murderer even if they have to put their own lives at risk. 

So I'm not going to give that first sentence away but seriously the girls, Eleni in particular, were kind of sociopaths. For a good portion of the book, I figured Eleni was the murderer. She was seriously cold-blooded. I kind of even wanted her to be, her sarcasm went too far even for me sometimes. It felt less like sarcasm and more like she had no emotions and she really pushed Tasia to do some pretty horrible things. 

I really don't believe I have any complaints, it's super fast-paced given the length but overall the author does a good job of building up tension at just the right spots. And it was a surprisingly complete story. I was really afraid that since it was only 110 pages long there would be some serious plotholes but there really only ended up being a few and they didn't affect the overall story. Definitely recommend it for someone who just wants a really quick, well-written, mystery.

And as always thank you to Booksirens for the free eArc!

Figurehead by Carly Holmes - A beautifully written walk down a very disturbing path

 

I've been on the lookout for a scary book for a while and I was hoping this would be it unfortunately the stories are more disturbing than they are scary. And that's not a bad thing in the least I just definitely wasn't prepared for a walk down humanity's darker side. 

The thing that stood out for me the most with this collection is Holme's writing style, honestly, everything was written so beautifully that it would never even cross your mind that something horrible was going to happen that the end. And she does such an amazing job of building up the tension in every story, but I found that Sleep demonstrated this the best out of all of them. It just builds like you are climbing up a steep hill and you don't know that at the end is a drop-off and when you finally get there you just barely keep yourself from falling off the edge. That being said Sleep is not my favorite, The Demon L was, it's the first one in the book and I honestly kinda felt bad for L. 

Overall even though I wasn't scared out of my wits I still enjoyed this book, especially since it was made up of short stories, I could read a couple at a time and then come back to it a couple of days later. And with stories like Sleep, I needed that break. It's one of those things that as a parent it's in the top of five of your worst nightmares. 

I want to thank Netgalley and Parthian Books for the free eArc.

Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White - Come for the dystopian future, stay for the character development

 

If you've ever wondered what would happen if you turned The Umbrella Corp into an evil right-wing church and had a group of LGBTQ+ kids save the day then look no further because that's this book in a nutshell. Or the K-Drama Sweet Home. I could go on this book reminded me of so many different video games, shows, and other books those are just the first two that came off the top of my head. And yes after calling out the whole plotline just a couple of chapters in it decreased my interest in the book greatly. That being said, my eldest son is transgender, and no matter how formulaic this book was I still found it to be an important book to read because no matter how supportive I am and how much anger I feel myself over the shit that he has to deal with from the rest of the world I can never understand fully how that feels to him. 

The world as we know it has ended, a Reformation Faith Evangelical Church has released The Flood, a virus that causes humans to mutate into something monstrous in an attempt to wipe all sinners from the face of the Earth. Benji is a transgender sixteen-year-old boy whose mother is the Reverend Mother, one of the highest-ranking members of the Church they escaped The Flood by taking shelter at New Nazareth where the Church commands the Graces the monsters The Flood created, having them slaughter everyone that the Church deems to be heretical, which includes Benji and his father. In a desperate attempt to save his son Benji's father flees with him and is killed in the process, Benji knows though that they won't hurt him because he is special he is The Seraph, and the Church and his mother plan on using Benji to finish what The Flood started. Benji, however, has other plans he won't be used any longer, and when he discovers that a local LGBTQ+ Youth Center survived he finds the support he needs to bring The Church to it's very knees. 

I honestly wished this book wasn't as formulaic as it was I hoped that at some point there was a twist that made me sit up and become just a little bit more interested but it really never happened and the one that kinda does at the end of the book just kind of prolongs it. And honestly, I could not get past the fact that every time I pictured one of the Graces I just saw the boss from Resident Evil 2. Every time. 

That being said Benji's journey is awesome. Meeting other trans kids for the first time, having actual friends, learning to trust people, and learning to be angry. Those parts were wonderful. This is probably one of a few horror books where I really didn't care about the main plot, I wanted to head down that side story. Nick was a fantastic character as well. Two out of four of my kiddos are autistic and Nick reminded me of my son completely, which endeared him to me almost immediately. 

Overall, I'm not going to lie while the predictability of this book at some points bored me to tears Benji's story made all of the difference. 

And of course, I'd like to say thanks to Netgalley and Peachtree Teen for the free eArc of this book.

Ex Tempore by Tiina Utoslahti - A solid murder mystery with a Finnish Twist!

 

I want to start out by mentioning that the translations in this are a bit rough. That being said there is no mention of an actual translator which leads me to believe the author did their own translating if that is the case I'd give this five stars on that alone because this was a fantastic book. And on that note who may be reading this that is Finnish or reads/speaks Finnish I apologize in advance if screw up the spelling of any of the characters' names. 

Sanna Blinck walks into work one day to find the body of their part-time cleaner sprawled in a back door. It's clear to her that this is a murder and she informs her co-workers. As the police arrive she's more than a little shocked to see her "dream man" Juho Seppa, is one of the detectives. Several years earlier Sanna and her husband had been in a devastating accident, killing her husband and leaving Sanna a young widow, Juho had been the investigating officer but since no one but Sanna had met him and she had forgotten everything else from her hospital stay her friends and family just assumed she'd dreamed him up. Sanna is initially annoyed by Juho and his partner though, they seem to take nothing she says seriously and even treat her as a suspect. But Sanna isn't going to take that lying down, she starts her own investigation into her co-worker's murder that puts her right in the murderer's crosshairs. 

As I said once you get passed some of the rougher translations this is a perfect murder mystery with a side of romance. Sanna's independent streak paired with her vulnerability makes her on par with JD Robb's Eve Dallas as far as I'm concerned. Juho is great as well. He admits that he's overlooked several lines of inquiry that he provided shouldn't have and he realizes that Sanna could be more helpful than he'd initially thought thanks to her no-nonsense attitude. And he's incredibly sweet and thoughtful. 

The pacing on this was spot on for a mystery of this length I never found myself bored and when they wrapped everything up I facepalmed a couple of times because there were clues that I had clearly overlooked. 

Overall I'm genuinely hoping this will be a series, personally, I think that Sanna and Juho could give Eve and Rourke a run for their money.

As always I'd like to thank Netgalley and The Book Guild for the free eArc!