Book Review: Wink Poppy Midnight by April Genevieve Tucholke (@apriltucholke)

Wink Poppy Midnight
Author: April Genevieve Tucholke
Publication Date: March 22, 2016
Published: Dial Books

My Rating:

Every story needs a hero.
Every story needs a villain.
Every story needs a secret.
Wink is the odd, mysterious neighbor girl, wild red hair and freckles. Poppy is the blond bully and the beautiful, manipulative high school queen bee. Midnight is the sweet, uncertain boy caught between them. Wink. Poppy. Midnight. Two girls. One boy. Three voices that burst onto the page in short, sharp, bewitching chapters, and spiral swiftly and inexorably toward something terrible or tricky or tremendous.
What really happened?
Someone knows.
Someone is lying.

I’m not strategic in my reviewing process. I sit at the computer, in front of a blank doc and try to form enough of an opinion to push out a few words. But, with Wink Poppy Midnight it’s taken me ten minutes to get to this point because only one word springs to mind when I think about this title: weird.

Good weird or bad weird?

Book Review: Dodgers by Bill Beverly

Dodgers
Author: Bill Beverly
Publication Date: April 5, 2016
Published: Crown
Source: First to Read

My Rating:

Dodgers is a dark, unforgettable coming-of-age journey that recalls the very best of Richard Price, Denis Johnson, and J.D. Salinger. It is the story of a young LA gang member named East, who is sent by his uncle along with some other teenage boys—including East's hothead younger brother—to kill a key witness hiding out in Wisconsin. The journey takes East out of a city he's never left and into an America that is entirely alien to him, ultimately forcing him to grapple with his place in the world and decide what kind of man he wants to become.
Written in stark and unforgettable prose and featuring an array of surprising and memorable characters rendered with empathy and wit, Dodgers heralds the arrival of a major new voice in American fiction.

I received a digital ARC from First to Read.

The story moves really slow and I would put it down for days with no motivation to continue. My first problem was I never connected with the characters. My second issue was that I was so bored by the story. I expected an action packed road trip adventure. What I got was a story as mundane as watching the trees and flat plains outside your backseat window.

Just when something exciting would happen, it was short lived. Then it was back to the boring road trip. Blah, blah, blah. I was not much of a fan of the style of writing either.

The climax wasn't even climatic. I began to skim the last 90 pages but even then I was so bored I gave up. Honestly I don't know or care how it ends.

1 out 5 snores.

Book Review: I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga (@barrylyga)

I Hunt Killers (Jasper Dent #1) by Barry Lyga
Publication Date: April 3, 2012
Published: Little, Brown and Company
Source: Netgalley

My Rating:

What if the world's worst serial killer...was your dad?
Jasper "Jazz" Dent is a likable teenager. A charmer, one might say.
But he's also the son of the world's most infamous serial killer, and for Dear Old Dad, Take Your Son to Work Day was year-round. Jazz has witnessed crime scenes the way cops wish they could—from the criminal's point of view.
And now bodies are piling up in Lobo's Nod.
In an effort to clear his name, Jazz joins the police in a hunt for a new serial killer. But Jazz has a secret—could he be more like his father than anyone knows?

Early Book Review: Butterfly Kills: A Stonechild and Rouleau Mystery by Brenda Chapman (@brendaAchapman)

Butterfly Kills: A Stonechild and Rouleau Mystery by Brenda Chapman
Publication Date: February 24, 2015
Published: Dundurn Group
Source: Netgalley

My Rating:

Jacques Rouleau has moved to Kingston to look after his father and take up the position of head of the Criminal Investigations Division. One hot week in late September, university student Leah Sampson is murdered in her apartment; in another corner of the city, Della Munroe is raped by her husband. At first the crimes appear unrelated, but as Sergeant Rouleau and his new team of officers dig into the women's pasts, they discover unsettling coincidences. When Kala Stonechild, one of Rouleau's officers from Ottawa, suddenly appears in Kingston, Rouleau enlists her to help. Stonechild isn't sure if she wants to stay in Kingston, but agrees to help Rouleau in the short-term. While she struggles with trying to decide if she can make a life in this new town, a ghost from her past starts to haunt her. As the detectives delve deeper into the cases, it seems more questions pop up than answers. Who murdered Leah Sampson? And why does Della Monroe's name keep showing up in the murder investigation? Both women were hiding secrets that have unleashed a string of violence. Stonechild and Rouleau race to discover the truth before the violence rips more families apart.

Book Review: Of Scars and Stardust by Andrea Hannah (@andeehannah)

Of Scars and Stardust by Andrea Hannah
Publication Date: October 8, 2014
Published: Flux
Source: Netgalley

My Rating:

After her little sister mysteriously vanishes, seventeen-year-old Claire Graham has a choice to make: stay snug in her little corner of Manhattan with her dropout boyfriend, or go back to Ohio to face the hometown tragedy she's been dying to leave behind.

But the memories of that night still haunt her in the city, and as hard as she tries to forget what her psychiatrist calls her "delusions," Claire can't seem to escape the wolf's eyes or the blood-speckled snow. Delusion or reality, Claire knows she has to hold true to the most important promise she's ever made: to keep Ella safe. She must return to her sleepy hometown in order to find Ella and keep her hallucinations at bay before they strike again. But time is quickly running out, and as Ella's trail grows fainter, the wolves are becoming startlingly real.
Now Claire must deal with her attraction to Grant, the soft-spoken boy from her past that may hold the secret to solving her sister's disappearance, while following the clues that Ella left for only her to find. Through a series of cryptic diary entries, Claire must unlock the keys to Ella's past—and her own—in order to stop another tragedy in the making, while realizing that not all things that are lost are meant to be found.

Blog Tour: The Legacy by Necole Ryse - Review (@NecoleRyse)

The Legacy by Necole Ryse
Publication Date: June 17, 2014
Published: Necole Ryse
Source: Received copy for honest review

My Rating:

Nineteen-year-old Raevyn Jones has never worn a designer gown. She's never had access to unlimited champagne or chauffeured limo rides.
But when she is dropped in the midst of the Black Ivy League--against her will--she has to pretend that everything is normal, as if she belongs.
When her new friends start to question her sketchy past and her shaky legacy at Benjamin Wallace Fitzgerald University, Raevyn realizes she will have to rely on her street smarts more than ever before.

Raevyn starts to receive cryptic text messages and emails from an anonymous sender and she soon discovers that not only does someone want her to leave B.W.Fitz--someone also wants to end her life.

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Book Review: Coin Heist by Elisa Ludwig (@ElisaLudwigYA)

Coin Heist by Elisa Ludwig

Publication Date: June 10, 2014
Published: Adaptive Studios
Source: eARC from Netgalley

My Rating: 

The last place you’d expect to find a team of criminals is at a prestigious Philadelphia prep school. But on a class trip to the U.S. Mint – which prints a million new coins every 30 minutes – an overlooked security flaw becomes far too tempting for a small group of students to ignore.

United by dire circumstances, these unlikely allies – the slacker, the nerd, the athlete, and the "perfect" student – band together to attempt the impossible: rob the U.S. Mint. The diverse crew is forced to confront their true beliefs about each other and themselves as they do the wrong thing for the right reasons.

Elisa Ludwig's Coin Heist is a fun, suspenseful, and compelling thriller, told from the revolving perspectives of four teens, each with their own motive for committing a crime that could change all of their lives for the better—if they can pull it off.