Review: Chloe Cates is Missing by Mandy McHugh

 

Chloe Cates is Missing by Mandy McHugh
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

AThe disappearance of a young internet celebrity ignites a firestorm of speculation on social media, and to find her a detective will have to extinguish the blaze. 

Chloe Cates is missing. The 13-year-old star of the hit YouTube series, “CC and Me,” has disappeared, and nobody knows where she’s gone — least of all ruthless momager Jennifer Scarborough, who has spent much of her daughter’s young life crafting a child celebrity persona that is finally beginning to pay off. And in Chloe’s absence, the faux-fairytale world that supported that persona begins to fracture, revealing secrets capable of reducing the highly-dysfunctional Scarborough family to rubble. 

Anxious to find her daughter and preserve the life she’s worked so hard to build, Jennifer turns to social media for help, but the hearsay, false claims, and salacious suspicions only multiply. As the search becomes as sensational as Chloe’s series, Missing Persons detective Emilina Stone steps in, only to realize she has a connection to this case herself. Will she be able to stay objective and cut through the rumors to find the truth before it’s too late?

Told from multiple points of view including Jennifer, Emilina, and pages from Chloe’s lost diary, Chloe Cates Is Missing is a suspenseful novel of a child pushed to the brink, and of the troubled family that desperately needs her back.

—-

Chloe Cates is missing is a phenomenal debut. Seriously. It’s SO good.

I started it late evening yesterday and read until the early hours, and then picked it up again as soon as I could today. Within twenty-four hours of starting this book, I’d finished it. I simply couldn’t read it fast enough. Chloe Cates is Missing is a twisty, complicated story that spirals around Jennifer, the mother of Abigail who is more publicly known as Chloe. Jennifer began a ‘mommy blog’ when Abby was little, and ‘Chloe’ is its main character. While Jennifer’s son is allowed a normal life, Abby isn’t. She’s not allowed to go to school, have friends, or make any of her own choices. She has to constantly perform as Chloe, and we see the horrific things that this leads to. And the story begins when Jennifer finds that her precious daughter is missing…

Jennifer is such a fascinating character. She’s dark and twisty. She sees her daughter only in terms of what Chloe can provide her. She treats her like a doll, wanting to control every aspect of her life. And she’ll do anything to make sure she gets her own way. And she lies. She lies a lot, and I was never quite sure when she was telling the truth. This made the tension so, so high. I couldn’t stop reading. She’d engineered an entire fake life for her daughter for her followers to watch. Chloe’s ‘friends’ were photoshopped models. Any time Abby really did start making friends of her own, Jennifer put a stop to it. She wanted her daughter isolated and dependent, and Jackson, Jennifer’s husband and Chloe’s father just lets it happen.

Jennifer is also a murderer. Part of the narrative is from the perspective of Emilina, the former best friend of Jennifer and the now detective investigating Chloe’s disappearance. Emilina knows exactly what kind of person Jennifer is, as Jennifer forced her to cover up the murder when they were kids. 

And that’s not the only murder in the book. We’ve also got the murder of Missy, a girl the same age as Chloe and who looks pretty similar to her. And it soon becomes clear the murder of Missy and the disappearance of Chloe are intrinsically connected.

Chloe/Abby is a fascinating character. I really felt for her, could feel her desperation through her journal entries as she tried to fight her controlling mother. Indeed, the journal was quite horrifying to read when it became apparent just how far Jennifer would go to make sure her daughter was doing what she wanted. There was a fantastic twist about the boy whom Abby was secretly getting to know. And we really see the effect of all this emotional abuse on Abby and learn how her mother’s behaviour has shaped her. Nothing is as it seems!

There are so many twists in this book. The pacing is spot-on, and I simply had to read it as quickly as possible to find out who was the evil mastermind—because no matter how hard I tried to work it out, I just couldn’t. Every time I thought I had a handle on one of the suspects, a new curveball was thrown into the mix.

We’ve got a lot of first person narrators—Jennifer, Emilina, Abby, and Jackson (Jennifer’s husband)—but it didn’t feel like too many and I was able to separate the narratives quite easily.

All in all, this is a highly recommended read. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

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Review: Shattered by C. Lee McKenzie

Shattered, A Story of Betrayal and Courage by C. Lee McKenzie
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Courage put Libby Brown into the final selection for the Olympics, but betrayal crushed her spine and her chance at the Gold. Now she has two choices, use her courage to put her life back together, or remain shattered forever.

—-
Unfortunately this is a DNF at 19% for me. I had high hopes for this book, thinking it would be similar to Scars Like Wings by Erin Stewart and Faceless by Alyssa Sheinmel. As a disabled person myself, I’m always looking for stories of disability that are skilfully and sensitively told. Unfortunately, this wasn’t one of those for me.

Within a few chapters, I’d picked up on quite a few ableist sentences. When Libby becomes paralysed following a skiing accident, she tells readers, ‘I might as well be dead if I couldn’t walk or ski or do anything that I loved. I couldn’t imagine how it would be to be trapped in a wheelchair the rest of my life, and I willed that image to disappear.’ This immediately set off alarm bells for me as I’ve had so many people devalue my own life since becoming disabled, people telling me that they’d rather be dead than live as I do. I really didn’t like the idea of being ‘trapped’ in a wheelchair given that wheelchairs offer freedom to so many disabled people that they wouldn’t ordinarily have. Still, I persevered with this book. I thought maybe this was just Libby’s mindset at the start of her journey as she was still coping with her new reality. I was hoping to see a transformation in her mindset and her acknowledging that her earlier thoughts were harmful and ableist.

I don’t know if this does happen, as I stopped reading at chapter nine. The above quotes were around chapter three, but by chapter nine we had more ableism and I simply wasn’t enjoying the story. Reading was feeling like a chore. Another instance of ableism I picked out was this one, which Libby uses when ‘evaluating’ her new room mate at the rehab centre: ‘More to the point, how could a one-legged swimmer have three boyfriends and the attitude of the Dali Lama?’ Just, urgh. She uses the term ‘one-legged’ in a clearly negative way here and she’s just so judgemental of her new ‘friend’, only seeing the disability.

Leading on from that, I didn’t find Libby likeable, yet I also felt like I didn’t know her. There wasn’t a great deal of deep characterisation for her or any of the characters, in my opinion. And the writing was kind of clunky. The very first paragraph tells us about a girl, Etta, who wasn’t then in any of the first nine chapters again. There’s no mention of a first-person narrator in that paragraph, so I assumed at first that Etta was the main character and that it was a third-person narrative. That seemed like a really poor opening to me.

There was a lot of repetition of phrasing too. We’re constantly told that voices interrupt Libby’s thoughts when she’s in hospital, and so many chapters began in similar ways. For my day job, I work as a developmental editor for a publisher and I’m a writing teacher, and there were just so many little things like this that I would’ve flagged if I’d been editing it. These things just meant I couldn’t get into the story to enjoy it.

And there were some big pacing issues—the characters constantly refer to important things that have happened off-page that the reader doesn’t actually witness. One major example of this is how suddenly were told Libby has a boyfriend when she’s at the rehab centre and sees her roommate with hers. I didn’t spot any mention of Libby having a boyfriend prior to this, but then we’re told that all this time the boyfriend had been trying to get in contact with her. That seemed like an afterthought and I couldn’t work out why this hadn’t been incorporated more smoothly into the narrative earlier on.

And then Libby and her boyfriend break up. Take a look at this passage:

“It’s okay,” I said quickly. “I asked you here to tell you that since things are so, well, different” —I held onto the arms of the wheelchair like a lifesaver— “I’ll understand if you have to move on. Your degree. Your life. You know.” I had to stop so my voice didn’t catch. “Hey, but thanks for coming by.”
For the first time our eyes connected.
“I’m sticking if you want me to.” Now his voice sounded pinched, maybe panicked. He’s afraid I’ll take him up on his offer. It wasn’t so much how he’d said those words as it was the way he sat pulled away from me, ready to bolt for the door that made me flinch.
I shook my head. “No.” The word came out sharp and final. “I don’t think that’s necessary.”
[…]
“I’m really sorry—”
And that’s all you can come up with? Sorry was such a limp word.
I shook my head. “Not your fault. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” I couldn’t help wondering what would have happened if Ben had pulled himself out of bed that morning and gone with me. He might have taken the hit instead of me. He might have heard the snowboarder coming at us and shoved me out of the way.
“I know, but I, well I’m just—”
“Don’t be.” I did not want to hear the word sorry from him. I hadn’t expected our meeting to go this way. I’d expected him to protest more. I hadn’t expected my heart to shrink when he turned his back and vanished out the door.

This was the point that really got to me, Like, I understood Libby’s feelings. I’d felt that before, being convinced no one would want me for my disability—but I wanted either him to fight for her here or for her to just be angry or something. Instead, she’s just accepting of it. I don’t know if we get more on this later, if I’m fact Libby does realise she still has worth. But this, combined with the earlier ableism and the pacing issues, just meant I couldn’t read any further.

In fact, the only thing that had kept me reading that far was the mystery element, that we know that the ski accident wasn’t an accident. Someone had paid a guy to cause the accident. I loved that, but it just wasn’t enough to keep me reading.

I feel bad giving this book one star, but it read like an unedited draft to me and the ableism was a big problem.

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Review: Flower Crowns and Fearsome Things by Amanda Lovelace

 

Flower Crowns and Fearsome Things by Amanda Lovelace
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

in her new standalone poetry collection, flower crowns & fearsome things, bestselling & award-winning poetess amanda lovelace explores the complexity of femininity through alternating wildflower & wildfire poems.

within these pages, you will find that each of us has the ability to be both soft & fierce at the same time. there is no need to choose one or the other.

—- 

I finished this beautiful poetry collection on femininity last month and this was exactly the book I needed. The poetry is wonderfully written, so lyrical, and so powerful. The imagery is mesmerising, and I loved the motif of soft vs fierce.

There’s so much packed into these words, and the collection as a whole requires deep thought and contemplation afterward—I couldn’t simply dive into my next book as I needed to process what I’d read.

This collection is very feminist and it circles around abuse in a really sensitive but powerful way.

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Review: THE ART OF NOT BREATHING by Sarah Alexander

 

The Art of Not Breathing by Sarah Alexander
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Since her twin brother, Eddie, drowned five years ago, sixteen-year-old Elsie Main has tried to remember what really happened that fateful day on the beach. One minute Eddie was there, and the next he was gone. Seventeen-year-old Tay McKenzie is a cute and mysterious boy that Elsie meets in her favorite boathouse hangout. When Tay introduces Elsie to the world of freediving, she vows to find the answers she seeks at the bottom of the sea.

----

This is one of the most hauntingly beautiful books I've ever read. It tells the story of Elsie, a teenage girl who has no friends, and how the disappearance and presumed death of her twin brother Eddie, five years ago, is still affecting her now. She's awkward and lonely, and she discovers the joys of diving--even though she's forbidden from swimming and going in the water, as Eddie disappeared when swimming.

Elsie holds a lot of guilt over Eddie's disappearance as she was supposed to have hold of his hand that day. Eddie has special needs (really well written), and she feels responsible. This leads to an almost self-destructive spiral as she becomes obsessed with diving and finding the place where she believes Eddie drowned. Her parents are too broken by Eddie's loss to notice how Elsie is struggling--her mother's an alcoholic and her dad leaves them during the story.

Elsie's older brother Dillon is the only one who notices--but not in a way that he is able to help Elise, because he is also struggling. And this is one of the best YA books I've read for eating disorder rep in teen boys. Restrictive and purging behaviours are how Dillon is coping with Eddie's disappearance--and the secrets he holds around this.

There's a really well written romance too, and although we get some 'insta love' moments between Elsie and Tay (the guy who teaches her to dive), such as where Elsie imagines herself with his last name very early on, there's also an awkwardness about it. It shows how desperate Elsie is for a connection to someone--we even see her starting to get close to another guy, Danny, in Tay's absence for the middle part of the book, and I really felt how she was drawn to others as a way to anchor herself. Indeed, it's like she's floating aimlessly, unsure of who she is when she can't define herself against others (such as Eddie or Tay). And that really makes her sound shallow, the way I've worded this, like she's not an individual--but she is. She just doesn't know who she is, and she's sure the only thing that can truly ground her is discovering what happened to Eddie.

Being in the water gives Elsie flashbacks of the accident, so we see how her romances with Tay and the closeness with Danny (another instructor) again bind her to Eddie. And, as the plot progresses, more and more secrets unfold. I was so surprised when Tay and Danny were revealed to be a part of this, and I really felt Elsie's own heartbreak at that discovery. There was a strong sense of betrayal, of hurt, especially as they'd just slept together.

The characters in this are so well written. I can't emphasise this enough, and I really

This, ultimately, is a book about and pain and hurt, about self-destruction and self-harm. But it's also about healing. It's sad and heartbreaking, but it's real. So real.


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Review: THE BLACK WIDOWS by Angie Thomas

 

The Black Widows by Angie Thomas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the short story that became The Hate U Give, and although it was written several years prior to THUG, you can tell Angie Thomas is a masterful writer. Very skilled.

It tells a version of Khalil's story, and a lead-up to his death, and we see several of the characters from THUG. I especially enjoyed seeing Starr through Khalil's eyes.

There is a hugely strong narrative voice in this story, and Angie Thomas touches on the important themes that her other works examine: racism, education, poverty, and the idea of being trapped in a way of life.

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Review: THE LAST BEAR by Hannah Gold

 

The Last Bear by Hannah Gold
My rating: 5 of 5 stars


In this instant literary classic about friendship, forging your own path, and doing what’s right, debut author Hannah Gold inspires fans of Pax and A Wolf Called Wander to make a difference in any way they can.

There are no polar bears left on Bear Island. At least, that’s what April’s father tells her when his scientific research takes them to a faraway Arctic outpost.

But one night, April catches a glimpse of something distinctly bear shaped loping across the horizon. A polar bear who shouldn’t be there—who is hungry, lonely and a long way from home.

Fusing environmental awareness with a touching story of kindness, The Last Bear will include full-page black-and-white illustrations as well as a note from the author with facts about the real Bear Island and the plight of the polar bears. 

--

Every now and again, you read a book, and it feels like being wrapped in a warm hug from someone important. It feels beautiful and significant, and you know it's going to have a long-lasting effect on you. This was that book.

I haven't that much middlegrade before, but I'd seen the author posting beautiful photos of this book on social media, so when I saw I could get a signed copy from Waterstones, I jumped at the chance. And this book was amazing.

April and her father get the chance to live at the Arctic when he gets located there for his job. While he's busy shutting himself away for work, April explores the island--and finds a polar bear, a bear who know one else knows is there.

April's a complex character. She's somewhat friendless at school and prefers being on her own. She feels abandoned at times by her father who is swamped in work--and indeed, working seems to be his coping mechanism for dealing with the death of April's mother. April is, in turn, still processing this, and we can really see how her life experiences have shaped her.

April and the polar bear build an almost magical friendship. Both are lost and isolated, and they come to trust each other greatly. The bear is hungry and April feeds him, providing him with her food. But of course, this friendship has a time limit on it--not only are April and her father due to return home at the end of his work, but this secret friendship can't last once food has run out, and there's also the threat of others finding out about the bear and removing him.

The ending of this book is bittersweet. I felt sad--I wanted things to go another way--but it also felt right. It was the right ending for the book, and I'm sure it'll teach a lot of children some very important life lessons too.

This book also says a lot about the environment and the devastating effects of global warming on the melting ice caps and the animals this affects, such as polar bears. There's just so much in this book.

It's a really important read.

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Review: BEFORE WE WERE BLUE by E.J. Schwartz

 

Before We Were Blue by E.J. Schwartz
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Get healthy on their own—or stay sick together?

At Recovery and Relief, a treatment center for girls with eating disorders, the first thing Shoshana Winnick does is attach herself to vibrant but troubled Rowan Parish. Shoshana—a cheerleader on a hit reality TV show—was admitted for starving herself to ensure her growth spurt didn’t ruin her infamous tumbling skills. Rowan, on the other hand, has known anorexia her entire life, thanks to her mother’s “chew and spit” guidance. Through the drudgery and drama of treatment life, Shoshana and Rowan develop a fierce intimacy—and for Rowan, a budding infatuation, that neither girl expects.

As “Gray Girls,” patients in the center’s Gray plan, Shoshana and Rowan are constantly under the nurses’ watchful eyes. They dream of being Blue, when they will enjoy more freedom and the knowledge that their days at the center are numbered. But going home means separating and returning to all the challenges they left behind. The closer Shoshana and Rowan become, the more they cling to each other—and their destructive patterns. Ultimately, the girls will have to choose: their recovery or their relationship.

-- 

This book has everything I could possibly want. I love sad and haunting stories that also offer hope, and BEFORE WE WERE BLUE, E. J. Schwartz's debut, gives just that.

I requested an ARC of this book on NetGalley because the cover was just so beautiful. Then I started reading it and realised it was about eating disorders--and I was drawn right in. In fact, I fell in love with this story as soon as I started it. Chapter one gives us Shoshana's POV as she's in RR, a recovery programme for her eating disorder. Immediately, I was pulled into her world and her life. She felt so, so real, and the writing was beautiful. There's something so compelling about the writing, in fact, that I just couldn't put it down. I knew immediately that this was a five-star book for me--and then I got Rowan's POV. And, just, wow. I didn't think this book could get it better, but chapter two just lifted it beyond 5 stars. We'd already met Rowan from Shoshana's POV, but chapter two, written in direct address from Rowan to Shoshana reveals the one-sided nature and complex intricacies of their friendship. There's this hard, toxic edge to Rowan and we realise she's using Shoshana. My heart was pounding reading this. It's just deliciously addictive.

Schwartz is a master of characterisation and voice, and I wasn't prepared for just how good this book was going to be. Every chapter, as I got deeper into the story, made me fall even more for this book. Shoshana and Rowan feel so real. I was breathing their stories, and Schwartz covers a lot of ground in this book.

Both girls are suffering from eating disorders, and there's a lot of discourse on bodies and social media. Shoshana is a professional cheerleader who developed her ED as a response to the pressures of this (and a pretty nasty coach), while Rowan has had her ED for longer, likely having, in some part, 'inherited' the behaviours from her mother who also showed signs of this. This book also really looks into the psychology of eating disorders and how they're often linked to other conditions--not just the physical ones caused by the effects of starvation and malnutrition, but other mental illnesses too. And it looks at WHY eating disorders can occur and how and why someone can relapse during/after treatment. There's one line from Shoshana that particularly struck me--she says about how she just wanted to be gone, and this jus really got to me. It resonated with me, and I think so many people think that eating disorders are just about food and body image, and someone's mental torture and desperation to disappear can often be overlooked because of this.

The friendship between Rowan and Shoshana is masterfully written. Rowan's arc in particular is impressive--she starts off wanting to hold onto her status as 'gray' (those whose EDs are controlling them more), and she's proud of it. She wants to be disciplined and seen as disciplined enough to maintain her status as gray (again, these were things I could personally relate to). But we see Rowan's mindset changing as she decides she wants to get better--and this coincides with her realisation about how she's been using Shoshana and needs to be a better friend.

Rowan's arc cleverly contrasts with Shoshana's. When Rowan's resisting progress at the start of the book, Shoshana is making it. When Rowan makes progress at the end, Shoshana's hitting 'rock bottom' again (perhaps, worse than before). But

This is definitely a story of friendship too--in all its different types--and we see how close and dependent the two narrators are on each other. There was this super intense relationship between them that I just adored. Now, I must just mention here that I am ace, and a lot of things that Shoshana said had me getting strong ace vibes. But I kept thinking that it wouldn't got that way, that it was just a coincidence--and then the author confirmed that this was in fact ace rep! At that point, I hadn't thought I could love this book any more, but I really did. This was just...amazing. A book that I could personally relate to not just on the eating disorder rep but also the ace rep. I was speechless. I almost couldn't believe I'd found such a perfect book for me.

I was so sad when I finished this book. I'd felt so seen in these pages, and I just wanted it to continue.

E.J. Schwartz is now an auto-buy author for me. BEFORE WE WERE BLUE is a complex look at eating disorders, friendship, social media and societal pressures, the process of healing, and asexuality. It's masterfully written, compelling and powerful, and I could not turn the pages fast enough.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC copy.

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