Review: DAISY DARKER by Alice Feeney

 

Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The New York Times bestselling Queen of Twists returns…with a family reunion that leads to murder.

After years of avoiding each other, Daisy Darker’s entire family is assembling for Nana’s 80th birthday party in Nana’s crumbling gothic house on a tiny tidal island. Finally back together one last time, when the tide comes in, they will be cut off from the rest of the world for eight hours.

The family arrives, each of them harboring secrets. Then at the stroke of midnight, as a storm rages, Nana is found dead. And an hour later, the next family member follows…

Trapped on an island where someone is killing them one by one, the Darkers must reckon with their present mystery as well as their past secrets, before the tide comes in and all is revealed.

With a wicked wink to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, Daisy Darker’s unforgettable twists will leave readers reeling.

--

I finished this book maybe six weeks ago, and I cannot stop thinking about it. It's not often that a book stays with me this much, to this extent, but Daisy Darker really is a gem.

I've started other books by Alice Feeney before but not finished them--I'm not really sure why--but I found this book to be very different and I was so compelled to read it, and I think it all comes down to the character. As a narrator, Daisy is compelling. And I'm going to try and write this review without spoilers, because that ending absolutely blew me away. And you know, up until that ending my one critiquing point really was that I felt like Daisy was a bit passive in the 'present' timeline, but that ending totally explains that and it just blew me away.

This is a phenomenal story.

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Review: COUNTERFEIT by Kirstin Chen

 

Counterfeit by Kirstin Chen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

For fans of Hustlers and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, the story of two Asian American women who band together to grow a counterfeit handbag scheme into a global enterprise--an incisive and glittering blend of fashion, crime, and friendship from the author of Bury What We Cannot Take and Soy Sauce for Beginners.

Money can't buy happiness... but it can buy a decent fake.

Ava Wong has always played it safe. As a strait-laced, rule-abiding Chinese American lawyer with a successful surgeon as a husband, a young son, and a beautiful home--she's built the perfect life. But beneath this façade, Ava's world is crumbling: her marriage is falling apart, her expensive law degree hasn't been used in years, and her toddler's tantrums are pushing her to the breaking point.

Enter Winnie Fang, Ava's enigmatic college roommate from Mainland China, who abruptly dropped out under mysterious circumstances. Now, twenty years later, Winnie is looking to reconnect with her old friend. But the shy, awkward girl Ava once knew has been replaced with a confident woman of the world, dripping in luxury goods, including a coveted Birkin in classic orange. The secret to her success? Winnie has developed an ingenious counterfeit scheme that involves importing near-exact replicas of luxury handbags and now she needs someone with a U.S. passport to help manage her business--someone who'd never be suspected of wrongdoing, someone like Ava. But when their spectacular success is threatened and Winnie vanishes once again, Ava is left to face the consequences.

Swift, surprising, and sharply comic, Counterfeit is a stylish and feminist caper with a strong point of view and an axe to grind. Peering behind the curtain of the upscale designer storefronts and the Chinese factories where luxury goods are produced, Kirstin Chen interrogates the myth of the model minority through two unforgettable women determined to demand more from life.

--

This book has been on my radar forever. I'd borrowed it from the library a couple of times but then my loan was always due before I had a chance to start it, and when this was about to happen for the third time in a row I decided to knuckle down and get started. And I read this book soooooo quickly!

I love stories about con men and women. I love stories where the narrators lie. I love stories that are multiple POV and you never know who is the most reliable. I love stories with huge plot twists. So, essentially, this book was PERFECT for me!!!!

Counterfeit follows Ava Wong, a pretty 'ordinary' law-abiding woman, as she reunites with former best friend Winnie Fang--and becomes embroiled in Winnie's illegal, fraudulent business where she produces counterfeit designer handbags. So, like, I didn't realise that I would be so interested in the world of handbag production and counterfeits. This book has soooo much detail on this, and I found it fascinating. Like, we have pages and pages about it, and it's so eye-opening.

But the characterisation is what really makes this book amazing. And the plot twist. Okay, spoilers ahead! So, for the first half of the book, I was feeling sorry for Ava. She's married to a pretty awful guy who cuts off her money and controls her and throws strops. She's having to single-parent their child because he decides to move somewhere else for work, leaving his family for pretty much the whole week, every week. And when Ava dares go and visit her family, he throws a temper tantrum about that, and removes her from their joint bank account. Cue Winnie stepping in and giving her an easy way to make a lot of money. We see Ava struggling with the ethics of this and we see how once she gets started she can't get out. There are a lot of mind games, and she just seems so vulnerable. The narrative at this point also consists entirely of Ava recounting all these events to a police detective, as part of her interview, so it's first person. (I loved this as a narrative mode, plus we have no speechmarks for dialogue within this as the whole thing is pretty much the prose transcript of Ava's speech.)

I totally believed her--and then part two gives us Winnie's third-person narration where we begin to piece together that Ava has been lying to the police the whole time (and lying to us!). She's not innocent, being swept along by Winnie. She too is a con woman (she conned us all!). And that reveal is just FANTASTIC. So, so, so good!!!! We then alternate between the rest of Ava's dialogue to the detective and Winnie's narration, which give quite different versions of the same events. And I loved this, because who are we supposed to believe? Winnie's narration seems more objective as it's third person, but it's still close third person, so can she be trusted either?

I am a sucker for unreliable narrators and this book was great!

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Review: BLANK CANVAS by Marcy Gregg

 

Blank Canvas: The Amazing Story of a Woman Who Awoke from a Coma to a Life She Couldn’t Remember by Marcy Gregg
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When Marcy Gregg awoke from a coma, 13 years had vanished from her memory.
She was 30 years old; she thought she was still 17. She didn’t recognize the man who introduced himself as her husband. She stared at pictures of the three children they said were hers, trying desperately to remember them, but her mind was blank.

Terrified and confused, Marcy did the only thing she could think of: she faked it. She told the doctors she was starting to remember and bluffed her way through visits from friends and family. Against all odds, it worked: she was released to a home, family, and life she should have known intimately―but seemed to be a stranger’s. How was she going to pull off the biggest acting challenge imaginable―and would her memories ever return?

Ghost Boy meets What Alice Forgot in this amazing true story of a woman who lost herself and tried to fight her way back on her own―but who found unexpected beauty in hope, faith, and second chances.

---

When I heard about this memoir, I was so excited to then get an ARC through NetGalley. I love memoirs and I love chronic illness memoirs. I also love memoirs about motherhood, so this seemed like the perfect book for me. But I just... I didn't like it as much as I thought I was going to.

The storyline was good, well written, well plotted out. But it was more the writing style that I just didn't particularly get on with--though it worked well enough that I was able to finish the book. But I just found myself skipping over and skim-reading a lot of the religious parts. I understand that religion is hugely important to the writer, but I can't personally relate to this, and so I was more interested in the on-page interactions between Marcy and other characters, than her 'letters' to God. There did seem to be a lot of lamentation in these letters, which is understandable. I'm chronically ill and I know the frustration--but I found it laborious to read those parts, maybe because they did hit close to home, in part.

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Review: FAMILY OF LIARS by e. lockhart

 

Family of Liars by E. Lockhart
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The prequel to We Were Liars takes readers back to the story of another summer, another generation, and the secrets that will haunt them for decades to come.

A windswept private island off the coast of Massachusetts. 
A hungry ocean, churning with secrets and sorrow.
A fiery, addicted heiress. An irresistible, unpredictable boy. 
A summer of unforgivable betrayal and terrible mistakes.

Welcome back to the Sinclair family. 
They were always liars

— 

Beautiful lyrical prose, as is expected of E. Lockhart, and a wonderful prequel to WE WERE LIARS. Always interesting learning about the previous generation, and the characterisation was masterful. The twists were phenomenal. Complete shockers that I did not see coming. Unreliable narrators (like mother like daughter!), delightful imagery, and a book that speaks so many truths, particularly for the #MeToo movement.

Although this review is short (I’m currently not that well!) this book is an instant favourite.

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Review: IDENTICAL by Ellen Hopkins

 

Identical by Ellen Hopkins
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Do twins begin in the womb?
Or in a better place?

Kaeleigh and Raeanne are identical down to the dimple. As daughters of a district-court judge father and a politician mother, they are an all-American family—on the surface. Behind the facade each sister has her own dark secret, and that's where their differences begin.

For Kaeleigh, she's the misplaced focus of Daddy's love, intended for a mother whose presence on the campaign trail means absence at home. All that Raeanne sees is Daddy playing a game of favorites—and she is losing. If she has to lose, she will do it on her own terms, so she chooses drugs, alcohol, and sex.

Secrets like the ones the twins are harboring are not meant to be kept—from each other or anyone else. Pretty soon it's obvious that neither sister can handle it alone, and one sister must step up to save the other, but the question is—who?

—

It’s taken me a little while to write this review, but honestly, this book was amazing. I’m a massive fan of verse novels, and Hopkins has to be one of the best verse novelists I’ve read so far. IDENTICAL is the story of Kaeleigh and Raeanne (I listened to the audiobook so I only just looked up the spelling of their names!), and they are identical twins, but Hopkins really shows how different they are.

The contrasts between them were beautifully done—and that just made the twist at the end all the more powerful. I did not see that coming, and it was expertly done!

This book covers some difficult topics: child sexual abuse at the hands of a parent, death, grief, mental illness (including disordered eating and dissociative personality disorder/multiple personality disorder—I don’t know the correct term, sorry!). But it also looks at positives too: Support of (good) family members, friendships and supportive relationship.

The writing itself is lyrical, poignant, powerful, and stunning. Listening to this was a delight—which is kind of a weird thing to say, given what this story was about. I now recommend this novel to my students as an example of verse storytelling.

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Review: HOW WE FALL APART by Katie Zhao

 

How We Fall Apart by Katie Zhao
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

3.5 stars

I liked this book, but I really wanted to love it, but unfortunately I found parts were just a bit…flat. I think if I’d read this before One of us is Lying I’d have enjoyed it a lot more. As it was, I just kept thinking of that book. But with How We Fall Apart, I kept thinking it felt a little formulaic. One by one, the Proctor revealed the secrets of the main characters, but each time we knew a mew secret was coming as we’d been warned and the book gets into this repetitive pattern with the reveal of secrets, so none of them really felt like a big twist for me—until the ending. The ending is good and made me like the novel more.

But each time when one of the secrets was revealed, it didn’t really seem to have any lasting impact on the characters. The consequences shown seemed a bit flat, and then a couple chapters later, it felt like those had been forgotten completely.

What I did really like about this book though was that it has all Asian leads, and it looks at the impact of class divisions and the dark academia that appears married to wealth. Jamie was a complex character. She’s rich but unhappy. She’s entitled and expects to win everything and will do whatever it takes to get rid of her competition. Jamie is also sharp-tongued and mean, and I have to confess I was sad she was the one killed off because I found her more interesting than Nancy, the POV character.

While Nancy did a great job of looking at the social-economic relationships and classes and what it meant to be the only poor kid on a scholarship at a school full of dark, twisted, rich kids, I didn’t really connect to her in the way I’d hoped. Instead, I found myself connecting much more to Jamie and Krystal.

I even remember thinking at one point that I wished we got Krystal’s POV. Her secret when it was revealed was powerful and made me take note, and I wanted more on it. I wanted to see more the psychological impact this had on her. 

Thinking about this book more, I think there’s a lot of places where we could’ve gone deeper, not just I’m showing subplots and impacts of reveals lasting longer, but even with the portrayal of grief. It almost feels like no one is genuinely grieving for Jamie, and I know Nancy and nearly every character fell out with her before she was murdered, but Nancy and Jamie were best friends for years beforehand. I felt there should’ve been some more genuine grief, perhaps ensnared under feelings of hatred, especially as we have alternate timelines showing they were friends—even if the relationship wasn’t equal due to wealth and class differences. 

There is also a student/teacher relationship type thing in this book too. That was handled really well. 

All in all, it’s a good read and it covers some important topics. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my ARC copy.

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Review: THE MAID by Nita Prose

 

The Maid by Nita Prose
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a phenomenal book.

The writing is so, so strong, and Molly’s voice is fantastic. Molly Gray is twenty-five, a maid, and she sees the world differently to most people. She struggles with social interactions, taking everything at face value and interpreting things literally. She’s not a good judge of character as she’s way too trusting. And that becomes her downfall when others use this against her to set her up for the murder of a pm important client at the hotel she works for.

Molly discovers wealthy client Mr Black is dead when she goes to clean his room, and because she doesn’t act as others expect her to, she quickly becomes a suspect in the police investigation. The real murderers realise this and use it to their advantage, framing her more and more.

I couldn’t get over how amazingly well written Molly is. It’s first-person narrative and we’re in her head, seeing her thought processes and how she reacts differently. Yet it also very much clear to readers who the bad characters are from the start, despite us only ever seeing them through Molly!s eyes where she believes they are good and trustworthy. This is simply a masterful piece of craft.

All the characters are so well written, and every time I felt like I knew Molly, there was a surprise or a twist in store. This book is tense, and I read the whole thing in a couple of days. Really, really recommend it to everyone who likes stories of neurodivergence, thrillers, suspense, and strong characters. 

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.   

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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: SHINY BROKEN PIECES by Sona Charaipotra and Dhonielle Clayton

 

Shiny Broken Pieces by Sona Charaipotra
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

June, Bette, and Gigi have given their all to dance at Manhattan’s most elite ballet school. Now they are competing one final time for a spot at the prestigious American Ballet Company. With the stakes higher than ever, these girls have everything to lose… and no one is playing nice.

June is starting to finally see herself as a prima ballerina. However, getting what she wants might cost her everything—including the only boy she’s ever loved. Legacy dancer Bette is determined to clear her name after she was suspended and accused of hurting her rival, Gigi. Even if she returns, though, will she ever regain the spotlight she craves? And Gigi is not going to let Bette—or the other dancers who bullied her—go unpunished. But as revenge consumes her, Gigi may be the one who pays the price.

After years of grueling auditions, torn ribbons, and broken hearts, it all comes down to this last dance. Who will make the cut? And who will lose her dream forever?

--- 

If I could give this book more than 5 stars, I would. I already loved the first book in the series and rated that one 5 stars, because it was so good--and so I wasn't expecting the sequel to be even better. But it is...

Book one ends with a pretty big event (spoilers for book 1 here): Gigi's been run over and one of the ballet dancers was behind it. This book opens a little while after this. Gigi is now recovered and returning to the school (alongside Cassie who is also returning--Cassie was absent on-page from book 1, having also been injured in the bullying). June is back at the school too but on thin ice as the school are now aware of her eating disorder and tell her she will be asked to leave if she doesn't improve. Bette is back at her family home for much of the book, having been excluded from the school who believe she was responsible for Gigi's accident--even though Bette's narrative tells us she wasn't and she's determined to find out who was.

So the stakes are immediately high in this book and it takes on almost thriller vibes at times. And it's just so tense--because the girls in this book are even more vicious than in the last book!

Gigi and Cassie team up together, which is understandable as there's no way Gigi is going to trust Bette or June. But Cassie is so, so toxic though and we see her manipulating Gigi, getting her to do things she'd never normally do (such as giving Eleanor peanuts when the girl has a severe peanut allergy). Gigi also cuts off all of June's hair, and there are numerous other things she now does without question due to the mindset that her accident and Cassie's manipulation have got her into.

And Gigi isn't the only one whose 'pranks' turn more severe. We see June also upping her game, and we see just how far Bette will go to clean her name.

Of course there's more darkness in this book--but I actually think it was handled even better than in book one. (Spoilers ahead). We've got a predatory teacher preying on Eleanor (Bette's best friend), and Bette takes photographic evidence of this. When these photos are mysteriously leaked to the students and teachers, Eleanor is blamed and slut-shamed--and then she attempts suicide too. My heart was racing at this point and I couldn't read fast enough to see if Eleanor was okay.

June's eating disorder becomes even more prominent, and she's also balancing this with the stress of the future of her romantic relationship with Jahye, as he wants her to relocate to where he's going to college, which would mean giving up her dreams of being a professional ballet dancer.

In fact, all three narrators--June, Bette, and Gigi--are worrying about their future in this book, as are all the other main characters (Cassie, Will, etc). This is their last year at the ballet school and the school only offers places to two dancers. There's this huge sense of urgency and inevitable change.

One of the reasons I really loved this sequel is because I felt Bette's character was more fully fleshed out. In book 1, she's backstabbing and manipulative--and she is in this book two, but we learn more about her. Because she's at home for a lot of the book, we get an insight to her family life that we didn't have before and we meet her father who left her. We also understand more about why she's so jealous of Gigi as she is still in love with her ex (Gigi's boyfriend). And we get a lot more insight into Bette's addiction too and how she struggles with drugs.

In fact, I think this book has more psychological insight for all the narrators--especially June. 

And, of course, it's a hugely diverse book in terms of race and disability/chronic illness. 

The only 'negative' I have about it (and I had to think hard about this one!) is the male characters, mainly the male ballet dancers. Because the female ballet dancers' personalities were so strong and so well developed, they felt flatter in comparison. I did catch myself skimming over scenes with Alec and Will, at times, purely because I wanted to get to the 'heart' of the novel where it was about the backstabbing girls pretty much plotting to murder each other.

But this has to be one of my top reads.

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Review: TINY PRETTY THINGS by Sona Charaipotra and Dhonielle Clayton

 

Tiny Pretty Things by Sona Charaipotra
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Now a Netflix TV show!

Black Swan meets Pretty Little Liars in this soapy, drama-packed novel featuring diverse characters who will do anything to be the prima at their elite ballet school.

From the New York Times-bestselling author of The Belles, Dhonielle Clayton, and the author of the highly anticipated Symptoms of a Heartbreak, Sona Charaipotra.

Gigi, Bette, and June, three top students at an exclusive Manhattan ballet school, have seen their fair share of drama. Free-spirited new girl Gigi just wants to dance—but the very act might kill her. Privileged New Yorker Bette's desire to escape the shadow of her ballet-star sister brings out a dangerous edge in her. And perfectionist June needs to land a lead role this year or her controlling mother will put an end to her dancing dreams forever.

When every dancer is both friend and foe, the girls will sacrifice, manipulate, and backstab to be the best of the best.

Don’t miss the gossip, lies, and scandal that continues in Tiny Pretty Things’ gripping sequel, Shiny Broken Pieces!

----

I read this book after having seen the Netflix series--albeit I'd bought the book before the TV series came out--and there's something really addictive about it. Usually, I end up liking either the book or the adaptation more--but it wasn't the case with this. I think I liked them both equally, even though they're quite different in terms of plot and character.

I couldn't stop reading this book, and it was one of those that I really wanted to savour. For a start, it's about ballet dancers and I don't know why, but I just can't get enough of ballet fiction at the moment. There's something so enticing about it.

Tiny Pretty Things is a dark book, and though it's about petty teen drama at a lot times, it also covers quite a lot of difficult themes: eating disorders, mental illness, bullying, assault, violence. And all of these things are covered so expertly and sensitivity. And I did I mention it's got perhaps the most diverse cast I've ever read? Of it's three narrators, Gigi is Black and June is Korean. Oh and Gigi has a chronic illness too. And I just loved that rep, as a chronically ill person myself.

Going back to the three narrators, too--each narrator felt like she had equal importance in the story. It was well balanced and the structure really worked. Not to mention that the narrative voices of each POV character were different as well, so that was really amazing.

At its heart, this is a book about the toxic competitive natures of teen ballet girls and what they'll do to succeed (a theme which is taken even further in the sequel which I read straight after this and am about to review too). But here's also a fair amount of romance for two out of the three narrators, and there are some touching moments of friendship and family too.

And there are unreliable narrators! Which I LOVED.

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Review: MY DARK VANESSA by Kate Elizabeth Russell

 

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Exploring the psychological dynamics of the relationship between a precocious yet naïve teenage girl and her magnetic and manipulative teacher, a brilliant, all-consuming read that marks the explosive debut of an extraordinary new writer.

2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher.

2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager—and who professed to worship only her—may be far different from what she has always believed?

Alternating between Vanessa’s present and her past, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield. Thought-provoking and impossible to put down, this is a masterful portrayal of troubled adolescence and its repercussions that raises vital questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood. Written with the haunting intimacy of The Girls and the creeping intensity of Room, My Dark Vanessa is an era-defining novel that brilliantly captures and reflects the shifting cultural mores transforming our relationships and society itself.

-- 
Oh my goodness. This book is dark. It is intense. It's amazing. And it's such an important read.

Content warning for sexual abuse, sexual assault, child sexual abuse, and grooming.

So I listened to the audiobook of this one, and I was just overwhelmed. I think that's the best way to describe my reaction. I found it difficult to listen to--and several times I had to stop when the story just became too much. It felt too real, and the rape scenes were very graphic. It made me feel sick, and as someone who's experienced sexual violence, this book just hit too close to home several times.

But I couldn't leave the book alone for long. I always had to know what happened next. I had to know if Vanessa would realise that she had been abused, and I had to know if her abuser would pay. But I think it was the first of those reasons--needing to see if Vanessa would or could understand what had happened to her was wrong--was what really drove the story. Because for a lot of the book, the relationship she had with her teacher was romanticised. And it was romanticised a lot. It's skillfully written, because as an adult reader, I could see what it was: a predatory, abusive relationship, even though for a long time, the main character can't see this. And I think what really helped was that we get pretty much duel timelines. We see her as an adult looking back (albeit she still isn't accepting that it was wrong, still believing her relationship with the man to be different, even as he is now facing accusations of abusing other girls at the school). And because we get these different perspectives--adult Vanessa as well as teenage/child Vanessa--that's what really makes this story a masterpiece.

We see the effects of this abuse on Vanessa as an adult, even though she's still struggling to see it for what it was. We see her going to therapists and struggling to hold relationships with others, both romantic and familial. We see the effects of the abuse on her relationship with her parents, both at the time when she was a fifteen-year-old and now as an adult. But we also see the the changing attitudes toward sexual assault and child sexual abuse and grooming in the book.

As a child, Vanessa takes the blame for it all when others find out about her relationship with the teacher. The fact that the teacher actually coerced her into taking the blame, really manipulating her, set me teeth on edge as I was reading, and I felt so, so angry.

But we do see how attitudes are changing in the book--as an adult, and when others have come forward about this teaching abusing them, Vanessa is starting to accept what happened to her was abuse and we see others supporting her.

There wasn't really a sense of justice though, (spoiler ahead), as the predatory teacher takes his own life about halfway through the adult timeline of the book, which does lead to Vanessa having to deal with guilt over this as well. While I desperately wanted there to be justice, I can't deny that that wouldn't have been right for the story that the author was telling here. She was focusing on Vanessa and showing what does happen.

This book is dark, probably the darkest thing I've ever read. It's disturbing. There's no denying it. I think that's why I wouldn't necessarily say I 'enjoyed' this book. It was emotionally draining. But it was so, so good. Really well written. And it's an important book that needs to be read.

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Review: FRIEND REQUEST by Laura Marshall

 

Friend Request by Laura Marshall
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

1989. When Louise first notices the new girl who has mysteriously transferred late into their senior year, Maria seems to be everything the girls Louise hangs out with aren't. Authentic. Funny. Brash. Within just a few days, Maria and Louise are on their way to becoming fast friends.

2016. Louise receives a heart-stopping email: Maria Weston wants to be friends on Facebook. Long-buried memories quickly rise to the surface: those first days of their budding friendship; cruel decisions made and dark secrets kept; the night that would change all their lives forever.

Louise has always known that if the truth ever came out, she could stand to lose everything. Her job. Her son. Her freedom. Maria's sudden reappearance threatens it all, and forces Louise to reconnect with everyone she'd severed ties with to escape the past. But as she tries to piece together exactly what happened that night, Louise discovers there's more to the story than she ever knew. To keep her secret, Louise must first uncover the whole truth, before what's known to Maria--or whoever's pretending to be her--is known to all.

--

Oh, this book! So, when I first started reading it, I found the opening a bit slow. It was a take-it-or-leave-it book for me for a while, but then the pacing suddenly picked up and I couldn't read it quickly enough.

Louise has a secret. She was involved in the murder of her former friend Maria, at high school. Now she's an adult and a mother, and suddenly she's receiving messages from someone who's supposedly Maria. Louise panics and goes to see Sophie, the ring-leader of the bullies at school (the one who made Louise bully Maria). As an adult, Sophie is calmer and seems less mean and insecure--she was a classic bully at school--and Sophie has also been receiving messages from 'Maria'. And when they both go to a high school reunion, things get out of hand.

The story alternates between the present day and the characters' school years. The teenage girls in this are written so very well--the bullying seems so real and authentic, and the author really captures just how mean teen girls can be.

There are twists throughout this book, and barring the beginning, the pacing is good. This was one of those books where I could not work out who the real murderer was... every time I thought I knew, I was thrown off a little. And when we had the reveal at the end, I just couldn't read fast enough.

The identity of the person behind 'Maria' was a little bit of a let-down if I'm honest as that character didn't really have much page-time earlier in the book. But the reveal of the murderer was so good. Really gripping writing. 

Trigger warning for rape.  

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Review: ALL YOUR TWISTED SECRETS by Diana Urban

 

All Your Twisted Secrets by Diana Urban
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This thrilling debut, reminiscent of new fan favorites like One of Us Is Lying and the beloved classics by Agatha Christie, will leave readers guessing until the explosive ending.

Welcome to dinner, and again, congratulations on being selected. Now you must do the selecting.

What do the queen bee, star athlete, valedictorian, stoner, loner, and music geek all have in common? They were all invited to a scholarship dinner, only to discover it’s a trap. Someone has locked them into a room with a bomb, a syringe filled with poison, and a note saying they have an hour to pick someone to kill … or else everyone dies.

Amber Prescott is determined to get her classmates and herself out of the room alive, but that might be easier said than done. No one knows how they’re all connected or who would want them dead. As they retrace the events over the past year that might have triggered their captor’s ultimatum, it becomes clear that everyone is hiding something. And with the clock ticking down, confusion turns into fear, and fear morphs into panic as they race to answer the biggest question: Who will they choose to die?

------

I already know this is going to be one of my top reads of 2021. It's PHENOMENAL.

I love locked room mysteries. And I love escape room mysteries. I love stories about friendships--especially when those friendships turn bad. I love unlikeable female characters. I love unreliable narrators. And I love alternating timelines. This book has it all. I mean, I was almost afraid that it wouldn't live up to my expectations, but this book is phenomenal. Truly spectacular.

The book starts with Amber invited to a restaurant to meet the mayor, as she's got a scholarship. Also invited are her boyfriend Robbie, her former best friend Priya, her current friend Sasha, the school drug-dealer Scott, and Diego, who is the boy Amber now likes. When the six get to the restaurant, they're trapped. The door locks, and they can't get out. Then Amber discovers a bomb with a one-hour countdown and a syringe. Instructions tell them that the syringe contains poison and they must choose one person to die before the hour's up, else the bomb will kill them all. Cue: panic.

But how amazing is this set up? So, the narrative alternates between them in this one-hour countdown as they panic and try to think of ways out, and scenes from the last year or so. We get to know the characters, and gradually the past scenes reveal huge secrets--secrets that are then brought up in the current timeline as the characters turn on each other, as they try to work out who to die.

And this is where we see that all these characters are complex. They've all got secrets, all got flaws--it's amazing writing.

The next part of my review contains spoilers, so be warned!

Amber is our main character. She's hugely talented with music and she's also still grieving over her older sister's death. Maggie took her own life after being bullied for about a year by an unknown girl.

Sasha is the queen bee of the school. We see her befriend Amber, and readers can immediately tell that Sasha is using Amber. But Amber can't see this at the time, and it was infuriating! We could see exactly what was going on. But in the present timeline, Amber's very aware of who Sasha really is--but she doesn't expect for more secrets to be revealed in the bomb's countdown, namely that Sasha is the girl who bullied Maggie, causing Maggie to commit suicide.

Priya is Amber's former best friend. She was also initiated into Sasha's popular group when Sasha befriended Amber, but Sasha bullied Priya too in the same way she'd already bullied Maggie (and she knew what happened to Maggie, too). The bullying in this storyline culminates in Priya having her front teeth knocked out and Sasha sharing a video of it to the whole school. Priya then drops Sasha as a friend, and also Amber.

Next we have Robbie. He's Sasha's best friend and becomes Amber's boyfriend. He's a nice enough guy--until he believes that his dreams and ambitions are more important than Amber's. Then he becomes a bit of dick.

Diego is Amber's friend from when she was a child. The two fell out after Diego invented a colour-changing sponge and Diego's father resigned from Amber's father's business, causing it to fold. Diego is also extremely intelligent, and we see how Sasha is in direct competition with him for getting into Harvard. Sasha does her best to sabotage Diego at every opportunity, no matter the consequence.

And last is Scott. He's the stoner of the school, and he at first seems out of place being invited to the restaurant--it's believable to Amber that all the others have been invited there to celebrate their scholarships, but not Scott.

So, this is the set-up. (And even more spoilers ahead now). As the hour passes, the characters turn on each other and several get injured. When trying to break the windows to escape, Scott falls and breaks his ankle. Priya is hypoglycemic and passes out at one point, but Diego revives her.

The writing is so good that I kept working out what I'd do if I was in this situation. Faking a death seemed like an obvious thing to do, but it took the characters a long time to decide to do this.

And as the time is running out and they're all convinced they have to kill someone, Amber manages to turn everyone against Sasha so she is the one who gets injected with the syringe of poison.

At which point, they discover that the poison isn't real! I mean, to be honest, I was thinking that would have to happen. But Sasha, still alive, turns on the others. She attacks Amber, and she tries to kill her. Amber is saved by Priya, who stabs Sasha with a shard of glass from the window in self-defense. And Sasha dies.

And at this point, my eyes were so wide as I was reading (well, listening, as I had the audiobook, which has fantastic narration!). They'd literally killed one of the group. And still the bomb was counting down.

When the time runs out, and they're all alive, it's so tense. They hear footsteps and this was the part where I really had no idea who had orchestrated all this--which, I must admit, is unusual. I read a lot of YA thrillers and usually have some sort of idea. But I was flummoxed. And it's a delivery driver who lets them out. He's been instructed to deliver a cake to the room with a message telling them that they now know who each other are.

This writing--it's just so amazing. Tense. I was on the edge of my seat. (I actually had to stop listening at this point, as I had to get off the bus, and I was desperate to keep listening!).

And then we have the timeline going to four hours ago--and we get the huge reveal. Amber set all this up!!!! So, I didn't see it coming--even though one of the past scenes ends with Amber wanting to get revenge on Sasha. But I trusted Amber as she's our first person narrator. I believed her when she said she didn't know what was going on.

But then the pieces started to slot into place. Amber was the one who found the bomb in the room. All the people in the room were connected most strongly to Amber. And this is a story of revenge. It's a story of Amber wanting to teach Sasha a lesson--it wasn't supposed to end up with murder, but it did. It's Priya getting revenge on Sasha for the bullying--though Priya only stabs Sasha to stop her killing Amber. It's just...wow. That reveal--that Amber was behind it all--changed my whole view on her. I didn't know what to think anymore. I was totally blown away. Absolutely blown away. And it made Amber unlikeable. She was going to get away what was basically murder--even if she'd not intended to kill. But then Amber feels guilt. She goes to turn herself in, and is stopped by Priya and Diego.

It really is a story about the power of friendship and how toxic teenagers can be. It's a story of cold, calculated revenge. A story of secrets being revealed and the lengths that people will go to in order to keep them.

Highly recommended.

There are lot of trigger warnings for this book: suicide, drugs, bullying, abuse, implied school shooting at one point, potential for eating disorder survivors to be triggered by some of the bullying language used toward Priya.

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Review: LIES LIKE POISON by Chelsea Pitcher

 

Lies Like Poison by Chelsea Pitcher
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Poppy, Lily, and Belladonna would do anything to protect their best friend, Raven. So when they discovered he was suffering abuse at the hands of his stepmother, they came up with a lethal plan: petals of poppy, belladonna, and lily in her evening tea so she’d never be able to hurt Raven again. But someone got cold feet, the plot faded to a secret of the past, and the group fell apart.

Three years later, on the eve of Raven’s seventeenth birthday, his stepmother turns up dead. But it’s only belladonna found in her tea, and it’s only Belladonna who’s carted off to jail. Desperate for help, Belle reaches out to her estranged friends to prove her innocence. They answer the call, but no one is prepared for what comes next.

Now, everyone has something to lose and something equally dangerous to hide. And when the tangled web of secrets and betrayal is finally unwound, what lies at its heart will change the group forever

--

So, when I was first getting into audiobooks, I was browsing YA thrillers on audible and I came across this one--instantly, I was hooked. I downloaded it immediately--along with a few others--and then I had technology problems and couldn't access my audiobooks! Oh no! Eventually, I sorted it out, but I'd forgotten which book this one was. All I remembered was the main characters shared names with flowers and there was murder, and I was desperately trying to work out which book it was.

So, a few months later, when I'd finished my most recent listen and clicked randomly onto this title (my audible app doesn't show book descriptions), I was delighted to realise IT WAS THIS BOOK! And this book is incredible.

Complex female characters? Yes. Complex male characters? Yes. Complex transitioning characters? Yes. LGBT relationships? Strong character voices and narrative writing? Yes. Beautiful imagery? Yes. And a plot that just grabs you right away? Yes.

THIS BOOK WAS AMAZING! It's haunting and breathtaking and I could not stop listening to it. Chelsea Pitcher is now one of my favourite YA writers ever. And I must give a shoutout to the narrators too: Emmett Grosland, Emily Ellet, Amanda Dolan, and Kevin Free.

The book is told via multiple narrators and across multiple timelines. When the characters were little, Poppy, Belladonna, and Lily planned to poison Raven's evil step-mother--shortly after the murder of Raven's mother. They didn't do it. Now, the characters are 17, and Raven's just returned from the boarding school is father sent him to, to find out his step mother actually has been murdered and Belladonna's been arrested. The 'recipe' for murder that they came up with as children as apparently now been followed. Jack (previously named Poppy--and the book follows his transition) is desperate to clear Belladonna's name and ropes in Lily and Raven to help.

And this book is just so delicious. All the characters are so 3D. Lily's dark and sinister, suffering an eating disorder due to her mother's abuse. Belladonna is obsessed with fairytales--dark tales--having been adopted by a man who locked her up at night after his biological daughter was abducted. Jack has secrets of his own--from the clothes he burned on the night of Raven's step-mother's murder to his preference to be called 'Jack' and using him/his pronouns. And Raven--well, Raven is the character that haunted me the most. There's something eerie about him, namely stemming from the scene we're shown early on where as children all the characters were playing at fairy tales and he was lying 'dead' in a coffin.

So who did the murder?

Well, I must confess that I did realise who the murderer of the step-mother was quite early on. Not because all clues pointed to that person, but through process of deduction I realised it couldn't be anyone else. What I didn't expect was to find out the identity of the murderer of Raven's real mother too. That was edge-of-your-seat-stuff.

The only thing that bugged me a bit about this book was how when we're halfway through, we suddenly are introduced to narration by Raven as well. Up until that point, the narration had been told by Jack, Lily, and Belladonna only--so I did find it a little jarring.

But this is an amazing YA thriller! It's just so atmospheric and haunting and I loved it so much.

Content warnings for: abuse, eating disorders, suicidal talk.



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Review: A DANGER TO HERSELF AND OTHERS by Alyssa B. Sheinmel

 

A Danger to Herself and Others by Alyssa B. Sheinmel
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Only when she’s locked away does the truth begin to escape…

Four walls. One window. No way to escape. Hannah knows there's been a mistake. She didn't need to be institutionalized. What happened to her roommate at her summer program was an accident. As soon as the doctors and judge figure out that she isn't a danger to herself or others, she can go home to start her senior year. In the meantime, she is going to use her persuasive skills to get the staff on her side.

Then Lucy arrives. Lucy has her own baggage. And she may be the only person who can get Hannah to confront the dangerous games and secrets that landed her in confinement in the first place.

---

AMAZING. Seriously, that's the only way to describe this book. It is truly amazing.

In the opening pages, we meet Hannah Gold. She's a confident and likeable narrator, and she's just been institutionalised. But she tells us not to worry. It's just a mistake, her being there. It's because Agnes, her best friend and roommate at summer school, is in a coma with brain damage, and Agnes's parents mistakenly believe that Hannah was involved. But as soon as Agnes wakes up or her parents talk to Jonah, Agnes's boyfriend, Hannah's name will be cleared and she'll be back out in the real world.

The writing in this book is just so compelling. I was sucked in right away, completely on Hannah's side. We're given little snippets of info at the right time to keep us reading--this is one of the best books I've read for pacing--and we gradually begin to piece together a picture of what happened to Agnes that's led a psychiatrist to believe Hannah is a danger to herself and others. Indeed, being a danger to herself and others--those exact words--becomes a motif in this book as we learn Hannah is more than a little obsessed with it. But, still, we're thinking that's fair enough. And if I was in that situation, I don't think I'd be as calm as Hannah. She's handling it all well.

Now, the rest of this review will contain spoilers--because I have to talk about these twists. THEY ARE AMAZING.

So, Hannah gets a roommate, Lucy. Lucy is a ballerina who has an eating disorder and a dark secret--she wanted to hurt one of her rival ballerinas. She wanted to push her, take away her dancing ability. And it's when Hannah meets Lucy that we begin to suspect that Hannah isn't quite as level-headed as she lets on. She becomes obsessed with Lucy, wanting to be her best friend (giving Lucy no choice) as she believes if the doctor sees how she's best friends with Lucy, they'll know she's not a danger to herself and others--and then she'll be out.

Hannah's having therapy sessions throughout the novel with Dr. Lightfoot (not the real name, named by Hannah because the doctor wears ballet slippers), and in those sessions, we see Hannah open up more and more. She is a very complex character, and we learn of her childhood, seeing the pivotal moments that shaped her into this arrogant and intelligent character: her parents took her to grown-up meetings, left her in hotel rooms, made her eat oysters as a child. And she was rewarded for acting like a grown up. She wasn't allowed to be a child.

Hannah, at the summer school, also had an affair with Jonah--the guy we are told is Agnes's boyfriend. But then we get the twists. Neither Jonah or Lucy are real. I was gobsmacked at this reveal, but they're both hallucinations. And oh my goodness, I could not stop reading this book at this point (and I'd been so addicted to it before).

I've had hallucinations myself, and this really just 'got' me. Especially how we see Hannah in denial about this--insisting her friends are real--and then coming to terms to it. She then frets about how can she know if anything at all is real? She doubts all her memories, and I just loved this. It reflected exactly my own thought processes.

We never find out the diagnosis that Hannah has--and I think that really worked in this book. Instead, we see her at the hearing as she's cleared of being the cause of Agnes's accident, and we see her leaving the hospital once she's medicated. We see her moments of doubt, her delusions, and we also meet her parents. And wow, that characterisation is incredible. The parents are so cold and calculating that I desperately wanted Hannah to go back to the hospital where Dr Lightfoot was. Because she cared more for Hannah than her own parents did. And that was heartbreaking.

This is just an incredible book. Highly recommended.


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Review: I KILLED ZOE SPANOS by Kit Frick

 

I Killed Zoe Spanos by Kit Frick
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This gripping thriller follows two teens whose lives become inextricably linked when one confesses to murder and the other becomes determined to uncover the real truth no matter the cost.

What happened to Zoe won't stay buried...

When Anna Cicconi arrives to the small Hamptons village of Herron Mills for a summer nanny gig, she has high hopes for a fresh start. What she finds instead is a community on edge after the disappearance of Zoe Spanos, a local girl who has been missing since New Year's Eve. Anna bears an eerie resemblance to Zoe, and her mere presence in town stirs up still-raw feelings about the unsolved case. As Anna delves deeper into the mystery, stepping further and further into Zoe's life, she becomes increasingly convinced that she and Zoe are connected--and that she knows what happened to her.

Two months later, Zoe's body is found in a nearby lake, and Anna is charged with manslaughter. But Anna's confession is riddled with holes, and Martina Green, teen host of the Missing Zoe podcast, isn't satisfied. Did Anna really kill Zoe? And if not, can Martina's podcast uncover the truth?

--

This book has been on my radar for a while, ever since YA Thriller Con 2020, when Kit Frick was on one of the panels. Recently, I've been listening to audiobooks, and for my second audiobook I decided to go with I KILLED ZOE SPANOS. And, right away, I was gripped.

This book has a lot of things in it that I love in a YA thriller: unreliable narrators; mixed media (part of the book is told via a Podcast series, and we've also got police interviews too); multiple narrators; a missing teen girl; and an examination of memory and identity.

So, Anna has just moved to a new town for a summer nanny job. There, she learns she looks like missing teen, Zoe Spanos. She meets Zoe's sister, her friends, and her boyfriend Cayden. But what really makes this book twisty is that we open with a police investigation where Anna is admitting to killing Zoe. This is someone that we believe, from reading Anna's own narrative (it goes back and forth between now--when Anna has been arrested--and before, when Anna has just arrived) who hasn't met Zoe, as Zoe disappeared before Anna arrived in town. Yet, it's so twisty. We're immediately questioning the reliability of the narrator, and I LOVED that.

And we then get Martina's podcast too, telling us of all these other theories as to what happened to Zoe. Martina is the best friend of Zoe's sister, Aster, and it's through Martina's investigation for her podcast that we learn that Anna has been pressured into giving a false confession. And this is just one of those books where all the time, I had no idea who had actually killed Zoe. Every time I thought I knew, something else happened that proved me wrong.

I did guess one of the twists. Spoilers ahead: I realised pretty early on that Anna was most likely a half-sister of Zoe.

I'll confess, I found the actual reveal of who killed Zoe to be a bit of a let-down, but only at first--I felt as if this character wasn't really in the first half of the book enough for her to be a genuine suspect. But once we had the reveal, she did play much more of an important part in the narrative, even having her own POV.

Overall, this is a great twisty YA thriller (and with great narration for the audiobook),

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Review: ALLEGEDLY by Tiffany D. Jackson

 

Allegedly by Tiffany D. Jackson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Mary B. Addison killed a baby.

Allegedly. She didn’t say much in that first interview with detectives, and the media filled in the only blanks that mattered: A white baby had died while under the care of a churchgoing black woman and her nine-year-old daughter. The public convicted Mary and the jury made it official. But did she do it? She wouldn’t say.

Mary survived six years in baby jail before being dumped in a group home. The house isn’t really “home”—no place where you fear for your life can be considered a home. Home is Ted, who she meets on assignment at a nursing home.

There wasn’t a point to setting the record straight before, but now she’s got Ted—and their unborn child—to think about. When the state threatens to take her baby, Mary must find the voice to fight her past. And her fate lies in the hands of the one person she distrusts the most: her Momma. No one knows the real Momma. But who really knows the real Mary?


--


Allegedly is the third book by Tiffany D. Jackson that I've read, though it was her first published, and I know this is going to be a book that stays with me for a long time.

This book tells the story of a Mary, a Black girl who allegedly killed a white baby when she was nine years old. She's now 16, pregnant, in a group home, and fighting to find a way to keep her baby and clear her name. And it's... ahh, I just haven't got the words. This is a book that is dark and gritty, it's disturbing and emotional. And I was rooting for Mary the whole way...

But the ending--okay, so there's a HUGE twist (and I should've anticipated that, given Jackson wrote this). And the twist completely changes the whole story--like, literally you're in the final chapter and you learn something that means you view the whole of the rest of the book differently. And I can't decide whether I liked that twist. I mean, it was shocking and impactful, but with us only having one chapter for this twist, it made the ending feel a little rushed. I'd have liked a couple more chapters to really smooth it out and delve deeper into the implications of this twist. (A twist that I did not see coming whatsoever--and it's so hard to write about this without giving spoilers!)

Mary is a complex character. We feel her pain and desperation. She's realistic and so well written. In fact, all the characters are. But it's only once you get deep into the novel that you begin to realise just how unreliable Mary is as a narrator--yet the whole time I was willing her not to be the classic unreliable narrator. It really is such good writing.

And the twist at the end really changes the way you view Mary's mother--and both 'versions' of the mother are so believable. And that's just a sign of such fantastic writing.

I found this book addictive. I could not stop reading it. It also employs some excellent narrative devices to show other sides of the story. While Mary narrates the main narrative, we have snippets of police interviews, excerpts from books that others have written about the Mary B. Addison case, and interviews with Mary's mother and the mother of Alyssa, the baby who Mary allegedly murdered. 

It's a difficult book to read. Obviously, it deals with the murder of a baby. You've also got references to child abuse and rape, as well as a lot of discourse on racism. It is such an important read, I cannot stress that enough. But I do think I prefer Jackson's later books (which also deal with unreliable narrators and racism). Still, this is a highly recommended read.

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