The Furies by Mark Alpert

Note: The Furies was an Advanced Reader Copy I received from NetGalley in exchange for a review.

I found the premise of this book to be very interesting which is the very reason why I requested it from NetGalley. The blurb explained that there are a set of people called Furies who, once upon a time, were called witches and were burned at the stake, etc. but instead of really having magical powers or anything there is actually just a genetic mutation that sets them apart from “regular” humans. Sounds interesting and unique, right?

The prologue started off strong in 1645 England with a woman named Elizabeth Fury hiding from the men who was on a witch hunt for her. It was clear from the start that the focus would be on the power of the women because she notes that she fears for her daughters and her sisters. I was excited to see how powerful these women really were.

But then the story switched over to modern day times where a man named John Rogers and a woman named Ariel in a bar and the two eventually become immersed in what kind of appears to be a gang war. At this point I figured the author was just trying to build up anticipation for the “big reveal” (aka the link between the part of the story set in 1645 and the modern day one). And of course a little bit of anticipation was a good thing but other than a strange anomaly with Ariel’s tooth there wasn’t even a hint of what the reveal as until I got 28% into the book. By that point I almost didn’t care anymore.

The major issue I had with the whole genetic mutation thing was in how it was handled. In the prologue Elizabeth made it very clear that she knew her fellow villagers cried “witch” whenever something was off and that she knew exactly how she was “special” and “different.” Then why in the world would she have risked living so close to town for over twenty years? Why wouldn’t she have done the logical thing and kept the family moving or better hidden? There had to have been a way to do that.

Then once we learn more about the why the Fury women are so special I was confused (because first of all it really wasn’t even that big of a deal, it wasn’t even remotely “magical” just very convenient.) You want to stay hidden but you still send people out to get pregnant and further the family to the point where it’s getting ridiculously difficult to hide? At this point I’d think it far more likely for the family to have split up into different smaller colonies all around the world or for them to have come out into the open and have the Fury women basically running the whole damn world.

Now let me touch on the characters a bit. We have Ariel the researcher who wants the answers to everything but won’t give answers to anyone else. She doesn’t make any sense at all but is one of the of the only people with a motivation that I could even remotely empathize with, i.e. wanting to know exactly what she was dealing with before proceeding with the experiments. Then we had John Rogers who from the get go had a sad past and wouldn’t let the reader forget it. Yes his past was sad but all I got out of it was that the reason he hangs onto Ariel through thick and thin is because he was attracted to her and then they are thrown into a situation where he feels he needs to save/protect her. Yeah, that’s a good reason for a love story.

And the antagonist Sullivan. Oh dear. He’s about as stupid as they come. I can understand how the men in this Fury family feel like they’ve gotten the shaft. But he’s all upset because Ariel wants to research a formula instead of just injecting it all willy nilly. Really, that’s his whole motivation. He wants to be more like the women and thinks the women are being all selfish when basically they’re just trying to make sure that one: they don’t cause harm with their experiments and two: that they don’t expose the Fury family. Basically his motivation is that he doesn’t understand common sense. Oh and he likes to torture people.

There are just so many things that were wrong with this story: the characters motivations, the lack of common sense, the pacing (it took nearly 30% of the book to reach the big reveal and less than 10% to reach a resolution).

All I have to say is that I find obligated to read this book since I was granted an advanced copy from NetGalley. If it wasn’t for that I would never have finished the thing.

Waterfall by Lisa T. Bergren

As an Outreach Coordinator at a library I deliver books to elderly citizens who cannot make it to the library on their own. One of the books I brought them was by Lisa Bergen and inside was an advertisement for this, The River of Time series, and the advertisement made it look interesting. A YA story about time travelling twins? Sign me up! Unfortunately my library only had the last two books so I had to wait for a few weeks while we ordered the first one and though it’s been slow going I’m glad that I did.

Waterfall, the first book in the series, starts out in modern day Italy where twins Lia and Gabi are with their archaeologist mother. But within a few chapters the twins have discovered a strange drawing in a cave and next thing you know Gabi is transported to the fourteenth century. As the story goes on the reader gets to learn more about the fourteenth century and follow Gabi as she acclimates and tries to figure out if Lia has joined her in the past.

I really did enjoy the story though for some odd reasons it took me far longer to finish than a novel of this size usually takes (maybe it was the history and maybe it was because of more personal issues, I’m not certain.)

It is true that Gabi (and Lia) are almost a little too perfect (I’m pretty sure knowing how to fence would not automatically lend you to know how to wield a broadsword well enough to actually get in a few hits on your enemies) but it was nice to see a set of girls being pretty kick ass even though they were completely out of their element. I also liked that the author didn’t shy away from some of the more awkward/everyday thoughts one would have if faced with less than modern day conveniences (chamber pots, lack of forks, etc.)

One issue I had with the book was this: from reading history I’m pretty certain that people from medieval times were very suspicious. I understand that travel wasn’t as common or as easy back then but for the Italians to just believe that customs were so different in Normandy required a bit of disbelief. “Oh you’re from Normandy so women wearing pants, learning to fight, letting their hair loose, etc makes sense.” No, I’m pretty sure they would have known if women’s rights were that advanced and they’d be suspicious of someone who behaved that way (especially once someone admits they’ve been to Normandy.)

This book is actually the first in a trilogy but it has the type of ending where it wouldn’t be entirely necessary to finish the rest but I definitely want to.

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black

According to the acknowledgements section of the back of this book “The Coldest Girl in Coldtown” is Holly Black’s first novel about vampires. The setup is very unique (at least unique from any other vampire stories that I’ve read before). In this world vampirism is almost like a virus. If a vampire fully drains a human of blood then nothing happens to the human but if the human is just bitten and left alive they are now infected. Two things can happen after the point of infection, aka “going Cold”, the human can wait out the infection for approximately 88 days or if they drink human blood they will officially turn into a blood thirsty vampire.

I liked how Black described her vampires; a mixture of the seductive myth as well as the older more gritty version. Vampires here crave blood but can learn control, can’t go out into the sun for fear of burning up, and can look utterly feral or charming. Getting turned is a sometimes brutal experience, pain mixed with pleasure, but people often seek it out so that they can be immortal.

This is one of the most logical views of vampirism I’ve read; I could see things turning out this exact same way if our current society were to discover there really are vampires among us. People know how dangerous vampires are because there are constant reports of murders and vampire hunting shows but it’s also glamorized on other channels where life is shown as an endless party. Plus I could definitely see the United States trying to handle a vampire outbreak by quarantining cities like they do in these Coldtowns.

The story starts with Tana waking up after a party which had turned into a massacre without her knowing it and the only other two people alive are her ex-boyfriend who has been infected and a chained up vampire with a very mysterious past. Tana, haunted by her mother’s death due to infection, decides to save them both. What she begins is a descent into the biggest and most famous Coldtown in America where she discovers more about the history of vampires than she’s ever seen televised before.

The characters were lively, the vampire mythos was well crafted and nothing was ever really as it seemed which was fantastic. My only question is whether or not this is a stand-alone or the beginning of a new series because it could honestly go either way. I loved it.

The Heist by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg

I saw this book when it first came into the library and I figured I'd give it a try since I enjoy Evanovich's Stephenie Plum series. And well it was refreshing to finally see a couple of strong female characters, ones who have kick ass skills and know how to use them (instead of Stephenie and Lula from Plum who are always ridiculous) it fell far from the mark I was expect.

By looking at the book flap I expected this to be less about just Kate O'Hare and more about Fox as well. After all this is clearly a start of a series which will star both of them. But all the background information, personal details, and inner monologues were all Kate. Fox was nothing but a cardboard cutout version of the sexy conman and he never really evolved. I didn't learn anything to flesh out his character but I would have liked to.

And even though the reader did learn more about Kate it didn't seem to make sense. She was set up to be a tenacious FBI agent (hell she's so bad ass that she punched out her commander when she was a Navy SEAL because he made a pass at her) and occasionally she talked about how she didn't always play by the rules. I know it was for a con and all but by the end of the book descriptions of Kate's hot body were abundant but anything kick ass she did was basically glossed over in a sentence or two. I would have liked for the focus to be on her analytical skills instead of on thoughts like "eww, he's such a pig."

I also expected this book to be a little bit more serious than the Plum novels, more high speed crime and drama. And it did get a little gritty but then the authors (I'm betting on Evanovich because of the similarities to the Plum series) they tried to insert too much humor into situations where it wasn't needed. A scene where the focus is more on a man's anatomy than how O'Hare can get out of the situation. The ending couple of paragraphs that come straight out of a fanfiction scene written by a twelve year old like "create a scene where the character's aren't doing anything dirty but everyone else thinks they are and go."

This will not be a series that I will continue because I felt it promoted itself as a more serious crime drama and it was not and because the characters were so dull and flat I just didn't care about them.

The End of Everything by Megan Abbott

This book was a hard one to choose a rating for. The prose was lyrical and lovely but the story itself put my teeth on edge. I do understand that bad things happen but every single character in this book romanticized all the bad things. I can picture the thoughts floating through their minds: “There is something off about our neighbors but they all look perfect so it doesn’t matter. He molested her but he loved her so it’s okay. He did really bad things but he saved your life once.” Not a single character seemed to be able to think more than one thing about any given situation. It was too black and white and they all tried to fit everything into their first preconceived notion about the situation.

And I remember being a teenage girl, in the scheme of things it wasn’t even really all that long ago. I was probably confused about life throughout most of those years but I was not as naïve as all of the girls in this book were portrayed. It was sickening and there was no one in the story I was rooting for. I didn’t feel for any of the characters even though they were being faced with something so horrid.

Deadly by Sara Shepard

I've read that the next book in the series is the last one and I sincerely hope that it is. The first few books were very interesting and I'm still loving the TV series but after the first arc the books have gotten ridiculous.

I still love Spencer, Aria, Hanna and Emily but the last few books have made them look like complete idiots and so did the beginning of this book. But then they finally did what I've been waiting forever for them to do: contact the police. Yeah it doesn't really help them much at first but can you imagine if they would've done that back before the baby/art theft/drunk driving/drug use? Life would have been so much simpler! But nope the girls just act like confused preteens instead.

I did like the reveal of who helper A was. It was both a surprise and something I expected so that was nice. I just hope Shepard has the girls really fight back and play it smart in the next book which is hopefully the last.

Notes From Ghost Town by Kate Ellison

This book is about Olivia, whose mother has been accused of murdering her best friend. Then she is visited by his ghost and starts to realize that her maybe her mother didn't really do it.

I have read several other YA books like this in the past few years. Books where a teen was murdered and their best friend is the one who has to figure out who really did it. And yes the mystery aspect was pretty good (I didn't suspect the real murderer until about 20 pages before Olivia did). I liked the whole addition of Olivia's mother being schizophrenic and Olivia's sudden color blindness because it made me wonder how reliable the narrator was. (Was she really seeing ghosts and going color blind or was she slowly starting to go crazy?)

So even though I've read similar stories it was an interesting read except for one small thing. It really needed a bit more editing or a different description for a few scenes. Like where Olivia lifts a piano lid but then says it had been left open ever since it had been put in storage. And that was important because when she closes it a clue fell out...which couldn't have happened if the lid had been closed and then opened. And then at the end of the chapter the piano was still open...but how is that possible if Olivia closed it and a clue fell out?

(After some research maybe the scene did make sense if the first reference was to the keyboard lid and the second was to the actual lid but to someone who has never played a piano and hasn't seen one in years that was really confusing.) That scene needed more clarification...exactly which lid was she opening/closing each time? But if that wasn't continuity there was at least one, if not more, instances of it.

So all in all it was a good book and kept my attention but I think it could have used another proofreader or at least have some clarification for that confusing piano scene.

Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare

I actually really liked this book but it lost a star for a few reasons. First of all,every main character ends up with a love interest and basically a happily ever after. And the fact that Tessa managed oh so tragic happy endings with both the men in her life. I mean I did spend the majority of the books flipping back and forth as to who I thought she should end up with, Will or Jem, but damn I thought it was a cop out for her to get a chance with both of them.  I'm all for happy endings but in a world full of people who spent their lives fighting demons it doesn't make sense that every single couple ended up growing old and having children. Shouldn't someone have died young or been injured so badly they were unable to have children?

I did like how although Tessa fell for Mortmain's lies, allowing herself to change into his father (really, how did she not realize that would end badly?) she was able to be the one to hand out the killing blow when the time came. I'd been hoping that would happen since the beginning.

I was also pleasantly surprised when there was still about 15% of the book left after they defeated the Clockwork army. I was expecting that to pretty much be the end of it but nope, the reader learned a little bit about what happened to everyone afterwards even Magnus's journeys. So that was a nice wrap up and I didn't feel like I was left hanging.

So even though there were a few parts I was nitpicky about all in all I thought it was a pretty strong ending to a beautifully written series.

Plum Spooky by Janet Evanovich

Just like the rest of the Plum books there was a formula here only with the addition of the supernatural Diesel. And although the supernatural elements were still there (people "poofing" in and out of places and some other magical powers) there weren't as over down and distracting as all the others have been which was good since this Between the Plums novel was actually more like a novel instead of a novellete like the others.

Now for the good. Stephanie admitted that she was a dumb ass with no self defense skills (but at least she managed to kick a few guys in the junk so that's progress). Admitting your problems is a step in the right direction, right? Please let it be Evanovich! Oh and the monkey was kind of funny.

The bad. Come on Stephanie learn some damn defense skills! And have a discussion with Morelli about your relationship! I hate how flippy floppy she is. If Morelli had chicks sleeping in his bed or kissing his head she'd have a fit. Stop having double standards.

For now I'll continue with this series but I have to remember not to read several of them in a row; the similarities are waaay too obvious when I do.