Book Review: The Secret History of Us

The Secret History of Us by Jessi Kirby

Released: August 1, 2017

Read: July 2017

Publisher: HarperTeen

Format: ARC, 288 pages

Series: Stand-alone

Description on Goodreads:

    Olivia wakes up to realize she doesn’t remember. Not just the accident—but anything from the last four years. Not high school. Not Matt, the guy who is apparently her boyfriend. Not the reason she and Jules are no longer friends. Nothing.

    That’s when it hits her—the accident may not have taken her life, but it took something just as vital: her memory. The harder she tires to remember things, the foggier everything gets, and figuring out who she is feels impossible when everyone keeps telling her who she was.

    But then there’s Walker. The guy who saved her. The one who broke her ribs pumping life back into her lungs. The hardened boy who keeps his distance despite Olivia’s attempts to thank him.

    With her feelings growing for Walker, tensions rising with Matt, and secrets she can’t help but feel are being kept from her, Olivia must find her place in a life she doesn’t even remember living.

Review:

    The Secret History of Us is your generic I-lost-part-of-my-memory-and-now-things-have-changed type of novel. It was a good read, but just that. It wasn't very exciting; it lacked the drive that makes you want to finish the book. I stayed until the end though, thinking that maybe, just MAYBE the plot might pick up a bit or something might pique my interest. No such luck. The ending was satisfying and decent enough, I just wish there was something more. Maybe a bigger, more extravagant plot twist, or a more in-depth examination of the accident.

Favourite Quotes:

• "Look down into the water below. It's calm. Slick and dark on the surface, giving nothing away. No indication of what happened here. It's been forgotten already. The memory of it washed away with the ebb and flow of the tides, and carried out to the open ocean to be let go."
• "Pay attention to your attention."

Rating: 4/10

Recommended if you like: memory-loss novels, contemporaries

Keep flipping pages,

Lauren

Blog Tour: But Then I Came Back

Hey Everyone!

To honour the release of But Then I Came Back by Estelle Laure, Raincoast decided to host a blog tour! Below is a review and rating of the book and a Q&A with the author. I hope you find it as interesting as I did!

Review: 
    But Then I Came Back begins swiftly and immediately leads into the events preceding the accident. During these events, you get a brief backstory of Eden's character, her problems, and her family. Knowing these details really helped me to visualize the story. It made the whole book more realistic. Eden had a life before the incident, her story, her entire existence, didn't just suddenly start the second she slipped into a coma. She didn't know in advance that she was going to be harmed, so she continued on dealing with her everyday problems until the last moment. 
    AND THEN... THE COMA. Estelle Laure wrote exactly what I thought being in a coma would be like, minus the whole Jasmine situation. I imagined an alternate universe where everything resembles your normal life, but something is off. Maybe everyones' faces are distorted, or random events take place that make absolutely no sense, or, in this case, flowers appear randomly all the time. I was so impressed and happy to read all about it. It was just so incredibly bizarre.
    I was also incredibly excited that the novel didn't centre around the romance. I mean, I enjoyed the scenes with Eden and Joe, but I was more interested in the plot line with Jasmine, and how Eden was recovering from her coma. This got an A+ in my book. My favourite part about Eden's therapy was probably how she treated the whole situation. She would give sassy responses to her doctors and therapist but still treated them like old friends. It was hilarious viewing these scenes through her eyes.
    Overall, I would 100% recommend this book. It deals with tough issues but presents them well, and still adds lighter tones and comedic scenes. It shows you that even when things look bleak, they will get better.

Rating: 8/10

Q: Have you yourself endured such a traumatic experience? What led you to this idea?

A: I personally have not been in a coma or had a major accident I needed to recover from. A really close friend of mine committed suicide as I was working on this. I had been writing a story about love and romance and suddenly I couldn’t do it. My life was consumed by questions of life and death and suicide and why we make the choice to live or die on a daily basis. The story unfurled pretty organically from there once I gave in to the subject matter.

That's all for today! Want to read more Q&A's with Estelle Laure? Check out the following blogs in the next couple of days!

Lauren,
at the Autumn Bookshelf

Book Review: Things I Should Have Known

 Things I Should Have Known
by Claire LaZebnik

Released: March 28th, 2017

Read: January 2017

Publisher: HMH Books For Young Readers

Format: ARC, 311 pages
Series: n/a

Description from Goodreads: From the author of Epic Fail comes the story of Chloe Mitchell, a Los Angeles girl on a quest to find love for her autistic sister, Ivy. Ethan, from Ivy’s class, seems like the perfect match. It’s unfortunate that his older brother, David, is one of Chloe’s least favorite people, but Chloe can deal, especially when she realizes that David is just as devoted to Ethan as she is to Ivy.
   Uncommonly honest and refreshingly funny, this is a story about sisterhood, autism, and first love. Chloe, Ivy, David, and Ethan, who form a quirky and lovable circle, will steal readers’ hearts and remind us all that it’s okay to be a different kind of normal.

Review: I almost didn't read this book, because contemporaries aren't really my kind of books, but because of Marianne's cupcake, here we are. And I am so glad! This book was great!
   This book was full of growing up. Everyone changes and understand themselves a bit better by the end, everything is closed up neatly, nicely and not too quickly.
   I'm also such a sucker for simple romances that are the backdrop for larger plots and character arcs. And if one of the people has opened up to the other? I'm dead. This book is so full of positivity it was almost blinding. Yet somehow, despite the cliches, it remained realistically open to not ending well. Or not ending at all, in that sort of lingering, closed-chapter-of-life kind of way.
   Altogether, the characters are lovely, the plot is great, and if you need a pick-me-up, this relatively short book is right up your alley!

Quotable Quotes:
"Why are you asking me? I'm seventeen and don't know anything about what to do when you're autistic and gay."

Rating: 9/10

Optimistically yours, Ola <3

Book Review: Wink. Poppy. Midnight.

Wink. Poppy. Midnight. by April Genevieve Tucholke 

Released: March 22, 2016

Read: March 2016

Publisher: Dial Books ( Imprint of Penguin Random House)

Format: ARC, 256 pages

Series: stand-alone

Description on Goodreads:

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

Review:

    With every paragraph, page and chapter that I read, I couldn't help but think what the heck? Everything each character thought and did, was creepy in some way. Like when Midnight waits and is fine with Poppy climbing into his room at night even though he's trying to get over her. He was supposed to be with Wink! Was he just leading her on?
    And then there were the Orphans, aka Wink's siblings. There were so many of them and they didn't have distinguished personalities. They acted like a mass of small, childish innocence that didn't play much of a role at all. Poppy on the other hand was the most complex and strangely interesting character I've ever met. She could control everyone as if they were puppets and she the puppy master. She could get anything and anyone she wanted (*coughALMOSTcough*), and yet that was never good enough for her. She just wanted her parents to consider her mature and no longer their 'little girl', and to be viewed as an equal. 
    One part of the novel I really did enjoy though, was the ending. You can tell that much thought and detail was put into creating how the conclusion came to a close. The back and forth plot, the Is she alive? Is she dead? Is she a ghost?, kind of threw me a bit, but I'd be open to read more about something like that.

Favourite Quotes:

• “When you look into the darkness, the darkness looks into you.” 
• “Revenge. Justice. Love. They are the three stories that all other stories are made up of. It's the trifecta.” 
• “All good Heroes are scared, if they know the evil they face.” 

Rating: 5/10

Recommended if you like: novels about story-telling, mystery, manipulation, bullying, books about books, very psychotic plot twists, 

Keep flipping pages,
Lauren