“The game isn’t over until everyone’s played.”
The Mary Shelley Club by Goldy Moldavsky (Henry Holt, 2021) is clever and by turns comedic and horrifying. I was as terrified as Rachel most of the way through. Also, incredulous that The Club could do these things to their friends.
“Give people a few convincing threads and they’ll spin the rest themselves. This story has been woven for us, more tightly than I could have done. I couldn’t untangle the knots now if I tried.”
I really liked Nobody Knows But You by Anica Mrose Rissi (Quill Tree Books, 2020). A welcome change from the mystery/thrillers I’ve read lately.
If you liked A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson (Electric Monkey, 2019) you might not like the following rant.
Finishing this trainwreck of a book was excruciating. It has a 4.3 average rating on Goodreads, when most books average 3-4. I have no idea how that happened. A theme of the book is racial profiling by police and how media coverage differs between people of colour and white victims and murderers. Pippa the student PI acts like an entitled white girl trying to save the brown boy. Additionally, Pippa gives a speech about racism at the end. If all the diversity boxes are ticked, does that make it ok?
Peta Lyre’s Rating Normal by Anna Whateley (Allen & Unwin, 2020) is shortlisted for the CBCA Book of The Year Older Readers 2021. Providing a compelling story while giving insight into navigating highschool while neurodiverse.
“I love how he can always find a way to laugh, no matter how crap everything gets.”
“Then the sky cracks open and the light shines through.”
Cracked by Clare Strahan (Allen & Unwin, 2014) has all things I love in a book: a waddling senior staffy, nature, graffiti, hot ranga who rides bmx, one angry young woman. My regular refrain: how did it take me so long to find this, get around to read it. Also, how has this book not won awards?? I’ll give it one now: Fav Book I Just Finished Reading.
One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus (Penguin, 2017) was my first read for the other Reading Challenge I signed up for. Must be the Year of the Reading Challenge or something. Another book that’s languished on my TBR for too long.
Spoilers, spoilers, everywhere
I read Cry Blue Murder by Kim Kane & Marion Roberts (UQP, 2013) four years later – nothing new there. I have so many questions and my brain is in pieces after the discombobulation of that ending. WTF!? I do love, more than words itself, an unexpected unreliable narrator. And that narrator certainly sucker-punched us all.
“And the truth lies in none but in all.”
I read Release by Patrick Ness (Walker Books, 2017) a while back and Forever by Judy Bloom (1975) even further back, although when I was an adult and a kids/teen librarian. (I’m no longer one of these things, most likely the former.)
Ness wrote his masterful exploration of homophobia, sex and strange paranormal happenings with inspiration from Forever. In 2015 the two bantered as the headline act at the Young Adult Literary Convention in London. In Sex in YA Danielle Binks wrote about the influence of Forever on the depiction of sex in YA books published after 1975.
“As usual, I don’t know which way is north, but I know the direction of beauty.”
Last month my Book Group did Take Three Girls by Cath Crowley, Simmone Howell and Fiona Wood (Pan Mcmillan, 2017). A trio of prodigious writers, writing a stunning story.
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