'Riverkeep' by Martin Stewart

*This review will contain spoilers!*

'"Your hands are shaking, Wulliam."

Wull shrugged and shifted his grip on the mug.

"It's cold."

Pappa laughed, releasing a stinging breeze of lakoris tobacco.

"That's no' cold. Cold is when yer eyeballs scratch when ye blink, when it hurts to breathe. Ye'll be a Riverkeep soon. Ye'll get used to that quick enough."

"I'm no' Riverkeep yet," said Wull. Never, he thought.'  

Wull's father is the Riverkeep, but on his sixteenth birthday he has to take the oars and become the Riverkeep himself. His birthday is still a few days away and he's certain he's going to be able to avoid his responsibilities somehow... Until his father gets dragged into the river by a bohdan, which possesses him and starts slowing killing him from the inside out.
Wull hears that the mythical beast the mormorach has resurfaced. Having researched the bohdan he knows that part of the mormorach can cure those who have been afflicted, so he puts his father in the bata - the Riverkeep's trusty boat - and sails down the Danek river towards Canna Bay, where the mormorach is rampaging.
Along the way, he acquires some companions. There's Mix, who was stowing away on a boat with some pirates and decides to stowaway on the bata instead. He also finds Tillinghast, a homunculus with a death wish, and Remedie, who's cradling a wooden baby called Bonn.
The ragtag group head along the river, getting up to all kinds of crazy antics on the way, but Wull's Pappa is still deteriorating. Will he be able to get to the mormorach in time?

Oh, if only there was something good to say. Everything about this was terrible.
I don't say that lightly. Normally I can find at least one positive aspect in any novel, but I'm actually scratching my head and feeling completely baffled about how this even got published (let alone why it's shortlisted for the YA Book Prize!).
Okay, I guess I liked the concept. I was expecting it to be more like Claire McFall's 'Ferryman' (a book I also hated, hmm...) as I'd assumed the Riverkeeps were pulling corpses out of the river to welcome them to the other side rather than just because there was an alarming amount of dead bodies in that stretch of water, but I guess someone has to do it!
I appreciated the fact that Wull was trying to save his father, rather than it being a parent attempting to save their child. It was nice to get that flipped on his head, and to see Wull attempting to fill his Pappa's boots as he unexpectedly became Riverkeep early. But Wull does a terrible job.
As you can tell by the fact that the gang get up to some crazy antics, the plot gets distracted regularly. There are needless diversions which just leave you groaning and wanting to tear your hair out. Till is infuriating, making everything harder, and if a characters only job is to interrupt the plot and make things harder it proves that the author doesn't know how to write decent obstacles.
Wull doesn't go through any real character development. He faces a bad guy, and the bad guy just happens to fall backwards, onto his own knife, killing himself in the process!
Of course! That's so feasible!
He faces the mormorach and the bohdan inhabiting his Pappa decides to switch into the mormorach, so he avoids certain death. Till also sacrifices himself to save Wull's life, despite the fact that they've nearly gotten each other killed multiple times because they're both so stupid.
I absolutely adored it when Wull was trying to save Till from certain death, and he said "He's a pain an' he's rude, but he's my friend". No, he's not. Every single thing that Till does is directly against Wull's wishes, they argue all of the time and they have nothing in common. That's not friendship.
Okay, I lied about Wull having no character development. He's hardly affected when his Pappa dies, which I guess is a huge metaphor for growing up and saying goodbye to things - like having your own dreams, and cherished family members.
Meanwhile Remedie, Bonn and Mix run into the night, never to be seen again. That's closure for ya. Mix only becomes relevant two sentences before she disappears for good, so I feel as though it's their adventure was written with an open ending to allow for a sequel, to which I say PLEASE GOD, NO.

I hadn't heard of 'Riverkeep' until it was featured on the YA Book Prize shortlist, and I knew after the first couple of pages that it wasn't the kind of book I'd normally read.
Reading this has proven how stubborn I am. I wanted to give up so many times, but I persisted and I can categorically say I haven't hated many books more than I hated this one.
I need to learn how to DNF. 

'The Monstrous Child' (Mortal Gods #3) by Francesca Simon

*This review will contain spoilers!*

'I really hate children. They're cruel, and they mock. I hate grown-ups too, of course. Actually, don't get me started. I hate everyone.'

'You'd think after my brother the snake was born they'd have stopped at one. But no.' 

Rapidly introducing Jormungand and Fenrir, Hel's voice is instantly snarky and bitter - the perfect tone for a girl who is born half dead.

'Corpse baby. Carrion tot. The third monster.'
When Hel is born, she's half dead.
Her bottom half, specifically.
Her legs are rotted flesh, putrid and decayed despite the fact that she's less than a minute old. Her mother is distraught: having already given birth to a snake and a wolf she'd hoped it was going to be third time lucky. Loki, her father, thinks they should just finish her off.
Hel doesn't have the easiest family situation.
When the Fates predict that Jormungand is going to kill Thor and Fenrir is going to kill Odin, the monstrous children are kidnapped and taken to Asgard. Jormungand is thrown into the Midgard sea. Fenrir is bound by magical means to a rock.
Hel? She gets thrown to Niflheim, commanded to become the Queen of the Underworld, host to all dead spirits.
Doesn't that just sound like fun and games.
That's not the worst part, though. When Hel was in Asgard, she met a god. She finally felt love.
All she wants is to be reunited with her beloved Baldr. But not even Hel can leave the Underworld, and gods don't die...

After finishing this book, I found out that it's the third book in a series, which baffles me. Widely advertised as Francesca Simon's 'first foray into teen', why did she decide to switch target market? If you're writing a middle grade series, commit to it being middle grade. Don't suddenly try and branch out.
That being said, this read like a middle grade book. Yes, Hel is a teenager, but her attitude is far more childish than most teenage narrators. I can understand why she whines and complains - she is half dead, abandoned by her family who detested her, and despised by most of the living - but it's more draining than anything I can remember reading before.
I really like Norse mythology, but hardly any backstory is given. This is probably due to it being the third installment, but with that fact being so under-acknowledged I can imagine a lot of people have been caught out in the same way.
I haven't read anything focusing on the Norse gods for quite a while. I'm much more accustomed to the Marvel counterparts of Thor, Loki and Odin, and it took a lot of effort to readjust. I might have found things easier if Francesca wasn't name-dropping seemingly irrelevant gods and goddesses on every page.
It's obvious that Francesca is primarily a children's author. I've commented on my apprehension towards author's who write across multiple genres before, and this just justified my fears. Yes, some of the descriptions of Hel's rotting body are gruesome, and I don't think Loki's sexual adventures could be as openly discussed in a middle grade novel, but everything screams that this isn't teen. The instalove Hel feels towards Baldr is enough to turn off the majority of teen readers. Everyone I know is tired of attraction starting that fast, but it's made worse when you find out Baldr is married. Hel acts like a child in the middle of a temper tantrum to control him and try and make him hers, and it made me uncomfortable and irritated in equal measure.
Then there's the fact that Hel feels much better when she's given lip gloss. WHAT?! Seriously? She's been wallowing for years - possibly hundreds upon thousands of them - and a human gives her lip gloss and suddenly joy returns to her world. GROAN.
To make matters even worse, the actions starts right before the book ends. There's finally the opportunity for some plot, rather than repetitive and irritating teenage rambling, but then the book ends. I genuinely felt like crying when I got to the last page: out of sheer frustration, not from any kind of emotion.

I only read this book because it's on the YA Book Prize shortlist, and I innately knew I wasn't going to enjoy it.
Thankfully it's a quick read. It's just under 300 pages, but it's filled with illustrated letters at the start of each chapter. Those take up a lot of room, meaning a lot of the pages have hardly any text on them, and if I'd been enjoying this more I would have flown through it in one sitting. As it is it only took me two attempts to get it finished, but there was a lot of eye-rolling and groaning throughout. 
I'm always going to wonder if I'd have felt differently towards this installment if I had actually read the first two books in the series first, but I have no inclination to pick them up now.

'The Bronze Key' (Magisterium #3) by Cassandra Clare and Holly Black

*This review will contain spoilers!*

"In Europe," she said, "when they discover someone is a chaos mage, they don't celebrate them. They kill them."

'Call made a few final tweaks to his robot right before sending him into the "ring" - a second of garage floor outlined in blue chalk.'

Boring. This might be one of the most disappointing first lines I've ever read.
Seriously, I'd been excited to rejoin the world of the Magisterium because I'd been waiting so long to read this third installment, and this really took the wind out of my sails.

It's Call, Aaron and Tamara's third year in the Magisterium (if you hadn't guessed from the title, their Bronze year) and they're still dealing with the fallout of the events of 'The Copper Gauntlet'.
Aaron and Tamara finally found out that Call's soul is that of Constantine Madden, the Enemy of Death, the big bad who created chaos-ridden animals and an army of zombies he could command.
Having decapitated Constantine's preserved body, the gang ensured there was no longer a chance for the Makar's soul and his body to be reunited.
The Magisterium and Collegium join forces to celebrate the group - including Call's father Alastair and nemesis Jasper DeWitt - thanking them for finally ending the cold war that has been plaguing the mage world for decades.
When they're at the party someone tries to kill Call. He's lured to another room using a fake note from Celia, then a chandelier is almost dropped on his head. Jennifer, the girl who passed him the note, is found dead, floating in the water with a knife sticking out of her stomach. The Masters have no leads as to who could be trying to kill students left, right and centre.
The search to find whoever attempted the assassination is on. They introduce new security measures throughout the school, installing Anastasia Tarquin - Alex Strike's mother and a member of the Assembly - to guard the powerful elementals kept their following a previous attempt on Call's life.
But he's still not out of danger. Despite all of the security, someone still manages to loose an air elemental who attempts to attack him. Soon after, his school equipment is being tampered with, putting his life in terrible danger.
Call has no idea who is after him, but he knows why. Someone else must have figured out that he was the Enemy of Death, and must have decided to take him out.

God, this was bland.
I'm grateful that the words coruscating, stalagmites and stalactites were used less in this installment, but that's the only thing that's improved from the first two books in the series.
There are many reasons I hated this novel.

• It has no plot, then a "shocking" event (that you could see coming from miles away) happens at the end of the novel - the only thing that happens during the entire story - but it dupes readers into thinking something has actually happened, explaining how it has such inexplicably high star ratings on Goodreads. 
• Aaron dies. Yep. It's foreshadowed like hell but is still unnecessary and avoidable. It's using the shock factor to the max, trying to make people care about an uninteresting series with cookie cutter characters. Aaron, Tamara, Jasper or Celia could have died, and it would have had elicited the same response in me - nonchalance. 
• This is 'Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets' without the satisfying conclusion. Anastasia reveals she was Constantine Madden's mother in a revealing and impassioned speech, then the book just ends. It means people are still going to read on to the fourth installment, 'The Silver Mask', despite the fact that...
• There's no compelling story to be told. Wow, Call has the soul of a big bad evil, that doesn't necessarily mean he's going to become evil. He's an average, neutral good character, and could have been written so much better.
• It's repetitive. I felt like I'd already read huge sections, because they echo the events of the previous books so closely.
• There's random romance, for no particular reason. Celia wonders if Call is going to ask her on a date, Call likes Tamara but thinks she likes Aaron, so Celia and Jasper end up dating. Sigh. Is this really necessary in a book for kids? I know both authors are popular for the romance that they write in their YA novels, but COME ON.
• It's just filler. Other than Aaron's death, nothing integral happens. When you look back at the Magisterium series as a whole, when the last two books are out - and please, dear god, let those be an improvement on this one - you won't be able to remember anything from 'The Bronze Key'. Even the key itself is such a forgettable part of the plot.

The writing duo seem to have had no idea what to do with this book. This is the shortest Magisterium book so far, but despite that there still wasn't enough action to fill 250 pages.
This story would have made more sense as a novella - particularly because it's very similar to the events we've already read featuring Master Joseph and Drew - but instead this was a half-hearted and disappointing release from two insanely popular authors.
I'm going to continue on with the Magisterium series, because I'm interested to see what happens after the closing events of this book, but I don't have my hopes too high anymore. It's still possible for this series to be redeemed, but it's going to take a lot of hard work.

#BLOGTOBER DAY 18: 'Stealing Snow' by Danielle Paige

*This review will contain spoilers!*

First things first, I need to say a huge thank you to Bloomsbury Children's for accepting my request to view this title on NetGalley, and to NetGalley for the service that they provide.

'First kisses sometimes wake slumbering princesses, undo spells, and spark happily ever afters. Mine broke Bale.'

Don't be deceived by how strong this first sentence is. It's the only good thing about the entire book.

In New York, Snow is a patient in a mental hospital where she's been confined for attempting to walk through a mirror when she was a little girl.
But there's another world out there, Algid, waiting for their princess to come home and save them. Their ruler, King Lazar, is an evil tyrant who uses his snow powers for evil, freezing whole villages in the blink of an eye every time he gets angry. Snow is his daughter, and the only person in the world who has powers capable of taking Lazar down and freeing the world from his icy hold.

I hated this book.

• There's a love square. Snow is in love with Bale, one of the fellow patients in the mental asylum. He gets kidnapped and taken to Algid, where she follows him because she's so in love. She's taken to Algid by a charming man called Jagger, who she's instantly attracted to. He abandons her when they arrive, and she meets a magic hating man called Kai, who she kisses - despite the fact that she loves Bale. She's then separated from Kai and reunited with Jagger, who she constantly thinks about kissing. Every man this girl encounters, she wants to make out with. You'd think having a prophecy dedicated to her and a murderous father would give her more important things to worry about. 
• The writing is basic. I don't think I saw a sentence longer than a few words. There were no sentences with clauses. There was lots of stopping and starting. If this had been a novel aimed at younger readers it would have made sense. But it was quite annoying. 
• There were also endless lists of questions. Obviously Snow wants answers about Algid, because she's got no idea about this magical realm that she apparently originates from, but she doesn't give anyone a chance to answer her questions. She just keeps going, barely drawing breath, paragraphs of questions one after the other after the other.
• Don't forget the constantly interrupted speech! I don't know how to... What should I... I mean... It's hard to explain... Describing it... I just can't find the words... Yeah, you get the drift. There's a big difference between speech interruptions that make the dialogue more realistic, and those that prove the author doesn't have a clue what she wants her characters to say. 
• The world is hardly built. There's a River Witch, a Fire Witch and a Witch of the Woods, as well as a group of Robbers that use magical potions in small vials. If I hadn't read the two novellas - 'Before The Snow' and 'Queen Rising' - I would have had no idea what was going on, because in the bulk of the novel nothing was established. This is one case where it's vital you read the novellas if you want to read the book, because there's no history given in the entire novel. The descriptions are also very basic, with trees that change colours and snow everywhere... Definitely transports you to a different realm. 
• Snow doesn't achieve anything in the first novel, which means the second book is going to go much the same. She's still separated from Bale, still has unresolved feelings for Jagger and Kai (who has gone missing with his shapeshifter sister, Gerde) so I can imagine that a lot of the book will be dedicated to tracking down those two characters. She's looking for three pieces of a magical mirror... And she manages to find - and lose - one of those pieces in this first book, so she's still going to be looking for those. It's painfully predictable. 
• Talking of predictable, I knew what the big twist was going to be within the first 20%. Bale, the (alleged) love of Snow's life, is randomly taken to Algid, and she follows him. When in Algid, she learns of a mysterious masked man who acts as the Enforcer, the King's terrifyingly evil and murderous guard. As soon as he was mentioned I thought "hm. Bets on Bale being the Enforcer?" and I WAS RIGHT. It's so obvious, especially after the Enforcer throws himself into a tree to avoid attacking Snow... And she still doesn't put two and two together. Say it with me now: GROAN!

Save yourself and don't bother reading this book. I have literally nothing good to say about it. Worst book I've read this year.

'The Dead Boyfriend' by R.L. Stine

*This review will contain spoilers!*

'Here I am, dear diary, about to confide in you again.'

I really love the epistolary style, whether featuring letters are written to another character or - as in this case - diary entries, so with this opening sentence I'd assumed I was going to love this book.

When Caitlyn meets Blade, it's insta-love.
He's staring at her in the restaurant where she's sat with her friends, Julie and Miranda, and it's not long before she abandons them to approach the attractive boy in the bright red hoodie. They run off together, crash a college house party, passionately make out in front of strangers.
Their whirlwind romance begins.
Caitlyn's completely and utterly in love. She refuses to heed the warnings given to her by Deena Fear (you thought this would be a Fear Street novel without one of the Fear family appearing? You'd be wrong!) who saw Blade first, and believes he should be hers.
Caitlyn is (innocent, idiotic, self-absorbed... You pick the adjective) and genuinely believes nothing can get in the way of their love - despite the fact that they've known each other for less than two weeks - so when she sees Blade at a club kissing another girl, she goes crazy. She can't believe he'd do that to her, so she stabs him to death.
Yep, the dead boyfriend referred to in the title is Blade. There's a shock!
She stabs him to death on his doorstep. At the funeral, she's on edge in case the police arrive to arrest her, and her anxiety levels go through the roof when Deena reanimates Blade's corpse and makes him sit up.
The next thing, his body disappears and the girls realise that Deena did much more than temporarily reanimate Blade: she brought him back to life! But even in death he only wants Caitlyn, and being stalked by your dead ex-boyfriend isn't the best way to spend senior year...

I couldn't connect to the characters, who were all flat, one-dimensional caricatures of teenagers. You'd think after writing books for teenagers for this long R.L. Stine would know how they acted, but that presumption would be wrong.

Ways the teenagers aren't realistic:

• 'That's when I knew Blade and I belonged together' is a quote that comes out less than an hour after they've known each other. Retch. 
• Deena tells Caitlyn she saw Blade first, and Caitlyn thinks 'hm, what does that mean?' before twigging that DEENA LIKES HIM?!?!?! a few chapters later. What else did she think 'I saw him first' meant?
• Caitlyn stabs Blade, then decides 'to stop that horrible sound he was making. I swung the knife back, then plunged the blade deep into his stomach'. Yeah, cause killing someone is the best way to stop their pain noises. How about DON'T STAB PEOPLE IN THE FIRST PLACE! 
• Also who the hell calls their kid Blade? (and who decides a character called Blade should be stabbed to death? That's just too obvious). 
• The "best friends" are just plot devices there to give Caitlyn alibis. Neither of them have personalities or plots, they're just there to give Caitlyn someone to avoid at school when she's feeling guilty about BEING A MURDERER. 

There were a bitch ton of plot holes, too. Caitlyn insists upon the fact that she keeps her diary locked, and wears the key on a chain around her neck. She mentions this point so many times, then just happens to leave it open at the end of the story (which I'm going to get on to in a minute). 

There's the random almost-mugging that occurs in the parking lot after work, which is solely put in to give her a reason to buy a knife. Yeah, the knife is important to the story, but other than that the event is completely self-contained: it doesn't give Caitlyn anxiety or PTSD, we never encounter the mugger again... It's all a bit pointless. 

The sister, Jen, is mentioned in a throwaway comment at the beginning of the book when R.L. Stine is allowed Caitlyn to give away all of the exposition by describing her character in full to her diary. 'I'm Caitlyn Donnelly. I'm seventeen, a senior at Shadyside High. I'm not terrible looking' she lists, then goes on to recite her hair colour, eye colour, names of her family and friends. There's a phrase in writing called "show, don't tell" that is obviously disregarded in this first chapter. But the sister is never written in, so why does she even need to be mentioned?

The most irritating aspect for me is that the diary format is hardly used. Occasionally in the middle of a sentence Caitlyn will write 'Diary', to link it back to the beginning, but the tone is nowhere near what's necessary for that style. The chapters also don't make sense: they're all short and sharp, but because they don't start with the 'Dear Diary' prefix it makes the set-up very illogical. It's annoying, because that's the entire reason I decided to read the book - false marketing!

It's also a blatant American Horror Story ripoff. Girl has a dead boyfriend has been used before, but girl has a dead boyfriend who struggles to speak to her and is mute for a large portion of the book? I've only ever seen that done in the third season of American Horror Story, and I couldn't get past the fact that they did it much better, dealing with it in a harrowing and emotional way.

Then there's the end of the book.

So, it turns out that instead of being a diary, it's actually a story being written by a teenage girl. A novel in a novel. Novel-ception.

I'm going to admit, I thought this was a massive cop-out. I have a feeling that the book was nearly finished, R.L. Stine realised he'd set up too many plot lines (Deena's taxidermied parents, her random supernatural powers, Blade's unquestioned disappearance, Caitlyn's second murder victim) and had no idea how to wrap any of it up, so decided to take the easy way out and make it a story in a story. 

It's just too easy. I don't really respect authors (or directors) that use the 'it was all a dream' escape clause, because it leaves the story half finished and the audience cheated. I'd been really looking forward to how it would all work out without Caitlyn going to prison, and then it's over. Done. Finito. 

I haven't been this disappointed in a long time. 

If you loved R.L. Stine's writing when you were younger, leave this book far alone. Don't have the wonderful memories tainted, because it sucks. 

If you're a writer, don't use the 'it was a dream' get out of jail free card: just commit to the story that you're telling and respect it enough to end it. Don't then put ANOTHER twist right at the end, just to recapture the audience's interest after losing it so spectacularly.

I've seen a lot of people putting this on lists of spooky books that they want to read over Halloween, but I would sincerely suggest (demand, plead) that you don't choose this one. Yes, it's a short and fast read, but with the simplistic and childlike language it reads more like a Goosebumps book than a Fear Street novel. (I'm glad it's not a Goosebumps book, though. I don't want those ruined for me too). 

This has made me much less likely to pick up any of the other recent Fear Street reboot novels, but it has made me want to reread my childhood favourites and hope that I can banish the memories of this book from my mind forever. 

I would actually give this book no stars if I could, and I don't think that often. 

'Anything You Want' by Geoff Herbach

*This review will contain spoilers!*

First things first, I need to say a huge thank you to Sourcebooks Fire, for accepting my request to view this title on NetGalley. I also would like to thank NetGalley, for the service that they provide. 

When William 'Taco' Keller asks Maggie Corrigan to the prom, he doesn't think she'll say yes.

He definitely doesn't think they'll have a whirlwind summer romance that will result in Maggie being pregnant. 

Yep, you heard that right - this is a teen pregnancy book told from the male's perspective. I can't think of another one of those, so that's certainly a selling point for 'Anything You Want'. 

However, that's really the only positive thing I can say about it.

Am I being harsh? Probably. But 'Anything You Want' is one of those books that genuinely makes me despair for the English language. I've been wondering how to word this review for a while, and it seems the best (nay, only) way is for me to list exactly what is wrong with this novel.  

So sit back, relax, and enjoy...

1. The main character's name is Taco. Isn't that an instant turn off?!
   
2. Maggie Corrigan is a manic-pixie-dream-girl in the most awful sense of the term.
   'Maggie Corrigan is intense. She's wild and crazy and intense. [...] I spent a few weeks following Maggie Corrigan around school and saw how she laughed until she fell on the floor, screaming when she got mad at her friends, cried when she was sad about the basketball team losing, and smiled so hard it looked like her face might break.'
   
   Sounds to me as though Maggie Corrigan could potentially be dealing with bipolar (based on her extreme and instantaneous mood swings throughout the novel) or, if not suffering from something clinical, she has one serious case of drama queen disorder.
   
3. The rights of a mother mean less than nothing. Despite the fact that Maggie is the one that's pregnant, she doesn't have any character development and no one really takes her feelings into consideration. She tells Taco she wants an abortion - he refuses. She tells Taco she wants to be a proper family, including getting married - he agrees, then changes his mind and doesn't even have the guts to tell her to her face, he just emails her. Maggie definitely develops Taco's character, but she's very much a minor player in her own story.
   
4. Repeated 'dingus' syndrome. I appreciate it when characters have their own vocabulary and their own quirks (I mean, I did coin the phrase "Crikey Moses!" to replace "Jesus Christ!") but it only works effectively if it happens at intervals throughout the book, and if it actually makes sense in the sentence, dingus. Taco just uses the word all the time, dingus. It loses all meaning, dingus. Dingus, dingus, dingus.
   
5. Taco is on the honor roll?! Yep, I'll say that again: TACO IS ON THE HONOR ROLL. Apparently he's one of the smartest kids in his school and always has been. So tell me, if he's so smart why does he say to Darius when he asks if Maggie's on birth control: "No. [...] Why should she be?" and then later, to Maggie: "I thought you were possessed by a ghost, but [Darius] said you were pregnant".
   If you're on the honor roll, you're smart enough to know about contraception and pregnancy. You don't get carried away and state that 'For whatever reason, doing it didn't seem the same as having sex'. No intellectual character would EVER state that.
   
6. The characters are utterly unrealistic. Just to clarify, in case you can't see that by the points I've made above. They're so obviously caricatures of genuine teenagers that it makes me wonder if Geoff Herbach was ever a teenager himself.
   
7. OF COURSE Taco's mother is dead! Because in YA books nowadays the mothers either need to be dead or absent. The thing is, Taco dealt with his mother's death a little bit too well: he refused to cry when she was dying because he didn't want to make her sad, then when he's talking about her dying words he comments 'Anyway, I listened to the lady'. No teenage boy would refer to his DEAD MOTHER as THE LADY. ARGH.
   
8. It's not cohesively told. Throughout the book, Taco is telling his story to the reader. Then, in the last chapter, it's made to sound as though Taco is writing a letter to his newborn child to tell him the story of how he came to be. If it had been told like that all the way through it might have been charming and adorable, but it sounds to me like Geoff Herbach didn't exactly know how to finish his book, so decided to sign it off like a letter. Barf.
   
9. Nothing happens for the bulk of the book. So much happens at the end that you wouldn't even believe it, and that's the stuff that should have been developed. Instead of multiple montages of Taco and Maggie doing it wherever and whenever they could, Taco's relationship with his boss and father figure Nussbaum is something I actually wanted to read about! But instead that's all rushed, leading to a happily ever after that made me groan so loud I'm surprised people weren't complaining in China.
   
10. It's meant to be funny, but it's really not. I can see that Geoff was playing up the ridiculousness of the characters to add humour to the situation, but it just doesn't work. When Darius, Taco's brother, crashes into Taco Bell, he gets wasted and tells Taco that he was trying to kill him - because of their similar names, he thought Taco Bell would do just as nicely! It doesn't take a lot to make me laugh, but 'Anything You Want' didn't even make me smile: it was trashy. 

I have to stop.

There are more points that I could make about how dreadful this novel is, but I really don't want to waste any more of my time on it. I should have given up, but I struggle to stop reading books when I'm already more than half way through them - it's a day of my life that I'm not getting back, and I regret that. It just had SO MUCH POTENTIAL. This could have been wonderful and brilliant and hilarious and epic, but it ended up being nothing but a steaming pile of pain.

If you've read this review and you're still tempted to read 'Anything You Want', I admire your bravery and I wish you the best of luck with all of your future (dreadful) life decisions. 

'Be Careful What You Witch For' by Thomas Hoobler

*This review will contain spoilers!* 

First things first, I need to say a huge thank you to Booktrope, for allowing me to view this title on NetGalley, and to NetGalley for the service that they provide.

I was actually really excited to read 'Be Careful What You Witch For', because I read Thomas Hoobler's 'Come Sit By Me' last year and really enjoyed it. 'Come Sit By Me' was a contemporary based on a school shooting, so I thought I'd like this magical novel even more.
However, I ended up hating it. Olivia is the stuck-up daughter of two movie stars, and when they go overseas to film a movie she ends up going to New York to stay with her Aunt Tilda (Aunt Tilda, who is an awful lot like Aunt Hilda from 'Sabrina the Teenage Witch'...).
First things first, Olivia's a racist. She lands in New York, takes one look at the taxi driver and observers 'he was wearing a turban and some kind of long striped shirt and baggy pants that made Olivia think of terrorists' - great way to really reinforce some degrading stereotypes. She then encounters another taxi driver, René, and comments 'he had an accent that Olivia thought sounded French, though of course he couldn't be French' because - you probably guessed it - René is black. And it's completely unbelievable to have a black Frenchman, isn't it?
Secondly, Olivia's a homophobe. She makes a friend called Paul, and when she finds out he likes men she's understandably shocked. When she discovers the power of spell-casting and Wicca, she contemplates whether she can change Paul into a 'real boy' and then there's 'a daydream she was having - trying to decide whether she would dump Alex if Paul turned into a real boy'.
This sickens me. I was already utterly bored by the book, but this little section is what really pushed me over into the I DESPISE THIS BOOK WITH ALL OF MY GODDAMNED BEING. Being gay does not make you less of a real person. You shouldn't fantasize about what it would be like to date your gay friend if you turned him straight. Yes, Olivia doesn't end up going through with it (only because Paul completely dismisses it and tells her she should like him for who he is - she doesn't even decide by herself that it's wrong!) but the fact that it was included... It's just disgraceful. This is the 21st Century, and attitudes have changed enough that this kind of thing shouldn't make it into books that get published - it's discriminatory, dismissive and, quite frankly, homophobic. If she had gone through with it, it would have been as bad as using exposure therapy in mental asylums.
Even dismissing that irritant, this book was bad.
Olivia moves to New York, where she's surrounded by mysterious things happening. She's fourteen, but she's never heard of reincarnation, or levitation, or pretty standard witchy things that most girls of fourteen would have at least encountered in books or on TV by that point of their lives. This means it's extremely unrealistic (I'd go so far as to say you could tell it was written by a male, but there are a lot of male authors who can write female characters well... It just feels as though the author didn't particularly put in a lot of research for this book).
More things that make it unrealistic? Well, other than the fact that it seems as though Olivia's never encountered a gay man before - come on, her parents are Hollywood movie stars, she really should be a bit more open-minded about things! - she also gets very upset when the girl at school she hates doesn't invite her to her party (okay, this wouldn't happen - it's so unbelievable, because no one expects to be invited to the party of their sworn nemesis) and she's extremely rude to most of her classmates as soon as she joins the school, not giving them a chance to show her their personalities but just being instantly judgmental of their looks (for example, her school guide is Muffin, and the first thing she says to her is "You could get contacts, you know". No one is that horrible on their first day at a new school).
There's a lot of generic teen worries about school and friends and boys, but there's not a lot of magic until the last half of the book. Aunt Tilda tries to keep things on the down low, but her next door neighbour Eva delights in teaching Olivia how to cast spells. This would have been better if there had been more interactions between them (and less of a focus on the kinds of teas that Eva was serving) but the magic is so scattered throughout the first half of the book that it's not cohesive in the slightest.
The relationship between Olivia and Alex was bordering on abusive: she places a spell on him to make him fall in love with her, then proceeds to spend his money and order him to do things that he's uncomfortable with throughout the entirety of the novel. She insists that she's not thinking of him as a familiar, then three pages later tells herself 'He's my familiar' to somehow make her attitude towards him completely acceptable.
They still end up together at the end of the novel, even after she takes the spell off of him, which I assume is supposed to show us that he was truly in love with her and the magic didn't cause that much of a change in him. However, when you consider the fact that Olivia states "I don't really love him, but it was nice to think somebody loved me", it makes you feel very sorry for Alex - she's using him, so if he genuinely does have feelings for her it's even worse.
I just thought his portrayal was very stereotypical (hottest guy in school with no brain cells) and the fact that Olivia thought throughout that she 'wanted to dump him entirely, but he was too useful'... No.
The ending is rushed, with Olivia thinking it's a super smart idea to summon seven demons to roam the school "until all within it are deceased" - it really hits home what a self-obsessed and immature child she really is. It also doesn't make much sense: she summons the demons, but for some reason all of the people in the school get turned into animals? What sense does that make? There's no explanation for why there was this side effect, so it just left me with a huge question mark hanging over my head. The story is left open to allow a potential second book: all I can say is PLEASE GOD NO.
I'm not even judging this book so harshly because I don't like the characters (well, I don't, but sometimes I hate all of the characters and still really love the book e.g. 'The Great Gatsby') it's just that I don't think it was written well. The characters were very weak and the interactions between them were so simple and stereotypical that I felt as though I'd read this book many times before. There wasn't even really a plot line, because the focus switched from high school drama to magical disaster extremely quickly, and then was wrapped up in record time... It just didn't really give you a chance to get into the story. There was nothing new or unique to add to the witch mythology, so I just wish it had been left alone.
I could go on but, quite frankly, I don't want to. If you like witches, you might like this book - all of the other reviews I've seen are raving about how good it is - but if you hate racism and homophobia I would shy away from this one. 

'The Girl's Guide To The Apocalypse' by Daphne Lamb

First things first, I need to thank Booktrope for inviting me to participate in this blog tour! I'd also like to thank them for allowing me to access a copy of this book through NetGalley, and to thank NetGalley for the service that they provide. 

*This review will contain spoilers!*

I've never been disappointed in a Booktrope release, so it saddens me to say that I really, really disliked 'The Girl's Guide To The Apocalypse'. I was very excited about this one after participating in the cover reveal way back in July, but I ended up not enjoying it at all. 

I'm afraid I just really didn't like Daphne Lamb's writing style. Writing comedy is difficult, because there's a very thin line between great comedy writing and average regular narrative. At points, this book was humourous (by this I mean I enjoyed one or two of the one-liners) but for the majority of the novel it just fell short. It was attempting to be a parody, twisting aspects of multiple apocalyptic stories into one to create a smorgasbord of end of the world drama, but it just felt ill thought out and badly prepared.

Because there was so much focus on shoving as many events into the novel as humanely possibly, it meant that the characters were hardly described at all and had no personalities. If you ask me what Verdell Sonobe looks like, I can tell you she's wearing a Batman t-shirt and a UCLA sweatshirt (because, apparently, clothing associates you with gang leaders at the end of the world) but I couldn't give you a hair colour or a definitive description... Apart from the fact that everyone seems to be calling her fat. Given the fact that the other characters surrounding her are constantly complaining about their carb intakes, I'm assuming she's just a regular sized girl surrounded by irregular sized women - it just makes Verdell even more nondescript, apart from her unusual name. 

I mean, yes, Verdell had a personality, if only because we're in her head and are constantly receiving her bitterly complaint-filled internal monologue. That's more than I can say for the other characters, who were flat and one-dimensional, but Verdell's personality was so gratingly irritating that I sincerely wished that she would hurry up and succumb to her inevitable end. I know that the point of this book was that the survivor is lazy and unenthused by the whole "survival" thing, but I just assumed it was a selling point - disastrous, regular person survives apocalypse, so you can too! - and she would end up becoming a better character... Really, she didn't change at all throughout. 

The ensemble of various other characters are just as bad, if not worse. Somehow they keep splitting up and getting pushed back together again, which is logistically impossible in a situation like this, but even if I suspend my disbelief in this aspect I still can't believe how idiotic the characters were. This was because the humour wasn't coming across well - some of the idiotic comments were supposed to be hilarious, but they were just eye-rollingly cringey. It might have been okay if I'd actually liked some of the characters, but because there were so many popping in and out it was impossible to feel a connection with any of them. 

Verdell constantly thinking about how to break up with her boyfriend, her boss constantly telling her to do work-related things for him, her self-obsessed supervisor constantly getting her name wrong... These could have been hilarious, if they'd been executed in a good way. Alas, none of it worked. 

This is the first book that I've read in a completely neutral state. I had feelings of boredom and exasperation at times, sure, but that was with the writing rather than with the characters. It's quite badly constructed and it plods along - Verdell will jump from doing one thing to another thing to another thing, and the amount of dialogue included means that there's hardly any description to set a convincing end of the world scene. We get some generic mentions of crumbling cityscapes, but there's nothing specific to evoke emotion and really invest you in the characters. Yes, I read the entire book, but I didn't feel happy or sad or angry or shocked throughout... It seemed like too many things were included just to evoke a shock from the audience (such as the multiple appearances from cannibals, the multiple deaths of named characters and the multiple random gunshots ripping through the various camps where our protagonist stays) but because there was too much trying to get a reaction, it completely desensitised me to any reaction. 

I will concede to this, however - Daphne Lamb is brilliant at social commentary. Having a survivor scouring a dating app looking for fellow survivors might seem ludicrous, but it's one of the easiest ways to find people near you that you could potentially shelter with... It terrifies me to think that during an apocalypse this could genuinely become a thing, but it's scarily accurate. 

I'm not saying you won't like this book, because you might - I think it just takes a more childish sense of humour, or a more easily entertained mind. Someone else might find this the funniest book of all time, it just wasn't to my taste. The idea was great, but I think I'm going to have to look elsewhere for my sardonic apocalypse tales. 

'Whispers In The Dark' by Chase J. Jackson

First things first I need to say a huge thank you to Boutique of Quality Books Publishing for accepting my request to review this title on NetGalley, and to NetGalley for the service that they provide. 

*This review will contain spoilers!*

I hadn't read a good YA horror novel in so long that I'd been highly anticipating this one, despite its minuscule length. It follows the story of Adrian, who has just moved back to his childhood home with his girlfriend, Lea, after getting a job at the local private school. When they move in Lea starts feeling as though there is a presence in the house, and when Adrian meets spooky student Robin, his work life gets turned upside down too... The cover was sufficiently spooky, the title evoked menacing imagery and the synopsis sent shivers down my spine, so I was certain I was going to love this one.
However, I ended up being utterly disappointed. The opening scene is of Adrian driving in a car in a thunderstorm, before someone starts choking him from the back seat. Adrian screams out "Ahhhh!", detracting from all of the dramatic tension that had been built up so efficiently, leaving the entire scene feeling flat and unconvincing.
This just continued throughout. Whenever things started to get a bit exciting and the adrenaline levels started rising, someone would shout out "Noooo!" or "Ahhhh!" and it interrupted the entire flow of the story. It would have been so much more effective if the characters hadn't even spoken, instead of wailing in such a stereotypical and unrealistic fashion. Instead of feeling like a polished novel from a published writer, it just made it feel like a creative writing essay from a schoolkid who didn't know any better. This was even further cemented when the word 'really' was repeated five times on one page, and the phrase 'in the office' was repeated three times in one piece of dialogue.
Similarly, some of the subplots don't even get dealt with. After Adrian awakes in his car, he notices that there's a phantom line around his neck, as though he really had been being strangled by something. This is mentioned twice in the first few chapters, never to be referred to again, meaning that it was a completely pointless addition. As well as this, the spooky goings on at Adrian's house are never explained (well, I lie, one of them is) meaning that we never really know if his house was haunted or if it was just his imagination going wild during one of his many vivid (and utterly irritating) dream sequences.
I really want to have at least one good thing to say about this novel, but I'm afraid that there really isn't anything worth mentioning. The characters are interchangeable - none of them really have any defining qualities - the dialogue is boring and too stolidly crafted, and the big twist at the end of the novel is visible from the first chapter due to the stereotypical language surrounding it ("this room is so cold!" signalling the presence of the ghost character at least three times). Furthermore, the moral of the story is beyond preachy - Adrian is a majorly selfish character throughout the book, so at the end of the novel he displayed a compete 180 of his personality and starts being completely selfless, caring more about other people. Sometimes, I don't mind stories that have morals; as long as they are done subtly, so it doesn't feel as though I'm reading some classic fables, I can even enjoy them, because it is good to show that being a good person makes good things happen to you. However, the moral of this story is so blatantly obvious throughout the whole novel that it's like being hit repeatedly in the face by a brick.
I can't really recommend this one at all, unless you're a younger reader - I'm not sure this will appeal to the YA crowd, because it seems too immature, but if this was a younger teen book I think it would go down a lot better. The characters go out and drink in bars, and there are references to underage sex, so it's definitely not written for a younger crowd, but the voice is too childish to really aim any higher. 

'Supervision' by Alison Stine

First off I need to say a big thank you to HarperVoyager UK for accepting my request to view this book on NetGalley, and to NetGalley for the service that they provide.

*This review will contain spoilers!* 

If I had to choose one word to describe how I feel about 'Supervision', it would definitely be confused.

In 'Supervision' we follow Esmé, a teenage girl who has been kicked out of her private school in New York. Exasperated with her behaviour, her sister sends her off to Wellstone, a small town in the countryside, to live with her grandmother, but when Esmé gets to Wellstone her life goes from bad to worse. Why? Because she's now invisible. Oh, and she's surrounded by ghosts. 

I really liked the premise of this book, so I was hoping I was going to love it, but something vital was lost in translation leaving me with unanswered questions occurring constantly throughout my reading of this book. Written like a bad 'American Horror Story' fan-fiction, ghosts were popping up all over the place, written into and out of the story without much rhyme or reason despite the insistence from the ghosts that if there were more of them around they would know about it... They quite obviously didn't, even if they had been hanging around for over 100 years. 

Too much of this book relies on coincidences, meaning you constantly feel cheated at every twist and turn: children have been going missing regularly for years, but no-one notices until Esmé comes along and points out the pattern, a tin can accidentally gets knocked off of a table, landing on a hollow piece of flooring and causing the discovery of the trapdoor they'd been searching for, a ghost randomly appears and points you in the right direction. All of these things mean that the characters don't need to work for any of their discoveries, they just easily get pushed along to the right conclusions to keep the story moving, but it makes it a very one-dimensional novel. Even the big climax at the end is solved by someone else, with the answer to all of their problems being given to Esmé in a vision by the ghost of her mother, but it coincidentally happens to work out - Esmé isn't a hero, she's just a girl being told what to do by extraneous forces. 

As well as the plot being one-dimensional, all of the characters are too. Well, all apart from one: Clara, the ghost of a thirteen year old girl who died in a fire that she started. Clara's personality verges on bipolar at points, switching from being really nice to Esmé to being the mean girl spreading rumours about her, but this makes her all the more realistic. Thirteen year old girls often aren't the nicest, because they can be immature and childish, so being stuck at that age for a century would cause you to have a few mood swings. But other than Clara, the rest of the characters really don't have all that much going on for them. Mr Black is a drunk, Martha is a maid, Tom is the cute boy next door, Esmé is the main character searching for answers. Oh, and there's the Builder, who - you guessed it - builds. That's all you really need to know about any of the characters, because throughout the entire story they don't really develop or change too much. 

Everything just seems to convenient for this to be a good book. The Firecracker - Esmé's sister - can see Esmé when she places her on the train to Wellstone, but Esmé turns invisible at some point between leaving New York and arriving at her new home. This is explained away later on, apparently as a side effect of the family gift that allows them to interact with ghosts, but Esmé then has the revelation that she knew a ghost at her previous school. Seeing as everything revolves around Esmé hitting her head while exploring in an out of bounds subway tunnel at the beginning of the book, and they seem to assume that that was when her talent came into effect, how could she see the previous ghost? And why didn't she turn invisible straight away? None of these things are answered, meaning that, at least for the hows and whys, this book doesn't really answer any questions. 

As well as this, there are multiple points throughout the book where things start to get explained, but we're told that we will get the explanations later, just for it to never happen. An example of this is Martha, the ghost of the maid, and the question around how she died. We know that she killed herself from a very early point in the novel, and every time she starts to dive into the story she stops herself and pronounces that she will tell Esmé later, but that's something that never comes. I could understand it if it had been touched upon and she'd stated overtly that it was something that she could never go into, but the fact that she promises to relate the story, and then doesn't, definitely means that there's a chunk missing from this book.

The one thing I was actually pleased with was the ending. The majority of the individual character plots gets wrapped up extremely quickly, but it was good that it wasn't dragged out any further because I don't think I would have been able to cope. The fact that Esmé managed to appease Tom's spirit, despite the fact that she had burgeoning feelings for him, was also a relief - too many times in YA novels the spirit decides to hang around to spend time with their living and breathing girlfriend, which always leaves me feeling irritated at the conclusion.

I know I was reading an advanced copy of this book, but in all honesty this feels like a first draft. As well as having a ridiculously high amount of spelling and grammar mistakes throughout (which doesn't effect my rating of the novel directly)  the story just doesn't seem anywhere near as fleshed out or completed as it should be - there are too many unanswered questions left for it to be a satisfying read. Yes, it has a lot of promise - the idea of all of the family experiencing the ghosts in different ways, ranging from seeing colours and shapes to smelling their scents, is a brilliant one, as is the idea that ghosts can only feel pain if they return to the scene of their death. If this had been carried out well it would have been a roaring success, and it would have been one of the most intriguing and unique books I'd read all year. But that's not the way this story goes, and I'm left feeling extremely disappointed, unfulfilled, and beyond all - confused. 

'Midnight Crossroad' (Midnight Texas #1) by Charlaine Harris - SPOILER FREE REVIEW

First off I need to say thank you to Orion Publishing Group for accepting my request to read this book on NetGalley, and to NetGalley for the service that they provide.

'Manfred Bernardo realizes he's moved to the right place. In fact, it's just like he belongs here.'

I haven't yet read Charlaine's Harper Connelly series, but I knew that Manfred Bernardo was one of the characters from those books that people really love, so I was excited about reading this book despite the fact that I didn't already know the character. And for the first five percent or so (thinking that I read this on my Kindle) it was rather interesting - Manfred is the new guy in Midnight, an internet psychic who actually has powers, so he's already pretty interesting. We then get introduced to all of the characters really quickly, and it's pretty obvious that they all have their own secret pasts that we will discover throughout. I was looking forward to a good old mystery book, with plenty of red herrings and misinformation given throughout, and I had my hopes pretty high for this one. However, it was pretty awful.

In fact, if I could give an award to the most boring book I've read in the last couple of years, 'Midnight Crossroad' would experience a landslide victory. 

How do you write a review for a book in which nothing much really happens? Well I'm about to find out, because in a book that has over three hundred pages, only three things (yep, one thing every one hundred pages) of consequence actually happened. It sounds like an under-exaggeration, doesn't it? You're thinking 'Wow, there is no way this can be true!'. Well it is. 

If you're thinking of reading this book, I would seriously recommend just skipping the first quarter, because it's utterly pointless. Charlaine has decided to use exposition to the maximum, so for the first big chunk of the novel is just an endless monologue of 'this shop is to the west of this shop, and this shop is slightly to the south-east of this shop, and this shop is...'. I'm attempting to read a book, not completely familiarise myself with the location that it's set in. I'm not going to be drawing a map of Midnight, so I really don't need to know what is east of anything. I do not enjoy skipping sections of novels, because I think if the novel has been published then everything in it must be included for a reason, but I was nearly tearing my hair out by this point. The locations then get reiterated consistently throughout the novel, every time the characters are travelling to another business in Midnight, so much of this book could have just been compressed down into a more concise method of storytelling.

Furthermore, most of the conversations between the characters are yawnfests. Off of the top of my head, there's a conversation between Bobo and Fiji, the owner of the pawn shop and the local witch, when they're walking towards a picnic, which felt as though it went on for hours - we got a little bit of back story on both of their characters, but it wasn't really anything that we needed to know, so it definitely felt as though Charlaine was just filling the book up willy nilly. Similarly, there's a scene where Bobo and Manfred go to dinner at Joe and Chuy, the local gay couples house, and while we get an intimate guided tour of their house, the fact that we never go back to that location makes it completely redundant. 

Don't get me wrong, the main plot line is quite interesting. Bobo's girlfriend, Aubrey, disappeared a few months back, at the start of summer, and her body is found towards the start of the novel (well, just over a quarter of the way in, which is why you should skip the first quarter) and that's when the interesting stuff starts... Well, at least some interesting stuff. Bobo's grandfather was a racist homophobe, and the extremists Men of Liberty (MOL - think of the KKK) are desperate to get in contact with Bobo, because they're certain that he has his grandfather's legendary stash of guns hidden somewhere in Midnight. Tension occurs - fights happening all over the place, and a really well written scene when the MOL crash Aubrey's funeral, infuriating all of her mourners, but other than that nothing really goes on with them, either. This whole book just seems to be a collection of loose ends chucked together, with a bestselling authors name on the cover to make people pick it up. 

But really, the worst thing of all about this book is the fact that Aubrey's murderer isn't even considerable until the reveal at the end of the novel. There are no clues spread throughout, no little niggles of doubt, until the reveal just slaps you right in the face with the information. This means it's a massive anti-climax, because whereas there are a few characters who could have been in the frame, and definitely could have had motive, the reality is that there's a shock factor here. If I had been more emotionally invested in this book, I would have felt disappointed and betrayed by the easy escape clause that Charlaine used, but thankfully I really didn't care enough to muster up a response to it.

In all honesty, all of the interesting aspects of this book are underplayed, understated and under appreciated. Fiji's familiar, the talking cat, never gets explained - we just accept the fact that about halfway through the book, the cat starts talking, with no reason. Lemuel, Bobo's tenant, an energy sucking vampire who can invigorate himself just by holding the arm of a person - also, not really explained. It's touched upon, just about, but there's nothing here that really makes me think 'hm, that explains that, that's an interesting idea!'. 

If you like Charlaine Harris, you'll probably like this book, because I've read a lot of five star, super positive reviews. I've tried to look on the optimistic side, and I've tried to look a little deeper and to find something worth liking, but it's just not there for me. I know that the whole point of the rambling exposition is meant to demonstrate the fact that in a small town, everyone knows everyone else's business, down to what they're eating on which evening, but I really didn't care enough to want all of that information. I have no idea why, but this book is the first one in a trilogy - there is literally no possible way that this series could get worse, so fingers crossed that the next installment will get to the point a little bit quicker.

'Marly's Ghost' by David Levithan

*This review will contain spoilers!*

When you die, the heart just stops.

When she died, my heart just stopped. 

If you haven't guessed by the title, 'Marly's Ghost' is David Levithan's retelling of the classic 'A Christmas Carol' by Charles Dickens. The thing that makes this not a direct copy is that the main character, Ben, is haunted by the ghosts of Past Love, Present Love and Future Love following the death of his girlfriend, Marly, and the novel is set on Valentine's Day Eve rather than Christmas Eve. 

Other than those two aspects, this book is basically a direct copy of the Dickens classic, which is a novel I hold very close to my heart. When I hear a book described as a retelling, I normally expect quite a few changes to the characters, or differences to the plot, to make the retelling more unique, but there is nothing that particularly stands out about this book. 

In fact, I pretty much hated it. Not even pretty much, I hated this book. Ben and his girlfriend, Marly, have been together for a pretty long time in teenage relationship standards, and he has supported her through her entire struggle with cancer. Yet his friends all seem pretty bummed out when he won't celebrate Valentine's Day by partying with them a mere four months after she dies. So this is the story of a boy with a dead girlfriend and a group of highly insensitive friends... Great justification for his dead girlfriend's ghost to show up and basically tell him it's time for him to get over it and move on with his life. 

Then the ghosts turn up and tell him if he doesn't get over his girlfriends death RIGHT NOW, he'll end up killing himself in two years. There doesn't seem to be any acknowledgement of the fact that time heals wounds, and death is easier to cope with when it has been longer than four months. It just seems to be imperative that he moves on from her and stops his silly displays of emotions as quickly as possible.

There really is nothing else to say about this book. It really is all there is. Ah, there's a nice scene between Ben and the Ghost of Present Love, when she tells him to blame people's discretions on the individuals, rather on the entity that they claim inspires them (a good piece of advice, when multiple people claim hatred on different gods due to the actions of extremist individuals) but other than this there is nothing of worth in the novel. I can tell it's meant to be an enlightening story about how the memories of people we love keep them alive after they've gone, and how it's not worth wallowing in grief when you're lucky that you still have a life to live, but in my opinion it's perfectly fine to grieve for four months after your loved one has died. In fact, it's okay to grieve for as long as you like - it's an individual process! 

If you haven't read a David Levithan book, don't start with this one. It seems to be a soulless commercial product, with none of Levithan's usual creative uniqueness that makes him stand out in the YA crowd. I think the publishers wanted a cute little Valentine's release to lead up to the release of 'Hold Me Closer: The Tiny Cooper Story', and I'm sure that this sold a lot of copies, but please don't fuel it any further. This is not a good book, not at all. 

'Savage Run' by E. J. Squires

*This review will contain spoilers!* 

There comes a time in every reviewer's life when they have to decide between upholding their integrity or following their heart. I'm choosing to follow my beliefs and do what I think is right, even though it does make me feel like a massive poo. I want to say a huge thank you to E. J. Squires for sending me this novel in exchange for an honest review, and I tried so hard to like it, but I'm going to be honest - this was one of the most disappointing books I've read in a very long time.
'Savage Run' tells the story of Heidi, a Laborer in the lowest class in her society, destined to be ruled by a Master as soon as she turns sixteen. Heidi's best friend, Gemma, has been with her Master for nearly a year, and Heidi comes up with a plan to get her freedom - the Savage Run event. The Savage Run is a competition for teenage boys of the lower classes to participate in an obstacle course to become Masters, giving themselves economic stability and freedom for the rest of their lives. Because Heidi and Gemma are girls, they disguise themselves as males and get hold of fake IDs, desperate to compete for their only chance at freedom.
I thought the plot sounded so interesting, I jumped at the chance to review this novel. I love dystopian fiction, and for a novel to have something that sounds so out of the box and brand new is a massive surprise. But there were so many things wrong with this novel.
To start off at a basic level: there were 35 errors that I spotted throughout the novel, also known as an error every ten pages. It made it feel uncomfortable and disconnected, with fragmented sentences and random punctuation marks inserted into the manuscript over and over again. That's not including the commas that were added in or were missing, because once you start counting commas it gets to an insanely high number, but that means in actuality there were way more errors. I understand that for lesser known, indie authors the proofreading process is never going to be absolutely faultless, because paying for someone to proofread and edit your novel is quite costly, but this many errors shouldn't have just been able to slip under the radar unnoticed. Similarly, there were a lot of phrases that didn't make much grammatical sense, meaning that every page I was tripping over something, leaving me feeling beyond disappointed at how deeply it affected my enjoyment of the novel.
Also, the repetition throughout the novel grated so deeply. Heidi constantly forgetting that she'd traded away her mother's locket, and rolling in the guilt of causing Gemma's 'death', just annoyed me. I didn't feel anything over Gemma's death, so constantly being reminded of how upset this girl is over a character that I didn't have a minuscule amount of emotion for just bored me, and I just wanted to shake her and tell her to get over it.
Furthermore, it was just so one dimensional it made me want to scream out loud at multiple points throughout. The 'death' of Gemma at the start of the novel was flat - how are we meant to care about the death of a character who has done nothing of note for the first fifty pages? - and that tone continued throughout, with other Savage Run participants being introduced and killed off after having only appeared in one scene, meaning that I didn't have a visceral reaction to any of the devastating imagery described throughout the first three quarters of the novel. Arthor was a promising character, but even his death didn't do too much for me, because it was all so utterly predictable. I didn't even like Heidi; constantly second guessing whether Nicholas liked her and panicking about their potential relationship when she should be more worried about possibly impending death, the internal complaining about Arthor when she wanted to let him go first on the cliff and took instant offence when he took the lead, all of her actions just made me want to slap her, and when you hate the main character of a dystopian novel you find yourself constantly crossing your fingers that they're going to end up dead, even though it's beyond predictable that they're going to survive.
On the note of predictability, anybody that didn't see the reveal of Mia being Heidi's mother is obviously blind to what is stated right in front of them. It was obvious from the second appearance of Mia, so the fact that Heidi stated repeatedly that there was no way that Mia could be her mother just made me want to rip my hair out, and the big reveal in the final chapter fell completely flat because I'd been expecting it since the first one hundred pages of the book. Similarly, it's pretty obvious that you never know someone is dead until you've seen their body, so Heidi discovering that Gemma survived the beginning of the book also didn't surprise me.
There were some promising scenes. The obstacles featured in the Savage Run all seemed extremely interesting, but in the actual delivery of them they fell short. The moment when Johnny shot Heidi's capsule out of the sky, and the following recovery in the hospital, was extremely well written but other than those small moments the book as a whole was completely flat. At times it felt like a rip-off of 'Divergent': the box that made them hallucinate the people they cared about most and then having to shoot them being the most obvious comparison, but also the attitude of the main character constantly throwing herself into life-threatening situations for reasons that only really made sense to her.
The ending of the novel is left extremely open, but I have my fingers crossed that there isn't going to be a sequel, because it will probably be focussed solely upon the politics behind the Savage Run and the downfall of President Volkov, and it all just seems too predictable to be worth wasting the time upon. I went into this book seeing that it had nearly a 5 star average rating on Goodreads, but if you're considering reading it don't be fooled by that number. I am really disappointed and deflated following what I just forced myself to read. 

'Burned' (Pretty Little Liars #12) by Sara Shepard

*This review will contain spoilers!*

If you haven't read my last review, for 'Stunning' (Book #11) you should probably go and read that because it leads nicely into this one.

In other words - everything that I thought was going to happen in this novel happened, making it painfully predictable in a way that led to me wanting to pull my own hair out from sheer irritation. 

This novel tells us the story of Hanna, Emily, Aria and Spencer, who are taking an Eco Cruise with their school - part school holiday, part learning experience informing them all about the islands that their cruise tours and sustainability. Hanna is rooming with Naomi Zeigler, the popular girl she's had a rivalry with for years, Emily meets a random girl on the boat and falls deeply deeply in love, Aria decides to take part in a scavenger hunt and gets paired up with mystery man Graham, and Spencer furthers her relationship with Reefer, encountering difficulties when it turns out Naomi has a crush on him too. 

When I finished reading 'Stunning', I predicted that this novel was going to deal with the Eco Cruise, Spencer and Reefer's relationship and Hanna's hit and run accident, all of which got dealt with and nicely wrapped up (well, apart from Spencer and Reefer who are still together, but knowing the 'Pretty Little Liars' books that isn't going to last much longer). I generally like reading books without knowing what's going to happen in them, so the fact that the little epilogue written by A always tells you what to expect in the next novel is disappointing. However, at the end of 'Burned' it does refer to Hanna and Aria's "incident" in Iceland, which is probably the only reason I'm going to pick up the next novel - I hate leaving things unresolved, especially when I'm this far into a series and there are only four left to wade through.

If you're going to read this book, you need to have an extremely strong (and I mean, strongman strong) belief in coincidences, because the amount of stuff that just coincidentally occurs is beyond irritating. I can believe in one or two odd happenings, but when the entire book is based off of them it takes away any semblance of realism that was remaining in this series, making it beyond ludicrous. The fact that Naomi was Madison the car crash victims cousin could have been believable by itself, because of the fact that Madison lived near by and everyone has family. But when Aria just happens to get paired up with Graham, who turns out to be the ex-boyfriend of Tabitha, the girl they killed in Jamaica, and then Noel just happens to find Tabitha's locket necklace on the beach is just a bit too far-fetched for me to subscribe to. Furthermore, both of those revelations were beyond obvious - Graham was mentioned in 'Stunning' and if Aria had been following the case about Tabitha that closely she would not have forgotten her ex-boyfriends name, and then the fact that the necklace had a letter that looked like an 'I' or a 'J' made it supremely blatant that it was going to be Tabitha's locket that Noel had discovered. And the entire thing with Emily dating a serial thief who she just happened to bump into on the first morning, and who then - out of thousands of cabins - chose to stowaway in Emily's cupboard? Yeah, that's definitely plausible, definitely a high chance of that happening. 

In all honesty, nothing in this book was that good. Hanna starting to be friends with Naomi just to end up ruining it all was obviously going to happen, because whenever the girls get close to other people it always goes wrong and you really would think that they'd have learnt that by now. Emily considering running off to Thailand with a girl she'd known for less than a week made me put my head in my hands from sheer annoyance, while Spencer and Reefer's relationship was cute at the beginning but quickly became annoying (I mean she was up puking all night and then they started passionately making out? Oh wow, that's super hygienic). Aria has always been my favourite character, which is probably the only reason I'm still managing to slightly enjoy her chapters, but before the revelation that they hadn't killed Tabitha in Jamaica all I found myself doing was rooting for the police, desperately hoping that the Pretty Little Liars would get caught once and for all. 

It's utterly obvious to me that Real Ali is going to return, whether in the next book or the next couple, because of Emily leaving the door open for her to escape after she tried to murder them in the Poconos, but I just sincerely hope that the last couple of books are good, because if the climax to the series is as terrible as the last few books have been it's going to be a sad ending to something that had so much potential at the start. If a successful ending means the death of one of the four main girls I don't really mind, because I just think Sara Shepard needs to pull out all of the stops to get this train back on the tracks.