The Winter Girl ~ By Matt Marinovich 3.0 Stars

Tags

Adult Fiction, Family Relationships, Mystery, Psychological Thrillers, Suspense

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Doubleday for sending me an e-ARC!

Release Date: January 19th, 2016

Synopsis: It’s wintertime in the Hamptons, where Scott and his wife, Elise, have come to be with her terminally ill father, Victor, to await the inevitable. As weeks turn to months, their daily routine–Elise at the hospital with her father, Scott pretending to work and drinking Victor’s booze–only highlights their growing resentment and dissatisfaction with the usual litany of unhappy marriages: work, love, passion, each other. But then Scott notices something simple, even innocuous. Every night at precisely eleven, the lights in the neighbor’s bedroom turn off. It’s clearly a timer…but in the dead of winter with no one else around, there’s something about the light he can’t let go of. So one day while Elise is at the hospital, he breaks in. And he feels a jolt of excitement he hasn’t felt in a long time. Soon, it’s not hard to enlist his wife as a partner in crime and see if they can’t restart the passion. 

Their one simple transgression quickly sends husband and wife down a deliriously wicked spiral of bad decisions, infidelities, escalating violence, and absolutely shocking revelations.

The good news is that this book is an exciting and dark psychological thriller. The bad news is the characters go so off the deep end by the middle of the book that any empathy I had for them was completely lost.

First, you need to realize that Scott and Elise aren’t the sharpest crayons in the box. I mean honestly? Nothing says romance like breaking into your neighbor’s house and having sex on their bed? Then they discover that underneath the bedspread upon which they just rekindled their passion is a large amount of dried blood.  From there on in it’s just one idiotic decision after another from these two. 

But, somehow I couldn’t stop reading. I’m not sure what that says about me. There is a lot of psychological suspense which the author uses very well in a sort of visual sense. If Alfred Hitchcock had penned a novel he couldn’t have ratcheted up the tension more. I actually felt like I was seeing events play out through the eyes of Scott who’s the narrator. And the shocking revelations pile on one after another. After the first few chapters I thought I knew where things were headed, but I was wrong.  

So, here’s the question as to whether I recommend this or not. If you enjoy psychological thrillers with tons of suspense and surprising plot twists, and don’t mind unsavory characters, than definitely try this. It’s a quick read that has an ending you won’t see coming!

2015 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 16,000 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 6 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

This is my first full year on WordPress so it was awesome looking at all the stats. Thank you helper monkeys!  I’d like to thank everyone who has visited me here in my little corner of the blogging universe.

What really amazes me is that visitor from 96 countries stopped by. That’s made me quite humble!

The helper monkeys put together a top five list of my most active commenters who I’d like to give a shout out to:

1. http://vinnieh.wordpress.com
2. http://isaacspictureconclusions.com
3. http://emmakwall.com
4. http://husbandandhusband.net
5. http://jeannowensauthor.wordpress.com

Thank you Vinnie, Eric, Ems, Jonathan & Aaron, and Jeanne! And thank you to everyone who has stopped by whether to comment or simply read my meandering musings and reviews. Here’s hoping that 2016 will be a stellar year for all of us!

Girl of Myth and Legend (The Chosen Saga #1) ~ By Giselle Simlett – 3.0 Stars

Tags

Adventure, Fantasy, Suspense, YA Fiction

I received this e-book from NetGalley and WWS Publishing in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis: Leonie Woodville wants to live an unremarkable life. She wants routine, she wants repetition, she wants predictability. So when she explodes in a blaze of light one morning on the way to her college, it’s enough to put a real crimp in her day.

And things only get weirder…

Leonie learns from her father that she is the last of the Pulsar, a phenomenally powerful member of a magical species called the Chosen. It will be her sole duty to protect the Imperium, a governing hierarchy, from all enemies, and to exceed the reputation of the Pulsar before her. So–no pressure there, then.

Leonie is swept away from her rigorous normality and taken to a world of magic. There, she is forced into a ceremony to join her soul to a guardian, Korren, who is both incredibly handsome and intensely troubled, a relationship for which ‘it’s complicated’ just really doesn’t cut it.

But Leonie is soon to learn that this ancient world is no paradise. With violent dissidents intent to overthrow the Imperium, and dark entities with their own agenda, she and Korren find themselves caught in a war where they will have to overcome their differences if they are to survive. 

Dare to dream. Dare to hope. Dare to be a legend.

I had some pretty high hopes for this, and while it didn’t quite live up to my expectations, overall I think it makes an okay addition to the YA Fantasy genre.

When I first read the synopsis of the book and the description of Leonie I thought: “Ah! Here is a character I can relate to!” Well, as much as an almost 51 year-old woman can relate to a teenage girl anyway. Like Leonie, I find myself longing for life without worries and strife. Unfortunately, and it pains me to say this, at the beginning Leonie seriously annoyed the heck out of me. The story is told from her point of view, and the reader is bombarded with repetitious details of her life and her family’s background. For example, Leonie TELLS, the reader more than a few times that she and her father aren’t exactly sociable people. The author already shows this by describing  her lack of friends, etc. It’s really not necessary for her to keep assuring us of this. Thankfully as the storyline moves along this lessens somewhat. One thing I did like about her is that she’s not a “perfect little snowflake”. Yes, she’s strong and winds up with all these special powers, but because of her past, she’s pessimistic and can even be downright disagreeable. While this also annoyed me at first, after a while I thought it made her more realistic. One thing I did think would have made her more empathetic, was if the traumatic event that helped shape Leonie was shown more from her memories. Instead her father tells Korren about it which somewhat lessens the impact.

And then there’s the dreaded insta-love. I often wonder if authors ever listen to reviews, because other than an occasional exception to the rule, THESE DON’T WORK! Okay. I said it. But c’mon! You know you agree with me! Adding to this aggravating one, is that Korren is your typical handsome but broody hero. Honestly, there’s virtually nothing that distinguishes him from all the similar characters that have come before him. 

The world-building is interesting and I think that’s what ultimately kept me reading. The story starts on present day Earth, but moves to another realm which is beautifully described. The author crams in a lot of information about both the magical realm of Duwyn and her characters, but I thought she did a nice job balancing everything. Making things more intriguing is that you see this new world and it’s mythology through Leonie’s eyes. The cliffhanger ending is exciting, and ends things on a high note. 

To be perfectly honest I toyed with giving this 2.5 stars before giving it the higher rating. While the Girl of Myth and Legend has a lot of potential, ultimately it fell a little short for me. I can however see this appealing to a lot of teens. I hope in the next book the author will smooth out some of the wrinkles that were so prevalent in this one, because if she does, this has the possibility of being a great new series.