Orlando Shooting

A Heartbreaking and Thought-Provoking Post

I’m not sure how to write this post. After hearing the news I felt shocked, then angry, then sad, but now I just feel numb. I don’t know how to write a post feeling this way. I don’t know how to express how horrible I feel thinking about the 50 innocent people who lost their lives, the families and friends of those dealing with the loss of their loved ones, the 53 who were insured. My heart breaks for them. I hate to think that I live in a world where such hatred exists. It’s sickening.

Aaron and I have gotten calls from friends all day telling us, “How many times have we gone to a club, a bar just looking to have some fun. It could have happened to us, it could have happened to anyone.” I think about all the boyfriends that went together, looking for a night out together(maybe…

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How To Disappear ~ Ann Redisch Stampler – 3.5 Stars

Tags

Mystery, Thriller, YA Fiction

Thank you NetGalley and Simon Pulse for providing an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Release Date: June 14th, 2016

Synopsis: Nicolette Holland is the girl everyone likes. Up for adventure. Loyal to a fault. And she’s pretty sure she can get away with anything…until a young woman is brutally murdered in the woods near Nicolette’s house. Which is why she has to disappear.

Jack Manx has always been the stand-up guy with the killer last name. But straight A’s and athletic trophies can’t make people forget that his father was a hit man and his brother is doing time for armed assault. Just when Jack is about to graduate from his Las Vegas high school and head east for college, his brother pulls him into the family business with inescapable instructions: find this ruthless Nicolette Holland and get rid of her. Or else Jack and everyone he loves will pay the price. 

As Nicolette and Jack race to outsmart each other, tensions–And attractions–run high. Told in alternating viewpoints, this  tightly plotted mystery and tense love story challenges our assumptions about right and wrong, guilt and innocence, truth and lies.

How To Disappear is a pretty decent YA thriller although I had some issues with one of the main characters, Nicolette. The chapters alternate between her and Jack which keeps the action going at a pretty fast clip. They don’t actually meet until halfway through the book, which is when a romance develops that I was never really able to buy into. This is partly because I disliked Nicolette right from the beginning. She’s supposed to be a smart girl yet she makes some incredibly stupid decisions. I made my mind up fairly early on that she was either an absolute idiot, or a cold, conniving manipulator. Jack, while not pure as the driven snow either, comes across more sympathetically. He’s tried so hard to distance himself from his family, but he’s unwillingly recruited for this mission in order to protect his mother. I truly did feel sorry for him at times. The story itself is filled with plenty of thrills and chills and even some snarky humor courtesy of Nicolette’s and Jack’s inner monologues. The ending is particularly twisty and clever, and I honestly didn’t see it coming. In the end How To Disappear is an exciting cat-and-mouse thriller sure to appeal to older teens.