The God Game, by Danny Tobey ~ 5.0 Stars

Tags

Contemporary Fiction, Physical Abuse, Politics, Social Issues, Substance Abuse, Techno-Thrillers, Theology, YA Fiction

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Release Date: January 7th, 2020

496 Pages

Synopsis:

You are invited!

Come inside and play with G.O.D.

Bring your friends!

It’s fun!

But remember the rules. Win and ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE. Lose, you die!

With those words, Charlie and his friends enter the G.O.D. Game, a video game run by underground hackers and controlled by a mysterious AI that believes it’s God. Through their phone screens and high-tech glasses, the teens’ realities blur with a virtual world of creeping vines, smoldering torches, runes, glyphs, gods, and mythical creatures. When they accomplish a mission the game rewards them with expensive tech, revenge on high-school tormentors, and cash flowing from ATMs. Slaying a hydra and drawing a bloody pentagram as payment to a Greek god seems fun at first. Harmless even.

But then the threatening messages start. “Worship me. Obey me.” Complete a mission, however cruel, or the game reveals their secrets and crushes their dreams. Tasks that seemed harmless at first take on deadly consequences. Mysterious packages show up at their homes. Shadowy figures start following them, appearing around corners, attacking them in parking garages. Who else is playing this game and how far will they go to win?

And what of the game’s first promise: win, win big, lose, you die. Dying in a virtual world doesn’t mean you die in real life—does it?

As Charlie and his friends try to find a way out of the game, they realize they’ve been manipulated into a bigger web they can’t escape: an AI that learned its cruelty from watching us. God is always watching, and He says when the game is done.

The God Game, first caught my eye because of many early reviews comparing it to Stranger Things and Ready Player One. I personally think it bears more a resemblance to the latter rather than the former, but comparisons don’t really matter because what this IS, is a high octane crazy thrill ride that I found impossible to put down. I’m not exaggerating. I started this after supper Sunday night and wound up staying awake until almost 3:00 a.m. I kept telling myself “just one more chapter,” but nope. That didn’t work out.

Often times with books that have so much action, character development falls by the wayside. Not here though. There are quite a few characters in this story and you get almost all of their perspectives. This makes it so much easier to become emotionally invested in them. Every single one of them have things going on in their lives that will draw on your empathy, even the bullies. There are quite a few social themes that could be triggers for some readers. These include: death of a parent, death of a sibling, physical abuse, substance abuse, and bullying. There are scenes that are very dark, but they’re not overwhelming. Instead it made me understand how a “game” like this could appeal to so many.

The plot is creative and despite previous books like Ready Player One, manages to stand completely on its own. As I said, the pacing is just NUTS, and if you get this when it comes out in January, good luck putting it down once you’ve started reading!

The God Game is an intriguing and frightening look at the proliferation of AI in our society. It also explores theology, sociology, and politics as seen through the eyes of teenagers. It has so many anxiety-inducing twists that the only thing I could be sure of is to expect the unexpected, especially at the end. There are a couple of things that aren’t fully explained, but these are so minor (plus, given the lateness of the hour, I might have just missed them), that I’m not taking any points off. With the advances in AI technology, I’m not even going to say this is science fiction. Rather, it falls under the sub-genre of techno-thriller, so if you’re a fan of that, I highly recommend this. And, although this technically falls under the heading of YA, don’t let that stop you. Some of the perspectives are told from the adults in the story, so I can see this having wide appeal for teens and adults. Now who do I talk to about making this into a movie?

Grace and Fury, by Tracy Banghart ~ 3.5 Stars

Tags

Fantasy, Social Issues, Suspense, YA Fiction

Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown Books for Young Children for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Release Date: July 31st, 2018

320 Pages

Synopsis: In a world where woman have no rights, sisters Serina and Nomi Tessaro face two very different fates: one in the palace, the other in prison.

Serina has been groomed her whole life to become a Grace—someone to stand by the heir to the throne a a shining, subjugated example of the perfect woman. But when her headstrong and rebellious younger sister, Nomi, catches the heir’s eye, it’s Serina who takes the fall for the dangerous secret that Nomi has been hiding.

Now trapped in a life she never wanted, Nomi has only one way to save Serina: surrender to her role as a Grace until she can use her position to free her sister. This is easier said than done. A traitor walks the halls of the palace, and deception lurks in every corner. But Serina is running out of time, imprisoned on an island where she must fight to the death to survive and one wrong move could cost her everything.

Before I begin my review of Grace and Fury, I want to warn readers that there are some triggers that may make some uncomfortable. These include: Hints of past rape, implied attempted rape and sexual assaults, graphic violence, and animal abuse. Given the serious nature of the story none of these are written gratuitously, but they’re still there.

I loved the two dominant themes in this book, the bonds of sisterhood and women fighting back against oppression. The story is told from the alternating viewpoints of Serina and Nomi, and while I definitely had a favorite (I’m not telling you which one), I was invested in both. I have to be honest though and say that the two of them make some god awful decisions that not only impact them, but others as well. They didn’t really make sense to me and ultimately took away from the story. There is also a love triangle which I found annoying, and I thought the romance as a whole was overblown. The world building though is phenomenal and I was sucked in from the first page. It’s a fast read and the cliffhanger ending left me with plenty of questions so I’m looking forward to the next book.

Overall, while it definitely has some issues that will hopefully be worked out in the sequel, I think Grace and Fury is a promising beginning to this new untitled series. Because of the aforementioned themes, I’d recommend this to readers age 16 and up.

 

Bad Girls with Perfect Faces, by Lynn Weingarten ~ 3.5 Stars

Tags

Mystery, Social Issues, Suspense, Teen relationships, YA Fiction

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon Pulse for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Release Date: Available Now

320 Pages

Synopsis: Bad girls get it done.

Sasha’s all-time favorite person is her best friend Xavier. He’s smart, funny, and strange. He’s not just nice but kind. He’s endlessly forgiving, even when maybe he shouldn’t be.

So when Xavier lets his ex, Ivy, slither her way back into his life, Sasha knows she needs to protect him. And not just because she can’t stop thinking about the night she and Xavier shared a rum-soaked kiss. No, it’s because Ivy is poisonous. The last time they were together, Ivy cheated on Xavier and he just barely survived.

Sasha has a plan: pose online as a guy to seduce Ivy, proving that cheaters never change. But she soon learns to be careful who you pretend to be—because you can never truly know the darkness inside of someone. Including yourself.

Bad Girls With Perfect Faces is a solid mystery/ thriller that I think will have wide appeal. It’s dark, gritty and compelling, and although I had some trouble connecting with the characters, the plot kept me reading .

The narrative is told from multiple POVs and jumps between first, second, and third person. Ivy is your stereotypical mean girl, who really has nothing that makes her stand out from similar characters in other YA books. Xavier is an affable guy, but rather bland and completely clueless. Sasha is the most interesting character and I appreciated her complexity. She’s impulsive and a bit obsessive when it comes to her feeling about Xavier, yet there’s no doubt that she genuinely cares about him and wants to protect him.

The plot itself is dark and twisty, and went places I did not expect it to go. There’s plenty of twists and turns and while there was some foreshadowing as to the big revelation, the journey getting to that point was still an intriguing one.

Bad Girls With Pretty Faces is the first book I’ve read by Lynn Weingarten, and while I wish the characters had been developed a little more, I thought the story itself was original and entertaining. I think this would appeal to a wide audience. I would however recommend it to older teens as this covers sexual situations, drugs, alcohol and self-harm. I’m definitely planning on checking out future books by this author.

 

Strange Weather, by Joe Hill ~ 4.5 Stars

Tags

Adult Fiction, Horror Fiction, LGBT, Post-Apocalyptic Fiction, Science Fiction, Social Issues

Thanks to Edelweiss and William Morrow for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Release Date: October 24th, 2017

448 Pages

Synopsis: A collection of four chilling novels, ingeniously wrought gems of terror from the brilliantly imaginative, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fireman, Joe Hill.

“Snapshot” is the story of a Silicon Valley adolescent who finds himself threatened by “The Phoenician” a tattooed thug who possesses a Polaroid Instant Camera that erases memories snap by snap.

A young man man takes to the skies to experience his firs parachute jump…and winds up a castaway on an impossibly solid cloud, a Prospero’s island of roiling vapor that seems to have a mind of its own in “Aloft”.

On a seemingly ordinary day in Boulder, Colorado, the clouds open up in a downpour of nails—splinters of bright crystal that shred the skin of anyone not safely under cover. “Rain” explores this escalating apocalyptic event, as the deluge of nails spreads out across the country and around the world.

In “Loaded”, a mall security guard in a coastal Florida town courageously stops a mass shooting and becomes a hero to the modern gun rights movement. But under the glare of the spotlights, his story begins to unravel, taking his sanity with it. When an out-of-control summer blaze approaches the town, he will reach for his gun again and embark on one last day of reckoning.

Strange Weather is an eclectic collection of four tales which only has one theme connecting them, the weather. And this really only plays a major role in the last story, but it honestly doesn’t matter because Joe Hill’s writing is so brilliant.

Snapshot features a monstrous villain known as The Phoenician who stalks his victims with an instant camera which extracts their memories. The only one who can stop him is an eleven-year-old misfit. It’s a vintage horror story and somewhat reminiscent of Hill’s NOS4A2. I would say that out of the four stories, this was my favorite because I have a fondness for underdog kids battling evil. I give this 5 Stars.

Loaded tackles the horror of gun violence, and it a story that Hill has been mulling over in his mind since the Newtown massacre. Here, the shooter, Randall Kelloway, is a mall cop who’s been rejected numerous times from the police force because he’s psychologically unfit. He’s a gun fanatic who illegally carries one to work, which results in tragedy. Aisha is a reporter who has her own tragic history with gun violence. She’s suspicious of Randall’s account of what happened, and is determined to discover the truth. It’s a tough story to read and the ending ripped my heart out. Rather than being supernatural in nature, instead the story focuses on the real life monsters among us. I did think this went on a little too long which is why I’m giving this 4.5 Stars.

Aloft is quite different from Hill’s usual writing. It focuses on twenty-something Aubrey Griffin, who along with a small group are completing things on their friend June’s bucket list, that she was unable to do before her death from cancer. The first is a parachute jump, and Aubrey is panic-stricken, but he’s trying to impress his friend Harriet. Once they’re in the plane though, he finds he just can’t go through with it. That is until, the plane starts to lose power and everyone is forced to jump. Aubrey lands on this strange looking cloud. And of course this is not your average cloud. This isn’t a horror story per se, but instead, a quirky, poignant and thoughtful exploration of unrequited love and the question of whether it’s truly possible to have everything you want. There are some questions as to who and what the cloud is, and where did it come from, so I’m giving this 4.5 Stars.

Rain is the last story and is very reminiscent of some of Hill’s more post-apocalyptic fiction. The rain arrives in the form of crystalline needles that are capable of penetrating both objects and bodies. The heroine here is the kick-ass Honeysuckle Speck, and the journey follows her as she tries to get from Boulder to Denver to tell the father of her girlfriend and his wife’s deaths. In addition to trying to avoid further deadly outbreaks of rain, Honeysuckle also has a murderous doomsday cult after her. It’s a well-written story and the perfect way to end this anthology. I give this 5 Stars.

Strange Weather confirms why I’m such a fan of Joe Hill. Every story has characters that readers will connect with. Diverging from his more epic horror like last year’s The Fireman, this is more in keeping with his other short story collection, 20th Century Ghosts. I believe this quite literally has something for everyone and I HIGHLY recommend it to both long-time fans of Hill’s as well as new readers.

 

Monster, (Gone #7) by Michael Grant ~ 4.5 Stars

Tags

LGBT, Science Fiction, Social Issues, Suspense, Thriller, YA Fiction

Thanks to Edelweiss and Katherine Regan Books for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Release Date: October 17th, 2017

576 Pages

Synopsis: In the stunning follow-up to the globally best selling Gone series, Michael Grant continues the story of the teens who morph into superheroes—and supermonsters—when they ingest an alien virus.

Four years after the events of the FAYZ, New meteorites are hitting Earth, and the whole world is exposed to a strange alien virus that gives humans unique superpowers.

As some teens become heroes and others become dangerously out of control with their new powers, the world will become more terrifying than the FAYZ—and only a monstrous battle between good and evil can save them.

I’m a huge fan of Michael Grant’s Gone series and was disappointed when it came to an end. I’ve been anxiously anticipating Monster since I heard about it a few months ago. I was a little nervous that it would be an unnecessary extension of a hugely popular series that wouldn’t live up to the previous books. What was I thinking? This is Michael Grant. Of course it’s brilliant! 

For anyone not familiar with these books, the Gone series introduced readers to a world where an enormous dome suddenly appeared over the town of Perdido Beach and everyone over the age of fifteen disappeared. And as a further complication, some of the kids left trapped in the FAYZ (Fallout Alley Youth Zone), developed these strange supernatural powers. Some use them for good, others, not so much. It’s sort of a combination of Under the Dome, by Stephen King and Lord of the Flies, with superpowers thrown in. Monster picks up four years after the dome has come down. It can definitely be read as a standalone, but you’re missing out if you don’t read the previous books.

Kudos to Michael Grant for making everything flow seamlessly together to create this brutal and gory apocalyptic world. The action begins on the very first page with the dome falling, only this time we see it from the perspective of the people outside of it. Then there’s a small time jump by a few years. Now the same sinister space body that created the FAYZ, is sending asteroids crashing down to earth that cause mutagenesis in anyone who comes in contact with them. And naturally, many of the wrong sort of people get a hold of them, including the government.

Let’s start with the characters. They are a large diverse cast of teens, adults, sexuality and races. There’s two familiar faces that play major roles in the action, but for the most part these are all new players. Which leads me to my one and only criticism. There are so many people here with different perspectives, I didn’t feel as though I got to know them as well as I would have liked. Everyone one of them is dealing with some sort of issue. One is coming to terms with being gender fluid, another has schizophrenia, another battles with Oppositional Defiant Disorder, etc. I did mention diverse right? I absolutely loved this, but because there were so many, there didn’t seem to be enough time spent with each of them. But, honestly, this is a very minor complaint. 

The superpowers and transformations are so visual that they seem to pop off the pages. I also found fascinating how each character’s power tied into their genetics, personality, and even things like what they had recently eaten. And the fight scenes. Oh my God! Exciting and amazing doesn’t even begin to describe them! I swear my jaw was aching by the time I reached the ending because I had my mouth open almost the entire time I was reading. Needless to say the pace was insanely fast, and despite the book being almost 600 pages long, I finished this over the course of two nights.

In my opinion, Monster is an absolutely thrilling continuation of the Gone series that will please fans, and attract new readers. Please be warned. Like the previous books, Monster pulls no punches, and there were some scenes that even made me a bit squeamish, especially a couple involving children. Michael Grant has created a world full of brutality and breathtaking ruthlessness, yet there is also hope, because where there are villains and monsters, there are heroes who sacrifice everything to fight them. I highly, HIGHLY recommend this to older teens and adults who love superhero books and movies. I guarantee you won’t be disappointed!

 

 

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Dear Martin, by Nic Stone ~ 4.5 Stars

Tags

Affirmative Action, Police Brutality, Racism, Social Issues, YA Fiction

Thanks to NetGalley and Crown Books for Young Readers for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Release Date: October 17th, 2017

224 Pages

Synopsis: Justyce McAllister is top of his class and set for the Ivy League—but none of that matters to the police officer who just put him in handcuffs. And despite leaving his rough neighborhood behind, he can’t escape the scorn of his former peers or the ridicule of his new classmates. 

Justyce looks to the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for answers. But do they hold up anymore? He starts a journal to Dr. King to find out.

Then comes the day Justyce goes driving with his best friend, Manny, windows rolled down, music turned up—way up, sparking the fury of a white off-duty cop beside them. Words fly. Shots are fired. Justyce and Manny are caught in the crosshairs. In the media fallout, it’s Justyce who is under attack.

Dear Martin is the debut novel of Nic Stone, and what a powerful statement it makes! It may technically be a work of fiction, but the social issues it introduces: police brutality, affirmative action, racism, and gang violence are all very real issues that face so many minorities.

The main character, Justyce McAllister is a thoroughly likable and relatable protagonist. Seventeen-years-old, he’s done everything right in his young life. Yet he’s caught between two worlds. Teens that he grew up with resent him for receiving a scholarship to a prestigious prep school, and some of his classmates may espouse to be believers in equality, but their actions speak louder than words. After he’s a victim of racial profiling and police brutality, Justyce begins to realize that while he’s followed all the rules, he’s still judged by some for the color of his skin. 

One of the things I loved about this relatively short novel, is the amount of growth and maturity Justyce goes through. When the novel begins, he’s a rather naive young man, who despite coming from a rough neighborhood, has never actually been the victim of racism. After being unfairly targeted himself, his eyes are opened to the injustices in the world, yet he never loses sight of his hopes and dreams, even when another tragic incident occurs.

Even while becoming a victim himself of racial injustice, Justyce has the support of many people including his mother, two close friends and classmates, their parents, and a teacher who has turned into a mentor. They have all helped form him into the incredible person he’s become, and they continue to be there for him during the more difficult times. These themes of love, friendship and support serve to balance the darker ones, and further flesh out the characters and plot.

The only reason why I’m not giving this 5 stars is because there’s some romantic drama which is included, and while I think in a longer book it would have been fine, because of the brevity of the story I found it unnecessary and distracting.

Overall though, Dear Martin is an incredible debut by Nic Stone, and it’s one that should be shared in high school classrooms and book discussion groups. In addition to the powerful The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas, this can serve to open a much needed dialogue about inequality and race relations in this country.