“The Getaway” Lamar Giles

Rated 5 stars ***** ARC.  Scholastic Press (Scholastic). 400 p. Published September 20, 2022.

Seventeen-year-old Jay, along with his friends Zeke, Connie and Chelle live in Karloff Country. Soon after moving there they met Chelle, the half-Black heiress of Karloff Country, who was looked down on by her grandfather because of her race. Their friendliness helped ground her when being the half-Black granddaughter of the richest and most racist man around became too much to handle. From then on the four of them were inseparable.

People come to Karloff Country to enjoy rides, costumed characters, themed park areas, restaurants, resorts and more. Those who live and work within its protective walls are safe from the food shortages and hunger they experienced before moving there with their families. Everyone’s needs are taken care of while AI technology keeps everything running smoothly. Life is good, until suddenly it’s not.

Things started to go downhill when Connie and her family disappeared. Then jet planes started to land, followed by everyone getting locked in their homes for a few days. The world outside the walls of Karloff Country had collapsed into chaos, and no one inside was allowed to leave. Life inside Karloff Country was expected to continue as usual, with one change. The billionaires and millionaires who had flown in were now considered Trustees, so everyone who worked at Karloff Country is at their beck and call for ANYTHING they want them to do. If any worker dares to resist, the Trustee’s real fun begins and their lives might end. Welcome to Karloff Country, “the funnest place on Earth.”

Though this is a dystopian novel, taking place many years in the future, it was very scary to think our world could end up in the way it was described. The workers unable to leave Karloff Country reminded me of lyrics from the Eagle’s Hotel California song: “You can check out anytime you want, but you can never leave.” Cliffhanger endings make this a quick read, and teen readers will stay hooked until the last page. I think a sequel might be in order, and look forward to reading it.

Recommended for ages 16 and older.

“The boy on the bridge” M.R. Carey

Rated 4 stars **** ebook. Orbit (Hachette Book Group). 2017.

A group of 12 scientists and soldiers set out from the last city left in Great Britain in an armored research vehicle, nicknamed Rosie, tasked with searching for specimens that had been left behind a year earlier by another group of scientists. They’re hopeful that also sampling “hungries” on the journey will help them find a cure for Cordyceps, a disease that has turned almost everyone on earth into “hungries,” zombies who seek anything alive. Time is of the essence or mankind, as they know it, will disappear.

Stephen Greaves is a fifteen-year-old genius autistic brought onto the trip by his mentor. On one of Rosie’s stops he notices a child who eats like a hungry but acts and thinks like a human. He slips out to look for her in the nearest town, and finds a band of them. The next day his plan to study them is interrupted when a child is killed by one of Rosie’s soldiers, who is also killed. Stephen takes the body and hides it aboard Rosie. Soon Stephen makes an incredible discovery, but the band of hungry children start tracking Rosie through the wilderness. He knows they want the body and will do anything for its return.

This book was written after “The girl with all the gifts,” and is supposed to be its predecessor. There are a few things explained from “The girl” that were a little questionable, but “The boy” left its own set of unanswered questions. I’m wondering if the author is planning on doing a part 3. I liked “The boy” more than “The girl” because Stephen was a strong character and made me feel more involved in the storyline. However I still have questions about the time span between the two books, and what happened in those years to make Dr. Caldwell decide to study the children.

Despite this, I will go ahead and recommend it for Adults.

“The girl with all the gifts” M.R. Carey

Rated 3 stars *** 2015. Orbit (Hatchette). 431 p. (Includes “Interview [with the author],” “Reading group guide,” and a chapter from an upcoming book.)

A strange type of spore has invaded the world, changing most of the population into zombies. Mindless “hungries” are left to wander the ruined land seeking blood. There are just a few pockets of normal civilizations, who shut themselves behind barricaded walls guarded by soldiers. Ten-year-old Melanie has grown up in such a place with other children, strapped into wheelchairs by soldiers for school, and kept in cells at all other times. Her mind is eager for knowledge, and she longs for the times when Miss Justineau, her favorite teacher, visits the classroom.

After hungries attack her secure area, Melanie, Miss Justineau, an evil doctor and two soldiers are left to make their way South towards one of the only remaining civilizations left in Great Britain knowing that hungries lie in wait on every crumbled street in every forsaken city. It is the ingenuity of little Melanie, and the love she has for her teacher, which powers the book towards its inevitable ending. I wasn’t a fan of that ending, but it seemed to make the most sense given everything else that happened in the book.

At first I was bored, and couldn’t get into the book. It wasn’t until the hungries invaded that I became more invested. Though it had a slow start it raised a lot of thinking about what happens when an Apocalypse occurs, but it also left quite a few unanswered questions. The Q & A with the author at the end was very enlightening.

I recommend this book for Adults.

“Someday” by David Levithan

Rated 5 stars ***** Alfred A. Knopf. 2018. 394 p.

A’s love story continues in this sequel to Every Day. When last we saw him in “Every Day,” A had decided to leave town because, though he didn’t want to leave Rhiannon, Poole was after him. He set Rhiannon up to be with Alexander, the boy whose body he’d been inhabiting that day, and left town.

Now far away in Denver, A continued to live his many lives. Every day he wondered how Rhiannon was doing, missing her, but feeling he’d made a good decision. For her part Rhiannon missed him too. She felt as if she and Alexander were good together, but he wasn’t A.

Poole returned, now calling himself X, and went after Nathan demanding A’s return. Nathan sought help from Rhiannon, who had already been in contact with A. It is up to A to figure out a way to safely return without getting caught up in X’s diabolical plans, while also wondering if there’s a way for him and Rhiannon to be together again.

Told from multiple points of views, readers get to see what’s inside X’s head as well as the thoughts of others who also change bodies every day. Levithan makes readers wonder if there really are people in the world that can inhabit our bodies for one day and we’d never know. Are there? Have they? I hear the strains of Twilight Zone music playing…

Recommended for teens ages 15 and older.

“Unfolding” Jonathan Friesen

Rated 1 star * ARC. To be published January 31, 2017. Blink. 275 p.

All his life Jonah has loved Stormi while hating his own scoliosis and epilepsy. Some in his little town of Gullary, Oklahoma are leery of her because she sees things before they happen, while others love her. Mixed in with his constant thoughts of Stormi, and his bouts with epileptic attacks, is a mystery surrounding a secret group of men called The Circle and an old prisoner.

I couldn’t get into this book, finding Jonah’s wandering narrative to be sleep inducing and the storyline too far fetched for my liking. Maybe one of you will enjoy it, so I will leave it up to you to Decide if You Want to Read it or Not.

 

 

 

“The alienation of Courtney Hoffman” Brady Stefani

Rated 1 star * ARC. Published June 7, 2016. SparkPress.

Courtney used to love being with her grandfather, listening to his strange stories about aliens visiting Earth, until he tried to drown her when she was just a little girl. Now that she’s 15 years old, she still hasn’t come to grips with the traumatic events of that day.

When her childhood imaginary friend reappears in her mind, and aliens begin to constantly attempt to communicate, Courtney is sure she’s going insane. A new friend convinces her to visit a doctor who understands aliens and who will solve her problems. Before she knows it, Courtney is involved in a race to help the aliens save the world from destroying itself.

Courtney was so immature. I lost count of how many times she pulled her hair in frustration, and I don’t know any 15 year olds who pull their hair. Her friend Agatha was 19 years old and her vocabulary, which consisted of saying the word “dude” in every sentence, was grating and just as bad.

Courtney is 15, has a 19-year-old friend, says bad words, and has a mother who doesn’t listen to anything she says. That means it has to be a YA book. Right? Wrong! The storyline was boring and not believable, the characters were flat and immature, and it could have easily passed for a lower middle grade book. I was looking for an interesting YA book, but this was not that book. A sequel is planned, but I won’t be reading it. I’m sorry I read this one.

I didn’t like it, but will leave it up to you to decide if you want to read it or not.

I received a digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

 

“All these perfect strangers” Aoife Clifford

Rated 3 stars *** ARC. Ebook. To be published July 12, 2016. Random House.

In the late 1980’s a murder was committed in Pen’s small hometown when she was only 15, which implicated her and her best friend Tracey. It’s now 1990, and she is seeing a psychiatrist for some murders that happened at her University. Using her doctor’s suggestion, Pen decides to keep a journal to recount events in her life so she could get to the root of her real problems.

Pen’s diary goes back and forth in time describing the current situation in her hometown, then skipping back to her life at University where someone is attacking females with a screwdriver, and where drugs, sex and drinking run rampant and unchecked. Occasionally Pen’s diary jumps even further back in time to give readers glimpses of her time with Tracey, but that timeframe is not as well developed.

The author cleverly weaved in secrets and lies as people were dropping like flies, which made me suspect practically everyone. I enjoyed trying to figure out what was happening, but I did not like the way the book ended. Are readers supposed to guess at what happened in the last chapter, or is the author planning on writing a sequel? I really hope not, but if she isn’t going to write one why did she leave readers dangling off the edge of a cliff?

I will recommend this book with some reservations. If it weren’t for the ending, and not getting clear answers to my many questions about Pen and Tracey, I would have given this book 4 stars. Its murky ending lowered it to three stars.

Recommended for Adults.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

“The Revenge of Seven” Pittacus Lore

Rated 4 stars **** ebook. 2014. Lorien Legacies, book #5. Harper (Harper Collins). Includes three excerpts from “I Am Number Four: The Lost Files titled “Return to Paradise,” “Five’s Legacy,” and “Five’s Betrayal.”

Ella has been kidnapped by Setrákus Ra, is a prisoner aboard his spaceship, and finds out she’s actually his granddaughter. Meanwhile John, Sarah, Sam, Malcolm and Adam are holed up trying to plan their next move after the disaster in Chicago while Six, Marina and Nine are trying to find their way out of Florida swampland where they’d been ambushed by Five. Eight has been killed and taken by the Mogs, but Marina is determined to find a way to rescue his body from them.

Despite being separated and facing grim odds, the remaining Loric are desperate to figure out a way to use their legacies to stop the Mogadorians from invading Earth. With each passing day Setrákus Ra’s evil plan gets a step closer to becoming reality, and it will take all of their combined power to stay a step ahead of the Mogs to survive one more day and save Earth.

This latest book in the “I am Number Four” series is full of the usual Mog fights and Loric shows of power. An interesting twist, along with a very frustrating cliffhanger ending, will leave readers eagerly clamoring for Book #6 which won’t be released until 2015 and is portrayed as THE final book in the series. I’ll believe it when I read it.

Recommended for readers aged 14 and older.

“Tabula Rasa” Kristen Lippert-Martin

Rated 5 stars ***** ARC. ebook. To be published September 23, 2014. Egmont USA.

Sarah was patiently waiting for her last brain surgery. Finally she would be relieved of all the memories that had been clogging her mind and would be free to reinvent herself as a new person. The hospital she was in had the latest technology and the best nursing care available, so Sarah wasn’t worried. Everything was going to be just fine.

On the last day of her surgery, everything was going as planned until a power failure caused it to be postponed. Within a matter of hours, she’d regained part of her memory, began fleeing for her life from an army of trained soldiers sent to kill her, found herself falling in love with a strange hacker dude, and uncovered heartbreaking memories which revealed a deep, dark secret about her past.

Lippert-Martin’s dystopian, action-packed, thriller adventure will have its readers on the edges of their seats as they eagerly read to find out what will happen next to Sarah. Each cliffhanger chapter ending reveals a new key to the mystery, making it impossible to put down the book until it’s all finished.

Highly recommended for ages 12 and older.

“The Tesla Gate” John D. Mimms

Rated 2 stars ** To be published July 10, 2014. ebook. ARC. Premier Digital Publishing.

Edited on April 5th. Now Rated 3 stars *** (see explanation at bottom of review)

Thomas Pendleton loves his wife Ann and son Seth, so works long hours for them. He feels guilty missing birthday and family time but knows this will help them have the money they need to be comfortable in the future. However all is not well, and a strange cosmic storm appears which somehow causes ghosts to appear visible.

However all is not well as the government has devised a plan to get rid of these “Impals” (impalpables) as they’ve been renamed which is similar to what was done to the Japanese Americans during World War II. As Tom has a strong connection to one of them, he will have to use everything at his disposal to make sure this particular “impal” is protected.

“The Tesla Gate” has a semi interesting storyline, and leaves much to the reader’s imagination such as how did the government figure out iron was the only thing that could contain an Impal?

NOTE: On April 5th I received a note from the publisher discussing various discrepancies I mentioned in my Spoiler Alert below (DO NOT READ THE SECTION BELOW IF YOU DON’T LIKE SPOILERS) Thus since I didn’t know the book was a trilogy, and the errors I mentioned had been corrected in the final version, I will change my review from 2 stars to 3 stars *** because it really was a good storyline and, since the issues I mentioned were corrected and others will be explained in later books, it deserves a chance to be read.

Recommended for Adult readers.

NOTE: SPOILER ALERT. DO NOT READ BEYOND THIS SECTION.

*** SPOILER ***

************************************************************************************

*** SPOILER ***

The author had a huge discrepancy not caught by an editor. After his wife and son died, Tom thought back to their final days and remembered how she suffered a low blood sugar attack on their way home from a picnic causing their car to strike a tree, where they died instantly. However, several chapters later he laments the fact they both drowned. I was left scratching my head. First, how do you get low blood sugar when you just finished eating lunch? Secondly how do you die in a car accident yet several chapters later have drowned?

Additionally the title “The Tesla Gate” does not adequately describe what’s happening in the book, as the gate is only mentioned in the final pages of the book. I think the author could have thought of a title more in tune to the fate of the Impals along with Tom’s adventures with his son.

Edited April 5: I received the following comments from the publisher: “I would like you to know that due to being up against a pressing deadline, the ARC was released prior to editing. The discrepancies you caught were corrected in the final version to be published in July. Also, the Tesla Gate is a trilogy. This will be made clear in metadata before release. Things you did not feel were explained, such as the gates and iron, are going to be addressed more thoroughly in the following books.”