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A Touch of Death
A Touch of Death
Rebecca Crunden | 2017 | Science Fiction/Fantasy
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
New twist to the classic dystopians
Trigger Warning: Graphic gore, death, suicidal thoughts, torture.

When Rebecca approached me about reading A Touch of Death, I have to admit I was a little apprehensive. Dystopian is one of those genres that has been so overly saturated that nothing seems to be fresh. Luckily, my apprehension was unwarranted.

A Touch of Death is one of those books that will grab you the second you start reading it. This dystopian sci-fi novel grabbed me almost instantly. The plot was exciting and gave us a nice twist to the classic dystopian books. I liked all of the elements present, and they seemed to work pretty well together.

The main characters Kitty & Nate, were fascinating. I liked seeing how they interacted, and I loved the bit of bickering too. It did take me some time to warm up to both characters. I never seemed to connect to either of them, but that didn't stop me from enjoying the book. The relationships in the book were interesting to watch evolve, and I liked seeing how both Kitty & Nate changed throughout the book.

All in all, I enjoyed the book. I would have liked to connect more with the characters, but this was a solid 4 star read for me!
  
The Good Daughter
The Good Daughter
Karin Slaughter | 2017 | Fiction & Poetry, Mystery, Thriller
8
8.2 (25 Ratings)
Book Rating
Charlie and Sam grew up in Pikeville, Georgia, with anything but an idyllic childhood. When the girls were teens, they were part of a brutal assault at their family's farmhouse. The attack left their mother, "Gamma," dead and profoundly affected their father, a prominent local attorney. Years later, Charlie remains in Pikeville, a lawyer like her father, and trying to keep the past behind her. All that changes when the town witnesses violence yet again--and Charlie is right in the thick of it. Suddenly, she's forced to confront so many of the emotions she's buried for years and to fully deal with exactly what happened to her family so many years ago.

Slaughter's latest novel starts quickly out of the gate--with a brutal, graphic, and spell-binding description of the assault and attack on Charlie, Sam, and Gamma--and it never lets up from there. <i>Seriously, this book never lets you take a breath or a break: it's just constant action and second guessing. </i>

Told from the points of view of both Charlie and Sam, including their varying memories of the incident at the farmhouse, we are forced to see all the events and violence through the eyes of the two sisters alone. As I mentioned, this keeps you guessing--and reading. I completely put down the other novel I was reading at the time (FINAL GIRLS) to read this: I had to know how it ended.

All the characters in this book are entwined, and Slaughter does a great job of depicting the small town of Pikeville. It's a mystery at its core, sure, but it also goes deeper with commentary on race, class, and how modern society deals with mass tragedy. The characters are well-drawn: I immediately found myself intrigued by Sam, Charlie, their father (Rusty), the descriptions of Gamma, and by a slew of small-town folk, including Rusty's secretary Lenore, and Charlie's estranged husband, Ben. Slaughter is excellent with the details.

Indeed, <i>she's great at doling out those "whoa" moments.</I> The plot never lets down; in fact, it continues to pick up as the novel continues on. I truly gasped a couple of times and found myself going "wow"! That's not easy to do once, let alone consistently.

This is a beautiful book at times--the way the plot and characters weave together. It even makes you laugh at moments, despite some truly somber subject matter. I found myself a bit irked at times by Charlie and Sam's fighting (I've read a lot of books with sisters fighting as of late), but if that's my only nitpick, that's not bad at all.

Overall, a great mystery that keeps you guessing and surprised to the very end. Excellent, fascinating, and deep characters. Definitely worth a read.

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher and Edelweiss (thank you!); it is available everywhere as of 08/22/2017.

You can read my review of Slaughter's novel PRETTY GIRLS <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1374683896?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1">here</a>;.

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Angel Catbird, Volume 1
Angel Catbird, Volume 1
Margaret Atwood, Johnnie Christmas | 2016 | Comics & Graphic Novels, Fiction & Poetry
2
4.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
This is what happens when a vanity project goes wildly offtrack. (0 more)
This is an unfortunate disappointment for me. I haven't read much of Atwood, but I'm familiar with her and her significance as an author so I was more than intrigued by the idea of a graphic novel written by her. Well, imagine my disappointment in what she gave us: from her rather self-serving foreword, where in the first paragraph she reminds us that she is “an award-winning nice literary old lady” and then goes on to great lengths about her lifelong interest in comics, to the flat story that is nothing but one overused superhero trope and bad pun after another, to the lackluster art (sorry, but Johnnie Christmas' art just didn't save this enough for me), to the interjected facts about the number of cat and bird deaths in Canada, the US, and the UK that occur each year, I was shocked that this got published. I would assume that had anyone other that Margaret Atwood presented this project, it would have been shot down. This is nothing to me but a vanity project and one that I just can't see myself continuing. The only reason I can't give it 1 star is because it is Margaret Atwood, after all, and it seems sacrilegious to do so.