Genre: Thriller


Friday, April 22, 2016

Blog Tour: The Darkest Corners by Kara Thomas – Review

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I received this book for free from Random House Children's Books in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Blog Tour: The Darkest Corners by Kara Thomas – ReviewThe Darkest Corners by Kara Thomas
Published by Delacorte Books for Young Readers on April 19th 2016
Genres: Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, YA
Source: Random House Children's Books
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four-stars

The Darkest Corners is a psychological thriller about the lies little girls tell, and the deadly truths those lies become.

There are ghosts around every corner in Fayette, Pennsylvania. Tessa left when she was nine and has been trying ever since not to think about it after what happened there that last summer. Memories of things so dark will burn themselves into your mind if you let them.

Callie never left. She moved to another house, so she doesn’t have to walk those same halls, but then Callie always was the stronger one. She can handle staring into the faces of her demons—and if she parties hard enough, maybe one day they’ll disappear for good.

Tessa and Callie have never talked about what they saw that night. After the trial, Callie drifted and Tessa moved, and childhood friends just have a way of losing touch.

But ever since she left, Tessa has had questions. Things have never quite added up. And now she has to go back to Fayette—to Wyatt Stokes, sitting on death row; to Lori Cawley, Callie’s dead cousin; and to the one other person who may be hiding the truth.

Only the closer Tessa gets to the truth, the closer she gets to a killer—and this time, it won’t be so easy to run away.

This was one of those rare books that actually stumped me until almost the very end. I am usually very good at figuring out a mystery and what is really going on, but this one kept me second guessing myself the whole time. It was fantastic and held my attention the whole time. The characters were great, and the emotional impact was spot on. It was a bit slow moving at times, especially to start, but it really helped build things up. One of the major things I noticed (and loved) was that there was no romance thrown in. It wasn’t necessary and it would have taken away from the story.

Tessa has had a very rough childhood. Her father is in jail, and her sister and mom have abandoned her. She has been living with her grandmother since she was younger. With her father being about to die, she goes back to her hometown to stay with Maggie, who has always been kind to her. Maggie is also Callie’s mom. Callie who used to be her best friend until she moved away. Until what happened in their childhood put a wedge between them, though Tessa doesn’t know why. Now she is back, and they are second guessing if what they testified as kids was right. Especially after another person ends up dead. She also holds a secret from when they were questioned all those years ago by the police. Something she didn’t tell anyone. Tessa is also trying to find her sister and her mom, but the more she uncovers about things, the more she feels like she is running into more dead ends. She is a smart girl, but she is also pretty broken. She has no one, she needs answers, but all she is getting is more questions. She proves brave and determined though, and she definitely gets more than she bargained for by digging for the truth.

Callie seems stuck up and snobby, but she is just as broken, if not more, than Tessa. She never left and has been left to live in the same place where the bad things happened. She feels like she can’t question what she saw that awful night because if they were wrong, then a horrible person is still out there. She just wants to get as far away from that town as she can. She drowns her pain and thoughts with alcohol. Surprisingly, even though the last person she wanted to see again was Tessa, they start to bond again through finding out the truth of everything. At first I didn’t like Callie, but by the end I really did. She was much different underneath than what we initially see when we meet her.

So of course this is a mystery, but there are also a lot of twists. One especially that I totally didn’t see coming. And I love that!! It’s not often that a book can catch me off guard like that. I tend to be very observant and can figure things out with tiny clues, but not this time. Maybe I’m getting old. It was dark at times, and suspenseful. I was intrigued by all the things that Tessa found out and how one thing led to another, even if they weren’t really directly connected to one another. The characters were great and very real to me as well. I loved watching Tessa and Callie reconnect, and I also really loved the whole family dynamic. The way the story was told, it was so believable. There were no easy outs, or coincidental things that made things just fall into place. This was fabulous!!

four-stars

4 Hot Espressos

Review: The Dead House by Dawn

Posted by on 10/30/2015 • 7 Comments

Disclaimer: this wasn’t a scary book. When we say ‘scary’, that’s something I would give to the likes of Daughters Unto Devils by Amy Lukavics and Girl from the Well + The Suffering by Rin Chupeco. This wasn’t even a mind-fuck of a book a la Dangerous Girls

However, that doesn’t mean my mind didn’t reel from it. Even though this didn’t have the quiet or the jumpy horror I am well fond of, how this book delivered a kickass psychological paranormal thriller made me shiver in my boots.

1. Unreliable narrator? Check. 2. A book majorly in a dairy format, showing us the thought processes of our heroine, therefore giving us an intense sneak peek of the insanity of the situation? Check. 3. Notes, transcription of videos, medical reports, letting us also see…

Review: NEED by Joelle Charbonneau

Posted by on 10/23/2015 • 8 Comments

At first glance, NEED by Joelle Charbonneau sounds like the fricking bomb. Its premise speaks of the following:

A small town full of selfish high schoolers; A social media tool that promises to fulfill your every need if you do certain conditions; A heroine who has a brother who desperately needs a kidney transplant.

This was basically me:

But unfortunately, while I do agree that this was a fast-paced novel, it wasn’t something that left a huge impact in me.

Let’s talk about multiple, emotionless, deadpan-like POVs.

For a premise like this, I do understand the need of having multiple POVs, especially since you have a tempting social media tool that promises to fulfill even your most extravagant wishes for a price. It’s something that affects the people on a…

A Letter to Kady (Illuminae) by Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff

Posted by on 10/21/2015 • 11 Comments

I’m excited to have the Illuminae tour stop by the blog today with a fun guest post! I’ve got both Amie and Jay here today with a letter to their main character, Kady! Also don’t forget to enter to win before you go! Before we get to that, let’s see what this book is all about:

Guest post by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

A Letter to Kady

Dear Kady,

Okay, first up, we’re sorry. WE’RE SORRY. Please don’t delete our back-up files, remotely active our car alarms or plaster our embarrassing baby photos all over the internet. We know you know how. And okay, maybe you’d be justified. We put you through some stuff in Illuminae. We can acknowledge that.

We’re particularly sorry about…

Review: The Harvest Man by Alex Grecian

Review: The Harvest Man by Alex Grecian

Posted by on 07/06/2015 • 4 Comments

I always am up for a good mystery/thriller so when I saw this I was all about it. I haven’t read the other books from this series, but it didn’t matter. It seems that each story is its own. After reading this though, I am definitely interested in going back to read the previous ones. It wasn’t a super suspenseful mystery, but it did have that chilling factor to it. It is told from numerous points of view, and that was what kind of disconnected me from it all. I did enjoy it though. We not only have Jack the Ripper to worry about in this, but a new killer named The Harvest Man. The characters were interesting, but how this is told, I never really felt an attachment to…

Review: Reckless Hearts by Sean Olin

Review: Reckless Hearts by Sean Olin

Posted by on 07/02/2015 • 2 Comments

Don’t we just love watching trainwrecks happen?

Last year, I read the author’s Wicked Games, a young adult suspense thriller with extremely unlikeable characters who got themselves entangled in a situation that actually spelt complete and utter DISASTER. It was the sort of drama where you know everything was going to go totally wrong, and it was only a matter of watching everything explode. I do admit that the first book was suspenseful, the edge-of-your-seat kind of thriller that would make your heart pound, but because it had extremely unlikeable characters (as in I would have loved to go inside to slap them silly) the connection wasn’t really there. I didn’t feel for them, heck, I wasn’t even scared for them or anxious of what might happen. Don’t get me wrong, I love unlikeable…

Review: Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Review: Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Posted by on 06/17/2015 • 21 Comments

If ever the times comes I’d need to pick the ultimate young adult sci-fi novel, I would choose Illuminae without any second thoughts.

You guys may be well-aware of my huge love for space opera. There’s really nothing more mesmerizing than a tragic and action-packed story set in the vastness of empty space, where you are in the middle of absolute nothingness, where stars, rocks, and planets are seperated by unimaginable distances. I don’t know, it’s just such a beautiful setting for me. Maybe it’s because I find the universe to be the starting ground of life itself, or maybe it’s because I find the cosmos so romantic, or maybe it’s because I see poetry in the stars. Whatever the case, I felt all three of these in Illuminae.

And then some.

Here’s…

Review: Normal by Graeme Cameron

Review: Normal by Graeme Cameron

Posted by on 06/11/2015 • 14 Comments

A book about a serial killer in the eyes of the serial killer… I know what you’re thinking: the morbidness! The fascinating concept! The potential to show us what it is like on the other side of the fence! The opportunity to give us such a gritty, different, and complex story!

… which boggles the mind: how the hell did this one manage to bore me the frack out?!

Here’s the thing, ladies and gents: when we’re reading a perspective from the other person when it comes to controversial issues, I expect it to be… well, deep, because they shove us an extremely unlikeable person who does extremely unlikeable (read: detestable) things so they can humanize them to a certain extent in order to make us “see” where they are coming…