Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

Camille’s skin tells the story of her troubled past.

Riddled with words that she carved into her skin, they tell the story of a girl trying to get through the pain of her teenage years in the only way she knew how.

After a stay in the hospital, Camille became a reporter for a paper in Chicago.

When a story about a child murderer calls her back to her home in Wind Gap, she doesn’t know how she will be able to face going back there.

Wind Gap houses her past, her dead sister, and her addiction to carving words into her skin using knives from the kitchen. Everywhere she turns, there is a memory; whether it be an old face or an old hangout. Nothing has changed.

What has changed is the fact that there are innocent girls being murdered in their town, and nobody knows who is behind it.

As Camille tries to get her story and figure out what is going on in Wind Gap, she has to face all of her old demons . . . and her new ones. Her mother is as shut off and disapproving as ever. Her sister tries to be the golden child, but has a wild side that ends up with a night of drinking and doing drugs with Camille. Being attracted to a cop and playing a game of cat and mouse trying to get information and a statement from him.

Nothing is easy down in Wind Gap. There are too many secrets.

This was a really deep and dark book. Between dealing with mental illnesses and murder, there was no room for any bright storyline, and that it what makes it stand out to me. Gillian Flynn didn’t try to fluff up the story at all because these are very real problems that people face. It made the book very real and more interesting.

The twist at the end was really interesting to me. I am not sure if figuring out who the murderer is was supposed to be a twist, or a confirmation of readers’ beliefs. I had it narrowed down to two people mid-way through the novel, and both of them ended up being caught and prosecuted for different crimes. So, it wasn’t really a twist to me, but it didn’t have to be. It was good to finally know what happened and who did it.

That being said, the reveal of the murderer was really creepy. The explanation of where the teeth went and how the crimes went down was really disturbing.

I was sort of disappointed with how Camille ended up at the end of the book. I was hoping that she would come out of Wind Gap stronger than ever and leave her past behind. She couldn’t do that and ended up reverting back to her old ways. I don’t necessarily always want books to have a happy ending, but I was really rooting for her.

5/5 Beautifully written. Really intriguing story.

I haven’t been able to get the image of a crazy lady in all white taking a girl into the woods since I read that section in the book. That will probably be the thing that sticks with me the most. It gave me chills.

Memorable Quote: “Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom.”

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Losses by Robert Wexelblatt

This was an interesting book for me. It was really short, only about 82 pages, but it didn’t seem to go anywhere quickly.

It didn’t seem to actually go anywhere until the last few chapters.

A single father who is also an IRS agent takes on a large case that could incriminate a lot of people.

He has to balance his work with taking care of and raising his young daughter Augustus. They were abandoned by her mother when she was very young, and it has just been the two of them for years.

When she changes her mind and decides she wants to actually be a mother, he and Augustus must figure out how to approach the situation.

Some things just don’t follow a certain game plan though.

The writing was okay at best. The story was interesting, but as I said before, it was either lacking a good flow or was just moving very slow.

For a storyline that wasn’t very sophisticated, it had a moderately sophisticated vocabulary. I couldn’t figure out what type of audience it was trying to reach.

3/5 stars

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Artificial Gods by Thomm Quackenbush

This is Book 3 in the Night’s Dream series.

When Jasmine sees a mysterious UFO hovering over her back yard, things start getting very weird for her.

Men in all black suits show up at her door demanding photographs of the UFO that she did not take.

She discovers they may not be after her alone. Her sister Chrys and Chrys’s friend Dylan may also be in trouble. They receive weird visits from people they do not know and they experience lost time.

When they come face to face with a reptilian that calls himself Gideon, everything starts to fall into place.

They visit a doctor who conducts hypnotism on the three to try to figure out what has happened to them during their lost time.

After this, Jasmine discovers that her sister may not be who everyone thinks she is. There may be a dark secret deep within her.

Gideon enlists the help of Jasmine to destroy the “Grays” [aliens] because he can’t do it himself.

This book seemed to go on a lot longer than it really needed to. There were a lot of chapters that I felt could have been shorter and a lot of information was given that was not helpful to the story. The ending especially seemed to drag on.

If anything, the book should have ended right after the fair. It would have left some things up to the imagination.

The three main characters from the first two books were reintroduced at the end of this one, but I felt their appearance was really unnecessary. It didn’t add anything to the story for me and made the ending more confusing.

The first half of the book flowed a lot nicer than the previous two books, but as it reached the end, the writing felt forced.

The one plot point that I found really interesting was the suggestion that people see things because they really believe in them, and people can be forced to see anything if belief is pushed onto them. 

I never really got attached to any of the characters in this one either. I kept reading more to just find out what happened and to finish the series rather than because I cared about the characters.

3/5 stars. The plot was more interesting than the first two, but it fell short in the end.

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Danse Macabre by Thomm Quackenbush

Danse Macabre is the second book in the Night’s Dream Series.

The four main characters are back – Roselyn, Shane, Eliot and Dryden.

Dryden likes to role-play as a vampire. He has a whole clan that is in on it with him. They believe they are vampires, but they also believe that real, bloodsucking vampires are a myth.

That is, until Dryden is converted into one. He isn’t like the rest though. He doesn’t feel the need to kill people in order to get blood. He would rather drink from an animal than from a human, but that is not how it works in the world of the undead.

When he escapes captivity from his makers, they set out to hunt him down and will collect everyone he loves in the process.

Shane gets mistaken for Roselyn and is captured. Roselyn, Dryden, Eliot and Noah must all work together to try to save her before the vampires end up killing her.

As Dryden feels himself becoming more bloodthirsty and violent, he must find a way to halt his urges before anyone close to him is hurt.

I feel like there was better character development in this one compared to book one. They all had their own arcs and personalities. Whereas, in the first book, everyone meshed together for me; it was hard to get connected to them.

Seth was an extremely likable unlikable character. The reader isn’t supposed to like him at first, and he is written well to make you appreciate him.

The plot and flow of the story made a lot more sense to me in this one than the first one did. I was able to follow along pretty well. It also helped that I knew who the characters were from the first novel.

Even for a book about vampires, I was a little surprised by the amount of blood that was in it. I am not used to the genre though, so I don’t know whether it is more or less than the norm.

3/5 stars

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Bitter Orange by Marshall Moore

After having his life turned upside down by 9/11, Seth leaves his lavish lifestyle behind to move all of the way across the country to start his life all over again. He has a roommate named Sang-Hee who is the only person who knows about his secret. Seth can become invisible, and if he is not invisible, he can deceive people into believing whatever he says. He is able to pay for an iPod with only a few dollars, and he is able to steal chips from a casino in Vegas. Seth can do basically anything he wants, but is that enough for him?

Seth was an interesting guy. He touches on the topic of having a good job in New York City that he left after 9/11. He doesn’t go into detail about it at first, so the reader isn’t completely sure what he had done in his past. Once I learned more about Seth, he became an even more unique and interesting character that was fun to read about.

Sang-Hee was a great supporting character. I liked their conversations. They flowed well, had good chemistry, and were mostly funny. Sang-Hee could have had a bigger role, but he was also good as he was presented.

I liked how Marshall Moore incorporated gay characters into the book. The main characters are gay, but that isn’t the storyline. I feel that a lot of the books I have read in the past with LGBT protagonists, the writer relies on this to form the story. They are usually love stories. But, in Bitter Orange, it was almost like it was a side note, “Oh, by the way, Seth is gay. Now lets move on with the story.”

With the push for more diverse characters in books, I feel this book should be mentioned more just for that reason alone.

The storyline really kept me hanging on until the end. I had to figure out if the reason for Seth’s sudden powers were ever explained, and they were. It was nothing like I was imagining, but I didn’t really have any theories in mind to begin with. It was a nice surprise, and the twist at the end was a little crazy.

It definitely leaves it open to a sequel.

3.5/5 stars. A little slow at times, but it is ultimately worth the read.

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