Tag: 3 stars

Metamorphosis #1: The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass – Adan Jerreat-Poole

Eli is a girl of hawthorn and glass. Literally. Her body consists of other substances as well but she’s a made-thing. She’s the perfect assassin, created by a witch to kill ghosts.

Eventually she would turn back into the parts the witch had used to make her – a girl stitched together out of beetle shells and cranberries and a witch’s greed.

Eli and her seven blades have never failed before but something goes wrong this time in the City of Ghosts, and she’s terrified of being unmade.

Seanan McGuire says The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass is a “unique, gripping, engaging book by a voice that the genre has been waiting for.” Anyone who knows me knows Seanan is my favourite author so if they enjoyed it, then logic says I will as well. I loved the concept and this series has so much potential. Amongst other goodies, there’s magic, witches and a labyrinth.

“What’s the magic word?”

“I was trained to kill?”

“Good enough for me.”

You know those photomosaic jigsaw puzzles where each piece is its own tiny picture, but when you finish the puzzle you see the big picture? That’s the image I get when I think about the world building in this book, except the big picture isn’t complete. It’s like I was given a bunch of beautiful, strange little pictures, some that read like poetry. However, I didn’t get enough of them to form an overall picture.

I can see part of the Labyrinth, part of the library and the door of Circinae’s house but I can’t imagine the City of Eyes as a whole. I also couldn’t get a clear picture of what Kite looked like.

I wanted to delve deeper into the history of the City of Eyes. Eli, as a made-thing, wasn’t privy to that information herself so it made sense for the reader to go in blind. We learn a small amount of background information when Eli does. If I’d either been given a history lesson earlier or had the opportunity to interact with more of the Coven, I‘m certain I would have been more invested in the story.

As it was, for most of the book, the Coven’s motivation was unknown. Other than some limited interaction with Circinae, the adult inhabitants of this world remained fairly mysterious. Not an alluring kind of mysterious, though. It was more of an ‘I don’t know who these characters are’ mystery. There were also some scenes where I still don’t really know what happened.

I’m pretty sure I stumbled into a couple of plot holes although, to be fair, there is a forthcoming sequel that could fill them. I’d be interested to see how the story concludes in The Boi of Feather and Steel.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Dundurn Press for the opportunity to read this book.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

Even teenage assassins have dreams.

Eli isn’t just a teenage girl – she’s a made-thing the witches created to hunt down ghosts in the human world. Trained to kill with her seven magical blades, Eli is a flawless machine, a deadly assassin. But when an assignment goes wrong, Eli starts to question everything she was taught about both worlds, the Coven, and her tyrannical witch-mother. 

Worried that she’ll be unmade for her mistake, Eli gets caught up with a group of human and witch renegades, and is given the most difficult and dangerous task in the worlds: capture the Heart of the Coven. With the help of two humans, one motorcycle, and a girl who smells like the sea, Eli is going to get answers – and earn her freedom.

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The Mall – Megan McCafferty

Cassie has her life all planned out. The plan consists of a summer job in the mall with her boyfriend of two years, followed by moving to New York together to attend colleges across the road from one another. The plan did not include her getting mono, missing prom and graduation, her boyfriend breaking up with her or losing her job.

Taking place almost exclusively within the mall during the summer of 1991, there are plenty of 90’s references, from 90210 to Nirvana, from big hair to lycra. This was a quick and easy read, and I enjoyed the nostalgia. I adored the cover design and absolutely loved the “90210 Scale of Parkway Center Mall Employment Awesomeness”, where Dylan McKay is obviously the coolest.

“There’s a fortune hidden somewhere in the mall,” Drea said, “and I’m determined to find it.”

While I liked the concept and was thrilled when the quest for hidden treasure made its way into the story, overall the story fell flat for me. I wanted to get to know two of the characters better, Zoe and Drea, as they had an edge that interested me. Most of the other characters were fairly generic.

Along with the drama of teenage friendships and boys, there’s also slut-shaming, a revenge makeover and a catfight. The list of people Cassie needs to avoid in the mall grows fairly steadily as the story progresses.

Cassie is quite elitist, knowing full well that she’s never going to be one of the mall’s lifers, as she’s destined for bigger and better things in New York. Although she is unarguably book smart, she’s not as mature as she seems to think she is. Often she behaved as though she was closer to 13 than 17.

Something that gave me pause: on the copyright page the author’s name appears after Alloy Entertainment, a book packaging company. It made me wonder how much creative control the author had when they were writing.

Thank you to NetGalley and Wednesday Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press, for the opportunity to read this book.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

The year is 1991. Scrunchies, mixtapes and 90210 are, like, totally fresh. Cassie Worthy is psyched to spend the summer after graduation working at the Parkway Center Mall. In six weeks, she and her boyfriend head off to college in NYC to fulfill The Plan: higher education and happily ever after.

But you know what they say about the best laid plans …

Set entirely in a classic “monument to consumerism,” the novel follows Cassie as she finds friendship, love, and ultimately herself, in the most unexpected of places.

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Mayhem – Estelle Laure

“Don’t you want to know what’s really going on, Mayhem?”

Mayhem and Roxy, her mother, have recently moved in with Elle, Roxy’s twin sister, and her foster children. Roxy always swore she’d never return to Santa Maria but Mayhem doesn’t know why. It turns out there’s a lot she doesn’t know about being a Brayburn.

This book covers a lot of ground: family legacies, the secrets we keep from ourselves and others, the impacts of trauma and the ways we try to reclaim our power.

I was only three. Lyle saved us. That’s the story.

The portrayal of what it’s like for a child living in a home where domestic violence is the norm was painfully authentic. I could feel what it was like for Mayhem as the abuse was happening to both herself and her mother, the impacts of which were evident throughout the story.

I particularly appreciated the fact that once there was some physical distance between the abused and abuser, life didn’t automatically become sunshine and roses. The abuse wasn’t sensationalised but it also wasn’t sugarcoated.

Roxy doesn’t cry. Neither of us do. We don’t talk about it, even to each other, like if we never say it out loud, it will stop.

There were some sentences that resonated with me so much that I had to reread them immediately and then pause while I absorbed them. I anticipate these quotes will be staying with me for quite a while:

“Don’t let the idea of people overshadow truth.”

“Sometimes it’s hard to hear things, because then you have to admit other things and the story you’ve been telling yourself unravels so fast you can barely handle it.”

I found the names of several businesses in the story absolutely delightful. I’d stop reading when I came across those as well, but only long enough to say to the nearest person, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’. My favourite was We’ve Got Issues, a comic book store. Brilliant!

Then there were the parts of the story that hovered over my head, just out of reach. In particular, I wasn’t always entirely sure what was happening during the scenes where magic happens. There often wasn’t enough detail given to allow me to ‘see’ what was going on.

There was one scene involving the serial killer where this was especially evident; I didn’t even know what happened until I was given more information a few pages later. Incidentally, I had hoped the serial killer would have more page time than they did. The resolution of their part of the story was much too quick and easy for my liking.

I began to read some reviews to find out if I was the only one who wasn’t always getting it. Plenty of reviewers have mentioned the similarities between this story and The Lost Boys. I’ve never seen that movie and I’m still not sure if it was an advantage or disadvantage coming into this book uninitiated.

It has made me wonder if some of the more magical components of this story were written using a kind of shorthand, where if you were familiar with the movie you’d know exactly what the author was talking about without needing the additional descriptions that would have been beneficial for me.

The person I most wanted to get to know was Neve but she remained somewhat of a mystery to me. I wanted to find out more about her life before she lived with Elle but I only caught a couple of glimpses.

“They do not mess with us,” Neve murmurs, almost to herself. “For good reason.”

I’ve never been a fan of insta-love although sometimes it grows on me as a story progresses. It didn’t here. I also became frustrated as the story never really came together for me, even though there were plenty of elements that I should have loved.

Aspects of the story didn’t have the depth I was looking for and neither did some of the characters. I wanted to come away having a detailed understanding of the way the magic worked but I could only explain it to you in vague terms. I don’t even really know how to explain it but it was like I got a taste of many things but never the entire experience.

“People want to keep secrets from you, but it’s not right. You need to know everything.”

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Wednesday Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press, for the opportunity to read this book.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

It’s 1987 and unfortunately it’s not all Madonna and cherry lip balm. Mayhem Brayburn has always known there was something off about her and her mother, Roxy. Maybe it has to do with Roxy’s constant physical pain, or maybe with Mayhem’s own irresistible pull to water. Either way, she knows they aren’t like everyone else. 

But when May’s stepfather finally goes too far, Roxy and Mayhem flee to Santa Maria, California, the coastal beach town that holds the answers to all of Mayhem’s questions about who her mother is, her estranged family, and the mysteries of her own self. There she meets the kids who live with her aunt, and it opens the door to the magic that runs through the female lineage in her family, the very magic Mayhem is next in line to inherit and which will change her life for good. 

But when she gets wrapped up in the search for the man who has been kidnapping girls from the beach, her life takes another dangerous turn and she is forced to face the price of vigilante justice and to ask herself whether revenge is worth the cost. 

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Where the Veil is Thin – Cerece Rennie Murphy & Alana Joli Abbott (editors)

So, here I am again, having read an entire anthology just because there’s a contribution from Seanan McGuire. I always think this is a brilliant idea when I first stumble across the book but my excitement generally turns to dread when I remember that short stories and I have a love-hate relationship. I love some and I hate some. Sometimes the love outweighs the hate but more times than I can count it’s the other way around.

Taking on faeries (“Yes, but we don’t like to use that word.”) are fourteen authors. Included in the mix are stories of love and betrayal, a unicorn named Kevin, changelings and a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure that knows when you’re cheating.

The Tooth Fairies: Quest for Tear Haven by Glenn Parris

Night always invited wayward blood thirst in one form or another.

Glamour by Grey Yuen

“The door! We saw the door. I swear it! It had a mouth and it screamed!”

See a Fine Lady by Seanan McGuire

“It’s always so much easier to do our shopping when someone can see us.”

Or Perhaps Up by C.S.E. Cooney

“Family does not pull family under. We pull each other out.”

Don’t Let Go by Alana Joli Abbott

“You shouldn’t have seen that.”

The Loophole by L. Penelope

“Seems like my last meal isn’t agreeing with me.”

The Last Home of Master Tranquil Cloud by Minsoo Kang

“Even as we speak, the fate of the man who has done me wrong is being sealed.”

Your Two Better Halves by Carlos Hernandez

“Your choices are your opportunities.”

Take Only Photos by Shanna Swendson

“What else that’s supposed to be imaginary is actually real?”

Old Twelvey Night by Gwendolyn N. Nix

It happened the same way every time.

The Seal-Woman’s Tale by Alethea Kontis

Ah, humans. My guilty pleasure, my fatal flaw. They were always just so … fun.

The Storyteller by David Bowles

“Would you like to hear a story?”

Summer Skin by Zin E. Rocklyn

It would be nice to be noticed.

Colt’s Tooth by Linda Robertson

“You’re not going anywhere ‘til I get those teeth!”

All of the anthologies that came before this one are now collectively pointing at me and sneering, ‘Have we taught you nothing about yourself?’ While this book already boasts multiple five star reviews, I wandered through it underwhelmed. I’d encourage you to read some of these five star reviews before deciding whether or not this is the book for you.

I loved Anna Dittmann’s cover illustration but unfortunately I didn’t come away with any favourite stories.

Thank you to NetGalley and Outland Entertainment for the opportunity to read this anthology.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

These are not your daughter’s faerie stories …

Around the world, there are tales of creatures that live in mist or shadow, hidden from humans by only the slightest veil. In Where the Veil Is Thin, these creatures step into the light. Some are small and harmless. Some are bizarre mirrors of this world. Some have hidden motives, while others seek justice against humans who have wronged them.

In these pages, you will meet blood-sucking tooth fairies and gentle boo hags, souls who find new shapes after death and changelings seeking a way to fit into either world. You will cross the veil – but be careful that you remember the way back. 

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Here Lie the Secrets – Emma Young

Do you believe in ghosts?

Mia is visiting her aunt in Brooklyn over the summer and plans on hanging out with her friend, Tamara, as they save up for their planned road trip.

Meeting Rav was not on the agenda, nor was spending time with him and his colleagues from the Parapsychology Research Institute as they investigate a potential haunting.

Mia is already haunted by the death of her best friend, Holly, and is certainly not wanting to cross paths with any other ghosts.

It is clear the author has spent a significant amount of time researching the methods investigators use to hunt ghosts, as well as the various arguments for and against the existence of ghosts, prior to writing this book.

While I was really looking forward to this read, there ended up being a mismatch between my expectations and reality, and this coloured the way I experienced this book.

After learning about Rav, a student of parapsychology, in the blurb, I spent a lot of time waiting for some creepy, needing to look over my shoulder content. Instead I found the narrative to be more of an exploration of grief. Not necessarily a bad thing, but certainly not what I’d been hoping for.

When I read about a Ghostbusters belt buckle and found a quote from my all time favourite movie, I began my search for Ghostbusters Easter eggs, but never found them. I was initially interested in the discussions exploring why people do or don’t believe in the existence of ghosts but they felt more like info dumps and when the discussions devolved into arguments I lost interest.

I didn’t connect with any of the characters and expected to feel their grief but never did. The information provided about the summer job felt important at the time it was given but seemed more and more irrelevant as the story progressed.

I absolutely loved learning of the existence of the Here Lie the Secrets of the Visitors of Green-Wood Cemetery art installation, where visitors write their secrets on paper and place them into the grave.

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While this story ultimately wasn’t for me, I would encourage you to check out some of the 4 and 5 star reviews before deciding whether or not this is the book for you.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Stripes Publishing, an imprint of Little Tiger Group, for the opportunity to read this book.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

Mia’s best friend Holly died when they were thirteen. But years later, Holly still hasn’t left her.

Spending the summer in New York, Mia is hoping to escape the visions of Holly that haunt her life at home. There she meets Rav, a parapsychology student, who convinces her to take part in a study into why some people see ghosts. Soon she is caught up in the investigation of Halcyon House, which is reputed to be haunted by a poltergeist. As Mia confronts her fears, what she learns about the house and herself will change her life forever.

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Alphonse, There’s Mud on the Ceiling! – Daisy Hirst

This is my first Natalie and Alphonse read. It’s the third in a series about monster siblings who live on the seventh floor of an apartment building. Although they’re good at entertaining themselves, sometimes there just isn’t enough space for them to play and some of their games are messy.

They want to go camping but they don’t have a backyard. They spend some time exploring in the local park.

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Then the siblings use their imagination to come up with a way to sleep in a tent in the jungle without needing a backyard. The siblings’ creativity and adaptability allow them to come up with a solution to a problem.

I don’t think I’d be as laidback as their father was about the huge mess they made in the apartment. If they were my little monsters I’d be making sure they’d cleaned up after themselves before they got to have an adventure in the park. Although, perhaps father monster just wanted them to use up some of their excess energy …

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The illustrations are colourful and cute, although I prefer children’s books with more detailed pictures. I liked the book’s message but I don’t think I’d want to read it again.

Thank you to NetGalley and Candlewick Press for the opportunity to read this book.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

Lovably rambunctious monster siblings Natalie and Alphonse are excited to go camping in the wilds of nature – without leaving their apartment.

Most of the time, Natalie and Alphonse like living in an apartment on the seventh floor. They have bunk beds to drive, a big green chair to hide behind and yell “Raaaar!”, sunflowers on the balcony to water, and almost enough hallway space for tumbling. But when they pretend to be wiggly worms crawling across the jungle … SHFLWUMP! Ow! That is not a good game for indoors! How can they explore the joys of nature in the middle of the city? In a playful ode to cooperation and imagination, award-winning picture-book creator Daisy Hirst presents a third adventure starring two relatable – and resourceful – siblings.

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Someone to Kiss My Scars – Brooke Skipstone

Spoilers Ahead!

Before I tell you anything else, I want you to know there are a significant amount of 5 star reviews for this book and would encourage you to check some of those out before deciding whether this is the book for you.

“There are a lot of things I wish I didn’t remember.”

This could well be the most triggering book I have ever read. I knew before I began that sexual assault would be addressed but I read a lot of books that include content of that nature so I thought I’d be okay. I never expected there would be such consistently graphic content. I don’t think for a moment that the author intended any of the scenes to be gratuitous but it felt at times like I was reading a Virginia Andrews novel.

If there’s been more light included in the story to help counter the overwhelming darkness I might have been okay. Instead I felt more and more weighed down by story after story of trauma. Your response may be different to mine and you may be okay after reading this, but if you’re a survivor of sexual assault, please be safe while reading.

Why was his brain assaulted by other people’s stories when he could remember nothing of his own?

Hunter can take bad memories away from other people but each memory he deletes from them adds to his own burden. Given how their traumas are both related to sexual assault and that they’re best friends, I had trouble believing Jazz could so easily give her memories to Hunter.

While I definitely understand the desire to erase traumatic memories, it still felt selfish of Jazz to ease her burden by heaping it instead on someone she cared about. Hunter doesn’t feel the way I do about this. I didn’t want Jazz silenced; I wanted her to be able to share her story with someone. My only problem with this was the choice to delete memories you don’t want by adding to the trauma of another person.

I balked and very nearly threw my Kindle across the room when a victim of child sexual abuse described their perpetrator as seducing them.

I wanted to know more about Dr Ru and his ‘treatments’, particularly how many other potential Hunters there are wandering around and if the side effects of the treatment differ between patients.

I was interested in spending more time exploring the changes that took place in people when their traumatic memories were removed and wanted to know the long term effects Hunter would experience by overloading his mind with other peoples’ trauma.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and DartFrog Books for the opportunity to read this book.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

Hunter needs to remember. Jazz needs to forget. They need each other to heal in this teen thriller of survivor love.

Hunter’s past is a mystery to him, erased by a doctor at the direction of his father. But memories of the secret trauma begin to surface when Hunter sees other people’s memories – visions invading his mind with stories of abuse, teen self-mutilation, rape, and forbidden sex.

His best friend Jazz has dark and disturbing memories of her own that she hides behind her sass and wit. Hunter discovers he can rescue the victims, even though he risks adding their suffering to his own.

Hunter and Jazz kiss each other’s scars and form a bond of empathy no two teens should ever need.

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Xander and the Rainbow-Barfing Unicorns #5: Fairies Hate Ponies – Matthew K. Manning

Illustrations – Joey Ellis

I love visiting the other dimensions and the flashbacks of the unicorns’ time before they became zombies so this book felt a bit tedious in comparison. Most of the time we’re either hanging out at the Montgomery Orchard or the landfill next door.

There are some new characters in this book, several thousand of them in fact. Insect fairies from Pegasia are sick of all of the sweetness and adorability of their home so they hitch a ride through a portal to see what Earth has to offer. They like what they see and decide to stay, but this doesn’t bode well for Cradie, Blep and Ronk; if humans discover these magical creatures they’re sure to be locked up and experimented on.

I thought insect fairies would be interesting characters but I found them annoying. We only really get to know Willibop, who’s pretty cantankerous. Because this book basically felt like an exercise in pest control, my mind started to wander.

I keep wondering what Xander’s parents know about the unicorns. Their son is the person who introduces the unicorns during the weekend shows and given how popular the shows are supposed to be, have these parents seen the show? Asked Xander where he got the ‘ponies’?

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After searching for Stalor in another dimension, the unicorns seem to have forgotten all about him. I’m not sure if he even survived the events in The Search for Stalor.

Then I thought about the zombie virus the unicorns were infected with. Is there a cure they could be looking for? Is there going to be any information about the origin of the meteorite that brought the zombie disease to Pegasia?

Is Xander finally going to admit his crush to Kelly? Is Kelly going to finally figure out that there are unicorns in her aunt’s orchard? Is Kelly’s aunt going to figure it out? With only one book left in the series I’m really hoping for some answers to at least some of my questions.

Ronk has randomly been described as grey during the series, which makes me wonder if he was originally going to be that colour. Most of the time he’s described as green and is always pictured that colour. In previous books, whenever Ronk says, “Ronk!” the word was always green; in this book it’s blue for some reason.

At the end of this book there’s a glossary, barf words (these have been the same in each book), jokes and a character spotlight where you learn more about Willibop, the insect fairy.

Up next: Who Turned Off the Colours?

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

Xander discovers a new magical creature – millions of them, actually! In this adventure, a swarm of insects threatens the Montgomery Orchard and twelve-year-old Xander’s fruitful summer job. Luckily, the so-called bugs aren’t actually bugs. Unluckily, they’re miniature, unicorn-hating, insect fairies from the magical world of Pegasia!

If Xander and his team of Rainbow-Barfing Unicorns can’t rid the orchard of these no-good fairies, their secret will be blown quicker than a stomach-load of full-spectrum chunks. Plump-full of grotesquely delightful characters and fantastical realms, Xander and the Rainbow-Barfing Unicorns is so epic it’ll make you wanna puke.

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Fig Swims the World – Lou Abercrombie

Spoilers Ahead!

I’m sick of my mother controlling me. She’s hacked into my life for too long, insisting on her ‘It’s my way or the highway’ rules; on me having to follow her timetable, dressing the way she suggests; achieving the New Year’s resolutions she makes for me.

Mubla decides what her daughter’s New Year’s resolution is going to be each year. Fig isn’t allowed to quit or fail, even if she hates the goal her mother has chosen. This year Mubla has signed Fig up for acting lessons. Fig doesn’t want to act and the idea of being on a stage terrifies her.

Fig has had enough of her mother controlling her. She decides to make her own resolution: Fig is going to swim the world! There’s just one catch; she can’t swim. Oh, and she’s scared of swimming. And of plenty of animals that live in the water. And of being alone. And the list goes on.

Speaking of lists, Fig loves making them. She also loves maths. Both will come in handy as she plans her adventure.

“It’s as much about the mental challenge as the physical. All you need is self-belief …”

I was looking forward to following Fig’s adventure around the world and when I learned of her struggles with anxiety I was even more invested in her success. I was keen to watch her learn to manage her anxiety, striving to achieve a goal that scared her. However, the more I got to know Fig the less I liked her. She was selfish and spoilt, and she annoyed me so much. The majority of the time Fig was more concerned with getting caught than with the impact her disappearance would be having on the people who love her.

I’ve disliked the main character in other books and still enjoyed the story though, so my frustration with Fig wouldn’t have been an issue for me if it wasn’t for my inability to suspend my disbelief. I read a lot of children’s and YA books and usually don’t have a problem with this. In this instance though, I think it would have helped if I could have read Fig’s story when I was a child. Unfortunately, adult me kept getting distracted, having trouble believing Fig’s year would have transpired the way it did.

Although her parents are supposedly searching for Fig and there’s a social media campaign to find her, she manages to elude everyone for months when this should not have been the case. Why?

  1. Fig used her mother’s credit card to finance the travel portion of her adventure. Her mother and/or the Police could have easily tracked her every step of the way. Why didn’t her mother advise her credit card company that the charges were fraudulent and cancelled them? Fig couldn’t have continued travelling all over the place if her travel reservations were cancelled. If, as her mother claimed, she knew where Fig was then why didn’t she go and bring her home immediately?
  2. Fig uploaded photos of herself to social media along the way. Yes, her account was set to private some of the time but surely someone could have done a reverse image search, figured out her alias and found her by checking the metadata on her photographs.

This family seem to have the kind of money I could only dream of. The swimming equipment that Fig purchased with a “leftover birthday gift voucher” would be equivalent to my income for about two months. Fig doesn’t understand why her mother won’t trust her when she’s previously given her no reason not to, and I understand wanting to rebel against a controlling parent. However, the amount of money Fig must have stolen from her parents and her disregard for the morality of this decision got under my skin.

I had a particular soft spot for Jago, Fig’s younger brother. I wanted to get to know him better. I don’t know how Fig could leave Jago without really considering how her absence would affect him. I also didn’t think she was a good friend to Stella, who was supposed to be her best friend. I wish I could have spent more time with Sage and Myrtle; they were interesting enough to warrant an entire book dedicated to their lives.

Some scenes were too convenient for me and others quite predictable. It seemed awfully convenient for Fig to be seated next to an open water swimmer on a plane when she needed information and encouragement specific to this. The identity of one of the people who follows Fig on social media seemed obvious to me, yet she didn’t figure out who it was until near the end of her adventure. I expected the reveal about one of the minor characters, which happened late in the book, once the first clue was planted.

I admired Fig’s determination in facing her fears and achieving her goal, despite the anxiety she experienced, but I wanted to give her a good talking to whenever she felt the need to complain while she was doing exactly what she wanted.

I hate sailing! I’m sick of this trip!

I’ve loved all of the other books published by Little Tiger Group as much, or even more, than I expected to, so I’m really disappointed that this one didn’t work for me. If I’d managed to get out of my head early on when I was questioning the practicalities I probably would have been able to just keep swimming. Please read some other reviews before deciding if this is the book for you or not. I hope it’s a five star read for you.

Bubble, bubble, breathe.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Stripes Publishing, an imprint of Little Tiger Group, for the opportunity to read this book.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

Fig Fitzsherbert is good at a lot of things: making lists, playing the piano, advanced mathematics. But it’s never quite enough for her high-flying mother, who every New Year’s Day sets Fig an impossible resolution. So one year, Fig decides to set her own challenge instead: she’s going to swim her way round the world. There’s just one tiny problem … Fig can’t swim. Taking it one length at a time, Fig embarks on the adventure of a lifetime. But with her mother closing in, will she be able to keep her head above water and complete her challenge?

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Friday the 13th, Camp Crystal Lake #4: Road Trip – Eric Morse

Spoilers Ahead!

It is a dark and stormy night and time for revenge of the nerd, Friday the 13th style. Teddy Bateman is Buzzy the Bee, Carville Hornets’ team mascot. He has a crush on Summer but has never had a girlfriend. This short, geeky senior is understandably angry about being the target of bullying.

He’s on the way back from a football game with the players, cheerleaders and coach that contribute to his misery. Good on him for being the one who finds the mask. It’s a pity the mask wearer usually winds up a corpse in this series. Jason himself is still a no show.

“You’re going to die”

The potential Voorhees victims in this book:

Carville Hornets (a school football team):
Coach Wardell – if you don’t play sports then you’re of no interest to Coach, unless he’s taking out his frustration on you.
Russ Johnson – linebacker star on the field and boyfriend of Belinda off the field.
Slick Chambers – top receiver and the fastest player. He’s a serial cheater and doesn’t say ‘no’ to drugs, so not even his “sexy eyebrows” will be enough to save this player.
Dave Myers – quarterback and captain of the team, who also does drugs. Dave has put a limit on the amount of times his ditzy but loyal girlfriend is allowed to tell him she loves him each day, so I’m not sure we‘re cheering him on to survive.
Billy Raymond – centre. He travelled back on the bus so, although we’re briefly introduced to him, he’s irrelevant to this story.
Tommy Bartlett – kicker. He took the bus as well. Therefore, he’s irrelevant too.

The Cheerleaders (there are ten but we’re only introduced to four):
Missy Lowe – cheerleading captain. Missy is tall and blonde. She’s enthusiastic, especially about her love for Dave (who she knits for) but we constantly reminded how dumb she is.
Summer Stone – has four older brothers and is a cynic. She’s tall, with dark hair and blue eyes. Her weakness is Slick, who has no doubt cheated on her a lot more times than she knows about.
Belinda Karras – a control freak, Belinda is short and pretty.
Arlene Kerdell – the top girl of the cheerleading pyramid, Arlene takes the bus, so we didn’t really need to learn her name.

The Locals:
The Trooper – for someone who plays a larger role in the story than I initially expected, I thought he had earned a name. I was wrong; he’s the Trooper the entire time. Although law enforcement don’t usually fare well in horror stories he does warn some randoms about the town’s history, so there’s a slim chance he’ll survive.
Tina – other than being the trooper’s wife, the only other piece of information I have about this woman is spoilery in nature. She’s unlikely to survive.
Cliff – an architect and the trooper’s best friend. His character is essentially only there to help tell Tina’s spoilery story so we may as well dig his grave now.

The Randoms:
Donny Borelli – as far as I can tell, Donny and his friend, Stu Bergman, served their purpose in this book as soon as they introduced the trooper, the cave and the vampire bats.
Mr Morrisey – bus driver. It appears they are smart enough not to take the Crystal Lake detour.

“You’re going where?”

While I wasn’t invested in any character enough to hope they lived (or died) I did have to give most of the characters some credit. Other than Donny, Stu and the locals, no one actually planned on spending any time in Voorhees-land. The Carville Hornets are actually the only ones in this series so far that didn’t reserve their death day in advance.

“BEHIND YOU!”

With spelunking, strange hybrid vampire bats, cheating partners and too much time spent at the football game, this is definitely not my favourite slaughter fest of the series. The mask has once again added more magic to its repertoire, with a newly found ability to remotely operate a car, even before it’s attached to someone’s face. The introduction of the cave, especially minus a backstory, felt like a weird choice although it did provide a semi-legitimate reason for the inclusion of the vampire bats.

A series of unanswered questions relate directly to the bats, the most pressing of which is: What is their backstory and why are we not told about it?

It took quite a while for the hockey mask action to commence. This is a short book, yet it wasn’t until page 96 that someone put the mask on and the first kill by the person wearing the hockey mask didn’t happen until page 116! Even then, one of my biggest disappointments of the third book was repeated here: the hockey mask guy wasn’t even directly responsible for about half of the kills.

The Death Toll: a spider, bat and somewhere between 9 and 11 people.

The spider got squished by a car in the prologue and then I had to wait around for a while before I got to the first human kill.

Of those not killed by the person possessed by the hockey mask, three people were shot (Tina, Coach and Cliff), Slick was sucked dry by vampire bats and Teddy got roasted. The hockey mask guy was only directly responsible for four deaths (unnamed trooper, Missy, Belinda and Dave).

I think one of our two spelunkers (Donny and Stu) was dispatched via vampire bat and the other was never heard from again, but I may be wrong about these guys. It didn’t seem overly specific at the time.

Best Insult:

“You’re the world’s biggest fungus brain”

Kill of the Book: Missy, who was skewered with her own knitting needles, which were attached to the stinger on the mascot’s head.

There are some racist, sexist and homophobic comments and enough discrepancies between the text and cover image to tell me that the artist didn’t read the book. The uniforms on the cover are blue and white but in the book they’re orange and black. The kid in the hockey mask is supposed to have dark, curly hair and the blonde girl is supposed to have her hair in a whole pile of braids. The killer doesn’t wield a machete in the book, the van is supposed to be white and, as I’ve already said, the massacre takes place on a dark and stormy night.

If you are planning on reading this series you should probably read them in order. The second book follows on from the first and the events of the third book are mentioned in this one.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

When the football team van swerves off the road and crashes after the big game, everyone blames Teddy, the class nerd and the team’s mascot. While his tormentors take shelter at Camp Crystal Lake, Teddy trades in his mascot suit for Jason’s hockey mask – and makes this a night his classmates will never forget.

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