Black Canary: Ignite by Meg Cabot

This is a good middle grades/middleschool read.  A nice introduction to a new superhero and a nice touch of backstory as well.  Great illustration and pacing.

All That's Bright and Gone by Eliza Nellums

We are introduced to 6 year old Aoife (Ee-fah) on a very bad and confusing day.  It appears that her mom has had a bit of a nervous breakdown on while driving Aoife to the mall. 

Fortunately she has her imaginary friend Teddy to make her feel safe while her mother stays in the hospital.  When the hospital calls her Uncle Donovan to stay with her, we get a look into the life of a child being raised by a mother with mental illness.  

As any young child, Aoife sees her life as perfectly normal.  She knows that there are things you just don’t talk about, she is accepting and imaginative and has an overwhelming desire to just be good.

Aoife feels that if she could just stop talking to Teddy out loud and if she could just find a way to help her mother deal with the loss of her older brother Theo, her life can return to “normal”.  Luckily Aoife has a neighbor named Hannah who is not only older (8!) but knows just how to solve a mystery.

Aoife is charming, she is imaginative and thoughtful.  The way the family history is told and pulled back layer by layer helps the reader to draw the curtain back on a family full of love and heartache.

I found some of the antics that Aoife gets up to a little hard to believe of a six year old but her age is important the telling of the family tale. 

This was a sweet and fast read that solves the mystery surrounding how and why Theo had to go away, how a family falls apart and comes back together and all the missteps along the way.

The Dead Girls Club by Damien Angelica Walters

2.5 rounded up 3 

Heather Cole, a psychologist who treats troubled kids finds herself plunged back into her own childhood when a mysterious envelope shows up at her office containing a necklace she hasn’t seen since the night her best friend was murdered. 

Heather and her 3 friends found themselves captivated, to the point of obsession, by all things creepy and formed The Dead Girls Club.  Teen fascination with horror, serial killers and urban legends turns to something MUCH darker when Becca, Heather’s best friend, is murdered.  Or was she?

Somebody knows the whole story and is baiting Heather, letting her know that her secret is no longer safe.   Someone wants Heather to pay for what happened.

Talk about unreliable narrator!  It is clear early on that Heather is not mentally stable.    The then and now narration leaves the reader wondering how much of the then is what actually happened and how much is Heather's twisted mind. 

The story is full of twists and turns and has a very dark thread that pulls the story along.

The ending left a bit to be desired and left more questions than answers.  I didn’t really like the ending as it seemed too much like so many endings to books and movies in this genre. 

Thank you to the publisher and to Netgalley and for the e-Arc in exchange for my honest review!

The Memory Thief by Lauren Mansy

The Memory Thief is built around a fascinating concept, memories as currency, which of course means as power and corruption and all that goes along with it.

The Gifted have the ability to give and take memories, the Ungifted are used as sources for these memories; talents and skills and happy memories are sold to the highest bidder.  But bad memories are also wanted and used.  There are many other factions here as well, Shadows, Ghosts, Hunters, Tribes and they each seem fascinating in their own right, for what little is explained of each.

The pacing of this book was off a bit for my liking, it seemed to be selected chapters from a much longer novel crammed together to make plot twist after plot twist and narrative snippets tie in together at a pace that just wasn’t fulfilling.

The connections between the characters were not believable or well sketched out.

Great idea – not so great in the execution. 2 Stars.

One Night Gone by Tara Laskowski

One Night Gone

In 1986, young runaway Maureen is traveling with a summer carnival when they arrive at Opal Beach.  Maureen just knows that it is her destiny to stay there.  She is befriended by some of the locals and the kids who summer at Opal Beach and finds the courage to quit her job and start her new life.  And then she disappears.

Thirty years later, Allison, a former television meteorologist come to Opal Beach to housesit and flee the very public demise of her marriage.

The story is told from Maureen’s point of view and Allison’s.  When Allison meets Maureen’s best friend, Tammy, who still lives in Opal Beach, the two become friends and Tammy enlists Allison’s help to figure out what happened to Maureen all those years ago. 

An interesting premise, lots of local color, the haves and the have nots, and tons of red herrings, this had all the markings of a great suspense tale but it fell a little short for me.  None of the characters were particularly likeable, the whispers and near premonitions that Allison experiences were a little too cheesy for me. 

The resolution of the murder was a little too predictable and the happily ever after way the book tied up made it just 2.5 rounded to 4 for me.   

This would probably made a good rainy day at a beach vacation read. 

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

The Widow of Pale Harbor - Hester Fox

The Widow of Pale Harbor was pitched as gothic suspense/historical fiction.  Set in 1846 Maine, the tale begins when Gabriel arrives to fill the slot as minister in this tiny seaside town.  He arrives during a brutal storm and finds disturbing items left at the altar.  While getting to know his new congregation, he is told to watch out for The Widow Carter, a recluse who locals believe killed her husband in cold blood. 

Her housemate and servant, Helen, does nothing to thaw the villagers perceptions, keeping Sophronia Carver at home and protected through use of herbal spells and bindings. 

Someone is leaving dead birds, threatening notes and other totems at window Carver’s house; at the same time strange things are happening in the village and all are blaming Widow Carver, calling her a witch. 
While Gabriel is enchanted by Widow Carver, he manages to put his foot in his mouth and make himself misunderstood for the first few meetings.  Sadly, that’s where the romance takes over and the mystery takes a back seat. 

Even when Gabriel’s secret is found out by the Widow, it does nothing to dissipate their newly found attraction.   The story had an interesting loop into Edgar Allan Poe to help lead us to the culprit and tie the clues together.

This was a romantic suspense novel, heavy on the romance, very very light on the suspense.  A nice light read on a rainy weekend.

The Stranger Inside - Lisa Unger

A man who likely got away with murder is found dead in his home.  There is no evidence to point a finger at the killer.  For journalist Rain Winters, it all seems eerily familiar.

Rain, a survivor of childhood trauma, finds herself investigating the murder and its similarities to the murder of her attacker and abductor and murderer of her friends.  

As she finds herself divided between stay at home mother and investigative journalist, she must access parts of her past that she kept locked away.  

Hank, the friend that survived the abduction and torture has made it his life to help traumatized children out of the darkness of abuse as a psychologist but he’s never completely forgiven Rain for being the one to survive.

While trying to make sense of the latest murder, Rain uncovers ad rediscovers some truths that were meant to stay buried.  Is there a balance between right and wrong?  Can doing wrong for the right reason make it right?

This is a story full of twists and turns, emotion and introspection.  It has a wonderful depth and a certain lyrical quality, even in its darkest passages.