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Book Review: Killing November by Adriana Mather

cover of Killing November by Adriana Mather

Killing November by Adriana Mather (  Bookshop.org | Amazon.com  )

Ember, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-0525579113

Available: Library binding, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook.

 

November Adley was told she was being sent to boarding school for her own safety, but on her arrival, she discovers it is full of intrigues she knows nothing about but is expected to rise to the challenge and survive deceptions, strategies, and attempts on her life from both students and teachers. The classes are like nothing she’s ever had to take before: knife throwing, poisons, deception, and tree climbing, among others. Deadly midnight challenges lead to shifting allegiances, every word and action has the potential to put her life at risk… and, while everyone assumes she knows exactly what’s going on, she has no idea why her father would send her to this school (I also question why her father would send her to a school filled with enemies she knows nothing about for safety. It would be a spoiler to reveal what she has in common with the other students, and that doesn’t make me question his judgment less).

November does have some survival skills she learned from her parents, mostly as games: she’s not unfamiliar with knife-throwing or tree climbing, she is good at observation and memorization, and she’s learned to think outside the box (her parents have kept a LOT of family secrets, and uncovering these is essential to her understanding of events and relationships at the school). But she has never learned to disguise her emotions or hide the truth, a disadvantage in the dangerous games of the school. She has to earn the trust of her prickly roommate, Layla, and decide whether she can trust Layla’s brother Ashai, an expert in deception, to survive.

Killing November rockets along from start to finish, and even the most unbelievable aspects of the story get caught up in the rush. It is the first in a series, and with November scrambling to figure out what’s going on, whose loyalties she can depend on, and who she is supposed to be, trapped in the claustrophobic boarding school environment, it is a really fun read. With much of this settled in the second book, while there’s still plenty of action, it’s less engaging. Both Killing November and its sequel, Hunting November, are enjoyable thrillers that have the potential to appeal to teen lovers of action, murder, mystery, and romance. Recommended.

 

 

Posted on September 14, 2020 by , Reply

Book Review: In the Vines by Shannon Kirk

Cover image of In The Vines by Shannon Kirk

In The Vines: A Thriller by Shannon Kirk (Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

Thomas & Mercer, Seattle, 2018

ISBN-13: 9781503901940 (hardcover)

ISBN-13: 9781503900752 (paperback)

Available: Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle edition, compact disc, MP3 CD

 

In The Vines: A Thriller by Shannon Kirk is a murder mystery with a sprinkling of horror and gore. Fans of Edgar Allan Poe will recognize the technique of peeling away the layers of an onion, slowly revealing past sins, guilt, self-doubt and escalating violence. The main characters are Mary Olivia Pentecost, aka Mop, and Lynette Viola Vandonveer, aka Aunty Liv. They are descendants of Boston Brahmins, both with scions  who seem to have guilty secrets, as well as privilege and power. Their character traits and secrets lead to tragedy.

 

Mop is a recent college graduate searching for her own identity She is to marry her childhood sweetheart, a son of a nouveau-riche family with an adjoining estate in Rye, New Hampshire. Aunty Liv is an unmarried nurse having an illicit affair with a Boston surgeon, and is spying on her lover’s wife. The novel begins with Mop bleeding from a leg wound, dragging an unconscious, unnamed companion out of hiding during a nor’easter. An unidentified, shrouded figure wields an ax over them. Who are they? How did they come to this? What will be the story’s denouement?

 

The author uses the voices of Mop and Aunty Liv to narrate the story. The story jumps back and forth between scenes from the present, two years in the past and two weeks ago. Kirk’s technique is disconcerting, but it is important in slowly revealing the characters’ secrets and building a sense of frustration, anxiety and anticipation in readers. The main characters are well-drawn, and readers will understand why they make seemingly bad decisions that often lead to disaster.  The author describes the ocean, beach, rocks, cliffs, trees and brambles of New England’s coast beautifully. They become participants in the story. Highly recommended for adults.

 

Contains: Moderate gore, moderate violence, mild profanity

 

Reviewed by Robert D. Yee

Posted on June 7, 2020 by , Reply

Book Review: Eight Minutes, Thirty-Two Seconds by Peter Adam Salomon

Eight Minutes, Thirty-Two Seconds by Peter Adam Salomon

PseudoPalms Press, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1093780673

Available: Paperback,  Kindle edition, audiobook

 

 

Eight Minutes, Thirty-Two Seconds has a fascinating concept, and turns out to be more relevant to our times than I’m sure the author expected. Taking place in the near future, I’d say this is more a sci-fi thriller than horror. Our protagonists are L and M, the only two occupants of a gigantic bunker on an Earth where all life appears to have been destroyed. Neither L or M have any memory of their lives prior to waking up in the bunker, and the parameters of the AI in charge are set to make it almost impossible to discover what happened and who they are. Their only escape is a drug that flatlines them for eight minutes and thirty-two seconds. During that time they “jump” into the minds of one of six gifted teenagers secretly working together on a complex, mysterious, and fatal project.  L and M are only able to get short glimpses, though, and have difficulty remembering what they’ve seen once they’ve been “brought back”. It takes an extended flatlining on M’s part, and rapid repeats of inducing her death on L’s part, to piece together the six teenagers’ terrifying plan and the consequences of its results.

While the idea is interesting, and puzzling the pieces together was enough to keep me reading, the lack of character development in this book is a serious flaw. Because L and M don’t have memories, and don’t seem to have much interest in even exploring much of the bunker, it is hard to get a sense of who they are and what they’re like. It’s unclear why they have to die repeatedly to learn about the past or why flatlining would specifically take them to random parts of these specific teens’ lives. Outside of all being genius-level intelligent, it’s also not really clear why these teens would choose to work together. While their leader is clearly alienated from humanity, others seem to have positive relationships, and their willingness to participate was confusing to me.  Although I ultimately found it to be unsatisfying,  I appreciated Salomon’s creativity,  and there were enough unexpected moments to keep me reading it all the way through in an afternoon.

 

Editor’s note:  Eight Minutes, Thirty-Two Seconds  was nominated to the final ballot of the 2019 Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel.

Posted on March 14, 2020 by , Reply
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