killers Archives - The Y Logs

Yzabel / December 5, 2019

Review: Hold Your Tongue

Hold Your Tongue by Deborah Masson
My rating: ★★★☆☆

Blurb:

A brutal murder.
A young woman’s body is discovered with horrifying injuries, a recent newspaper cutting pinned to her clothing.
A detective with everything to prove.
This is her only chance to redeem herself.
A serial killer with nothing to lose.
He’s waited years, and his reign of terror has only just begun . . .

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

I think this is the very first novel set in Aberdeen that I read, which kind of surprises me, since I assume there are plenty of stories set in that city. Since I’ve never visited it either, I had absolutely no idea what it looks like, so I couldn’t rely on my own knowledge of it. We get a few streets’ names to place the action, but not so many that it becomes confusing, and what the city’s areas stand for (posh districts, less savoury places, and so on) is clear and presented concisely. It had a gritty side, and a sometimes stifling atmosphere that went well with the nature of the crime/murder mystery here. On the other hand, I have no idea if the real Aberdeen feels like this. I was under the impression that the setting here, while fitting, was perhaps more generic than anything else (it would’ve worked just as well in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Birmingham or Manchester).

“Hold Your Tongue” deals with DI Eve Hunter getting back to her job after a couple of harrowing events that left her and Sanders, a colleague, heavily wounded—and not only does she have to immediately investigate a series of gruesome murders, but a lot of people aren’t happy to see her back, including other police officers who hold her responsible for what happened to Sanders. While the novel is not entirely clear about the latter point in the first pages, it’s still obvious how much this is weighing on Eve, and her coming to terms with this (psychologically, emotionally and physically) is just as much part of the plot as the murders themselves.

The story comes with plenty of turns and red herrings. These included focusing on a suspect in spite of a lack of clues; gut feelings; and also chapters narrated from the point of view of the killer, spreading little clues here and there, but still vaguely enough as to not make the killer’s identity too obvious from the start—I got close to guessing who it was, but not too close either, which is good for me. At times, I found the characters perhaps too prone on jumping on certain clues or making certain mistakes because of how their own experiences influenced them (for instance, Eve and Ferguson’s strained relationship clearly doesn’t help them keep a straight head); this was partly understandable, and partly cast a shadow on them, in that it made them look less professional in such moments.

I liked that some of the tension gets resolved in this first volume in the series, but not other things (Eve’s origins and how they may colour her future take on life, or how the killer’s actions will weigh on her team in general). This was a good introduction to Eve and her partners, hinting at more depth—although I regret that one of those relationships just can’t be exploited anymore, or not directly, in the following novels.

Conclusion: 3.5 stars. As a first story in a series, it sets the scene and characters well, with a partial resolution only, and therefore more left to explore later on. It was a bit slow in places, though, and could do with just a smidge of plot tightening. I’ll definitely be interested in book 2 no matter what.

Yzabel / July 22, 2019

Review: The July Girls

The July Girls by Phoebe Locke
My rating: [user 4]

Blurb:

Every year, on the same night in July, a woman is taken from the streets of London; snatched by a killer who moves through the city like a ghost.

Addie has a secret. On the morning of her tenth birthday, four bombs were detonated across the capital. That night her dad came home covered in blood. She thought he was hurt in the attacks – but then her sister Jessie found a missing woman’s purse hidden in his room.

Jessie says they mustn’t tell. She says there’s nothing to worry about. But when she takes a job looking after the woman’s baby daughter, Addie starts to realise that her big sister doesn’t always tell her the whole story. And that the secrets they’re keeping may start costing lives…

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Here’s a mystery about a killer, nicknamed “Magpie”, who every year, on July 7th, abducts and kills a woman. In this case, though, it’s not the police’s investigation we follow, but this story seen through the eyes of Abigail, a young girl born on July 7th as well: because on her 10th birthday, her father comes home covered in blood, and that’s when she starts questioning more and more what other secrets her family is hiding.

Just as much as a crime story—there is an investigation as well, after all—“The July Girls” is the story of a small family, specifically Addie and her big sister Jessie, who’s more a mother to her, since their mum has vanished abroad and never comes home. Their father is seldom around either, trying to make ends meet as an unlicensed cab driver, and it is clear from the beginning that Jessie loves Addie so much that she tries to shield her from basically everything, including their relatively bleak prospects in South London. And when things take a turn for the worst, we also get to see how the sisters’ life goes on, how Addie gets bullied at school because of her father, and how she tries to make sense of the events that unfolded until that point.

The novel spans about ten years in Addie’s life, which is good: it allows the readers to ‘see’ her voice mature, and her thoughts processes go from a girl’s to an adult’s. It’s also good in that it makes the killer’s arc into a slow-going investigation, as is definitely needed here, with the murders happening only once a year: if it had been solved in two years, it wouldn’t have been as suspenseful, for sure.

I kept guessing and guessing regarding who the killer might be, as there were a few valid options here. There were several twists and turns, and while a couple of them were slightly erring on the far-fetched side, I still found the novel as a whole a pretty good one, that kept me reading and interested until the end.

Yzabel / August 13, 2018

Review: Killing It

Killing It: She’s one bad mother . . . by Asia Mackay

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

Every working mum has had to face it.

The guilt-fuelled, anxiety-filled first day back in the office after maternity leave.

But this working mum is one of a kind.

Meet Alexis Tyler.

An elite covert agent within Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Her first project back is a high-stakes hit of global significance and the old boys network of government espionage is far from ready for the return of an operational mother. But woe betide anyone who ever tells Alexis Tyler ‘you can’t’.

She will have it all. Or she’ll die trying . . .

And yes, she damn well will be home for bath time.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

A fairly entertaining novel, although it didn’t keep me enthralled.

I couldn’t decide if ultimately, the whole spy organisation was believable or not; some aspects felt far-fetched, where I had expected something more on the… ‘realistic’ side? Not that I know much about actual MI6 operations are conducted, that is: it was more a feeling than anything truly objective. Some parts I found amusing and inventive, in a sort of parodic way that I could only envision in a novel or a game (such as conducting interrogations in disused Tube parts, so that nobody would hear the cries over the din of trains or wonder about ‘that drunk, stumbling friend I’m dragging with me at 1 am is absolutely not a suspect I’ve just finished torturing’). I’d say this works if you’re looking for the kind of caricatural spy network, and works probably less well otherwise. As far as I’m concerned, I’m on the fence with it.

As a result, the plot was a little unconvincing, and I couldn’t really connect with Lex as a character: I liked her snarky comments in general, but found it difficult to reconcile her callous take on offing and torturing people with the double standard of ‘I do it on a regular basis to other people, but no one dare touch my daughter’. While wanting to protect one’s family is totally normal, there’s an underlying hypocrisy here that doesn’t sit too well with me, probably because I usually have a strong reaction to ‘do what I say, not as I do’ people.

On the other hand, the novel raises interesting, if not unexpected points about age-old attitudes in the workplace regarding women, and especially mothers. In that, ‘Killing It’ is close to a lot of things we can still see nowadays, where in spit of feminist progress and workplaces generally opening up, a woman’s position is still subjected to ‘having to prove herself twice as much as the men’. (There’s been a lot of progress IRL, and I sure won’t deny this, but I’ve been in enough interviews with barely concealed sexist questions to know that the way to full equality is still long.) Basically, Lex’s struggle with coming back to work after her maternity leave felt real and relevant: some of her colleagues, and especially her boss, kept on questioning her ability to do her job and not ‘giving in to hormones’ and all manners of crap arguments. Here, too, some things were caricatural and laid out too heavily (like Bennie’s attempts at putting Lex down)—and, of course, Lex’s job is not just any office job, and is much more dangerous—but it doesn’t change the fact that many people (other women included) still assume too often that as soon as one becomes a mother, one becomes ‘weaker/less smart/less able/whatever’ and have to prove herself all over again… while nobody bats an eyelid at a man becoming a father.

Conclusion: The humour didn’t always work for me, and some things were definitely hammered in too much. Still, as a light novel that doesn’t demand too much focus, it worked.

Yzabel / June 20, 2018

Review: Thirteen

Thirteen by Steve Cavanagh

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

Murder wasn’t the hard part. It was just the start of the game.

Joshua Kane has been preparing for this moment his whole life. He’s done it before. But this is the big one.

This is the murder trial of the century. And Kane has killed to get the best seat in the house.

But there’s someone on his tail. Someone who suspects that the killer isn’t the man on trial.

Kane knows time is running out – he just needs to get to the conviction without being discovered.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book from NetGalley.]

Hmm… The premise sounded interesting, for sure (the killer’s not on trial, but in the jury!). However, the execution made it a little too far-fetched to my liking.

I didn’t know the ‘Eddie Flynn’ series before—this is actually the fourth book, although it’s not a problem: it reads as a standalone, and whatever background you need to know about Eddie (ex-con artist, estranged family…) is mentioned soon enough for a reader not to be confused at some missing backstory. I also quite liked the character himself, who in spite (or perhaps because of?) his past displays a strong moral fiber, and doesn’t abandon his clients even when everything conspires against them. Maybe he had a slight tendency to boast sometimes, but nothing too bad.

On the other hand, many of the other characters were really one-dimensional, almost caricatures: the famous lawyer who pulls out as soon as the deal’s not so juicy anymore, the prosecutor who’s only interested in fame and winning all his trials, corrupt cops… I was hoping that things would go differently with the jury consultant, since Eddie and him didn’t like each other, but acknowledged their respective skills and made efforts to work together; alas, this didn’t come to pass.

Most of all, I had trouble with the killer’s part of the story. He was too much of a villain with everything going for him: special abilities, smart, always prepared, always one step ahead, with contacts on the inside, able to bug the lawyer’s office, etc. There were no flaws in sight, nothing I could really use to build hypotheses as to what would be his downfall… And yet, paradoxically, even with all those aces in his sleeves, Flynn was still able to guess he was on the jury. I think this would’ve gone down better for me if it had been Kane’s first time only; his plot is quite complex, and interesting. But as a repeat plot, it didn’t work for me—his successes vs. what happens in the novel don’t add up.

Writing: The book was a fast read, not difficult to follow at all even if you don’t know much to US law procedures. The writing style was OK in places, annoying in others (too many short sentences will kill the rhythm just as much as too many long ones). There were typos, too, but I don’t know if I got technically an ARC, or the final copy; if they’re in the final copy, it’s not good.

Yzabel / January 26, 2018

Review: Paper Ghosts

Paper Ghosts: A Novel of Suspense by Julia Heaberlin

My rating: [rating=1]

Blurb:

An obsessive young woman has been waiting half her life—since she was twelve years old—for this moment. She has planned. Researched. Trained. Imagined every scenario. Now she is almost certain the man who kidnapped and murdered her sister sits in the passenger seat beside her.

Carl Louis Feldman is a documentary photographer. The young woman claims to be his long-lost daughter. He doesn’t believe her. He claims no memory of murdering girls across Texas, in a string of places where he shot eerie pictures. She doesn’t believe him.

Determined to find the truth, she lures him out of a halfway house and proposes a dangerous idea: a ten-day road trip, just the two of them, to examine cold cases linked to his haunting photographs.

Is he a liar or a broken old man? Is he a pathological con artist? Or is she?

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley.]

I had liked ‘Black-Eyed Susans’ by the same author well enough, and I thought I’d like this one as well, but unfortunately, it wasn’t the case. As evidenced by the time I needed to finish it, that wasn’t because I had too much work and no time to read, but because it kept falling from my hands and I’d reach something else to reach instead.

It started well enough, and I thought that the story would be a game of cat and mouse between the main character and the suspected killer. However, while I kept waiting for said character to reveal her hand—for instance, to show that she had made this or that mistake on purpose, in order to better turn the tables—such moments never happened. I think this is where it went wrong for me, and I believe the first-person narration wasn’t an asset in this case: with a third person POV, I could’ve been fooled into thinking the ‘heroine’ knew what she was doing, since I wouldn’t have been completely ‘in her head; but with first person, it’s more difficult to fool the reader…

So, well, I wasn’t fooled. In spite of all her alluding to her ‘trainer’ and to how she had taught herself to face various difficult situations, she wasn’t really one step ahead. Perhaps in the very beginning, but this fell down the train as soon as Carl started coming up with new ‘conditions’ along the way, and she was totally taken aback, and… just relented, or protested weakly. That didn’t fit my idea of someone who had planned carefully, or whose plans were unravelling but who still had the savvy to bounce back.

Also, I wasn’t convinced at all by the twist at the end. Something you can’t see coming because there was never any hint of it throughout the story, is not what I call an actual twist, but cheating the reader. (Now, when I read something and I’m all ‘a-ha! So that’s why she did this in chapter2, and said that in chapter 6, and that character did that in chapter 14’, well, that’s a proper twist.)

Conclusion: 1.5 stars. Too bad.

Yzabel / August 14, 2016

Review: Malus Domestica

Malus Domestica by S.A. Hunt

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

Kids are going missing in the tiny hamlet of Blackfield, Georgia, and nobody knows why except for Robin, the homeless young woman that just rolled into town last night.

When she claims she knows who’s responsible, only 4th-grader Wayne Parkin and his schoolmates Pete, Amanda, and Juan believe her…but it takes a terrifying encounter with an interdimensional creature to spur them into action.

Robin proves to be a formidable monster-hunter with strange supernatural powers, but a tragic setback reveals a secret organization and a centuries-old conspiracy.

Can new friends and old enemies band together to save Blackfield from an unspeakable darkness?

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

1.5-2 stars. I liked the ideas at this novel’s core, but ultimately I had a hard time getting into it, and had to force myself to go on reading. I guess this was a matter of rhythm, and of some clichés that didn’t sit too well with me.

The premise: young witch hunter Robin Martine has been travelling through the USA, filming her tracking and fighting witches (women who sacrificed their heart to goddess Ereshkigal in exchange for powers and a longer existence). She puts her videos on her YouTube channel, followed by thousands of people who don’t realise this is no special effects, but reality. After years spent training and hunting, Robin comes back to her home town, to get rid of the witches who killed her mother; along the way, she gathers quite a little posse of various characters who’ll help in that quest.

As said, the ideas themselves were fine. The YouTube channel? Why not: surely being anonymous would be a better choice, but there’s a certain appeal to the “hide in plain sight” theory. The various secondary characters formed a pretty diverse cast— a veteran turned artist, a kid and his father, a gay childhood friend and his brother owner of a comics shop… There’s a creepy house, existing on two different levels (I love that kind of atmosphere, those “parallel nightmarish worlds” layered over the normal world). A ruthless killer. Cats who’re more than cats. The stifling surroundings of a small town where just about anyone can be a spy of the witches. And so on.

The problem with the characters, though, were that in spite of their diversity, they were also a bunch of clichés, and not very developed as individuals. Kenway had his own background story and issues, but Leon’s bereavement for instance was just touched upon, and he wasn’t more than “Wayne’s father” in the end. Same with Joel, who felt like a potential sidekick but also like a gay butt-monkey of sorts. These side-stories both took too much room, in a way, while at the same time just being here, instead of being fully exploited (“while we’re here, we might as well…”).

I was hoping to see more of the witches and the killer working for them. While they did create a predicament for the “heroes”, I kept thinking they could and should have done more, been more frightening, brought even more weirdness into the story.

The writing itself was alright (although I found it weird when onomatopoeias were inserted—don’t ask me why I’m sensitive to that). Even though I mentioned having trouble getting back to the book every time I stopped, it wasn’t because of the style.

Really, it’s too bad I didn’t like it more. This book could’ve been right up my alley, but didn’t work for me in the end.

Enregistrer

Yzabel / August 2, 2016

Review: The Body Reader

The Body Reader by Anne Frasier

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

For three years, Detective Jude Fontaine was kept from the outside world. Held in an underground cell, her only contact was with her sadistic captor, and reading his face was her entire existence. Learning his every line, every movement, and every flicker of thought is what kept her alive.

After her experience with isolation and torture, she is left with a fierce desire for justice—and a heightened ability to interpret the body language of both the living and the dead. Despite colleagues’ doubts about her mental state, she resumes her role at Homicide. Her new partner, Detective Uriah Ashby, doesn’t trust her sanity, and he has a story of his own he’d rather keep hidden. But a killer is on the loose, murdering young women, so the detectives have no choice: they must work together to catch the madman before he strikes again. And no one knows madmen like Jude Fontaine.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

For three years, Detective Jude Fontaine was kept under lock, in the dark, abused and malnourished, at the hands of her unknown abductor. With no contact with any other human being than that man, her survival reflexes made her learn to “read” him, in order to stay alive. After she seizes an opportunity to escape, she realises she has retained this ability to “read” other people, booth the living and the dead: even a frozen corpse will still “talk” to her, in its expression, the way its fists are closed, and so on. As she’s trying to go back to her former career as a cop, Jude understands she can use this newfound skill to make things right.

Excellent idea, but one that I thought wasn’t exploited enough throughout the story: we are made to see June “read” her new partner first, then “read” a corpse, yet nothing much happens in that regard after that, and it’s like the body-reading concept got lost along the way, along a more “traditional” thriller story. This was rather too bad, as I would have enjoyed seeing more of Jude’s ability, things that would truly set her apart from “just yet another very talented cop”.

Another problem I had with the story was the moments when Jude tried to figure out how to go back to a normal life, or even if she could: a new flat, maybe getting back with her boyfriend, her tense relationship with her family… All interesting things, but presented in too descriptive a way, rendered too flat: I didn’t “feel” her predicament, I simply read about it, and it just wasn’t the same. I felt more connected to Uriah, who had his own emotional struggles to contend with, but here too the whole thing was more descriptive, not vibrant enough.

Finally, the ending was too neatly wrapped, too quickly, without the kind of intensity I’d expect from the last chapters of a thriller. I could also sense the places where the story was trying to mislead me, yet at the same time the lack of involvement (or, should I rather say, the sideline involvement) of some characters gave a few things away.

I did like, though, how Jude, even though toughened and emotionally withdrawn, went about getting back control of her life by doing something useful, like picking up cold cases, and how the author didn’t fall into the typical trappings of adding some romantic twist in there. Sure, there’s the boyfriend, but this side plot is never presented as an end in itself, never touted as “Jude’s salvation in the arms of a man”, or whatever similar tripe. In the same vein, Jude and Uriah give off a definite “work partners and perhaps friends someday” vibe, not a “and perhaps lovers someday” one.

2 stars: I quite liked some of the themes here, but this remains an “OK” book and nothing more, because it fell flat for me, and because its ideas weren’t developed enough compared to what the blurb had made me expect.

Yzabel / June 11, 2016

Review: Jane Steele

Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

Like the heroine of the novel she adores, Jane Steele suffers cruelly at the hands of her aunt and schoolmaster. And like Jane Eyre, they call her wicked – but in her case, she fears the accusation is true. When she flees, she leaves behind the corpses of her tormentors.

A fugitive navigating London’s underbelly, Jane rights wrongs on behalf of the have-nots whilst avoiding the noose. Until an advertisement catches her eye. Her aunt has died and the new master at Highgate House, Mr Thornfield, seeks a governess. Anxious to know if she is Highgate’s true heir, Jane takes the position and is soon caught up in the household’s strange spell. When she falls in love with the mysterious Charles Thornfield, she faces a terrible dilemma: can she possess him – body, soul and secrets – and what if he discovers her murderous past?

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

I have a weak spot both for retellings and for “Jane Eyre”, so no wonder I’d request this novel. And it turned out to be fairly interesting, although it’s more “inspired by” than an actual “retelling”, and at times my attention waned a little—not sure if it’s because of the book or just me being myself, that is, with the attention span of a dead amoeba. Also, I don’t why, I had forgotten that the novel was set in the 19th century, and was surprised at first that it wasn’t set in some contemporary UK. Dead amoeba, I tell you.

Jane Steele, who incidentally is an avid re-reader of the original “Jane Eyre” story, is, like her heroine, an orphan surrounded with a hostile family that mocks her at best and generally despises her. Her mother being an artist and a laudanum-addict doesn’t exactly help. However, unlike Jane Eyre, Miss Steele early enough takes matters into her own hands by despatching those who are in her way. These aren’t just random murders committed by a psychopath, though, and her victims aren’t exactly goody-two-shoes. Jane is actually trying to protect the people she really loves, not obeying some dark unexplained instincts. And so this brings quite a few questions about whether killing might be seen as “justified” in some cases, or not? After all, so many people kill others in wars, and it’s seen as “justified” and not “murder” because “it’s for your country”… so why wouldn’t “it’s for love” be good enough a reason either?

And there you have it. There are killings in this novel, yet they come second to complex relationships among very different people. Thornfield and his Sikh family. The girls at Lowan School, united in misery through a perverse net of betrayal and friendships disguised as hate (unless it’s the contrary?). Jane and her cousin who could so very well end up raping her. Jane and her mother, and these two and Aunt Patience, because there must be a reason for the latter to despise them so much.

There were a few funny moments, especially when the inspector was concerned—well, I did find them funny, especially with Jane constantly trying to escape him. And I also liked the way assault/rape was handled, as it turns out not so many characters in there blame the lady, and do think instead that, yes, she’s not the one at fault at all.

To be honest, I preferred the first part of the novel, with Jane’s years at school with the other girls. The plot in the second part was nice, but… the pacing and the setting in general were less thrilling (which is too bad, for Sardar and the others provided characters and a setting that screamed “badass”)… not to mention that, in spite of the inclusion of a large cast of Sikh people, in the end what could have broken the typical colonialist/jingoist mould of many Victorian-era stories just didn’t do that. (It’s still about white people finding happiness, and the non-white ones kind of get the shaft.)

As for the romance, of course it was meant to mirror the one in “Jane Eyre”, in a fashion, however I never really felt any chemistry between Jane and Charles: it felt more as if they were destined to end up together because Brontë’s characters did, and not because of their traits as people.

Conclusion: I really liked the beginning, so I’m still giving this book 3 stars. The second half and ending didn’t do much for me, though.

Yzabel / April 21, 2016

Review: Life After Dane

Life After Dane by Edward Lorn

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

A mother’s love is undying… and so is Dane.

After the state of Arkansas executes serial killer Dane Peters, the Rest Stop Dentist, his mother discovers that life is darker and more dangerous than she ever expected.

The driving force behind his ghostly return lies buried in his family’s dark past. As Ella desperately seeks a way to lay her son’s troubled soul to rest, she comes face to face with her own failings.

If Ella cannot learn why her son has returned and what he seeks, then the reach of his power will destroy the innocent, and not even his mother will be able to stop him.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Well, that was quite a twisted ride here. A sort of “making of a serial killer”, seen through the eyes of the killer’s mother, Ella, as she reminisces about the past after her son’s death, while stranger and stranger events start happening around her.

Dane Peters, a serial killer known as the Rest Stop Dentist (after his places of killing and his “collection” of teeth from his victims), is gone, sentenced to death and executed. It’s time for his mother, who followed the trial for months, to go back home, where she finds shelter in religion, the only thing she has left—and even that is less than certain, for Dane’s reputation as well as an article by journalist Sven Gödel have tainted her, made her into “the killer’s mother”, and he own church may not want her anymore. So Ella tries to go on as she can, but her enemies are many, tagging her house at night and leaving accusatory articles in her mailbox, while her friends, like Talia, are few.

Enters Dane, his presence brought back through a DVD he left in Sven’s care, a video containing a last message for the person he loved most. His mother? Well… This is when Hell on Earth breaks for Ella and Sven, haunted more and more by Dane. A real ghost? A common hallucination? A hallucination that can hurt and kill, for sure. Threatened and manipulated, the mother and the journalist have no choice but to go on a sick quest of Dane’s making. But did Dane turn evil just because it was in his nature, or did someone made him into a killer?

For me, the supernatural and horror aspects were intriguing, but what interested me even more was the abuse running rampant in Dane’s family. While I would definitely disagree with anyone affirming that being abused as a child turns people evil, the fact is, abuse in any form is very, very likely to leave children (and their future adult selves) scarred, in one way or another. This novel is perhaps more a study of abuse than a ghost/horror story: a study in how a father perpetuates on his son what was done to him, on how a scared mother may choose to turn a blind eye on said abuse, thus becoming complicit in the daily torture, on how love can get horribly warped, on crappy justifications to horrible actions…

As a result, the main characters felt unpleasant yet also sympathetic, a dichotomy that isn’t so easy to achieve. Unpleasant because of their flaws, their tendency to justify them, their voluntary blindness to ugly truths, their hypocrisy, too (Ellaconsidering herself a good Christian, while letting the abuse go on). Sympathetic, because, all in all, Ella and Dane were victims first and foremost (to use the same example, Ella found refuge in her beliefs precisely because facing the truth alone was too hard and she was too scared).

And, to be honest, the teeth motif particularly struck me: losing teeth is one of my deep fears, and in general, anyway, imagining people having their teeth ripped out of their mouths is… just frightening. It hurts terribly, it touches you directly in your face, so close to the seat of your thoughts, it disfigures you, and it’s such a horrible way to bleed to death, too…

Nice touch at the very end, too, but I’m certainly not going to spoil anything.

Yzabel / December 5, 2015

Review: Yesterday’s Gone (Season 1)

Yesterday’s Gone: Season One by Sean Platt

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

On October 15 at 2:15 a.m. everyone on Earth vanished.

Well, almost everyone.

A scattered few woke alone in a world where there are no rules other than survival… at any cost.

A journalist wanders the wretched reality of an empty New York, in search for his wife and son.

A serial killer must hunt in a land where prey is now an endangered species.

A mother shields her young daughter from danger, as every breath ﬁlls her with terror.

A bullied teen is thrilled to ﬁnd everyone gone. Until the knock on his door.

A fugitive survives a ﬁery plane crash. Will he be redeemed, or return to what he’s best at: the kill?

An eight year old boy sets out on a journey to ﬁnd his missing family. What he ﬁnds will change him forever.

And there’s a few people who aren’t surprised that this happened at all. In fact, they’ve been dreaming about this day for years.

These survivors aren’t alone…
Someone or something is watching them.
And waiting…

Strangers unite.

Sides are chosen.

Will humanity survive what it never saw coming?

The only certainty is that Yesterday’s Gone.

Review:

(I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

I seldom read serials, and I admit that reading one in the shape of a “novel” of gathered episodes kind of defeats the purpose (all the more since the authors mention their love of cliffhangers at the end), but… nevermind. I was in the mood for post-apocalyptic stuff, anyway.

So far, this first “season” isn’t the most original thing I’ve read when it comes to this theme: most people gone, survivors trying to figure out what happened (with some being really awful chaps), mysterious aliens-or-zombies creatures that may or may not be the reason behind the catastrophe, an infection… It’s part alien sci-fi, part zombie post-ap, and readers who enjoy the typical tropes of such stories are likely to get their share here, although at times it felt like a jumble of subplots more than a structured story, as if the authors were going along with whatever struck their fancy. This may or may not be true; I couldn’t make up my mind about it, as every time some new elements was introduced, I thought “yet another idea…, then “this could still come together in the end, with more seasons to go, depending on what they do, so let’s wait and see.” Truth be told, we don’t get a lot of clues about what’s happening behind the scenes; the hints are more of the gory variety (the worms, people being killed…)

The format itself is very TV-like, an obvious goal, and one I was looking for. It wouldn’t be difficult to imagine this serial as episodes, complete with regular shifts from group to group. This worked well enough for me. There’s no shortage of action, and as the focus jumped from one character to another, I often found myself wanting to know more about the one left in a predicament… while also wanting to read about the current focus, that is. There were a few boring parts (I didn’t really like the ones about the kids, the Uno game, etc., as I was of course interested in what the characters would do as survivors), especially in the middle, although the pacing managed to bring me back in again in the last third of the book.

The characters are fairly typical of such stories. Survivalists (both good and bad people), some of whom were united by strange dreams and knew beforehand they had to prepare for the apocalypse. An ex-government agent/spook. A pregnant teenager from a conservative family. A father who now regrets he let his work get in the way of his family. A mother trying to protect her daughter. A young man who finds himself stuck, supreme irony, with his abusive stepfather, instead of the latter being dead/gone like most other people. A guy whose last conversation with his now-gone wife was an argument. A kid who meets an old man, the latter taking him under his wing. Even a serial killer.

I remained torn about these characters for most of the story: some of them are uninteresting and would deserve more spotlight to be allowed to shine, but others are definitely intriguing, even though not always exploited to their best, plot-wise.

Boricio was one of the vilest ones in this story, and yet, in spite of all the revolting stuff about him, especially the way he treated women, he also had a sort of “heroic bastard” side to him, probably because he was written with a humorous, slapstick comedy side; oddly enough, some of his scenes were enjoyable… in a much twisted way–like a train wreck that you can’t help but keep looking at. Edward, too, was fascinating: I still don’t know what’s true about him, what’s make-believe, who’s right about him, and let’s not forget the twist at the end of his arc in this first season.

On the other hand, the female characters were a letdown: mostly here to be the object of violence (Callie, Paola after her dream) and/or to be rescued and protected (Teagan, Mary and Paola) by the guys. The only “active” female character is the one in Boricio’s narrative, and she’s clearly one of the baddies, on top of not being developed anyway (Callie is first shown as badass, same in her flashback, but quickly devolves into frightened-girl-in-need-of-protection). And don’t start me on the rape scene, so nicely wrapped and dropped under the rug as a sort of afterthought; that was seriously infuriating. Definitely not the way to write such a scene and its aftermath, to say the least.

In terms of writing style, something that bothered me was the use of numbers (it feels really weird to read “20 yards” and not “twenty yards” in a novel – though maybe it’s just me). Another issue was a tendency to resort to “descriptive” sentences (he did this, she did that), which ended up in a lot of cases of “telling, not showing.” Finally, the dialogues also felt stilted most of the time, with a lot of flashback-type narratives when characters revealed what had happened to them; not uninteresting in itself, but told in ways that didn’t feel very natural, as if they were, well, scripted.

Conclusion: 2.5 stars. I will likely read book 2, since I also got it through NetGalley anyway, because “Yesterday’s Gone” was interesting in more than one way. But I can only hope that this series will improve in terms of writing style and character development (and that we’ll get actual revelations about the monsters and the shady ops guys).