Ghost Flower by Michele Jaffe YP FIC JAFFE

It started as a con.  Eve was a runaway with a past she can barely remember.  When she meets Bain and Bridgette they give her a chance she never dreamed of.  She looks like Aurora, their cousin that disappeared three years ago, the very night her best friend Liza committed suicide.  She can come back as Aurora and collect a lot of money, but there’s always a price to pay.  Liza’s ghost appears and tells her she was murdered.  Is this ghost a benevolent protector, a vengeful spirit, or something even more dangerous?  And whatever really happened to missing Aurora, and will Eve be able to avoid the same fate?

This is a fun, twisty mystery that has a lot of suspense and memorable characters.  This is Jaffe’s follow up to the similar Rosebush (I reviewed it here), and I must say that this one doesn’t feel as memorable.  The twists in both books are somewhat similar and rely on villains with BECAUSE I’M CRAZY motivations. On the bright side, this is a REALLY GOOD but not great story with loads of suspense and an interesting premise.  I liked following Eve and seeing how she would pull off her deceits AND handle all the ghostly shenanigans of Liza.  I also liked how freaked out Eve was of Liza.  Far too often, characters rebound way too quickly to such a huge revelation.  So if you like mysteries and suspense, then Ghost Flower is one of the better recent entries.  It has a nice slow build of suspense and a believable and relatable main character.  Hopefully the sort of way over the top ending doesn’t spoil it too much for you.  

You can check our catalog for Ghost Flower here.

Kill Me Softly by Sarah Cross YP FIC CROSS

Mira has lived her whole life with secrets. How did her parents die? Why is she prohibited from returning to her birthplace? `Why does she get the feeling everyone she knows is lying to her?  When she finally breaks away and makes it to her home town of Beau Rivage she discovers that more secrets than ever.  She falls quickly for Blue, a man everyone says is dangerous, but she feels like she can’t pull away from him.  Life in Beau Rivage is strange, just like a fairy tale…literally. She soon finds that all the residents of Beau Rivage are fated, cursed to live out legendary fairy tales, and she is beginning think hers has a Grimm ending.

Reimagined fairy tales are the new dystopias, vampires, fallen angels, whatever the big thing this month is!  They are in loads of movies, TV shows, and books, so it can be tough knowing which of the 3,486,794 fairy tale retellings released a month to give your precious time to. Fortunately, Kill Me Softly is something rather special.  It takes the fairy tales before Disney cleaned them up, finds the odd fascination with love and death and blends it into a modern romance. I think the novels twists work pretty well, but if you are familiar with old fairy tales, you’ll know some of the major ones fairly early on.  However, once the book is all about the strangling hand of inexorable fate, then that actually adds its own level of enjoyment.  The main fun is seeing the skewed fairy tales and trying to guess how everything will turn out. Underneath the romance and mystery is a look at the dark and dangerous side of fairy tale love.  I think Cross does a really good job at looking at te relationship between real life abusive relationships and the fairy tale like logic that people trapped in them often use.  This is a great, twisted, dark romance.  I highly recommend it to anyone looking for something unique. 

You can check our catalog for Kill Me Softly here.

172 Hours on the Moon by Johan Harstad YP FIC HARSTAD

Mia, Antoine, and Midori have won the ultimate vacation: an all-expenses-paid trip to the moon! They will train with NASA, explore the moon, and come back world famous.  But not really.  There is something very dark hiding on the dark side of the moon and there is nothing that can prepare them for it, no one to save them from it, and if they don’t make it back no one will ever even know what killed them.

This book is tense, creepy, scary, eerie, and all sorts of other things that will keep you up late at night.  What works so well is that it’s a really slow burn.  We get to know all that characters with chapters from their perspective and learn about their hopes and dreams before they are thrust into mortal danger.  This makes for a slow start, but it makes the horror of the later chapters really pay off. The use of photos and diagrams also was a very smart touch by Harstad.  It helps establish a layer of believability and adds a nice variety to boot.  It’s one of those “will ANYONE survive” type of horror books that really pushes you to the edge of your seat.  It was the rare book, where I didn’t see the final twist coming at all.  So if you want a genuinely creepy book, this is a sure fire scarer. 

You can check our catalog for 173 Hours on the Moon here.

Mister Death’s Blue Eyed Girls by Mary Downing Hahn YP FIC HAHN

It was the last day of school. 1956.  Nora’s life was so simple, her biggest worry finding a boyfriend. Mister Death changed all that. BANG. BANG. Cheryl and Bobbi Jo were dead.  All fingers point to Cheryl’s ex-boyfriend, Buddy.  No one knows about Mr. Death.  Nora doesn’t know what to believe any more. Not about the murders, not about Buddy, not about God, life, love, death, or any of the rest of it.  Told through the eyes of the kids left behind, this is the story of the last summer of innocence.

This is a sad and haunting mystery about all that death robs from those left behind.  The violence is left off screen and the shifting focus is on the teenagers that knew the victim. The shifting focus keeps the suspense building and helps underscore how violence has such large ripple effects.  This let’s Hahn explore much more than just a mystery, but also a lot about 1950s society.  This is based on a real event that happened when Hahn was a teenager and she does an amazing job of bringing that to life in a way that feels immediate.  She is able to write as a teenager and also finish with an epilogue written at the age she is now and have both feel totally genuine.  The story is a great look at a different time, but also the way that childhood has to end for everyone.  I recommend this to fans of historical fiction and anyone that wants a well written, suspenseful read.

You can check our catalog for Mister Death’s Blue Eyed Girls here.

Guy Langman, Crime Scene Procrastinator by Josh Berk YP FIC BERK

Guy joined the forensics club against his usual policy of laziness and disinterest for two reasons: hot girls and death.  He’s always been interested in the former and the sudden passing of his father has him semi-obsessed (as much as Guy gets obsessed with anything) with the latter. When he and his best friend, Anoop find a REAL dead body at a FAKE forensic scene, they decide to solve the case. The deeper they look the more Guy has to actually DO things; and the more he finds out about his deceased dad, but they aren’t things he wants to find out.

I read this book weeks ago, but I’m just now getting around to reviewing it. HA! Procrastination joke!  Fortunately the jokes are way better in Guy Langman, Crime Scene Procrastinato. Guy Langman, Crime Scene Procrastinator’s (Does it show that I like the ridiculously long title?) humor is by far its main strength.  The humor is brash, dumb, and juvenile, which means its right up my alley!  If you like about 337 variations on ‘your momma’ jokes, then it’s likely up your alley as well. And who doesn’t like ‘your momma’ jokes? Your momma? Like Beck’s previous book The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin,  the overall mystery is less of a draw than the humor. The main character is likeably dorky and lazy which made him very relatable to me.  Some of the side characters weren’t all that fleshed out or memorable, but never to the point of being distracting. This is a fun, light (and I could use that after the dark, darker, and darkest books I’ve reviewed lately), and consistently funny mystery.  I recommend it to anyone that needs or just highly desires a good laugh.  

You can check our catalog for Guy Langman, Crime Scene Procrastinator here.

Wonder Show by Hannah Barnaby YP FIC BARNABY

Come see the oddest of oddities, the tragic spectacle of twisted humanity at Mosco’s Traveling Wonder Show.  We have a towering giant, a shrunken dwarf, a bearded woman, the albino family of Bora Bora, and the strangest of all: Portia, the ‘normal’ girl that made freaks into a family.  But that family can’t protect her if Mister finds her.  And Mister always finds hi wayward girls.

This is a delightful historical fiction tale set in a circus during the Great Depression.  It has great period detail and a very unique setting.  It was fascinating to get a realistic look into the freak shows of old.  Barnaby builds a wonderful supporting cast and an amazing protagonist.  Portia is a natural born storyteller and liar, which almost always makes for a great character.  She’s resourceful and clever, but also very flawed.  This drives the plot forward in a way that makes it feel meaningful and make sense why a ‘normal’ girl would have to live with so called ‘freaks’.  Her storytelling and lies work as a metafictional examination of the power of stories to shape the reality we want to live.  The ending feels a bit rushed and sort of too neat.  I mean, how realistic is a ‘happy’ ending in the Great Depression? But have no fear; the book is more than good enough to handle a less than perfect finish.  I highly recommend this to anyone that wants a good story with a unique setting, but especially for fans of historical fiction.

You can check our catalog for Wonder Show here.