The Apocalypse of Elena Mendoza by Shaun David Hutchinson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Elena Mendoza is a miracle, literally.
The product of parthenogenesis, a virgin birth, Elena’ life has been quirky indeed.
As you can imagine, this anomaly made the headlines, making Elena low-key famous.
She does her best to just live her life, ignoring the chatter around her, but it hasn’t always been easy.
Elena has never really fit in and although she has some close relationships, she’s far from one of the popular kids.
When the girl she has been crushing on, Freddie, comes close to losing her life, right in front of Elena’s eyes, she discovers she has the ability to heal. A power she never realized she had.
However, the power comes at a price.
Every time she heals, a random number of people disappear, sucked up by a bright light; raptured, if you will.
Through Elena’s own musings, as well as her conversations with certain inanimate objects, we begin to slowly understand the reality of her situation.
Somehow, she needs to save the world. The future of humanity rests on her young shoulders, or does it?
This was so good. Wildly creative and although the content may seem over the top, there are some incredibly important topics to be found within these pages.
Examining complex relationships, as well as the power of free will and identity, this will definitely stick with me.
There’s no doubt, if you are looking for a queer story to make you think about life and the choices we make, Shaun David Hutchinson is a good way to go.
This was completely unique and stole my heart in an oddly compelling way!
I’m so happy my random number generator selected this book for me to read off of my enormous TBR list.
Who knows how long it would have actually taken me to get to it otherwise!? I really enjoyed my time reading this.
Why did I wait so long to read this? Bad life choices, I guess. I loved this so much – now I can FINALLY watch the movie! There really isn’t too much I can say about this book that hasn’t already been said. I think pretty much everyone knows the basic premise of this so I won’t reiterate that here. What I do want to touch on is how this book made me feel. I am in a long-term relationship, having been with my partner for 11-years this month. In the beginning of our relationship we were long-distance. A lot of our initial ‘getting to know you’ period was perpetuated through online correspondence, via email. I absolutely adored the use of mixed media in this, showing the emails between Simon and his love interest, known as ‘Blue’. It just made my heart sing reminiscing on that feeling you get when you see a new email has come through, opening it up to behold what the person you are crushing on has written you, seeing the initial low-key flirting and how that grows into more and more over time. 
I received A Whisper of Bones as an e-ARC through NetGalley. The first thing that drew me to this book was the cover. It’s gorgeous. I love the colors…and it’s a mystery, one of my favorite genres. I failed to note however that it was #25 in a series; completely blinded by the cover…again. However, I kept it in mind and kept checking reviews to see if I could read it as a stand-alone. I certainly didn’t have time to go back and read 24 books in order to get myself ready for this one. I was so psyched when I discovered that this series, like many adult mystery series, do not need to be read in order; think Hercule Poirot, Murder, She Wrote, etc. You could definitely read this as a stand-alone so if you haven’t read any other books in this series, please don’t let that deter you!