YA Thriller/Horror

Review: I Am Still Alive by Kate Alice Marshall

~ megs14malloy

I Am Still AliveI Am Still Alive by Kate Alice Marshall
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

**4.5-stars**

Alternating between After and Before sections, I Am Still Alive follows teenager, Jess, who has moved to Canada to live with her estranged, off-the-grid, father.

Battered, bruised and grieving, Jess has recently survived a car crash in which her mother was killed.

Like losing your mom isn’t hard enough. Like losing the strength in your own body isn’t hard enough. Now Jess has to leave the only life she has ever known behind and move to the wilderness to live with a virtual stranger.

Y’all, you can tell from the very start that this story is going to take you places. Those places aren’t going to be great, but what is great is the writing, pacing and format of this YA Survival Thriller.

After a shocking event, which is revealed slowly over the course of the story, Jess ends up alone.

The cabin where she had been living burned to the ground, leaving her, her dog Bo and a few meager supplies to try to survive on their own.

Jess is still in a lot of pain from her accident. Her muscles have atrophied in one leg fairly severely; as in, she was in therapy training herself to walk again prior to moving to the wilderness.

Because of this, even small tasks are literally exhausting for her. Her physical limitations present mental challenges as well. She truly must learn to listen to her body in order to push through.

This is a true survival story. Marshall does not shy away from pain, hunger, thirst, desperation and anguish. It is all on page and at times is agonizing to read.

There’s also some fairly painful issues involving family, guilt and grief. All handled extraordinarily well.

Reminiscent of Hatchet, the first survival story I ever loved, I really enjoyed reading this. I really enjoyed reading it, even though it tore my heart out and I legit cried like a baby at the end.

This is not a comfortable read, but it’s definitely a challenging, thought-provoking, adventurous read; not for the faint of heart.

I will absolutely be reading more from this author!

View all my reviews

Review: Even If We Break by Marieke Nijkamp

~ megs14malloy

Even If We BreakEven If We Break by Marieke Nijkamp
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I don’t even know what to say. This book was a huge disappointment for me.

I knew going in, the reviews were not the greatest. Regardless of the super interesting synopsis, it seemed a lot of readers were not enjoying it.

Frequently, I find myself in the minority opinion on polarizing books, however, so I still wanted to give it a shot.

I love slightly cheesy, teen slashers, particularly with weekend getaways or gaming elements. This book sounded like it would be a great fit for my tastes.

We follow five friends, who I believe are in high school, who head off to a cabin in the Arizona mountains for a weekend getaway playing a RPG they created.

There are costumes, a murder mystery to solve and things go south fairly quickly. Before you know it, we have a real life murder mystery on our hands.

I would surmise that incorporating a high fantasy RPG into a narrative story would be a complicated task, and I think I’m right, because I found it confusing AF.

I was still sort of intrigued, but then it went off the rails.

The big baddie was super obvious, so no real suspense there and then the drama to reach the conclusion was ridiculous. I’m sorry, but it was.

There was also a lot of hard-hitting contemporary topics sprinkled throughout that seemed oddly out of place. It made the overall intent of this novel confusing.

There were some diverse characters in here, which I love to see, but in a way, it felt overplayed; like it was just an effort to get them in there for that sake alone.

I don’t know, it didn’t come off as genuine? Perhaps because they were portrayed so one dimensionally.

This is just my opinion, of course, and I would love to see OwnVoices reviews on this story.

If you are unaware, this novel features trans-rep, nonbinary-rep and disability-rep. I also would really like to see reviews from individuals who actually participate in RPG; I would love to hear people’s opinions on how that was represented here.

Without belaboring the point, I didn’t like this. If you pick it up and enjoy it, or even love it, I am so happy you had that experience with it.

Sadly, it just wasn’t the right fit for me. On to the next!

Original:

1. A Weekend Getaway.
2. A Game.
3. Deadly Secrets.

I will
never
 skip a book with these buzzwords.

Sign me up!

View all my reviews

Review: Five Total Strangers by Natalie D. Richards

~ megs14malloy

Five Total StrangersFive Total Strangers by Natalie D. Richards
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

**3.5-stars rounded up**

Mira lives in California, while her mother lives in Pittsburgh. It’s Christmas and Mira wants nothing more than to be over on the other Coast with her Mom.

Last year, her Aunt, her Mom’s sister and closest friend, passed away. They both took it hard, but her Mom really struggled.

Mira is concerned about her mother’s mental health as she tries to cope with that loss around the holiday.

So, when her connecting flight from New York to Pittsburgh gets canceled due to inclement weather, Mira needs to find another way to get home to her.

Luckily, the girl she was sitting next to on the plane, Harper, is renting a car, along with three of her college friends, Brecken, Josh and Kayla.

There is room and they are heading in the same direction, so Harper offers Mira a ride. It would sure beat any of the other options, like sleeping at the airport.

Mira accepts, but she has her reservations. She doesn’t know these people at all.

As they hit the road, the weather gets progressively worse. They see a lot of accidents and even have a few close calls themselves. As you can imagine, the stress level in the car is ratcheting up.

They’re now at each other’s throats and it’s not pretty.

Anything that could possibly go wrong, does for this group. Conditions get to the point where they are barely able to drive at all.

They make a few pit stops and yep, you guessed it, those don’t go well either!

I had fun with this one, y’all. Richards did a great job or bringing your typical Teen Scream to the page.

The cast of characters played well off of one another and it definitely kept me guessing. There’s some uncertainty as to what people’s motives are and I enjoyed that element a lot.

The suspense continues to build throughout the story. Items start to disappear from the car and it feels threatening rather than accidental.

Although there were some plot holes, and I wasn’t sold on the ending, I did have fun with it. I think if you don’t take it too seriously, it’s quite an enjoyable read.

Thank you so much to the publisher, SourceBooks Fire, for providing me with a copy of this to read and review.

Blizzard Scares are some of my favorite scares, so I am definitely happy that I had the opportunity to read this one. It’s perfect for this time of year!!

View all my reviews