Can’t Wait Wednesday – Spotlight on THE RAGING ONES by Krista & Becca Ritchie
/30 Comments/by Suzanne
“Waiting On” Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted at Breaking the Spine, which encourages fellow bloggers to spotlight upcoming releases that we’re excited about. It is a meme that I have loved participating in for over a year now, but as Jill is no longer actively posting, from now on I’ll just be linking to Can’t Wait Wednesday, hosted by Tressa, which is a spinoff of the original WoW meme.
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My selection for this week is THE RAGING ONES by Krista and Becca Ritchie. I’m always on the lookout for new science fiction series and this one recently caught my eye, especially the idea that everyone knows the exact day they will die and that the three characters in this book somehow manage to dodge their deathdays. I was recently approved for an ARC of this book and am quite excited to start it.
THE RAGING ONES by Krista & Becca Ritchie
Publication Date: August 14, 2018
From Goodreads:
In a freezing world, where everyone knows the day they will die, three teens break all odds.
Franny Bluecastle, a tough city teen, dreams of dying in opulence, to see wealth she’s never known. Like the entire world, she believes it’s impossible to dodge a deathday.
Until the day she does.
Court Icecastle knows wealth. He also knows pain. Spending five years in Vorkter Prison, a fortress of ice and suffering, he dreams of life beyond the people that haunt him and the world that imprisoned him.
Mykal Kickfall fights for those he loves. The rugged Hinterlander shares a frustrating yet unbreakable connection with Court—which only grows more lawless and chaotic as their senses and emotions connect with Franny.
With the threat of people learning they’ve dodged their deathdays, they must flee their planet to survive. But to do so, all three will have to hide their shared bond as they vie for a highly sought after spot in the newest mission to space. Against thousands of people far smarter, who’ll live longer, and never fear death the way that they do.
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I’d love to hear what upcoming book releases you’re waiting on this Wednesday? Leave me your link in the comments below and I’ll stop by and check out your CWW selection for this week. 🙂
DNF Regrets – Top 10 Books I Wish I Had Quit Reading
/48 Comments/by SuzanneTop Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Top Ten Tuesday has been one of my favorite memes ever since I started blogging, so huge thanks to Jana for taking over the hosting duties!
This week’s TTT topic is Books I Decided to DNF (did not finish) too Quickly (are you questioning your DNF choices on any books? If you have a policy to not DNF, put a spin on the topic to make it fit you.)
I had to tweak this topic a bit since up until very recently, I was always very hesitant to DNF a book. Even if I was clearly not enjoying a read, I always had that little nagging voice in the back of my mind telling me to keep going, that surely it would get better, etc. I don’t even want to think about how many hours I’ve wasted reading books that weren’t for me just because I couldn’t make myself give up on them.
I think since I have started blogging, I’ve finally just become more comfortable with the idea that not every book is for every reader and if I’m not enjoying something and have given it a fair shot, it’s okay to move on and try another book instead. It has still taken me until about six months ago to really start DNFing books though so my top ten list is a list of books I wish I had made myself quit reading. There was something about each one of them that didn’t appeal to me at all – a main character I didn’t like, a writing style that didn’t work for me, too much description and not enough action, or maybe I just flat out got bored with the series, etc. Whatever the reason, I was not enjoying these reads very much but couldn’t make myself quit. If I had it to do all over again, these would all be DNFs.
DNF Regrets – Top 10 Books I Wish I Had Quit Reading
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1. ALLEGIANT by Victoria Roth
(I enjoyed the first book in the series but was just bored with it by book 3.)
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2. THE BONE WITCH by Ria Chupeco
(I wanted to love this but got bored with too much elaborate description of fashion and classes, but not enough action.)
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3. GLASS SWORD by Victoria Aveyard
(I could kick my own butt for even starting this book, considering how much I wanted to throttle Mare in the first one. To my credit though, I have NOT continued with the series.)
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4. THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN by Paula Hawkins
(I found the main character to be so annoying. Everything she did just drove me bonkers.)
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5. FROSTBLOOD by Elly Blake
(I got bored with this story because it just didn’t feel very original. I ended up liking it by the very end but it took too long to get to that point.)
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6. GILDED CAGE by Vic James
(Like Frostblood, I pushed through even though I was a little bored and was okay with it by the end. That said, however, I did end up DNFing the next book in the series.)
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7. THE IMMORTALISTS by Chloe Benjamin
(The premise of the book was so interesting but I was bored almost the entire time I was reading and didn’t feel a connection to any of the characters.)
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8. ROSEBLOOD
(The premise was interesting but the pacing was so slow that I kept losing interest and falling asleep.)
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9. SWEETBITTER by Stephanie Danler
(I kept waiting to love this book because it was the must-read book of the summer when I read it. There’s even a TV show or movie based on it now, but I was just so bored. It made me hungry but that was about it. And yet I still didn’t DNF it. *shakes head*)
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10. EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE by Jonathan Safran Foer
(I will say that by the end, I found the journey somewhat worthwhile, but I felt like I had to work too hard to really connect with this book. It was meaningful yet felt somewhat pretentious.)
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Question: What about you and your DNF regrets? Do you have any books that you wish you had given up on?
Review: THE DEATH OF MRS. WESTAWAY
/20 Comments/by SuzanneAlso by this author: The Turn of the Key
Published by Gallery/Scout Press on May 29, 2018
Genres: Mystery, Thriller
Pages: 384
Source: Netgalley
Amazon
Goodreads
FTC Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
MY REVIEW:
Even though I’m typically a huge fan of suspenseful thrillers, for some reason I had not gotten around to trying one of Ruth Ware’s popular novels yet. I don’t really have any real excuse other than I sometimes tend to shy away from hyped books and this was one of those cases, especially since I’ve seen Ware referred to as the Agatha Christie of our time and that seems like a pretty tall order for any author to try to live up to. The synopsis of The Death of Mrs. Westaway captivated me, however, and I decided it was past time for me to try my first Ruth Ware novel. How did it work out? I’d say the fact that I’ve ordered copies of all of Ware’s novels since finishing this one is a pretty good indicator of how it went. While I might not go so far as to call her the Agatha Christie of our day, Ruth Ware is a superb mystery author in her own right.
Sympathetic Protagonist: Harriet Westaway (or Hal as she is more often referred to) is a character that tugged on my heartstrings from the first pages of the novel. She is a 21-year-old tarot card reader who works on a pier in Brighton, England. Hal fell into this line of work a few years earlier when her mother, also a tarot card reader, was struck and killed in a hit-and-run accident. The driver was never caught and so Hal was forced to drop out of school and take up her mother’s work in order to keep a roof over her head and food on the table. There’s no father and no other family in the picture so Hal is all alone in the world and is struggling to make ends meet. When we meet Hal, she is up to her neck in trouble, having borrowed some money from a sleazy loan shark who keeps changing the terms of her repayment and has sent his goons to deliver a message to her, that message being threat of bodily harm or even worse if she doesn’t cough up 3,000 pounds, which she clearly doesn’t have.
Although Hal is a sympathetic character, she’s still pretty savvy and street smart, which is another thing I liked about her, as well as the fact that she also has a bit of a morally gray element that adds even more interesting layers to her personality. When a letter from an attorney’s office arrives in the mail telling Hal she has been named as a beneficiary in the will of a Mrs. Westaway who has just passed away, Hal knows it can’t possibly be her, as she has no family. That said, however, she can’t help but wonder if her ability to read people – so finely honed by years of reading tarot cards and telling fortunes – is sharp enough for her to fool people so that she really can claim the aforementioned inheritance. Yes, there’s a risk she could go to jail for fraud, but if she can pull it off, it’s the answer to all of her prayers. That in itself makes it a risk worth taking. It’s so wrong of course, but I just couldn’t help but admire her guts and determination.
Atmospheric Quality: In addition to the wonderfully well-rounded character that is Hal, my other favorite part of the book is the atmosphere that Ware has created. Everything about the atmosphere has an air of suspense to it but it takes a turn for the creepy and Gothic once Hal arrives at the residence of the late Mrs. Westaway. The house itself is dusty and ill-maintained, some of the windows are barred, It’s filled with endless dark corridors and stairways, and to top it off, there’s a mean old housekeeper, Mrs. Warren, that Hal seems to find lurking around every corner. Everything about the house just had this ominous feel to it and had me wanting to yell at Hal to get out while she could.
Family Secrets – Web of Lies: If you’re into books that focus on messy families and their dirty little secrets, The Death of Mrs. Westaway is the book for you! As soon as Hal arrives and hears the will reading, she can tell that something is amiss with the Westaway family and that she has landed herself right in the middle of a hornet’s nest. Nothing is as it seems and although she knows she should just cut and run before she ends up in potentially deeper trouble than she already is, she feels compelled to find out the truth about the family and whatever it is they appear to be hiding. Ware does a marvelous job with the pacing of the novel and I remained enthralled as I waited for each strand of the web of lies to unravel.
I don’t really have anything at all here. It was a phenomenal read that I couldn’t put down once I started reading.
While this was my first time reading Ruth Ware, it will definitely not be my last. I’d recommend The Death of Mrs. Westaway to anyone who is a fan of mysteries and thrillers as well as to anyone who enjoys a good domestic drama.
GOODREADS SYNOPSIS
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of In a Dark, Dark Wood, The Woman in Cabin 10, and The Lying Game comes Ruth Ware’s highly anticipated fourth novel.
On a day that begins like any other, Hal receives a mysterious letter bequeathing her a substantial inheritance. She realizes very quickly that the letter was sent to the wrong person—but also that the cold-reading skills she’s honed as a tarot card reader might help her claim the money.
Soon, Hal finds herself at the funeral of the deceased…where it dawns on her that there is something very, very wrong about this strange situation and the inheritance at the center of it.
Full of spellbinding menace and told in Ruth Ware’s signature suspenseful style, this is an unputdownable thriller from the Agatha Christie of our time.