Recent Reads

Bad Romance by Heather Demetrios

Synopsis - Grace wants out. Out of her house, where her stepfather wields fear like a weapon and her mother makes her scrub imaginary dirt off the floors. Out of her California town, too small to contain her big city dreams. Out of her life, and into the role of Parisian artist, New York director—anything but scared and alone.
Enter Gavin: charming, talented, adored. Controlling. Dangerous. When Grace and Gavin fall in love, Grace is sure it's too good to be true. She has no idea their relationship will become a prison she's unable to escape.

Thoughts - This was a very important read, a kind of It Ends with Us for young adults. It is so hard to identify being in an abusive relationship especially when you are dating some so hot and popular, charismatic, someone you should be lucky even noticed you. And once you realize you are in a bad relationship how do you get out of it? I enjoyed the book, like the way it was written in retrospect, the future Grace watching and commenting on her past self as she falls in love and gets sucked into this messed up relationship. 

The Lies We Told by Camilla Way

Synopsis - When Clara's boyfriend, Luke, disappears, everyone believes that he's left her, but Clara thinks she knows the truth. Recent evidence suggests that Luke had a stalker, and Clara worries that he's been kidnapped. Then Luke's older sister, Emma, who vanished twenty years ago, suddenly reappears.
Emma wants to help Clara with her search for Luke, but she refuses to talk about what happened--even though it nearly destroyed her family when she vanished. And the deeper Clara digs into Luke's mysterious disappearance, the more convinced she is that the two incidents are connected.

Thoughts - I like this one as well, I was not able to predict what was going to happen. There were many twists and turns. It was a good page turner.

The Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

Synopsis - Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. By age twenty, in fact, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most elite universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her?
Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. These eight windowless “tombs” are well-known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street and Hollywood’s biggest players. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive.

Thoughts - This was my first time reading anything my Leigh Bardugo though I have seen her Shadow and Bone show on Netflix. I liked Ninth House but I wasn't riveted. The secret societies are always interesting and Alex Stern was a well written female character. I liked the book enough to immediately rush to the library to find a copy and start reading the second book in the series, Hell Bent.

Hell Bent by Leigh Barudo

Synopsis - Find a gateway to the underworld. Steal a soul out of hell. A simple plan, except people who make this particular journey rarely come back. But Galaxy “Alex” Stern is determined to break Darlington out of purgatory―even if it costs her a future at Lethe and at Yale.
Forbidden from attempting a rescue, Alex and Dawes can’t call on the Ninth House for help, so they assemble a team of dubious allies to save the gentleman of Lethe. Together, they will have to navigate a maze of arcane texts and bizarre artifacts to uncover the societies’ most closely guarded secrets, and break every rule doing it. But when faculty members begin to die off, Alex knows these aren’t just accidents. Something deadly is at work in New Haven, and if she is going to survive, she’ll have to reckon with the monsters of her past and a darkness built into the university’s very walls.       

Thoughts - I definitely liked Hell Bent more than Ninth House. While the first book introduced us to the secret societies this book was less about them and more about Alex Stern, her cohorts and the big mission of rescuing Darlington. 

What have you been reading? 

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