Reclaimed by Madeleine Roux REVIEW

Summary:

The Ganymede facility is a fresh start. At least that's what Senna tells herself when she arrives to take part in a cutting-edge scientific treatment where participants have traumatic memories erased.

And Senna has reasons for wanting to escape her past.

But almost as soon as the treatment begins, Senna finds more than just her traumatic memories disappearing. She hardly recognizes her new life or herself. Even though the cure might justify the side effects of the process, Senna knows that something isn't right. As her side effects worsen, Senna will need to band together with the other participants to unravel the mystery of her present and save her future.

My Thoughts:

Senna was born and raised in a cult, which she narrowly escaped with her life. Her family and the rest of the cult members weren't so lucky. When she finds a treatment trial to erase traumatic memories, Senna jumps at the chance. But when she arrives at the facility, even before the treatment, things seem off. There is a bad storm that traps them all there for days, she starts seeing shadows, and her non-traumatic memories are also effected by the treatment.

The summary is slightly misleading, as Senna is only one of the main characters. We also follow Zurri, a model, and Han, a teenage genius. The chapters alternate between the three of them. They are mostly well-developed, with Zurri being the least of the three. I really like the concept of the story - how memories, even bad ones, shouldn't necessarily be forgotten. I also liked the concept behind how the memories are erased, which we learn more about towards the end of the novel. I do wish that the villain of the story was more developed, as he seemed one-dimensional and stereotypical. Otherwise, this was a very interesting read.

My Rating: 3 stars 

Dead Silence by S. A. Barnes REVIEW

Summary:

Claire Kovalik is days away from being unemployed - made obsolete - when her beacon-repair crew picks up a strange distress signal. With nothing to lose and no desire to return to Earth, Claire and her team decide to investigate.

What they find is shocking: the Aurora, a famous luxury spaceliner that vanished on its maiden tour of the solar system more than twenty years ago. A salvage claim like this could set Claire and her crew up for life. But a quick search of the ship reveals something isn't right.

Whispers in the dark. Flickers of movement. Messages scrawled in blood. Claire must fight to hold onto her sanity and find out what really happened on the Aurora before she and her crew meet the same ghastly fate.

My Thoughts:

This was such a breath of fresh air and exciting to read. The story goes back and forth between past and present of Claire telling her story. Rejected from the multiple jobs in space she applied for, Claire has to head back to Earth for an office job - something she never wanted to do. She likes the silence and peace of being out among the stars with little to no human interaction. Her crew is against going to assist the distress signal, but their minds change when they see the ship. They could make a lot of money taking things from it, and the families of the dead on board would finally know what happened to their loved ones. But upon entering the ship, Claire starts to see and hear things. This isn't abnormal for her, as she has the ability to see ghosts, but something is different about it this time. When her crew starts experiencing the same, it becomes a battle to continue their mission without going crazy.

I like the development of Claire and her crewmate Kane, who are the main focuses of the novel. We get to know things about their pasts and their life before this mission. Claire is the sole survivor of a tragedy that killed her mother, and Kane is a single father with a daughter on Earth. Claire is telling the story because she was found in an escape pod without her crew to Verux officials, who want to know what happened and why she is alone. They don't believe her about seeing things on the ship, of course, but they need a statement and want to go find the ship. Near the end, they convince her to go with them to get it so she can show them where everything is - but it turns out that they want to take some things and explode the ship with her on it. The disappearance of the ship and the deaths of the passengers wasn't an accident - they were experimenting with sound waves, which made the people on board crazy and start killing each other. Claire has to grab Kane and try to escape before they blow up the ship.

My Rating: 5 stars

One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig REVIEW

Summary:

Elspeth Spindle needs more than luck to stay safe in the eerie, mist-locked kingdom she calls home - she needs a monster. She calls him the Nightmare, an ancient, mercurial spirit trapped in her head. He protects her. He keeps her secrets. But nothing comes for free, especially magic.

When Elspeth meets a mysterious highwayman on the forest road, her life takes a drastic turn. Thrust into a world of shadow and deception, she joins a dangerous quest to cure the kingdom of the dark magic infecting it. Except the highwayman just so happens to be the King's own nephew, Captain of the Destriers . . . and guilty of high treason.

He and Elspeth have until Solstice to gather twelve Providence Cards - the keys to the cure. But as the stakes heighten and their undeniable attraction intensifies, Elspeth is forced to face her darkest secret yet: the Nightmare is slowly, darkly, taking over her mind. And she might not be able to stop him.

My Thoughts:

This book was a lot of fun, and reminded me of why I used to love fantasy so much. Elspeth had gotten sick as a child - the kind of sick where you would be taken away and killed. But her family hid her illness, and she went to stay with her aunt and uncle to be safe and away from prying eyes, as her father works for the King. The illness did not give her magic, although when she touched a Providence Card, a monster took refuge in her head. All magic other than Providence Cards is strictly forbidden after a tragedy happened centuries ago, making the mist something to fear. 

I really like the writing here, it reminds me of fantasy novels I used to read, full of description and escape, but not overwritten. Elspeth is a compelling character, and we learn things as she does. For years, she didn't realize that the voice in her head could actually help her by taking over her body. We learn that the cards, if used too much, cause degeneration, where the user gets weaker and weaker with each use. But Elspeth doesn't know what hers will look like, until the voice tells her. The Nightmare is actually the soul of the Shepherd King, who died centuries ago, and each time she asks for help, Elspeth is weakened. Eventually, he will take over her body for good. Collecting all of the cards breaks the curse of the mist and cures those effected by magic, but there's one problem: one card has been missing for centuries, ever since the death of the Shepherd King. The romance between Elspeth and Ravyn is done very well. They do not fall at first sight, it takes most of the book before they are together, and it is merely a subplot of the book. It ends on a cliffhanger, and I am excited for the next one.

My Rating: 5 stars

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo REVIEW

Summary:

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.

My Thoughts:

While this book was difficult to get into, it got really interesting about 50ish pages in. The chapters go back and forth between past and present, and the world building is very well done. Alex is the kind of character that you hate at one moment and love the next. She has a messy past with drugs and murder, but she's likable enough to root for. Alex is on the hunt for a murderer, who may or may not be connected to one of the secret societies at Yale. While it seems like there's no connection at first, she digs in deeper and finds information that was buried deep and could also connect to the disappearance of Darlington, her mentor. My only issue with this book, other than it being difficult to get into, is that Alex is the only well-rounded character here. While I cared about Dawes and Darlington, they were underdeveloped, and the rest of the characters felt like they were just there and had no depth. The plot twist towards the end would have been better if I had felt any sort of connection to Belbalm/Daisy. However, I do look forward to reading the sequel.

My Rating: 4 stars 

They Never Learn by Layne Fargo REVIEW

Summary:

Every year, Dr. Clark searches for the worst man at Gorman University and plots his demise. Thanks to her planning, she's avoided drawing attention to herself - but as she's preparing for her biggest kill yet, the school starts probing into the body count on campus. Determined to keep her enemies close, Scarlett insinuates herself into the investigation. Everything's going according to her master plan . . . until she loses control with her latest victim.

Meanwhile, Gorman student Carly Schiller is simply trying to survive her freshman year. Finally free of her abusive father, Carly just wants to fade into the background. Her roommate has other ideas. Allison Hadley is cool and confident, and the two girls quickly form an intense friendship. So when Allison is assaulted at a party, Carly becomes obsessed with making the attacker pay . . . and turning her fantasies about revenge into a reality.

My Thoughts:

The book is told from two POVs: Scarlett and Carly. Scarlett is a professor at Gorman and is tired of terrible men getting away with hurting women. She secretly kills them, but stages them as suicides. Her next target is one of her colleagues - Kinnear. But then Mina, Kinnear's ex-wife, comes onto the scene to investigate the deaths of students, and Scarlett has to lay low and get sneaky. Carly is a new student who comes from an abusive family and wants to be able to be herself away from them. She quickly befriends Allison and her friend Wes, and things are finally looking up for her. But when she sees Allison - who was most likely drugged - being assaulted, she steps up to take care of her and wants the man to pay. Carly quickly learns that even the men you think you can trust, can secretly be horrible people, as evident when she goes to report the assault, and when Wes starts acting seemingly out of character.

I loved this novel. Carly and Scarlett are perfectly developed as characters, and the writing is powerful. Revenge stories are always some of my favorites, and this one did not disappoint. The twist towards the middle was so mind-blowing, and it took a while for it to settle in my brain. The only thing that I would have changed about this book was that there wasn't more kills. I would absolutely recommend picking this one up.

My Rating: 5 stars