REVIEW | Bad Mommy by Tarryn Fisher

Name: Bad Mommy
Author: Tarryn Fisher
Genres: New Adult, Thriller
Publisher: Self-Published
Format: Paperback
Source: Amazon
Rating: ★★★★☆
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When Fig Coxbury buys a house on West Barrett Street, it’s not because she likes the neighborhood, or even because she likes the house. It’s because everything she desires is next door: The husband, the child, and the life that belongs to someone else.

KEY WORDS: Psychopath, Villainous Women, Motherhood.
TW: Miscarriage, Adultery, Abuse of Power.

 

So ever since I read F*ck Love a few years ago and decided I kinda loved Tarryn Fisher, I made it my mission to read all her stuff. This was, however, in between university and a hefty TBR so it’s taken me longer than anticipated. I started with the Love Me With Lies series which was her first few books and they were so different from FL that I only became more intrigued. When I read Mud Vein, though, I knew I was lost and thoroughly in love with Fisher’s incredible, lyrical writing style and insight into the human mind, making me question my own feelings, morals and leaving me a mess of overthought for the days to follow. Bad Mommy was no exception.

This book has three unreliable narrators. Not one, not two, but three people who tell you completely different sides to the story just to mess with your head and leave you constantly wondering who is telling the most truthful version of the story. The three sides of the story are told by a psychopath, a sociopath and an author, all well trained in telling stories, bending truths and saying what you want to hear. And by hell, do they do that!

As ever, Fisher’s writing is flawless, flowing and lyrical, making you want to curl up within the pages of the book and stay there forever. It’s told in first person from each perspective and you feel so deep inside each character’s head that you almost feel like you’re just as insane as they are. I loved every second.

I really loved the characterisation of each of the main characters. Fig was truly fascinating and I almost found myself sympathising with her at times, while at other points shouting out loud about how absolutely insane she was. Darius was intriguing because we meet him first from Fig’s obsessive perspective before seeing him for who he really is and I loved that. Finally, Jolene. I saw so many similarities between Tarryn and Jolene throughout the novel and I will always love the way she inputs a part of who she is as a person into her characters, just to make you question who you are. I couldn’t tell you who I am. I probably am a little bit Fig-like, and a bit of Jolene. Maybe a bit of all three. Is that an unhealthy balance? Who knows?

Tarryn has produced another masterpiece that displays the inner workings of the human mind in an extraordinary way which has, yet again, made me wonder who the hell I am. Now I’m going to go and reread Mud Vein and be numb for a few days… before FINALLY reading Atheists Who Kneel and Pray, of course.

Tarryn Fisher’s completely varied novels pick apart your brain:

• F*ck Love ★★★★★
• Mud Vein (TW: rape, kidnapping) ★★★★★
• Marrow (TW: miscarriage, child abuse, murder) ★★★★★
• Love Me with Lies series ★★★★☆

Have you read Bad Mommy? Let me know in the comments!

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CURRENTLY READING | Bad Mommy by Tarryn Fisher

Genres: New Adult, Thriller
Publisher: Self-Published
Format: Paperback
Source: Amazon

When Fig Coxbury buys a house on West Barrett Street, it’s not because she likes the neighborhood, or even because she likes the house. It’s because everything she desires is next door: The husband, the child, and the life that belongs to someone else.

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What are you reading right now? Are you enjoying it? Tell me in the comments!

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TOP TEN TUESDAY | Top Ten Books on My Autumn TBR

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish and I love a good list so here goes!

I have so many books on my TBR that I actually have a spreadsheet detailing what I need to read and by when. It’s long and organised and mad but these ten books below are the ones I’m most looking forward to!

Ringer (Replica #2) by Lauren Oliver
Release: 3rd October 2017

I was lucky enough to receive an eARC of Replica this time last year and absolutely adored it, so when Ringer was released on Edelweiss, I snapped it up! It’s next on my TBR once I finish Tower of Dawn!

The Replica series tells the story of two girls, Lyra and Gemma, when their lives become intertwined after Lyra and a boy known only as 72 escape the Haven Institute, a clandestine research facility where thousands of replicas, or human models, are born, raised, and observed.

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The Fandom by Anna Day
Release: 5th October 2017

I somehow managed to get this beautiful paperback ARC at YALC, moments after I walked into the convention hall. I am really intrigued by the concept and will definitely be reading this one soon.

A YA fantasy, set within a YA fantasy. Cosplayers go to comic-con and, after a freak accident, find themselves trapped within the fantasy world from their favourite fandom.

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A Language of Thorns by Leigh Bardugo
Release: 26th September 2017

I am unbelievably excited to be transported back into the incredible Grishaverse. Leigh Bardugo is one of the best world-builders out there right now and I have loved everything she has written. Give me more.

Six short stories set within the Grishaverse which explore familiar lands and new, inspired by myth, fairytale and folklore.

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Without Merit by Colleen Hoover
Release: 3rd October 2017

I have read every CoHo book, some more than once, and her books mean so much to me. They tear me apart and stitch me back together. I cry a lot. They are my catharsis and I’ve heard lots of good things about her next novel, her first YA since Losing Hope.

Without Merit explores family dynamics and the layers of lies that tie a family together through the eyes of the imperfect daughter, Merit Voss. 

GOODREADS | PRE-ORDER/BUY

Bad Mommy by Tarryn Fisher

Much like Colleen, I love Tarryn’s writing. Plus, sometimes it hard to like one and not the other considering what a double act Hoover/Fisher are. Bad Mommy is one of the few that I haven’t yet read along with the new release Athiests Who Kneel and Pray. Both are on my bookshelf begging to be read.

When Fig Coxbury buys a house on West Barrett Street, it’s not because she likes the neighbourhood, or even because she likes the house. It’s because everything she desires is next door: The husband, the child, and the life that belongs to someone else.

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Illuminae series by Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff

My friends kept going on and on at me telling me I would love this series so I decided to buy them and now they’ve been sat on my shelves a month or so, waiting to be read. I guess I’d better get on with it!

Kady’s planet has been invaded and she and her ex-boyfriend need to work together to fight their way to an evacuating fleet. Told through a fascinating dossier of hacked documents including emails, schematics, military files, IMs, medical reports, interviews and more.

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False Hearts by Laura Lam

Having read the Micah Grey trilogy and fallen in love, I figured I should add Laura Lam’s other novels to my TBR. I’m sure I’ll love this adventure just as much as the last.

Two formerly conjoined sisters are ensnared in a murderous plot involving psychoactive drugs, shared dreaming, organized crime, and a sinister cult. 

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The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Top of the NY Times bestseller list since its release, The Hate U Give, has been widely recognised as the book to read in 2017… so I read it I must!

A young, black girl, trapped between the two worlds of her poor neighbourhood and surburban preparatory school, has her life turned upside down after she witnesses the fatal shooting of her unarmed, childhood best friend by a police officer.

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And I Darken by Kiersten White

I purchased this and its sequel, Now I Rise, at YALC having had it on a long list of books I should get for a while. Yet, since its purchase, I have had more pressing things to read. It sounds just like my kind of book so I would love to get around to this soon.

A gender-swapped, historcal YA retelling the story of the Prince of Wallachia, also knowsn as Vlad the Impaler. Political and historical with a ruthless heroine, stabbing, murder and volatility.

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One of Us Is Lying by Karen M. McManus

Another novel that I haven’t stopped hearing about since it’s release so I feel the need to see what all the fuss is about. Especially with the tv series going ahead, I want to read it before that comes out.

A murder mystery surrounding five high school students who have detention together, but only four come out alive. Everyone is a suspect, and everyone has something to hide.

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What’s on your Autumn TBR? Have you read any on my list that I should read sooner? Let me know in the comments or link me to your TTT for me to check out!

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TOP TEN TUESDAY | Ten Books That Took Me A Long Time

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish and I love a good list so here goes!

I’m a pretty fast reader and there are only a few reasons a book takes me more than a week max. These are either because I’m not invested in the same way that I usually am, I’m crazy busy, or I need time to digest the heavy plot or how it is written *cough 18th/19th Century authors *cough*. Here’s a list of the books that took me longer than they should have. Again, I’m struggling with ten, but you’ll forgive me, right?

Uprooted by Naomi Novik
KEY WORDS: Magicians, Pure Magic, Old World Fantasy.

I really loved Uprooted but it took me about four months to read. Now, that was mostly because it was a busy time at uni but also during that time, I found time to do so many other things when I could have been reading this. It didn’t enthrall me enough to want to read it instead of doing everything else which is how I like my books.

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Snow Like Ashes series by Saraa Raasch
KEY WORDS: Resistance, Dictatorship, Fantasy, Suppressed Magic.

I read the first novel in the series and loved it but having read one chapter of the second, I put Ice Like Fire down and haven’t picked it up since. I still haven’t finished book two, or the rest of the series and I have no idea when I will get back to it.

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Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
KEY WORDS: Classic British Romance.

Jane Austen is one of the most incredible classic British authors and I love reading romantic classical 18th and 19th Century novels like Austen, Brontë and the like. However, as lovely as it sounds, they are hard to get through. I started Pride and Prejudice after I received a beautiful leatherbound classic for Christmas a few years ago. I got halfway through and put it down to do uni work and never picked it up again. It’s still on my bedside table!

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Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
KEY WORDS: Super-hype, Thriller, Intense.

I read this novel back in 2016 and it was without a doubt one of the best of that time. I hadn’t read a lot of thrillers then and all the twists were fanatstic. But it did take me a good few months. The first half dragged a lot but as soon as I got to the second, I’d finished it in a matter of hours. It’s strange how that happens.

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Which books have you read that took you longer than expected? Let me know in the comments or link me to your TTT for me to check out!

REVIEW: The Arsonist by Stephanie Oakes

Name: The Arsonist
Author: Stephanie Oakes
Genres: Young Adult, Thriller
Publisher: Dial Books
Format: Paperback ARC
Source: YALC
Rating: ★★★★★
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Molly Mavity is not a normal teenage girl. For one thing, her father is a convicted murderer, and his execution date is fast approaching. For another, Molly refuses to believe that her mother is dead, and she waits for the day when they’ll be reunited . . . despite all evidence that this will never happen.

Pepper Al-Yusef is not your average teenage boy. A Kuwaiti immigrant with epilepsy, serious girl problems, and the most useless seizure dog in existence, he has to write a series of essays over the summer . . . or fail out of school.

And Ava Dreyman—the brave and beautiful East German resistance fighter whose murder at seventeen led to the destruction of the Berlin Wall—is unlike anyone you’ve met before.

When Molly gets a package leading her to Pepper, they’re tasked with solving a decades-old mystery: find out who killed Ava, back in 1989. Using Ava’s diary for clues, Molly and Pepper realize there’s more to her life—and death—than meets the eye. Someone is lying to them. And someone out there is guiding them along, desperate for answers.

KEY WORDS: Adventure, Thriller, Mystery, Berlin Wall, Cold War, Friendship, Family.

*I received an Advanced Proof Copy of this novel at YALC in exchange for an honest review*

From the very first page, Molly Mavity had me hooked. The book tells the story of three people whose lives become inextricably linked one summer when Molly and Pepper are thrown together to discover the mystery of who killed Ava Dreyman, “the Anne Frank of the Cold War”.

The tale of all three characters are intricately interwoven through Molly’s letter’s to Pepper as he lies in a coma, Pepper’s emails to Mrs Eldridge in order to not flunk out of High School and Ava’s diary entries from 1986-1989. Oakes expertly weaves these stories, leaving the reader hanging on the edge of their seat for answers. Who was Ava Dreyman? Why is Pepper in hospital? What happened to Molly’s mother? And so many others…

I was sucked into the mystery from start to finish, making up my own conclusions and solutions as I went, doubting myself at every next turn.

Through all the mystery and intrigue, there are lessons to be learnt from the fictional revolutionary, Ava, and her mother, the original Arsonist. This book touched my heart and set it on fire, we must fight everyday in the world for freedom for ourselves, our fellow human beings and for the future generations. I am lucky enough to be living in a country where, while we have our issues, they are not as serious as other places in the world. I am priviledged. My civil liberties are not being directly threatened every day. Even if you live somewhere where people of colour are not being killed daily, where trangender people are being denied the right to work in the armed forces, where the LGBTQ+ community are not being persecuted for being who they are and loving who they love, fight. Keep fighting. Keeping lighting fires.

“When they lock you in the darkness, become an arsonist. When they put you under house arrest, or defile your name in public, or make you live beneath the rules that suffocate you, become an arsonist. When they put a pistol in your hands and make you shoot your best friend, and when they throw you in a death camp, when you see everyone around you get sick from the poison they’re feeding them, light a fire that will destroy them. A fire they won’t forget the next time they try to do it to someone else.”

Mirka Dreyman in ‘The Arsonist’ by Stephanie Oakes

REVIEW: The Treatment by C. L. Taylor

Name: The Treatment
Author: C. L. Taylor
Genres: Young Adult, Thriller
Publisher: HQ
Format: Uncorrected Proof (ARC) Paperback
Source: HQ Books, YALC
Publication Date: 19th October 2017
Rating: ★★★☆☆
GOODREADS | PRE-ORDER/BUY

Cecelia Ahern’s Flawed meets Never Let Me Go in the pulse-pounding YA thriller from the Top Ten Sunday Times bestselling author of The Escape.

“You have to help me. We’re not being reformed. We’re being brainwashed.”

All sixteen year old Drew Finch wants is to be left alone. She’s not interested in spending time with her mum and stepdad and when her disruptive fifteen year old brother Mason is expelled from school for the third time and sent to a residential reform academy she’s almost relieved.

Everything changes when she’s followed home from school by the mysterious Dr Cobey, who claims to have a message from Mason. There is something sinister about the ‘treatment’ he is undergoing. The school is changing people.

Determined to help her brother, Drew must infiltrate the Academy and unearth its deepest, darkest secrets.

Before it’s too late.

 KEY WORDS: Mystery, adventure, adolescents vs. government, psychology, brainwashing

*I was given this ARC at YALC by the author/publisher in exchange for an honest review*

I think the best way to describe this book is what Cally says in her acknowledgements at the end of the novel – “Prison Break meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest but for teens”. If that sounds like your cup of tea then you 100% need to pick this up when it releases in October.

I always feel like I have to explain how much I enjoyed a book when I give it three stars because even I feel like it’s not a good rating but I have to confirm that it is. I enjoyed this book a lot. Three stars means I liked it, but when I see someone give books I loved three stars I get a bit upset wondering what their problem is. Thing is, three stars is a good rating. 3/5 is more than half, but when you only have the choice of one to five, you have to be really careful about what you give your four and five stars to.

The Treatment was intriguing, a story that explored family and friendship and an evil government (all recipes for success) through an adventure that puts lives in danger and looks into psychology and brainwashing. All exciting topics and very well written, immediately drawing me into the action. I liked this book, I promise.

The reason it doesn’t get four or five stars for me is because it, much like The Loneliest Girl in the Universe, seemed a bit on the youngest side of YA for me. It’s a personal preference, and I LOVE thrillers so I spent the whole book thinking, ‘god, I bet I’d love Cally’s adult novels’ (they are all now on my TBR). The only other thing I could fault it for, again, much like The Loneliest Girl was how quickly it concluded. It hit the climax of action and then suddenly everything happened in the last three chapter and it was over. The final “wrap up” chapter seemed a bit too much like, “eh, I’m done now so I’ll just tell you all these things so that the book is over”.

A solid three star novel that I would happily read again. Perfect read for a weekend away, train journey or summer holiday.

CURRENTLY READING: The Arsonist by Stephanie Oakes

Genres: Young Adult, Thriller
Publisher: Dial Books
Publication Date: 22nd August 2017

Molly Mavity is not a normal teenage girl. For one thing, her father is a convicted murderer, and his execution date is fast approaching. For another, Molly refuses to believe that her mother is dead, and she waits for the day when they’ll be reunited . . . despite all evidence that this will never happen.

Pepper Yusef is not your average teenage boy. A Kuwaiti immigrant with epilepsy, serious girl problems, and the most useless seizure dog in existence, he has to write a series of essays over the summer . . . or fail out of school.

And Ava Dreyman—the brave and beautiful East German resistance fighter whose murder at seventeen led to the destruction of the Berlin Wall—is unlike anyone you’ve met before.

When Molly gets a package leading her to Pepper, they’re tasked with solving a decades-old mystery: find out who killed Ava, back in 1989. Using Ava’s diary for clues, Molly and Pepper realise there’s more to her life—and death—than meets the eye. Someone is lying to them. And someone out there is guiding them along, desperate for answers.

GOODREADS | PRE-ORDER/BUY

CURRENTLY READING: The Treatment by C. L. Taylor

Cecelia Ahern’s Flawed meets Never Let Me Go in the pulse-pounding YA thriller from the Top Ten Sunday Times bestselling author of The Escape.

“You have to help me. We’re not being reformed. We’re being brainwashed.”

All sixteen year old Drew Finch wants is to be left alone. She’s not interested in spending time with her mum and stepdad and when her disruptive fifteen year old brother Mason is expelled from school for the third time and sent to a residential reform academy she’s almost relieved.

Everything changes when she’s followed home from school by the mysterious Dr Cobey, who claims to have a message from Mason. There is something sinister about the ‘treatment’ he is undergoing. The school is changing people.

Determined to help her brother, Drew must infiltrate the Academy and unearth its deepest, darkest secrets.

Before it’s too late.

GOODREADS | PRE-ORDER