36 Questions is such a fun YA romance! Bad boy Paul and overachiever Hildy are paired up in a psychology experiment to determine if asking a series of 36 probing questions can make romance blossom between complete strangers. I remember reading about this type of experiment in the New York Times a couple of years ago, and being intrigued at the possibility. Both this novel and the New York Times article are inspired by an experiment conducted by psychologist Arthur Aron in the 1980s, and if you’re interested in trying it out for yourself, the NYT also printed out the full list of 36 questions. The idea of course is to create a sense of intimacy, however artificial. Asking 36 personal questions cuts right through all the awkward first date chatter and reveals the inner workings of a potential partner. The final part, where you have to stare into your partner’s eyes for a full four minutes, just enforces this sense of connection.

The realist in me thinks all this intimacy is artificial, that you may ‘know’ your partner for an hour and possibly even develop feelings for them, but that will all dissipate once you return to the ‘real world’ and go about your everyday tasks. The romantic in me just fell head over heels in love with the sparks flying between Paul and Hildy in this book. There’s a Filipino word ‘kilig‘ that I use when any English equivalent (‘giddy feels’?) just isn’t enough, and it perfectly encapsulates what I felt when reading Paul and Hildy’s banter.

The book is told in a non-traditional narrative style. Most of the book is just the dialogue between Paul and Hildy as they ask each other the 36 questions, evade the questions that get a bit too personal, and gradually allow themselves to open up to each other. I love the rapid-fire pace this allows eschewing any extraneous narration and integrating any additional details (e.g. the characters’ looks) seamlessly into the dialogue. A flying fish (really) switches up the pace a bit and gives Paul and Hildy a bit of a real-life break before they pick up their conversation and IM their responses. This gives us a glimpse into their lives beyond the questions, in particular Hildy’s family problems and the reason she tries so hard to maintain a perfect facade. Paul’s troubled family life isn’t much of a surprise, but Grant orchestrates some delightfully cheesy scenes at a diner from Paul’s childhood.

36 Questions is romantic comedy at its best. It unironically believes in love and earnestly professes the possibility of finding love through a psychology experiment. The characters have real problems — Hildy is dealing with major guilt about her family and Paul is dealing with major trust issues — and both characters do bond genuinely over emotional connection, but this all feels secondary to the sparkly repartee and hilarious antics (see: flying fish) that just propel Paul and Hildy towards their happily ever after. The final copy of the book will include illustrations (mostly in Paul’s notes to Hildy), and the descriptions alone made me squee, so I’m really excited to see how they turn out.

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Thank you to Hachette Book Group Canada for an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I’m a huge fan of Krysten Ritter’s work as an actor in Jessica Jones, and after reading Bonfire, I’m now a major fan of her as a thriller author as well. Please tell me she’ll write more thrillers like this!

Bonfire is a mystery thriller about a Chicago-based environmental lawyer who returns to her hometown to investigate a plastics manufacturing company that employs most of the residents. Abby Williams’ interest in the company isn’t so much about their current environmental impact, however, as it is their potential link to a mysterious illness that befell Kaycee Mitchell, a high school queen bee and former childhood friend, almost a decade ago. Kaycee left town immediately after graduation, and after she and her friends admitted the illness was an elaborate prank, but things never quite added up for Abby, and she’s determined to dig up the truth.

I absolutely loved this book, and devoured it in a single day. It’s tense and atmospheric, and more importantly, it’s just a really good mystery. There are enough twists and turns to keep the reveal a surprise, but I like how Ritter delves into the investigative process, so that while we’re interested in learning the truth, we’re not quite racing towards the reveal so much as enjoying the gradual unearthing of clues along the way. The mystery does take an unexpected turn, but one that fits very well within the rest of the story, even better than the original hypothesis would have.

More than a mystery, Bonfire is also a deeply emotional character study, particularly in the complex relationship between Abby and her father. She left him behind ten years ago to escape his violent temper, and returns to find him in the early stages of dementia. While she struggles against feelings of pity for him, she can’t help but soften and admit that what she feels is more than pity — it’s a kind of love that she can barely begin to face, given everything he’s put her and her mother through. It’s a beautifully crafted piece of the story, one subplot among many yet especially powerful in its restraint.

Abby’s relationships with other characters are fascinating as well, and likely relatable for many readers who’ve returned to their hometowns after a long time away. Meeting the adult versions of her high school classmates forces her to reevaluate and reconsider her memories of how they were. Was Misha, the high school queen bee’s second in command who is now the high school vice principal, really as mean-spirited as Abby remembers, or was she simply going along with Kaycee’s cruelty out of fear? She also encounters Brent, a former high school crush, and Condor, a former high school slacker whom she finds herself attracted to despite her instinct to stay away. There’s a great line where Abby realizes that the difference between Brent and Condor is that with Condor, it’s herself she doesn’t trust, and any casual romance reader can tell where the sizzle truly lies, and that there isn’t much of a love triangle here after all.

Overall, Bonfire is a fantastic mystery thriller about digging up the secrets of the past and confronting the reality of what happens when an entire town becomes dependent on a single company. It’s about corruption, exploitation and violence against women that can take its root as early as high school. I’m very much excited to see Krysten Ritter back on Netflix in season 2 of Jessica Jones, but I’m even more excited to see her continue to write mysteries, and I look forward to her next one!

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Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for an advance reading copy in exchange for an honest review.

Bonfire will be released in Canada and the US in November 2017.

I remember liking Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, so when I saw she was coming out with a new novel after seven years, I was eager to give it a go. Manhattan Beach opens in Brooklyn during the Great Depression, then follows the story of a young woman, Anna Kerrigan, as she becomes a diver during World War II. Alongside her story is that of a nightclub owner / gangster Dexter Styles and his possible connection to the disappearance of Anna’s father, a professional bagman. I’ve had a wonderful run of really good historical fiction recently (The Heart’s Invisible Furies and The Address), so I was eager to immerse myself in the world Egan creates.Unfortunately, I just found Manhattan Beach boring and the ending drawn out too long.

There were some parts I really enjoyed, and that kept me reading till the end: Anna’s diving and her struggle to prove herself in a traditionally male profession was particularly strong. I also liked the parts about Anna’s disabled sister Lydia, and her response to visiting the sea was incredibly moving. The side characters as well were compelling — Charlie Voss’ affection for Anna was sweet, Aunt Brienne and Nell were such awesome women, and fellow divers Bascombe and Merle were intriguing. I liked the way Nell’s romance turned out — even though part of me wished she got her happy ending, I like that what happened to her felt realistic, and probably happened to many other women during that era. Finally, I really liked Dexter’s backstory — while at times it felt like mere distractions from the real story, I liked seeing how his father shaped the man he became.

But overall, the book fell flat for me. I didn’t really care about why Anna’s dad walked out on his family, nor did I care about how he became involved with the criminal world, and this was such a huge chunk of the plot and source of Anna’s motivation. Anna’s romance felt icky, mostly because her first encounter with this man was when she was a child and he an adult, so all I kept thinking was that he was old enough to be her father.

I also thought the minor characters were under-utilized, and that they had the potential to do so much more. But I think part of that is that their disappearance and reappearance in the story just felt somewhat random, and they never quite felt fully integrated into the story. Even Anna’s mother, who cared for her and Lydia long after their father disappeared, seemed to have been discarded from the plot about halfway through, and given some pretty major moments in Anna’s life later on, I wondered why she didn’t turn to her mother for help.

Overall, the book isn’t bad. There are some interesting parts and the quality of Egan’s writing carried me through to the end. But it also felt long, and bogged down with details and subplots that weren’t all that interesting.

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Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for an advance reading copy of this in exchange for an honest review.