Review | Luckiest Girl Alive, Jessica Knoll

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22609317Ani FaNelli appears to have the perfect life – a glamourous job at a glossy magazine, a gorgeous figure, and a handsome blue blood fiance. But beneath the facade are scars that she has worked for years to keep hidden, and a team of documentary filmmakers may very well bring the truth to light.

When I began Luckiest Girl Alive, I thought it was going to be just like Gone Girl. Ani reminded me of Gone Girl’s Amy in many ways — beautiful, cold and calculating. And right on the very first page, Ani is contemplating slipping a knife blade into her fiance’s stomach. So I figured, it was like Gone Girl, but  we know the woman is a psychopath from the beginning.

Fortunately I was wrong. Luckiest Girl Alive wasn’t the straightforward psychological thriller I was expecting, and it was a much better book because of that. Knoll takes great pains to make Ani seem like a coldhearted bitch, but slowly peels back the layers of her past to reveal a very vulnerable young woman. There are a couple of big reveals about her past, and we realize why doing the documentary is so important to her. I found the flashback scenes powerful, and I was impressed with the contrast between Ani at fourteen and the much more guarded, faux confident Ani in the present day.

As a whole, the novel doesn’t quite come together completely. Perhaps it’s partly because her supposedly “perfect” adult life never really feels perfect. As well, Ani the adult just doesn’t quite add up — she seems more a wannabe rich bitch than an actual one, yet doesn’t quite show the vulnerability that could make the wannabe aspect work. Ani as a teenager felt more real, and I’m wondering if the personality shift could have been better integrated.

I also wish we knew more about Ani’s fiance. As it was, I didn’t quite understand why doing the documentary was such a big deal. And later on, I was mostly confused about his responses to various situations. At times, it felt like he was there more as a prop for the plot than an actual character.

The ending as well seemed really sudden. Elements of it made sense, but the shift to get to that point seemed to happen really quickly, and there was a minor tidbit that was left hanging for some reason. Perhaps the author felt she didn’t have to explain how that tidbit turned out, but it felt like such an important part of the story that I wish it had been closed off more neatly.

Overall though, the segments about Ani’s past really made the book for me. These raised some powerful, timely and highly relevant issues, and I thought the author did a great job in presenting teenage Ani as a complex, multi-layered character. At one point, remembering a particularly traumatic moment, Ani confesses to some really dark thoughts, and to me, that bit of darkness is far more interesting than the bitchy facade the author uses to make her character seem evil and unlikeable. These are the most powerful moments of the book, and the ones that make the slow start very much worth it.

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

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RESPONSE TO QUESTIONS ABOUT THE ENDING
EDIT NOVEMBER 21, 2015 

Since posting this review, I’ve received quite a number of questions about the ending, and I now really wish I hadn’t given my copy away because I’m now wondering if I’d missed things in my original reading.

Short response: I’m afraid I don’t remember anymore. I’d read it so long ago, and I no longer have a copy to refresh my memory.

So for anyone asking about the ending, here’s the reply I sent to one of the earlier emails I received, and please note that my interpretation of the seashell is by no means at all confirmed as accurate:

I agree on the big reveal (that Ani’s conversation with Dean was miked up to catch his confession), mostly because I didn’t think it was as much of a surprise as the build up led us to believe. That being said, I like that Ani finally got the confession she deserved all those years ago, and having it recorded puts the power back in her hands.

I thought the story as a whole could’ve held together better. What I like the most is that I thought it was one kind of story at the beginning (Gone Girl), but it was really about a young girl’s trauma. So in that sense, the conversation being miked and going public is a fitting happy ending. Personally, I thought the whole Gone Girl angle/fiancé subplot felt unnecessary – it would have been more powerful (and IMHO less confusing) if the author had stuck to the high school trauma story. Even the shooting part wasn’t really necessary – like the author tried to put so many reveals into one story.
Re seashell: It’s been a while since I’ve read it, but I don’t remember the seashell playing a significant role necessarily, other than as a souvenir of the day with Arthur. I thought it was mostly part and parcel with the photo, and so both kinda meant a lot to her and her memory of Arthur, so her fiancé (can’t remember his name) being so casual about it just shows how little he really knows her.

Hope this helps, and if anyone has alternative explanations of the seashell or the ending, feel free to write in the comments!

 

Review | Fatal Affair and Fatal Justice, Marie Force

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If you love romantic thrillers, check out this awesome series by Marie Force. Nine titles are already out in ebook, but only the first two have been released in print so far (Book 3 Fatal Consequences and Book 4 Fatal Flaw hit shelves June 2015).

FATAL AFFAIR (BOOK 1)

The series begins with the death of a US Senator. DS Sam Holland, just coming off a tragic assignment that jeopardized her career, is assigned to the case. The man who discovered the body is Nick Cappuano, the Senator’s Chief of Staff, and also the man with whom Sam had spent a memorable evening with years earlier. Their sexual chemistry is still off the charts, and Sam learns that what she’d perceived then as Nick’s loss of interest was actually the result of scheming by her controlling roommate and now ex-husband to keep them apart.

The mystery about the Senator’s killer is interesting, but it’s the chemistry between the leads that really propels this book forward. I love their bantering, and I especially love how they both respect each other’s boundaries given their respective careers. Nick sometimes tries to be alpha male and protective of Sam, but in this context, Sam is a trained police officer and Nick is a civilian, so she naturally pushes him out of harm’s way and is the one to chase after the bad guys. I love that, and while Nick at times has trouble accepting it, I love that he makes the effort.

I also really like the cast of secondary characters. Sam’s father in particular provides a rich story arc for the series, a former police chief who had been paralyzed by an unknown assailant while on the line of duty. Boyishly handsome straight-laced Catholic Freddie, Sam’s eager young partner, is probably my favourite — I love his mentor-mentee relationship with Sam, and I especially love seeing him get all flustered when one of the leads they have to interview turns out to be a beautiful woman heavily into kink.

This print edition also includes the novella One Night with You, which is about Nick and Sam’s first meeting and fateful night together. The chemistry in this was sizzling, and I felt bad thinking about how they would then be kept apart for years afterwards.

FATAL JUSTICE (BOOK 2)

In the second book a highly controversial Supreme Court nominee is killed. Sam has been promoted to Lieutenant, Nick is now a US Senator, and their relationship is in the media spotlight, which means that both are even more embroiled in this case than in the previous.

I found the mystery in this book more compelling — the victim had family issues that added some interesting angles to the investigation. Sam and Nick’s relationship deepens, and despite some snags where one tries to keep some information from the other for whatever reason, I love the overall openness of their communication. Finally, Freddie gets his own romantic subplot, which I found very sweet and that I look forward to reading more about later on.

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Overall, these are a promising beginning to the series. The author gives us enough of the characters’ lives beyond the mysteries to make them feel real, yet never meanders too far off course. The chemistry between the characters is fantastic, and I’m sure it will continue to propel the series forward.

More titles are available in ebook format, but if you prefer print and are willing to wait a bit, print versions will be rolling out later in the year.

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Thanks to Harlequin Books for a copy of these books in exchange for an honest review.

Review | Boo, Neil Smith

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23012503On the first week of school in 1979, thirteen year old Oliver “Boo” Dalrymple dies in front of his locker while reciting the periodic table. A shy, socially awkward aspiring scientist, Boo wakes up in Town, a bit of heaven populated by thirteen year olds. A few days later, he is joined by his classmate Johnny, a friendly popular boy who reveals that both he and Boo had been killed by a school shooter.

Despite technically beginning with death, Boo started out almost whimsically. It was fascinating to see Neil Smith’s vision of heaven for thirteen year olds, and it was great to see Boo, who was friendless on earth, fitting in with the other souls in Town. There’s something reassuring about having an afterlife that’s so similar to our own world, yet there’s also something disquieting about how the old souls (thirteen year olds who’ve been in Town for decades) act older (some of the female souls are referred to as “mothers), yet are still kept childlike in some ways, dependent on god (called “Zig” in Boo’s narration) to provide the basic necessities. Once in a while, something discordant arrives, like a photocopier, and the teens are left to wonder what Zig wants them to do with it.

This foray into a thirteen year old heaven is what I expected when I began the book, and if it remained on that storyline, with perhaps a romance or two sprinkled in, I would have called Boo charming, a fun, entertaining read.

But the story gets darker, much more disturbing than I expected from a YA book, and so much more powerful because of it. It begins with Johnny’s revelation that he and Boo were killed by a school shooter, who had then killed himself. Then the question: what if “Gunboy” had been reborn in Town as well? Haunted by nightmares of the shooting, Johnny becomes obsessed with this possibility, and takes Boo with him on a quest to track down their killer. The story then turns into a very Lord of the Flies type tale, with the Town residents cobbling together their own law enforcement and justice systems. In the afterlife, what could possibly be a fitting punishment for murder? And how far can a desire for revenge go before it descends into madness?

The search for Gunboy and the ensuing trial are among the book’s most disquieting scenes. The Town’s other murder victims see their own desire for justice in Johnny and Boo’s situation. In a particularly chilling moment, while discussing what to do with Gunboy, someone mentions that the other murder victims don’t just see Gunboy, they see their own murderers and abusers, the people in their own lives who caused their deaths and towards whom they are powerless to exact revenge.

And still the story progresses beyond this Lord of the Flies stage. We eventually do learn more about Gunboy, but more than that, we learn about Boo and Johnny and the lives they led before these were so violently cut short. We learn about inner demons, voices in people’s heads who say things people don’t want to hear. We learn about loneliness, and alienation, and all the things that at thirteen, we desperately want to believe “gets better” over time. And above all, we learn about friendship, about the power of a kind word to resonate with someone even beyond death.

Ultimately, I’m not sure what to say about Boo. It’s such a textured, multi-layered story, and I feel that if I read it again, I will parse something new each time. There’s not much going on in the plot, yet so much more happening between the lines, such that any pithy phrase I’d choose to describe it feels inadequate. I don’t even know how I feel about this book. I just know that it made me think, and that several days after I’ve turned the last page, I’m still thinking.

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Thank you to Random House Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.