Silence Is Goldfish by Annabel Pitcher

The Blurb On The Back:

My name is Tess Turner – at least, that’s what I’ve always been told.

I have a voice but it isn’t mine. It used to say things so I’d fit in, to please my parents, to please my teachers. It used to tell the universe I was something I wasn’t. It lied.

It never occurred to me that everyone else was lying too. But the words that really hurt weren’t the lies: it was six hundred and seventeen words of truth that turned my world upside down.

Words scare me, the lies and the truth, so I decided to stop using them.

I am Pluto. Silent. Inaccessible. Billions of miles away from everything I thought I knew.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Annabel Pitcher’s third YA novel is an emotionally charged contemporary tale covering pushy parents, bullying and personal identity and although some elements didn’t work for me (the talking torch needlessly infantilised Tess, some of self-destructive behaviour and wilful blindness seemed contrived and I wish that she’d confronted her father’s poor behaviour), the bullying scenes and Tess’s hurt and despair made this a stirring and powerful read. I completely believed in Tess’s reaction to discovering that her dad is not her biological father, her decision to remain silent and some of her self-destructive impulses (notably her desire to be Anna’s friend). However, I didn’t buy her behaviour with Isabel (which seemed to exist solely to leave Tess isolated) or the budding romance with Henry (who is too idealised) and her role as a pawn in a teacher romance seemed contrived and a little crude (especially her refusal to acknowledge the same). That said the bullying scenes really resonated with me as did her reaction to the same (although I don’t see why she needed to be overweight) and ultimately, the skill of Pitcher’s writing carried me through to the end and really resonated with me.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

Fellside by M. R Carey

The Blurb On The Back:

You will find Fellside somewhere on the edge of the Yorkshire moors. It is not the kind of place you’d want to end up, but it’s where Jess Moulson could be spending the rest of her life.

It’s a place where even the walls whisper. And one voice belongs to a little boy with a message for Jess. Fellside will be the death of you – if it doesn’t save you.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

M. R. Carey’s novel is BAD GIRLS meets THE SIXTH SENSE, mixing horror and dark fantasy in a story about guilt and redemption that shows great imagination but has a soap opera feel with some of the twists a little too easy to guess, which ultimately makes for an okay read but not a great one. For me, the biggest issue with the book is Jess as I found her difficult to empathise with as she is so full of self-pity. All her actions in the book are about her – the decision to starve herself to death is because she can’t cope with the guilt, her decision to help Alex is because it offers a chance of redemption – and that made it difficult for me to care. I also found the prison set up to be incredibly cliché, from the corrupt prison guards to Harriet Grace’s crime empire (which isn’t helped by the fact that Grace is thinly characterised) and some of the twists that come in the story are telegraphed far too early. I did like Jess’s journeys into dreamland and the relationship that develops between her and Alex but ultimately this didn’t work as well for me as Carey’s other books and while it’s an okay read, it’s not a great one.

Missing, Presumed by Susie Steiner

The Blurb On The Back:

Mid-December, and Cambridgeshire is blanketed with snow. Detective Sergeant Manon Bradshaw tries to sleep after yet another soul-destroying Internet date – the low murmuring of her police radio her only solace.

Over the airwaves come reports of a missing woman – door ajar, keys and phone left behind, a spatter of blood on the kitchen floor. Manon knows the first 72 hours are critical: you find her, or you look for a body. And as soon as she sees a picture of Edith Hind, a Cambridge post-graduate from a well-connected family, she knows this case will be big.

Is Edith alive or dead? Was her “complex love life” at the heart of her disappearance, as a senior officer tells the increasingly hungry press?

And when a body is found, it is the end or only the beginning?

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

I picked this up because Susie Steiner’s crime novel (the first in a series) was one of the big hits of the 2016 summer but although I enjoyed the viewpoints of the three main narrators, the plot is incredibly contrived and didn’t make a whole lot of sense towards the end (especially one of the developing relationships which I would have expected to be prohibited due to the conflict of interest). The story is mainly told from the point of view of the emotionally vulnerable Manon, socially conscious Davy, and Edith’s mother Miriam who’s struggling to understand her relationship with her daughter as it provides emotional insight on the search and its impact but the way Steiner connects the murder and disappearance didn’t work for me as it relies heavily on contrivances that pop out from nowhere and I really didn’t believe the involvement that Manon takes in the life of the victim’s brother. In fact, Manon herself is pretty cliché with her difficult love life, inability to look after herself and need for a baby and that made it difficult for me to empathise with her – especially the pathetic neediness she displays during one relationship. Ultimately, I kept turning the pages but I’m not going to rush to read the next book.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

Our Chemical Hearts by Krystal Sutherland

The Blurb On The Back:

”I always thought the moment you met the love of your life would be more like the movies …”

Henry Page is a film buff and a hopeless romantic. He’s waiting for that slo-mo, heart palpitating, can’t-eat-can’t-sleep kind of love that he’s seen in the movies. So the last person he expects to fall in love with is Grace.

Grace Town is not your normal leading lady. She dresses in oversized men’s clothing, smells like she hasn’t washed in weeks and walks with a cane. She’s nobody’s idea of a dream girl, but Henry can’t stop thinking about her.

There’s something broken about Grace; a small part of her soul is cracked from the secrets in her past. Henry wants nothing more than to put her back together again, but will she let him?

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Krystal Sutherland’s debut YA contemporary romance is a slickly written tale of first love with some dry one-liners and a serious comment to make about false expectations in romance and how love alone can’t “fix” someone suffering from emotional trauma but it falls for the cliché of having two “oddball” characters who are also incredibly hot beneath their quirkiness and some of the observations don’t ring true for teenagers – no matter how precocious Henry and Grace may be. What Sutherland does well is show the selfishness that teenage love can entail – on the part of both Henry and Grace (whose grief and guilt are well depicted) – and I like how she shows the emotional growth they each go through. Also good are the side characters of Murray (who intentionally skirts Aussie cliché) and Lola (who is the sensible, practical heart of the novel) – both are fun and ground the central romance. However some of the dialogue and cultural references didn’t ring true for teenagers and I really disliked the fact that Sutherland makes a point of showing that her leads are actually quite hot beneath the gawkiness (in the case of Henry) and self-punishment (in the case of Grace). That said, this is a strong debut that will appeal to its target audience of Rainbow Rowell and John Green fans and I look forward to reading what Sutherland does next.

OUR CHEMICAL HEARTS was released in the United Kingdom on 4th October 2016. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the ARC of this book.