Category: 2.5 star

2.5 star

The House in the Pines by Ana Reyes

Fives @ Down The Rabbit Hole

Armed with only hazy memories, a woman who long ago witnessed her friend’s sudden, mysterious death, and has since spent her life trying to forget, sets out to track down answers. What she uncovers, deep in the woods, is hardly to be believed….

Maya was a high school senior when her best friend, Aubrey, mysteriously dropped dead in front of the enigmatic man named Frank whom they’d been spending time with all summer.

Seven years later, Maya lives in Boston with a loving boyfriend and is kicking the secret addiction that has allowed her to cope with what happened years ago, the gaps in her memories, and the lost time that she can’t account for. But her past comes rushing back when she comes across a recent YouTube video in which a young woman suddenly keels over and dies in a diner while sitting across from none other than Frank. Plunged into the trauma that has defined her life, Maya heads to her Berkshires hometown to relive that fateful summer–the influence Frank once had on her and the obsessive jealousy that nearly destroyed her friendship with Aubrey.

At her mother’s house, she excavates fragments of her past and notices hidden messages in her deceased Guatemalan father’s book that didn’t stand out to her earlier. To save herself, she must understand a story written before she was born, but time keeps running out, and soon, all roads are leading back to Frank’s cabin….

Utterly unique and captivating, The House in the Pines keeps you guessing about whether we can ever fully confront the past and return home.

This was one of the ones I picked out of a list of thrillers just to get started on for the season, and unfortunately it wasn’t a great hit for me. Maybe it was just the themes, but I didn’t find it particularly enthralling on any level. Just when it was going to redeem itself, it didn’t, so all in all it was pretty disappointing.

The House in the Pines follows our unreliable, memory-suppressed protagonist, Maya, who is brought back to a past she had run away from when a video pops up with of her ex-boyfriend. Two girls having dropped dead in front of the same man, with no explanation, and Maya has no recollection of how it went down the first time around. Seeking a resolution for her missing memories, Maya heads back to her home town to hunt down the truth.

Continue reading “The House in the Pines by Ana Reyes” →
2.5 star, YA

ARC Review: This Cursed Light by Emily Thiede

Andge @ Down the Rabbit Hole

Series: The Last Finestra #2

When the gods make the rules, the players must choose: Sacrifice their love to save the world, or choose love and let it burn?

Six months after saving their island from destruction and almost losing Dante, Alessa is ready to live happily ever after with her former bodyguard. But Dante can’t rest, haunted by a conviction that the gods aren’t finished with them yet. And without his powers, the next kiss from Alessa could kill him.

Desperate for answers, Dante enlists Alessa and their friends to find the exiled ghiotte in hopes of restoring his powers and combining forces with them to create the only army powerful enough to save them all. But Alessa is hiding a deadly consequence of their last fight–a growing darkness that’s consuming her mind–and their destination holds more dangers than anyone bargained for. In the mysterious city of the banished, Dante will uncover secrets, lies, and ghosts from his past that force him to ask himself: Which side is he on?

When the gods reveal their final test, Dante and Alessa will be the world’s last defense. But if they are the keys to saving the world, will their love be the price of victory?

In This Cursed Light, Dante and Alessa face their most daunting challenge yet when the Gods demand they prove their worth by choosing the ultimate sacrifice to save humanity, once and for all.

Overall Recommendation:

Continue reading “ARC Review: This Cursed Light by Emily Thiede” →
2.5 star, YA

Review: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Fives @ Down The Rabbit Hole

In this exhilarating novel, two friends–often in love, but never lovers–come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won’t protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.

This was another one I read for my bookclub, and was on someone else’s suggestion. Needless to say, it was not my favourite, though I believe it was for a couple of reasons. The premise is certainly interesting though, and ultimately I still had no trouble finishing the book.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow revolves around two main protagonists, Sam and Sadie, who have a long history together even from when they were kids. They were both obsessed with video games and end up going to school together and making excellent games. They have their share of qualms and squabbles too, and the story is about their individual journeys through life as they navigate success, failures, disabilities, and hard relationships.

Ultimately I just couldn’t like any character in this book, particularly the two main leads. The way they act is just completely toxic, and even if that is a part of the book, it just left a particularly bad taste in my mouth the entire time. And there’s a lot of it. A lot. The maturity was almost non-existent (though possibly explainable), but this did not really help. It is not necessary to like or love every character in a book, but it’s just easier to follow a book when you have someone you’re rooting for or at least appreciate. I just didn’t really get that from this book, so honestly it wasn’t the most fun from that perspectives.

The plot was interesting at times, and there are times where there are unique executions of the plot, which I appreciated. However, overall the story did not feel coherent enough, and the characters didn’t seem to grow even as they started making their second, third, or fourth games together. The same problems always came back up, and never dealt with it better. The “relationships” also had me frustrated, as I felt like it could really have been explored differently, yet eventually it just felt like it fell back into the same old tropes. This may again just be a personal preference, but I was really expecting more from this in terms of the relationship as well.

I would say I enjoyed the last…20–25% of the book, when I feel like there was finally some character development and some tense moments that weren’t just dealt with badly. So there was a redeeming feature for me for sure. However, if you perhaps relate to some of the characters more, that may also help the rest of the plot. There were also some awkward time skips throughout, flashbacks and flashforwards that came out of nowhere that I felt were more disorienting than helpful. The premise of making video games and actually going through the whole process of selling and designing what the public wants is super interesting though, so if you’re interested in that, I would still recommend this book. I just wouldn’t hold my breath about the other aspects.

Overall Recommendations

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is about two lifelong friends who grow up and eventually make successful video games together. Games are fickle creatures though, and the public can love one and hate another. Relationships strain as they try to navigate their career and successes and the diverging paths in life. The video game-making element is super interesting, and there is a decent amount of exploration into this topic if you are interested in it! However, I’d warn against reading it for anything much beyond that.