'Alien Proliferation' Katherine "Kitty" Katt #4 by Gini Koch

Received from the Author

From the BLURB:

After the wildest wedding ever, Katherine “Kitty” Katt-Martini and her Alpha Centaurion husband Jeff are hoping life will settle down. But alien attacks are on the increase, and someone is testing a dangerous new drug on unwilling subjects within their group. As if that’s not enough, Kitty and a number of the A-C women are expecting their first babies.

No one is certain what this baby boom will lead to, but after almost losing Kitty in childbirth, they discover that their newborn’s talents are off the charts – and potentially dangerous. And just to add to their worries – the bad guys want their baby.

The last thing anyone in Centaurion Division needs after that is a conspiracy to kill the heads of the C.I.A.’s Extra-Terrestrial Division and the Presidential Terrorism Control Unit, otherwise known as Charles Reynolds and Kitty’s mother, Angela Katt.

Then, suddenly, key members of Alpha and Airborne start vanishing.

Can Kitty, her remaining team members, friends old and new, and a totally unexpected new partner rescue everyone and figure out how and why Kitty’s become a superhuman? Most importantly, can they pull it all off before the event Kitty dreads most – her Alpha Centaurion baby shower?

Following the events of ‘Alien in the Family’, Katherine “Kitty” Katt is now officially Mrs Jeff Katt-Martini, and enjoying wedded bliss to her Alpha alien honey. But hot on the heels of Jeff and Kitty’s nuptials was more joyful news of a baby on the way.

With baby and baby shower looming, Kitty is holed up on bed rest and hating every minute of it. Carrying an alien baby means Kitty’s breasts are turning to torpedoes and baby’s kicks are rocket-powered.

Kitty also hates having to take to bed while Jeff and his cousin, Christopher, go off on all the dangerous missions and shoot-up’s. It’s little consolation that in her bed-ridden state, Kitty has been meeting with her best friend, Chuckie, and discussing ways to improve the C.I.A.’s Extra-Terrestrial Division (headed by Chuckie himself).

But then a phone call in the middle of the night throws Kitty’s maternity leave into a tail-spin. . .

Her best friend from high school, Amy, is running around the Paris Métro, being chased by twenty thugs. Jeff and Christopher swoop in to rescue Kitty’s bestie – but Amy brings more trouble upon her safe return. Like hints of a mole in the A-C division, and rumours of an assassination-in-the-making for Chuckie and the head of the Presidential Terrorism Control Unit (a.k.a: Kitty’s mum!).

Contractions are three minutes apart, there’s a spy in the team and alien agents are disappearing. As Kitty would say, Welcome to DEFCON Worse.

‘Alien Proliferation’ is the fourth book in Gini Koch’s astronomically cool ‘Katherine “Kitty”(-Martini) Katt’ series.

The new ‘Katherine “Kitty” Katt’ book is always a treat. My ARC (advanced reader copy) arrives in the mail and I turn into a jittering junkie until I can become safely ensconced in bed and get stuck into the latest blasting adventure of Kitty and Martini. ‘Alien Proliferation’ was a particularly hard book to wait for . . . ever since Daniel Dos Santos’s (drool-worthy) cover-art was revealed with a swaddled baby cradled in Jeff’s arms. The wait has been hard, but the pay-off is totally worth it.

I’ll start by answering the question burning in most fan’s minds . . . yes, baby is born. Daniel Dos Santos wasn’t just playing a mean trick on us, and Koch isn’t doing a three-seasons-long soap-opera maternity trick. Kitty is at the end of her pregnancy when the book opens, we read a labour to rival Bella’s in ‘Breaking Dawn’ and the rest of the book is all the bad guys and gun-toting drama we’ve come to love . . . plus baby!

Never fear though, motherhood hasn’t softened Kitty (much). She’s still as kick-ass as ever, but now she’s just kicking butt and taking names with a Snugli baby strapped to her! Jeff in daddy-mode is gorgeous and doubly Alpha; his goal in life now is to take care of his family, and beat the living daylights out of anything that tries to hurt his wife or baby. It’s super swoon-inducing to read Jeff be all sexy baby-daddy. And I love that Koch is doing what so many paranormal/fantasy writers are reluctant to do . . . build a family for her protagonist. Koch’s series was unique enough for having Jeff and Kitty get together early on in book one (pretty much from page three onwards, lol). Now we’re reading Kitty and Jeff’s evolving happily-ever-after, complete with bundle of joy. If ‘Proliferation’ is any indication, it will be really fascinating to read all the usual drama, explosions and conspiracies that Jeff and Kitty deal with, but now with baby in tow. Not to mention the implications of what has happened to Kitty's post-baby body (dun, dunnn, DUN!) Bring it on!

Christopher is a big focus in this book (I can hear his fan-girls squealing in the background. . . ) Poor Christopher is the ultimate lovelorn underdog. His first love, Lissa, died before she could properly choose him over Jeff. Then Christopher went and fell for Kitty, when she was firmly Jeff’s girl. In ‘Proliferation’ both Christopher and Kitty address the previous awkwardness of his romantic feelings for her – and it’s a cathartic discussion, for both of them. We needed this, especially after Chuckie came on the scene and sent Jeff’s jealous-streak into overdrive. Jeff’s he-man antics over Chuckie are still very much lingering, so it’s nice that at least one of Kity’s previous admirers can be put to bed (so to speak). It also helps that motherhood has given Kitty a new, somewhat clucky, perspective. She loves Christopher, and she wants him to be looked after and loved. Their scenes together are heart-meltingly sweet and long overdue;

I managed not to shriek. Good, good. I was calm, cool, and collected.
“Yeah.” He swallowed. “Is this the part where I make that horrible laugh and turn evil and then try to kill everyone I love, right before you and Jeff kill me to save the world?” He was serious, and trying not to cry.
“Oh, honey, no.” I hugged him as best I could, stroked his hair, and kissed his forehead. “Having power is one thing. Using it unwisely is another. Honey, you’ve always been powerful. And all you and Jeff have done with that power is protect people and worlds, and you both could have taken over without even trying hard. Chuckie thinks you and Jeff were already genetic evolutionary steps.”

But the real big draw-card of ‘Proliferation’ for Christopher fans is the introduction of his very own honey . . . that’s right, Christopher gets his very own happily-ever-after and it’s sexy, sweet and smouldering! I refuse to give anything away about the who, what and where. But I will say that I look forward to reading Christopher and ____ being loved-up and cute in upcoming books!

Just when you think Gini Koch’s ‘Kitty Katt’ series can’t get any better – the explosions can’t be bigger, the stakes higher or the alien men hotter – she wallops readers with ‘Alien Proliferation’ . . . and you realize that Gini Koch has a lot more blockbuster fun up her sleeve. Bring on ‘Alien Diplomacy’, pronto!

5/5

'Alien Proliferation' will be released December 6th 2011

'Chasing Charlie Duskin' by Cath Crowley

From the BLURB:

Charlie Duskin is running. Fleeing from failures and memories and friends who have given up on her. And she's not only running, she's chasing things–like a father who will talk to her, friends who don't think she's as invisible as a piece of cling wrap, and an experience with a boy in which she doesn't look like an idiot.

But Charlie Duskin is about to have the best summer of her life. She's about to meet a friend who'll change her forever. She's about to fall in love. She just doesn't know it yet.

Rose Butler and Charlie Duskin couldn’t be more different.

Charlie lives in the city, with her dad. Her mum died when she was nine, and her dad has been mourning her ever since … and ignoring Charlie in the process. At school, Charlie is a gutless wonder. She’s always a step out of beat, uncoordinated and all too willing to let people walk all over her. Her best friend, Dahlia, is just starting to figure this out – and, as a result, her and Charlie’s friendship is crashing and burning over the summer holidays.

Every Christmas Charlie and her dad return to his childhood town where he and Charlie’s mother fell in love. This time of year should be full of pine trees and celebration. Except this is the first year since Charlie’s grandmother passed away. The last person in the world to think Charlie was truly special, and now she has gone too. Her grandfather isn’t coping, and now Charlie is stuck with two men who can’t seem to come to grips with the absence of the women they loved.

Rose Butler lives next door to Charlie’s grandparent’s house. Her little hometown is a toilet stop – someplace you pass through, but never want to stay. For years now, Rose has been watching Charlie ‘Dorkin’ breeze through her town – always to end up on the freeway, going back to the city and a better life. And this year, Rose might just go with her … because Rose has a scholarship burning a hole in her back pocket. A scholarship to a city school, and out of this dustbowl town.

But Rose will miss her best friend, Dave, and boyfriend, Luke. She’ll miss the river and the falls, and the safety of shared history.

Charlie would give anything to hang out with Rose, Luke and especially Dave. She’d love to feel like she belongs, just for a bit. And to feel wanted. She’d like to be part of a choir, instead of always singing solo.

Rose will get out of this town. Even if it means using Charlie Dorkin to do it.

‘Chasing Charlie Duskin’ is the beloved 2005 YA novel from Cath Crowley.

I came to the Cath Crowley fan club a little late. I read ‘Graffiti Moon’ this year, and loved it. Now I’m back-tracking through Crowley’s previous books … and I really shouldn’t be surprised that ‘Chasing Charlie Duskin’ is as brilliant as I thought it would be.

Charlie Duskin is a frustratingly beautiful character. She is walking wounded – having lost her mother at a young age, which also led to the disappearance of her father as he retreated into grief. Now Charlie is living with more heartache since the recent passing of her grandmother, which lumps her with another male who is not coping well with the death of his beloved wife. As a result of so much tragedy, Charlie is disarmingly negative about herself. She thinks she’s broken – clutzy and embarrassing, unable to talk to boys and utterly invisible. She thinks her best friend, Dahlia, lucked out in the friendship stakes, and is unsurprised when it appears their camaraderie is starting to dissolve. Charlie sings and plays guitar, but all her songs are about wanting to fit in but knowing she never will.

Rose Butler, on the other hand, is a firecracker. She has lived in one place her whole life – with two boys who know her better than anyone else in the world. Her car-mad friend, Dave, and her boyfriend Luke. Rose loves these two - but she hates her town. She feels frustrated by her complacent parents, and their suffocating love. So when Rose is told that she has been awarded a city school scholarship, she keeps it a secret. She doesn’t want to be told she can’t go, and she doesn’t want to see the look on Luke’s face when she tells him she’s leaving.

Rose and Charlie are heading for disaster when both of them (unknowingly and unwittingly) present the other with what they most want in the world. For Charlie, Rose represents everything she can’t be – confident, carefree and cool. For Rose, Charlie is her ticket out – and she intends to be sitting in the car with Dorkin when she and her dad breeze out of town and head into the city.

Disaster is bound to ensue.

Cath Crowley’s books are reading confectionery. Her lyrical words are gooey caramel that get stuck to the roof of your mouth so you can tongue them and savour the sweetness. She looks at the world through dizzying heights and candy-coloured spectacles – and I can’t get enough of her writing or her characters.

Charlie Duskin was sublime. I just wanted to wrap her in a bear hug and whisper words of encouragement in her ear. She’s that kind of character – one you want to bundle off the page and bring home to make hot chocolate for. She’s beautiful and doesn’t know it, and that made her superb.

Rose was equally charming and disarming. The book is told from both points of view – Charlie and Rose’s – and in the beginning, through Charlie’s eyes, I did frown down at Rose and her seemingly perfect life. But Crowley loves shades of grey, and Rose is just a gorgeously lost and nervous as Charlie is (even if she hides it better).

The book is ultimately about the fragility of people, and giving a little kindness to watch them grow. The finale is a chest-swelling crescendo, and a fitting ‘Aha!’ moment for dear Charlie Duskin.

We watch her walk into the spotlight she’s been hiding from most of her life. Sure, friendship is all about believing in someone so hard they believe it, too. Sure, it’s about trust. But if anyone hurts her tonight, it’s about ripping them apart with my bare hands and really enjoying it.

Cath Crowley is certainly an Aussie YA treasure. Her books take you down to the lowest lows (so that you find yourself crying on the train while reading) but then she makes it up to you when her characters soar (so that you do a little fist-pump on the same train ride home). I think that whenever Crowley puts fingers to keyboard, a little bit of magic happens … I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next.

5/5

'Working Stiff' Revivalist #1 by Rachel Caine

From the BLURB:

It's a tough job but somebody's got to do it – dead or alive.

Bryn Davis knows working at Fairview Mortuary isn't the most glamorous career choice, but at least it offers stable employment – until she discovers her bosses using a drug that resurrects the clientele . . . as part of an extortion racket. Now Bryn faces being terminated (literally) with extreme prejudice.

With the assistance of corporate double agent Patrick McCallister, Bryn has a chance to take down the bigger problem – pharmaceutical company Pharmadene, which treats death as the ultimate corporate loyalty program. She'd better do it fast before she becomes a zombie slave – a real working stiff.

She'd be better off dead . . .

Bryn Davis is ex-military, just trying to fit into her new civilian job . . . at a funeral home. Not exactly a ‘normal’ job, offering people casket packages and floral arrangements, but a job nonetheless.

Except Bryn thinks there’s something strange(‘r’ than you’d expect) happening at Fairview Mortuary. Desperate people come to this place after hours, and the funeral director seems to be selling more than just bereavement packages. And as it turns out, Bryn is right. Because Fairview is selling immorality and reanimation – for a hefty price.

Bryn soon finds herself in the middle of a corporate upsurge with a company called Pharmadene – more than that though, she has become their own personal lab rat. Complete with handler, Patrick McCallister and a do-or-die mission.

‘Working Stiff’ is the first book in Rachel Caine’s new paranormal series, ‘Revivalist’.

I love Rachel Caine. Honestly, between ‘Morganville Vampires’ and ‘Weather Warden’ she has fast become an automatic-buy for me and a guaranteed book-pleaser. So her new series was heavily anticipated . . . and, of course, it totally lived up to expectation.

In ‘Revivalist’, Rachel Caine is exploring the current hot-topic of zombies. But in typical Caine fashion she is setting herself apart from all other zombie paranormal’s that have gone before her. Because in ‘Revivalist’ zombies are a by-product of clever business marketing –tied up in big Pharma and corporate espionage.

“From the moment our researchers discovered that this drug could revive and maintain dead tissues, there was no going back. It isn’t about a market share; it’s about power. Someone’s going to have it. Someone will control how this drug is manufactured and used. It will change the entire world. Wars will be fought. Whole civilizations will be destroyed, because right here, in these rooms, we have stopped the one thing that man never conquered: death.”
There was a glow in her face now, an almost religious ecstasy that Bryn found scarier than the corporate bullshit she’d seen before.

I was reading ‘Working Stiff’ while also viewing the new season of ‘Torchwood’, and their new ‘Miracle Day’ storyline. Caine and Torchwood are exploring similar ideas very differently – and I found that my reading/viewing was a nice, harmonious complement. With Caine, we observe the grass-roots of a corporate pharmaceutical takeover. In ‘Torchwood’, we are watching the global fall-out if such a pharma problem was allowed to thrive. And at the root of both concepts – what if we couldn’t die? I love it. I love that both Caine and Torchwood have taken the fairly blasé concept of ‘zombies’ and ‘immortality’ and put a clever and real-world spin on it.

One of the best things about all of Caine’s series is her tendency to put her main (female) characters into tough predicaments early on. In the first ‘Weather Warden’, Jo is an accused murderer on the run with a demon mark on her person. In ‘Morganville’, Claire is quickly under ownership by the biggest, baddest town vampires and left to serve them. Likewise, in ‘Working Stiff’, Bryn is quickly thrown into a bad situation that sees her become a Pharmadene puppet, and almost completely reliant on them. It’s such an interesting dynamic for our heroine to be in – literally ‘owned’ by someone else. And everything that comes after is the repercussions of her being between a rock and a hard place.

Caine also excels at writing swoon-worthy romance – Jo and David, Claire and Shane. Well, in ‘Working Stiff’ we have a slower-to-burn romance between Bryn and her handler, McCallister. It’s one of those romances where you’re really not sure if what you’re reading is a romance-in-the-making or just a little side-tracking . . . Caine definitely keeps these two subdued, and readers on their toes when it comes to their true feelings. It’s a different paced coupling than what we’ve read from Caine in the past (none of Jo and David’s instant-steaminess, or Claire’s constant pining for Shane) but it still works. Just a little more subtly.

I will definitely be reading more of Rachel Caine’s ‘Revivalist’ series. ‘Working Stiff’ is a smart zombie novel that goes beyond the typical reanimation explorations and delves into the world of big Pharma and corporate takeover. In typical Caine fashion, our heroine is gutsy, loyal and in the wrong place at the wrong time . . . this series is shaping up to be a very rewarding and interesting new addition to the urban fantasy genre, even if the romance was less ‘fireworks’ and more ‘slow burn’.

4/5

'Raw Blue' by Kirsty Eagar

From the BLURB:

Carly has dropped out of uni to spend her days surfing and her nights working as a cook in a Manly café. Surfing is the one thing she loves doing ... and the only thing that helps her stop thinking about what happened two years ago. Then she meets Ryan and Carly has to decide. Will she let the past bury her? Or can she let go of her anger and shame, and find the courage to be happy?

Carly is hiding.

She has dropped out of uni and off her family’s radar. She is living with a salsa-dancing, man-mad Dutch woman and working as a short-order cook at the cafe in a surf town. At night Carly’s nightmares creep in, and sometimes while driving she’ll be tempted to run herself into the guardrail and end it all. . .

But during the day, and especially early in the morning, Carly is found.

She surfs and she remembers why she’s still here. The beautiful moments when she catches a wave and is in the tunnel of the surf . . . in those moments, Carly thinks that maybe she can go on.

But she is still hiding. She’s hiding from her fear, and her anger. Fear of men and their pack-like behaviour and intimidating masculinity. And her anger about what happened to her that night . . .

But Carly can’t hide forever. She can’t hide from her new surf buddy, the young boy Danny who has synesthesia and sees people’s true colours. And she can’t hide from Ryan, a local surfer with a shady past who makes Carly feel safe, for the first time in a long time.

‘Raw Blue’ was the 2009 debut novel from Kirsty Eagar, which also won the 2010 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards Young Adult Fiction prize.

I read this book last year, shortly after I interviewed Ms Eagar about her second novel, ‘Saltwater Vampires’. I never wrote a review of ‘Raw Blue’ though, mostly because I feared being unable to do the book justice. And also because after my first reading, I had to put the book down and walk away for a little while. Because that’s what sort of book ‘Raw Blue’ is. It stays with you, burrows deep and gnaws away months after reading so that you keep turning it over and admiring new angles and smoothing it out. But recently ‘Raw Blue’ warranted a re-reading, and I now feel able to get my thoughts down and communicate my praise.

‘Raw Blue’ is, first and foremost, a novel about anger. It’s about how anger and its triggering grief will never remain dormant for long, no matter how much we try bottling it. At the beginning of the novel, Carly is deep in repression. She has secrets and angry scars of hurt – but when we meet her she is trying to push forward and put a bandaid over her war wounds. She has dropped out of uni, gotten a low-paying but steady job and sequestered herself in a surf town where nothing much is expected of her except catching the next big wave.

But despite her best efforts at normalcy and getting lost in her love of surf . . . flashes of anger and grief shine through. When she’s driving, Carly imagines running her car off the road. And when a large group of men come into the cafe, she can’t stop thinking of them and being aware of their presence while she hides in the kitchen out back.

Carly is hiding a deep hurt, and a traumatic event. The details of this moment slowly leak into the story, but it’s with great reluctance on Carly’s part, and reads like pulling teeth as she pieces together the moments of a night she’d rather forget.

I loved that Eagar is dealing with a very big ‘issue’ in an utterly un-explosive way. There is no one moment that pushes Carly to a major reveal of her deep, dark secret. Rather, it’s a gradual picking apart bought on by a number of factors. Like Carly’s easy conversations with the beautiful and sweet Danny, who has synesthesia and attaches colour to people and objects. Or her reluctant attraction to Ryan, a fellow surfer whose shady past and questionable friends terrifies Carly, but whom she can’t help but be drawn to.

I bury my face in my hands. And then Ryan does such a nice thing. He wraps his arm around my shoulders and pulls me in against him. I can feel his body heat through his cotton T-shirt, and directly in front of me are the worn, faded knees of his jeans. But most of all, I can smell him. And he smells sandy-warm, like a beach. No one can see my face in there protected by his chest. Which is good because I can’t stop crying. I mean, I’m really going for the world record in terms of an inappropriate public breakdown. But it doesn’t matter, it just doesn’t matter. I’m sheltered.

The surf setting is wonderful, both because Eagar has a clear love and affinity for the sport, but also because it forces Carly to confront her demons. It’s definitely a blokey sport – not for the timid that aren’t willing to muscle in on a wave or call someone out when they steal yours. Carly loves surfing, but she can’t deny that it’s a male-dominated ocean out there, and while she may think of herself as damaged and frightened, readers see in the way she holds her own on a surfboard that she isn’t necessarily scared of men – not when she’s willing to surf with the big boys and take the waves that come her way.

Eagar beautifully harmonizes Carly’s inner explorations with the surf-setting and lifestyle. Grief and anger come in waves. Sometimes they’re lulling – like calm waters. But all it takes is an unexpected swell to send you down into the deep, drowning and struggling, unsure of which way is up and how to find air. That’s ‘Raw Blue’, it’s about the moments of calm that trick Carly into thinking a wave of emotion isn’t right around the corner, about to drag her out to sea.

5/5

'The Name of the Star' Shades of London #1 by Maureen Johnson

Received from the Publisher

From the BLURB:

Sixteen-year-old American girl Rory has just arrived at boarding school in London when a Jack the Ripper copycat-killer begins terrorising the city. All the hallmarks of his infamous murders are frighteningly present, but there are few clues to the killer′s identity.

"Rippermania" grabs hold of modern-day London, and the police are stumped with few leads and no witnesses. Except one. In an unknown city with few friends to turn to, Rory makes a chilling discovery...

Could the copycat murderer really be Jack the Ripper back from the grave?

Aurora ‘Rory’ Deveaux is leaving her Louisiana swamp and moving to London. While her lawyer parents live in Bristol, Rory will be attending a Wexford co-ed boarding school for her ‘A levels’ (whatever the heck those are).

But Rory’s London move just so happens to coincide with ‘Rippermania’. Following a bizarre copy-cat murder that follows a similar motif to that of a Jack the Ripper slaying of 1888, London is in the grip of Ripper-madness. Things reach a fever pitch when a local news station receives the partial kidney of one of the victims, along with the infamous ‘From Hell’ letter.

Now there’s Rippercon and London tourism is fit to bursting.

Meanwhile, Rory is fitting in nicely to her new abode. She has become close friends with her roommate Jazza, and even has her eye on a Ripper-obsessed British lad called Jerome.

But one night when Rory and her friends are caught in the cross-hairs of Ripper-madness, Rory will come closer to the killer than she ever thought possible . . . putting her squarely in the psychopath’s path, and introducing her to some incredible (albeit, ghostly) London residents.

‘The Name of the Star’ is the new book from Maureen Johnson (author of the ‘Little Blue Envelope’ series). It is the first in a new paranormal YA series, called ‘Shades of London’.

I love, love, loved this gruesomely-compelling book. I am familiar with the Jack the Ripper legend (thanks in large part to Johnny Depp’s ‘From Hell’ and more recently, the ITV mini-series ‘Whitechapel’). More than that though, Jack the Ripper is a collective conscience of fascination and gore. Everyone just knows about Jack – he’s infamous and world-renowned as the first serial killer, and one of the few to get away with his crimes and remain an utter mystery. There’s enough eerie interest surrounding Jack that a paranormal book based around him isn’t that much of a stretch . . . but I was surprised at the interesting twists and turns Maureen Johnson added into her new series and world-building, to ensure that ‘Shades of London’ becomes a new must-read paranormal YA series to stand out from the slew of sameness.

First off, I loved the Wexford boarding school setting. A Louisiana native living in London was hilarious – as Rory navigates the Tube, comes to grips with hockey and ‘everyfink’ else about London town. And I adored Rory, everything from her home-grown stories of a parakeet-obsessed uncle to out-running a gator. The novel was often times quite gruesome and gory, so Rory’s southern quirks and molasses drawl were a lovely counterpoint to all the horror.

The Jack the Ripper copycat killings make up the murder mystery ‘whodunit’ of ‘Name of the Star’. Rory finds herself in the thick of the investigation after a near-death experience has her seeing a few interesting London ‘shades’ (or as they are more commonly referred to, ‘ghosts’). The Jack storyline is, unsurprisingly, creepy as hell. The new spin on this old mystery makes things equally chilling – like the CCTV footage that captures Jack’s rampage. But more than that, the public’s renewed fascination is equally gory and frightening – London pubs hold ‘Ripper nights’ and Rippercon is a meeting of the best (and geekiest) ‘Ripperologists’. In light of the Casey Anthony and Amanda Knox murder trials, Johnson’s depiction of a modern-day Jack the Ripper is a disturbingly keen observation. She writes about a city’s fascination with an infamous murderer, and how they make a celebrity of him. It’s sickening especially for its believability.

“But there have been other murderers since,” I said. “Lots of them.”
“But Jack the Ripper was kind of the original. See, he was around when the police force was fairly new and psychology was just starting out. People understood why someone might kill to steal something, or out of anger, or out of jealousy. But here was a man killing for seemingly no reason at all, hunting down vulnerable, poor women, cutting them apart. There was no explanation. What made him so terrifying was that he didn’t need a reason. He just liked to kill. And the papers played the story up until people were mad with fear. He’s the first modern killer.”

But though Jack is the whodunit of this book, he’s not the central plot of the ‘Shades of London’. The series will instead focus on a London ‘Spook’ squad, a task force of people who can see ghosts because of a near-death experience. The spooks notice Rory after she reports seeing a strange man hanging around the location of one of the copycat Ripper murders. . . except only she could see this mysterious gentleman, and his clothes suggest he’s a decade out of date. Thus, Rory comes to the notice of officer Stephen, Callum and an undercover agent.

I really loved the ghost aspect of this book. It blends seamlessly into the London setting, a city that has plenty of ghost tours and horrible history to support the many shades plot. Furthermore, the fact that the London police are ‘in the know’ about London’s non-corporeal is way cool and a nice twist on the usual supernatural (where authority is very rarely cluey).

There was only one thing that didn’t work for me in this book, and that was the somewhat lagging romance plot. It does seem silly that all young adult supernatural/paranormal books have a romantic sub-plot as a general rule of thumb. But it’s all about balancing – when the genre demands a certain horror/violent/gore factor, it helps pacing that there is a soft, romantic side story to calm the waters. In ‘Name of the Star’ Rory does have a romance going with a fellow boarder called Jerome. But their ‘romance’ came across as an afterthought, and Jerome’s morbid fascination with all things Ripper made him creepy and not entirely romantic. I do like Stephen for Rory, but I really couldn’t tell if there was any heat between them. . . I do hope that this is developed in future books.

‘The Name of the Star’ is a wonderful new supernatural series. Maureen Johnson has written a fantastically gory and frightening novel based around an infamous murderer who has a whole new and captivated audience. Long live Ripper-madness.

4.5/5

'Between' by Jessica Warman

Received from the Publisher

From the BLURB:

Elizabeth Valchar --- pretty, popular and rich --- wakes up the morning after her 18th birthday on the yacht where she’d been celebrating with her closest friends. A persistent thumping noise has roused her. When she goes to investigate, she finds her own drowned body is hitting the side of the boat. Liz is dead. She has no memory of what happened to her, and can only observe in horror the fallout of her death.

She’s also soon joined by Alex Berg, a quiet boy from her high school who was killed by a hit-and-run driver. The two keep each other company, floating in and out of memories and trying to piece together the details of what happened to each of them.

In her regular life, Liz was a runner. It wasn’t abnormal for her to run 8-10 miles per day. But as memories from closer to her death begin to surface, Liz finds that she’d been running much more than normal, and that she’d all but stopped eating. Liz’s mother, who died when Liz was nine, had battled with anorexia as well, and those around her worried that Liz was following in her mother’s footsteps. But something more sinister was consuming Liz from the inside out...

Elizabeth Valchar has died at her 18th birthday party. Now she’s stuck permanently wearing cowboy boots that pinch, watching her father waste away and observing her BFF step sister move in on her beloved boyfriend. Because though Elizabeth ‘Liz’ Valchar is dead, she’s still hanging around her small, affluent town of Noank.

After discovering her body face-down and floating alongside her father’s boat, Liz has just been wandering around. She was there to see her body discovered, watch the divers fish her out and listen as the local cop threw around words like ‘suspicious circumstances’ and ‘murder’.

Now Liz is left to watch a year of mourning as her friends crumble and her family shatter. But Liz isn’t alone. Another died-too-young teenager, Alex Berg, is also a ghostly hanger-on. Alex was killed in a hit-and-run last year, and now he and Liz are stuck together for some reason. Alex thinks it’s to figure out how they died and what they need to know to ‘move on’ . . . but Liz can’t remember anything. She knows she loved her boyfriend, Richie, but she can’t remember if she cheated on him like he claims she did. She knows that she loved her best friend (and later step-sister) Josie – but she doesn’t know why she’s now trying to take her place in the school hierarchy and with Richie.

But most of all, Liz can’t remember being such a cold-hearted queen-bee bitch. But Alex does. . . and he shows her – through flashbacks and memory-jumping, Alex shows Liz exactly what kind of person she was when she was alive. And, suddenly, Liz wonders if she really was murdered.

‘Between’ is the new paranormal YA novel from Jessica Warman.

I was a little nervous going into ‘Between’. I had just finished reading Gayle Forman’s gut-wrenching ‘If I Stay’, and didn’t know if my heart could take another slog through such depressing subject matter. Both are books about a girl observing her family and friends in the wake of disaster and loss – and both books involve the girls visiting flashbacks and distant memories to piece themselves back together again. But these are only superficial plot similarities . . . luckily for my weary heart, ‘Between’ and ‘If I Stay’ are two books exploring death and resolution in very, very different ways.

‘Between’ kicks-off with Liz’s eerie discovery. She wakes up from a drunken stupor aboard her father’s boat, where she and her closes friends were ringing in her birthday. What wakes Liz is a persistent thumping against the side of the boat . . . but when she goes to investigate what she thinks is a caught fish, she instead sees her bloated form with steel-tipped cowboy boots thunking against the hull. It’s a brilliant opener – equal parts intriguing and spine-tingling, and it hooked me into the story straight away.

Liz is our narrator, and she’s a ghost. We remain with her as she listens in on the investigation of her murder – a local cop called Joe who thinks it strange that there have been two suspicious teen deaths in the small, affluent town of Noank – first a hit-and-run victim called Alex Berg, and now pretty and popular Elizabeth Valchar. Meanwhile, Alex is a ghostly accomplice to Liz’s afterlife, following her as she observes friends and family attend her funeral and then grieve throughout the school year. At the same time, both Liz and Alex back-track through their respective memories, trying to piece together their deaths.

In revisiting her life, Liz comes to the unsettling realization that she wasn’t a nice person. She was obsessed with being at the top of the popular totem pole, and she didn’t care who she trampled on to get there. Now, in death, Liz is mortified at how her friends and classmates remember her – even while visiting her grave, her best friend can’t help but be torn about her passing.

She shudders. ‘It’s horrible. Everything’s terrible without you.’ She pauses. ‘But it was terrible even when you were around. I know it sounds crazy, but for months before you died, it’s almost like there was this . . . this sense that something bad was going to happen.’
She picks up her pom-poms, gives them a shake to get rid of the leaves that have got caught in the plastic. ‘I don’t know why, but when I heard Mera scream that morning, I knew something terrible had happened to you. I just knew.’
Then she bows her head, says a quick, quiet prayed and crosses herself with a pom-pom. ‘You were falling apart before you died, Liz. Everybody could tell. I hope things are better for you now. They sure are awful around here.’

But it’s not all hating in the afterlife. Liz’s boyfriend and father really did love her, and now they’re struggling in her absence. And ‘Between’ isn’t just a lesson in morality. Warman has also interwoven several mysteries throughout the book – mainly concerning Alex and Liz’s respective deaths. But there’s also a mystery in the passing of Liz’s mother – a woman who suffered and eventually died from anorexia nervosa when Liz was nine years old. For years people thought that Liz’s mother was stressed and starved because of her father’s obvious affair with Nicole, the woman who would become Liz’s step-mother after her real mother’s death. Liz and Josie were always BFFs, so when Nicole and Liz’s dad married the two girls thought they were gaining sisters. But in recounting her memories, Liz starts to see something far more sinister and heartbreaking in Nicole and her father’s poisonous relationship. . .

Some things didn’t work for me in this book. Like Liz being seemingly blasé about her boyfriend, Richie, and step-sister, Josie, hooking up. I thought she’d be a lot angrier, a lot more hurt. But Liz maintains that she and Richie had a great romance, and that she and Josie were sisters-for-life besties. She reasons and justifies their coupling, and it just didn’t ring true and the anger needed to be there. For that reason, I didn’t really connect with the romance of ‘Between’, which is clearly meant to be between Richie and Liz.

‘Between’ is very plot-heavy, which actually works well with the otherwise depressing story of a deceased girl doing the ghostly walk-around after her death. We’ve had the depressing limbo novels, ‘If I Stay’ and ‘The Lovely Bones’ among them. So it’s really refreshing to read a book that handles popular-girl-morality and teen death with equal amounts sadness and self-reflection, but with a healthy dose of interesting whodunit.

4.5/5

'If I Stay' by Gayle Forman

From the BLURB:

Just listen,' Adam says with a voice that sounds like shrapnel. I open my eyes wide now. I sit up as much as I can. And I listen.
‘Stay,’ he says.

Everybody has to make choices.

Some might break you.

For seventeen-year-old Mia, surrounded by a wonderful family, friends and a gorgeous boyfriend decisions might seem tough, but they’re all about a future full of music and love, a future that’s brimming with hope.

But life can change in an instant.

A cold February morning . . . a snowy road . . . and suddenly all of Mia’s choices are gone. Except one.

As alone as she’ll ever be, Mia must make the most difficult choice of all.

Gripping, heartrending and ultimately life-affirming, If I Stay will make you appreciate all that you have, all that you’ve lost - and all that might be.

Mia has a choice to make.

She has just been in a car accident that has killed her mother and father. Her little brother, Teddy, is struggling in another hospital somewhere, while Mia has been air-lifted to ICU.

Her friends and remaining family straggle through the hospital room. Her Gran and Gramps cry. Her best friend, Kim, is trying to stay positive. Her father’s band mates and best friends are praying and Mia’s first love, Adam, is begging her to stay.

Mia knows all of this, because while her body is bruised and battered lying prone in a hospital bed, Mia looks on. She thinks back on her life up to this point, and she sits in the waiting room with the people who love her.

But what is keeping her here? When she has nothing left to live for, what’s the point in staying?

Mia has a choice to make – a life or death decision.

‘If I Stay’ is the smash-hit contemporary young adult novel from Gayle Forman, which recently had a sequel released this year called ‘Where She Went’.

Yes, I have been ‘reading’ under a rock. I knew that ‘If I Stay’ was a best-selling, beloved YA novel released in 2009. I read the rave reviews and knew that there was a furore surrounding this incredible book’s sequel . . . still, I didn’t read it. I knew that this book packed a punch – that it was sadness through and through and to be honest, I just was never in the right head-space to get stuck into the novel. Until now. Don’t ask me what did it – I just decided I was ready to brave the emotional terrain and whip out the Kleenex.

Mia’s story really does start out sad . . . and get worse from there. The car accident is the plot-trigger, and everything that comes after is Mia weighing up and pros and cons of staying, or letting go. It’s a sad start, with plenty of emotional turmoil heaped throughout. But the novel is, surprisingly, not altogether depressing.

I should be in agony. And I’m not crying, either, even though I know that something unthinkable has just happened to my family. We are like Humpty Dumpty and all these king’s horses and all these king’s men cannot put us back together again.

While Mia’s ravaged body repairs itself in a cold hospital room, ghost-like Mia remembers her life to this point. She recalls her punk-rock parents and their dismay when Mia took up the cello and fell for Mozart. She remembers the birth of her little brother, Teddy, and all her brother’s funniest moments. She remembers how her best friend, Kim, saved her from herself by prodding her into music camp. But most of all, Mia remembers Adam. Adam, the beautiful and dishevelled older boy played in a rock band and inexplicably loved Mia – and how she loved him back.

The novel cuts between present-time and back-tracking memories; as Mia’s fetch-like form watches the nurses monitor her vital signs and doctors perform surgeries, she also recounts her memories in vivid detail.

I hear the nurse’s words again. I am running the show. Everyone is waiting on me.
I decide. I know this now.
And this terrifies me more than anything else that has happened today.

I did love the book, as I suspected I would. It’s partly because the story is duelling heartbreak, and uplift – as we see Mia come to the slow realization that life is beautiful, regardless of the pain. But also because Forman could have dragged Mia and the story down in a flowery writing style . . . when you’re discussing death and the meaning of life, it’s very easy to wax poetic and get too caught up in the meaningful, so that life gets lost amidst the prose. But Forman has deliberately shied away from sweeping declarations of life-affirming meaning – the prose is simple and powerful for its subtlety, and the real meaning of life is between the lines, in the flashbacks of Mia’s childhood. Perfection in simplicity.

5/5