Nothing Bad is Going to Happen by Kathleen Hale

Series: No One Else Can Have You (bk. 2)

Genera(s): Realistic Fiction/Mystery

Subjects: humor, comedy, murder, mystery, small towns, winter

Setting: Friendship, Wisconsin (which is north of the Wisconsin Dells) before Halloween

POV/Tense: 1st person present tense. Kippy’s POV.

Age/Grade Level: Teen

Length: 260 pgs.

HC/PB: Hardcover

List Price: $17.99

Publisher: HarperTeen

Summary/ product description: “Geeze Louise, for such a small town, there sure are a lot of murders in Friendship, Wisconsin.

After helping to catch the man who murdered her best friend, Kippy Bushman was looking forward to life returning to normal. Well, at least as normal as it could get in a town like hers. But then the unthinkable happens: Kippy finds her boyfriend, Davey, in his house, barely breathing and surrounded by pills and empty beer bottles.

The sheriff is quick to rule the incident an attempted suicide, but Kippy refuses to believe it. She and Davey are completely in love; there’s no way he’d ever hurt himself. Right?

Kippy swears she saw someone else at Davey’s house that night and is convinced that person tried to murder him. Without any real evidence, though, no one—not even Kippy’s own father—believes her. So she has no choice but to team up with her former nemesis, Bible-thumping Libby, to try to catch this new killer. But in a town where everyone has their own secrets and a next-door neighbor could be a serial killer, who’s left to trust?”

My Review: Nothing Bad is Going to Happen is the hilarious sequel to No One Else Can Have You. I don’t think there will be a 3^rd book, but ya never know. Anyways, despite what other reviewers think, this book was pretty awesome. Maybe they were just being jerks, don’tcha know?

Kippy Bushman was almost murdered and has a leg cast to prove it. She caught her best friend’s killer, but the Sheriff took the credit for it, and made her look like a crazy person. The killer was a friend named Ralph who’s totally a sociopath and now locked up in Green Bay Correctional Facility. He keeps sending her creepy letters and calling her.

When Kippy find her boyfriend passed out on the night they planned to have sex, she calls 911. She think she saw a shadow figure and that no way could Davey commit suicide, but they rule it as attempted suicide because the bottles of alcohol and empty pill bottle. Kippy enlists Libby, a girl who used to be mean to her, but who’s now her only ally, to help her find evidence of Davey’s attempted murder. Filled with mystery, crazy twists and hilarious laughs, it’s the perfect sequel.

This book series is set in (Wisconsin) the hat of the state I live in (Illinois), I place I love dearly and the state that I visited the most. I’ve seen more of Wisconsin than Illinois. And I’m familiar with Wisconsinisms and their love of the Packers and cheese and all that. Friendship, Wisconsin is a real town near Baraboo, which I camped at Devil’s Lake State Park last year. The real Friendship, of course, is nothing like the one in the books.

The humor in this book is my favorite part. Sometimes it’s very dirty and full of swearing and things that make me cringe just thinking of because it sound erotic, but I cracked up reading this so many times that I sure that if I had read this in public, people would be staring at me. I think the characters came along better in this sequel. Kippy seems less strange and more smart than she did in the first book. Libby’s nice to her now and really helpful. Rose, the anger management counselor, is now dating Kippy’s dad Dom. Rosa is so hilarious. She’s Polish and speaks in broken English and calls Kippy by the most hilarious pet names, like Mud Dumpling, and says things like “Soup is on.” I’m like 20% Polish myself and I find her hilarious.

I recommend this series to people who love watching comedies, or reading books by Heather Keeble or Gretchen McNeil.

Cover Art Review: I love the donuts! They’re so cute….until you read the book and realize why they’re on the cover.

Don’t Let Go by Michelle Gagnon

Series: PERSEFoNE (bk. 3)

Genera(s): Realistic Fiction/Action Thriller

Subjects: hackers, technology, diseases, adventure, fugitives, conspiracies

Setting: Contemporary times, Throughout the USA

POV/Tense: 3^rd person POV, past tense: Noa, Peter, Daisy and Teo

Age/Grade Level: Teen

Length: 335 pgs.

HC/PB: Hardcover

List Price: $17.99

Publisher: HarperTeen

Summary/ product description: “In this pulse-pounding final installment of the Don’t Turn Around trilogy, which in a starred review Kirkus called “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for teens,” Noa and Peter race across the country in their search to destroy Project Persephone before time runs out.

After a devastating loss, Noa Torson is out of options. On the run with the three remaining teens of Persephone’s Army, she is up against immeasurable odds. The group is outnumbered, outsmarted, and outrun. But they are not giving up.

When Noa and Peter realize they can’t run anymore, and that Noa’s health is failing, they know they must go back to where this began. But when they come face-to-face with the man who started it all, the question becomes, can they win?

This riveting final book in the Don’t Turn Around trilogy ratchets up the action as Noa and Peter confront the evil that has chased them and won’t let them go.

My Review:  This is the first book in this trilogy that I was fully able to enjoy. Maybe I was just in the right mood for it this time. The first two books just didn’t have the epic amount of action and adventure that this book did. There was some romantic stuff, but it wasn’t the most important thing. I really liked that Noa and Peter were back together for this book. They are both amazing hackers (and Zeke was too). They have great dialogue. Also Teo and Daisy are so cute together. All their dialogue is lovey-dovey and funny.

Don’t let go had a dystopian-esque feel to it. It was very much a thriller. It’s a little on the sci-fi side with Noa’s implanted thalamus and the made up disease of PEMA. This book is so much fun, but there’s also some questionable subjects. Kidnapping and organ trafficking and murder and whatnot. You can discuss it. The book leads into an epic conclusion and we finally discover what PEMA really is.

I’d compare it to the Unwind series, but instead of unwinding AWOLs, street kids were being kidnapped to be experimented on and used to find a cure for a disease called PEMA. I love to hacker stuff. I always feel like hackers have superpowers because they can manipulate technology (but hackers can be bad when they use their powers to steal you information). /ALLIANCE/ is a hackivist group that Noa and Peter are apart of. It is like the real hackivist group, Anoymous. I watch Agents of SHEILD and Skye is a hacker, and I also watch Scorpion on CBS, another great TV show about hackers. Anyone who’s a fan of those shows or thriller maybe enjoy this series.

Cover Art Review: I like the silhouetted hand and fist and the title. The color scheme is good. It’s a sticking cover. Wish it were metallic.

The Vanishing Season by Jodi Lynn Anderson

Publication Date: July 1^st, 2014

Series: Standalone

Genera(s): Contemporary Romance/Mystery/Paranormal Horror

Subjects: murder, death, ghosts, supernatural, winter, love

Setting: Gill Creek (a made up town based of real towns) in Door County, Wisconsin

POV/Tense: 3^rd person POV, past tense: Maggie, with interludes of a ghost’s 1^st person POV

Age/Grade Level: Teen

Length: 259 pgs.

HC/PB: Hardcover

List Price: $17.99

Publisher: HarperTeen

Summary/ product description: “Girls started vanishing in the fall, and now winter's come to lay a white sheet over the horror. Door County, it seems, is swallowing the young, right into its very dirt. From beneath the house on Water Street, I've watched the danger swell.

The residents know me as the noises in the house at night, the creaking on the stairs. I'm the reflection behind them in the glass, the feeling of fear in the cellar. I'm tied—it seems—to this house, this street, this town.

I'm tied to Maggie and Pauline, though I don't know why. I think it's because death is coming for one of them, or both.

All I know is that the present and the past are piling up, and I am here to dig.I am looking for the things that are buried.

From bestselling author Jodi Lynn Anderson comes a friendship story bound in snow and starlight, a haunting mystery of love, betrayal, redemption, and the moments that we leave behind

My Review: This book wasn’t your typical paranormal mystery. I don’t think I can even consider is a ghost story. It takes place in a small town called Gill Creek, Wisconsin. This is not a real town, but it’s supposed to be in Door County. Maggie and her parents move there from Chicago and fix up this old house. She meets a girl named Pauline, who becomes her best friend there, and Pauline’s friend, Liam, who’s not the boyfriend, but Maggie and Liam do end up liking each other. There’s some romance. All the while girl are getting murdered in other town through fall and winter.

My favorite this about this book is definitely the setting, and that Maggie is from Chicagoland, like me. For those of you who have never been to or even heard of Door County, it’s most of the peninsula, or “Wisconsin’s Thumb” that juts out into Lake Michigan. It’s about 70 Miles long and has bunch of state and county parks, beaches and rocky outcroppings and all kinds of natural beauty.When I went there in August 2011, I took tons of photos of nature and buildings while my dad drove. We drove through every town there, but not Washington Island. Gill Creek is probably based off of multiple towns in the county. There’s Gills Rock, Fish Creek, New Port, Sister Bay and Ephraim (which have a Water Street).

There are chalets and cottages that have very a Scandinavian look to them: 

This is in Whitefish Dunes State Park, and Cave Point County Park, near Jacksonport:

This is Death's Door Bluff, Door Bluff County Park between Ellison Bay and Gills Rock:

This is in Peninsula State Park, near Fisk Creek, you can see Adventure Island: 

This is the draw bridge in Sturgeon Bay:

We camped in Potawatomi State Park near Sturgeon Bay. 

I also took lots of photos of moths. They flew into our lanterns, our campfire. They sat on the walls of the shower houses and I took photos of they and posted them to this website that identifies them.  

There’s a lot of magical realism and eeriness to the story. It’s creepy at times and you don’t really know what’s going to happy. I like the story, but was a bit disappointed with how it ended. I ended up crying a bit. This book was kind of like Lies Beneath by Anna Greenwood Brown, but without the mermaids. If you love books with realistic settings based off of real lakeside/seaside towns, then you’ll love this. This book has great atmosphere and is well written. I usually have issues with books in the 3^rd person, but this book had good story telling. It made ordinary seem extraordinary. I have not read anything by Jodi Lynn Anderson, but I might check out Tiger Lily after reading this.

Cover Art Review: I love the illustrations of the moths and snow and swirls. Awesome pen work. The tree photo doesn’t say “This is Door County” to me. No rocky or sandy Lake Michigan shoreline.