One Was Lost by Natalie D. Richards

Publication Date: October 4, 2016

Series: Standalone

Genera(s): Mystery/Thriller

Subjects: survival, camping, murder

Setting: Southern Ohio

POV/Tense: 1^st person, present tense: Sera

Age/Grade Level: Teen

Length: 320 pgs.

HC/PB: Paperback

List Price: $10.99

Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire

Summary/ product description: “Damaged. Deceptive. Dangerous. Darling. Are they labels or a warning? The answer could cost Sera everything.

Murder, justice, and revenge were so not a part of the plan when Sera set out on her senior camping trip. After all, hiking through the woods is supposed to be safe and uneventful.

Then one morning the group wakes up groggy, confused, and with words scrawled on their wrists: Damaged. Deceptive. Dangerous. Darling. Their supplies? Destroyed. Half their group? Gone. Their chaperone? Unconscious. Worst of all, they find four dolls acting out a murder—dolls dressed just like them.

Suddenly it's clear; they're being hunted. And with the only positive word on her wrist, Sera falls under suspicion…”

My Review:  I received an ARC of One Was Lost from Anderson’s Bookshop for a pre-pub event, which I sadly can’t attend because of a night class.

One Was Lost is a standalone thriller set in the Appalachian wilderness of southern Ohio. A group of 6 teens are on a trip with two teachers. A rainstorm causes a flash flood. The bridge that they were supposed to cross the river with is broken. Sera, Lucas, Jude, Emily and Mr. Walker make it across, but Madison, Hayley, and Ms. Brighton get left behind as the river floods.

The group of five sets up camp, hoping the river level will go down the next day. The next morning they wake up to find word written on their arms and Mr. Walker unable to wake up. They figure out that they were drugged, probably by something in their water bottles. Most of their supplied have been destroy or stolen. Sera’s word is Darling, Lucas has Dangerous, Emily has Damaged, and Jude had Deceptive.

This book is full of brutally realistic survival and a freaky mystery. I had my guesses on who did it, but I didn’t expect who it turned out to be. I enjoyed the romance between Sera and Lucas. I thought Sera being a director of school plays made her a unique and interesting protagonist. I liked the fast pace of the story and I just wanted to know what happened next. I never read anything by this author before, but this book made me want to check her other books out.

I recommend this book to those who enjoy mystery thrillers, like anything by Alexandra Sirowy, Kimberly Derting, or Becca Fitzpatrick.

Cover Art Review: My ARC cover is orange. The new cover has a voodoo-doll made of sticks, which are mentioned in the book.

The Telling by Alexandra Sirowy

Series: Standalone

Genera(s): Horror/Mystery/Thriller

Subjects: murder, death, islands, summer

Setting: Gant Island in Washington state

POV/Tense: 1^st person POV, present tense: Lana

Age/Grade Level: Teen

Length: 387 pgs.

HC/PB: Hardcover

List Price: $17.99

Publisher: Simon & Schuster for Young Readers

Summary/ product description: “Lana used to know what was real.

That was before when her life was small and quiet.

Her golden step-brother, Ben, was alive, she could only dream about bonfiring with the populars, their wooded island home was idyllic, she could tell the truth from lies, and Ben’s childhood stories were firmly in her imagination.

Then came after.

After has Lana boldly kissing her crush, jumping into the water from too high up, and living with nerve and mischief. But after also has horrors, deaths that only make sense in fairy tales, and terrors from a past Lana thought long forgotten: Love, blood, and murder.”

My Review: The Telling is a standalone murder-mystery thriller set on an island in Washington State, called Gant. Lana’s step-brother was possibly or probably murdered two month ago in June. His ex-girlfriend was suspected in helping a car jacking that led to his dead. Ben had stopped the car for a stranger and was attacked and stabbed and then dragged away. Lana spent about a month after his death moping at home until a note Ben left jolts her out of her grief. She starts hanging out with the popular kids, who she’d never thought would include her in anything.

These kids made fun of her in middle school and some of high school. Now it’s August and soon school starts. These popular kids known around town as the Core (Becca, Carolynn, Rusty, Duncan and Josh) are with Lana and Willa (Lana’s only previous friend) at a spring in the woods hanging out and drinking. They dare each other to jump off a cliff into the lake and when they do they find a body stuck under the water: Ben’s ex-girlfriend, Maggie. And when they report the body they suddenly become suspects. But this murder is only the beginning and Lana and the Core have to find the murderer before they become victims.

Ben, Lana’s stepbrother, has a mysterious past. He arrives with his mother Diane, when he was twelve. Diane became Lana’s father’s new wife. Lana’s mother died when Lana was four. Ben’s been telling Lana fantastical stories of good vs. evil since he came. In these stories, Lana and Ben are always the heroes and Lana’s a brave warrior. These stories are sometimes disturbing a violent. They’re not the sort of thing out of a kid’s imagination. Lana was addicted to those stories. They made her feel strong. She wanted to be brave like that Lana. Ben was obsessed with adventure and getting out of Gant. He wanted to do something important with his life, so he spent some time in Guatemala helping to build wells. Gant is a place full of rich people who have excess and Ben found it disgusting, yet his life was full of riches too. He considered himself a hypocrite, and said he wanted to leave Gant after high school.

I really enjoyed the book. I usually only read sci-fi, fantasy and paranormal stuff, but because this had a ghost-story horror feel to it, I didn’t care. It’s a very atmospheric book. The misty setting of Washington in late summer became a character itself. I recently watched the TV series Dead of Summer and even though that was paranormal and not contemporary, it had the same kind of creepy summer feel. I read The Creeping last year by this author and enjoyed it. 

Also, I really am amazed that I was right about the twist. I had this epiphany when I was maybe a third of the way into the book that if I was the author, I would totally make the killer someone so unsuspected, so I went off on a limb on this idea, was pulled away from it by some possibilities, but inevitably came back to the this conclusion which turned out to be right. I sure it was just foreshadowing or maybe a cliché in classic horror and not actually as clever a twist I thought, or maybe I have a psychic superpower for guessing plot twists, because I right maybe half the time or more. It’s really hard to talk about it because it’s too big of a spoiler, but I saw it coming somehow. I WAS RIGHT!!!!

Cover Art Review: I love the opalline paper this is printed on. The cover itself is creepy and definitely gives you a sense of the story inside.

The Revival by Chris Weitz

Series: The Young World Trilogy (bk. 3) Final Book

Genera(s): Dystopian Sci-fi

Subjects: post-apocalyptic, survival, viruses, love, adventure

Setting: New York City

POV/Tense: 1st person past tense rotating between Jefferson, Donna, Peter, Evan and Kath, mainly, and interludes from Brainbox, Rab, and Imani

Age/Grade Level: Teen

Length: 258 pgs.

HC/PB: Hardcover

List Price: $18.99

Publisher: Hachette: Little, Brown

Summary/ product description: “The teens survived a mysterious catastrophe in The Young World, brought the cure back home in The New Order, and now must forge a new world in this fast-paced conclusion from acclaimed film director Chris Weitz.

The teens forge a new world in this epic conclusion to The Young World trilogy.

After the emotional cliffhanger of The New Order, shocking events take place for Donna, Jefferson, Kath, and their tribe as they face their greatest challenge yet--how to hold the new city-state of New York against a ruthless attack from the Old World.

Heart-stopping action and exciting new revelations will leave readers hungry for the final installment in the series.”

My Review:  The Revival is the finale to the Young World trilogy. If you have not read this series, it’s set in a post-epidemic version of New York City in which only kids and teen survived the plaque. I recommend this to fans of the Gone series by Michael Grant, The 5th Wave, The Hunger Games, Divergent, Maximum Ride, Quarantine by Lex Thomas, Monument 14 by Emmy Laybourne, No Easy Way Out by Dayna Lorentz, Inhuman by Kat Fall, The Murder Complex by Lindsey Cummings, Taken by Erin Bowman, and other dystopian book.

Donna is back in New York City and with her comes some of the people she met in Cambridge, including Rab, the guy “seduced” her to get information. There’s Titch who’s a burly guy, there’s Guja, a Nepalese mercenary, and a few other. Jefferson, the leader of the group of kids who lived in Washington Square, was pinning for Donna to come back and Kath says he should get over her. Kath and Jefferson had a thing for a while. Peter is mad that Chapel, a guy who he thought her was in love with, betrayed him, and possibly also just seduced him for information. Evan, Kath’s brother, from Uptown, is a sociopath and has some nefarious plans.

This book series is full of humor and action. This is one of the most fun dystopian book series you will ever read. It’s a little bit like the Gone series at first, minus the super power. I love that we get different first person perspectives. The male POV are in a serif and female in san-serif a typeface. The chapter headers have a weapon silhouette behind the character name. I recall the first book was all Jefferson and Donna, but here we get Peter, Kath, Evan, Imani, Brainbox, and Rab. Some of them only get 1 or 2 chapters.

This book also brings up a lot of social issues like race, gender and sexuality, and it does it with humor. Some of the characters are clearly a bit racist, but most are just trying to survive and don’t care about that stuff. There’s just a extremely diverse cast of characters that the author created, maybe unreality so. I don’t think that it’s a very realist story, even if there was a virus that killed all the adult and kids had to survive. Yes, there would be cliques and gangs, but some of the story does seem silly, but this is fiction and I enjoyed it.

The book ended in an acceptable way. We didn’t get to see what happed 6 months later or whatever future would happen, but the character definitely had some kind of resolution. A climatic scene, and showdown, some sad deaths, some romance. It’s a pretty good finale and I will miss this series, but there’s always more to read.

Cover Art Review: Cool cover, as always with this series. I like that awesome samurai sword that the guy in the middle, who is probably Jefferson, is holding.