Taste the Books: Review Morsels #62 Kat Ellis, Joelle Wellington, Elizabeth Anne Martins

Intro

Hello beauties!

Welcome again to my own brand of mini reviews! I never thought I'd do minis, until I recapped a few of my long reviews in some digest post in 2014, and then guest-posted some shorties for a blogging event in 2015. And Karen from For What It's Worth started praising my short recs/recaps 😊. Just to be clear,  I'm NOT taking a break from writing long reviews - no such luck LOL (though for anthologies, shorter books or books that I didn't enjoy/I don't have enough to say about, I decided to stick to minis). But while I'm making up my mind about a new book I've read, I might as well give you the short version 😉. Just be warned - this feature will be VERY random!

Note: all the mini blurbs (in italics) are of my own creation.

The Devouring Light by Kat Ellis (ARC Review)

★★★

After a mysterious accident that leaves them stranded in a swampland, the members of two teen bands who share a complicated history seek refuge in an eerie, crumbling manor, only to find out that the real horror has followed - or better, preceded - them inside, and can feed off them in more than a way...

***

Rated 3.5 really.

First off...DISCLAIMER: I requested this title on NetGalley. Thanks to Harper Collins UK, Children's/Harper Fire for providing a temporary ecopy. This didn't influence my review in any way.

The Devouring Light puts a hell of a spin on the haunted house/we're-never-getting-out-of-here-alive trope, turns the bug/body horror up to eleven and never hits the brakes. The result is a spooky, often disturbing, yet entertaining mix of mystery and creature feature with a Faustian bargain angle, sprinkled with rocky relationships (but ultimately much tamer ones than the blurb leads you to believe) and doubling as a cautionary tale about fame's demands, especially at a young age. Ellis takes her horror seriously, so if you're a fan of the genre, you won't be disappointed; then again, there are a couple of giant red flags that even less seasoned readers will pick up on, while the group - especially the protagonist - remains oblivious to them (I will concede, though, that I didn't comprehend the full implications of one of them myself, so I had a rude awakening at one point. But maybe I was just in denial...), which hugely dampens the shock factor when the actual reveals come. The ending is gutsy - though I've learned that it's common practice with most horror, so I should probably have expected that (half) twist (denial again?). All in all, a solid, pull-no-punches addition to the genre, which could have benefited from a more pronounced human angle (though that's a complaint I have when it comes to lots of horror nowadays...).

Note: definitive review (I don't have enough to say to justify writing a full-length one later).

Girls Who Play Dead by Joelle Wellington (ARC review)

★★★★

Two Black siblings who separated after their parents' divorce slowly reconnect in the aftermath of the sister's best friend's murder, getting entangled in a web of conspiracies and lies that hits too close to home - and in more than one way - for one of them.

***

First off...DISCLAIMER: I requested this title on NetGalley. Thanks to Harper Collins UK, Children's/Harper Fire for providing a temporary ecopy. This didn't influence my review in any way.

This was an intense, character-driven mystery with lots of teen appeal, but - despite the amount of high-school drama - I found it to be extremely palatable for senior readers as well (it didn't hurt that it reminded me of classic Christopher Pike thrillers like the Final Friends series, only with a ton more diversity). Mostly, I have the main characters, with their emotionally charged inner monologue and their strong (if messy) dynamics, to thank for it. Of course, Mikky is much easier to love, with his open queerness, his honesty about his mental health issues (depression and anxiety), and his effort to help/reconnect with a sister he left behind in order to prioritise his emotional well-being. But under her mean girl facade (borrowed from her dead friend Erin), mired-in-grief yet angry Kyla turns out to be a much more vulnerable character than one would think, and Wellington does a great job having the reader empathise with her and root for her during her self-awareness journey. As for the murder mystery, it needs some suspension of disbelief, but it's well thought-out and compelling enough to have you compulsively turning pages until the (appalling) reveal. Laced with romance, wrapped in secrets and coated in make-up, Girls Who Play Dead is a lot of things - a portrait of grief and guilt, a coming-of-age narrative, a commentary on the beauty/influencer culture, and a small-town mystery with a very dark edge of course - but its heart lies in the problematic, yet powerful and ultimately endearing sibling relationship. Not to be missed if you're a fan of thrillers with a soft core under the gritty exterior.

Note: as a rule, I review every book that I rate 4 stars and above in full, unless it's a novella or an anthology. But I didn't want to go in too deep about this one to avoid spoilers, and it felt easy to summarise its contents (and my opinions) in a few sentences, so I took the mini-review route.

Opposite World by Elizabeth Anne Martins (ARC Review)

★★★★

The daughter of a former computer scientist who's hiding from his past gets involved in the same technology he contributed to creating - one that can rewrite the user's experiences - and once trapped in the program itself, must battle corporate overlords and unbury the truth about her own life, in a literal trip down memory lane.

***

First off...DISCLAIMER: I requested this title on NetGalley. Thanks to Harper Collins UK, Children's/Harper Fire for providing a temporary ecopy. This didn't influence my review in any way.

Fair warning: Opposite World has all the markings of an intriguing sci-fi/thriller/coming-of-age blend, but it takes a bit for it to get there. The first chapters speed through the protagonist's formative years spent on the run with her father, after her mother's death and a mysterious incident that prompted him to hide from his former colleagues. I understand that the author had to play her cards close to her chest, but the complete lack of answers and the way Pip only questions it up to a point are frustrating and hard to buy into. That and the author's penchant for extravagant/clunky metaphors ("his eyes dripping over me like syrup"; "the door flung open like an open wound") had me worried that I wouldn't enjoy OW that much. Thankfully, things pick up (and get more interesting) when the aforementioned sci-fi content is finally introduced, and the story takes an Inception-meets-The-Matrix turn that ends up being totally its own thing (the fact that the similes start to get more sparse doesn't hurt either). Everything Pip and the reader thought they knew is flipped on its head, and if the dream/memory world requires some suspension of disbelief, it's such an immersive, exciting and visually stunning experience that you'll find yourself not caring (that much) about that. I'm still salty about certain...misguided parental behaviours (to put it mildly) and Pip's acceptation of them, and I'm not a fan of the unnecessarily long epilogue that causes the story to fizzle out, at least to an extent (I mean everything that comes after the climax, not the Epilogue proper); but I came for the dreamscape/memoryscape, and I have no complaints about that. Brilliant.

Note: as a rule, I review every book that I rate 4 stars and above in full, unless it's a novella or an anthology. But I didn't want to go in too deep about this one to avoid spoilers, and it felt easy to summarise its contents (and my opinions) in a few sentences, so I took the mini-review route.

So, have you read/are you planning to read any of the above? And if you have, what do you think of them? Do you post mini reviews? Do you like to read them?