Taste the Books: Review Morsels #35 Lamar Giles, Andrew J. Brandt, Scotto Moore

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 Getaway by Lamar Giles (ARC Review)

★★★

A Black teen and his friends living in a corporate community/utopian enclave surrounded by a crumbling world find themselves and their families to be pawns in a horrible game, and set to uncover the secrets of their alleged paradise and fight its elite, while not even knowing if there's anything left for them outside its walls.

***

Rated 3.5 really.

First off...DISCLAIMER: I requested this title on Edelweiss. Thanks to Scholastic for providing a temporary ecopy. This didn't influence my review in any way.

The Getaway is a compulsively readable post-apocalyptic (or better, apocalypse-adjacent) dystopian thriller with a twist...since neither the main characters (and their families and friends), nor the reader, know to what extent the world outside Karloff Country is crumbling - the only thing the residents know is that they're safe inside the enclave, and are supposed to be grateful and to deem themselves lucky for being there. Everyone both lives and works inside KC, including main character Jay and his friends Zeke and Connie (all Black), while Jay's crush Seychelle (mixed race) is the heir of the Karloff empire, if only her white grandfather can stop despising her long enough to actually pass the baton. Things in KC are subtly (or not so subtly) wrong from the start, but everyone takes them in stride (or more like, do their best to), until shit openly hits the fan, and the racism and classism barely contained under the surface burst in the open in horrible, elite-sanctioned ways (think...our world, only worse. Far worse. For now).
The Getaway is a wake-up call of a book with a friendship-and-family core. A cautionary tale with a thriller edge. An adventure at the end of the world (or of the world as we know it?) with a honest and hopeful, if not bow-tied, ending. Even if the real action only occurs in the last chapters and I didn't fall head-over-heels for the characters (I did like them though!), I enjoyed the story and the message, and I'm sure teens will get a kick (and hopefully a call to action) out of it.

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

Picture Unavailable by Andrew J. Brandt (ARC Review)

★★★

Three 12 y.o. boys investigate a missing classmate whose image inexplicably vanished from every yearbook, while one of their teachers, who lost a friend 24 years before, tries to protect them from the supernatural force who took his peer, the kids' classmate, and a bunch of other middle-graders through the years.

***

First off...DISCLAIMER: this title was up for grabs on NetGalley (in the Read Now section). Thanks to Blue Handle Publishing for providing a temporary ecopy. This didn't influence my review in any way.

Based on the very few info I had access to when I decided to download this book, I was certain that it would be a YA title, with its characters going through memory lane and suddenly realising, while browsing through old yearbooks, that something was off - i.e., an old friend of theirs who had disappeared a few years before had also vanished from each one of them. But that wasn't the case, and Picture Unavailable turned out to be a difficult book to categorise: partly MG, partly adult, which isn't a combo I typically read. Therefore, I'll start by admitting that I'm not the right audience for it, which may have impacted my rating.

I did enjoy the story on the whole, but I would have liked for it to bring something more to the table. Most of the time, I had a strong feeling of déjà vu, though the author did try to weave fresh details into the plot (like the role of the lamp posts and the podcast the kids use as an excuse to interview the supposed witnesses). Some characters (like the old librarian) felt cliche-y. And I was confused about the darkness that predates on children every six years - to me, there wasn't enough substance (no pun intended) to it, or a clear direction for its mythology, which felt all over the place. I was also left with the impression that the ending could have been fleshed out more, not to mention, it didn't explain/resolve the main issue (though the characters seem to think it did) or give me any insight into the supernatural force at play. I understood that the author was trying to convey a message about grief and forgiveness, but it didn't feel consistent with the spooky core of the story. I did like the young protagonists though, and their interactions and inner monologues felt real and far more convincing than the supernatural plot.

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

Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You by Scotto Moore

★★★

A blogger becomes obsessed with the music of a new, mysterious band with ties to his past. The problem is, he isn't the only one - and the truth about the band's lead singer and her agenda might destroy the world as we know it.

***

I'll be honest - I expected something different from this story. Maybe a tongue-in-cheek homage to rock as "the devil's music", or a twist on that trope. YFBCSY is much, much more far-out than that, and though I can commend it for its originality (as far as I know) and I pretty much devoured it (then again, it's only 120 pages long), I'm not sure I "liked" it in the proper sense of the word. Tongue-in-cheek it is, but more like an episode of a sci-fi (or is it supernatural?) comedy series...only with horror. Music, blogging and a passion for both do fuel the story, but in the end, they seem to serve the action and humour more than make a statement about art and the nerds who live and breath it. I thought the writing was neat, though - suited to the humorous vibe of the story but more subdued than the content...Recommended for fans of weird, farcical sci-fantasy fiction with music and fandom in it.

Note: definitive review (due to time commitments, I've decided not to write full-length reviews anymore for short stories, novellas and anthologies, except in special cases or unless they're part of a series).

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?