YA Thrillers Month: Follow Me Down by Tanya Byrne

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Amazon / Barnes & Noble

Author links:

Website / Twitter

*Book Summary*

The sensationally good Tanya Byrne returns with her new novel - a dark, compulsive tale of obsession and betrayal.

When sixteen-year-old Adamma Okomma, a Nigerian diplomat's daughter, arrives at exclusive Crofton College in Wiltshire, she is immediately drawn to beautiful, tempestuous, unpredictable Scarlett Chiltern. Adamma and Scarlett become inseparable - until they fall for the same guy. Soon the battle lines are drawn and Adamma is shunned by Scarlett and her privileged peers. But then Scarlett goes missing and everything takes a darker turn. Adamma always knew that Scarlett had her secrets, but some secrets are too big to keep and this one will change all of their lives for ever.

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*My rating*

MY REVIEW

My first thought upon finishing this was: How am I going to review this? It’s so good, people. And whenever I love a book, I find it difficult to summon the right words to express my admiration. 

When it comes to Follow me Down, I thought the writing was solid, characters felt real, the plot and the mystery kept me intrigued. Trust me, this novel has it all, it’s definitely one of my favorite YA thrillers!

The story takes us to Crofton College in Wiltshire, Adamma’s new boarding school. The author truly captured the atmosphere of a small English village. I felt like I really knew those characters, Adamma’s peers and teachers, you get a sense of the community. There are plenty of characters, but you can easily differentiate them all.

There Adamma meets Scarlet, her new BFF – for whom I didn’t care at all. Her character was a little bit of a pixie dream girl type, however by the end we see she too is just lost.

Adamma, on the other hand, was an awesome protagonist. Strong, intelligent, fierce, she doesn’t take no for an answer. 

Moreover, I loved the fact that she’s Nigerian and there are lots of cultural elements in the novel, I felt I learned something new by reading this book, and that’s always a good thing.

 

The story is told through Before and After chapters, we see Scarlet and Adamma becoming friends, but then they fall apart, all because of a boy. Or so it seems.

There are two mysteries in the novel: first one concerns the attacker/rapist on campus, and second deals with the boy Adamma is seeing.  I loved how his identity is withheld till the very end; first you think it’s obvious, but then you notice how his name is actually never mentioned. Ha! The book kept me on my toes the whole time, I was second-guessing things the whole time, what is Scarlet hiding, who is he, who is the bloody killer?! I had my suspicions but every now and then, the author would throw in something that’d make me doubt myself.

I’m a fan of Tanya Byrne, I’d previously read and loved Heart-Shaped Bruise. The two novels are completely different which just speaks about the author’s amazing artistic abilities. I’ll be reading more from Tanya Byrne that’s for sure!

I can feel it sometimes, at night, when I can’t sleep and I try to remember what it was like to be the girl who thought she could do anything. But then the morning comes and I tell a lie, then another and another. One more and I’ll never feel that light again.

To conclude, Follow Me Down is a gripping story with well-structured plot, believable characters, and the ending which is so fitting and will leave you like this:

xoxo, 

Beatrix

YA Thrillers Month: Delicate Monsters by Stephanie Kuehn

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Author links:

Website / Twitter

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SUMMARY

From the Morris-Award winning author of Charm & Strange, comes a twisted and haunting tale about three teens uncovering dark secrets and even darker truths about themselves.

When nearly killing a classmate gets seventeen-year-old Sadie Su kicked out of her third boarding school in four years, she returns to her family’s California vineyard estate. Here, she’s meant to stay out of trouble. Here, she’s meant to do a lot of things. But it’s hard. She’s bored. And when Sadie’s bored, the only thing she likes is trouble.

Emerson Tate’s a poor boy living in a rich town, with his widowed mother and strange, haunted little brother. All he wants his senior year is to play basketball and make something happen with the girl of his dreams. That’s why Emerson’s not happy Sadie’s back. An old childhood friend, she knows his worst secrets. The things he longs to forget. The things she won’t ever let him.

Haunted is a good word for fifteen-year-old Miles Tate. Miles can see the future, after all. And he knows his vision of tragic violence at his school will come true, because his visions always do. That’s what he tells the new girl in town. The one who listens to him. The one who recognizes the darkness in his past. 

But can Miles stop the violence? Or has the future already been written? Maybe tragedy is his destiny. Maybe it’s all of theirs.

My rating:

REVIEW

The things that we love tell us what we are. – St. Thomas Aquinas

This book is weird as fuck. There’s no other way of putting it. Psychological thriller at its finest. Honestly, I’m not even sure what is this that I’d read, how to categorize it. It’s not for everyone, that’s for sure. Is it for teens? Honestly, I don’t know. Just because characters are teens, does not make a book YA. Yes, sure things are not that graphically described, but sometimes that vagueness makes it even more eerie. 

But there are some people who find comfort in discomfort. In knocking people out of their hamster wheels and setting them free onto the four-lane highway of reality. Look at Sartre. Look at Kierkegaard. Remember what he said? ‘The crowd is untruth.’ Kierkegaard knew. And people like that, like us, we’re the ones the hamsters should fear. Because other people’s fear, it kind of gets us off. 

The title says Delicate Monsters, but trust me, there’s nothing delicate about this book. Characters are the exact opposite of delicate. They’re flawed, disturbed, and utterly fascinating. We have Sadie, who was expelled from boarding school because she tried to kill her classmate. You can see right away, we’re working with crazy here. Then there’s Emerson, who seems pretty normal at first, but boy is he gonna prove you wrong. And finally, we have Miles, Emerson’s younger brother, who always seems to be getting sick. Makes you wonder, what’s wrong with him?! Well, by the end you find out, and it ain’t pretty. 

There was only so much ruin the mind could rationalize. There was only so much badness that could be suppressed for so long. His guilt, on its own, was utterly meaningless - just a showy type of magic that changed nothing because changing nothing was the endgame all along. 

The novel is incredibly well-written; it’s really short, but the story moves slowly, and everything sort of creeps up on you. When I started reading, things seemed normal, and I thought well, this is okay, nothing that disturbing thus far. But, really soon, characters begin to show their true colors. And whether or not you enjoy their ‘colors’ remains the biggest question. 

Sometimes to end things, you had to go back to the beginning. 

xoxo,

Beatrix

YA Thrillers Month!

HI GUYS!

I've decided that in February I want to read more young adult thrillers. I've choosen the following 4 books (maybe 5, I'll see how it goes). Therefore, you can expect reviews of them during the month. I don't know in which order I'll be reading, it will probably be random.

So here they are!

These Shallow Graves by Jennifer Donnelly

Jo Montfort is beautiful and rich, and soon—like all the girls in her class—she’ll graduate from finishing school and be married off to a wealthy bachelor. Which is the last thing she wants. Jo secretly dreams of becoming a writer—a newspaper reporter like the trailblazing Nellie Bly.

Wild aspirations aside, Jo’s life seems perfect until tragedy strikes: her father is found dead. Charles Montfort accidentally shot himself while cleaning his revolver. One of New York City’s wealthiest men, he owned a newspaper and was partner in a massive shipping firm, and Jo knows he was far too smart to clean a loaded gun.

The more Jo uncovers about her father’s death, the more her suspicions grow. There are too many secrets. And they all seem to be buried in plain sight. Then she meets Eddie—a young, brash, infuriatingly handsome reporter at her father’s newspaper—and it becomes all too clear how much she stands to lose if she keeps searching for the truth. Only now it might be too late to stop.


The past never stays buried forever. Life is dirtier than Jo Montfort could ever have imagined, and the truth is the dirtiest part of all.
Goodreads link



Follow Me Down by Tanya Byrne 

When sixteen-year-old Adamma Okomma, a Nigerian diplomat's daughter, arrives at exclusive Crofton College in Wiltshire, she is immediately drawn to beautiful, tempestuous, unpredictable Scarlett Chiltern. Adamma and Scarlett become inseparable - until they fall for the same guy. Soon the battle lines are drawn and Adamma is shunned by Scarlett and her privileged peers. But then Scarlett goes missing and everything takes a darker turn. Adamma always knew that Scarlett had her secrets, but some secrets are too big to keep and this one will change all of their lives for ever.

Goodreads link







Cruel Summer by James Dawson

A year after Janey’s suicide, her friends reunite at a remote Spanish villa, desperate to put the past behind them. However, an unwelcome guest arrives claiming to have evidence that Janey was murdered. When she is found floating in the pool, it becomes clear one of them is a killer. Only one thing is for certain, surviving this holiday is going to be murder…

Goodreads link











Delicate Monsters by Stephanie Kuehn

When nearly killing a classmate gets seventeen-year-old Sadie Su kicked out of her third boarding school in four years, she returns to her family’s California vineyard estate. Here, she’s meant to stay out of trouble. Here, she’s meant to do a lot of things. But it’s hard. She’s bored. And when Sadie’s bored, the only thing she likes is trouble.

Emerson Tate’s a poor boy living in a rich town, with his widowed mother and strange, haunted little brother. All he wants his senior year is to play basketball and make something happen with the girl of his dreams. That’s why Emerson’s not happy Sadie’s back. An old childhood friend, she knows his worst secrets. The things he longs to forget. The things she won’t ever let him.

Haunted is a good word for fifteen-year-old Miles Tate. Miles can see the future, after all. And he knows his vision of tragic violence at his school will come true, because his visions always do. That’s what he tells the new girl in town. The one who listens to him. The one who recognizes the darkness in his past.

But can Miles stop the violence? Or has the future already been written? Maybe tragedy is his destiny. Maybe it’s all of theirs.

Goodreads link

xoxo,

Beatrix