JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

Something Wilder by Christina Lauren

Lily has never forgotten the man that got away . . . but she certainly hasn’t forgiven him either!

As the daughter of a notorious treasure hunter, Lily makes ends meet using her father’s coveted hand-drawn maps, guiding tourists on fake treasure hunts through the canyons of Utah. When the man she once loved walks back into her life with a motley crew of friends, ready to hit the trails, Lily can’t believe her eyes. Frankly, she’d like to take him out into the wilderness – and leave him there.

Leo wants nothing more than to reconnect with his first and only love. Unfortunately, Lily is all business: it’s never going to happen. But when the trip goes horribly and hilariously wrong, the group wonders if maybe the legend of the hidden treasure wasn’t a gimmick after all. Alone under the stars in the isolated and dangerous mazes of the Canyonlands, Leo and Lily must decide whether they’ll risk their lives, and their hearts, on the adventure of a lifetime . . .

Set in the Utah wilderness, Christina Lauren’s Something Wilder brings two former lovers back together as they hunt long-lost treasure in the middle of remote desert.

In the prologue we meet 19-year-old Lily, painfully in love with her boyfriend Leo and set to take over her treasure-hunting father’s ranch. But then Leo leaves, her father sells the ranch and leaves her in financial ruin, and Lily is forced to chase alternate dreams. Now, ten years later, Lily is leading treasure hunting expeditions for tourists where she runs into Leo again.

“Leo felt like he’d slept crammed in a box, but despite the interminable travel for whatever Wild West adventures might lie ahead, Bradley looked entirely untouched. For a man wearing leather driving shoes and a cashmere sweater, he was surprisingly game for the great outdoors.”

The authors do well to keep tension building and the stakes raised – not every character is who they seem, and soon the treasure hunt claims a life. Lily and Leo are soon racing through the Utah wilderness trying to uncover the lost treasure before others do.

Lily’s connection with her late father Duke Wilder is a strong point in the novel – she feels she owes him this last adventure, and hopefully by discovering the treasure she’ll be able to buy back the ranch that she loves so much. Lily’s relationship with her late father is one of the strengths of the novel, and something I connected with a lot more than the relationship between her and Leo.

In saying that, the connection between Lily and Leo will please romance readers, as the two are forced to work together when their treasure hunt turns deadly. They will be forced to confront what happened ten years earlier, as the two come to realise the mistakes they made when their former relationship ended. Whilst their connection isn’t perhaps as strong as other romance novels, there is a lot of passion there that will draw a romance reader in.

“She hadn’t been kidding. The heat of the day had sapped the riders of any remaining enthusiasm by the time they finally reached camp. Ace’s shadow stretched long across the ground, distorted by pinon pine and scraggly patches of juniper that thrived there in the arid soil.”

The nature of the book did seem to jump around a bit, and it ended up being a story I wasn’t quite expecting after assessing the cover and blurb on the jacket. What started as a romance ended up being a high-stakes thriller through the wilderness, which soon took over as the main plot point. Overall, the structure of the novel felt a bit jarring.

Additionally, there were some elements of the book that felt forced and caricature. In particular, the character of Terry, whose dialogue didn’t read naturally and whose actions seemed stereotypical.

“Leo had never wished he could fly, but he did just then. There was something about the canyon that made him want to explore, to swoop from the top of one red rock pillar to another and down into the literal maze of intersecting slots. It was both exquisite and sinister.”

Recommended for readers of romance fiction and adventurous rom-coms. Readership skews female, 25+

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Something Wilder
Christina Lauren
May 2022
Hachette Book Publishers

The Two Lost Mountains by Matthew Reilly

Against all the odds, Jack West Jr found the Three Secret Cities but at a heartbreaking cost. His beloved daughter Lily, it appeared, was slaughtered by Sphinx in a cruel ancient ritual.

With his rivals far ahead of him, Jack must now get to one of the five iron mountains – two of which have never been found – and perform a mysterious feat known only as ‘The Fall’.

Although what is this object on the moon that is connected to it?

Amid all this, Jack will discover that a new player has entered the race, a general so feared by the four legendary kingdoms they had him locked away in their deepest dungeon.

Only now this general has escaped and he has a horrifying plan of his own…

Matthew Reilly’s The Two Lost Mountains is the sixth and second-last novel in the Jack West series, a rollicking, fast-paced, energised adventure series for adults.

In The Two Lost Mountains, the penultimate book in the series, Captain Jack West undertakes tasks and quests to hunt the labyrinth. Additionally, when the villain Sphinx steals the Siren bells that have disastrous effect on locals, Jack West races against the clock to defeat an unstoppable enemy force.

This latest installment will please loyal fans of the series. You’ll once again meet the familiar cast of characters you’ve come to love in the previous five books, and once again Matthew Reilly has thrust them into a high-intensity environment that tests their resolve.

“Jack wanted to retrieve some ancient texts and files he kept in a bio-secure vault there. In particular, he was after a collection of documents related to his very first mission with Lily, the one involving the Great Pyramid at Giza and the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.”

Readers will find themselves enthralled by the well-researched, rich history of the story, as well as the unpredictable twists on ancient mythology.

Stylistically, the plot maintains the interest of the reader. The dialogue is consistently realistic and relatable, the surprises unforeseen, and with each passing chapter the reader will find themselves enraptured by the storytelling.

“Moving quickly by the light of a small flashlight, he wended his way down several dark passageways, moving ever deeper into the ancient prison until at last he came to the innermost dungeon of the whole ghastly place.”

Admittedly, the pacing in The Two Lost Mountains could’ve benefited from being slower at times. A lot of scenes are truncated and punchy, and everything races along so fast that there’s not always enough description or details. You don’t always need this, but the novel would’ve helped to have a bit more of this embedded within.

“Lily saw the reactions immediately. A garbage truck beneath her veered off the road and slammed into a building. Cars collided on the ring road. The buses on the boulevards crashed into light poles, traffic lights and shopfronts. Lily watched in helpless horror.”

Fans of this series will be satisfied with the last installment. Now all we have to do is wait for the final one.

Recommended for fans of thriller, mystery, action and adventure. Readership skews male 14+.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Two Lost Mountains
Matthew Reilly
October 2020
Pan Macmillan Publishers

The Cull by Tony Park

One mission… countless enemies.

Former mercenary Sonja Kurtz is hired by business tycoon Julianne Clyde-Smith to head an elite squad. Their aim: to take down Africa’s top poaching kingpins and stop at nothing to save its endangered wildlife.

But as the body count rises, it becomes harder for Sonja to stay under the radar as she is targeted by an underworld syndicate known as The Scorpions.

When her love interest, safari guide and private investigator Hudson Brand, is employed to look into the death of an alleged poacher at the hands of Sonja’s team, she is forced to ask herself if Julianne’s crusade has gone too far.

From South Africa’s Kruger National Park to the Serengeti of Tanzania, Sonja realises she is fighting a war on numerous fronts, against enemies known and unknown.

So who can Sonja really trust?

The Cull is a heart-racing thriller from former army officer and bestselling author Tony Park — this is his 14th novel and once again he’s transported a real-life ‘wildlife war’ onto the pages of a novel.

This is the third novel with protagonist Sonja Kurtz, although I haven’t read the first two (The Delta and An Empty Coast) and I was able to read this book just fine, so The Cull definitely works as a standalone novel.

Sonja is resourceful, intelligent, observant and equipped to handle everything that she comes across in the African wilderness. She’s in Africa training women in an Anti-Poaching unit and they are ambushed by well-armed poachers. Two women in the team end up dead.

“Paterson watched the others. The TANAPA ranger, a young man, looked shaken. Ezekial, the preacher’s son, deliberately avoided eye contact with him and strode away. Tema walked with the fluid gait and cold stare of a leopard slinking through the long grass.”

Afterwards, wealthy businesswoman Julianne Clyde-Smith meets with Sonja and offers her a job — she wants to take down the poaching kingpins that are overtaking the African wildlife. She wants to find out who is at the top of these organisations and destroy them from the source. But once Sonja accepts the job and employs an exclusive team to help her, she realises that there’s a lot more to this job than Julianne let on. The team are suddenly entangled in a dangerous and deadly war between them and a poaching mob named The Scorpions.

“This wasn’t Sonja’s fight but her people were under fire. She could see Ezekiel lying on the ground, frantically pulling clubs from Julianne Clyde-Smith’s golf bag.”

Sonja is a fantastic protagonist. She’s really skilled and trustworthy, and she leads her team with strength and determination. At the same time, Sonja is a bit flawed. She can be a bit awkward, and she’s in a sort-of relationship with Hudson Brand and she really loves him but doesn’t act accordingly sometimes. She jumps to conclusions and makes assumptions and for a while it’s hard for the relationship to stay stable.

“Sonja sighed. She really had made a mess of this. She regretted bringing Mario onto the team, and what had gone on between them, but she was sure he would be enough of a gentleman not to put her on the spot. She had made this bed and would have to lie in it, with both of these handsome dark-haired men.”

There are plenty of sub plots throughout the novel to keep the reader engaged and entertained. The side characters are just an intriguing as Sonja, and I really enjoyed reading this book. It’d be a great Father’s Day gift, especially if your dad reads crime or thriller novels like James Patterson.

“Hudson left his camera and made for a stone pillar supporting the terrace roof and ducked behind it. Three men, each wearing a balaclava and armed with an AK-47, burst out into the restraint terrace. ‘Everybody down.’
People screamed.
The man who had given the order pointed his rifle at a family.”

Finally, Tony Park does a fantastic job of describing the African wildlife. His prose is rich with detailed description and imagery, and the reader can easily imagine everything that’s happening even if he/she has never been to Africa before.

I’d recommend The Cull to lovers of crime, thriller and adventure novels. It’s heavily embedded in African wildlife and the politics of poaching in the wilderness, so you’d have to be interested in reading about that or this may not be the book for you.

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Cull
Tony Park
October 2017
Pan Macmillan Publishers

The City of Secret Rivers by Jacob Sager Weinstein

An exciting subterranean London adventure, the first in a middle-grade trilogy.

Hyacinth Hayward has recently arrived from America and is having difficulty adjusting to her new surroundings, especially being in the sole company of her eccentric mother. Everything feels strange. Very strange. And it gets stranger the day she accidentally unleashes the power of a secret river running through London. To prevent a second Great Fire, Hyacinth needs to retrieve a single, magically charged drop of water from somewhere in the city sewer system. Along the way she encounters an eclectic cast of characters – the shambling, monstrous Saltpetre Men who kidnap her mother, the Toshers who battle for control of magical artefacts and a giant pig with whom she has a tea party. The clock is ticking – will she figure out who to trust?

The City of Secret Rivers is fun to read, with mad cap adventures and a fast-paced invitation down into the depths of London’s underground rivers.

The author actually did a lot of research whilst writing this book, which he talks about in the Author’s Note. The book features a lot of illustrations throughout the pages, which I think kids would love.

“During the creepiest and most disgusting day of my entire life, I thought I had handled everything pretty calmly, all things considered. But now there were rats swarming over my body, and all I could do was shriek really intelligent things like ‘Aaaaaaaa’ or ‘GET OFF GET OFF GETOFFGETOFFGETOFF’
The rats didn’t listen.”

The protagonist is a sassy, fast-talking young girl who embarks on the crazy journey under London to save her mother.

This book is supposed to be for children aged 9-12 but I definitely feel like it wouldn’t be suitable for some kids who fall into that lower age bracket. Some of the things that happen in the book (one character tries to kill another by slitting their throat) seem a little too much for young children, and I thought those parts of the novel should’ve either been diluted or cut out completely. Additionally, I feel like children’s novels should contain character names that are easy to pronounce. I’m an adult and I have absolutely no idea how to pronounce Hyacinth or Oaroboarus. Surely kids might struggle as well?

I think children who are avid readers will love this book, because they’ll stick with it to find out what happens to Hyacinth’s mother. But for children who struggle with reading, I don’t think this is the book to give them.

“I had never really thought much about what kind of spiral staircase I prefer, but as we got higher and higher, I started thinking about it more and more. Some spiral staircases have walls on both sides. Those, I decided, are the right kind.”

I felt like this story was too chaotic — too disjointed and fast-paced. I understand some kids might find this exciting, but so much was happening that I couldn’t quite take the time to understand or appreciate the characters. Everything was moving so fast and there were so many things being thrown at the reader in each chapter, that I felt a little lost throughout the book and the characters weren’t really that memorable. I got the end of the book and most of the plot was lost on me, and I didn’t feel overly attached to any of the main characters.

I think Jacob Weinstein has done a good job of bringing together a unique storyline, I just wish he’d taken out some of the ‘twists’ and ‘adventures’ and filled the book with more characterisation and depth.

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The City of Secret Rivers
Jacob Sager Weinstein
August 2017
Walker Books Australia