JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

Malorie by Josh Malerman

In the old world there were many rules. In the new world there is only one: don’t open your eyes.

In the seventeen years since the ‘creatures’ appeared, many people have broken that rule. Many have looked. Many have lost their minds, their lives, their loved ones.

In that time, Malorie has raised her two children – Olympia and Tom – on the run or in hiding. Now nearly teenagers, survival is no longer enough. They want freedom.

When a census-taker stops by their refuge, he is not welcome. But he leaves a list of names – of survivors building a future beyond the darkness – and on that list are two names Malorie knows.

Two names for whom she’ll break every rule, and take her children across the wilderness, in the hope of becoming a family again…

Josh Malerman’s Malorie is the sequel to the cultural sensation-turned-Netflix-movie Birdbox, starring Sandra Bullock.

In this follow up, Malorie is even more cautious and paranoid than when we last saw her. She’s had seventeen years to perfect her methods of survival. She’s got two teenage children now and even though they’re old enough to look after themselves, they’re teenagers and they don’t always obey the rules. They don’t remember the world before the creatures — sometimes they’re too trusting, and they don’t always understand why they can’t look outside at the real world.

Malorie needs to learn to trust her children. She needs to learn to loosen the reigns a little. She’s hyper-cautious and strict, and she doesn’t trust easily, and whilst it’s easy to understand her characterisation, her son Tom in particular grows quite resentful of her smothering nature over the course of the novel.

“Malorie thinks of Gary. It makes sense. A man arrives at the camp. He knocks. He speaks from the other side of the door. All good intentions, of course. Until you let him in, of course. Then he makes friends with the others, ingratiates himself to the point where your own kids turn on you, and presto, you’ve welcomed an old-world mad-man into your life.”

It’s fascinating reading this whilst living through a pandemic. You can suddenly relate to the characters’ fear of the unknown, the scepticism, the uncertainty and the doubt. The blindfolds feel strangely close to masks, and remembering myself watching the film — pre COVID-19 — with no idea of what was to come to the world, is a strange thought.

Malorie is a bit of a balancing act — road trip, survival story, family drama, teenage angst. There are so many different elements to the story and Josh does a really fantastic job of juggling them all and maintaining interest from the reader. There are lots of twists and turns, plot points I didn’t see coming. Although admittedly, there are some moments where Tom goes from being an understandably rebellious teenager, to being just that little bit too annoying and unlikable.

“Tom is stricken by how alive Malorie looks. Her eyes appear bright memories, realisations, decisions. The bag beside her is full. She wears a hoodie and long pants, gloves and boots. In one hand is the blindfold she just removed.”

Whilst you can read Malorie without having read or watched Birdbox, I’d advise you familiarise yourself with its predecessor. It would make for a richer and more enjoyable experience when reading Malorie. There are frequent mentions to events from the previous book, particularly surrounding the character Gary, and I do think readers who are unfamiliar with Birdbox will get confused easily.

“She thinks of Camp Yadin and how safe they were. She can almost feel the texture of the rope in her gloved hands, rope connecting each building, one of which housed canned goods, another with a garden beside it. She sees herself, waking there, walking there, living there, safe. She hears herself asking the teens what might be outside.”

Whilst the ending of the book is satisfactory and satisfying, I felt like the pacing was inconsistent. The book moves at a slow but tense pace, drawing the reader in and keeping them engaged throughout. But the ending is incredibly fast and rushed. I almost couldn’t believe Malerman was going to wrap up the story in such a short amount of pages, and yet, he did. I wish some more time had been spent on the ending.

Highly recommended, although do read or watch Birdbox first.

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

Malorie
Josh Malerman
August 2020
Hachette Book Publishers Australia

Recursion by Blake Crouch

What if someone could rewrite your entire life?
‘My son has been erased.’

Those are the last words the woman tells Barry Sutton, before she leaps from the Manhattan rooftop. Deeply unnerved, Barry begins to investigate her death, only to learn that this wasn’t an isolated case. All across the country, people are waking up to lives different than the ones they fell asleep to. Are they suffering from False Memory Syndrome, a mysterious, new disease that afflicts people with vivid memories of a life they never lived? Or is something far more sinister behind the fracturing of reality all around him?

Miles away, neuroscientist Helena Smith is developing a technology that allows us to preserve our most intense memories, and relive them. If she succeeds, anyone will be able to re-experience a first kiss, the birth of a child, the final moment with a dying parent.

Barry’s search for the truth leads him on an impossible, astonishing journey, as he discovers that Helena’s work has yielded a terrifying gift – the ability not just to preserve memories, but to remake them . . . at the risk of destroying what it means to be human.

Recursion by Blake Crouch is a mind-bending, thrilling novel about memory readjustment, and a technological advancement that allows people to go back in time and rewrite their history and avoid terrible things happening — deaths, divorces, terrorist attacks. But, naturally, something with this much power has its consequences.

There are two main characters in the book. First, in 2018, there’s Barry, an NYPD detective whose marriage crumbled when his daughter was killed in a hit-and-run accident over a decade earlier.

Secondly, in 2007, Helena is a neuroscientist in Palo Alto who is studying memory. Her mother suffers from severe memory loss and Helena wants to invent and develop a chair that will help her. When a stranger appears in her office, he offers her the funding she requires to finish the chair that could help her mum.

“Barry has the tracking software activated on his phone. He has no idea how long he’s been unconscious, but assuming it’s still early Tuesday morning, his absence from work won’t be noticed until late afternoon. In theory, hours from now.”

Part of the intrigue of the book, is waiting to find out how Helena’s inventions in 2007 lead to the plagued False Memory Syndrome in Barry’s 2018. We first meet Barry when he fails to convince a woman not to jump off the top of the building in suicide — she’s a victim of False Memory Syndrome and a few weeks earlier, she woke up to discover all her past memories weren’t real and she was now living an alternate life. She was confused and angry, and lost. She felt so depressed, she committed suicide. Barry investigates this ‘syndrome’ and uncovers a dangerous secret behind the syndrome, and we start to understand how Barry and Helena’s lives will intersect.

This book took me completely by surprise — it hooked me from the first chapter, and kept me absolutely addicted until the last paragraphs. What a wild ride; what a magnificent read.

The technology and the premise drew me in immediately. Memory is the dominant theme in this book and it’s used so well, drawing on the human experience of hindsight and regret and asking readers to imagine a world where you could go back and change something terrible that happened in your life. Regret your marriage? You can erase it!

Recursion is apparently a sequel, although I sensed no evidence of that. I’ve never read Dark Matter, and I adored this book. I’ve been recommending it to just about everyone since I finished it last week.

“Over the last year, this apartment has felt more and more like a prison, but never more so than now. And it occurs to her as hot, angry tears run down her face that it was her own self-destructive ambition that carried her to this moment, and probably the one in 2018.”

Despite a less than impressive cover design, this book is the kind of story I’m interested in. It’s complex, but heartfelt. The characters are fleshed out and original, and the premise is incredibly fascinating, unique and a real page turner.

This book won’t be for everyone, I’ll admit that. It’s about time travel, memory alterations, and at times the back-and-forth between timelines and the complex mathematical nature of it all can get a little overwhelming. You have to have an interest in the fantastical — the imaginary — to love this book. But if that sounds like you, definitely pick this up. Well worth a read.

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

Recursion
Blake Crouch
June 2019
Pan Macmillan Publishers

Unearthed by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner

When Earth intercepts a message from a long-extinct alien race, it seems like the solution the planet has been waiting for. The Undying’s advanced technology has the potential to undo environmental damage and turn lives around, and Gaia, their former home planet, is a treasure trove waiting to be uncovered.

For Jules Addison and his fellow scholars, the discovery of an alien culture offers unprecedented opportunity for study… as long as scavengers like Amelia Radcliffe don’t loot everything first. Mia and Jules’ different reasons for smuggling themselves onto Gaia put them immediately at odds, but after escaping a dangerous confrontation with other scavvers, they form a fragile alliance.

In order to penetrate the Undying temple and reach the tech and information hidden within, the two must decode the ancient race’s secrets and survive their traps. But the more they learn about the Undying, the more their presence in the temple seems to be part of a grand design that could spell the end of the human race…

Unearthed is the first book in a brand new duology by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner, described best as ‘Lara Craft and Indiana Jones teaming up in space’.

I love the setting of this novel, and how fun it was to read. This is an adventure novel set in space, but there’s also a touch of romance in there. Jules and Amelia have great chemistry, growing close over the course of the novel and working together to solve the mystery.

Both Amelia and Jules have troubled history that’s driving them to better understand this ancient alien culture. They meet in the abandoned temples of Planet Gaia — Amelia has illegally gained passage to this planet as a scavenger and she is looking for anything she can sell in order to save her sister. Jules, a young, black English archaeologist, is desperate to find and solve some of the many mysteries that Gaia holds. His father always hypothesised that there were many clues inside Gaia — clues left by the coded messages of the Undying.

“My father’s always told me that my integrity matters more than any other part of me, and he’s shown his over and over, in the face of unbearable pressure, to protect even those who don’t want his protection.”
JULES

This book is filled with plenty of riddles and puzzles, and any reader who loves solving mysteries will devour this book. Anyone who has read Amie & Meagan’s previous series will also love Unearthed. The dialogue and banter between the characters is really fun and hilarious, and the two characters compliment each other really well.

The ending of this book will have you desperate for the sequel— Amie and Meagan have done a stellar job of setting up the characters and their relationship, and drawing the reader in. We become heavily invested in their stories, and the ending of the book (no spoilers!) is such a cliffhanger that the reader will be so excited for Book 2 next year.

“I’m double-checking the bands of my climbing harness and listening with half an ear while Jules talks to himself. Every chance he gets he starts scribbling in his little journal, working through ideas aloud and staring at pictures of glyphs from his wrist unit.”

I loved that Jules and Mia were knowledgable in some really untraditional things for this genre. Physically, they’re not really strong, but they’re both really intelligent and they use things like maths, linguistics and music to solve the puzzles in the temple. It’s quite refreshing to read in this kind of setting and I really enjoyed following along as they solved the mysteries and progressed to the next stage of the puzzle.

“I lead the way for a while. Not every room in this place is a puzzle requiring Jules’ expertise, and while I can’t read the glyphs, I am starting to know what their patterns indicate. Like Jules said, the glyphs are based on math, and once I started to recognise the equation for their language, their simpler instructions – step here, don’t walk there – aren’t hard to translate.”

The plot did unfold in a rather predictable way, at some points. There were some moments where I saw what was coming next, or was unsurprised when particular moments of betrayal happened. I did feel like there could’ve been stronger world building in the book, particularly at the beginning when we first learn that Amelia and Jules are on this alien planet. At times, I felt a bit confused about the connection between this alien planet and Earth. After a while, I just pushed my confusion aside so that I could keep reading.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and I’m really keen to see how the story ends in book two. I recommend this to fans of Amie & Meagan’s, but also YA fans and young readers who love to read thrillers and adventure novels.

Unearthed
Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner
December 2017
Allen & Unwin Publishers

Stray by Rachael Craw

Stray is the sequel to Spark and is the second book in a young adult science fiction trilogy by New Zealand author Rachael Craw.

Stray follows on from where Spark finished. Evie is a Shield: designed to kill in order to protect, but now the Affinity Project have finally come for her as she always feared. Evie is studied, tested on, and lectured on what she can and can’t do. She longs for her boyfriend Jamie and she’s desperate to prove that her brother Aidan is innocent and to clear his name.

The strongest part of this book – and the whole series – is the relationship between Evie and her friends and family. There is wit and humour present in this book, even amongst scenes filled with tension or horror. Kitty is a wonderful character and her and Evie really complement each other well in a scene.

Spark, the first book in the trilogy, felt like it contained a fair bit of info dumping, especially about the world and the technology and the history of Evie’s family. However, in Stray, information was woven into the story seamlessly, with well-written integration and easy-to-understand explanations. I thoroughly enjoyed this book more than Spark, and felt the plot progressed quicker and it was more of an exciting read.

The only negative I have about this book, and it’s slightly nitpicking, is Jamie’s characterisation. I seem to be the only reader who felt he was a little bland, perhaps one dimensional. I felt I couldn’t relate to him or understand him and I doubted Evie and Jamie’s chemistry. Also, there were a few times in the book where I felt like things weren’t explained as clearly as they could’ve and I had to reread certain passages. But this didn’t occur often and events later in the novel usually answered any questions I had.

To anyone who is interested in reading Stray, make sure you’re quite familiar with Spark and have read it – or reread it – recently. When I picked up Stray, it had been a few months since I’d read Spark and I really struggled for the first one hundred pages. That is, until all of the technology and familial relations and problems from the first book came flooding back and I remembered what happened.

I recommend the Spark trilogy to all young adult readers. It’s fast-paced and intriguing and Stray builds upon Spark with lots of action and fighting and danger. More information is uncovered, and more threats become known. Also, Rachel Craw does well to answer some questions for the reader whilst also leaving some things open to make readers eager for book three, Shield.

These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner

These Broken Stars is the first book in a trilogy by duo Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner. A perfect blend of young adult, fantasy, and science fiction, These Broken Stars presents a unique and interesting world. Luxury spaceliner Icarus suddenly plummets from hyperspace into the nearest planet. The main characters, Lilac Laroux and Tarver Merendsen, miraculously survive and must work together to stay alive on this uninhabited, deserted terrain.

Lilac is the daughter of the richest man in the universe and Tarver is just a war hero, but without the recognition he deserves. They bicker, disagree, and they struggle to stand each other. But they have a common goal: survive. And the entire book is shaped around this sole desire.

Amie and Meagan have put two characters together who are very different, and the authors have forced them to work together. They’re in a deserted location with the possibility of death, and the experience changes them. They grow over the course of the novel, and they are fast at observing abnormalities about this strange new world that they’re now trying to survive in. Lilac and Tarver soon realise that something shocking happened here, and they work to uncover it.

The sunlight feels pale and cold, but I know it’s the only thing standing between us and a much bigger problem. A problem we’ll face when the sun starts to sink.

Amie and Meagan have written an engaging, intriguing and well-written novel, filled with diverse characters and beautiful prose. Sometimes the pace seems a little slow, and sometimes Lilac seems too spoilt, but this is necessary. Lilac is like that because of the family she’s from, and the pace of the book sometimes feels slow because they’re the only two people in this terrain and the reader knows something is just around the corner, waiting to appear and challenge the characters.

Lilac and Tarver are authentic and the development of their relationship is realistic. Amie and Meagan have crafter multi-layered characters that propel the story along and give life to the novel. This is just as much a character-driven story as it is a plot-driven story. Lilac is stubborn and defiant, and Tarver is impatient and resourceful. Since they’re the only characters in the story for 90% of it, they held their own in the novel and kept the reader interested.

The prose is very descriptive and the dialogue surprisingly minimal. Amie and Meagan rely on imagery and description and seamless internal dialogue to paint their world, and it’s impossible for the reader to not enjoy this book. It’s wonderful, and it’s a trilogy that I’m very eager to continue!