JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

Friend Request by Laura Marshall

Maria Weston wants to be friends. But Maria Weston’s dead. Isn’t she?

1989. When Louise first notices the new girl who has mysteriously transferred late into their senior year, Maria seems to be everything Louise’s other friends aren’t. Authentic. Funny. Brash. Within just a few days, Maria and Louise are on their way to becoming fast friends.

2016. Louise receives a heart-stopping email: Maria Weston wants to be friends on Facebook. Long-buried memories quickly rise to the surface: Those first days of their budding friendship; cruel decisions made and dark secrets kept; the night that would change all their lives forever.

Louise has always known that if the truth ever came out, she could stand to lose everything. Her job. Her son. Her freedom. Maria’s sudden reappearance threatens it all, and forces Louise to reconnect with everyone with whom she’d severed ties in order to escape the past. But as she tries to piece together exactly what happened that night, Louise discovers there’s more to the story than she ever knew. To keep her secret, Louise must first uncover the whole truth, before what’s known to Maria-or whoever is pretending to be her-is known to all.

Friend Request is Laura Marshall’s debut psychological thriller — it’s told in dual timelines and switches back and forth between 1989 and 2016.

In the present, Louise receives a friend request on Facebook from Maria Weston, a high school classmate who died twenty-five years ago (although her body was never found). Louise is shook, but she’s also feeling deeply guilty because of things that transpired in high school in 1989. The reader learns early on that Louise didn’t treat Maria well in school, and more importantly, Louise feels responsible for Maria’s death.

“I have lived the last twenty-seven years in the shadow of what we did, of what I did. Of course my life has carried on — I have studied and worked, shopped and cooked; I’ve been a friend, a daughter, a wife, a mother. Yet all the time, in the back of my mind, this one unforgivable act has loomed — squashed, squeezed, parcelled, but always there.”

Louise is a single mother to four-year-old Henry; she was married to her high school classmate Sam, but the two split up when Henry was two and now Sam is remarried with a new child. Things seem tense between the two, and Louise is trying to keep the relationship as pleasant as possible, but deep down she is still hurt that Sam cheated on her and then left her for the woman he was having an affair with.

This book feels very current because of how dominant social media is to the storyline. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the premise is quite absurd, but it’s still a good read. It’s still thrilling and an absolute page-turner.

I really thought I had a solid theory about the ending of the book, but I was completely wrong. I was actually genuinely surprised by the twist at the end, and in some reviews people say they saw it coming, but I definitely didn’t.

“I tend to divide the people I meet, or certainly those of my own age, into two broad categories: those who are like me, and those who aren’t. I was fascinated if a little disgusted by this new information about someone who (on my admittedly limited acquaintance with her) had seemed firmly in my category.”

There is one thing about this novel that I didn’t particularly enjoy. Every so often, there’s a chapter in the book written in italics. It’s unclear whose point of view these chapters are written from, but there’s definitely an ominous danger to them. You feel like these chapters are key to the twist at the end of the book, but you can’t quite grasp the answer. After I’d finished reading the novel, I went back and re-read these particular chapters and thought that they probably weren’t needed. I could certainly see some hints dropped in, but I felt like those italic chapters detracted from the plot and stalled the story too much.

“Some days she feels like a prisoner in her own home. There’s no reason she can’t go out, of course. Nobody could tell from simply looking at her. But on days like today, it feels as though someone has peeled back a layer of skin, leaving her face red raw, offering no protection from the elements.”

Friend Request illustrates to readers that we are actually really vulnerable online. We post all about our lives, and we allow people to see things about us that we may not choose to tell them in an everyday face to face setting. This is a chilling, engaging read but it’s also a social commentary on how much we expose ourselves online to strangers.

I’d recommend this to crime fiction fans and also anyone who has an online presence. Readers who don’t have social media may not understand some of the references, but the underlying plot of this book is the disappearance and (presumed) death of Maria Weston and I think most readers will enjoy playing the guessing game.

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

Friend Request
Laura Marshall
July 2017
Hachette Book 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

Hunger by Roxane Gay

From the bestselling author of Bad Feminist: a searingly honest memoir of food, weight, self-image, and learning how to feed your hunger while taking care of yourself.

In her phenomenally popular essays and long-running Tumblr blog, Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and body, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As a woman who describes her own body as “wildly undisciplined,” Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care. In Hunger, she explores her own past—including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life—and brings readers along on her journey to understand and ultimately save herself.

With the bracing candor, vulnerability, and power that have made her one of the most admired writers of her generation, Roxane explores what it means to learn to take care of yourself: how to feed your hungers for delicious and satisfying food, a smaller and safer body, and a body that can love and be loved—in a time when the bigger you are, the smaller your world becomes.

Hunger is a memoir that is unapologetic and searingly honest, and evokes heartbreak, admiration and respect from its readers. Roxane Gay is a brilliant memoirist, pulling apart her life in carefully selected sections to allow the reader to delve into her life and better understand how she has become who she has become.

People might notice many things about Roxane – she’s talented, intelligent, honest and brave. But at the same time, Roxane acknowledges that people always notice her weight. Roxane acknowledges that she is morbidly obese, and she is also very tall at 6 foot 3 inches. In Hunger, Roxane wants readers to know that everyone has a story and everyone has a history. Not everyone has come from the same place and not everyone has gone through the same experiences. Roxane’s path has been laid out before us in this book.

“I ate and ate and ate in the hopes that if I made myself big, my body would be safe. I buried the girl I was because she ran into all kinds of trouble. I tried to erase every memory of her, but she is still there, somewhere. . . . I was trapped in my body, one that I barely recognized or understood, but at least I was safe.”

When Roxane was 12, she was the victim of a horrific gang rape at the hands of her boyfriend and his mates. Roxane didn’t know how to come to terms with what happened with her, and she kept the rape a secret for years. She dealt with the assault by eating. She turned to food as comfort.

Hunger oozes a punctual, academic tone. Roxane focus on events and key moments more so than her feelings or emotions about those said events. Roxane is stating what happened to her and how that effected her. She is telling the reader about the key moments in her life, and how they became a catalyst for the later events in her life.

“I am shoved in public spaces, as if my fat inures me from pain and/or as if I deserve pain, punishment for being fat. People step on my feet. They brush and bump against me. They run straight into me. I am highly visible, but I am regularly treated like I am invisible. My body receives no respect or consideration or care in public spaces.”

What happened to Roxane was awful, and I think it’d be really difficult to find someone who read Roxane’s story and didn’t feel heartbroken for her. How she felt afterwards was equally as hard to read about. In a later chapter, Roxane talks about how her boyfriend at the time (who was the ringleader) now has a high-paying, executive job and sometimes she looks him up online to check up on him.

An underlying element of this book that builds and builds quite subtly is Roxane’s determination and passion for writing. Even when she was at her darkest, she would spend hours at her computer writing stories and submitting them. Even when she had no money and no job and no prospects, she was working on her writing. It was actually really inspiring to read about that in her story. Amidst all the horror in her life, she still had the drive to write. There was still something there helping her and pushing her to succeed.

“For so long, I closed myself off from everything and everyone. Terrible things happened and I had to shut down to survive. I was cold, I’ve been told. I often write stories about women who are perceived as cold and resent that perception. I write these women because I know what it’s like to have so much warmth roiling beneath the skin’s surface, ready to be found.”

Hunger is brilliant. It’s so brave and so honest, but it’s also a fantastic read. I finished the book so quickly because of how engrossed I was in Roxane’s story. I really can’t fault this. PLEASE go buy this.

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

Hunger
Roxane Gay
June 2017
Hachette Book Publishers

The Shark Club by Anna Kidd Taylor

On a summer day in 1988, two extraordinary things happen to twelve-year-old Maeve Donnelly. First, she is kissed by Daniel, the boy of her dreams. Then, she is attacked by a blacktip shark.

Eighteen years later, Maeve is a world-travelling marine biologist studying and swimming with the very animals that once threatened her life. Maeve is fearless in the water. On land, however, Maeve is haunted by painful memories, and indecisive about the path her life will take. When she returns to her childhood home on the small island off Florida’s coast where she grew up, she finds that her twin brother may be about to make it big as novelist, using her love life as his jumping-off point.

Will she confront her feelings about her brother’s betrayal – and forgive her childhood sweetheart, Daniel, the missteps of their youth? Or will she dive headlong back into her research and open her heart to Nicholas, the handsome colleague who shares her passion for the ocean?

The Shark Club is a bittersweet story about the power of forgiveness and the promise of true love. Ann Kidd Taylor is a talented writer, with beautiful imagery and description and a real knack for evoking certain feelings and emotions out of the reader.

“Tucking away a long strand of hair that floated in front of my scuba mask, I kicked through the blue-green waters of Bimini on the last day of my research term, keeping watch for Sylvia, a five-foot, four-year-old lemon shark I’d named for oceanographer Sylvia Earle.”

The book is part romance but also part mystery, when someone on the small island is running a shark finning operation and Maeve is determined to find out who it is. There’s definitely a bit of environmental activism coming through in the book, but not the ‘beat you over the head’ kind of activism where you feel like the author is preaching at you.

“It happened near here, didn’t it?” he asked.
‘Less than ten miles. A hundred sharks were slaughtered for their fins, and I’ve heard nothing about an investigation and only one news report – a TV reporter asked some guy on the beach about it and he basically said the best shark was a dead one. This is what we’re up against.’

The Shark Club is rich with description and setting, and Ann Kidd Taylor captures the world of underwater animals wonderfully. It’s clear that she’s done her research.

Most of the characters in the book are flawed. Maeve can’t stick up for herself when she needs to, and lets old feeling resurface. And her brother just floats between jobs and doesn’t have the drive to really stick it out or put enough effort in.

I do have a couple of pet peeves about the book. At only 274 pages, Ann Kidd Taylor doesn’t allow the reader to really understand all of the characters. There felt like gaps in the story and the plot moves a little too quickly.

“He walked toward me and didn’t stop until he was kissing me. Everything came back with strange suddenness. Memories, the old feelings, the believing, the wanting. And then a sort of deja vu.”

I found it a little unrealistic that Daniel’s daughter would have such a keen interest in sharks and would therefore bond so heavily with Maeve. I also found it unrealistic that Maeve would feel like she has to be friends with this young girl (she really should’ve told Daniel to stick it). And finally, it seemed awfully convenient that Hazel’s mother had recently just died.

I would have preferred it if Nicholas didn’t exist in the novel at all and instead, Hazel’s mother did. I think it would’ve made for a better love triangle and a more engaging power dynamic. After all, Nicholas is gone for most of the book anyway so he’s not there long enough for the reader to really get to know him. It doesn’t make us want to fight for him when Maeve has to decide which guy to stay with.

The Shark Club feels a bit like literary chick-lit, so I’d recommend this book to those of you who love a romance story with a bit of mystery on the side.

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

The Shark Club
Ann Kidd Taylor
June 2017
Hachette Book Publishers

The Ones That Disappeared by Zana Fraillon

Kept by a ruthless gang, three children manage to escape from slavery. But freedom isn’t just waiting on the outside.

Separated, scared and looking after a small child, Esra will do whatever she can to reunite with her friend Miran, who was captured by the police – the police who she mustn’t trust.

Hiding in the shadows of the forest, Esra is found by a local boy, a boy with his own story. Together they will create a man out of mud. A man who will come to life and lead them through a dark labyrinth of tunnels until they finally have the courage the step above ground. Until they finally have the courage to speak their story. Until they finally have the courage to be free.

The Ones that Disappeared is the latest YA novel by the Carnegie-shortlisted author Zana Fraillon. It’s a powerful tale about three trafficked Syrian children searching for freedom and hope. Across the world, millions of children are the victims of human trafficking. Zana takes an issue that people no doubt think is ‘far away’ and brings it into our hands. The book is set in Australia.

‘Be careful girl,’ he said, his voice growling like Orlando’s dogs. ‘Most people won’t tolerate a mouth like that. Better hope I don’t tell Orlando he needs to shape you up. Better hope I don’t tell Orlando he should sell you on. I know people who would pay a good price for a girl like you.’ Then he jammed my face into the bricks and held it there, watching.

This book follows three trafficked children: Esra, Miran and Isa. They have done different types of jobs since leaving their families and their home, and they’ve often suffered beatings if their work was not deemed to be of an acceptable standard.

Their job is to take care of opium plans, but then something goes wrong — a fire starts and the police turn up and Miran gets captured. Esra and Isa run away along the river, taking shelter in a cave.

“I move back to the wall and pull Isa over me, my arms wrapping him tight. I look at Skeet again, his face burning into my brain. His toad opens an eye and stares straight back. I won’t tell him, this boy, this Skeet, that when he talked of his circus, filled with toads, it made me remember.”

Zana’s writing is poetic and lyrical, with flowing sentences and brief but realistic dialogue. It’s a short read, despite the topic that the book explores. There’s a bit of magical realism in the book. Esra and Isa meet a young boy – Skeet – who is ignored by his alcoholic mother, and the three of them craft out a Riverman from things they find along the bank. And then the next day, that Riverman is real and he leads them down into the tunnels of the town in an effort to save Miran from their captors.

This is a book about survival and bravery, but also about hope and courage. Esra and Isa are desperate for freedom and Zana shows us that it’s worth fighting for what you want, even if what you’re fighting for is something that is a basic human right. And Skeet is searching for something more. At times, it feels like he’s searching for family. And at other times you feel like all he wants is love and someone looking out for him.

This book is daring because young audiences may struggle to grasp the scope of these experiences in the world, however, Zana has done a wonderful job of taking the issue of child slavery and presenting it to readers in an accessible way. There are some fantasy/magic realism elements to this book, particularly with the Riverman who comes to life. But the book is also very literary and poetic. This book gives voice to the often forgotten victims of child slavery here in Australia.

I stand up, my hand on Isa’s shoulder and look down at the voice. He’s old. A white beard, knotted and dirty, and a jacket wrapped tight protecting him from the rain. He’s standing with his hands on his hips, staring at us with hard in his eyes.

The Ones That Disappeared does drag a little bit in the middle, with slow pacing and some stagnant conversation that allows the reader’s attention to slow. But Zana is not glamourising anything and her intention is to shine a light on trafficking and how scary and dangerous it is for these children.

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

The Ones That Disappeared
Zana Fraillon
June 2017
Hachette Book Publishers