Hide

 

Hide by Kiersten White                  Suspense/Supernatural Thriller

(from Amazon)  The challenge: Spend a week hiding in an abandoned amusement park and don’t get caught.  The prize: enough money to change everything.  Even though everyone is desperate to win—to seize a dream future or escape a haunting past—Mack is sure she can beat her competitors. All she has to do is hide, and she’s an expert at that.  It’s the reason she’s alive and her family isn’t.  But as the people around her begin disappearing one by one, Mack realizes that this competition is even more sinister than she imagined, and that together might be the only way to survive.  Fourteen competitors. Seven days. Everywhere to hide but nowhere to run.

(My Review)

This is not the book I was hoping it to be.  I was hoping for it to go in one direction and it went in a completely different direction.  I think to say more would give too much away.  I think the premise had sooo much potential.

The Agathas

 

The Agathas by Kathleen Glasgow    Teen & Young Adult/Mystery & Detective Story

(from Amazon)  Last summer, Alice Ogilvie’s basketball-star boyfriend Steve dumped her. Then she disappeared for five days. She's not talking, so where she went and what happened to her is the biggest mystery in Castle Cove. Or it was, at least. But now, another one of Steve’s girlfriends has vanished: Brooke Donovan, Alice’s ex–best friend. And it doesn’t look like Brooke will be coming back. . .  Enter Iris Adams, Alice’s tutor. Iris has her own reasons for wanting to disappear, though unlike Alice, she doesn’t have the money or the means. That could be changed by the hefty reward Brooke’s grandmother is offering to anyone who can share information about her granddaughter’s whereabouts. The police are convinced Steve is the culprit, but Alice isn’t so sure, and with Iris on her side, she just might be able to prove her theory.  In order to get the reward and prove Steve’s innocence, they need to figure out who killed Brooke Donovan. And luckily Alice has exactly what they need—the complete works of Agatha Christie. If there’s anyone that can teach the girls how to solve a mystery it’s the master herself. But the town of Castle Cove holds many secrets, and Alice and Iris have no idea how much danger they're about to walk into.

(My Review)

I enjoyed this YA mystery.  This was a solid mystery, with a "friend"-group trying to solve the murder of a classmate.  If you liked A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, you'll like this one.

Daisy Darker

 

Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney   Mystery, Thriller, Suspense

(from Amazon)  After years of avoiding each other, Daisy Darker’s entire family is assembling for Nana’s 80th birthday party in Nana’s crumbling gothic house on a tiny tidal island. Finally back together one last time, when the tide comes in, they will be cut off from the rest of the world for eight hours.  The family arrives, each of them harboring secrets. Then at the stroke of midnight, as a storm rages, Nana is found dead. And an hour later, the next family member follows…  Trapped on an island where someone is killing them one by one, the Darkers must reckon with their present mystery as well as their past secrets, before the tide comes in and all is revealed.  With a wicked wink to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, Daisy Darker’s unforgettable twists will leave listeners reeling.

(My Review)  This book was so atmospheric and had me guessing until the very end.  I loved the whole Agatha Christie feel to this book, as well as the isolated setting.  This was a very good read.

The Weight of Blood

 

The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson  Teen and Young Adult/Thriller & Suspense/Multicultural Fiction

(from Amazon)  When Springville residents—at least the ones still alive—are questioned about what happened on prom night, they all have the same explanation . . . Maddy did it.  An outcast at her small-town Georgia high school, Madison Washington has always been a teasing target for bullies. And she's dealt with it because she has more pressing problems to manage. Until the morning a surprise rainstorm reveals her most closely kept secret: Maddy is biracial. She has been passing for white her entire life at the behest of her fanatical white father, Thomas Washington.  After a viral bullying video pulls back the curtain on Springville High's racist roots, student leaders come up with a plan to change their image: host the school's first integrated prom as a show of unity. The popular white class president convinces her Black superstar quarterback boyfriend to ask Maddy to be his date, leaving Maddy wondering if it's possible to have a normal life.  But some of her classmates aren't done with her just yet. And what they don't know is that Maddy still has another secret . . . one that will cost them all their lives. 

(My Review)

Holy moly, this book was good! This modern-day Carrie retelling was told in a way that only Tiffany D. Jackson could tell it. I will be thinking about this one for a long time.

Later

 

Later by Stephen King                 Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

(from Amazon)  SOMETIMES GROWING UP MEANS FACING YOUR DEMONS.  The son of a struggling single mother, Jamie Conklin just wants an ordinary childhood. But Jamie is no ordinary child. Born with an unnatural ability his mom urges him to keep secret, Jamie can see what no one else can see and learn what no one else can learn. But the cost of using this ability is higher than Jamie can imagine – as he discovers when an NYPD detective draws him into the pursuit of a killer who has threatened to strike from beyond the grave. 

(My Review) 

This book reminded me of the movie The Sixth Sense.    King takes a kid with that same ability and expands the possibilities.  This poor kid is being manipulated, and used by others for their own gains.  It's a short, but chilling read.  

Meddling Kids

 

Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero     Horror Fiction/Humorous

(from Amazon) With raucous humor and brilliantly orchestrated mayhem, Meddling Kids subverts teen detective archetypes like the Hardy Boys, the Famous Five, and Scooby-Doo and delivers an exuberant and wickedly entertaining celebration of horror, love, friendship, and many-tentacled, interdimensional demon spawn.  Summer 1977. The Blyton Summer Detective Club (of Blyton Hills, a small mining town in Oregon's Zoinx River Valley) solved their final mystery and unmasked the elusive Sleepy Lake monster - another low-life fortune hunter trying to get his dirty hands on the legendary riches hidden in Deboën Mansion. And he would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for those meddling kids.  In 1990, the former detectives have grown up and apart, each haunted by disturbing memories of their final night in the old haunted house. There are too many strange, half-remembered encounters and events that cannot be dismissed or explained away by a guy in a mask. And Andy, the once intrepid tomboy now wanted in two states, is tired of running from her demons. She needs answers. To find them she will need Kerri, the onetime kid genius and budding biologist, now drinking her ghosts away in New York with Tim, an excitable Weimaraner descended from the original canine member of the club. They will also have to get Nate, the horror nerd currently residing in an asylum in Arkham, Massachusetts. Luckily Nate has not lost contact with Peter, the handsome jock turned movie star who was once their team leader...which is remarkable, considering Peter has been dead for years.  The time has come to get the team back together, face their fears, and find out what actually happened all those years ago at Sleepy Lake. It's their only chance to end the nightmares and, perhaps, save the world.

(My Review)  

This was a fun read.  A group of adults get together to investigate an incident they experience when they were kids.  This story gives vibes of Stranger Things, Stephen King's It, Scooby Doo, I mean it was a really fun, fast-paced story.  

Spy x Family series 1-7

 Spy x Family series (Books 1-7) by Tatsuya Endo   Book 8 comes out Sept. 20!      Manga  

(from Amazon) Not one to depend on others, Twilight has his work cut out for him procuring both a wife and a child for his mission to infiltrate an elite private school. What he doesn't know is that the wife he's chosen is an assassin and the child he's adopted is a telepath!

(My Review)

This was my first experience with manga, and it did not disappoint.  It is such an engaging series about a spy who has to create a family in order to infiltrate a school, and in doing so he just so happens to choose a wife who is an assassin and adopts a child who is a telepath, but he has no idea (nor do they know what he is - well...telepath knows).  This created family becomes a real family, and they are so cute, but underneath that, there is a real mystery that they are dealing with which is very interesting.  The story also touches on bullying of different kinds.  I highly recommend this series, and definitely plan on reading more manga.