An ARC Review Catch-Up Post

Remember when I said I wasn't feeling much motivation to do anything? Well the result of that is way too many ARCs that I have read but not yet reviewed for my blog. So yeah, this post is basically a catch up post for some of those ARCs.

Title and Author: Don't Get Caught by Kurt Dinan
Source: NetGalley
Scheduled Publication Date: April 1, 2016
Goodreads Synopsis: When Max receives a mysterious invite from the untraceable, epic prank-pulling Chaos Club, he has to ask: why him? After all, he's Mr. 2.5 GPA, Mr. No Social Life. He's Just Max. And his favorite heist movies have taught him this situation calls for Rule #4: Be suspicious. But it's also his one shot to leave Just Max in the dust... Yeah, not so much. Max and four fellow students-who also received invites-are standing on the newly defaced water tower when campus security "catches" them. Definitely a setup. And this time, Max has had enough. It's time for Rule #7: Always get payback.

Review: Okay, so this book was actually better than I thought it would be. It was a cute and quick read and I laughed out loud on more than a few occasions. After reading more than a couple of really heavy books, I was happy about that. Max is one of several outcasts that are invited to a secret meeting of the Chaos Club, a club known for their pranks. Little do they know it's a setup. Like any other good heist movie (a genre Max seems to be very fond of), the people being setup must go for payback. So this little band of outcasts who would never otherwise get together bond over trying to setup the Chaos Club and pull pranks that they frame the club for. Yeah, I know that sentence sounded confusing but it really isn't. The problem is that these people start pulling pranks that are a bit vicious in order to get revenge on certain people and the whole "let's set up the Chaos Club" plan starts to go awry. Max was such a goofy, but lovable, character and I loved his struggle with revenge vs. justice. He was just a typical hormone driven teenager. Nothing super unusual there, but I liked it. There's some mystery and unrequited love and tons of mischief and mistakes, which is of course very common with all teenagers. The friendships were awesome and there were a few twists that I saw coming and a few that I did not. Max's parents were actually there, which is AWESOME. They cared about where he was and they actually noticed (and cared) when he got in trouble. 

Buy/Borrow/Skip: Go ahead and buy this one. It's such a fun read!

Title and Author: Every Heart A Doorway (Every Heart A Doorway #1) by Seanan McGuire

Source: NetGalley

Scheduled Publication Date: April 5, 2016

Goodreads Synopsis: Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere... else. But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children. Nancy tumbled once, but now she’s back. The things she’s experienced... they change a person. The children under Miss West’s care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world. But Nancy’s arrival marks a change at the Home. There’s a darkness just around each corner, and when tragedy strikes, it’s up to Nancy and her new-found schoolmates to get to the heart of the matter.

Review: Here was my only real problem with this book: it was too short! At less than 200 pages, it's really more of a novella than a book but I really enjoyed it. Basically Nancy is a girl who stumbled into the Underworld, where she spent a lot of time before being exiled back to her regular and boring world. Her parents were worried because she was missing for so long and thinks Nancy's stories about the Underworld are just a sign that she is insane. Enter Mrs. West and her school for children. On the surface, the school is designed to help people like Nancy, just not in the way that the parents want. This school is for people (mostly girls) who are having trouble coping with their regular lives after being in another realm.  This story is just so weird and creepy, but in the best way. It is almost a story about what would happen to Alice after she came back from the rabbit hole. And what do you do if you would rather be in this other world, but you can't find a way back and you hate the regular world with all its boring people. Yeah, that's what this school is like. Every single student spent time in a different realm and they all sound kind of intense and crazy and yet fantastic at the same time. Nancy does get caught up in a mystery at the school and that is what drives the plot. I won't give away the mystery or what happens, but I will say that I got chills more than once. I wanted more time with all of these fantastic characters and the ending just left me wanting more. From what I understand, this is the start of a series, but the next one is really just a prequel that describes one of the worlds that one of the students traveled to. Whatever the plot line is, I will be reading it for sure. 

Buy/Borrow/Skip: Buy this one!

Title and Author: Dear Nobody: The True Diary of Mary Rose by Gillian McCain

Source: NetGalley

Scheduled Publication Date: April 1, 2016

Goodreads Synopsis: Dear Nobody is a true teen diary so raw and so edgy its authenticity rings off every page. The words and drawings of Mary Rose present a gritty, powerful, no-holds-barred true experience of a teen girl so desperate to be loved, so eager to fit in that she'll go to extremes that could cost her her life. This is not a story about addiction. Or sexual promiscuity. Or cystic fibrosis. It's the story of a young woman with a powerful will to live, who more than anything wants to be heard...and loved.

Review: Okay, so the opening and the ending of this book (and the title obviously) indicates that this was a true story and a real diary of a teenager named Mary Rose. I hate ripping on a memoir, but I will because I just didn't get this book at all. But maybe I'm not ripping on her story, as much as I am ripping on the editing. They said that there were many more entries besides the ones in the book, but they only included some of them. I get that there was probably not enough room for everything. But here's the thing: the editing and the sequence of events and everything that was included was just bad. During the course of the journal, Mary Rose kept writing letters to someone named Haley, who was supposed to be her best friend. The problem was that we never find out anything about Haley. Where is she? How did they meet? Why don't they see each other or talk more? Mary Roses's life just plain sucked. It was depressing and I really wish I had felt some kind of emotional connection to her, but I felt nothing. She has cystic fibrosis, she is an alcoholic and a drug addict who went to rehab more than once, she has an alcoholic mother who keeps going back to the same abusive boyfriend and she makes really, really bad choices with men. Everything was just bad. There was so much alcohol and drugs and unsafe sex and I felt zero connection with the main character. The synopsis mentions she has cystic fibrosis and yet this was not mentioned until more than halfway through the book. Suddenly, she is pissed off because no one knows how bad this disease is and suddenly she is talking about all of her treatments and pills and all these people she knew who died from this disease. This was another issue with the editing. Up until this point, there had been well over a year's worth of entries and yet she doesn't mention this disease AT ALL? That was just weird. Like I said, these entries were all negative and zero positive, so it was just depressing. I got tired of hearing how lonely she was or hearing her talk about yet another jerk that she was in love with. Annoying. The worst part was that there seemed to be no point to this book. What was the point of publishing these entries? What was the moral? Even in the epilogue, when they talked about Mary Rose, they never, ever said what we were supposed to take away from it. The bottom line was that even though there were a lot of emotional topics covered in this book, it made no impact on me at all.

Buy/Borrow/Skip: Skip this one.

Title and Author: My Kind Of Crazy by Robin Reul

Source: NetGalley

Scheduled Publication Date: April 5, 2016

Goodreads Synopsis: Despite the best of intentions, seventeen-year old, wisecracking Hank Kirby can't quite seem to catch a break. It's not that he means to screw things up all the time, it just happens. A lot. Case in point: his attempt to ask out the girl he likes literally goes up in flames when he spells "Prom" in sparklers on her lawn...and nearly burns down her house. As if that wasn't bad enough, Peyton Breedlove, a brooding loner and budding pyromaniac, witnesses the whole thing. Much to Hank's dismay, Peyton takes an interest in him-and his "work." The two are thrust into an unusual friendship, but their boundaries are tested when Hank learns that Peyton is hiding some dark secrets, secrets that may change everything he thought he knew about Peyton.

Review: This was an interesting read. I liked the story and I did kind of like Hank. He didn't really have much ambition and he seemed to be content to work in a supermarket and skip college, but I get that. His father is an alcoholic and they are both still grieving the loss of Hank's mother and brother from five years before. They have very little money and it's kind of hard to dream when everything costs money. And there's that whole thing where his dad is a jerk who is constantly talking down to him and insulting him. So Hank is kind of beaten down, but he is obsessed with superheroes (I love that he has his own comic) and it does seem like he wants to be a hero to someone. Enter Peyton. I really, really enjoyed their developing friendship and they were so sweet together. The issue was that Peyton had so many red flags and Hank ignored them, mainly because he wanted to be the one to save her. That damn superhero complex will get you every time. Of course the friendship turned into something more and as it did, Hank's need to save her grew. Besides the whole pyromania thing, Peyton also has a crappy family life and you are never sure what is really going on. Honestly, I was so intrigued by Peyton's issues because you NEVER see pyromania talked about in books. I know this was Hank's story, but I wanted to know more about her issues and where it came from and where to go with treatment. I just didn't feel this book gave me that. I really hate when books insinuate that all mentally ill people need is a relationship and everything else in their life just falls into place. Like I said, I understand why Hank felt the need to save her. The problem is that this book does nothing to dispel with that notion. I won't give anything away, but Peyton did some things that were a serious cry for help and yet, there was almost no resolution with that. The ending was so clean and tidy and it should have been messy, ESPECIALLY with Peyton's mental health issues. I kind of felt like the book was leading up to this whole climax with her problems and then the resolution left me very unfulfilled. In terms of Hank's superhero complex and Peyton's mental issues, there was very little character development there and that bothered me.
Buy/Borrow/Skip: Borrow this one. It was a good read. I just had a few issues with the treatment of mental illness and the character development.