Review: #murdertrending by Gretchen McNeil #DRBC

Book info:

Title:  #murdertrending
Author:  Gretchen McNeil
Series: ????  Goodreads shows a sequel next year maybe?
Genre: YA contemporary thriller
Release Date:  August 7th, 2018
Publisher:  Freeform Books/Disney Publishing
Source:  ARC received from publisher which did not influence my opinion
My rating:  5 stars

Synopsis:
WELCOME TO THE NEAR FUTURE, where good and honest 8/18 citizens can enjoy watching the executions of society’s most infamous convicted felons, streaming live on The Postman app from the suburbanized prison island Alcatraz 2.0.

When eighteen-year-old Dee Guerrera wakes up in a haze, lying on the ground of a dimly lit warehouse, she realizes she’s about to be the next victim of the app. Knowing hardened criminals are getting a taste of their own medicine in this place is one thing, but Dee refuses to roll over and die for a heinous crime she didn’t commit. Can Dee and her newly formed posse, the Death Row Breakfast Club, prove she’s innocent before she ends up wrongfully murdered for the world to see? Or will The Postman’s cast of executioners kill them off one by one?

Scream Queens meets The Hunger Games in #MURDERTRENDING (On Sale 8/8/18) by Gretchen McNeil. In this gruesome young adult novel, seventeen-year-old Dee Guerrera is wrongfully convicted and sent to a prison island where government-sanctioned killers hunt down convicts and stream their deaths on social media for "spikes.”

 

With its morbid, tongue-in-cheek sense of humor and twisty, gasp-inducing mystery, this novel has already been optioned for development by television studio ABC Signature.

My Review:
This was an awesome book!  It totally feeds into how social media works today, as well as having a great mystery to be solved that keeps you guessing until the very end!  I totally agree with the synopsis about how it is similar to The Hunger Games, because I definitely got that feeling as I was reading about how the executions/murders were televised.  So much of this story had all of McNeil's perfect humor while fitting into what would make itself a great horror film, or as it also says in the synopsis above, a great TV series.    All of the characters were were interesting,  even the ones we didn't get very long to know since they ended up being on the cutting block, literally.  

The story had a lot of creative, unique bits to it, but also pulled in a lot of pop culture references.  What is funny to me about some of those references is that while the teens in the story basically understood what movie it was from, they didn't get all the specific details.  I loved that, because so often teens may know of a movie or singer, etc., but it wasn't actually something they'd watched themselves, so little details authors who are adults, like I am, might go over their heads.  Like the scene from Zoolander that one of the "Painiacs" as Dee's new friend Nyles has named them, is setting up for.  

Of course, then there were some things that I felt surely Dee should have figured out earlier.  Like the Postman, his identity, and how it could connect with her past.  Especially since we got the whole story of it, something that she would really have been pretty well aware of.  But then to make up for it, I also really like how the author was able to throw in feelings about current situations in the real world, without actually getting in there and naming specific people, which could alienate those who are possibly supporters of them. The way that she got those digs in was done in such a way that it reminds me of all the discussion I had in English classes about how that classic book has all those themes, that I always actually hated talking about.  I mean, I just want to read for the story, and when I do my own writing, whether it is any good or not, I don't know that I throw in hidden meanings or themes.  But McNeil has layered it into the story in such a way that it totally makes me want to apologize to any English teacher I had in school that I might have rolled my eyes at (not to their faces, I was a good student) or been totally bored with the talk of that.  

It was a page-turner, one that at certain points I had a lot of trouble putting down.  Even to the point where I had promised myself to start going to bed at a normal time to get ready for school to start again, instead of staying up late reading.  

The ending was superb, and definitely left it like a good horror movie would, open.  Although I didn't realize quite how open it was left until I saw a sequel posted on Goodreads as I was getting my review ready today.

Gretchen McNeil has been one of my favorite authors since I first read 3:59 and Ten.   I highly recommend her books if you haven't started yet!  Also, don't you love the cover of this one?  And #DRBC!!

Review - Black Widow: Forever Red by Margaret Stohl

First, thanks to Disney Book Group, Marvel Press, and Netgalley for allowing me to read an egalley of this title.  I'm a big fan of the author, Margaret Stohl, and so when I saw she had this book, I was eager to read it.  I'm a fan of the Avengers, especially Captain America.  I don't read the graphic novels/comics, I'm just not a fan of any of those.  So I was interested in reading a story in novel form about one of the heroes, especially one I didn't really know much about, Black Widow.  And I have to say I was pleasantly surprised in how it turned out.

The story  is about the Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff, but even more about a girl named Ava.  The book begins when Natasha saves Ava, who is about 5 years old, from Ivan Somodorov.  Ivan is the man who turned Natasha into the assassin she is now, and he has continued to do the same to other children throughout the years.  Natasha feels she's stopped him, but he is in the middle of some experiment that includes Ava being connected to some kind of machine.  Still the building is burned down, and the assumption is that Ivan is dead. Ava gets sent to be taken care of by S.H.I.E.L.D.  And Natasha, not one for family or friends, keeps her distance, only sending birthday and Christmas gifts, but without cards.  Ava hates life in their custody, and runs away.  She then lives on the street.  Out in the homeless shelters she makes a friend, and together they really get into fencing through the YMCA classes.  When they decide to enter a tournament, things go a little crazy. 

First, there is this boy that Ava has been dreaming about for a long time, so often and so detailed are the dreams that she has drawn portraits of him in her sketchbook.  She knows his name is Alex Manor, and she knows the names of the friends that she sees him with in her dreams.  At the tournament, she sees the boy.  And he sees her.  And there is a connection.  But of course in a book like this, young love isn't going to be easy.  Not when it seems that Ivan isn't really dead, he's back, and he wants Ava, and what he's put in her head.  Natasha shows up to protect her, and ends up getting her and Alex to protect.  But Ava may not need quite as much protecting. Thanks to Ivan she has a special connection to the Black Widow, something that leads to more problems with the other kids that Ivan has also connected to other people. 

The book really reads as if I was watching another Avengers movie.  And I'm saying that as a good thing, because I love the Avengers movies.  Tony Stark is there, and his humor is definitely written into the story.  The humor of the movies is definitely a part of the story, and the characters are all done very well.  The story lived up to what I expect from this author, and I will be recommending it not only to my students, but to a friend of mine who is also a huge Avengers fan.

Review: A Whole New World by Liz Braswell

First, thanks to Disney Book Group and Netgalley for allowing me to read an egalley of this title.  I have to admit that while I have "seen" the movie Aladdin, I've never really sat and watched it all the way through.  It came out when I was a teacher, so an adult, so the only time I ever watched it was when we showed it to a group of students as the end of a field trip day reward.  Nevertheless, I feel like this book was pretty darn close to the exact story. Enough so that instead of my usual summary of the story in my own words, I'm going to post the Goodreads summary, and then below that I will tell what I liked and didn't like about it.

Welcome to a new YA series that reimagines classic Disney stories in surprising new ways. Each book asks the question: What if one key moment from a familiar Disney film was changed? This dark and daring version of Aladdin twists the original story with the question: What if Jafar was the first one to summon the Genie?

When Jafar steals the Genie’s lamp, he uses his first two wishes to become sultan and the most powerful sorcerer in the world. Agrabah lives in fear, waiting for his third and final wish.To stop the power-mad ruler, Aladdin and the deposed Princess Jasmine must unite the people of Agrabah in rebellion. But soon their fight for freedom threatens to tear the kingdom apart in a costly civil war.

What happens next? A Street Rat becomes a leader. A princess becomes a revolutionary. And readers will never look at the story of Aladdin in the same way again.

So, as I said, I've not for sure watched the movie that I could say I know it that well, but really so much of this book seemed to be basically what I remember from the movie.  As they said, the main difference is who summoned the genie first.   So while this definitely changed the story in ways, overall it basically seemed to be the same general idea.  It's not that it wasn't a good read, just that I wasn't blown away, and didn't feel anything was really that new or original based on what I remember of the story.  And for someone like me, who hadn't really ever known the story that well, that disappointed me.  It should have been pretty easy to make it seem different, I would think, as so many other retellings of stories I've never read, or stories I did know and remember well, have done in the past.  

Overall this is not a book that I would go out of my way to recommend, although I would be sure to list it with other retellings for people who wanted suggestions.  It just wouldn't be on my list of go-to books to suggest to my high school students, or other teen readers.