Can't Wait Wednesday #39: #murdertrending by Gretchen McNeil

Can't-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Tressa at Wishful Endings to spotlight and talk about the books we're excited about that we have yet to read. Generally they're books that have yet to be released. It's based on Waiting on Wednesday, hosted by the fabulous Jill at Breaking the Spine.  This week I'm featuring a book by one of my favorite authors.  It's a standalone, YA futuristic murder mystery story.  Here is the blurb from Goodreads:

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?



What do you think?  Does it sound good to you?  Kinda reminds me of that movie Minority Report.  Have you read anything by this author?  I've read almost all of her other books, and they all grab me and keep me hostage when I pick them up, I can't put them down!  What book are you eagerly awaiting this week?

Review: Viral Nation by Shaunta Grimes

I won this book during the Debut Authors blog hop from Sandy at Magical Manuscripts.  I finally got around to it this past month.  This is a very interesting dystopian story.  And one of the big selling points is that it has an autistic main character.  I also like that it uses a service dog that she has to help her with dealing with things that normally overwhelm or upset an autistic person.  It was neat to be reading about it as the local news was running a story about service dogs and autism.

The main character is Clover.  She lives in a world that has been devastated by a virus.  It was sweeping through the population when Clover was born.  Fortunately the Company found a vaccine, in the future.  But now they control everything.  The whole country is split up into walled cities to protect the citizens.  Inside the walls they get their vaccines every day.  And their allowed to get the food and other supplies they need based on a lottery type system.  One that even includes a bit of gambling to try to increase the worth of the wages they get.  Clover's mother died when she was a baby, her father killed her to try to save her from the virus, all this before the vaccine became available.  When it did, his whole family was saved.  But then he went and worked for the executioners, the people who kill those that information from the future shows they will commit a crime.  In that part it reminds me of Minority Report.  Since he's away, has to stay in the military/Company barracks, Clover and her brother West are watched over by a neighbor.  One who now is getting elderly, and West and Clover kind of look after her as well.  When West finished school, he went to work on the Farms. But what he hopes to do, now that Clover is almost done with school, and should be accepted into the Waverly-Stead Academy where she'll stay in a dorm, he hopes to go work for the Company.  But all of that becomes a lost cause when Clover is refused admittance to the Academy, supposedly because of her service dog.

It seems handy that the person in charge of the school just happens to have a letter recommending her for a job at the Company.  Working with the Time Mariners, the team that travels to the future.  She finds out on one of her missions that her brother's name is going to come up as a killer.  And when she gets back, she goes to try to figure out how to save West.  In doing this, they end up contacting one of the men who started the Company, the man who first went to the future and found the vaccine.  And they find allies in other kids that came from the Foster City.  They soon realize that they must be a part of the rebellion, to find out just what the vaccine actually does, and what the Company really wants from the people like Clover that seem to be hired often for the Time Mariners.

A different type of dystopian in a way, but still has a lot of the same details and storylines.  The time travel methodology is an interesting one.  Especially that they can only travel exactly 2 years into the future at any time.  And even with what we do learn, there is still much more to know, due to a surprising death or two at the end of the book, and some plot twists.  I'll keep my eyes out for the 2nd one to find out more.  And I'll be donating my copy to the high school library where I work in order to get the kids interested as well!

While you're here, don't forget to go enter my 1900 follower giveaway for up to $19 worth of books from the book depository or an Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC for that amount.  It ends tomorrow at midnight!

Review: Uninvited by Sophie Jordan

First I must say thank you to Harper Teen as well as Edelweiss for allowing me to read an e-galley of this title.  I was surprised that this was the first book I've actually read by Sophie Jordan, as I knew her name well, and was excited to meet her last May at the Romantic Times Convention.  My guess is that I must just have seen all the books by her at the bookstore where I worked.  But I must say I was not disappointed at all, and am very glad that this is the first book of hers I've read, I really liked it!

This is a bit of a science fiction thriller, with a kind of dystopian slant to it.  In this future, scientists have identified a gene that causes people to be violent.  And they have also figured out a way to test for it.  The begin testing all people for it, and those who test positive for the gene, whether they've done anything or shown any tendencies whatsoever are now registered with the government, and have new rules they must follow.  The main character is Davinia, or Davy as she prefers to go by.  She comes from a nice family, in a pretty nice neighborhood, she is even able to go to a private school.  She has been accepted to Juilliard, because as long as anyone can remember she has been a musical prodigy.  She can pick an instrument up and just know or quickly learn how to play with no help.  Her boyfriend is "the man on campus" and she has a wonderful best friend named Tori.  As I mentioned she has a nice family, including an older brother, one who seems to get into trouble a lot.

One day at school she gets a call from her mom, telling her she needs to come home right away.  She is afraid something has happened to her brother, but her mother won't say anything over the phone.  She arrives home to find her principal and a government official who tell her that she has tested positive for the HTS (Homicidal Tendency Syndrome).  Because of this she has been "uninvited" from her school.  She must now attend the public school nearby.  And she is given all sorts of rules and told she must report to the official's office.  When she gets there she sees others and wonders if they are there for the same reason.  As she is getting ready to leave, a tall, very attractive, yet extremely scary boy around her age walks in.  Scary because he has the H tattoo on his neck, which she has learned comes from just one infraction of the rules.

When she gets to her new school, she finds out she is now attending with 5 other HTS positive students.  Their classroom is a cage down by the gyms and locker rooms.  There is a teacher, who is just there for supervision basically, because all their assignments are sent to them from the office and they are to work on them by themselves.  Life is a total change for Davy now.  The supervisor teacher is kind of creepy, two of the other students are also creepy and definitely violent.  There is only one other girl, and Davy soon learns about what she does to survive.  Because as an HTS positive, it is like there are no rules, people can do anything to you, but if you do anything back, then you're the one who is in trouble, not them.  And when there is a school shooting, the outside world begins to get scared, and even attack HTS positive people for no reason.  So all the HTS will be rounded up.

Davy doesn't know what will happen to her.  How will her friends and boyfriend deal with this?  And who is this scary new guy she's met, and is he really as scary as he seems?  And will she begin to exhibit violent characteristics?  Even her own family treats her differently.

A really great story, and I do love the way it is promoted as The Scarlett Letter meets The Minority Report.  Just a great, riveting, edge of your seat story.  Oh yeah, and here I am with the author from last May.