Release Week Blitz with Giveaway: We Told Six Lies by Victoria Scott

Hello and welcome to the Release Week Blitz for
We Told Six Lies by Victoria Scott
presented by Entangled Teen!

Find out more about this new release below,
and be sure to enter the giveaway!

CONGRATULATIONS, VICTORIA!

Remember how many lies we told, Molly? It’s enough to make my head spin. You were wild when I met you, and I was mad for you. But then something happened. And now you’re gone.
But don’t worry. I’ll find you. I just need to sift through the story of us to get to where you might be. I’ve got places to look, and a list of names.
The police have a list of names, too. See now? There’s another lie. There is only one person they’re really looking at, Molly.
And that’s yours truly.

We Told Six Lies by Victoria Scott
Publication Date: February 5, 2019
Publisher: Entangled Teen

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Victoria Scott is the acclaimed author of eight books for young adults. Her novels are sold in fourteen different countries, and she loves receiving fan mail from across the world. Victoria loves high fashion, big cities, and pink cotton candy. You can find her online at VictoriaScott.com.

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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!!

YA Review: Aftermath by Kelley Armstrong

Book info:

Title:  Aftermath
Author:  Kelley Armstrong
Genre:  YA contemporary thriller
Release Date:  May 22nd, 2018
Publisher:  Crown Books for Young Readers - Random House Children's Books
Source:  Physical ARC from publisher which had no influence on my opinion
My rating:  5 stars

Synopsis:
Three years after losing her brother Luka in a school shooting, Skye Gilchrist is moving home. But there's no sympathy for Skye and her family because Luka wasn't a victim; he was a shooter. 

Jesse Mandal knows all too well that the scars of the past don't heal easily. The shooting cost Jesse his brother and his best friend--Skye. 

Ripped apart by tragedy, Jesse and Skye can't resist reopening the mysteries of their past. But old wounds hide darker secrets. And the closer Skye and Jesse get to the truth of what happened that day, the closer they get to a new killer.

My Review:
Once again Armstrong has proven to me that she is an expert at writing a page-turner in any genre.  Personally I've only read her young adult books, but I've yet to find one that wasn't a winner.  This one is another 5 star read for me.  While the main subject of the story has to do with a school shooting, that isn't what the story is.  We got parts of the story from both Skye and Jesse's viewpoints, although only Skye's chapters were told in first person, Jesses's chapters were third person, and there were not as many chapters for him.  Both of them did the usual misunderstanding of the other's signals and reactions.  But when you got the story of the night that Jesse went by Skye's house right after the shooting, you really understood what Skye had been thinking, even if it had been a misunderstanding.  

The way the author set the story up, you are definitely given lots of clues and hints, but still kept guessing the entire way.  I like that.  Even though I get pretty turned around, I like being kept on my toes as I read, and not being able to figure it out right away.  I like that even though you get the bullies like you'd expect, and the people who are still really upset, totally understandably, from losing family in the school shooting, you also get people who understand that it wasn't the sister's fault.  I like that there were some points that are similar to real-life incidents.  The boy who came out of the bathroom with the gun, but as far as anyone knew he may not have actually shot anyone. And what if they'd been able to get help to her brother before he died, maybe a lot of the information about the reasons behind the shooting would have been found out.  I like that it is pointed out how sometimes the kids who are really talked about after a shooting tend to be the sports hero, the popular kid, and maybe, just maybe, they weren't as great of people as they are made out to be. Maybe they had their own problems. But maybe even with those problems, there is a point where it is realized that in that situation, everyone is human, and scared, and you must overlook what they may or may not have done.  

Really I liked the characters, the good guys, the bad guys, the bullies, and the adults.    This book was not really on my radar until the publisher reached out to me, but just like with the last book I read by Armstrong, I know I've got to make sure it is available for the students at my high school.