Blog Tour and Review: Dead Girls Society by Michelle Krys

Book info:
Title:  Dead Girls Society
Author:  Michelle Krys
Genre:  YA suspense/mystery
Published:  November 8th, 2016
Source:  ARC from Publisher
My rating:  5 stars

I got an email from the publisher asking if I'd like to participate in a tour for this book and another.  The other one is a middle grades book, so isn't my normal read, but they did send me an ARC of it as well. This book sounded really good, and actually I was definitely pleased at just how good it turned out to be!

The main character is a girl named Hope.  Hope has cystic fibrosis, which means she spends a lot of her time out of school because of how easily something can keep her from being able to breathe, how easily she can get sick.  When the story starts, she has gotten a text from some number that she doesn't know, and it is an invitation to participate in some kind of secret group.  It will require her to sneak out of her house late at night, but after being stuck at home, and her best friend Ethan seems to be moving on with a girl at school, she decides it is worth it.  

When she gets to the meeting place, she sees 4 other girls, ones that she doesn't think she has anything in common with.  There are instructions there for each of them, they must participate in dares.  Whoever makes it till the very end will win a lot of money.  If they fail a dare, they will be cut out of the competition.  If they cheat, tell anyone about the activities, or even just quit, they are threatened with punishment.  Each of the girls, other than Hope, seem to have something in their past that the person who is running this whole thing knows and is holding over them as blackmail.

The dares are dangerous as you'd expect.  A couple girls get really hurt, and there are several times that Hope almost doesn't make it.  In fact the person behind it all decides that she's cheated, and her punishment is something that affects her whole family.  

Not only is she dealing with this society, but she's also worried about losing her friend Ethan to this other girl at school.  But then a really popular, cute guy picks her for a project partner when she goes back to school, and he seems to really like her, and be interested in her.  But Ethan tells Hope that he doesn't trust this guy.  

In the end it will boil down to who is really behind the dares, which of the girls in the group are up front about what they are hiding.  Hope will have to find out if her friendship with Ethan can survive her wanting more, even if he seems to not see her that way.  She also needs the money to help her family, and is unsure if this new guy is really what he seems to be.  

The book was a really good, quick read.  I didn't make too many notes as I updated on Goodreads. Probably because it was so good I didn't want to stop to take the time to do that.  I enjoyed the New Orleans setting since I was just down there the first weekend of October, and what was kind of funny was that I actually was reading another book at the same time that took place in the city.  Anyway, I highly recommend this, and I will definitely be purchasing it for the school library where I work.  I liked the characters a lot, you had the main character with a debilitating disease, you had gay characters, there was a suicide that was a big part of the story, and other many other types of characters.  Below is the schedule for the blog tour if you'd like to check out some other posts on the book!

 

Review: The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black

This is an ARC I was lucky enough to get at BEA.  I didn't get to meet the author unfortunately, but still was able to get ahold of the ARC, and I'm glad I did.  I believe this is the first book by this author that I've read. But now I know that I need to read more!  And not just because there was a dachshund in the book. 

The main character is Hazel.  She and her brother live in a town where the forest nearby has a glass casket with a horned boy inside of it.  Now this glass is impossible to break.  People have tried over the years.  And it's not just the boy in the casket, there are fairies and other types of creatures in the forest.  For the most part their tricks are just scary, mostly harmless. Although if you are a tourist and don't know the rules, things might happen to you.  Deadly things.  Hazel and her brother Ben have lived in a house near the forest their whole lives.  They've gone to see the boy in the casket all the time.  Told him their secrets, fallen in love with him, both of them.  Before Ben was born, their mother painted a picture of one of the fairies, and the fairy woman blessed Ben to be musical.  When one of the fairies attack Hazel, he is able to play music in a way that saves her, and then they kill the fairy. They decide from that point on that they will hunt fairies.  At least they do until Ben questions his control of his musical ability.  So Hazel makes a deal so that Ben is able to get scholarships to go to a school where he wants to go to learn to control his music.  They move away from the forest.  Only things don't quite go as planned, and they move back, with Ben not wanting to play music ever again. 

The fairy folk don't just grant wishes like that without taking something in return.  And what Hazel had to promise was 7 years of her life. Which as a child she figured meant she'd die 7 years early, or at least they'd come from the end of her life.  But when the prince is broken out of the glass box, and the fairy begin attacking the town in different ways, she learns that maybe the 7 years will be taken in a much different manner than she could have ever expected.  Together with the freed prince, and a changeling that has been raised as a human, along with his human brother, (a great story!  But read it for yourself), they must figure out what they can do to save their town, Fairfold, from the Alderking and his plans. 

Such a great story.  Hazel is the knight, she will fight for her friends and family and town.  Ben is a great character as well.  Jack, the changeling, love him!  And the prince, Severin, is perfectly written.  A really great story, and I'm so glad it was my introduction to this author's work.