Book Review: A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder Series

Books 66,67 & 68 of 2021

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. Written by Holly Jackson

Good Girl, Bad Blood. Written by Holly Jackson

As Good As Dead. Written by Holly Jackson

So I feel like my only real option here was to review these three books together. The first two books I LOVED. LOVED. They reminded me of the days I was a teenager and used to read these sorts of books all the time. I phase that my mostly scardy cat adult self has grown out of! I read these first two books in one day. The third took me a little bit longer.

The first two books – I am going to talk about together, they had that hint of a relationship, but nothing really explicit at all. It was written as true crime, a ombination of various types of transcripts etc and it was brilliant. I am so pleased I read the hard copy and all the fonts and pictures etc worked the way that the author intended.

The books were both absolutely compelling, and I could not put them down. They told a good story that slowly unravelled and had an ending I am not sure anyone could have predicted.

Book three – felt a little more contrived. It was probably my adult brain but I could not get past the whole “really? A small town with this much happening?” without wanting to give away any spoilers I did like that it kind of wrapped up some things, and particular things that had been burning a little bit since book one. This was really well done! Book three also left me totally terrified! I lay awake listening to every noise in my house! haha.

I will say that as an adult reading these books one of my pet peeves came up – the fact that the teenagers in these books also think that they know best and deliberately don’t tell any adults what is happening – despite things really being too big for the kids.

Anyway! I highly recommend that you read this series! gotta love a completed series!

Mrs K

Genre: Holly Jackson, A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, Good Girl Bad Blood, As Good as Dead, Teenage fiction, adolescent fiction, mystery, thriller, crime, series, suspense, contemporary, fiction, young adult,

Book Review: Trouble is a friend of mine.

Book 65 of 2021

Trouble is a friend of mine. Written by Stephanie Tromly.

This is the first of my holiday reading! So that tends to make my reviews a little shorter, as am not on my computer as much (Yay summer!) and tend to read more.

Anyway – I came across this book on a bookstagram post about completed series, and am always happy to give things a try over the holidays. This book probably had a younger target audience that what I normally read – which led me down a whole thought process about the terms we use – teenage fiction, adolescent, young adult – but I will spare you that rabbit hole!

This is definitely teenage fiction, and actually reminded me of my much younger self who was totally obsessed with Nancy Drew and Trixie Beldon, the book was primarily a mystery which was really interesting, with a whole bunch of friendship, and self discovery and growth thrown in with just a touch of romance.

I would really recommend this book – in fact it is kind of the perfect light summer read! I am looking forward to the sequel.

I think this would be best suited for students around the year 9 mark (NZ schooling.)

Mrs K

Genre: Mystery, Young Adult, Contemporary, Fiction, Humor, Romance, Teen, Adolescent fiction, realistic fiction, thriller, mystery, Stephanie Tromly, Trouble is a friend of mine, series, family, friendship,

Book Review: Violence 101

Book 64 of 2021

Violence 101. Written by Denis Wright.

This is an older book now – published in 2007. It fell across my reading pile as we were looking for texts that we could teach to year 11, with a strong focus on looking for NZ texts.

The blurb is “Through mesmerizing journal entries, Violence 101 paints a disturbing yet utterly compelling picture of an extremely bright, extremely misguided adolescent who must navigate a world that encourages aggressive behavior at every turn.”

This was a super short and compelling read. It reads a bit like some of those “famous books” Catcher in the Rye, Clockwork Orange – in that the main character is extremely intelligent. His intelligene sets him apart from his peers, but also shows what he is really capable of.

I would love to teach this book – I think there is so much that we could talk about – the notion of truth for instance, that what one person sees as the truth is not the truth of other people who experienced that same event. I would love to have a discussion with kids about the mana of the main character in this book – and how that mana was perceived by different groups of people. I liked that for all his anger and bad decisions he was also able to make decisions about what was right for him. Ultimately we all make a choice right – a choice to be good or bad? Certainly Alex in clockwork orange does!

Aparantly the publishers were not happywith the original ending and so they made it have more hope than otherwise the author would have had – this worked well for me! If you have been reading my blog awhile then you know how important the notion of hope is for me while reading a book – which his revised ending certainly had.

I have a year 12 class next year – English through a psychological lens – and I think I want to teach this book – I want to talk about those ideas of truth, of character development – or lack there of – and of in general all the things!

At 170 pages this is a super compelling read! I highly recommend you all take an afternoon and give it a read.

Mrs K

Genre: Young Adult, Mystery, Realistic Fiction, Fiction, Contemporary, Mental Health, New Zealand text, Teen, Mystery, Crime, Adventure, Denis Wright, Violence 101,

Book Review: Defy the Night

Book 63 of 2021

Defy the Night. Written by Brigid Kemmerer

So this book was handed to me by a friend who was reading it, and needed someone to talk about it with. I am so pleased that she did! Because of this I started reading it with no real idea about what was happening or what was going to happen. Brigid Kemmerer however was the author of the A Curse so Dark and Lonely which I read last year and loved.

The goodreads blurb says A fantasy series about a kingdom divided by corruption, the prince desperately holding it together, and the girl who will risk everything to bring it crashing down.

This book is full of tropes, tropes that are super common in fantasy, but that still managed to take me by surprise. I liked this, I liked that I believed what I was sold and that it was so well written. There were aspects because of this that were a little bit predictable, but I am not sold that that makes a bad book!

My favourite part – and a full heads up – this is a spoiler was what happened at the end. I think in many fantasy books a revolution is not uncommon. Normally the ruling prince/king is killed and a strong sibling takes over, or else the king runs for protection in another land or kingdom and raises an army to come back.

What I really liked in this book – was that the king kind of went oh my bad – they are right and went and talked to the revolutionaries. He showed that he was a true king. Then in the aftermath you saw him actively working on making life better for all of his people.

I really admired this, it felt different to much of what the genre does, but also felt human and real – that idea that no one is perfect, and no one can be fully protected was explored so well. I cannot wait for book two!

Mrs K

Genre: Fantasy, Young Adult, Romance, Young Adult Fantasy, Fiction, High Fantasy, Retellings, Romance, Brigid Kemmerer, Defy the night, series, 2021 reads, 2021 published, teenage fiction, teenage fantasy,