Showing posts with label megan abbott. Show all posts
Showing posts with label megan abbott. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

SUMMER READING CHALLENGE: You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott #SRC2016 #bestsummerever

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Book Information
Genre: Mystery/thriller
  • Hardcover: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (July 26, 2016)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 031623107X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0316231077


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Synopsis: Katie and Eric Knox have dedicated their lives to their fifteen-year-old daughter Devon, a gymnastics prodigy and Olympic hopeful. But when a violent death rocks their close-knit gymnastics community just weeks before an all-important competition, everything the Knoxes have worked so hard for feels suddenly at risk. As rumors swirl among the other parents, revealing hidden plots and allegiances, Katie tries frantically to hold her family together while also finding herself drawn, irresistibly, to the crime itself, and the dark corners it threatens to illuminate. From a writer with "exceptional gifts for making nerves jangle and skin crawl," (Janet Maslin) You Will Know Me is a breathless rollercoaster of a novel about the desperate limits of desire, jealousy, and ambition.

Review: This book was scary--not only in the events that occurred but also in the way the characters dealt with them. While the things which happened in the gym seemed very realistic in terms of competition and sacrifice, certain things that happened outside the gym just didn't seem real. It definitely provides the reader with food for thought: how far would you go to help your child achieve her dream?

I honestly can't decide how I felt about the character of Devon. At times she seems like a confused, naive little girl, and at other times she's a cold, heartless bitch. I think she really needed a parent who was going to take her in hand and help guide her through adolescence, not parents who let a lot of her behaviors slide because the gymnastics was the important thing.

**I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are entirely my own.**

Rating: Four stars

About the author
 photo 29593_zpsot0bxyys.jpg Megan Abbott is the Edgar®-winning author of the novels Queenpin, The Song Is You, Die a Little, Bury Me Deep, The End of Everything, Dare Me, and her latest, The Fever, which was chosen as one of the Best Books of the Year by Amazon, National Public Radio, the Boston Globe and the Los Angeles Times.

Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Salon, the Guardian, Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Believer and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Born in the Detroit area, she graduated from the University of Michigan and received her Ph.D. in English and American literature from New York University. She has taught at NYU, the State University of New York and the New School University. In 2013-14, she served as the John Grisham Writer in Residence at Ole Miss.

She is also the author of a nonfiction book, The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir, and the editor of A Hell of a Woman, an anthology of female crime fiction. She has been nominated for many awards, including three Edgar® Awards, Hammett Prize, the Shirley Jackson Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Folio Prize

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

The Fever, by Megan Abbott

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Synopsis:The panic unleashed by a mysterious contagion threatens the bonds of family and community in a seemingly idyllic suburban community.

The Nash family is close-knit. Tom is a popular teacher, father of two teens: Eli, a hockey star and girl magnet, and his sister Deenie, a diligent student. Their seeming stability, however, is thrown into chaos when Deenie's best friend is struck by a terrifying, unexplained seizure in class. Rumors of a hazardous outbreak spread through the family, school and community.

As hysteria and contagion swell, a series of tightly held secrets emerges, threatening to unravel friendships, families and the town's fragile idea of security.

Thoughts: I was really anxious to read this book from the time I first read the description of it. Unfortunately, reality did not live up to expectation.

What exactly was making all these young girls sick? Was it a virus? Was it a vaccine? Was it something in the lake? The author had so many possibilities laid out for us, making them all seem plausible. But NONE of them were the actual answer (any further information would be a spoiler, so that's all you get, folks!)

I couldn't make myself care about any of the characters, except maybe the main character's father...but even he didn't seem to have that many redeeming qualities as he was written.

I would not recommend this book, not with so many other, more well-written YA novels out there.