My Father Didn't Kill Himself

My Father Didn't Kill Himself by Russel Nohelty
Publisher - Wannabe Press
Publish Date - Est. July 2016
Genre - YA Mystery












My Rating:




Reading and posting a review for this novel was a bit of a special treat for me and I am excited to finally get to share it with you! The author is a friend of mine from high school and asked if I would be willing to read a beta version of his new mystery novel. Um, yes! How could I say no, especially after seeing the title?

The entire setup of the novel is very clever and sure to appeal to every 21st Century tech-addicted teen. The whole book is a series of school assigned blog posts between the 2 main characters, Delilah and her best friend Alex. Delilah thinks her family and life is perfect until her entire world is shattered when her father commits suicide. Delilah learns that her father's insurance policy won't pay out for suicide so she sets out to prove that the police made a mistake and her father was, in fact, murdered.

Delilah's journey sends her on a tailspin of emotions and changes her to her core. It affects everything around her, including her friendship with Alex. Each blog post by both girls take you deeply inside the turmoil that they both experience during this difficult time.

You know how people always say "don't judge a book by its cover"? Admittedly, I have never been good at this and this situation was no different. There were a few things right off the bat that made me skeptical about whether I would enjoy this book or not. First, I judged the title - while the title intrigued me, I definitely assumed the worst. The synopsis told me no different. I expected a heavy, depressing journey on how to deal with a close family death as a teenager. Teenagers. Third thing I judged. I knew this was a young adult novel and I didn't know if I had it in me to absorb teenage level angst. The one thing that made me doubt my initial judgement was the artwork on the cover. I knew that there was a good chance this book wasn't all serious with the comic-like high school book cover doodles.

As does most times when I cast a quick judgement, this book surprised me. The format was very unique and I thought it would really appeal to today's younger generation. It was really interesting to see how both Delilah and Alex changed and developed as the plot unfolded. The emotional roller coaster was true to the experience that all teenagers go through during high school. The writing style was refreshing. Sometimes when you read teenage books written by adults, the language is forced and unrealistic. That's not the case with this story. I actually felt like I was reading diary entries by teenagers.

My Father Didn't Kill Himself had some great plot twists and turns that I did not see coming. It kept me guessing the whole way through and I couldn't wait to see how it ended. The story went to some dark places and dealt with pretty serious issues but somehow managed to do it in a way that didn't make you completely depressed while reading. Delilah and Alex are true friends to the end, even though that relationship is tested over and over again.

Even though this is technically a Young Adult novel, I think it's appeal goes beyond that audience. If you enjoy a story with plot twists and a surprise ending, give this one a shot! It might give you some unexpected insight into the world of the modern day high schooler and remind you what it's like to be that young.



Pair This With: Middle Sister Rebel Red

I've loved this brand of wine for a long time. I'm a middle sister so I figured their wines couldn't do any wrong. They are delicious but they also have seriously sassy labels that I'm pretty much obsessed with. Rebel Red's label says "If anyone tells you they don't like red wine, stop talking to them. You don't need that kind of negativity in your life". This wine is an easy drinking, semi-sweet red blend. It tends to be my go-to wine when I want something light and fruity.

Blog Tour - Sleeping With The Blackbirds

Sleeping with the Blackbirds by Alex Pearl
Publisher - Pen Press
Publish Date - 9/10/11
Genre - Young Adult Fiction
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads













My Rating:

Schedule

6th July - Book Wormie Spot - Guest Post

7th July - Mallory Heart Reviews - Review

8th July - CK Books Blog - Review

9th July -  Mousiey Books - Review

10th July - Books and Barrels - Review

13th July - Daniela Ark's Blog - Interview

14th July - Lovely Paranormal Books - Guest Post

                 - Tanya Robinson 100 - Review

15th July - A.E. Albert: A Writer's Blog - Interview

16th July - A Cascade of Books - Interview

17th July - Poseidon99 - Guest Post


Author Bio:

Who is Alex Pearl?

It's a question I often ask myself. Well, basically I'm a short-sighted bloke aged 50, which I suppose is pretty old really. And for 27 years I have worked at various advertising agencies and marketing
companies as something called a copywriter. This means I have to sit in an office and write the
words that appear in adverts, leaflets and letters. It's a funny old job. Sometimes it can be fun when,
for instance, you have to make a TV or radio commercial. But this doesn't happen very often. At
other times it can be rather dull and frustrating when a client rejects your work that you created and
insists that you do something far less interesting.

Outside work I'm a husband and a dad, and I live in North West London with my wife and two
children. We don't have any animals in our house but we do see lots of birds in our garden. And yes,
we do have a bird table, but only the one, and this is usually attacked by the squirrels before any
bird can get to it.

SAFE - Dawn Husted

One of the cool perks of writing a book review blog is that sometimes new authors reach out to you and ask you to read and review their book. How cool is that? For a book nerd like me, it’s pretty awesome. I was recently contacted for such a task recently by Dawn Husted to review her book, SAFE. This book is a dystopian, Young Adult novel which can be a pretty intimidating genre to bust in to right now with the HUGE hits of late like The Hunger Games and Divergent series.

Many years ago, massive earthquakes devastated the world. Survivors settled The Colony to try and rebuild a safe and stable place to live. It is here where everything in society is carefully planned out and keeps its residents under close scrutiny which is all necessary to keep civilization alive. Original settlers were injected with a vaccine to keep them free of contagious and fatal diseases. This vaccine eventually became integrated into everyone’s DNA, which President Falcon says helps keep their colony thriving.

SAFE follows the journey of Penny and James whose worlds are flipped upside down one day when Penny is taken from her home and told that she is sick. She faces two options – either exile or execution. In haste, Penny learns about a sister, Madeline, she never knew she had and her father says she must go find and rescue her. She and her boyfriend James make an attempt to escape the Colony and find her sister but must overcome many obstacles on their quest to find Madeline.

Overall, the story line was captivating and had some good twists and turns that you don’t see coming. It took me a little while to get in to the book as I found the language in the beginning a bit disjointed and wordy at times. Penny and James are both extremely likable characters that are easy to root for from beginning to end.

Since I don’t do spoilers, I won’t say what happens at the end but I did think the story ended a bit abruptly. Sudden endings seemed to be a bit of a theme throughout this story as I felt like many of the conflicts that Penny and James faced were resolved a bit too easily and swiftly. I’m not sure though if this book is the first in a series, so that may explain the sudden ending to the story.

In the end, this was a quick read that I think could be a good introduction for young readers into dystopian novels. If you are looking for something to read in a couple of days that has lots of action and interesting characters - go check this one out!

Rating: Good 7 out of 10

The Golden Compass - Philip Pullman

After a couple of serious reads, I felt that it was time for something a bit more fun. Even though I'm doing my best to choose the next book by random, I do know a bit about some of the books on the list even though I haven't read them. I knew The Golden Compass was a young adult novel and figured I'd be in for a more lighthearted adventure story.

The novel takes place in a sort of parallel universe to ours. Every human has their own daemon - their soul living outside their body in an animal form - that is closely attached to them and cannot stray. The story follows the wild adventures of Lyra and her daemon Pantalaimon. Lyra and her daemon set off to the Arctic, accompanied by a motley crew of characters (a gypsy-like clan, a balloon flying aeronaut and an armored bear) to rescue her friend Roger and Uncle Asriel who she was told were captured. Her friend Roger was taken by a group of people who perform experiments on children that include "cutting" away their daemon - a most horrific idea. Along the way, Lyra learns just how important she is in stopping these horrible experiments.

Before she leaves England, she is given a golden alethiometer, which as she learns to read, tells her the answer to any question she asks. This magical tool guides Lyra on her long journey to her final destination in the Arctic and her Uncle Asriel.

Initially, I had a difficult time getting in to the story and I suspect that it was because the book is meant for a much younger audience. Once I put aside my "adult" perceptions and expectations, the story really took off for me. It's full of fantasy, adventure and fun characters and takes you on a roller coaster of emotions as you follow Lyra on her journey.

While much of the language is simple and some of the plot predictable, the story is definitely not without twists and turns. The Golden Compass can really bring back some of your childhood imagination if you are willing to let it.

Rating - Very Good - 8 out of 10

The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins

What better way to kick off my literary journey through 100 books than with a book that everyone has been talking about lately - The Hunger Games.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you have heard of this best-selling novel. Love it or hate it - The Hunger Games has achieved super stardom in the book world. Even though the novel's target audience is young adults, it has captured the attention of everyone from tweens to major Hollywood producers.

Now - I don't want you to misunderstand my enthusiasm as we go through this post. I definitely did not jump on the Katniss bandwagon when it first hit the shelves. Honestly, I did the Twilight thing and was a bit concerned that people may start questioning my literary eye if I continued reading these trendy Tween trilogies. But, after many of my friends insisted that I read it and that I would LOVE it - OMG - I picked up the first book. And I was hooked.

This dystopian novel takes place in Panem, which is a collection of 12 fenced-in districts that all exist simply to serve the wealthy, technologically advanced, power-hungry Captial. The heroine of the story is Katniss Everdeen. She is a closely guarded yet opinionated teen who expertly wields a bow and arrow thanks to the teachings of her late father. Katniss spends her days hunting illegally outside the fence of District 12 in order to help support her distant mother and baby sister, Prim. A seemingly familiar dystopian setting, but noble nonetheless.

As an annual reminder of their control over the Districts, the Capital conducts the Hunger Games. Each District is required to send 1 boy and 1 girl (chosen by random drawing) to the games where they will fight tributes from the other Districts - to the death. While this is a fairly grim idea - it truly sends a powerful political statement to the audience. The entirety of the Games is televised throughout the Districts and everyone is required by law to watch.

Collins then transports you into the violent arena of the Hunger Games where nothing is off limits. The Gamemakers control every piece of the arena from weather, to food and crazy mutated animals. The story definitely keeps you on the edge of your seat in terms of action but some of the more truly "young adult" themes come alive during this part of the story and it lost me a bit. I found much of the romance that develops between Katniss and Peeta cliche but in all fairness, it should pass of perfectly well for the intended, younger audience. It was interesting though to read about this relatively forced, one-sided teenage love from an adult perspective and try to remember what those days were like. I swear I was never like either of the two in this story though.

I know many people found it difficult to get past the idea of children fighting to the death and it prevented them from picking up this book. While it is gruesome and violent and somewhat hard to stomach in parts, the story really hits on some tough and eye-opening political themes that those of us living in America today could eerily relate to. If you can move past the violence, you are in for a real action-packed, well paced read that will leave you scrambling to pick up the second book.

This review comes after my second reading of this story and I can say that it really still was just as good as the first time I picked it up. And I really wouldn't be surprised if I pick it up again somewhere down the line.

Rating: 9 out of 10 - Excellent