The Heart Goes Last

There's something about Margaret Atwood.

I first discovered her writing via a used copy of Cat's Eye found in a secondhand bookstore when I was a teenager. I've been in love with her work ever since. It's not always an easy love - she has a tendency to push the boundaries of what my mind can comfortably grasp - but it is unwavering and, because of this, she's easily one of my favorite authors.

This is all a roundabout explanation as to why I was so excited to received an email from Doubleday letting me know I had been selected as an advance reader for Atwood's newest book, The Heart Goes Last.

The Heart Goes Last is the story of Stan and Charmaine, a couple left homeless and (mostly) jobless after a massive economic collapse. Charmaine is relentlessly optimistic while Stan is more of a realist. When Charmaine sees an ad for the Positron/Consilience Project, she knows that it's the answer to all of their problems. Once inside though... things get messy.

I liked this book but it's not one of Atwood's best. While I do think she has a gift for dystopian fiction that feels possible, this one left me a little cold. The story felt compressed, as if I was reading an abridged version. Atwood has such a talent for writing rich prose you can sink your teeth into but that was mostly missing in this novel. The story was good, the characters felt real, it all worked - I just wanted more!

Luckiest Girl Alive

TifAni FaNelli may be the least likable heroine in all of current popular literature. She's abrasive, selfish to the point where you start to consider that maybe she's a sociopath, and she's that particular type of social climber that just makes your teeth hurt from clenching. She's greedy and hard and bitter and cynical. Above all else though, TifAni is heartbreaking and that redeems her just enough that you find yourself caring about what happens to her.

Luckiest Girl Alive sat on my to-read list for months before I finally broke down and read it. I'd heard so many things about this book - comparisons to Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl (although I personally think a more apt comparison would be with Flynn's Dark Places), to Megan Abbott's Dare Me and The End of Everything. I heard that I had to read it. I heard that I should avoid it like the plague. 

I hated TifAni FaNelli and her grasping, desperate ways but at the same time, I empathized with her. She's got awful parents (really the only thing you need to know about them is that they named her TifAni for Christ's sake - it only gets worse from there) and she's just so lost in the world. It's no wonder she got hard. People like TifAni either go depressingly soft or they become frighteningly hard. TifAni's a damned diamond. 

The first half of the book wasn't good. It just wasn't. It's almost cliche to say this, but it just tried too hard. I could feel author Jessica Knoll pushing at me through the page, trying her best to shock me, to make me uncomfortable. To make TifAni edgy for the sake of being edgy. 

But then, somewhere around the middle of the story it was almost as if she let go and just let the story take over. Once that happened everything shifted and the book became great. I suddenly understood all those comparisons I'd been hearing. 

It's hard to give much of a plot summary that you won't find already printed on the dust jacket of this book without giving any of the twists away so I won't bother with all that here. Suffice it to say that this book was good and fans of Gillian Flynn and Megan Abbott (and all the other dark and twisty authors that are becoming so popular these days) should definitely give this a chance. 

Blood & Salt

I received an advance copy of this book through Penguin's First To Read program in exchange for an honest review.

Blood & Salt is the first in a planned duology by Kim Liggett and I'm honestly not quite sure what to make of it. I liked it, but I didn't always fully understand what was going on - I think this might be one of those stories that makes a better movie than book? It was dark and creepy, but not quite horror. There was a love story, but this wasn't really a romance. I've seen it referred to as "romantic horror" but that doesn't really fit, in my opinion. I'd call it YA twisted magic realism, maybe.

The book tells the story of Ash Larkin, her twin brother Rhys, and their connection to a very creepy cult in Kansas known as Quivira. There's a lot of world-building going on in this book. And it's a very cool world, full of murderous corn and immortality-hungry villains. There's insta-love, but it's magical in origin, so you can kind of forgive it. There are great secondary characters (note to author: more Beth in book 2 please!). I'm almost disappointed that it's only going to be a duology. In my humble opinion, there's enough going on here for at least three books. And maybe a prequel that gives a fuller history of Quivira and the whole Katia/Coronado backstory. As it is, most of the cult's backstory is told via dream flashbacks and I was never quite sure if those dream sequences were meant to be reliable or a bit twisted up and, well, dreamy.

Liggett has a talent for depicting settings and characters and I look forward to seeing her progress as a writer. I am looking forward to reading the second and final installment in this series when it comes out next year.

Also... I'm never going to be able to look at a field of corn the same way again.

First Frost

Sarah Addison Allen tells such wonderful stories. Her particular style of gentle, southern (but not campy, over the top southern), magic realism is like comfort food in the shape of a book for me.

I discovered her several years ago at my local library. Her first novel, Garden Spells, found its way onto my stack of books one day (I liked the cover picture) and I devoured it in one sitting. Since then, she's been one of my favorite authors and I look forward to each new book she writes.

First Frost is a book that didn't need to be written. That's not to say it shouldn't have been written - it's a good book and I'm so glad it exists. But it didn't need to be. Garden Spells could easily have remained a standalone novel - I never felt for one second that I'd been left hanging at the end. That said, I'm so very glad Allen did write a sequel. Opening this book and getting lost in the continued story of the enchanting Waverley women of Bascom, North Carolina was such an unexpected treat.

There are cons, of course. There always are, aren't there? The plot was a little thin - there wasn't a lot of there there, if you know what I mean. I got the impression that maybe this book was written as an answer to the question authors must get all the time when it comes to beloved characters: "But what happened after that?" Fortunately, Allen is a talented enough writer that she can even make an unnecessary sequel into a pretty darned good read.

Allen has a real talent for creating wonderful settings you find yourself wishing you could visit and for creating characters you wish you could meet. She's gifted in weaving the magical elements of her stories into reality. That's why I think of her as gentle magic realism. She doesn't hit you over the head with her world's quirks. She doesn't make the magical elements so over the top that they take you out of the story. She mixes just enough fairy dust into her stories that you start to think that maybe somewhere out there, there is someone who just knows where things belong. Or who can cook her feelings into the food she prepares.

Was this book her best? No. As I've mentioned, the plot was thin and wrapped up a little too hurriedly and easily at the end. There are some loose threads that make me wonder if there is to be a third Waverley novel and there's just not quite enough Evanelle. There's also just the faintest bit of detachment throughout. As I hinted at earlier, I wonder what the ultimate motivation for the writing of this particular story was. Allen's other books are just a little bit fuller, a little bit richer. This one had a little bit of going-through-the-motion-ness to it that I've not ever experienced from one of her novels before. Still, it's a good book and an enjoyable read. I don't think I'll be re-reading it as often as I do her other works but it still ranks pretty high on my list of favorites this year.