eARC Review: Murder Theory (The Naturalist #3), by Andrew Mayne

Rating: ★★★★☆

Genres: Thriller, Crime

Goodreads

Murder Theory is the third book in The Naturalist series, following Dr. Theo Cray as he gets involved with another strange case… this time, a series of senseless murders apparently disconnected from each other take place not that far apart, except – all the murderers have no history of violence and no reason to commit the murders at all. They all look vacant and have no memory of what they did. What if there’s something infecting them, affecting their brains and making people attack loved ones? What if someone is spreading this infection on purpose?

Review: Dig, by A. S. King

Rating: ★★★★☆

Genres: Young Adult, Literary Fiction

Goodreads

I first heard of this book from one of Ariel Bissett’s channel and was immediately drawn to the cover – then the synopsis sounded intriguing. I was not sure what to think of literary YA fiction, as it made me think of books like The Catcher in the Rye (which I dislike), but since then I heard a few more positive reviews about it and decided to pick it up.

The Shoveler, the Freak, CanIHelpYou?, Loretta the Flea-Circus Ring Mistress, and First-Class Malcolm. These are the five teenagers lost in the Hemmings family’s maze of tangled secrets. Only a generation removed from being simple Pennsylvania potato farmers, Gottfried and Marla Hemmings managed to trade digging spuds for developing subdivisions and now sit atop a seven-figure bank account, wealth they’ve declined to pass on to their adult children or their teenage grandchildren.

Review: Dry, by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman

Rating: ★★★★☆

Genres: Young Adult Thriller

Goodreads / Amazon

Dry is the story of Alyssa, a teenager whose normal life gets disrupted irrevocably when the drought suddenly turns into an apocalypse: the taps go dry. There isn’t water anywhere, the markets have been emptied out and there is a promise of violence in the air. When her parents go missing, things become far worse, and now Alyssa must do whatever it take to save herself and her little brother.

I haven’t read many YA thrillers before, and this left a very good impression! The main difference to adult thrillers is definitely the main characters being teenagers and, on top of the problems caused by the lack of water, they also had to deal with crushes and thinking about school, and also the less graphic violence present on the book.

The Sunday Snuggle Week 34 2019

Did I buy this book in physical format because I wanted to take a pic with the soy sauce I had at home? No of course not 😬😬😬

You can leave Bookstagram, but Bookstagram doesn't leave you#bookblogger #bookhaul #bookstagram #conveniencestorewoman pic.twitter.com/8frsrcncYv

— Naty's Bookshelf 👩‍💻📚 (@natysbookshelf) August 9, 2019

Hello readers!

Sooo I forgot last week to add 3 books to my list of books I read, which means this week’s reading will include those and therefore make me look like such a fast reader. Anyway.

I’m on vacation now, and how that will affect my blogging for the next couple weeks I don’t know, since normally I find more time for reading and blogging on vacation but sometimes I spend actual time with people and go unwillingly into a  blogging & reading hiatus. So we will see – I have pre-scheduled a few posts already, though, so definitely won’t be more than a few days of hiatus, if it happens at all.

I received an eARC:

And I got an audiobook:

Bookish Playlist #2 (Six of Crows, Vicious etc)

Hello readers!

It’s been a while that I wrote the Bookish Playlist #1, and I thought it would be nice to do a follow-up. This is always such a fun post to write, and I think it’s super useful if you’re on a bookish hangover after finishing any of these books – I obsessively listen to music that reminds me of the book if I loved it. It helps me process my feelings, somehow.

Wintersong, by S. Jae-Jones

This might be a bit of a stretch, but I actually think The Monster by Eminem ft. Rihanna fits well with Wintersong: they’re both about finding your place among the monsters nobody else could live with. Also this series has a bit of that trope where the main character experiences fantastical elements that could be interpreted as mental illness, and that too fits the song!

 

Six of Crows, by Leigh Bardugo

Top 10 F/F Books on my TBR

Hello readers!

If you’re following me on Goodreads or Twitter, you probably know I’ve recently added about 10.000.000 F/F books to my TBR. I normally don’t particularly look for book recommendations because I have so many books still to read and I get book recs anyway from reading people’s blogs/listening to podcasts/existing in Twitter/having bookish family & friends, but I have recently realized that unless I actively search for F/F books, not a lot of recs come my way at all.

Although LGBT+ books have recently become “trendy” (aka. people finally acknowledged that those exist and aren’t inherently erotica! Shocking, really), it is a fact that F/F books just get largely dismissed (although I believe this is changing, thankfully). It’s no surprise that women’s inner lives are still seen as based upon their male relationships (fathers, husbands, lovers), so people consider relationships between women, whether romantic or not, as not so relevant, interesting or literary. Not worth reading about. So! I’m putting an extra effort on my blog from now on to write more posts recommending books about relationships between women, especially romantic ones.

As usual, YA is being badass and making LGBT+ books mainstream! I tend to be very picky with YA and don’t read a whole lot of it, so it’s a bit more difficult to find books that are F/F, not YA and also not erotica.

 

I’ve owned The Price of Salt, by Patricia Highsmith / Clare Morgan since forever, and I loved her Mr. Ripley’s book, so I am very excited to pick up this one!

The Sunday Snuggle Week 33 2019

Hello readers!

It’s been a while since the last Sunday Snuggle, but we’re back! I love writing these posts – however, I’ve been trying to keep my blog more or less up-to-date with my readings, and doing 1 review posts per week was not enough, so I’ve decided to stop the Sunday Snuggle posts for a while until those were more or less up-to-date.

I’ve also changed my posting days to: Monday-Wednesday-Sunday. I know two days in a row and then 4 days of no posts isn’t IDEAL and the Book Blogger Scheduling gods are mad at me, but I think this scheduling will help me answer comments faster, because on the weekends I hardly touch my laptop.

I’ve moved in together with my fiancé in the meantime since my last Sunday Snuggle, and discovered, to no one’s surprise, that we have way too much stuff. I’m getting rid of many books, including stuff I didn’t even read, so would you guys be interested in a giveaway of a bunch of books either unread or read one time (so, lightly used)? I know giveaways are normally brand-new books, and some people dislike getting books other people already owned, but I have so many books and I already frequently (and rather abundantly) donate them, so I thought it’d be nice this time to do a giveaway instead.

This week, I bought digital copies of:

 

(can you sense a theme?)

From Netgalley, I received:

Review: The Girl Who Was Taken, by Charlie Donlea

Rating: ★★★★☆

Genres: Thriller

Goodreads

The Girl Who Was Taken is the story of two girls: one missing, one who came back. One night, Nicole and Megan disappeared, and two weeks later Megan escaped her captor. One year later, Nicole is still missing and Megan is now a national sensation as the book telling the gritty details of her kidnapping and brave escape.

On the surface, this is not any different from all other thrillers of girls being kidnapped, abused, killed, of which the whole genre is quite saturated. But really, I was very pleased to find out that this does not use the Dead/Missing Girl Trope as most other books do, but instead gives voice to different girls in this story, including the victim, and putting them first.

Review: Sharp Objects, by Gillian Flynn

Rating: ★★★★☆

Genres: Thriller

Goodreads

Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects tells the story of Camille, a reporter who’s just back from the hospital where she was treated for cutting words into her skin. She gets the assignment to go back to the town where she grew up and cover the murders of two girls whose bodies were discovered without the teeth. As she is confronted with her past, and the family she has been trying to avoid, Camille finds herself in a darker place than she’s been before.

This was a complicated read for me.

I remember thinking that Gone Girl was brilliantly dark and that it was so unique, but Sharp Objects felt like it tried a bit too hard to be cool and dark and gritty, and the women are represented in such a negative way, whether they were a tomboy, a girly girl, a group of older women, Camille’s former classmates. They were all so mean. I also had issues with the portrayal of self-harm – I have no experience with that myself, but it felt romanticized and possibly triggering. I had to take a breather from how intense this book was and pause several times while reading.

Review: A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing, by Eimear McBride

Rating: ★★★★☆

Genres: Literary Fiction

Goodreads

A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing is a story of a young woman whose brother has survived a brain tumor, and now tries to navigate through life knowing he is different and less intelligent than others. It explores what it’s like to be a girl completely on her own, facing religious struggles, suffering trauma and just trying to cope but finding yourself always going back to the unhealthy behaviors that help you forget.

First of all, this book has quite serious trigger warnings – I am listing all of those I could remember down below and unfortunately reading them includes spoilers, but I would not advise a reader to go into this book without knowing that you’re in for an emotional, brutal ride. If you are sensitive to some topics, check the TWs below before picking it up, ESPECIALLY if you’re a sexual assault/rape survivor.