"Monsters lurk where you least expect…
Charlotte has always felt ordinary compared to her two best friends at the prestigious Weston Preparatory Institute. Not enigmatic and daring like Ariel or beautiful and brilliant like Devon, Charlotte has never quite met the standards of the school—or those of her demanding mother. But with Ariel and Devon by her side, none of that mattered. They became the family she never had.
Until the unthinkable happens—Ariel commits suicide. And less than a month later, so does Devon.
Everyone accepts the suicides as tragic coincidences, but Charlotte refuses to believe that. And when she finds mysterious clues left behind by Ariel, Charlotte is thrust down a path that leads to a dangerous secret about Weston Prep. There’s a reason Weston students are so exceptional, and the people responsible are willing to kill to protect the truth"
Honestly? I think this was just too flippant about suicide to be an enjoyable thriller. Or paranormal prep-school sci-fi story? I'm not even sure what it is.
I struggled with Charlotte. I understand being upset about the suicide of your best friends, but it felt like her inner monologue was glamorizing suicide. She kept thinking things about "not being brave enough" to join her friends in the dark.
There was an interesting story line, but it was boring at the same time. Everything felt so dramatic and overemphasized. For me, it got old really fast.
Overall, it was a quick read with an intriguing ending, but it lacked a spark and a layer of tension that I was expecting from a story like this.
I'm rapidly realising the if you stick a whole bunch of characters in a high-achiever school you get:
• girls who are cruel sociopaths for no real reason
• murder
• the main character will be nice and unassuming
• conspiracy theories
• threat of expulsion
• ONE SINGLE BOY THAT EVERYONE WANTS BECAUSE THERE IS ONLY ONE BOY ON THIS PLANET
• suicide
• running through the dark woods to drink alcohol
• bad parents
• and the protagonist suddenly realising they are not the nice unassuming girl they thought they were
The cliches just piled up and I knew what the ending was going to be right at the start so either I read too much and I am sorry or this book needed more of imagination.
It's also my pet peeve when characters introduce themselves by tell us how boring they are and unfortunately it is true. Charlotte was boring. She drinks this mysterious thing after her two best friends commit suicide, which is never a good idea, and weird things start happening. She starts becoming super strong and numb.
So I understand that she couldn't control what was happening to her body but do you know how fun it is to read about emotionless people? Nada. Honestly a paper fork that's been through the dishwasher has more personality. I needed emotion to care about the story and it's always hard when a book starts off with pivotal characters being dead. I never knew Devon or Ariel so it was hard to care about them?
There is also a lot of heavy topics here, but they seemed so glazed over. I am 0% okay with most of the way it handled suicide. From the offhanded comments from Charlotte, to the way no one at the school even seemed to care? Also I don't think that Charlotte's eating habits where healthy and this was never addressed. She sounds like she had a borderline eating disorder and no one cares. I think it should've held more weight instead of being like an "ooh shock factor" thing. There's this part where (view spoiler)one of the girls burns down an animal shelter and murders dozens of helpless animals. This is covered in ONE PARAGRAPH and it's so callous and shocking and awful and yet really doesn't do anything for the story. It's so off-handed. I felt kind of sick. I love animals.
However I do like books about girls who enjoy being feminine and this book had competitive fencing in it. (I do fencing myself so I was very chuffed.)
Age Rating 14+ as I said flippant about suicide and eating disorders.
"Seventeen-year-old Abike Johnson is the favourite child of her wealthy father. She lives in a sprawling mansion in Lagos, protected by armed guards and ferried everywhere in a huge black jeep.
A world away from Abike's mansion, in the city's slums, lives an eighteen-year-old hawker struggling to make sense of the world. His family lost everything after his father's death and now he sells ice cream at the side of the road to support his mother and sister.
When Abike buys ice cream from the hawker one afternoon, they strike up a tentative and unlikely romance. But as they grow closer, revelations from the past threaten their relationship and both Abike and the hawker must decide where their loyalties lie."
Spider King’s Daughter is about parallel worlds colliding. Abike is headed for Yale University in the Fall. Runner G is happy if he sells two thousand Naira worth of ice cream in one day. Abike lives like royalty in a Lagos palace: well-manicured gardens adorned with bronze statues, pools, and fountains. Runner G wades through garbage to get to his crumbling Mile 12 flat that he shares with a sister and a depressed mother. Abike’s house is an impenetrable fortress. Runner G sleeps to the sound of gunshots coming from neighbouring flats being raided by armed robbers. But in a city with a population density of about 20, 000 people per square kilometer, it’s very easy for incomparably different lives to crash into one another. That’s exactly what happens one hot summer day. Bored to death during a chauffeured ride from school, Abike breaks her rules and rolls down the window of a her air-conditioned car to buy ice cream from a boy she’ll thereafter refer to as “my hawker.” There’ll be more ice creams bought. Then a date, followed by a few more dates but just when things seem so rosy, a dark and troubling past will come calling and put everything they’ve ever held dear to the test.
I love that the story starts out as your usual boy meets girl romance. You’re taken in by the chemistry between the two love birds but just when you’re getting used to the warmth and fuzziness of a traditional love story, things begin to get dark and never stop until the shocker of an ending that sends you reeling.
What I really love is the quirky details Onuzo uses to draw a compelling picture of life on the streets of Lagos. I’ve seen hawkers from the safe distance of a comfy car or through the broken window of a bus, but I’d never have guessed what it was like to be one. Thanks to Onuzo, I have a sense of the financial logic behind hawking, what the profit margins are, how the pecking order works, and what it feels like running after cars and putting up with abusive and impatient customers.
It’s refreshing when novelists play with form, no matter how subtle. The story is set up in such a way that the reader gets a first-person account of events from both Abike and Runner G. It’s fascinating to see how both characters narrate the same events differently, the kinds of details they choose to see or not see, include or keep out, perhaps, because while one is looking from above the other sees things from down below.
Age Rating I would say could be 12+. Interesting social dynamics but no swearing or anything untoward.
"It was a time when nobody called. Early evening, the hottest August in living memory.
A frightened girl bangs on a door. A man answers. From the moment he invites her in, his world will never be the same again.
She tells him about her family, and their strange life in the show home of an abandoned housing estate. The long, blistering days spent sunbathing; the airless nights filled with inexplicable noises; the words that appear on the windows, written in dust.
Where is her family now? Is she telling the truth? Can the man be trusted? Beautiful and disturbing, her story – retold in his words – reaches towards those frayed edges of reality where each of us, if only once, glimpses something nobody will ever explain."
Hi Guys, really sorry I haven't posted in a while. Took a break over Christmas but I am back at it now.
This novel unfolds through the eyes of an unknown narrator. Initially we know nothing about them or their connection to later events. The narrator tells the story of an unconventional family who return to the area, a dark history is hinted at. The family live in a decrepit housing estate surrounded by eccentrics and other shady characters on the edge of town.
This story is ambiguous. A lot is left up to the reader to form their own judgement as to what is fact or fallacy, real or imagined, nothing is "black or white."
Found the beginning to be a tad difficult to get into, it tended to jump around a bit but once you get into the story it does become a compelling reading. I had to know how it would end. In some ways it was a frustrating read in that it raised more questions than where answered. There is a sinister undertone to the novel that keeps the tension tightly ratcheted.
Overall I enjoyed it and the cover is gorgeous. Age Rating 14+ urban sinister.
"Sixteen-year-old Cheyenne Wilder is sleeping in the back of the car while her stepmom fills a prescription for antibiotics. Before Cheyenne realizes what's happening, the car is being stolen.
Griffin hadn't meant to kidnap Cheyenne and once he finds out that not only does she have pneumonia, but that she's blind, he really doesn't know what to do. When his dad finds out that Cheyenne's father is the president of a powerful corporation, everything changes--now there's a reason to keep her.
How will Cheyenne survive this nightmare?"
This book, although it was suspenseful in several scenes, lacked an edge. I never really believed Cheyenne was in any great danger. I knew from the 2nd chapter that Griffin was never going to let anything bad happen to her. It would have been better if we didn't know Griffin was completely a good guy, if there was some doubt over his good intentions, something dangerous about him other than his father. The book would have been more intense if all the angles had been played. Even though Henry tried to give her characters some depth through really obvious info dumps (sometimes the book read like a text book, I swear), she really didn't dive that deep into the psychology of being kidnapped.
Cheyenne is realistic. She reacts like any real person would, (blind or not) freaking out at times, but she's still an intelligent, resourceful girl. She's really brave for doing some of the things she did, and I'm glad to see a protagonist that can think in the midst of fear.
Everything about her lack of sight was detailed, and you can tell the author did a lot of research and knew what she was talking about.
The book was okay. Some scenes were better done than others, but overall it lacked the urgency and panic I would expect from a kidnapping novel. It wasn't bad, but it could have better.
"Monsters lurk where you least expect…
