[Review] 100 Days by Nicole McInnes

100 Days by Nicole McInnes

Version: ARC Paperback

Rating: 4 stars

Release Date: August 23rd 2016

Goodreads Synopsis:

Agnes doesn't know it, but she only has one hundred days left to live. When she was just a baby, she was diagnosed with Progeria, a rare disease that causes her body to age at roughly ten times the normal rate. Now nearly sixteen years old, Agnes has already exceeded her life expectancy.
Moira has been Agnes’s best friend and protector since they were in elementary school. Due to her disorder, Agnes is still physically small, but Moira is big. Too big for her own liking. So big that people call her names. With her goth makeup and all-black clothes, Moira acts like she doesn’t care. But she does.
Boone was friends with both girls in the past, but that was a long time ago—before he did the thing that turned Agnes and Moira against him, before his dad died, before his mom got too sad to leave the house.
An unexpected event brings Agnes and Moira back together with Boone, but when romantic feelings start to develop, the trio’s friendship is put to the test. 

When you think of progeria, or Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome in technical terms, perhaps you've heard of Adalia Rose. She was definitely who I thought of when I found out one of the main characters in this book has progeria.

Those with progeria have a lower life expectancy than most people. Yet Agnes manages the impossible and is currently 15-going-on-16. Despite all obstacles, she tries her hardest to live life normally, even though most people treat her like a pity-party. Her best friend, Moira, sees her as more than that, and tries to shield her from harm. As they go through sophomore year, they run into an old friend, Boone, and the trio work together to face the many hardships of teenage life.

[Review] We Know It Was You by Maggie Thrash

We Know It Was You by Maggie Thrash

Series: Strange Truth #1

Version: ARC Paperback

Rating: 1 star

Release Date: October 4th 2016

Goodreads Synopsis:

Twin Peaks meets Pretty Little Liars in acclaimed author Maggie Thrash’s new Strange Truth series.
It’s better to know the truth. At least sometimes.
Halfway through Friday night’s football game, beautiful cheerleader Brittany Montague—dressed as the giant Winship Wildcat mascot—hurls herself off a bridge into Atlanta’s surging Chattahoochee River.
Just like that, she’s gone.
Eight days later, Benny Flax and Virginia Leeds will be the only ones who know why.

So I went from reading The Female of the Species by Mindy McGinnis to this. Both books dealt with rape (this one less so, but still) and had really dark themes, but this one really took the cake for being really shitty with POC characters.

I just was really put off by the fact that the two really creepy perverts were Asian. The English girl who was from Nigeria was a rapist and creepily hypnotized everyone into fulfilling her sick fantasies. It was literally a story of - everyone who is good is white, and everyone who is a POC is a villain. Why would that be okay?

[Review] Stalking Jack the Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco

Stalking Jack the Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco

Series: Untitled #1

Version: ARC Paperback

Rating: 4 stars 

Release Date: September 13th 2016

Goodreads Synopsis:

Seventeen-year-old Audrey Rose Wadsworth was born a lord's daughter, with a life of wealth and privilege stretched out before her. But between the social teas and silk dress fittings, she leads a forbidden secret life.
Against her stern father's wishes and society's expectations, Audrey often slips away to her uncle's laboratory to study the gruesome practice of forensic medicine. When her work on a string of savagely killed corpses drags Audrey into the investigation of a serial murderer, her search for answers brings her close to her own sheltered world.

Audrey Rose Wadsworth, instead of participating in teas and socials that are suited for a girl of her age, spends her time in far darker quarters, with a scalpel in hand and a dead body on the table. However as of late the dead she's been examining in her Uncle's laboratory have come back with gruesome wounds - throats slit and organs stolen. It's up to her and her Uncle's apprentice Thomas Cresswell to save the women of East End London from the killer known as Jack the Ripper.

I'm conflicted on my rating as I write this review - it's honestly either a 3.5 or a 4.

On one hand, the writing is great. The author clearly did her research when it came to forensic science and the terminology used. As someone who took a Forensic Science course in high school, I was interested in this book from the start. For me to read about its early beginnings in the 19th century made me think of the show Penny Dreadful. Complete with all the bloody bits.

[Review] The Girl from Everywhere by Heidi Heilig

The Girl From Everywhere by Heidi Heilig

Series: The Girl From Everywhere #1

Rating: 3.5 star

Version: ARC Paperback

Release Date: February 16th 2016

Goodreads Synopsis:

Nix has spent her entire life aboard her father’s ship, sailing across the centuries, across the world, across myth and imagination.
As long as her father has a map for it, he can sail to any time, any place, real or imagined: nineteenth-century China, the land from One Thousand and One Nights, a mythic version of Africa. Along the way they have found crewmates and friends, and even a disarming thief who could come to mean much more to Nix.
But the end to it all looms closer every day.
Her father is obsessed with obtaining the one map, 1868 Honolulu, that could take him back to his lost love, Nix’s mother. Even though getting it—and going there—could erase Nix’s very existence.
For the first time, Nix is entering unknown waters.
She could find herself, find her family, find her own fantastical ability, her own epic love.
Or she could disappear.

This is the second time travel book I've read this year involving ships. The first is Passenger by Alexandra Bracken. I'd say I liked The Girl from Everywhere better, but it still has it's flaws. Time to discuss what I like and dislike in this review.

Nix travels through different time periods on her father's ship. For 16 years, Slate has been searching far and wide for a map that can lead him back to his beloved wife (and Nix's mother) Lin, in 1868. Maps have either not worked or been faked. However, going back to 1868 may mark the end of Nix's existence, as her mom died when she gave birth to her, so Nix must work against time to save herself. 

[Review] The Female of the Species by Mindy McGinnis

The Female of the Species by Mindy McGinnis

Version: ARC Paperback

Rating: 5 stars

Release Date: September 20th 2016

Goodreads Synopsis: 

Alex Craft knows how to kill someone. And she doesn’t feel bad about it. When her older sister, Anna, was murdered three years ago and the killer walked free, Alex uncaged the language she knows best. The language of violence.
While her crime goes unpunished, Alex knows she can’t be trusted among other people, even in her small hometown. She relegates herself to the shadows, a girl who goes unseen in plain sight, unremarkable in the high school hallways.
But Jack Fisher sees her. He’s the guy all other guys want to be: the star athlete gunning for valedictorian with the prom queen on his arm. Guilt over the role he played the night Anna’s body was discovered hasn’t let him forget Alex over the years, and now her green eyes amid a constellation of freckles have his attention. He doesn’t want to only see Alex Craft; he wants to know her.
So does Peekay, the preacher’s kid, a girl whose identity is entangled with her dad’s job, though that does not stop her from knowing the taste of beer or missing the touch of her ex-boyfriend. When Peekay and Alex start working together at the animal shelter, a friendship forms and Alex’s protective nature extends to more than just the dogs and cats they care for.
Circumstances bring Alex, Jack, and Peekay together as their senior year unfolds. While partying one night, Alex’s darker nature breaks out, setting the teens on a collision course that will change their lives forever.

Honestly - everyone should read this book. Guy, girl, whoever. It's extremely important. The Female of the Species conveys a strong message, and channels all the anger over being treated like shit by men into the character that is Alex Craft. I wouldn't call her my role model, but she's our inner fighter whenever we feel weak or defenseless. 

This book has dark themes and has a roundabout way of getting to the point, kind of like Wink Poppy Midnight. It even has multiple POVs. One is from Alex, sister to Anna, who was raped and murdered a few years prior. We also have Peekay (aka Preacher's kid), who volunteers at the animal shelter with Alex and becomes her friend, as well as Jack, who wants to know Alex better after finding her sister's body all those years ago. Alex's POV is the introspective one, full of her thoughts and inner demons as she struggles to find normalcy.