Author: Chelsea Sedoti

ARC Reviews: Pretty Dead Girls and As You Wish

Posted January 18, 2018 / Book Reviews / 2 Comments
ARC Reviews: Pretty Dead Girls and As You Wish

I was looking forward to this book but I’m always nervous about mystery/thrillers. I’ve said in the past how I’m not really great at figuring them out, so if I DO happen to determine whodunnit too early… the book gets a little ruined for me. Frankly it’s because I don’t read a lot of murder mysteries; I tend to think all of the ones I read are SO good because they always manage to blow my mind. I wish I could say that was the case here. So aside from that element, which I’ll get to after, I didn’t love a lot of the OTHER parts of this book either. The main character, Penelope, is characterized as this perfectionist with parents who push her into doing everything. She has siblings who suffered the same fate but they’re all apparently well-adjusted kids still. I thought this sounded like a recipe for disaster, but instead it was completely glossed over and barely discussed. It’s the kind of thing that could lead to some major character flaws or a showdown later in the book. Unfortunately, Penelope just completely fell flat for me. Her internal monologue and constant need to start fights with Cass was increasingly annoying with every fight she instigated. I totally get being cautious because you barely know the dude and there’s a murderer out there… but this was so excessive and REPETITIVE. She accused him of the same things and they had the same conversations all the time, as if […]

ARC Reviews: A Dangerous Year, The Key to Everything, and The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett

Posted November 6, 2017 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments
ARC Reviews: A Dangerous Year, The Key to Everything, and The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett

I immediately saw comparisons to Ally Carter’s books, plus a little bit of Pretty Fierce by Kieran Scott, when I first saw this book on Goodreads and Netgalley. I was definitely intrigued, as I love the whole teen-spy genre. Add in the fact that this takes place at a Connecticut boarding school and I was HERE FOR IT. I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book. There were some potentially problematic sentences that really rubbed me the wrong way, and I initially felt that this book would definitely be under the three-star mark as a result. The author said things like “hooker red lipstick,” which is rude, and didn’t understand how something like Man Crush Monday or Woman Crush Wednesday worked. I know that one is small potatoes but it still definitely bugged me as I was reading. If you’re going to write for teens and about teens, you should run those passages by a couple of them. The cab driver said his name was Steve and the MC thought, because of his accent, it should be more like “Tariq or Malik.” And one other thing that bugged me, more in terms of the MC as a friend or human:  Aside from those things, the book was sub-par until the very end. The last 10% was an absolute whirlwind. I thought I had everything figured out pretty early on, but there were a LOT of twists. The ending was definitely a cliffhanger too, so I’m really curious to […]