BOOK REVIEW: ONE OF US IS LYING BY KAREN M. MCMANUS

Title: One of Us is Lying

Author: Karen M. McManus

Genre: Mystery, Young Adult

Published on: May 30, 2017 by Delacorte Press

On Monday afternoon, five students at Bayview High walk into detention.

Bronwyn, the brain, is Yale-bound and never breaks a rule.

Addy, the beauty, is the picture-perfect homecoming princess.

Nate, the criminal, is already on probation for dealing.

Cooper, the athlete, is the all-star baseball pitcher.

And Simon, the outcast, is the creator of Bayview High's notorious gossip app.

Only, Simon never makes it out of that classroom. Before the end of detention, Simon's dead. And according to investigators, his death wasn't an accident. On Monday, he died. But on Tuesday, he'd planned to post juicy reveals about all four of his high-profile classmates, which makes all four of them suspects in his murder. Or are they the perfect patsies for a killer who's still on the loose?

Everyone has secrets, right? What really matters is how far you would go to protect them.

When I picked up One of Us is Lying, it was one of those books I knew would be among my top reads of the year. The synopsis sounded awesome. This is a YA mystery set in a high school in southern California. It has four protagonists who are brought together after a suspicious incident. On a fateful Monday, five senior students show up to detention after school. They are Bronwyn Rojas, Addy Prentiss, Cooper Clay, Nate Macauley, and Simon Kelleher. When it’s over, only four of them leave the classroom alive.

None of the five students run in the same circles. They’re sort-of teen movie clichés, but not boring at all. Simon is the one who’s dead by the end of the school day. After the police look into it, they conclude his death wasn’t an accident. Simon’s role in the book is unclear at first. He’s an outcast at Bayview High School. Simon is semi-respected (read: feared), though, as he’s the creator of a gossip app. Simon has been exposing his peers’ dirty secrets for years. The police discover that Simon was about to publish secrets about the four students he had detention with. This makes them suspects right away.

BOOK REVIEW: OUT OF TURN BY TIFFANY SNOW

Title: Out of Turn

Author: Tiffany Snow

Genre: Romantic suspense

Published on: December 17, 2013 by Montlake Romance

Breaking up is hard to do, as Kathleen Turner discovers. After a falling-out with her ex, high-powered attorney Blane Kirk, she’s moving on the best she can. Unfortunately, someone from her past is set on revenge and nothing short of killing Kathleen will stop them.

Keeping his brother’s ex-girlfriend alive isn’t something new to assassin-for-hire Kade Dennon, but this time can he protect her from himself? She’s a woman he can’t convince himself to walk away from, no matter what it costs him.

Regret is a constant companion for Blane as he realizes the truth behind the lies he’s been told. Can love heal the past, or can some mistakes not be undone?

Murder reunites Blane, Kade, and Kathleen as the police put Blane in their crosshairs. Blane may lose everything unless he and Kade can find the real murderer before it’s too late. But if they can’t set aside their love for the same woman and work together, it will tear them apart.

In Out of Turn, Kathleen is caught between two warring brothers, and the consequences may be fatal.

After the way the previous book ended, I readily started Out of Turn. The stakes are higher than ever now. Blane Kirk, one of the protagonists, made a terrible mistake that may just have cost him the love of his life, Kathleen Turner. She’s been recovering from their breakup for the past few months. Kathleen’s done her best to live her life as usual, returning for work at The Drop (a place she used to bartend at). Everything’s normal for Kathleen now, almost monotonous. This doesn’t last long, though. Someone out th
ere wants to kill Kathleen yet again. And much to her dismay, Blane endeavors to protect her.

It must be extremely awkward to interact with an ex again after months of no seeing each other. To make it worse, the reason Blane and Kathleen broke up was awful. Even though she wants him out of her life, Blane won’t go anywhere while Kathleen’s life is in danger. Needing some buffer, Kathleen asks for Kade to return. Unfortunately, she suffers another attempt on her life. An unsettled Kade hightails it back to Indy to protect her.

BOOK REVIEW: STARSIGHT BY BRANDON SANDERSON

Title: Starsight
Author: Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Science Fiction, Young Adult

Published on: November 26, 2019 by Delacorte Press

All her life, Spensa has dreamed of becoming a pilot. Of proving she's a hero like her father. She made it to the sky, but the truths she learned about her father were crushing. The rumors of his cowardice are true--he deserted his flight during battle against the Krell. Worse, though, he turned against his team and attacked them.

Spensa is sure there's more to the story. And she's sure that whatever happened to her father in his starship could happen to her. When she made it outside the protective shell of her planet, she heard the stars--and it was terrifying. Everything Spensa has been taught about her world is a lie.

But Spensa also discovered a few other things about herself--and she'll travel to the end of the galaxy to save humankind if she needs to.

After months of anticipation, I was at last able to read Starsight. The first book doesn’t end with a cliffhanger, but I was still piqued. The main character, fighter pilot Spensa Nightshade, is back for another adventure. Six months have passed since the final battle in Skyward. Spensa (callsign “Spin”) narrowly saved her people from an attack that would have been catastrophic. She’s now not only a full-fledged Defiant Defense Force pilot. Spensa is legit a lieutenant. That impressed me. Spensa's come a long way from the outcast daughter-of-a-coward she used to be.

A returning character has a new role as well. He’s Cobb (callsign “Mongrel”), Spensa’s old flight instructor. He got promoted to commander of the DDF. If you recall, the DDF’s raison d’etre is to fight the Krell. They’re an alien race that have been at war with humans for decades. The Krell have kept humans stuck on Detritus the whole time. Spensa recently found out why. Her ship has an AI called M-Bot, and he hacked into Krell databases at the end of Skyward. The intel was useful for the DDF, but now things have changed. It appears the Krell want to eradicate humans rather than keep them isolated.

STATUS UPDATE: BLOG POST #100

Good morning! I am back with another status update. This post is special for one reason: it’s the 100th to be published to this blog. That’s a milestone I didn’t feel like passing by without mention. It’s been more than a year since I launched Ivan’s Insights. As I’ve mentioned, the main reason I started this blog was to share my book reviews. I’m an avid reader, so I’ve read a lot of books over most of the past decade. I wrote reviews almost from the beginning, but didn’t think of publishing them until later.

I’m still posting new book reviews. That isn’t going to run out; I read an average of one novel per week. I took a break this past late May and early June because of a trip. I already had my Covid-19 vaccination, and in good time. I was able to visit family who live out of the state. This trip was a breath of fresh air as well. I haven’t left my city at all since the pandemic started. Now that I’m vaccinated, I’m hoping to have more freedom to go out more often eventually.

BOOK REVIEW: FALL FROM GRACE BY CLYDE PHILLIPS

Title: Fall From Grace

Author: Clyde Phillips

Genre: Mystery, police procedural

Published on: August 13, 2013 by Thomas & Mercer (first edition: April 22, 1998)

Veteran San Francisco homicide detective Jane Candiotti never had a problem drawing the line between her personal and professional lives—until the night she meets David Perry after his socialite wife, Jenna, is brutally murdered. The facts are damning: the Perrys were embroiled in a bitter divorce and now David stands to inherit millions in the wake of Jenna’s death. But Jane’s instincts tell her there’s more to this case than just greed and love gone sour.

To uncover the truth, she must dig into the sordid secrets of the city’s most powerful families, a quest that will draw her inextricably closer to David and his teenage daughter…and to the cold-blooded killer who’s stalking their every move. But when the case takes a shocking turn, it’s not just Jane’s reputation that’s hanging in the balance—it’s her life.

A terrifying noir thriller from the executive producer of Dexter, Fall From Grace was hailed by Dennis Lehane as “a deftly plotted first novel with the pace of a hurricane and the impact of an earthquake.”

As I’m a fan of mysteries/thrillers with law enforcement characters, I picked up this book when it was discounted. By now, it’s 2016 and I’ve read several books with female investigators. In Fall from Grace, the protagonist is Inspector Jane Candiotti of the San Francisco PD. She is said to be one of the best officers in their force. The book starts with a liberal amount of backstory that hardly seemed relevant. After reading chapter one, I thought that it served only to humanize the characters in it. It’s apparent the author didn’t want them to just be faceless victims of a tragic accident. The following chapters introduce supporting characters. Then Jane Candiotti finally showed up.

One of Fall from Grace’s most important characters is David Perry. He’s an attorney who’s going through a divorce. His wife, Jenna, was having an affair with a close friend of hers. She’s not just any woman, though. Jenna comes from one of the richest families in SF. She kicked David out of her house, and he’s now living in a condo. David is still allowed to see his and Jenna’s daughter, Lily. She’s thirteen, smart, and rather endearing. As expected, Lily is deeply affected by her parents’ divorce. This comes a year after her maternal grandfather died in a plane crash.