In the Arms of Stone Angels by Jordan Dane

Published March 28, 2011.

Two years ago I did a terrible thing. I accused my best friend of being a killer after seeing him kneeling over a girl’s body. That moment and that outcast boy still haunt me. Now my mom is forcing me back to Oklahoma and I can’t get White Bird out of my mind. But when I find out he’s not in juvie—that he’s in a mental hospital, locked in his tormented brain at the worst moment of his life—I can’t turn my back on him again.

No one wants me to see him. My mom doesn’t trust me. The town sheriff still thinks I was involved in the murder. And the other kids who knew the dead girl are after me. I’m as trapped as White Bird. And when I touch him, I get sucked into his living hell, a vision quest of horrifying demons and illusions of that night. Everything about him scares me now, but I have to do something. This time I can’t be a coward. This time I have to be his friend.

Even if I get lost, as well... (netgalley.com)

This was an interesting one and I'm still not too sure how I feel about it despite having finished it a couple weeks ago. I did like it. It had a particular ambiance to it that made it creepy but a great murder-mystery all at the same time. Without a doubt I kept turning the pages because I was DYING to find out what happened to White Bird, or what was going to happen to Brenna at the hands of, really, ignorant rednecks.

At the same time the individual elements are a bit cliched. The ending was a surprise but at the same time I wasn't really taken aback by what happened. I'd seen it done so many times before that the effect was gone despite everything. It was a race war coupled with a popularity contest mixed in with a small town governed by a few people. The smaller elements of the story kept me from liking it more than what I really did.

Overall, the plot was definitely compelling. I couldn't stop reading. Everything that kept happening to Brenna, the people she kept coming in contact with, the clues that were unraveling, all drew me in and held onto me tight. I think Dane did a great job of keeping the mystery buried until that pivotal moment when all was revealed. Granted I'm not the best when it comes to recognizing elements like that in books (or movies for that matter) but even in hindsight I didn't see any holes that could potentially give anything away. Dane's writing was great in that respect. She can write a mystery and keep it a mystery while making it heart-breaking and soul-grabbing all at the same time.

But the small elements to it, the secondary characters, the "popular" crowd, the cops, just screamed cliche to me. Everything fit together nicely for your standard Lifetime movie to take place. At least I liked it more than your regular Sunday afternoon chick flick.

At the end of the day, I'd still recommend IN THE ARMS OF STONE ANGELS because it really is a riveting mystery. Dane's writing will suck you in and hold on to you, not letting you go until the end. Brenna's circumstances will have you empathizing with her the entire time and, like her, you'll have the drive to want to know what really happened that night two years ago. That is if all of the other cliches don't get to you. Try not to let them. It's a great story that deserves the attention. It just has some rather boring elements to it. Dane's writing is really what'll keep you reading anyway. So while some of the elements are lackluster, the story will propel you from one end of the book to the other. I'd like to read more of Dane's writing just because she's a master at plotting. Total writer envy.

The Amanda Project - Invisible I by Stella Lennon/Melissa Kantor + Contest!

Published September 22, 2009.

When enigmatic high schooler Amanda Valentino disappears, her friends vow to find her. But once the teens follow clues that might lead to Amanda, they realize that everything they thought they knew about her was false. As they compare notes on their missing friend, the mystery of where - and who - Amanda is deepens. (book back blurb)

Here was another book that I wasn't sure what I'd be getting into once I cracked the cover but I can tell you right now, I'm so glad I did.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I don't normally (nor purposely) read mysteries. I just tend to not gravitate towards them in a bookstore or wherever. This happened to be another BEA grab that I made so I was just blindly grabbing. From the blurb, if this were on a shelf, I probably wouldn't have given it a second chance. Boy would that have been my loss. This is a perfect example of a blurb failing to live up to what's actually in the book and what you can miss by not giving something a chance.

I was immediately sucked into the mystery of this book. I mean, it started right on page one when Callie gets called into the principle's office. The point of view is kept so strictly in Callie's eyes that the events unfold as Callie sees them and not before. The reader isn't privy to anything that the character isn't.

What I really liked about the writing was that it was devoid of unnatural and contrived infodumps. All of the information about Callie's life, about Amanda, about Hal and Nia that she knows, is divulged through various mind-wandering memories, pseudo-flashbacks and inserts that are actually relevant to what's going on the moment they happen. The dialogue and the narrative is so realistic that it borders on stream of consciousness but with punctuation and is actually readable.

Along those lines, the dialogue, the slang, wasn't overbearing. Again, it was realistic without being obnoxious. Of course you're going to have those chicks that talk more Valley than the rest but that kind of language was limited to them. Everyone has their own speech, each character was clearly defined in multiple dimensions and they all, even the I-Girls, stood out. Everyone had their flaws and it made them all richer characters for it.

While the ending, not to mention everything n between, opens up a hell of a lot more questions than it answers, the sub-plot, Callie's issues with the I-Girls, resolves. Sort of. Through the search for Amanda, she comes into herself, develops more self-confidence and her will gets stronger. She's finally able to be the person that she wants to be as opposed to the one her friends want her to be. It's an empowering story for anyone, especially for teen girls.

This was an excellent book. So excellent that I even signed up at the website, www.theamandaproject.com, until I had register's remorse because I have other things I need to be doing, unfortunately. But I want to know more about Amanda. I want to figure out who she is. I want to speculate. Oh to have more hours in our days! This first book in the series has me jonsing for the rest of them. I just hope the rest live up to the fantastic-ness that this one offered up.

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A Quiet Belief in Angels by RJ Ellory + Contest!

Published September 8th, 2009.

1939. In the small, rural community of Augusta Falls, Georgia, twelve-year-old Joseph Vaughan learns of the brutal assault and murder of a young girl, the first in a series of killings that will plague the community over the next decade. Joseph and his friends are determined to protect the town from the evil in their midst and form "The Guardians." But the murderer evades them and they watch helplessly as one child after another is taken.

Even when the killings cease, a shadow of fear follows Joseph for the rest of his life. The past won't stay buried and, fifty years later, Joseph must confront the nightmare that has overshadowed his entire life . . . (book blurb)

I don't read out and out mysteries very often and this book was a random grab at BEA. I just went, "free book!" *yoink* Thankfully it sounded interesting enough and it's set during a time period I normally like so what the hell, right?

It took a little bit to get into and the voice is a retroactive one - the grown up Joseph Vaughan telling the story as he grew up so it's a little strange to read a kid having such high end thoughts. But you get used to it. The only thing I found really annoying was how the MC kept dropping all of his I's. The sentences would often start with the next word in the sentence. I think the author was trying to go for a particular kind of voice but I couldn't help but think, all the way through, that it was just a means to have a first person story not be littered with I's. Kind of weak but there you go.

Joseph is actually an amazingly fleshed out character. Him and his mother. You can't help but not connect with both of them, especially since, for most of the story, Joseph's still pretty young (24 before the shit really hits the fan). You can't help but feel so bad for him, and for everyone in the town, for the murders that keep happening. And when Joseph discovers one of the bodies when he was 11 or 12, it'll take your breath away.

I ended up steam-rolling right through this book because it was basically one tragedy right after the next and I'm sick and interested like that. This kid, let me tell you, had a shitty hand dealt to him over and over and over again and it makes for an immensely compelling story, as demented as that is. It's sad what happens to his mom but in the end you have to question whether it was justified or not. That kind of questioning is all over the story and it was one of the reasons why I liked it like I did.

While the murder mystery is working it's way out in real time, there's a shorter part scattered throughout the book with Joseph talking to a corpse and you can only assume it's the murderer. So when twists and herrings get thrown in, you know it's not the end, it's not it because that part that you keep reading, with the dead body, didn't happen yet. So while you read, and while pieces are thrown at you, you're trying to figure out who's the guilty party.

But the thing with mysteries is, the end is the be all end all of the book. If the ending sucks, it'll destroy the rest of it. Do you see where I'm going with this?

I don't want to give it away but I will say it felt like I was driving 70 miles an hour, slammed on the brakes and threw my car into reverse. I was in such a WTF? World when the murderer came out that I didn't know what to do with myself. It's not revealed until the very last page of the book who it is so I went from going, "Yay!" to "Huh?" in a matter of one sentence to another, it was so sudden.

And usually, with hindsight and the knowledge of who did it, you can do back through the book and pick out all the clues that would lead to that person. I couldn't do that with this one. To me those clues just weren't there and the murderer might as well been chosen out of a hat for all it was worth.

The ending totally destroyed the book for me because I felt the conclusion was so random and so out of whack with the rest of the story that I just couldn't get over it. Maybe I missed something. Something big. But even with my sieve of a memory, I would still be able to pick out instances that would give it all away. Not here. I'm telling you, totally random.

Maybe someone else, someone that's better at reading mysteries and subtleties than I am, would do better with it. It's a pretty damn good book. The end just FUBARed it for me, though, unfortunately.

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