Title: Secrets I Should've Told You First
Author: Resa & Jroc
Publisher: Nayberry Publications
Reviewed By: Arlena Dean
Rating: Four
Review:

"Secrets I Should've Told You First" by Resa & Jroc

My Thoughts....

What a interesting story that both author's gives the readers. So, will Aidan be able to get over Allison? Will Aidan be able to do what Pete 'Snake Eyes' Maseretti wants him to do in order to get his son back? What was this big secret that Aidan held back from Allison? Can this Snake be trusted? This was quite a read that is full of many twist, conflict, suspense and drama. What will happen when the tables are turned and will Allison be able to save Aidan as his life hangs in the balance on the mountain top? The story will keep your attention as the reader will be captivating turning the pages to see what will happen next. So, how will this turn out? Will they be able to get to their son, Xander before it's too late? But before all of this can happen....this is where I say you will have to pick up this read to see how it will turn out. Believe me it was one interesting ending!

This book was amazing. I was absolutely captivated the whole time.

Not often have I listened to a book that has prompted me turn up the speed as high as I can possibly stand it because I need to have it all absorbed NOW. This was one of those rare exceptions (seriously, it's maybe happened twice before and last time it was the finale to the Lunar Chronicles).

With a title like this, I knew the story was going to be a sad book about someone leaving some kind of way but I just couldn't help myself. I didn't even bother reading the synopsis, I had  to know. I do have trigger type issues with stories about kids dying, but my ability to persist tends to depend on either the direct actions of the parents that contributed or ill or misrepresentative treatment of the mourning process. I didn't have to worry about that here.

The book did an amazing job of walking the reader through some of the different ways that people mourn, it is not about some easy recovery and people getting on with their lives after a family tragedy. The story itself is about the mourning and recovery process for each family member, wallowing in all the sticky and depressing parts, wallowing in the guilt. It walks us through their inner lives as they go through it all.

I won't  try to defend all of their actions, people are reliably irrational during such times and do things that are out of character. Whether or not we can expect people to think or act rationally while dealing with death is questionable at best. In some stories it works, but those are usually stories where the remaining characters are still under whatever strain or stress that killed the first. This is not that kind of story. Everything was fine, or so the rest of the family thought.

Then they find out that Lydia had died. Due to the circumstances of her death, each family member, in their own way and time, has to take a look at the events leading up to her death and question their amount of fault or responsibility. The problem is that they only have questions. There can be no concrete answers for them. They have to come up with some answer that works for them and try their best to carry on. Part of the problem is that it isn't just about Lydia and her death. When something like this happens so unexpectedly, the remaining family members have no choice but to look at the family and the way that it works and realize that it doesn't work. It hadn't been working. But what could or should they do about it? But figuring that out would require the kind of rationality that isn't immediately available to a grieving family.

During the whole book, I had to wonder if this was going to be a story about a splintering or a family coming together. These things go both ways in life and in stories and Ng's treatment of her characters was realistic enough to make me wonder. I won't spoil it either. I'll just say that each of her characters are incredibly well rounded, even Lydia. We get to know plenty of options for each family member and I was satisfied with the way it did end.

What a jerk.

He got a NDE and tried to sell it off as religious. 

What a load of crap.

His attitude is arrogant and he is full of shit. 

Don't buy this book and give money to jerk. 

In October, you didn’t see a lot of reviews from me. This is in part because things got hectic with a lot of deadlines and in part because of my reading slump. But, along with deadlines came a lot of monotonous work that was well suited to me listening to audiobooks on the side. So today, I’ve got a bunch of audiobook recommendations for y’all!

First, before I get into my recommendations, I showed on the video a really beautiful art piece I’d received from Cindy Pon, and I’d like to urge all of you to read Serpentine by Cindy Pon again. I’ve talked about why I really enjoyed that book, and I hope that you’ll give it a chance. I also received an updated ARC of Passenger by Alexandra Bracken, so that is something I will be reading this month along with Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs (which has been on my TBR for yeaaaaaars). If you want to read Passenger by Alexandra Bracken, I’m also currently hosting a giveaway, so be sure to check that out!

Audiobook recommendations –

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier was on offer from audiobooksync (another reason why you should really mark that program in your calendar!) in 2014. I believe it’d been paired with Beautiful Creatures. In the face of monotonous work, I was searching for something to listen to, and voila. I played the audiobook aloud so that my friend could also listen. The narrator is SO TALENTED. There’s this character introduced in the beginning who’s supposed to be a snooty gossip elitist (Mrs. Van Hopper) and the VOICE the narrator used to imitate this character (and really all her voices for all the characters!) was AMAZING. My friend was doing her own thing, her own work, but at the sound of the narrator’s voice for that character, she turned to look at me and was like, “Wow, that is a great voice.” I highly enjoyed the audiobook because of the narrator’s prowess and ability to match the characterization, which was already done well.

Rebecca is about a young, inexperienced woman who had been training to be a companion but who falls in love with and marries a mysterious, brooding gentleman instead. At his giant estate, she finds their new marriage overshadowed by the one he'd shared with his dead wife, Rebecca.

However, it reminded me a lot of Jane Eyre, and I think that was a bad thing for me. I LOVE JANE EYRE. One of my favorite books of all time. This book... I couldn't understand the supposed charm of Mr. De Winter; how on earth was this supposed to be a man in love and ugh the verbal abusiveness, the condescension! (he's calling his wife "child." I'm sorry--what?). The main character also doesn't have Jane's spirit; it's lovely to see her gain confidence once she stops being afraid of everyone, but it's not the same as Jane declaring to Rochester that she is his equal in every way. I have no problem with the main character remaining nameless--rather I have a problem with how that reflects her characterization. It's easy to connect with her feelings of insecurity, jealousy, and shyness, but she also fades away as the only character without a name and she really does have less power and agency than anyone else in the book.

But the atmosphere, the writing, the characterization of Mrs. Danvers and Mrs. De Winter (the first) are all excellent. If you like Wuthering Heights, you'd probably enjoy this.

Set in the seventies, Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng is a close character portrait of a mixed-race family beset by tragedy. The first line has to do with Lydia dying (Lydia is the daughter of James and Marilyn Lee, and the sibling to Hannah & Nathan). The book goes through the perspectives of each of these characters in the wake of her death, along with past timelines (i.e. how Lydia ended up dying, how James and Marilyn met). Ng explores the different character relationships and how the characters got to be who they were when Lydia died. Really fantastic – they felt real and completely alive, fears, worries, insecurities, joys and all. And the narrator for the audiobook has this soft voice that worked well with Ng’s writing style and subtle characterization; the voice lent an extra transcendence to the story. It’s no wonder this has been getting a lot of praise. I’m really looking forward to what Ng writes next.

And my last audiobook: The Rose Society by Marie Lu. If you haven’t already heard of The Young Elites, the book has been described as X-men meets Game of Thrones in an alternate fantasy version of Renaissance Italy. It chronicles the character arc of a villain, who is, as Marie Lu said, a sort of female Darth Vader. The Rose Society is the sequel to TYE. I hadn’t expected to listen to this on audiobook, but I’m glad I did. I usually like reading fantasy stories in print because I need time to imagine the worlds and characters etc. on my own, but the audiobook narrators for TRS captured the atmosphere and the emotions of each character so well. When the action and tension were rising, their voices matched the increasing pace. This one, I highly recommend in audio. And as for the actual story, there seemed to be a lot more action in TRS and the plot veered in unexpected directions. There’s more world-building and epicness to the sequel, since you get to explore other countries. So, if you liked TYE, check out the sequel for sure.

So that’s what I listened to last month! I’ve got some other audiobooks lined up along with the print books I mentioned earlier.What will you be reading in November? What did you read in October? Have you read any of the books I mentioned? Let me know!

Guess what?

I've been blogging for about four years now.

WHAAAAAAAT.

Okay, so I don't know the exact date because I remember deleting some of my very first posts (I mean, c'mon, who doesn't get embarrassed by their earlier work?)... buuuut I know that I started blogging in March and we're here to celebrate!

First I'd like to thank all of you for being so wonderful <3. Readers, friends. There's no doubt that I would not have continued all these years were it not for the community and you wonderful, wonderful people. Thanks!

Second let's hope it's "four years and counting." I have no plans to quit any time soon, but I do wonder whether I'll be able to keep up with blogging if I get accepted into graduate school.

Third let's not dwell on those sad things. Let's celebrate!

I posted about the February YA Buzz Books from HarperCollins in my February Recap.

Abigail’s parents have made mistake after mistake, and now they've lost everything. She’s left to decide: Does she still believe in them? Or is it time to believe in herself? Fans of Sara Zarr, David Levithan, and Rainbow Rowell will connect with this moving debut.

Abigail doesn't know how her dad found Brother John. Maybe it was the billboards. Or the radio. What she does know is that he never should have made that first donation. Or the next, or the next. Her parents shouldn't have sold their house. Or packed Abigail and her twin brother, Aaron, into their old van to drive across the country to San Francisco, to be there with Brother John for the "end of the world." Because of course the end didn't come. And now they're living in their van. And Aaron’s disappearing to who-knows-where every night. Their family is falling apart. All Abigail wants is to hold them together, to get them back to the place where things were right. But maybe it’s too big a task for one teenage girl. Bryan Bliss’s thoughtful, literary debut novel is about losing everything—and about what you will do for the people you love. 

The girl known as Gretchen Whitestone has a secret: She used to be part of Adolf Hitler’s inner circle. More than a year after she made an enemy of her old family friend and fled Munich, she lives with a kindly English family, posing as an ordinary German immigrant, and is preparing to graduate from high school. Her love, Daniel Cohen, is a reporter in town. For the first time in her life, Gretchen is content.

But then, Daniel gets a telegram that sends him back to Germany, and Gretchen’s world turns upside-down. And when she receives word that Daniel is wanted for murder, she has to face the danger she thought she’d escaped-and return to her homeland.

Gretchen must do everything she can to avoid capture and recognition, even though saving Daniel will mean consorting with her former friends, the Nazi elite. And as they work to clear Daniel’s name, Gretchen and Daniel discover a deadly conspiracy stretching from the slums of Berlin to the Reichstag itself. Can they dig up the explosive truth and get out in time-or will Hitler discover them first?

What if, after spending a lifetime deceiving everyone around you, you discovered the biggest lies were the ones you've told yourself?

Grace Fontaine has everything: beauty, money, confidence, and the perfect family.

But it’s all a lie.

Grace has been adopted into a family of thieves who con affluent people out of money, jewelry, art, and anything else of value. Grace has never had any difficulty pulling off a job, but when things start to go wrong on the Fontaines' biggest heist yet, Grace finds herself breaking more and more of the rules designed to keep her from getting caught...including the most important one of all: never fall for your mark.

Perfect for fans of Ally Carter, Cecily von Ziegesar, and Gail Carriger, this thrilling, high-stakes novel deftly explores the roles of identity and loyalty while offering a window into the world of the rich and fabulous.