As a parent you promise to protect your child but it’s kinda impossible to protect them from what happened to Junie.  Like Evie, I think the guilt and the anger/revenge would be in a constant battle within me, until someone paid for what they did. Struggling with a past, Evie finds herself looking in a mirror and wondering who is looking back.  She had wanted change and attempted it, yet did she really see the whole picture? 

Junie and Izzy had become friends in first grade.  Junie spent a lot of time at Izzy’s and that might have been because they preferred it that way or was it because Junie didn’t want anyone at her house.  There was definitely a financial dividing line between Junie and Izzy, as Izzy’s parents never struggled to put food on the table or provide what Izzy needed.  

Why were they murdered?  With Junie’s uncle on the police force, Evie feels no one will be comfortable coming forward with information to the police so she begins her own investigation and her nice motherly attitude goes out the window.  Yep, no more Ms. Nice Mom.  She’s begins sounding like her mother, the woman with a drink in one hand, a cigarette in another, and a loud, sarcastic comment spewing from her lips. It’s like she has lost her identity with her daughter gone. 

Snooping in her daughter’s room, after the police did their initial investigation, she finds something! This I couldn’t believe.  I think The 3 Stooges came to do the initial search of the house.  Anyways, this is where the book shoots off and there is no turning back now folks!

After Evie makes her discovery, she’s on a mission and nothing will hold her back, not even her brother, the cop.  We see more of Evie’s mother and boy, is she a fun, entertaining character.  It’s a circus, if you add in the news reporters, who come into town. Using flashbacks, Evie makes connections to her past.  She’s starting to get to the bottom of what has happened to these two young teens. I wasn’t ready for the big moments in the book that blew me away, they really took me by surprise.

I really enjoyed the characters in the book.  I liked how each one of them was cut and created from their environment and I liked how they mixed with one another. I liked how the author present the mystery of the book, I thought it was laid out nicely.

This review can also be found at Carole's Random Life in Books.

This was a fantastic novel! I read this author's previous book, The Roanoke Girls, and fell in love with this author's writing so I knew I wanted to read this book just as soon as I saw it. I went into the book with rather high expectations and they were met. This was a book that I found very hard to put down. The story was surprising at times and emotional in others. I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent reading this story.

The book opens with Eve receiving a visit from her brother Cal while working her shift at the local diner. Cal is a local police officer and is there to tell Eve that her 12-year-old daughter, Junie has been murdered along with another child. My heart broke right with Eve's. The descriptions of how she got through those first few days really got to me. Eve worked hard to be a good mother to Junie and only had her brother Cal to lean on. After Junie's death, Eve has nothing left to lose and decides she will stop at nothing to get justice for her daughter.

I thought that the characters in this story were very well done. There is a pretty eclectic group of characters represented in this story and they all felt very real to me. I found that while I was pretty shocked by some of the turns the story took, the actions of the characters always felt authentic. I really felt like I was in Eve's head and I understood her motivation to learn what happened to her daughter.

I love the fact that this book was able to surprise me. And it didn't just surprise me once because there were several times where the story took a turn that I didn't expect. I love that this story made me feel. There were times that this story really got to me. Eve was such a strong character who was put in one of the most difficult situations that I can imagine. I honestly don't know how someone could read this book and not feel for Eve. I also love that the mystery in this story really kept me guessing. I had no idea who killed those two girls but I was just as desperate as Eve to find out. I found the mystery to be complex and very well done.

I would highly recommend this book to others. I found this to be a wonderfully told story that was heartbreaking at times. I cannot wait to read more from this very talented author!

I received a digital review copy of this book from Penguin Publishing Group - Dutton via Edelweiss.

Initial Thoughts
This falls somewhere between 4 and 5 stars for me. I am going with 4 for now but might bump it up after I have some time to think about it. I had a really hard time putting this book down. I couldn't imagine going through what Eve does in this story and reading about it made me uncomfortable at times. There were a few twists that I found to be rather shocking. This is one of those books that will stay with me for a while.

In this volume, Jake wakes up in a room that's not his own, a mix between a cold-water flat and Bruce Willis' apartment from 'The Fifth Element'. The only clothes he has are orange jumpsuits. In the mirror he realizes he's all grown up.

What's happened?

Jake discovers that ten years have passed and the Yeerks have won. The land is devastated, everyone who isn't a fit host is relegated to an early death in the sewers and the Yeerks are poised to make their domination complete with a device that will turn the Moon into a Kandrona-ray generating satellite. 

There are also cameos from all our favorite characters.

This is another placeholder for a book that advances the plot - the ending hints at another meddlesome group that may have cards to play in the coming showdown.

Animorphs

Next: 'The Journey'

Previous: 'Back to Before'

Patty, a young devil girl, is too weak to summon a proper animal familiar, so she chooses a human named Norman instead. Norman is a daemon researcher who's absolutely thrilled to have the opportunity to do field research in the devil world, so this arrangement works well for him. Unfortunately for Patty, Norman sometimes gets overexcited about all of these fascinating beings he encounters. He also has a somewhat creepy habit of wanting to intensely observe, sketch, and measure everything.

Patty's father is a deadbeat who recently left town in order to escape loan sharks. She's now on a quest to find him, which gives Norman lots of opportunities for research. In this volume, Norman enters a contest for familiars (lots of different familiars to observe, plus the possibility of winning free tickets for the devil world cross-continental railroad), and Norman and Patty attempt to cross the devil world desert.

I picked this up on a whim, because it was on sale and I vaguely recalled hearing good things about it. My first surprise was the Norman was the familiar - I had thought this was a series about a human and his adorable-but-useless little devil girl familiar. My second surprise was how quickly I came to love it. Norman initially looked like the solid and dependable bodyguard type, but he quickly revealed himself to be an enormous nerd who just wanted to watch everybody, take notes, and make sketches. I loved his enthusiasm for his work, even as familiars were literally trying to kill him - as far as he was concerned, everything was just another opportunity to observe and learn about daemons.

The artwork was nice and added to the humor. I loved Patty and Norman's expressions, and the familiars were generally interesting-looking. And although I have several 4-koma manga series I love, it was nice to read a comedy that wasn't 4-koma for once.

Patty and Norman make a great pair, and I look forward to reading more volumes in this series. Crossing my fingers that the characters' relationship actually evolves over time and that Yaguraba gradually works in found family elements - I could see that possibility in some of Patty and Norman's initial interactions.

Extras:

The first few pages are in color. Also, there are three 4-koma strips at the end featuring Patty, Norman, and a few of Patty's friends. 

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

I love it and want more. But I'm going to resist for now because I really don't have any more shelf space.