This week’s Top Ten Tuesday is in honour of Mardi Gras!
These are 10 books I read in the last year that have purple, yellow and green covers:
Tag: Riley Sager
Quarterly Reading Recommendations
This is my final Quarterly Reading Recommendation post for 2020. I will be listing my top 10 favourite books I read during the last 3 months before I start compiling my lists and picking out my top ten overall of 2020 which I will post in a few days! If you want to check out my third quarterly reading recommendations click HERE!
My recommendations for October – November – December are:
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
No Exit by Taylor Adams
All the Stars and Teeth by Adalyn Grace
The Toll by Neal Shusterman
Hold Back the Tide by Melinda Salisbury
On the Come Up by Angie Thomas
Watch Over Me by Nina Lacour
Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust
Home Before Dark by Riley Sager
One to Watch by Kate Stayman-London
The Last Time I Lied Review
*SPOILERS AHEAD*
I really liked this book!
The Last Time I Lied is about a woman named Emma who attended a summer camp when she was 13 and while she was there three of her bunk mates went missing and were never found. Now 15 years later Emma has been invited back to Camp Nightingale where she vows to figure out what really happened all those years ago.
Emma I really formed an attachment to right at the start. She is likeable and realistic I think and over the course of the storyline her character shifts and we find out she might not be as reliable a narrator as we might have thought. The mystery surrounding the missing girls has really taken over her life and I liked the fact that she decides to take up Franny’s offer and go back. She is definitely an enigmatic character and I was constantly being surprised by her. I really thought for a minute that she might of been capable of murdering the girls or at least knew who did it and was covering for whoever that was.
I think I would of liked and appreciated this even more if it was maybe a dual perspective with Theo. Seeing how similar his and Emma’s lives were affected after everything happens and have their perspectives interwoven would of added that extra layer of depth and doubt to the reader. I would of liked to get more of an insight from his character and how the whole situation effected his family.
The format of the story with the flashbacks kept me highly engaged and eager to find out what really happened. There are various twists and turns that occur throughout the course of the storyline that was a little predictable and then would completely take me by surprise. I was on the edge of my seat while I was reading this book.
The ending I didn’t really need. I would of liked more of an ambiguous ending where we don’t know for sure whether or not Vivian was still alive or not. The meeting between them wasn’t really necessary in my opinion though I did appreciate that Emma doesn’t let her get away with it!
⭐️4/5 stars atmospheric, thrilling, unexpected twists, highly recommend!
WWW Wednesday
I figured it was time for another WWW Wednesday update!
One to Watch by Kate Stayman-London
Home Before Dark by Riley Sager
The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson
Home Before Dark Review
*SPOILERS AHEAD*
This was better than I was expecting!
Maggie returns to the house made famous by her father’s bestselling horror memoir. Is the place really haunted by evil forces, as her father claimed? Or are there more earthbound – and dangerous – secrets hidden within its walls?
I was definitely enthralled right from the start. From learning about Maggie and how she doesn’t remember any of the events over the 20 days her family spent in Baneberry Hall. Getting the truth from her mother that it was indeed all a lie only to go back and see that maybe what her father wrote was true.
There was a sense of eeriness and unease that wove its way throughout the course of the plot line and definitely added a bit of depth and atmosphere, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Just from reading Riley Sagar’s previous words I knew that the twist wasn’t going to be supernaturnal and their would be a solid explanation to the events that took place and I was pretty much correct.
Maggie as our main protagonist was wonderful. She had the perfect amount of drive to figure out what was really happening but also opened herself up to other explanations that added that sense of mystery. I wish we had touched a little more on the other characters in the book. Again I knew inevitably they would have more of a significance to the storyline than what we were getting at the start and I would of liked to learn more about them.
The jumps between present day and the narrative that Maggie’s father wrote was very well done and again just gave me more incentive to want to read on and figure out what was going to happen next. Riley Sagar has a way of manipulating the reading into thinking that these mysterious, otherworldly events really could of happened only to turn that on its head and have plausible explanation that was staring you right in the face.
I highly enjoyed this book. It was a little predictable at the end there but I was still surprised by a few of the twists and turns and it gave me hella spooky house vibes!
⭐️4/5 stars Definitely a page turner!
Amy Leigh Reads 