Y — THE YEAR OF SECRETS by Silvia Villalobos and two more Y books reviewed by Debi O’Neille

If you love thought-provoking mysteries that bless you with a scenic backdrop that pulls you right into the story, you will love THE YEAR OF SECRETS. Prepare to visit LA. Never been? Don’t worry. With this novel you’ll feel like you’re returning to a place you visited often. This author is that good.

Silvia, who short stories I followed four years, has always managed to take a handful of characters and bring them to life, whether it be in a short story or novel. She doesn’t just skate the surface of her characters. She shows us who they are down to the core. She writes with a sense of humanity while stretching into all corners of the human condition. Her genre fiction is always full of suspense and mystery, and yet she does it with same literary flair as in her short stories.

THE YEAR OF SECRETS is a sequel to Silvia’s first novel, STRANGER OR FRIEND, which was published by Solstice Publishing, and yet both novels work as standalones. THE YEAR OF SECRETS puts a new mystery in Zoe Sinclair’s world, something she can’t not tackle, while fighting the scarring demons she already wears. Now, she must put her own fears aside and find the person responsible for the murder of her mentor. Despite the dangers and challenges, Zoe Sinclair will not back down.

But she’s not the only character you’ll enjoy meeting. Authentically crafted LAPD detectives also play a part in bringing to light some disturbing secrets that will leave their mark on readers as much as it did the characters.

I’ve read many of Silvia’s short stories, all intriguing and memorable, so I was absolutely delighted to see that she’s written not only one, but two novels that I can read again and again. Move over, Harlan Coben. You need to share your shelf!

Happy Reading! (An interview with Silvia Villalobos by “Write 2 Be Magazine” can be found here.)

Note: I realize with the word “the” starting the title of this book, it doesn’t necessarily start with a Y. But I decided to skip the intro articles in titles, because I found too many books that I wanted to review begin with the, a, or an; therefore, (THE) YEAR OF SECRETS is right where it belongs.

And now for another Y book:

YOU’LL BE THE DEATH OF ME, written by Karen M. McManus; reviewed by Debi O’Neille

Published by Delacorte Press

I just finished the book yesterday, and I’m not smiling. I actually had to wait a day and let myself calm down, stop slamming cupboards and such, before I could write this review. The book is good, don’t get me wrong, but ... Here’s the thing. I was deceived. I read this book on the basis of Karen McManus’s ONE OF US IS LYING young adult series (my gushing reviews of books 1 and 2 of that series here).

Wouldn’t you expect this young adult book to be just as good as her previous books?

I knew when I started YOU’LL BE THE DEATH OF ME that it was a standalone, not a series, so that did not come as a surprise. And the plot was good, just as I expected it would be. So was the writing. The novel tells the story of  three classmates—Ivy, Cal, and (my favorite) Mateo, who used to hang out but drifted apart and then, through extenuating circumstances, are drawn together again in high school. As in the previously mentioned series that I loved, a classmate ends up dead. The fight or flight thing kicks in, and the kids are on the run and hiding while trying to find the truth and clear themselves. But nobody’s strictly innocent, and that proves to be true among these three.

The book has everything I would normally love— great characterization, excellent pacing, realistic voices and mindsets for young adults, and a great style and great plot. So what’s wrong with it?

The story ends with a cliffhanger.

Now, I know I’m the one who just defended the ending of a book that many readers said lacked a satisfying ending (my review of HOUSE RULES by Jodi Picoult), so I should not be going off on YOU ‘LL BE THE DEATH OF ME having the worst ending ever. Ever. I said ever! (Guess I’m not over slamming cupboards yet.)

I’d be fine with the cliffhanger ending if I knew there was a sequel that I could “click and buy now” to see what happens next. But there isn’t. As a standalone, there is no part two. There is no encore. No future for these kids I got to know so well. What there is at the end is the author posing this great, big question, giving one of the characters a brand, new goal and the steam to go after it, and that’s it. We don’t get to see if she succeeds. But most importantly, there would be 10,001 different ways to play that out, and we don’t get to see which one the character chooses and how it’s delivered. Now is that cheating us, or what?

I’m okay with the book just giving a hint at the end of what’s going to come next, and not actually playing it out for us. But I am not okay with telling us that somebody plans to do something, and then does not tell even hint at how the character goes about it.

Karen McManus just went to one of my new favorite authors to one of my new “don’t read it until somebody else tells you that it has a fair-to-the-reader ending” books.

Enough said.

Read at your own risk.

PS. Confession time. It will take me a while to choose reading another of her books, but she’s too good of a writer not to. So given proper healing time, I’m sure I’ll pick up another of her page-turners. But, I might do that thing that I have absolutely never, ever done before and read the last page first before buying the book.

And because I felt cheated with the previous book, here is a review on one more Y book:

YOU (Book 1 of 4 in this series) written by Carolyn Kepnes; reviewed by Debi O’Neille.

Published by Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

This is a great antihero, older young adult or full-blown adult story, (IMO), if you’re looking to see how the gears of a dangerous stalker work. I’ve never read a book with the sole point of view in the head of a calculating, evil person who lives right out in plain sight. I wasn’t sure I could handle it. (You know, without locking the book up into mini jail for a while as my way of finding justice.)

But after a friend told me that the book is really good, and the fact that it’s written by an author I’d never read before, I had to give YOU a try. Also, I thought it might give me a deeper look into stalkers, and this is one the kind of deviant who takes stalking to an unheard of level and then stretches beyond that. (Good info if I ever need to know a seemingly average guy who's really a psycho that deeply for my own writing, or a woman who might be one of her her worst enemies.) I have read novels by such authors as Lisa Jackson, who alternates points of view between a couple main characters  and, every few chapters or so, pops into the head of a vicious killer for an entire chapter. But that’s a chapter here and there scattered throughout the novel. Staying in the point of view of a terrible, psychotic, wicked, demented evil person for 422 pages is something quite different.

But I read all of YOU. Once I started reading, curiosity wouldn’t let me stop, even though there’s a lot of overly foul language and disgusting scenes (remember, we are in the head of a psycho). I have to admit, when I was in chapter two and had already come to that word that rhymes with duck but doesn’t start with a D a half-dozen times I had my doubts about the book. But I wanted to know what Stephen King – who has a blurb on the cover – thought was so dang hypnotic and scary. Who could possibly scare Stephen King?

So I made a deal with myself and every time I came to the rhyme of duck, I just glazed over it and kept reading. I’m not saying I can’t read some swearing, but this book sometimes surpassed my tolerance level. Yet the book is good. Extraordinary. It's well written and done in a very uncomfortably comfortable voice. Sounds odd, but it's true. Make a deal with yourself to glaze over whatever you need to, because the book is an important story that needed to be told.

Stephen King was right. The book is hypnotizing. It is scary. And true to his words, it’s "totally original."

I couldn’t put it down. There were so many questions I had along the way, and I had to keep reading to find the answers. Anytime I got close to an answer, more questions hit me, but it wasn’t even just that I wanted to understand the psycho and the female he was obsessed with. It was everything and everyone in the book. All the characters brought something new to the mix. I can’t say that I liked them all, but I did find them interesting, and I found them real.

YOU was educational as much as it was revealing. I'll have to wait awhile to shake off the feeling of being followed before I read the others in the series.

Prepare yourself for an eye-opening and disturbing read!