Characters who struggle against the odds when everything else around them is falling apart. Who know fear and terror and even madness and yet who despite it all find away to push through it.
My latest reading binge seems to have been drawn these characters lately and I'm loving the books I have been finding.
On The Edge Of Gone by Corinne Duyvis"January 29, 2035. That's the day the comet is scheduled to hit the Earth. Denise and her mother and sister have been assigned to a shelter to wait out the blast, but a last-minute meeting leads them to something better -- a generation ship, scheduled to leave Earth behind to colonize new worlds after the comet hits.
But everyone on the ship has been chosen because of their usefulness. Denise is autistic and fears that she'll never be allowed to stay. Can she obtain a spot before the ship takes flight?
And what about her mother and sister?
When the future of the human race is at stake who lives matter the most?"
Being something of a sci-fi fan this was just my kind of book with an end of the world disaster, a struggle for survival and a flawed but courageous heroine trying to make sense in a world about to end.
The Creeping by Alexandra Sirowy
"Twelve years ago Stella and Jeanie vanished while picking strawberries. Jeanie was never seen or heard from again while Stella returned with no memory of what happened. She s the lucky one who survived.
Now the past comes back for Stella when a body of a little girl is discovered in an old cemetery. A little girl who has red hair just like Jeanie did.
Suddenly memories of that day begin to return and Stella is about to learn that sometimes monsters really do exists."
Creepy stories where you're not sure who or what the evil is always have a way of pulling me in.
This one also has a very Gothic Southern feel to it with old cemeteries and scary forests where people still believe in hoodoo, voodoo and ancient spirits.
When by Victoria Laurie
"Maddie Fynn is a shy high school junior, cursed with an eerie ability to see a person's death date hovering above the foreheads of each person she encounters.
Forced by her alcoholic mother to use her ability to make extra money, Maddie identifies the death date of one client's young son, but because her ability only allows her to see the when and not the how, she’s unable to offer any more insight.
When the boy goes missing on that exact date, law enforcement turns to Maddie. who suspect her of the crime.
Getting them to believe her is one thing, finding the real killer is another thing altogether...
I love these kinds of books. Ones where the heroine struggles to live her life with a unique ability that no-one else believes or understands.
Reign Of Shadows by Sophie Jordan
"Years ago an eclipse cloaked the kingdom of Relhok in perpetual darkness. Luna has been hiding in a tower ever since. But that doesn’t stop Luna from wanting more.
When she meets Fowler, a mysterious archer braving the woods outside her tower, Luna is drawn to him despite the risk. When the tower is attacked, Luna and Fowler escape together.
But this world of darkness is more treacherous than Luna ever realized."
This was such a cool concept - a world surrounded in darkness, where people live never seeing or knowing daylight.
Throw in some mystery and intrigue and a flawed but brave heroine and I'm sold.
"Grace Mae knows madness. She keeps it locked away, along with her voice, trapped deep inside a brilliant mind that cannot forget horrific family secrets. Those secrets, along with the bulge in her belly, land her in a Boston insane asylum.
A visiting doctor who dabbles in the new study of criminal psychology sees Grace's brilliance and knows that she will make a perfect assistant. But gruesome nights bring Grace and the doctor into the circle of a killer who stalks young women. Grace, continuing to operate under the cloak of madness, must hunt a murderer while she confronts the demons in her own past."
I read this book in one sitting it was just so good. Partly because of the flawed heroine thing but also because part of the story looked at the very real (and horrific) reasons as to why some people were placed in insane asylums and the treatment of people in these places.
I almost wished there had been more of this book it was so good.
Alive by Scott Sigler
"A young woman awakes trapped in an enclosed space. She has no idea who she is or how she got there. With only her instincts to guide her, she escapes her own confinement—and finds she’s not alone. She frees the others in the room and leads them into a corridor filled with the remains of a war long past. The farther these survivors travel, the worse are the horrors they confront. And as they slowly come to understand what this prison is, they realize that the worst and strangest possibilities they could have imagined don’t even come close to the truth."
And another sci-fi book and one that hooked me right from the beginning.
Even better the sequel has just arrived on my desk - I'm hoping it's just as good.
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