Dancing With The Tiger By: Lili Wright Review

I won a free copy of Dancing With The Tiger By: Lili Wright in a Goodreads giveaway, so thank you to Goodreads and Putnam Books! 

When I first saw the summary for Dancing With The Tiger I was immediately intrigued by the Mexico setting and the colorful cover. I haven't read very many books set in Mexico. I am so glad that the setting was done well in this one. The writing throughout is so vivid and beautiful.  I really enjoyed the writing style in general. 

#VividWriting

The characters are also well done and they are pretty fleshed out. I liked Anna and I had to keep reading to see what would happen next with her. In general I love the whole literal/metaphorical mask thing this book has going on as well. The plot just really hooked me with the masks and art angles.

#Hooked

Dancing With The Tiger is such a stunning debut, but I did have one issue. It's really slow paced at times. Some parts seemed to really drag on and on with too many descriptions. I really do wish that this was faster paced, but pushing through the slower parts is worth it. Thankfully it's not all slow and the ending is action packed. I like how everything turned out too.

#AFewSlowParts

Overall Dancing With The Tiger is an enjoyable read! I love how it has a little bit of everything. Adventure, crime, art, history, and more! It's an amazing novel, despite a few parts that were bogged down a bit. I would love to read more by this author in the future!

#ALittleBitOfEverything

I recommend Dancing With The Tiger for mystery/thriller fans looking for an intricate plot. 

#LiteraryThrillerLovers

The Butterfly Garden By: Dot Hutchison Review #DarkAndIntense

Thank you to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for providing a free ebook copy of The Butterfly Garden By: Dot Hutchison in exchange for an honest review. 

I devoured The Butterfly Garden in one sitting. I was captivated as soon as I started. This book is so damn dark, intense, and twisted! I LOVED it. Some of the plot did seem a bit far fetched, but it didn't bother me at all. Even though some things are unrealistic there are just as many things that are very realistic. For example, I like the exploration of all the girls and all of the things that they went through in the garden. There are a lot of details of everyday life that I appreciate the author adding into the book. 

#ReadINONESITTING

I really did not expect The Butterfly Garden to be THIS good. I love a book that is extremely dark and I have to say that this one felt even darker than I'm used to. I think that is because the overall tone of the book is depressing. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, I loved it, but I do understand that is not for everybody. This is definitely not a happy go lucky book. 

#DarkAndIntense

Speaking of things not for everybody, the things that this group of butterfly girls went through is very intense. What I mean is this is the point where I insert a major rape trigger. I usually don't add trigger warnings in my reviews, but due to the overall depressing tone throughout most of the book I think it's necessary.  I'm not saying that everything in the book is depressing though. The way that all of the girls relied on and helped each other is really breathtaking. This is a stunning novel, even though it's so twisted. I really like Maya's character and how she was able to cope with things on her own and with the others. 

#TwistedButStunning

Overall The Butterfly Garden is a FANTASTIC book. It's an extremely well written and it's a very powerful read. It is a bit of a rough read as well so like I mentioned before, it won't be for everyone. Also, I could see this as a movie or TV show for sure. Maybe an episode of the Hannibal TV show, if it hadn't been cancelled a while back!! I'm still crying over that one, but if you've seen the show then you understand what I mean.

#CanIGetAShowPlease

I recommend The Butterfly Garden for anyone who likes their thrillers dark and intense, but also breathtaking. 

#DarkYetBreathtaking

Waiting on Wednesday- End Of Watch (Bill Hodges Trilogy #3) By: Stephen King

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly feature/meme hosted here at Breaking the Spine. The idea behind it is to share upcoming releases that we can't wait to get our hands on! 

My pick for this week is End of Watch By: Stephen King. This is the third book in the Bill Hodges Trilogy. I am so excited for this one!!!!!!!!! <---- As you may be able to tell by all of my exclamation points. I thoroughly enjoyed Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers, but I have a feeling that this one will be the best book in the trilogy. So far in the series there hasn't been anything supernatural. It's been just straight up crime, mystery, and thriller. However at the end of the last book I got the feeling that something supernatural may be coming, even if it's small, in the next book. From the summary it looks like I was right! I have enjoyed the first two books, but supernatural/creepy/horror/weird is what Mr. King does best and I can't wait for the conclusion of the Bill Hodges Trilogy. 

Expected Publication Date: June 7, 2016

Summary From Goodreads: 

Brady Hartsfield, perpetrator of the Mercedes Massacre, where eight people were killed and many more were badly injured, has been in the Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic for five years, in a vegetative state. According to his doctors, anything approaching a complete recovery is unlikely. But behind the drool and stare, Brady is awake, and in possession and of deadly new powers that allow him to wreak unimaginable havoc without ever leaving his hospital room.

Retired police detective Bill Hodges, the unlikely hero of Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers, now runs an investigation agency with his partner, Holly Gibney, who delivered the blow to Hartsfield's head that put him on the brain injury ward. Brady also remembers that. When Bill and Holly are called to a murder-suicide with ties to the Mercedes Massacre, they find themselves pulled into their most dangerous case yet, one that will not only put their lives at risk, but those of Hodge's friend Jerome Robinson and his teenage sister, Barbara. Because Brady Hartsfield is back, and planning revenge not just on Bill Hodges and his friends, but on an entire city. 

In End of Watch, Stephen King brings the Hodges trilogy to sublimely terrifying conclusion, combining the detective fiction of Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers with the supernatural suspense that has been his trademark. The result is an unnerving look at human vulnerability and up-all-night entertainment. 

Are there any other SK fans looking forward to this one? Have you read Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers yet? 

The Killing Lessons By: Saul Black Review and GIVEAWAY!!!

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Summary From Goodreads- 

When the two strangers turn up at Rowena Cooper's isolated Colorado farmhouse, she knows instantly that it's the end of everything. For the two haunted and driven men, on the other hand, it's just another stop on a long and bloody journey. And they still have many miles to go, and victims to sacrifice, before their work is done.

For San Francisco homicide detective Valerie Hart, their trail of victims--abducted women, tortured, and left with a seemingly random series of objects inside them--has brought her from obsession to the edge of physical and psychological destruction. And she's losing hope of making a breakthrough before that happens. 

But the murders at the Cooper farmhouse didn't go according to plan. There was a survivor, Rowena's ten-year-old daughter Nell, who now holds the key to the killings. Injured, half-frozen, terrified, Nell has only one place to go. And that place could be even more dangerous than what she's running from. 

In this extraordinary, pulse-pounding debut, Saul Black takes us deep into the mind of a psychopath, and into the troubled heart of the woman determined to stop him. 

My Review- 

I really enjoyed reading The Killing Lessons. Sometimes I am just in the mood for a good, fast-paced, crime/thriller, and this book totally hit that spot. The story grabbed me from page one and the suspense never let up. I did not have a single moment that I was bored. I had to keep going and see what would happen to the characters. The small splash of a survival story in there added to that a little bit too.

I was really surprised how many characters perspective's the book had, and yet all of them were very fleshed out. Which is hard to pull off where there are so many POV's! I think I was most interested in Valerie's POV though. There was just something about her having a few issues, and you almost want to dislike her, but she just keeps on trying to solve the case and that made her so likable. I liked Nell a lot too and boy is she a fighter!

The only thing I can say I didn't particularly care for was the Carla story line. I thought it would have been better if her story line had gone a different and less predictable way. Luckily it was such a small part of the book that it didn't make that much of a difference.

Overall The Killing Lessons is a pretty solid and suspenseful crime/thriller. I don't think it added anything crazy or new to the genre, but the story is interesting and well executed.

I recommend The Killing Lessons to anyone who loves a good crime thriller and to fans of popular suspense/thriller writers such as James Patterson.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press for providing me with a copy of The Killing Lessons to read and review. Also, a big thank you to St. Martin's Press for providing the two copies of The Killing Lessons for the giveaway.

Giveaway-

This giveaway is valid only for residents of U.S. and Canada.

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The Chew Vol. 1 Review

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Chew is a graphic novel about a detective named Tony Chu who is Cibopathic. Which means whatever he eats (including parts of corpses) he gets psychic impressions from it. The only thing he can eat that doesn't give him psychic impressions is beets. Tony's Cibopathic ability kind of reminded me of iZombie (I've seen a little of the CW TV show, but I haven't read the graphic novel yet) where the main girl eats brains and she gets information.

Honestly the whole Volume 1 was pretty darn gross. All of the things Tony has to nibble on is just disgusting. It also didn't help that when I read this I was sick with a stomach bug!! I made the wrong choice on what to read that day. I maybe would have given this 5 stars, but I took off a little bit because I was already sick and it made me more nauseated. So at some point I may go back and change it to 5 stars. We'll see.

Other than the nastiness (which it's a cool ability though), I loved everything else about Chew! There is a great plot, lots of action, a little bit of mystery, and fantastic artwork. Chew is a bit bizarre, but it's well written, funny, and very unique.

I recommend Chew Vol. 1 for fans of detective/crime novels, if you like graphic novels like Locke & Key and Nailbiter, and for anyone with a somewhat strong stomach.

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