This was not at all the book I was looking for. I wanted a true crime writer moving into a house where a murder occurred and investigating what happened, what I got was a lot of introspection and waffling over the morality of true crime writing. The first 40 pages were far too slow and while I was reading I just felt like I was constantly waiting for something to happen. I spent 45 minutes trying to read it at a doctor's appointment this afternoon and got so frustrated that when I got home I came to check the reviews, see if anyone else had similar issues - they did and they warned me that things were not going to get better if I forced myself to continue on, so this is my second DNF in 24 hours.

Loved it! Reminded me of playing Skyrim when you've done a ton of quests and you've amassed enough gold to buy your favourite player home and you're settling in to homesteading with your cow, chickens, and crops. And just like when I'm playing Skyrim and wishing for a sweet roll, I got hungry reading about Thimble's baking. I wouldn't change a thing about the story, even how short it was and the short story telling of Viv's first encounter with coffee tacked on at the end. Can't wait to read the sequels.

Pretty good YA sci-fi with not too much focus on how YA the characters really are. It actually reminded me really positively of my favourite YA series, The Tomorrow Series by John Marsden, especially during the climactic ending. I didn't feel like the characters made one stupid decision after another simply because of their YAness (which is one of the reasons I usually avoid reading YA books these days). I don't mean the children behaving like scared children (because, obviously, that's very realistic), I mean the teenagers letting their hormones take control during the middle of a gunfight. There was only one point where Cassie got a bit swept away by her hormones, but she was in a relatively safe situation - the bullets were not flying at the time - so I'm giving her a partial pass for allowing herself to let her guard down in a vulnerable moment. I'm interested in continuing the series, so I will put the sequels on my hold list when a space opens up.