A bunch of April books- all solid- that either are released, or will very soon!

Gone Dark by Amanda Panitch
Veil by Dylan Farrow
End of the World House by Adrienne Celt
The Fervor by Alma Katsu
And Then I Woke Up by Malcolm Devlin
The Genesis Wars by Akemi Dawn Bowman

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Gone Dark by Amanda Panitch
Published by Margaret K. McElderry Books on April 12, 2022
Pages: 448
Format:ARC, eARC
Source:Copy provided by publisher for review, via Netgalley

Dry meets Hatchet in this thrilling tale of survival following a teen girl who must lead her friends across country to the safety of her estranged father’s survivalist compound after a mass power failure leaves the country in chaos.

When seventeen-year-old Zara escaped her father’s backwoods survivalist compound five years ago, she traded crossbows and skinning hides for electricity and video games…and tried to forget the tragedy that drove her away.

Until a malware attack on the United States electrical grids cuts off the entire country’s power.

In the wake of the disaster and the chaos that ensues, Zara is forced to call upon skills she thought she’d never use again—and her best bet to survive is to go back to the home she left behind. Drawing upon a resilience she didn’t know she had, Zara leads a growing group of friends on an epic journey across a crumbling country back to her father’s compound, where their only hope for salvation lies.

But with every step she takes, Zara wonders if she truly has what it takes to face her father and the secrets of her past, or if she’d be better off hiding in the dark.

Gone Dark was one of my most anticipated books of the year. And good news, it did not disappoint! I love an apocalypse book, that goes without saying, but this one felt wholly realistic and kept me turning the pages! So let’s break down what I liked!

• As I mentioned, it’s a very realistic seeming apocalypse. Ugh, people are such trash, right? Like sure things are bad, but humans go ahead and make them far worse than they needed to be. Obviously people were going to die, that’s a given, but so many are killed by their fellow man that it’s infuriating. And so realistic. Add to it, Zara’s prepper background makes her abilities and knowledge seem quite realistic too.
• So morally gray! I love morally gray, and this book was excellent at positing some fabulous moral dilemmas. Zara and her friends have to make some truly awful decisions along the way. Some because apocalypses are crap, and some because humans are. Either way, they weren’t easy choices.
• I really enjoyed the characters. Zara seems, at times, paranoid (which makes total sense both because of her background, and the world we’re in) and I couldn’t help but wonder at times how reliable a narrator she was. But she clearly has the best intentions, and you cannot help but feel for her plight. She also undergoes so much growth and development during the story, and that was great to watch! I also loved the cast of characters she encounters along the way. I don’t actually want to say much about them (because you want to go in not knowing who makes it out alive, right?) but they were great, and I enjoyed her relationships with them.
• Quite thought provoking! The thing about a very plausible apocalypse book is, there’s almost no way to not put yourself in the main character’s shoes. What would you do when Zara makes a certain decision, right?
• There’s a bit of a mystery thrown in, too. What will Zara find at her father’s? Who exactly tried to attack her at the start? How did this whole thing go down, anyway? Those questions definitely propelled my reading.

My only minor qualm was that the ending did feel a bit rushed, especially considering how much had gone on during the book. But it wasn’t a bad or wholly unsatisfying ending either, so I can live with it.

Bottom Line: A realistic apocalypse with likable characters and a ton of adventure is always a huge win in my book.

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Veil by Dylan Farrow
Series: Hush #2
Published by Wednesday Books on April 26, 2022
Pages: 400
Format:eARC
Source:Copy provided by publisher for review, via Netgalley

The thrilling sequel to Hush, one of the most talked about YA fantasies of 2020.

Shae’s entire world has been turned upside down, and everything she’s ever believed is a lie. More determined than ever, she sets out to the mysterious land of Gondal—a place forbidden to mention and resigned to myth—in search of a dangerous magical book that could alter the fabric of the world.

Following the trail of Ravod, the boy she thought she knew and trusted, Shae discovers there is far more to the young man who stole the Book of Days than she ever realized. Together, with her friends, Mads and Fiona, and a newfound ally in her fierce former trainer, Kennan, Shae crosses the borders of the only home she’s ever had and into a world ruled not by magic, but technology and industry — one fraught with perils of its own.

In a world shrouded in lies, Shae is desperate for answers and to restore peace, but who will lift the veil?

I won’t lie, I went into Veil with some fairly low expectations, based on some pretty rough early reviews. But I was quite pleasantly surprised by my feelings about this sequel; in fact I think I liked it more than Hush? So at first, I admit, I didn’t remember a *ton* about the first book? This is just a thing that happens when much time has passed between books. It can’t be helped. But eventually, I started to remember the gist of the story, and I really found it entertaining.

I quite enjoyed the expansion of the world created in the first book in this one, and was so glad that we got to see more of it. I had some suspicions, and they turned out to be fairly on point, but I liked getting to see more of the world. I also enjoyed the relationships that the characters built with each other, and the growth they underwent.

And look, yes the book (or really, the series in general) was at times predictable. I also probably would have liked a few more answers about how the world came to be, because that is just who I am as a person. But overall, it was enjoyable and entertaining, and I liked the characters and their arcs, so I can’t really ask for much more. (Incidentally, this is another great example of the benefits of a duology- it would have been way too much for one book, and definitely not enough for three, two seems like the sweet spot for sure!) I also was quite a fan of the messages that the author was trying to give in the story, too. Which, for spoiler reasons, you’ll have to figure out yourself!

Bottom Line: Enjoyable characters and entertaining story, if a bit predictable at times.

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End of the World House by Adrienne Celt
on April 19, 2022
Pages: 320
Format:eARC
Source:Copy provided by publisher for review, via Netgalley

Groundhog Day meets Ling Ma’s Severance in End of the World House, a thought-provoking comedic novel about two young women trying to save their friendship as the world collapses around them.

Bertie and Kate have been best friends since high school. Bertie is a semi-failed cartoonist, working for a prominent Silicon Valley tech firm. Her job depresses her, but not as much as the fact that Kate has recently decided to move from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

When Bertie’s attempts to make Kate stay fail, she suggests the next-best thing: a trip to Paris that will hopefully distract the duo from their upcoming separation. The vacation is also a sort of last hurrah, coming during a ceasefire in a series of escalating world conflicts.

One night in Paris, they meet a strange man in a bar who offers them a private tour of the Louvre. The women find themselves alone in the museum, where nothing is quite as it seems. Caught up in a day that keeps repeating itself, Bertie and Kate are eventually separated, and Bertie is faced with a mystery that threatens to derail everything. In order to make her way back to Kate, Bertie has to figure out how much control she has over her future—and her past—and how to survive an apocalypse when the world keeps refusing to end.

This is a hard book to rate, because I really loved the beginning, and where I thought the story was headed/was focused on. But the last 15-20% kind of disappointed me, and kind of made me wonder if what I thought was the point of the story was what the author was trying to say at all. I did enjoy quite a bit though, so let’s break it down! 

What I Liked:

• Loved the take on this particular apocalypse! The author explores the ways the world has (or in many cases, hasn’t) changed since things started going wrong. People are, for the most part, in complete denial that the lives that they once knew are over. And honestly? It tracks. Didn’t people try to do just that with COVID? I found it so fascinating and thought provoking, that people will, even at the end of the world, pretend everything’s just fine.
• The exploration of the ups and downs of friendship into adulthood was fabulous. Bertie and Kate had been friends for a long time, and I really appreciated that the author examined how much relationships like this can change over the years. As time and distance change us, how does friendship evolve? That Bertie still felt so protective of her friendship with Kate, even as they have both taken different paths in life, was great, even if it happened to be not always the healthiest.
• The mystery itself definitely kept me intrigued- what was happening to Bertie? I love a mystery, especially when it involves sci-fi elements. Obviously, Bertie reliving the same day fits into this category, but it is clear that there is more to it than that. She keeps experiencing some bizarre events- bizarre even for someone stuck living the same day. I’ll leave it at that, but suffice it to say, it was intriguing.

What I Didn’t:

• I kind of guessed some of the ending earlier in the book, and when I did, I wasn’t thrilled? It seemed to sort of negate the entirety of events in the first part, in some ways. Again, I have to be purposely vague about this, because spoilers, but I just thought that the story was about one thing, then it takes a pretty big 180 into another altogether. One I liked less, too, as it turned out.
• I did not like the romantic interest that was introduced. Oh, this guy. Again, he’s not a thing at the start of the story, which is why I am going to be vague about him here (honestly all this vagueness is getting pretty annoying, sorry about that). But he sucks, frankly, and I didn’t want nor need him in this story.

Bottom Line: I loved the first part of the story, especially the time loops and apocalypse friendships. The latter part, less so.

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The Fervor by Alma Katsu
Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on April 26, 2022
Pages: 320
Format:eARC
Source:Copy provided by publisher for review, via Netgalley

From the acclaimed and award-winning author of The Hunger and The Deep comes a new psychological and supernatural twist on the horrors of the Japanese American internment camps in World War II.

1944: As World War II rages on, the threat has come to the home front. In a remote corner of Idaho, Meiko Briggs and her daughter, Aiko, are desperate to return home. Following Meiko's husband's enlistment as an air force pilot in the Pacific months prior, Meiko and Aiko were taken from their home in Seattle and sent to one of the internment camps in the Midwest. It didn’t matter that Aiko was American-born: They were Japanese, and therefore considered a threat by the American government.

Mother and daughter attempt to hold on to elements of their old life in the camp when a mysterious disease begins to spread among those interned. What starts as a minor cold quickly becomes spontaneous fits of violence and aggression, even death. And when a disconcerting team of doctors arrive, nearly more threatening than the illness itself, Meiko and her daughter team up with a newspaper reporter and widowed missionary to investigate, and it becomes clear to them that something more sinister is afoot, a demon from the stories of Meiko’s childhood, hell-bent on infiltrating their already strange world.

Inspired by the Japanese yokai and the jorogumo spider demon, The Fervor explores a supernatural threat beyond what anyone saw coming; the danger of demonization, a mysterious contagion, and the search to stop its spread before it’s too late.

When I first finished The Fervor, I thought “hmm it was disturbing, but I don’t know if it is horror…” But the truth is, it’s definitely horror, the way human beings insist on treating one another, year after year since forever and seemingly until forever. And frankly, it is the most horrific, because it’s all true.

Set in the midst of World War II, when the US is being The Worst™ but pretending to be holier than thou because they don’t happen to be Hitler, Japanese folks are being kept prisoner in camps across the country. Honestly, the patterns that keep being repeated are infuriating. Reading about the atrocities committed against these innocent people, just trying to live their lives… ah hell, they never stopped, did they? Sure, these were more organized, more textbook awful, but what happens to Asian people on the streets of America every day is unacceptable as well. (Obviously this is not isolated to Asian people, but for the purpose of this book, we’re focusing here for now.)

The author is explicit in her note that this book is a cautionary tale. And that is clear throughout. Meiko and Aiko are incredibly sympathetic and likable- as you can imagine, they’re having a rough time. Not only are they in both unfair and inhumane conditions, they’re without their husband/father, and witnessing some of the very worst of mankind’s behavior. We are also privy to the stories of a few other folks who are all interconnected in this story, but I think it makes for a much better experience if you read about that on your own.

Yes, there is a bit of a supernatural connection, which we see very early on in the book, via Japanese folklore and in connection with Meiko’s father. But the greater demons at play are the human demons.  The atmosphere is incredible, as the reader is absolutely understanding the feelings of the characters, the desperation of the situations they are in, and even the despicable attitudes of those around them. There are definitely mysteries to unfurl in this story, no question, but for me, the far bigger impact lie in the commentary.

Bottom Line: Humanity is the biggest bad of any demon in this eerie, atmospheric, and incredibly important novel.

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And Then I Woke Up by Malcolm Devlin
Published by Tordotcom on April 12, 2022
Pages: 176
Format:eARC
Source:Copy provided by publisher for review, via Netgalley

In the tradition of Mira Grant and Stephen Graham Jones, Malcolm Devlin’s And Then I Woke Up is a creepy, layered, literary story about false narratives and their ability to divide us.

"A scathing portrait of the world we live in and a running commentary on what’s story, what’s truth, and what’s not."—Stephen Graham Jones

In a world reeling from an unusual plague, monsters lurk in the streets while terrified survivors arm themselves and roam the countryside in packs. Or perhaps something very different is happening. When a disease affects how reality is perceived, it’s hard to be certain of anything…

Spence is one of the “cured” living at the Ironside rehabilitation facility. Haunted by guilt, he refuses to face the changed world until a new inmate challenges him to help her find her old crew. But if he can’t tell the truth from the lies, how will he know if he has earned the redemption he dreams of? How will he know he hasn’t just made things worse?

And Then I Woke Up was completely bananas, in the best possible way. The world is in turmoil because a certain portion of the population has gone completely batshit, attacking innocent people for seemingly no reason. But quite literally nothing is what it seems, and people aren’t sure what or who to believe anymore. Which is pretty much all I will tell you about that part of the story, because truly, it is worth unfurling all these mysteries on your own.

Spence is the main character, and he’s been “cured” of this plague that is tearing the world apart. But he can’t move on because he simply can’t live with the things he’s done, which makes sense really. He meets Leila at the facility that cured him, and she wants out. Sounds like a terrible idea, but hey, who am I to judge? So during his time helping Leila, they both piece together what happened in their pasts to bring them to this place and time, and one story is more horrifying and heartbreaking than the next.

The story is so readable, because you simply need to know what the heck is going on. The way the author sets up the story, you absolutely feel sympathy for the characters immediately, and are eager to learn the ins and outs of their personal stories, and also how this plague changed the world as a whole. Simply put, I couldn’t put this book down, even when I hadn’t a clue what was happening- no, especially then. Because it was clear that the payoff would be worth it, and it was.

Bottom Line: Full of horror, yes, but also full of heart, I can’t imagine I’ll ever forget this story.

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Genesis Wars by Akemi Dawn Bowman
Series: The Infinity Courts #2
Published by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers on April 19, 2022
Pages: 400
Format:eARC
Source:Copy provided by publisher for review, via Netgalley

Black Mirror meets Marie Lu’s Warcross in Nami’s continuing adventures as she fights to free her friends in this high-stakes sequel to The Infinity Courts by award-winning author Akemi Dawn Bowman.

It’s been ten months since Nami narrowly escaped the Four Courts and Ophelia’s wrath. Ten months since she was betrayed by someone she once considered a friend. Someone she poured her heart out to. And now her family here in the afterlife are gone, captured, and Nami is utterly alone.

On the run, only steps ahead of the AI forces pursuing her, and desperate to free her friends, Nami must take the allies she can find, even if she doesn’t fully trust them. And as she tests the limits of her own power, she must also reckon with the responsibility that entails.

Stakes are high as Nami navigates old enemies, unexpected allies, and an ever-changing landscape filled with dangers and twists at every turn. Along the way, she’ll learn powerful truths about who she can trust and the sacrifices that must be made in order to fight for a better, freer world for all.

Ah, we’re back with another fabulous installment in the Infinity Courts series! There is so much excitement and character development in this book that I don’t even know where to start! Okay, I’ll start with my one minor qualm so I can get to the good stuff: sometimes I didn’t quite remember all the things the author seemed to think I’d remember from the first book. But that is just as likely my fault, so there’s that. I had a few “wait who/what/where now?” moments, but aside from that, was totally invested.

Nami has changed so much during her time in the quasi-afterlife, and you can immediately see the toll this world has taken on her. It’s hard to witness, really, but also incredibly honest and realistic. Now, she’s trying to save all of humanity, and especially, her sister. Nami refuses to concede and allow humankind to basically have their minds wiped for eternity, which frankly, is fair. Even if that means that she won’t survive.

Basically, the book is so full of excitement that I didn’t want to stop reading. And then, just when I thought things couldn’t get any more exciting, the author outdoes herself with an incredible climax and a bonkers ending that had me begging for more. Honestly, a great sequel with absolutely no middle-book syndrome whatsoever.

Bottom Line: Desperately require Book 3, especially after a completely bananas ending.

Have you read any of these books? Plan to? Let us chat about them!