hi i'm merc! i recently turned twenty. i'm in the central time zone and my favorite animal is a fox! i play first last!

hi i'm merc! i recently turned twenty. i'm in the central time zone and my favorite animal is a fox!

The Girl on the Train starts slow. You are introduced to a couple of characters that tell the story. Through each chapter, you are debating what to believe and what happened to this girl who was gone missing.

Many times I thought about giving up on this book. It was a little slow for my liking (a lot of it was that I didn't like the main character). The mystery was hard to really pin down. Through each chapter I was left wondering what had happened which I thought a lot of the reason was because none of the POVs (the book shifts through 3 POVs) were trustworthy. As the book goes on, each POV gives you a reason not to trust that character. It makes you wonder if you how much they are telling the truth, how much they might be making up. The characters in themself are a mystery.

I probably wouldn’t have picked up this book had I not found out about it while researching for Unabridged’s July Book Preview. Well, I might have heard of it, but I probably wouldn’t have picked it up right away. I don’t usually buy books right after they’re released. I’d rather wait and see what other people thought of it before reading it myself. However, I found an inexpensive copy of it and decided to take the risk and read it before reading reviews about it.

This is a complicated book. It is an alternate history where the American civil war did not happen. It is present day and four American states (The Hard Four) still have slavery (“nonviolent slavery”, albeit still slavery). The rest of the world, we find out, doesn’t take to that too well. America is no longer part of the United Nations. Cars are imported from Africa and Pakistan, rather than Asia. The rest of America does not take slave-made products from The Hard Four.

I heard the author speak at a Christian rock concert I attended. She told us about her life as a young orphan in post-war Korea. With an interest in that area of the world and in adoption, I knew it was a book I had to read (and get signed while she was there!)

She Is Mine is wonderfully written! Her choice of the third person instead of the first was perfect for this book. She states at the beginning that the decision to write from that perspective was because her story was simply one of thousands, and she wanted to tell the stories of others who, though specifics differed, experienced the same struggles and joys growing up.

When I started reading this book, I actually assumed that the letters being sent between the children were depicting a blossoming friendship between two girls, and I was disappointed when I realized that it was actually the same childhood romance plot that has already been played out a thousand times.

I loved this book way more than I thought I would. The writing was beautifully detailed without being bloated or fluffy. I started this book without knowing what to expect or how the story would unfold. I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of it (no pun intended). About halfway through this book, I drove myself out to Barnes & Noble and immediately picked up volumes II and III so I wouldn't kill myself with the wait between books. It was that good.

It was delightful to unravel the truth in the story, and I often found myself devouring it. I did slow down towards the end, most likely because I didn't want to finish it too soon. I felt that I might have been reading it too fast and missing important details and interesting descriptions.

Every once in a while, you read a book that really changes the game. For me, What We Saw by Aaron Hartzler is that book. I just need to tell everyone about it.

After a wild night at John Doone’s party, Kate can only barely remember what happened. Shots with Stacey Stallard, her childhood friend Ben Cody driving her home. But when a picture of Stacey passed out, hanging over Deacon Mills’s shoulder appears online, Kate begins to question everything that happened that night. Especially when Stacey files charges against the boys, and the whole town erupts into controversy.