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izzys_internet_bookshelf's review against another edition
1.0
1/5
When a book is on your tbr for a while there is bound to be a problem when you realize that the plot wasn’t as intriguing or exciting as you first thought it would be.
When a book is on your tbr for a while there is bound to be a problem when you realize that the plot wasn’t as intriguing or exciting as you first thought it would be.
beastreader's review against another edition
1.0
The concept for this book is what drew me to it. I was curious about what theory Katie's father had about the true events of 9/11. After reading to the half way mark it was evident that this book was written more for the younger juvenile audience. Not that there is anything wrong with this. This just means for the older audience, like me, this book may not be appreciated. The theories being thrown around were unbelievable. Also, the intensity levels seemed to be muted for the younger crowd. Had these factors been improved on for all reading audiences, this might have been a pretty good book.
sandrareilly513's review against another edition
4.0
Katie never believed in her dad -- he let her down too many times to count. His bad combination of drugs and alcohol left Katie picking up his responsibilities all throughout her childhood, forcing her to learn that the only person she could depend on is herself. When the police bring Child Services to her front door, Katie isn't shocked, knowing it was only a matter of time. What she didn't expect was to hear her dad has been admitted to a mental institution due to a violent encounter with coworkers and claims of 9/11 conspiracies involving former vice president Dick Cheney. Katie remembers her dad spouting "truther" conspiracies sporadically, mostly when he was either drunk or high. But when her dad shares a dark secret with her, she finds herself thrust into a world of lies, half-truths, and corruption. Now Katie must figure out if her dad could be telling the truth -- which would shake up her world completely -- or if he really is in the place where he belongs.
Thoughts: Girard's novel had me riveted and horrified all at the same time. Like many reading this review, I remember 9/11 very clearly -- I can tell you where I was when each plane crashed, how I felt when each tower crumbled before the world's very eyes, and how my friends, family, and students were directly affected by what happened that terrible day. To read this fictional character, Katie, explore all-to-real "truther" points-of-view, I was so upset by how plausible it all seemed. I have never given credence to the "truther" movement before and I cannot say this book has convinced me to believe in any way, nor was that the author's intent, however I can see how easily it would be to get caught up in it all, just like Katie was. I would recommend this to any high school teacher who is looking to get their students more involved in questioning the world around them, even if it means questioning their own government.
Thoughts: Girard's novel had me riveted and horrified all at the same time. Like many reading this review, I remember 9/11 very clearly -- I can tell you where I was when each plane crashed, how I felt when each tower crumbled before the world's very eyes, and how my friends, family, and students were directly affected by what happened that terrible day. To read this fictional character, Katie, explore all-to-real "truther" points-of-view, I was so upset by how plausible it all seemed. I have never given credence to the "truther" movement before and I cannot say this book has convinced me to believe in any way, nor was that the author's intent, however I can see how easily it would be to get caught up in it all, just like Katie was. I would recommend this to any high school teacher who is looking to get their students more involved in questioning the world around them, even if it means questioning their own government.
_truthinadvertising_'s review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Boy 9/11 people are weird. I feel like I read most of this book because I was stupefied by the crazy. I wish the ending had some more specific detail but I liked the ending overall. Also loved the reference to Castillo and Ox from cains blood that was fun.
agn946's review against another edition
3.0
*I received a free copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.*
Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5
I feel like up top I should probably throw out the fact that if you are going to be bothered by discussions of conspiracy theories about 9/11, this book is definitely not for you. The author does a wonderful job addressing this in the afterword (he discusses that teens who weren’t alive for 9/11 are often interested in the conspiracy theories and he wanted to address those interests along with other information about it), but I think it’s important to know up front because it was the one thing that kind of bothered me throughout the book and tarnished it a little bit for me. I knew that would be part of the book but I guess I did not realize how much it would gnaw at me as I was reading that a lot of ideas brought up in the book had to do with the tragedy being a false flag or inside job and the like.
That aside, I think that the book actually handles the issue relatively well. Truthers is about Katie, a girl trying to create a defense for her father who has been arrested for an outburst about 9/11 and threatening Dick Cheney. Only a high school student, she throws all she has into the task trying of to mount a defense that just because her father might believe in conspiracy theories does not mean that he is a threat to others and should therefore be let off. It is an interesting framing and does a nice job of taking Katie from being a skeptic to being someone who is much more doubting of the official story. As a character, Katie is quite earnest which I found to be important to make rooting for her feel appropriate. I felt that her best friend was not very well fleshed out but with that one notable exception, I thought most of the characters were fairly well developed.
Max is a law student wunderkind who decides to help Katie out with her case. He is a nice foil for Katie as he remains more resolute in believing the official story of 9/11. He provided some much needed perspective both in the universe of the book and just to me as the reader, who almost had to put it down because (as mentioned above) the book dabbles with being disrespectful to the victims of 9/11. Also, Max being a complete and unabashed nerd referencing Tolkien immediately endeared him to me.
Overall, if you are someone interested in conspiracy theories, I think you will quite enjoy this book. If you are neutral about them it’s a decent YA story that is worth a read but not essential. If you can’t stomach the suggestion of alternate theories about the events of 9/11, this is a hard pass.
Also posted on Purple People Readers.
Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5
I feel like up top I should probably throw out the fact that if you are going to be bothered by discussions of conspiracy theories about 9/11, this book is definitely not for you. The author does a wonderful job addressing this in the afterword (he discusses that teens who weren’t alive for 9/11 are often interested in the conspiracy theories and he wanted to address those interests along with other information about it), but I think it’s important to know up front because it was the one thing that kind of bothered me throughout the book and tarnished it a little bit for me. I knew that would be part of the book but I guess I did not realize how much it would gnaw at me as I was reading that a lot of ideas brought up in the book had to do with the tragedy being a false flag or inside job and the like.
That aside, I think that the book actually handles the issue relatively well. Truthers is about Katie, a girl trying to create a defense for her father who has been arrested for an outburst about 9/11 and threatening Dick Cheney. Only a high school student, she throws all she has into the task trying of to mount a defense that just because her father might believe in conspiracy theories does not mean that he is a threat to others and should therefore be let off. It is an interesting framing and does a nice job of taking Katie from being a skeptic to being someone who is much more doubting of the official story. As a character, Katie is quite earnest which I found to be important to make rooting for her feel appropriate. I felt that her best friend was not very well fleshed out but with that one notable exception, I thought most of the characters were fairly well developed.
Max is a law student wunderkind who decides to help Katie out with her case. He is a nice foil for Katie as he remains more resolute in believing the official story of 9/11. He provided some much needed perspective both in the universe of the book and just to me as the reader, who almost had to put it down because (as mentioned above) the book dabbles with being disrespectful to the victims of 9/11. Also, Max being a complete and unabashed nerd referencing Tolkien immediately endeared him to me.
Overall, if you are someone interested in conspiracy theories, I think you will quite enjoy this book. If you are neutral about them it’s a decent YA story that is worth a read but not essential. If you can’t stomach the suggestion of alternate theories about the events of 9/11, this is a hard pass.
Also posted on Purple People Readers.
lacyduckie's review against another edition
3.0
It’d happened more than fifteen years ago, when she was maybe two, and she had no personal memory of that day, or of the weeks or months that followed. So, yeah, it was tragic and all that, but from a completely selfish, and honest, point of view, 9/11 was ancient history. It had about as much effect on her as Kennedy getting shot or the Titanic sinking. None. Unless . . . Unless her dad’s “freaky and sporadic interest” was more than that. Much more.
Truthers is a YA thriller about the conspiracies that surround 9/11. I've owned the book for a little less than a year but I decided to wait for September to actually read it. For obvious reasons.
As someone who loves conspiracies and theories, Truthers was an interesting read. It had a great build up and kept me wanting to read just one more chapter but then the ending kind of fell flat. Nothing really got resolved. But I guess that's fitting for a story about conspiracy theories because most of the time they don't have any real resolution. I still think it's a decent book.
Heads up, it's a hard book to find information on and after reading, the irony isn't lost on me. 👀
“So, what do you do after the buildings fall or the doors slam and there’s nothing but silence left? Maybe that ‘after’ is what counts. Your actions, your feelings. Maybe that’s the only real truth we ever get. And maybe that’s enough.”
dtaylorbooks's review against another edition
5.0
My interest was piqued with TRUTHERS, however, when I started reading I was very afraid of where the book was going to go. I have huge problems with people capitalizing on 9/11 in the form of entertainment, like fictionalized books or movies. Same goes for other big tragedies, like the BP rig explosion and that movie with Mark Wahlberg. Gross. No. You’re making money on the backs of dead people with survivors still alive to tell you exactly what happened. No.
So I was afraid because 9/11 is very close to me. I don’t like to call myself a survivor because I wasn’t downtown when it happened. I was in my dorm at 55th between 2nd and 3rd, having been dropped off eight days prior for my freshman year of college. I don’t feel like I actually survived anything being that far uptown, yet it’s such a monumental moment in my life that I’m still to this day grossly affected by it. I didn’t witness the planes crashing into the buildings or see the towers collapsing, but I can tell you how yellow the air was the next day when the wind shifted and what thousands of burning bodies and cement and steel and asbestos and office equipment smells like. How long it stuck to our hair and our clothes, how news anchors advised people to stay indoors. I can tell you it took between 7 and 8 hours to get a hold of my parents that day because cell services were jammed, pay phones were for emergency only, and no one had long distance on their dorm phones. So my parents had no idea whether I was alive or dead. I can tell you what a silent New York City feels like, what hordes of people walking across the Queensboro looked like because the island was locked down. What’s it like to walk in streets that were previously flat but were now rippled and bulging because of the underground force created by the falling towers. I can tell you what it’s like to have a fundraiser variety show for one of our friends whose dad, who didn’t work in the towers but were nearby, ran in to help people and never came out. They buried an empty coffin that November and in March his body was finally extracted from the wreckage, intact.
I know our government’s down some really shitty things, but I can’t accept that they would allow something like this to happen let alone actually orchestrated it. So I had a hard time going into this book, and I had a hard time writing what I did above, and I was afraid of what Girard was going to do. My 18-year-old self was very directly affected by 9/11 and my 34-year-old-self now is very protective of that piece of me. But I gave it a chance.
And once things started working out and cracks started to form, I stopped reading the book as if I were anticipating a hit. I waited until the very end to see how he would tie everything together just so I didn’t jump the gun and was like WHEW. TRUTHERS ended in a very satisfying place. Not one where I anticipated it ending, but a respectful place.
The basic premise is Katie’s dad has been not well for a long time and at his last breakdown before being hospitalized he drops a bomb: that we was involved in a secret conspiracy to orchestrate 9/11 and Katie is really the daughter of a woman off of Flight 93 who handed her over to him to save before the woman was carted off and murdered by the government. This is at the front of the book, and it’s a very insulting conspiracy which was why I was so apprehensive going into it. I was really hoping the book would ultimately be a comment on mental illness, which is kind of ends up being. It just takes a while for that point to develop.
So here’s the thing: conspiracies are not mathematically viable. Effectively the more people who know a secret the less amount of time that secret is going to stay a secret. That article effectively proves that based on prior real conspiracies that did come to light. The thing about covert operations is that very few people know about them. Exceedingly few. That’s to mitigate leaks. There is stuff that’s buried very deeply within the government that not even Julian Assange can get his hands on. The shit the government really doesn’t want people to know, they hide it well. Everything else . . . well, the government at large is terrible at keeping secrets, if you couldn’t already tell.
One of Katie’s contacts, a guy with the handle Benevolus522, states that people who know too much and who are deemed a threat by the government get eliminated. That’s not untrue. However the government actually needs to think you’re a threat with the information you know. Ben here’s been working on his truther crap for more than a decade and he considers himself hunkered down under hacker protection from the government and in hiding. 1) Hubris to think his tech skills are better than the government’s when it comes to spycraft. Ha. 2) By that same logic if he was actually on to anything he’d already be dead. Since he’s not, by that logic, he knows jack shit. But, you know. Truthers aren’t logical so that concept flies right out the window.
Max is a leveling factor throughout the story, poking holes in Katie’s logic the entire time and he really grounds it all out. He waters down every truther concept, picks it up and turns it around so it can be seen from the other side of the coin. He’s really the voice of reason as Katie devolves into this whole mess.
As for Katie herself, she gets points for the research she does and the time spent. The crux of this whole thing, as outlined by one of the cases she found, it to prove that the truther conspiracies are believable by people of sound judgment and mind, not just by “crazies.” And this is brought up very early on in the story so if you hang on to this notion, keep it in the back of your mind, it’ll help you carry through everything, from the cut-aways to the “men in black” talking about spying on her to the questionable scare tactic moments that arise. She’s also a vaguely inconsistent character, but that’s just one mention that really stood out: considering 9/11 ancient history, however, she quotes the movie Se7en, which is even older than that event. Literally before her time. But whatever. Small hiccup, ultimately.
There are a lot of hidden pieces in TRUTHERS that if I start talking about them they’ll just be outright spoilers. So I’ll just end it with this: it’s a book that ultimately keeps its distance. 9/11 is THE BIG THING in the book, but that’s not how it ends. Girard is respectful and ends up making various comments about the mentality around conspiracies, PTSD, mental illness, and persistence toward truth. It started off rough and ended quite well. I would recommend giving it a chance.
He puts a note at the end, before the bibliography, just commenting on the sites and books he referenced when researching the book and how it’s not an endorsement, just a research list. InfoWars is on there and it made me twitch. Ugh. Talk about conspiratorial drivel. I’m sorry he had to go there, but I think it shows the lengths to which he went in order to understand the mentality of that side of thinking and even that isn’t presented in a mocking way in the book, but just as another way of thinking without being disrespectful to those directly affected by 9/11.
So if you’re looking at the blurb and you’re skeptical in a way that I was, give TRUTHERS a chance. You might be surprised.
4.5
I received a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
So I was afraid because 9/11 is very close to me. I don’t like to call myself a survivor because I wasn’t downtown when it happened. I was in my dorm at 55th between 2nd and 3rd, having been dropped off eight days prior for my freshman year of college. I don’t feel like I actually survived anything being that far uptown, yet it’s such a monumental moment in my life that I’m still to this day grossly affected by it. I didn’t witness the planes crashing into the buildings or see the towers collapsing, but I can tell you how yellow the air was the next day when the wind shifted and what thousands of burning bodies and cement and steel and asbestos and office equipment smells like. How long it stuck to our hair and our clothes, how news anchors advised people to stay indoors. I can tell you it took between 7 and 8 hours to get a hold of my parents that day because cell services were jammed, pay phones were for emergency only, and no one had long distance on their dorm phones. So my parents had no idea whether I was alive or dead. I can tell you what a silent New York City feels like, what hordes of people walking across the Queensboro looked like because the island was locked down. What’s it like to walk in streets that were previously flat but were now rippled and bulging because of the underground force created by the falling towers. I can tell you what it’s like to have a fundraiser variety show for one of our friends whose dad, who didn’t work in the towers but were nearby, ran in to help people and never came out. They buried an empty coffin that November and in March his body was finally extracted from the wreckage, intact.
I know our government’s down some really shitty things, but I can’t accept that they would allow something like this to happen let alone actually orchestrated it. So I had a hard time going into this book, and I had a hard time writing what I did above, and I was afraid of what Girard was going to do. My 18-year-old self was very directly affected by 9/11 and my 34-year-old-self now is very protective of that piece of me. But I gave it a chance.
And once things started working out and cracks started to form, I stopped reading the book as if I were anticipating a hit. I waited until the very end to see how he would tie everything together just so I didn’t jump the gun and was like WHEW. TRUTHERS ended in a very satisfying place. Not one where I anticipated it ending, but a respectful place.
The basic premise is Katie’s dad has been not well for a long time and at his last breakdown before being hospitalized he drops a bomb: that we was involved in a secret conspiracy to orchestrate 9/11 and Katie is really the daughter of a woman off of Flight 93 who handed her over to him to save before the woman was carted off and murdered by the government. This is at the front of the book, and it’s a very insulting conspiracy which was why I was so apprehensive going into it. I was really hoping the book would ultimately be a comment on mental illness, which is kind of ends up being. It just takes a while for that point to develop.
So here’s the thing: conspiracies are not mathematically viable. Effectively the more people who know a secret the less amount of time that secret is going to stay a secret. That article effectively proves that based on prior real conspiracies that did come to light. The thing about covert operations is that very few people know about them. Exceedingly few. That’s to mitigate leaks. There is stuff that’s buried very deeply within the government that not even Julian Assange can get his hands on. The shit the government really doesn’t want people to know, they hide it well. Everything else . . . well, the government at large is terrible at keeping secrets, if you couldn’t already tell.
One of Katie’s contacts, a guy with the handle Benevolus522, states that people who know too much and who are deemed a threat by the government get eliminated. That’s not untrue. However the government actually needs to think you’re a threat with the information you know. Ben here’s been working on his truther crap for more than a decade and he considers himself hunkered down under hacker protection from the government and in hiding. 1) Hubris to think his tech skills are better than the government’s when it comes to spycraft. Ha. 2) By that same logic if he was actually on to anything he’d already be dead. Since he’s not, by that logic, he knows jack shit. But, you know. Truthers aren’t logical so that concept flies right out the window.
Max is a leveling factor throughout the story, poking holes in Katie’s logic the entire time and he really grounds it all out. He waters down every truther concept, picks it up and turns it around so it can be seen from the other side of the coin. He’s really the voice of reason as Katie devolves into this whole mess.
As for Katie herself, she gets points for the research she does and the time spent. The crux of this whole thing, as outlined by one of the cases she found, it to prove that the truther conspiracies are believable by people of sound judgment and mind, not just by “crazies.” And this is brought up very early on in the story so if you hang on to this notion, keep it in the back of your mind, it’ll help you carry through everything, from the cut-aways to the “men in black” talking about spying on her to the questionable scare tactic moments that arise. She’s also a vaguely inconsistent character, but that’s just one mention that really stood out: considering 9/11 ancient history, however, she quotes the movie Se7en, which is even older than that event. Literally before her time. But whatever. Small hiccup, ultimately.
There are a lot of hidden pieces in TRUTHERS that if I start talking about them they’ll just be outright spoilers. So I’ll just end it with this: it’s a book that ultimately keeps its distance. 9/11 is THE BIG THING in the book, but that’s not how it ends. Girard is respectful and ends up making various comments about the mentality around conspiracies, PTSD, mental illness, and persistence toward truth. It started off rough and ended quite well. I would recommend giving it a chance.
He puts a note at the end, before the bibliography, just commenting on the sites and books he referenced when researching the book and how it’s not an endorsement, just a research list. InfoWars is on there and it made me twitch. Ugh. Talk about conspiratorial drivel. I’m sorry he had to go there, but I think it shows the lengths to which he went in order to understand the mentality of that side of thinking and even that isn’t presented in a mocking way in the book, but just as another way of thinking without being disrespectful to those directly affected by 9/11.
So if you’re looking at the blurb and you’re skeptical in a way that I was, give TRUTHERS a chance. You might be surprised.
4.5
I received a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
sanctimonioussarah's review against another edition
2.0
It was honestly very confusing and I kept on not wanting to read it. The thing Katie and Max have is pretty cute and I liked the ending.