Was this book a bit fanservice-y? Yes, it was. But I want to say, it was an amazing read.

I haven't read or really thought about the original trilogy in a very long time, but with the movie coming out I decided it's time to bite the bullet and read this one. And I am so sorry that I haven't done it earlier. There is something so freeing about reading about a villain. I know how he will turn out, in the end. I hold no sympathy for him. And I didn't come into this expecting redemptions. Sometimes, you just need to read about a bad person, root for them and still hate him in the end.

That being said, there were some truly good, on a moral scale, characters too. Sejanus was so interesting, the war inside of him about being capitol or district and how it shouldn't matter so much, an interesting foil for Coriolanus. Also,

his betrayal with the jabberjays and his subsequent death were

two of my favorite scenes. But I think, in the end, he had the same problem as the tributes in the hunger games. He was just a kid. It's nigh impossible to make good choices about your own life at that age, inside or outside of the arena, but that is something you can only notice with age.

Lucy Gray, while a bit manic pixie dream girly in the beginning, grew on me a lot. She was strong, resilient, and still kind and optimistic. And the fact that in the end she

took a look at Coriolanus and went "I can make him better? Hell no, imma see myself out!"

like you got to respect that. I know this is not a new take, I also read it somewhere else, but truly Katniss was a fighter forced to perform, while Lucy Gray was a performer forced to fight. While I don't love that for her well-being, I am so glad that we are at a point in our society when a female main character can find strength in clothes, and in her community and be feminine and still be considered strong. And if you ask me about the ending, I think she

survived

.

I could write for a long while about Tigris, about the compact and the compass, about how cool it is that Coriolanus and Dr. Gaul were named after a mother-son duo from a Shakespeare play, but I don't think there is any more that I can say that will make people pick up this book if they didn't want to already. So read it, think about the nature vs nurture debate and whether men are intrinsically good or bad, and then come back and tell me I was right. This is a good book, future fascist dictator or not.

If the cause wasn’t honorable, how could it be an honor to participate in it?

What Lies Between Us by John Marrs

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Sometimes you pick up a book because it's convenient. Because it is there and you have a commute and why not? This is a recipe for both disaster and exhilaration, and you can't know which one until you embark on the journey. That's is how I met this book. Scrolling randomly on my audiobook app, I gravitated towards a thriller and this one popped up. I read the synopsis and decided it was worth a try. I listened to worse. And then...

It was good! Written in dual POV, we follow Maggie and Nina, mother and daughter. It also has a dual timeline; one of them is the present when Maggie is locked up in the attic by Nina, and the past, which starts when Nina was 13 and her father, Maggie's husband, left them. And, well, you just want to know how things got to where they are. It is a little formulaic, with the present giving you a crumb, and then the past explaining it a few chapters later, but the pace is good, and the happenings abhorrent enough that they make you keep going.

You see, none of these two women are likeable. They both did and are doing some fucked up stuff, but at the same time, you can understand how they got that way. You can see how in their brain, their actions are justified.

The other thing that I think is very well done is the theme of, and discussion on, motherhood. The things you would do to have a child or the things you do to keep the one you have. How it changes you and how it shows you that you can't change. And most of all, letting go. It's about how one of the easiest ways to see that your child turned out right is in the fact that they don't need you anymore, and how that can be devastating and hard to accept. Do you keep a child close because they need you or do you need them? As someone who doesn't plan on having kids, some of the happenings in this regard made me roll my eyes, but as a daughter of a mother, it gave me some stuff to think about.

Overall, even with the few twists that I figured out and the little slog at around the 2/3 mark, this was very enjoyable and I already recommended it to those around me that like domestic thrillers. Definitely one of the best I've read (well, listened to) in recent history.