This Darkness Mine by Mindy McGinnis

Previously reading The Female of the Species, I guessed that author Mindy McGinnis is not someone you would want to mess with.  After reading her latest novel, This Darkness Mine, I am now sure she is someone you would never want to cross (Okay, so she really is a great person and one that has recently said that she "really liked Kansas").

 This Darkness Mine is the story of Sasha Stone, the perfect girl who has everything going for her.  She is the soon to be valedictorian.  She is the leader of the school band.  She has the perfect boyfriend.  Her college plans are all in order.  She has it all....until one day things start happening that she has no recollection of.

The dark truth that she discovers is that she was once a twin, but that twin died before she was ever born.  Sasha comes to believe that she absorbed her twin while in the womb.  Sasha believes that Shanna, her twin, still lives inside her and is now trying to live the life she never had a chance to live.  The problem is that Shanna is not the good girl that Sasha always has been. 

Mindy McGinnis has brought us another powerful and thought provoking novel that will keep you guessing and on the edge of your seat until the very end.   
 

From Amazon:

Mindy McGinnis, award-winning author of The Female of the Species and A Madness So Discreet, returns with a new dark and twisted psychological thriller—perfect for fans of Gone Girl and Fight Club.

Sasha Stone knows her place—first-chair clarinet, top of her class, and at the side of her Oxford-wearing boyfriend. She’s worked her entire life to ensure her path to Oberlin Conservatory as a star musician is perfectly paved.

But suddenly there’s a fork in the road in the shape of Isaac Harver. Her body shifts toward him when he walks by, and her skin misses his touch even though she’s never known it. Why does he act like he knows her so well—too well—when she doesn’t know him at all?

Sasha discovers that her by-the-book life began by ending the chapter of another: the twin sister she absorbed in the womb. But that doesn’t explain the gaps of missing time in her practice schedule, or the memories she has of things she certainly never did with Isaac.

Armed with the knowledge that her heart might not be hers alone, Sasha must decide what she’s willing to do—and who she’s willing to hurt—to take it back.

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds

Wow!  What a beautifully written story.  Long Way Down is an incredible story, told in verse, about a young man (just 15 years old) whose brother has just been murdered.  Will is planning on following the rules that have been passed down in his family, in his neighborhood for years.  Rule #1: No crying.  Rule #2: No snitching.  Rule #3: Get revenge.

Armed with his brothers gun, he takes the elevator down from the seventh floor with the plans to go and kill the man he is SURE killed his brother.  At each floor someone new steps on the elevator, someone who has passed away, someone who has a connection to Will.  Each tells their story, making Will have to decide if he is really going to do what he says he is going to do.

This is a novel that is super fast paced and one that, due to it being told in verse, you will read in a very short time.  But you will also be blown away by the way that Reynolds so beautifully puts his words to paper.  I really cannot say enough good things about this one!

From Amazon:

Longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature

An ode to Put the Damn Guns Down, this is National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestseller Jason Reynolds’s fiercely stunning novel that takes place in sixty potent seconds—the time it takes a kid to decide whether or not he’s going to murder the guy who killed his brother.

A cannon. A strap.
A piece. A biscuit.
A burner. A heater.
A chopper. A gat.
A hammer
A tool
for RULE

Or, you can call it a gun. That’s what fifteen-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. That’s where Will’s now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brother’s gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who he’s after. Or does he? As the elevator stops on the sixth floor, on comes Buck. Buck, Will finds out, is who gave Shawn the gun before Will took the gun. Buck tells Will to check that the gun is even loaded. And that’s when Will sees that one bullet is missing. And the only one who could have fired Shawn’s gun was Shawn. Huh. Will didn’t know that Shawn had ever actually USED his gun. Bigger huh. BUCK IS DEAD. But Buck’s in the elevator? Just as Will’s trying to think this through, the door to the next floor opens. A teenage girl gets on, waves away the smoke from Dead Buck’s cigarette. Will doesn’t know her, but she knew him. Knew. When they were eight. And stray bullets had cut through the playground, and Will had tried to cover her, but she was hit anyway, and so what she wants to know, on that fifth floor elevator stop, is, what if Will, Will with the gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, MISSES.

And so it goes, the whole long way down, as the elevator stops on each floor, and at each stop someone connected to his brother gets on to give Will a piece to a bigger story than the one he thinks he knows. A story that might never know an END…if WILL gets off that elevator.

Told in short, fierce staccato narrative verse, Long Way Down is a fast and furious, dazzlingly brilliant look at teenage gun violence, as could only be told by Jason Reynolds.

The Dust of 100 Dogs by A.S. King

For those of you who regularly take a look at this blog and what I am reading, I am sure you are fully aware that I a HUGE fan of A.S. King.  She is an incredible writer and an even more incredible person.  The Dust of 100 Dogs was her first novel and they just recently re-released it.  And I am so glad they did, because if not I probably never would have known about it and therefore never read it, and believe me when I say I am so glad that I read this one.

This book was so much fun!  It tells the story of a modern day young woman who is fighting to get back to her past.  A past that goes back to the 1600s and her life ans a famous teenage pirate, Emer Morrisey.  As she was trying to escape this dangerous lifestyle, an old nemesis comes back to kill her and curse her with "The dust of 100 dogs."  A curse that will cause her to live the lives of 100 dogs before she can come back to her contemporary form....with all of her memories still intact.

This book beautifully weaves the stories of both the former Emer Morrisey and the present day Saffron Adams, jumping back and forth between the pirate tales of the late 1600s and the present day search for the treasure she buried many, many years ago.  In between these tales, we get tips from our narrator about dogs and why they do the things they do (remember, she lived the lives of 100 dogs, so she has a bit of insight).  This book is full of twists and turns and is another amazing story from the incomparable A.S. King.  

From Amazon:

The first book from LA Times Book Prize and Printz Honor winner A.S. King--a witty, snarky tale of love and family, revenge and reincarnation, and pirates.

In the late seventeenth century, famed teenage pirate Emer Morrisey was on the cusp of escaping the pirate life with her one true love and unfathomable riches when she was slain and cursed with "the dust of one hundred dogs," dooming her to one hundred lives as a dog before returning to a human body-with her memories intact.

Now she's a contemporary American teenager and all she needs to escape her no-good family and establish a luxurious life of her own is a shovel and a ride to Jamaica...