McGinnis is one of those authors that just never fails to completely sweep me away in her claustrophobic, tense and intensely atmospheric stories. The sheer power of her prose is unmatched. Her books burn with fury at the world, particularly in the ways it mistreats teenage girls. A Long Stretch of Bad Days is no exception to this rule, particularly focusing on the idea of the ‘perfect victim’ and how those who do not fit this criteria are ignored and forgotten. McGinnis has a lot to say about class, stereotyping and who is considered worthy of investigation and justice. Bristal Jamison is someone who has been defined by her name and background, with long-running town-wide assumptions about her family stemming from their class and home. Even Lydia falls for those assumptions, having to unlearn her own expectations and ingrained lessons. In this town, your name is everything. This creates huge divides and levels of expectations, with resulting imbalances of power and privilege. I found this thread fascinating, with your name defining your fate in the eyes of the town.

Trying to break out of that is near impossible, endearing me to Bristal instantly as someone trying to break the mould she has been forced into. It also helped that she was an extremely funny and charismatic character, with wit and plenty of heart. She deeply cares, though she may pretend not to. On the other hand, Lydia is initially blinded by her position, used to getting her way and succeeding. When this slightly chips, she gets pretty defensive and those internal prejudices come to the surface. However, you get to know her true passions and how this academic project becomes something that she will pursue at all costs. That drive for justice is commendable. I also love how McGinnis always creates such complex and flawed characters. She does not allow her teenaged girls to be pigeonholed or dismissed as vapid caricatures. They have grit beneath their nails and stones in their hearts. For me, they are devastatingly real and raw, drawing me to them endlessly.

McGinnis never fails to create books that are compulsive reads. They leave you tearing through them until the early hours, as the sun begins to break. Her pacing and ability to create tension is fantastic. This is no exception with an interesting spin on true crime podcasts and twists that leave you reeling. The way past and present mesh is interesting, with a mediation of what might have been. There is a lot of discussion around privilege, power and particularly around who controls the narrative. The way this wider discussion feeds into the plotline is incredible, leaving you with so many thought-provoking topics for future discussion and debate. I always love how wrapped up in McGinnis’ web I become. There are plenty of layered twists and turns that rip the flooring out from under your feet and upend everything that has come before. Every character has a suspicion cast over them and I was questioning everything that happened. Also, I loved how this investigation had real stakes and consequences. In such a claustrophobic small town, digging too far will unearth buried secrets and deep seated feelings, which boil over into outrage and even attacks. This, combined with Lydia’s dad’s subplot of taking on a vehemently hated client as a defence lawyer, creates a sense of every step having repercussions. You know this will all come back around and can only brace for the impact.

A Long Stretch of Bad Days is an incredibly compelling book, combining social commentary with slick storytelling that leaves you trapped in McGinnis’ complex web.

A Long Stretch of Bad Days is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.

Will you be picking up A Long Stretch of Bad Days? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis | Goodreads

From award-winning author Mindy McGinnis comes a thrilling and gripping YA mystery about a small town’s past and the secrets unearthed by way of two teen girls—and a podcast. Perfect for fans of Sadie, The Cheerleaders, and A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.

A lifetime of hard work has put Lydia Chass on track to attend a prestigious journalism program and leave Henley behind—until a school error leaves her a credit short of graduating.

Bristal Jamison has a bad reputation and a foul mouth, but she also needs one more credit to graduate. An unexpected partnership forms as the two remake Lydia’s town history podcast to investigate the Long Stretch of Bad Days—a week when Henley was hit by a tornado, a flash flood, as well as its first, only, and unsolved murder.

As their investigation unearths buried secrets, some don’t want them to see the light. When the threats escalate, the girls have to uncover the truth before the dark history of Henley catches up with them.

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I’d previously read and absolutely fallen in love with McGinnis’ work through the phenomenal The Female of the Species, so hearing that she was working on another mystery and that it was inspired by Edgar Allen Poe’s work, it made for a tantalising combination that was impossible to pass up. The very essence of Gothic fiction seeps into every word of this shadowy tale of death, broken friendships, and the blood search for vengeance. This genre was a smart choice as it often allows for the exploration of darker, tougher topics, which McGinnis does so well. Also, it grants some more creative license with some unexplained events creepily occurring in the background of our narrative and a highly unusual extra perspective we get to peek into.

Often, there is a thin line between our search for justice and a burning desire for revenge. Tress has been tipped over the line after years and years of being mistreated and marginalised and with the aching burden of the uncertainty of what happened to her parents all those years. The only person who may know is her former best friend, Felicity. Both of these characters are deeply flawed and hiding their own secrets in their troubled, messy, and multi-layered lives, but they’re just so well-developed and crafted. It’s great how we get to really delve into each of their perspectives and understand their individual motivations behind their actions. Often the same event is visited from both sides, which allows for a more realised and true to life depiction. Things are rarely as simple as they first seem. Part of the true hook of the story is trying to unpick the tangled mess that used to be their friendship, as well as wanting to solve the mystery. This makes for compulsive reading that you cannot find the strength to put down.

This is a highly unusual book in terms of its narrative structure and the events that occur within its pages. However, this only works in its favour. It blends this strange, almost surreal tale with an unflinchingly honest and slightly gruesome internal mediation on one person’s quest for the truth and revenge. In the background, there’s this hedonistic night of debauchery that slowly starts to go very, very wrong. There’s some intriguing elements of the story that aren’t fully explained, which assumedly will be further expanded upon in the sequel. There’s more than enough to keep you racing through the pages, but McGinnis also doesn’t spell everything out, leaving gaps for your imagination to run off with for now.

McGinnis’ signature strong style of writing meshes so well with the terrifying touches of Poe’s short stories. She goes dark and isn’t afraid to stay there, rarely allowing you a moment of lightness to relieve you from the sheer tension. This is a claustrophobic, heart-racing novel where the atmosphere and the tension are incredibly thick. With every moment that passes, the danger only grows and you are left genuinely unsure as to whether everyone will survive.

Without saying too much, this review would be incomplete without mentioning the sheer brilliance of that ending as the book has naturally built up this point. It’s not purely for shock or dramatic effect, though it delivers both of them in spades. Instead, McGinnis has incrementally built up to this, laying narrative breadcrumbs that finally pay off. It leaves some great threads open for the sequel, while adding the darkness and flair of the Gothic.

The Initial Insult is a horror thriller for the modern YA audience, jam-packed with suspense, disturbing events, and plenty of Gothic style.

The Initial Insult is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.

Will you be picking up The Initial Insult? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis | Goodreads

In the first book of this duology, award-winning author Mindy McGinnis draws inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe and masterfully delivers a dark, propulsive mystery in alternating points of view that unravels a friendship… forevermore.

Welcome to Amontillado, Ohio, where your last name is worth more than money, and secrets can be kept… for a price.

Tress Montor knows that her family used to mean something—until she didn’t have a family anymore. When her parents disappeared seven years ago while driving her best friend home, Tress lost everything. She might still be a Montor, but the entire town shuns her now that she lives with her drunken, one-eyed grandfather at what locals refer to as the “White Trash Zoo,” – a wild animal attraction featuring a zebra, a chimpanzee, and a panther, among other things.

Felicity Turnado has it all – looks, money, and a secret that she’s kept hidden. She knows that one misstep could send her tumbling from the top of the social ladder, and she’s worked hard to make everyone forget that she was with the Montors the night they disappeared. Felicity has buried what she knows so deeply that she can’t even remember what it is… only that she can’t look at Tress without having a panic attack.

But she’ll have to.

Tress has a plan. A Halloween costume party at an abandoned house provides the ideal situation for Tress to pry the truth from Felicity – brick by brick – as she slowly seals her former best friend into a coal chute. With a drunken party above them, and a loose panther on the prowl, Tress will have her answers – or settle for revenge.

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Where did the idea for Be Not Far From Me come from? 

I am an avid hiker, and often take vacations in places where I can get some hiking in. One such vacation was near a particularly dense Pennsylvania forest. The person I was with thought we could get a spur of the trail in before darkness fell. I didn’t think we could, and said so, but curiosity outweighed caution and we tried it. Hours later, with no overnight packs and failing phone batteries, we were in pitch black with a trail as wide as my hand, mostly searching for faded blazes on trees to mark our way. It was simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying. We did break out onto the trailhead around 11 PM. And no, I didn’t rub it in that I had been right about that spur. I was too grateful that we’d made it back to our car… and that a novel had been born while we wandered. But me being right about the spur totally came up the next day.

Do you have survival experience? How did you go about doing the research for what you didn’t know?

I grew up in the woods and have some basic experience. I can build a shelter, and know what to eat (or not eat) if a desperate situation arrives. I can start a fire, but it’s much harder than you think, and almost impossible in wet conditions. Most of Ashley’s survival tactics are things I already knew, but I don’t know that I could survive for any lengthy period of time out there. The research I did mostly consisted of reading hiking manuals for longer trails.

The drug world is a peripheral part of this book, but the central plot of your previous book, Heroine (which floored me, and which I loved). Was there any convergence between the two in conceptualization or writing?

It’s an interesting question. Be Not Far From Me was actually supposed to release in the Fall of 2018. It was written (and edited!) when I pitched my idea for HEROINE to my editor. The publisher felt that Be Not Far From Me was an evergreen story, whereas HEROINE was more topical in the moment. Therefore, Heroine skipped ahead of Be Not Far From Me on the publishing schedule. I wrote, edited and polished Heroine after having already finished (and polished) Be Not Far From Me. So, there was a convergence, it was just backwards from their publishing dates!

You write from such a raw place. Is it hard to stay in the emotions of the book when they’re so difficult and/or vulnerable? 

Not really. This book especially has so much of my real self in it, that I don’t find it difficult or uncomfortable to spend time with those thoughts, or scenes. I’ve always been more attracted to honest writing, and truthful assessments. It comes out in my own work, and who I am as a person.

One of the things I love about your books is the way you portray anger. Your female characters openly feel, express, and are sometimes overwhelmed by anger. Is this something you do consciously? How has anger shaped your writing?

Oh, great question! I freely admit to having an absolutely terrible Irish temper. Maturity has taught me how to control it, but as a child I would often get so angry that my mother worried I was going to have an aneurysm. I don’t know if that’s an actual possibility, I just know that it was a concern for her. As I got older, I learned how to express the anger in more healthy ways – and writing is one of them. I pour a lot of bile into my books, and very often that’s what my female audience is connecting to. We’re not supposed to be angry. We’re not allowed to be angry. But guess what? We’re totally fucking angry. (feel free to edit for language).

The title of Be Not Far From Me is taken from Psalm 22, but Ashley is decidedly ambivalent on religion. Did you mean to imply any kind of spiritual forces at work in Ashley’s journey (especially her encounters with Davey Beet’s trail), or were you trying to evoke the importance of human connections? 

Good job researching! I like to leave it to the reader to decide if there is a guiding hand in Ashley’s journey.

There are a couple of scenes I know I’ll be thinking about for a long, long time: the foot scene and the opossum scene. Both were brutal, but you never flinched (and neither did Ashley). Why was it important to you to show these particular aspects of Ashley’s journey? 

Without any spoilers – it takes an extreme amount of determination to do some of the things that Ashley does in the book. It comes down to will to live. Ashley wants to live, period. If she has to do some horrific things to make that happen (and she does), then she will. The human instinct to survive is strong… but stronger in some than others.

This book seems like the YA expression of a lot of the wilderness books I remember reading as a child, especially My Side of the Mountain and Hatchet. But both of those (a) featured boys and (b) made wilderness survival and self-reliance seem kind of fun. Meanwhile, Ashley has her period and has to squat to pee (not fun, I agree), and her survival is a terrible ordeal. Did you intentionally set out to critique those books?

It’s definitely not a critique. Both of the books you mentioned were pivotal for me as a child, as were any number of other survival books. But even as a child I would read them and think, “Yeah, but…” The really gruesome aspects of what it would take to make it weren’t included. Those books were written for a different audience, at a different time. This is a no-holds-barred version.

I’m glad you asked about menstruation. It’s something that simply never comes up in most tv-shows, movies or books, unless it’s an embarrassing situation. I remember on LOST when they were scavenging the remnants of the plane for food and medicine, I really wanted one of the female characters to say, “And tampons. We’re going to need those.”

Shame and pride are both huge motivating factors for Ashley, and also huge roadblocks. How did you navigate writing a characters whose strengths and weaknesses were only slight shades of each other?

Ashley is not easy to like. She’s tough, and she doesn’t bite her tongue often. She grew up hardscrabble, and it shows. This means she isn’t always the nicest person in the world. It also means that she’s exactly the kind of person who has the ability to survive in the wilderness. Strengths and weaknesses can switch places quickly with your situation. I think that’s an interesting element of life to dig into.

So, what’s your next project?

I’m very excited for my 2021 release, The Initial Insult, which blends retellings of Edgar Allan Poe stories in a contemporary Appalachian Ohio setting.

Mindy McGinnis is an Edgar Award-winning novelist who writes across multiple genres, including post-apocalyptic, historical, thriller, contemporary, mystery, and fantasy. While her settings may change, you can always count on Mindy’s books to deliver grit, truth, and an unflinching look at humanity and the world around us. Mindy can be found on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, along with at her website.

Will you be picking up Be Not Far From Me? Tell us in the comments below!

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It’s very much like The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King, although without the supernatural entity shadowing the protagonist, and with an older and more skilled protagonist. There’s a gruesome central thread of the plot that’s a lot more like 127 Hours, except it’s 360 hours and protagonist Ashley is moving as far and fast as she can instead of being trapped in a single place. But yes, mostly it’s an angry Gary Paulsen novel, Hatchet without the hatchet. Well. Mostly.

At one point Ashley does get her hands on a makeshift cutting/chopping instrument. It’s a scene so horrible and potent I almost missed my stop on the bus because I couldn’t look away, but that comes later. In the beginning, Ashley finds herself without any weapons or tools. She doesn’t even have a shirt: she had to use it to bind the wreckage of her foot, which she mangled in her rush from the campsite. Her journey begins barefoot in her sports bra, lost in more ways than one.

Her ordeal begins with a horrible discovery at a party in the woods. She’s drunk, she’s angry, and she’s a champion cross-country runner as well as a confident woodswoman, so her blind rush into the forest doesn’t seem all that bad an idea. But when she wakes up injured and hungover with no supplies and no idea where she is, her confidence sours. That’s when her tenacity takes over.

Ashley’s story is as much about her personal growth and resilience as it is about her woodcraft and survival skills. There are very clever moments at which she describes how she makes a cord out of her own hair, and how she fashions a sling for her foot, but this isn’t an instruction manual with some narrative embellishments. This is a story of Ashley’s survival, how her past both hinders and helps her, how her relationships sustain her, and how her own spirit gets her back up from every terrible fall.

I suspect people may get frustrated with Ashley for being stubborn and continuing to travel rather than staying in one place and trying to get attention. I am not an expert on wilderness survival and can’t comment on the relative wisdom of her choices, but as a former Angry Teenage Girl I can certainly attest that stubbornness to the point of masochism and self-reliance to the point of absurdity are certainly in keeping with Ashley’s age and situation. I, too, would have been the kind of person to press on despite all the disastrous setbacks. I wouldn’t have gotten as far as she did, certainly, but I would have gone.

Be Not Far from Me explores both the importance and the limits of self-reliance. She also delves into the poisonousness of pride but also the importance of anger. McGinnis always writes with raw, furious intensity, and I love her for it. Female anger, and especially teen female anger, is only recently a subject authors have been allowed to celebrate, and it’s long overdue.

If anything breaks the suspension of disbelief, it’s the repeated discoveries of the leavings of her personal hero and longtime crush Davey Beet. Davey set off into the wilderness several years ago and never returned. He’s presumed dead, and even Ashley knows that’s likely the case no matter how much she hopes otherwise.

Part of the issue is that the Appalachian wilderness is vast. It’s a cornerstone of the whole premise of the book: Ashley is lost in something so huge, so overwhelming, and so magnificently terrifying that her spirit will have to rise to the challenge. The hugeness of her personality and her resolve are being weighed against the oldest, most indifferent force humankind has ever dealt with: the wilderness from which we sprang.

So it undermines that theme rather a lot when Ashley finds signs of the one person she most wants to see. From a narrative standpoint, Ashley just needed some kind of emotional encounter to spur her inner growth and her resolve. And okay, sure, this is a novel, and also the world is full of strange coincidences, but McGinnis clearly wanted to tell the story of Ashley and Davey a little more than it made sense for that story to be told. The chances of finding—repeatedly!—signs of his passage are so infinitesimally small as to be impossible. And there’s not enough mysticism to really believe it’s part of some Larger Plan, nor enough madness to imply that it’s all just Ashley hallucinating.

This is not a religious book and Ashley is not a religious person. She’s pretty iffy on God, and she doesn’t go in for spiritual explanations. If McGinnis has opinions or beliefs, they’re hard to find. I’m glad this doesn’t conform to any stereotypical narratives about lost sheep or the magic to be found in the darkness. That would be trite, and this book is about as far from trite as Ashley is from civilisation.

The wilderness is brutal. Ashley at one point has to kill an opossum, and the scene is utterly wrenching as well as necessarily gory. Even if there’s some kind of faint providence in Ashley’s  journey, it doesn’t rise to the level of implying that there’s any kind of benign or beautiful force at work: to be alone in the forest is to be locked in mortal struggle. Ashley’s struggle is tense, terrible, and engrossing.

Be Not Far From Me is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers as of March 3rd 2020.

Will you be picking up Be Not Far From Me? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis | Goodreads

Hatchet meets Wild in this harrowing survival story from Edgar Award-winning author Mindy McGinnis.

The world is not tame.

Ashley knows this truth deep in her bones, more at home with trees overhead than a roof. So when she goes hiking in the Smokies with her friends for a night of partying, the falling dark and creaking trees are second nature to her. But people are not tame either. And when Ashley catches her boyfriend with another girl, drunken rage sends her running into the night, stopped only by a nasty fall into a ravine. Morning brings the realization that she’s alone – and far off trail. Lost in undisturbed forest and with nothing but the clothes on her back, Ashley must figure out how to survive despite the red streak of infection creeping up her leg.

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Will you be adding any of these new releases to your to-read list? Let us know in the comments below!

Red Sister by Mark Lawrence | Out Now | Goodreads
At the Convent of Sweet Mercy, young girls are raised to be killers. They hone their novices’ skills to deadly effect and takes ten years to educate a Red Sister in the ways of blade and fist. When eight-year-old bloodstained Nona Grey is brought to the halls of Sweet Mercy, the mistresses don’t truly understand what they have purchased. Falsely accused of murder and guilty of worse, she is sought by powerful enemies. Nona must come to terms with her demons and learn to become a deadly assassin if she is to survive…

American War by Omar El Akkad | Out Now | Goodreads
Born in Louisiana, Sarat Chestnut is only six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074. When her father is killed and her family is forced into Camp Patience, she begins to grow up shaped by her particular time and place. Not everyone at the camp is who they claim to be and eventually Sarat is befriended by a mysterious functionary and turned into a deadly instrument of war. The decisions she makes will have tremendous consequences, not just for Sarat, but her family and country.

Brimstone by Cherie Priest | Out Now | Goodreads
In the trenches of Europe during the Great War, Tomas Cordero operated a devastating weapon: a flame projector dousing the enemy in liquid fire. Having life the battlefield a shattered man, he comes home to find his wife has passed and soon finds himself dreaming of fire. Then there’s Alice Dartle, a talented clairvoyant living in present-day Florida. She also dreams of fire and knows her nightmares are connected to the war veteran and believes she can bring peace to him and his wife’s spirit.

Given to the Sea by Mindy McGinnis | Out Now | Goodreads
Khosa is Given to the Sea, a girl born to be to the water, her flesh preventing a wave-like the one that destroyed the Kingdom of Stille in days of old. But before she can, she must produce an heir, except the thought of human touch sends shudders down her spine. Vincent is third in line to inherit the throne and when Khosa arrives without an heir, he knows his father will ensure she fulfils her duty, at whatever cost. He soon becomes torn between protecting the throne and the girl whose fate is tied to its very existence.

Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray | Out Now | Goodreads
Noemi Vidal is a seventeen-year-old soldier sworn to protect her planet and willing to risk anything, including her life. Abandoned in space for years, Abel has advanced programming that’s begun to evolve and he only wants to protect his creator and to be free. The two are enemies in an interstellar war, forced by chance to work together and their efforts would end the fighting for good, but not without sacrifice. The stakes are higher than they realised and they are forced to question everything.

The Ship by Antonia Honeywell | April 25 | Goodreads
Lalla has grown up sheltered from the chaos amid the ruins of civilization. But things are getting more dangerous outside with people killing over husks of bread and police detaining anyone without an ID card. On her sixteenth birthday, her father decides it’s time to use their escape route—a ship he built only big enough to save five hundred people. But the utopia her father has created isn’t as it seems with plenty of food, but nothing grows; plenty of clothes, but no way to mend them; and no-one can tell her where they are going.

Void Star by Zachary Mason | Out Now | Goodreads
Not far in the future, the seas have risen but it’s still good to be rich in San Francisco, where weapon drones patrol the skies to keep out the poor. Irina isn’t rich, but an artificial memory gives her perfect recall and lets her act as a medium between employers and AIs. Kern, one of the many refugees, lives like a monk and trains in martial arts; Whereas Thales is from a different world entirely and flees to L.A. after an attack leaves him crippled and his father dead. The three are soon pushed together by subtle forces that stay just out of sight.

Spindle Fire by Lexa Hillyer | Out Now | Goodreads
Half sisters Isabelle and Aurora have always been close despite being polar opposites: Isabelle is the king’s headstrong illegitimate daughter whereas Aurora is beautiful and sheltered. Everything changes with a single drop of Aurora’s blood and a sleep so deep it cannot be broken. With the faerie queen and her army ready to march, Isabelle must find a prince who can awaken her sister with a kiss and create an alliance. But Aurora wakes in a strange enchanted world where a mysterious hunter may be the secret to her escape . . . or the reason for her to stay.

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