Category: Stand-alone

The Distance Between Lost and Found by Kathryn Holmes

Posted 10 February, 2015 by Nikki Wang in 2015, ARC, Book Review, Favorites, Stand-alone / 1 Comment

The Distance Between Lost and Found by Kathryn Holmes
Published by HarperCollins on February 17, 2015
Genres: Contemporary, Love & Romance, Young Adult
Pages: 320

Amazon • Book Depository •

Ever since the night of the incident with Luke Willis, the preacher’s son, sophomore Hallelujah Calhoun has been silent. When the rumors swirled around school, she was silent. When her parents grounded her, she was silent. When her friends abandoned her…silent.

Now, six months later, on a youth group retreat in the Smoky Mountains, Hallie still can’t find a voice to answer the taunting. Shame and embarrassment haunt her, while Luke keeps coming up with new ways to humiliate her. Not even meeting Rachel, an outgoing newcomer who isn’t aware of her past, can pull Hallie out of her shell. Being on the defensive for so long has left her raw, and she doesn’t know who to trust.

On a group hike, the incessant bullying pushes Hallie to her limit. When Hallie, Rachel, and Hallie’s former friend Jonah get separated from the rest of the group, the situation quickly turns dire. Stranded in the wilderness, the three have no choice but to band together.

With past betrayals and harrowing obstacles in their way, Hallie fears they’ll never reach safety. Could speaking up about the night that changed everything close the distance between being lost and found? Or has she traveled too far to come back?

Survival and heartbreak at it’s best.

Survival stories aren’t always my favorite. After a while all the books with characters lost in a forest sort of blurred together, so I was a bit wary of picking up The Distance Between Lost and Found, but the incident that was mentioned in the synopsis intrigued me, I’ll admit. And we all know how fond I am of tough-issue books. So I picked it up.
And loved it.

This is going to be a short review because I’m not quite sure how to do this book justice. It’s a survival book, but this one stands among all the others and I can’t quite put my finger on why. It’s a compelling story about finding your way home and finding yourself along the way and that, I suppose, is what made it so different, but I feel like it was more than that. Holmes writes this novel intricately and beautifully in a way that sounds plausible and as heartbreaking as it should’ve been.
Immediately in the first page you can feel Hallie’s hurt and her anger and her regret. It’s there and as a reader, it’s so prominently there that you feel it too. I read this entire book with my heart aching for our main character and what she’s been through.

The way that Holmes writes the actual plot of the story seemed well written too. There were several times I actually worried for the characters, afraid they’d end up dead and you guys have no idea how on edge I was while reading this. (I also got a craving for fish.) The book is extremely well paced and I wasn’t bored at all throughout the entire read. If they weren’t getting injured or struggling to survive, our characters would start to reveal bits and pieces of themselves, and in such a hopeless setting, it broke my heart.

A story about finding your voice and finding your way back home (literally and figuratively), the pure emotion Kathryn Holmes weaves into her writing is reason enough to read it, but with harrowing escapes, near death experiences, and a gritty atmosphere, The Distance Between Lost and Found is an absolute must read (so the distance between you and the bookstore should be zero to none. I’m sorry I couldn’t help it.) It’s really a gorgeous book that I’d recommend almost instantly to…well really, anyone and everyone!

One of the Guys by Lisa Aldin

Romantic fluffs aren’t really my thing–they’re kind of like a guilty pleasure that I can’t totally take seriously, but cheer me up nevertheless. One of the Guys fit my need for a little cheesy romance almost perfectly and getting approved on NetGalley made me stop, drop, and read. Here’s the gist of the review: the story itself had an insanely cute idea–it was just a matter of executing it and that’s evidently where the story fell a bit short. I loved the bits […]

Posted 7 February, 2015 by Nikki Wang in 2015, ARC, Book Review, Stand-alone / 3 Comments

Inherit Midnight by Kate Kae Myers

I inherited something from this book, but it wasn’t something I loved. Okay, so you should know beforehand that the main appeal this book had to me was that it sounded strikingly like a YA version of the 39 Clues series which, as a kid, I absolutely adored. Family secrets, a race around the world–what isn’t there to love? As it turns out, a lot. Not to mention the fact that at times, the similarities between Inherit Midnight and the 39 Clues were […]

Posted 5 February, 2015 by Nikki Wang in 2015, ARC, Book Review, Stand-alone / 2 Comments

The Last Time We Say Goodbye by Cynthia Hand

Cynthia Hand. Unearthly was one of the first YA series I’d started reading, so finding out that a contemporary was in the works was pretty much the most exciting thing ever. The premise seemed a bit overdone, especially in YA, but authors are always brilliant at coming up with new twists on old stories. But I’ll say this now–The Last Time We Say Goodbye isn’t going on a list of favorites anytime soon. There was just something about the story that felt utterly cheesy and […]

Posted 3 February, 2015 by Nikki Wang in 2015, ARC, Book Review, Stand-alone / 3 Comments

My Heart and Other Black Holes by Jasmine Warga

A book with it’s own potential energy–and lived up to it. I’ve been dying for what seems like forever for this book. Gritty and heartbreaking contemporaries are my thing, and the more tears I cry the better. (Yeah I’m a bit confused as to how that works too.) But this one just sounded like a me book. It sounded heartbreaking and beautiful and poignant and everything that I loved in my contemporaries–and love it I did. Here’s the thing about this Suicide Partners thing–suicide is […]

Posted 31 January, 2015 by Nikki Wang in 2015, ARC, Book Review, Favorites, Stand-alone / 2 Comments

Blog Tour: Cut Me Free by J.R. Johansson

There’s a lot about J.R. Johanssen’s books that draw me in. She’s been said to be fantastic with the creepiness of her stories and Insomnia soundeo absolutely heart pounding, though I haven’t read Insomnia solely because it didn’t sound like my kind of novel (no matter how fascinating it sounded). But Cut Me Free? Well, a story about a killer, a tragic past, some psychological aspects, and a bit of romance sounded right up my alley. I may be a wimp, but […]

Posted 27 January, 2015 by Nikki Wang in 2015, ARC, Blog Tour, Book Review, Stand-alone / 3 Comments

Shutter by Courtney Alameda

HOLY HELL. (Pun always intended) OH. MY. GOD. I’m going to admit, it was the cover of Shutter that drew me in (and Lynne Matson’s recommendation). I’m not a huge paranormal, ghost, or horror fan. (In order: Usually has cliches, usually isn’t unique, and I’m a huge wuss.) But ohmydearsweetgod, Alameda makes me want to run out and grab everything remotely similar to Shutter. First things first, the science. It’s absolutely amazing and it’s not something you’d expect in ghosts, is it? But there are talks about […]

Posted 26 January, 2015 by Nikki Wang in 2015, ARC, Book Review, Favorites, Stand-alone / 3 Comments