Författarbild

Kim Savage

Författare till After the Woods

3 verk 365 medlemmar 23 recensioner

Verk av Kim Savage

After the Woods (2016) 189 exemplar
In Her Skin (2018) 89 exemplar
Beautiful Broken Girls (2017) 87 exemplar

Taggad

Allmänna fakta

Det finns inga Allmänna fakta än om den här författaren. Du kan lägga till några.

Medlemmar

Recensioner

Nothing about After the Woods was particularly groundbreaking and I guessed the 'twist' fairly early, but that didn't detract from how much I enjoyed it. One thing that frustrates me about books of this ilk is that they try too much to hide the twist so it's surprising, rather than crafting a journey that's enjoyable whether or not you knew the end. It's more a psychological thriller than a straight up crime story. In some ways, it owes a lot to Gillian Flynn's [b:Sharp Objects|18045891|Sharp Objects|Gillian Flynn|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1370630413s/18045891.jpg|3801], its spiritual predecessor.

Julia Spunk was a great character to read. She's damaged, sarcastic and fastidious, suffering from flashbacks and nightmares, her growth and healing slow but there. Julia's PTSD, her struggle, is fascinating, particularly the way she separates herself from other girls her own age. I loved her complicated relationship with her best friend Liv; the comparisons between them worked well. Julia's got an overprotective, media-hating mother that insists she goes to various therapists. Liv's mother is an attention-seeking momager that cares little for her daughter's well-being and is, in many ways, a subtle, pervasive secondary villain.

There's a little hetero romance, but it's minimal and takes a backseat to Julia's relationships with her mother and her best friend, while still advancing Julia's story.

Rating: 8/10
Gay-o-meter: 1/10
… (mer)
 
Flaggad
xaverie | 13 andra recensioner | Apr 3, 2023 |
2.5 sad stars.

I just....... I don't even know what this was.


I'm beyond sad to say that I didn't love this book. I REALLY REALLY wanted to, but I just couldn't make that happen. I read [book:After the Woods|17998474] last year and thought it was phenomenal. Such a strong debut full of interesting characters, a twisty twist, and a smartness that blew me away.

Beautiful Broken Girls is not cut from the same cloth. This book is about an obsession that a town has with these girls-- the reason?? It's anyone's guess. The next door neighbor, Ben, has a particular fascination with the older sister, Mira. And when they take their lives by jumping off the quarry cliff and drowning, it's all a big mystery as to why.

Mira wants Ben to know because she's mailed him a letter sending him on a scavenger hunt for 7 other vague notes. Eager to find these notes (and relive the moments he and Mira shared in the hiding spots), Ben goes on the hunt.

Are you with me so far?? I was mildly on board with the story up to this point too. I mean, I thought it was creepy that she would send him on a scavenger hunt to places where he "touched" her. I get it that you love the girl, but are you really getting a boner over touching a girls hand or cheek??

But THEN-- the book takes this crazy U-Turn into Religious town. It's all Catholic rituals and Saints and Martyrs. It was hard for me to take it seriously, but when the characters in the book were taking it so seriously-- that's when I got confused.

There were times while reading the book that I did fall into the mystery of wanting to know WHAT THE HECK WAS GOING ON. And I did like that it veered into some theories that were promising, but ultimately wrong. I definitely thought at least 2 other things were going to be the suicide reason, and I was totally wrong-- and I love when I'm wrong.

The second biggest problem was Ben. He wasn't a strong enough character to carry the book. And we didn't get to delve into his issues enough. I still don't know what exactly happened to him as a kid-- and clearly he needed help, but never got it. I felt like the mental health issue wasn't handled as well as it could've been. There's nothing wrong with therapy and/or medication when you've been through something like *I think* he has.

His only characteristic is-- unhealthy Mira obsession. I mean, who imagines the insides of someone's organs as a turn-on?? ("He imagined glistening blood cells, villi waving like sea anemone, velvety mucosa. Turn Mira inside out, smear his hand inside." If that's not grounds for a restraining order, I don't know what is). I wish he (and the other dudes in his friend group) had more going on than 2 manic-pixie-dream-girls.

Did I like this book?? Meh. I wanted to and at times I did, but there was just a little too much weirdness, unexplained happenings, and lack of leading characters for me to say it was a recommendable book.

AND THAT ENDING. Just no.

OVERALL: I wanted to love this because of After the Woods, but it didn't live up to my expectations. I didn't like the religious/mystical place that the book went, and I didn't feel the main character was developed enough to lead the book. It's interesting in that it tries to do something different, but ultimately it wasn't for me.

My Blog:


… (mer)
 
Flaggad
Michelle_PPDB | 3 andra recensioner | Mar 18, 2023 |
Another 5 Star 2016 book!! I am having good luck with books released this year. This one was equally creepy, addicting, and cerebral... So cerebral.

I've been having the best luck with books released in 2016. Especially debuts! This book got me hooked right from the start. Julia and Liv were running in the woods when a strange man attacked Liv. Without even thinking, Julia sacrifices herself to save her friend. Now it's been a year since Julia escaped her captor and left the woods but things are more messed up than ever. There's Liv who has NOT acted like a friend, a reporter who isn't going away, and now there's a dead girl that has been pulled out of those woods.

This is a complicated story. And I had so many emotions reading it: disgusted, MAD, sad, fustrated.

Julia is such a smart character. She has all these feelings about what happened and she's suffering from a pretty severe case of PTSD, but she's also able to be so clinical when it comes to investigating her case. Well, it's more fact-gathering than it is investigating, but she's so detached while she's getting all this information together that it made her such an interesting character. She was serious and scientific about her fact-gathering, but she had this snarky, funny, vulnerable side also. She was an excellent main character-- and just everything about her, I couldn't get enough.

Not to give anything away, but the abduction turned out to be so much more than just a random sicko trolling for victims. As much as I love those stories too, I really LOVE when something out of the ordinary happens. And what happens in this book is seriously messed up. Like almost [b:Dangerous Girls|16074758|Dangerous Girls|Abigail Haas|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1356513050s/16074758.jpg|21869436] messed up.

There's a mild romance in this book and I definitely liked it. I usually wouldn't, but this relationship wasn't what made Julia whole again. I don't think anything makes people who have been victimized as she has "whole", but the love-interest to me just gave her the confidence to allow herself to FEEL. I also really enjoyed the secondary friendship with Alice. I could have read scenes with her and Julia in them forever.

OVERALL: Such a top shelf debut!! I would put it in the Must-Read Category. After the Woods was so much more than a kidnapping book-- it's a book about friendship and secrets and what it is to be a survivor-- it was twisty, haunting, and so very cerebral. I SO recommend this book!

My Blog:


… (mer)
 
Flaggad
Michelle_PPDB | 13 andra recensioner | Mar 18, 2023 |
This one fell flat. What did I just read? I'm not entirely sure. Lovely premise, but I think this author would find some talents with poetry over pose.
 
I'm still confused about Francesca and her role in the world. She has a strange relationship with a teacher and a strange relationship with her father, and just a strange overall personality. I'm not sure if she made the book fall into a fantastical world or if it was real world with religion, but I was just confused.
 
I never grew emotionally attached to Ben. He doesn't seem very emotional himself, so I never really deemed him worthy of becoming emotionally attached to. His background is unique, but is mentioned as a trope and I'm not really sure how it exactly contributes to this book. I don't really see why he's so obsessed with Mira; their relationship isn't really developed, although she does remember him after death.
 
At the beginning, I tried hard to pay attention because I feel like all the extraneous minor details probably have some purpose and were all connected to a bigger theme or symbol, but I got pretty bored relatively quickly and it took me a long time to get through.
 
Perhaps I simply missed the deeper message of this book, but I found it a chore to get through. Unfortunately, Savage's writing is not for me.
 
I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
… (mer)
 
Flaggad
whakaora | 3 andra recensioner | Mar 5, 2023 |

Priser

Du skulle kanske också gilla

Statistik

Verk
3
Medlemmar
365
Popularitet
#65,883
Betyg
3.2
Recensioner
23
ISBN
19

Tabeller & diagram