Book Review: If You Can Hear This by Faith Gardner

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If You Can Hear This  by Faith Gardner is a Young Adult Mystery & Thriller novel about a high school AV Club and the search of their teacher who is missing. The expected publication date of this book is November 19, 2024. I'd like to thank NetGalley for sending me an Advanced Readers Copy (ARC) of this book for free in exchange for my honest review.   Overall, I can say that I really enjoyed the storyline. It reminded me of the Point Horror Books of the 1980's and 1990's and followed a similar formula. There were plenty of suspects and motives throughout but was a bit predictable. Additionally, I liked that the author had a diverse group of characters in the book, including two or three from the LGTBQ+ community, a couple that were people of color, and one that had a mental illness. I think it's important to include a diverse group of characters so that everyone has a book to read that depicts someone like them as well as educating others on people who are different

Book Review: Dorothy Must Die (Dorothy Must Die Series, #1) by Danielle Paige


Dorothy Must Die Series #1
 
When my mom raved about the first book in the Dorothy Must Die Series by Danielle Paige, aptly named Dorothy Must Die, I was definitely interested in reading the series. At the time, I had a lot of books on my to be read pile, so I put off reading it. A few months ago, the site BookBub.com sent me an email with books that were on sale. Lo and behold, Dorothy Must Die (Dorothy Must Die Series, #1) by Danielle Paige was one of the ebooks on sale, so I decided to purchase the book. I finally decided to read it, and I was not enthralled with it at all.

I'm not sure what I expected from Dorothy Must Die (Dorothy Must Die Series, #1) other than I knew it would be a retelling of sorts of The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. Let me begin by saying that I'm not offended by foul language in the least, but seeing as this book series is targeted towards teens, I was caught off guard by the amount of curse words. Yeah, yeah, yeah . . . I know teenagers tend to curse a lot, and I guess the author was trying to appeal to them with the language. I know a lot of parents don't care if the book is age appropriate for their children and let them read whatever they want, but I definitely would recommend that children under the age of 11 not read this book just because of the language used.

When Amy Gumm landed in the land of Oz after the tornado, I was sure she was dreaming. However, the further I read on, the more unsure I was that she was actually dreaming. The reason I thought she was dreaming at first is that it always seemed that her injuries magically healed themselves. Time will only tell when I read the sequels. One thing that really bothered me was what I consider to be an editing oversight . . . in the third chapter, Amy talks about how sore she was from her fall into Oz, but in the next chapter, she tells us that she was "free of bruises, aches, and pains". Then, she goes on to say that her headache had subsided. These contradictions frustrated me a lot.

Wicked witches aren't supposed to work together.
But that was before Dorothy.
The above quote was one of my favorite quotes of the entire book and pretty much sums up the story line into one concise statement. Dorothy had returned to Oz and turned into an evil person, and now the wicked witches were now "good witches". I really hated that the author turned Dorothy into the bad guy. In fact, all the good guys in the original series have been turned into the bad guys. It definitely puts a cloud over how I think of the movie The Wizard of Oz. I haven't read any of the original books, but Dorothy Must Die (Dorothy Must Die Series, #1) has definitely renewed my interested in picking up Baum's books.
 
One thing I absolutely hated about this book is all the torture that was inflicted on quite a few of the characters, especially when some of the animals were tortured. This is another reason why I wouldn't let children under the age of eleven read this book. If it bothered me as an adult, I hate to think how it would affect young children.

At first, I wasn't all that enthralled with Dorothy Must Die, but the more I read, the more I wanted to know what happened. It definitely redeemed itself as it went along, and I now want to know what happens. For that reason, I bumped my score up to three out of five stars.

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