Review: Sinner

Thanks, coworker of my mom's who grabbed this ARC specifically for us! I appreciate it!

Also, I haven't read the Mercy Falls books in years, so this was a bit of an adventure. I nearly Wikipedia'ed summaries of them so I could be like "Oh, right, that happened," but I managed to do alright for myself. At least I remembered they're about werewolves, right?

So, in typical Stiefvater fashion, this novel is jointly narrated by Cole St. Clair and Isabel Culpeper, switching off every one or two chapters for a nice, comprehensive look at the story. Cole has just returned to LA, in part because of a webseries deal he landed, but also because that's where Isabel is, and he wants to be near her.

Isabel's wary, though - her family life has never been super warm and comforting, and she's learned that it's easier to develop a thick, impenetrable skin than let someone get too close. She's still relatively happy to see Cole, but she's not going to let herself fall in love with him, especially if he starts using or shifting again.

Cole's on the straight and narrow, much as it infuriates his new boss, Baby North (a name that can only remind me of the Kimye kid regardless of how much we learn about her character). She's known for finding struggling stars that want to revamp their careers and broadcasting vlogs about them on her website, sharpt33th.com, and the ratings always go up when the starts relapse into their old habits. She sets up plenty of opportunities for Cole to fail - junkie new bandmates, naked girls, mishaps in the recording studio - but Cole refuses to take the bait, creating his own TV-worthy situations instead. The stress of LA life does get to him, though, and he copes by forcing the change, though he knows making a controlled shift will only make him more likely to have an uncontrolled shift later on.

He also manages to get close with Isabel again, finding ways to talk to her without being recorded by the billions of cameras Baby North has planted in his apartment and even putting her in charge of "Virtual Cole," the phone with all of his social media apps on it - a move that forces her to talk to him more in order for her updates to sound realistic and reflect what he's actually doing. Everything's going smoothly, at least until it's not.

When Isabel catches Cole in some compromising situations, will she ever believe that he's telling the truth again? And when Cole realizes that maybe returning to his old haunts is just holding him back, will he find a way to make music without destroying his personal life? I'm not gonna spoil those answers for you.

Even though I haven't read the Mercy Falls books in ages, I still felt comfortable reading this novel. Sam and Grace, the protagonists from that series, don't really make an appearance in Sinner, so I didn't have to worry about remembering their arc too well, and it's pretty easy to pick up on Cole and Isabel's issues without needing a complete reread of the trilogy. Just remember that the shift is temperature-controlled and how Isabel's brother died, and you'll be good to go.

I love that this book was done with two narrators, too. It definitely would have been harder to understand Cole and Isabel's motivations with only one of them "speaking" for the whole story, and I probably would have found the one who wasn't narrating insufferable if I couldn't see into their head. It also allows the two growth arcs - because both Cole and Isabel need to change to make their love work - to develop properly and become really full-bodied.

I think my only critique of this book is that I would have liked to see Isabel learn to open up to other people a little bit sooner. Not at like the beginning of the novel or anything like that, but she doesn't really have her "aha" moment until the last few pages, and when I first read it, I felt pretty underwhelmed. I might have just been in a novel-finishing haze, though, because when I looked at it for a second time, I understood a little better how it fit into the broader scheme of the novel. I suppose what I really want is more of a resolution with Sofia, her cousin, a side character who got a lot of face time but never a lot of development. Isabel treats her like crap for a lot of the book without really understanding why, which I would kind of like to know.

Overall, Sinner was a good, engrossing read. The characters felt lifelike, the songs were tunes I'd like to actually have recorded, and I could believe and understand the struggles Cole and Isabel had, even if I couldn't directly relate. Four and a half stars.

Review: The Scorpio Races

Not gonna lie, it had been so long since my first read of this book that it was basically like I'd never read it before. Can't say that's a bad feeling to have.

Also, I read five whole books this weekend because of the amount of traveling I did, so it looks like I'm set for reviews for a while. :)

Kate "Puck" Connolly is an orphan on the island of Thisby, along with her brothers Gabe and Finn. They have managed to do alright for themselves after their parents died in an accident a few years back, but now Gabe wants to move to the mainland (leaving Kate and Finn behind) and Benjamin Malvern, the richest man on the island, is about to repossess their house.

Uh oh.

Sean Kendrick is another resident of Thisby and also an orphan. (Who needs parents, man?) He works at Malvern's stables, training horses and competing in the annual Scorpio Race. He's won the past four years, meaning he's got a decent purse of money saved up and Malvern has a lot of bragging rights. The rules are the same as any other horse race: first one to the finish line wins.

What's not so typical?

The horses are bloodthirsty killing machines.

Riders in the Scorpio Races capture capaill uisce - water horses - when they rise from the sea each fall. They use all sorts of charms and tricks to settle the horses (I won't say tame), and they either ride the horses themselves or sell them to people who are willing to ride but couldn't get their own horses. Not every rider makes it out of this race alive, but the prize at the end is a good incentive for participants.

Kate decides she's going to ride in the races this year, in order to keep her brother around longer and also get enough money to keep their house. However, she's going to do it on her own normal horse, Dove, and not a capall uisce, seeing as those horses are what killed her parents. Sean strikes up a deal with Malvern that will let him buy Corr, the capall he's been riding for years, if he wins the race one last time.

Kate and Sean become a somewhat unlikely team as they prep for the races, with Sean sharing what he knows about the races and Kate giving some outsider perspective that affects Sean's decisions. Only one of them can win the race in the end, though, and Kate's already facing a lot of criticism as the first woman to ever enter the races. Whatever happens will likely affect them - and maybe all of Thisby - for good.

I have to say, I'd forgotten how enjoyable I find Stiefvater's writing. Her language is rich and a bit old-fashioned, making this story feel very fairy tale-esque at moments. She also gives a satisfying, complete story without answering every question that comes to mind - we never learn how Kate came to be called "Puck," for instance, yet I never felt irked by that unexplained detail like I probably would have if another author had written this novel. The story captured all it needed to capture without wasting any time on irrelevant side plots.

I also really liked the inclusion of the capaill uisce. (God that's hard to spell.) I'd never heard of them before reading this novel, and it was a nice change from the standard vampire-werewolf-fairy-mermaid mythologies that tend to dominate in YA. I love reading those, too, don't get me wrong, but it's nice to read something entirely fresh for once. Can we start a More Lesser-Known Mythological Creatures in Novels 2014 campaign or something?

Finally, I loved how Kate and Sean's romance was done, too. It was a slow burn, but I never felt impatient with how long it took them to get together, since they spent a lot of their time working out each other's feelings and building a solid foundation. I can easily see them spending their lives together because of how intensely they can relate to each other and how neatly their interests align. They're both willing to make sacrifices for the other, too, but never in an "Okay, now you owe me" way.

Overall, The Scorpio Races is a gripping and emotional novel with equal parts action and romance that never gets sappy or clings too hard to old tropes. It also feels so nicely wrapped up that I can't even demand a sequel. Five stars.