thriller – Reading with Rendz

Greetings readers!

Anyone who follows me on Twitter or Instagram knows how much I adore Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s work. I discovered her a few years ago when The Beautiful Ones came out in 2017 and since then I have gobbled up her novels. And we all know how much I LOVE Gods of Jade and Shadow so obviously all her works are on my TBR from now one!

Her latest release, Untamed Shore is a crime thriller and—

—-Rendz you barely read thriller and you’ve a record 0 crime books

Um, excuse me. This is Silvia Moreno-Garcia we are talking about. If it’s got her name on it, I read it. Plus I always like guessing at mysteries!

Untamed Shore by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Pub Date: Feb 11, 2020
Publisher: Agora Books
Goodreads

Renowned author Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s first thriller, UNTAMED SHORE, is a coming-of-age story set in Mexico which quickly turns dark when a young woman meets three enigmatic tourists.

Baja California, 1979. Viridiana spends her days watching the dead sharks piled beside the seashore, as the fishermen pull their nets. There is nothing else to do, nothing else to watch, under the harsh sun. She’s bored. Terribly bored. Yet her head is filled with dreams of Hollywood films, of romance, of a future beyond the drab town where her only option is to marry and have children.

Three wealthy American tourists arrive for the summer, and Viridiana is magnetized. She immediately becomes entwined in the glamorous foreigners’ lives. They offer excitement, and perhaps an escape from the promise of a humdrum future.

When one of them dies, Viridiana lies to protect her friends. Soon enough, someone’s asking questions, and Viridiana has some of her own about the identity of her new acquaintances. Sharks may be dangerous, but there are worse predators nearby, ready to devour a naïve young woman who is quickly being tangled in a web of deceit.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia is one of the most exciting voices in fiction, and with her first crime novel, UNTAMED SHORE, she crafts a blazing novel of suspense with an eerie seaside setting and a literary edge that proves her a master of the genre.

The Likes

SMG has a way of just totally sucking you into a book. I’ve never set foot in 1970s Baja California and yet I felt like I was intimately involved with the town of Desengaño. The words wrap around you until you feel like you’re standing on the beach and looking at the display of shark corpses. You feel it, you smell it, you can hear every sound. And, yeah, you’ve never even been in a setting like that before, but the writing makes it a whole experience for you anyways.

The writing is gorgeous and stellar, but I’ll be honest, what got me reeled in were the characters!

Viridiana, my girl. She was un-apologetically herself all the time. (Although she has her moments of self-doubt, but don’t we all) She was walking paradox. Practical, straightforward and yet dreamy. She fully understood her confinement in her small town, and the limits placed on her because of her gender, religion and economic status, but that didn’t stop her from dreaming. From imagining herself as a movie star, albeit a hopelessly romantic one. She had a love for languages which hello, hi, same. I really enjoyed reading about her journey and the shit she put herself through and had to get out of. I loved that she was not perfectly capable and when she messes up she has to get her hands dirty to fix it up. And let me tell you she messes up. A lot. But she wants what we all want, a life worth having lived. Where she can reach for the stars like anyone else. And she lies, cheats and maybe does more to get that.

The Americans….HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. The mother fucking Americans. (I am talking specifically about the book’s Americans, not you my dear American readers). Viridiana gets caught up in their web and it takes a lot of work to get out of it. If I’m being honest Gregory was a little beeyatch and Daisy was The Bitch of the Group, so I really hated them, but was also fascinated by them. Viridiana and I were both really in the same boat here, except I was better at calling their bullshit.

The twistiness!!!! You know at one point I thought I had it in the bag. Like I knew exactly what was gonna happen and then I got slapped and realized I needed to humble myself. Suffice to say, the twists were really good. There was a lot of suspense to be had and the book keeps you on the edge of your seat constantly. It’s that kind of tense reading where you’re yelling at the characters to do one thing and they do the opposite which only makes you more stressed but also more intrigued! There were a lot less sharks than I initially anticipated (but they are mentioned a lot), but the Americans and ~others~ do have a certain vicious sharkness to them. I’ll be honest though the beginning sets up a lot of groundwork so it takes a bit to get to that first moment of shit-hitting-the-fan. But it sure does and my girl gets her hands dirty!!

Now, it turns out that I am willing to go way farther than Viridiana is to get out of a mess and she goes pretty far. I had to take a minute to question my moral values and reflect on my blood thirst. Viridiana had the decency to feel some remorse where as I was like yasssssssss I like this blood we are spilling and lies we are telling. So yeah. 🙂 I mean we both had self-preservation in mind, she’s just a little more of a thinker whereas I was like, let’s just take them all down!

The Questionable

Why couldn’t this book get the full five stars from me? I guess it’s because it ended almost too smoothly. Here I am complaining that it was a good ending. I’m a terrible reader, I know! But I guess I was hoping for that last minute WTF moment that I thought would come with thrillers, but no it was pretty chill. It was a good ending, satisfying too, but perhaps I was hoping for one more twist.

Overall, I really enjoyed this! It is definitely a thrilling ride and you will love the havoc these tourists wreak on this small town that, let’s face it, loves the drama just like us readers!

Rating: 4.25 / 5 Stars

Recommend: You know the answer is yes!

Let me know what you think! Have you read this or are thinking about picking it up? Are you a thriller fan? What are some of your favourites?

Happy reading!

~ Rendz

Greetings readers!

I do love a thrill. I love an adventure. I love the high-stakes, the heart pounding panic of what will happen next! What?! What?! What?! I get a lot of that from fantasy. Lots of epic battles and plans that go awry!

Now, I don’t usually expect thrill from contemporary. I usually look for the warm fuzzy feels and drama. But when reading a contemporary-thriller you have to expect less warm fuzz and more of that heart-pounding-my-goodness-what-is-going-on???? feeling.

Which I definitely experienced.

S.T.A.G.S. by M.A. Bennett

Seventeen-year-old Greer, a scholarship girl at a prestigious private school, St Aidan the Great School (known as STAGS), soon realizes that the school is full of snobs and spoilt rich brats, many of whom come from aristocratic families who have attended the institute throughout the centuries. She’s immediately ignored by her classmates. All the teachers are referred to as Friars (even the female ones), but the real driving force behind the school is a group of prefects known as the Medievals, whose leader, Henry de Warlencourt, Greer finds both strangely intriguing as well as attractive. The Medievals are all good-looking, clever and everyone wants to be among their circle of friends. Greer is therefore surprised when she receives an invitation from Henry to spend a long weekend with him and his friends at his family house in the Lake District, especially when she learns that two other “outsiders” have also been invited: Shafeen and Chanel. As the weekend unfolds, Greer comes to the chilling realization that she and two other “losers” were invited only because they were chosen to become prey in a mad game of manhunt.

Buy It!

Amazon | Indigo | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository

This book releases January 30th! Drop by your local bookstore or library to check it out!

*I received a free digital copy from the publisher on Netgalley, which does not in any way influence my opinion!*

Well. Well. I enjoyed this book very, very much. You guys know that thriller (like scary-dark thriller) is just not my thing. (I am a scaredy cat) But when I do make an exception and brace myself for some good ol’ thrill, I hope that it will crush my expectations and make me crave more of this genre.

Goal achieved.

**Plus this had the most gorgeous cover I just had to request it!! **

What I Liked:

Characters:

Greer: I found her to be a very interesting. She had spent the first half of the school semester as a misfit and shunned, scholarship kid. She basically had zero friends, meaning social life was at an all time low and getting an invite to an exclusive vacation at the richest/most beautiful popular boy’s house was the best thing that happened to her in a long time. Or was it??

Anyways…I really did enjoy Greer as a narrator and MC in this book. She was quirky and intuitive. She was also foolish and at one point I really want to knock her outside of the head. But she redeems herself! I absolutely loved that she brought up references to the films she and her dad loved to watch and how she inserts her personality and likes into the narration of the story. It really showed off her nerdy and quirky self and her grand ability to make connections and put two and two together!

Shafeen: Although he is not in most parts of the story, he is still very much a present. And when he is there, he is there. He shut down those racist, rich white kids so many times with such class. *applause, applause* Every word that came out of his mouth, priceless. Every move he made turned tables.

Other characters...There was also Nel, who had it pretty rough in a Gatsby style. She was of new money and the white rich kids did not appreciate people who were not of old money!

So then there are The Medievals a.k.a the white, rich (psycho) kids who brought down their wrath on the previous three characters mentioned. I wasn’t thinking of mentioning them because I really hated them, so let’s just say I enjoyed hating them very much.

The Blood Games:

I have never been hunting, shooting or fishing. Blood sports are really just not my thing. The Medievals version of Huntin’ Shootin’ Fishin’ really is not my style either…let’s emphasize the blood shall we. I’m not meaning to intend that this book was filled with gore and washed in blood every few pages because it wasn’t. It was a very bloody book in that these sports fostered danger, elevated the stakes and made the characters act in ways that were feral and wild. I really enjoyed the twist of the games and how they brought characters together and wreaked havoc too.

The Narnia References are in Full Force:

Okay so this isn’t really about the book, but hey! It’s important to me. I got like ten references to Narnia. First it was just a comparison to Prince Caspian then it was full blown, referring to the movie and talking about discovering secret worlds, finding magical apartments and…and…and.. I freaked out a little. I was just so excited. Trust me this book references lots of films, as that Greer’s favourite thing, so seeing my favourite movie/book referenced gave me all the feeeeeeeeellllllllllssssss!

*Plus LWW ends with the Pevensies chasing a White Stag…so it’s fitting that the movie be referenced :)*

The Narration:

Greer was retelling the story to us. It’s that kind of thriller, where the reader goes in and they are given this mini-introduction, so they have a foggy idea of how the book is going to end or where the direction of the story it headed. Then as Greer tells you the story you start picking up on things, connecting some dots and predicting events that just might happen. I especially loved it when Greer would add in her own little comments about what was happening and how she should have acted differently. Especially when she was in her more foolish nature, narrator Greer would take a side note just to point out how dumb she was being.

The World:

Perhaps “The World” is the wrong title, because this book took place in England. Not some foreign fantastical land. Still…the world was very different. We get a glimpse into the white, privileged, upper class life with a medieval twist. A literal medieval twist, these kids not only called themselves Medievals, but lived through that mantra. They avoided having too many modernities like the internet, phones, and most other electrical appliances and they engaged in traditional sports; hence Huntin’ Shootin’ Fishin’.

What really struck me about this world though, was experiencing the consequences of the power and privilege bestowed upon these teenagers that were almost lethal. They controlled everything and everyone. They got away with everything they did. And it’s not a far fact from how it is in real life. How far money and power can take you. How much money rules the world and the extent to which it can bend the will of a person. Scary stuff.

The Ending:

The gif is enough to summarize.

What I Disliked:

It Was Not As Twisty As I Was Hoping?:

There were twists trust me and some of them I saw coming. This really stems from the very beginning of the book and how Greer introduces the problem. I already knew going in that deaths would be inevitable and I was kind of thinking that everyone was going to die. And while I don’t mean to sound sadistic, one person died and it was a little anti-climatic. You have an idea of who dies and why they die and who kills them. So I felt that the intro given by Greer gave too much and it took away from the reader.

Overall, it was a great book. For a non-thrillerish gal I thoroughly enjoyed it very much. It was fun, fast, and quite a ride. It makes you think about the consequences of money and privilege and also the effect of living in a world where everything is on the internet. The ending was a bit cliff-hanger like. I mean it did open up the possibility of a sequel, but I think it would be best to leave this as a stand alone and let the readers wonder and imagine how that could possibly be resolved.

Rating: 4 / 5 stars

Recommend: Yes! Especially if your not always that into the thrills, but your in the mood for a little thrill!!

Let me know what you think! Have you read this? Are you good at guessing endings? What are some of your favourite thriller/mystery books? I need recommendations after all!

Happy reading!

~ Rendz

Tag: thriller

Untamed Shore | Review // In which I read my first thriller and realize I might be more blood thirsty than I initially thought…