Review: Where Futures End by Parker Peevyhouse

Where Futures End by Parker Peevyhouse
Publisher: Kathy Dawson Books
Release Date: February 19th, 2016
Purchase: Amazon

Five teens.
Five futures.
Two worlds.
One ending.

One year from now, Dylan develops a sixth sense that allows him to glimpse another world.

Ten years from now, Brixney must get more hits on her social media feed or risk being stuck in a debtors' colony.

Thirty years from now, Epony scrubs her entire online profile from the web and goes “High Concept.”

Sixty years from now, Reef struggles to survive in a city turned virtual gameboard.

And more than a hundred years from now, Quinn uncovers the alarming secret that links them all.

Five people, divided by time, will determine the fate of us all. These are stories of a world bent on destroying itself, and of the alternate world that might be its savior--unless it's too late.

My thoughts:
Have you ever read a book and just didn't get it, but wanted to so badly?  Well this is me right now.  I feel like I am totally missing out on some huge secret and I don't like it at all.  I want to like this book and I want my intelligence to understand what the author was trying to say to me, but I just don't get it.

The story started out really interesting.  We have Dylan who is obsessed with the Other Place which I think and I'm pretty sure I'm right is Fairy.  Now I could be wrong, but it felt like that was what the author was going for.  Don't think Melissa Marr's world, but more like a fairy tale happy place with adventures...maybe Peter Pannish??  I don't know but anyway Dylan wanted to go back there because he felt like that was where he belonged. The story was weird from the start, but I understood it because the author did a great job cluing her readers in.  Things slowly fell apart after that first part though for me.

This book is broken down into parts instead of chapters and the second part takes place ten years later and the world is a very different place.  It all felt really sad to me.  I kind of got the feeling like maybe the author was predicting our future because it was all very technology based and not in a good way.  Think YouTube but way way bigger.  This second story I understood too for the most part, but it didn't really connect much with the first.  The Other Place was in there and a few other things, but not enough for me to connect the dots.

I trudged on though because I did like the writing and the story was still really interesting.  This third part though was a little more different and while I still got it I started to really question where this was all going. This part was sadder than the previous ones and honestly made me scared.  I don't think this could happen but it does make you think about where our world is headed.

The fourth part really made me think.  This part was about a gaming world and was again sadder than the other parts.  The Other Place and Dylan were still the only connecting lines throughout the stories and at this point I had no idea where the author was going.  I had a hard time understanding this part because it was so very different than what my imagination could grasp so I was left feeling left out.  Now that I am thinking of it every part felt like a short story.  They all had a common thread, but nothing really connected them.

At the end I totally lost it all.  This last part takes place more than one hundred years from the start and I have no idea what this story was supposed to be about.  I feel like it has some higher meaning and I honestly feel a little stupid for not understanding it.  I don't like when stories make me feel this way.  I want to get it and I wanted to fall in love with this book because it had my name written all over it, but I'm left feeling very disgruntled, sad,  and a little upset.  I'm going to look through other reviews to see if it's just me and hopefully I'll find some clarity for this story because I feel like it should have been great and enlightening.  Maybe I'm just reading too much into I don't know, but I'm completely lost after that last chapter. 

I don't even know what to rate this honestly so I am for the first time ever not going to rate a book that I finished.  I can't rate something I didn't understand in my opinion so there you go no rating and a review filled with I don't get its....sorry.

Non-Review: Insanity by Susan Vaught

Insanity by Susan Vaught
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Childrens
Release Date: February 18, 2014

Never, Kentucky is not your average scenic small town. It is a crossways, a place where the dead and the living can find no peace. Not that Forest, an 18-year-old foster kid who works the graveyard shift at Lincoln Hospital, knew this when she applied for the job. Lincoln is a huge state mental institution, a good place for Forest to make some money to pay for college. But along with hundreds of very unstable patients, it also has underground tunnels, bell towers that ring unexpectedly, and a closet that holds more than just donated clothing....When the dead husband of one of Forest's patients makes an appearance late one night, seemingly accompanied by an agent of the Devil, Forest loses all sense of reality and all sense of time. Terrified, she knows she has a part to play, and when she does so, she finds a heritage that she never expected.

With her deep knowledge of mental illness and mental institutions, Susan Vaught brings readers a fascinating and completely creepy new book intertwining the stories of three young people who find themselves haunted beyond imagining in the depths of Lincoln Hospital

My Thoughts:
In the past few years I have discovered that I love creepy books.  The creepier the better and when I saw Insanity I knew I had to have it.  Unfortunately it didn't quite work for me and I ended up putting it down at 30%.  I know my rule is 50% but I sometimes you just know something isn't going to get an better for you and this was the case for me.

Insanity started out very creepy and at the point I was a very happy reader.  That ended soon after I finished chapter 2. What followed after the prologue felt like a totally different story and honestly if felt like a totally different author.  The writing in chapter one was very choppy and very scattered for me.  I couldn't ever really grasp what was going on.  One minute Forest is running down the hall and the next there are hounds and darkness around her.  I know this place is supposed to be creepy and crazy things are going to happen but I just feel like the author left out a lot of details that I needed to know.  I wasn't creeped out I was just lost.

I had problems with the characters as well.  Forest was really hard for me to connect with.  She seemed very young for being 18 if I hadn't known she was 18 I would have thought she was 15.  I'm not sure if it was her dialogue that made me feel that way or just how she acted overall but it didn't work.  Her part of the story felt very predictable as well.  When Levi was added into the mix I will admit I had an eye roll moment because he felt like every other bad boy out there.  He was fiercely protective of Forest even though she can hurt him with a singe touch.  Just to cliche for me.  I'm not sure where their storyline would have gone since I DNF this book, but I'm pretty sure they found a way to be together.

I have read other reviews that say the POV skips around and I did skim ahead and see this, but I'm not sure if this was a good thing or not.  The part I did read where Forest skips a whole bunch of time seemed very weird and out of place.  I don't know what the author was trying to accomplish and I'm guessing if I had read the whole book I would have found out but I don't want to have to dig through 100 pages of nothing to get that one page of creepy.

I know the author was going for creepy and weird, but there were too many low points that filled up the story.  I really wish the story would have stayed true to the prologue.  It was beyond thrilling and I loved it.  So for now I am going to set this one aside and let it go.

no rating