The Secret Runners of New York
Matthew Reilly
It can be extremely challenging to join the cliques of the upper echelon of society, but once you do, a whole new world awaits. When Skye Rogers befriends Misty Collins, she is invited into an exclusive group, with secret access to a portal into the future. As friendships fall apart, and the future shown by the portal is discovered, their games turn from fun to terrifying.
The book started off slowly but picked up the pace over time. The plot was intriguing and executed very well. While there was a time-travelling portal, the book didn’t revolve around it, instead focusing on the behaviour and personalities of the characters, using the portal to help achieve that end. This made the book feel much more layered and complex than a simple story about some kids having fun travelling through time. The book was very immersive, and once I had gotten past the slow beginning, I was hooked.
The end of the book was absolutely wonderful! I was worried that somehow the characters would magic everything into perfection, and it’d be like the catastrophe talked through the whole book never happened, but instead the author managed to make an ending that tied up loose ends, was satisfying in not having all the characters die, and clearly changed the lives of the characters drastically.
I definitely felt that the beginning of the book was a let-down compared to the rest. The relationship between the main character and her brother Red wasn’t really shown, but rather we were told about how close the two were. The references to movies and games also felt a bit strange to include in a book. I had to google one of the references they talked about (which broke the continuity for me a little), and some of the others felt outdated.
This was a really good book that I thoroughly enjoyed reading. I wouldn’t recommend it for younger readers, especially if they are easily spooked, but I found it a solid book and will probably read it again, which is why I’m giving this book 4 stars.
Pan Macmillan | 26th March 2019 | AU$16.99 | paperback
I went from being really excited about this novel to being really disappointed in it rapidly. The writing style irked me. I read the first two chapters desperately hoping that the writing style was just an introduction. I didn’t find Layla a believable character. At times it seemed like the novel was just intended to explain some parts of Muslim culture, such as that women don’t need to pray at the mosque when it’s ‘that time of the month’. This detail was included in a way that just didn’t feel natural.
A quick reminder: The premise that babies born in the year 2000 are humanity’s glitch is interesting and gets more of an explanation in this novel. However, not all babies suffer from the glitch, and not all suffer in the same way. I love the way Crash reacts to meeting more Crashes! However, apparently if these guys are the ‘zeroes’ there are also going to be the ‘ones’. Where do they come from? It’s pretty unclear.
This was a torturous book to read. For a very slim book that could have taken an hour or so to zoom through, it took me literally months to get to the end. The writing style left me wondering why there were so many words used to describe simple situations. Too many things are spelled out and the passive voice of Lola is irritating and wishy-washy. The book seems as if it has come out of the author’s head in one piece, and then hasn’t been checked for its ability to connect with a reader.
Suzanne is a tormented character with multiple facets that I loved. The magic here was that I could see things from her perspective and her flawed logic, even as I hated the way that she treated people. Strangely enough, I had just read 
This is another wonderful, thought provoking novel from Bren MacDibble. Her first novel, 
In these novels, Sanderson breaks all the writing conventions, especially the ‘fourth wall’. The author (Alcatraz) is writing these memoirs and is fully aware of how writers make novels and how to make readers cry out in anger! Particularly with meandering introductions to chapters or going off topic, or just generally being irritating. It’s a style of writing that is either going to drive you crazy or have you laughing out loud.
This was a clean teenage fiction with a tight-timed plot line and some chaste kisses. It was refreshing to read something that didn’t really want me to think too hard. I easily swapped between the perspectives of June and Day. Day watching over things actually reminded me strangely of Aladdin! Things often moved very quickly and so the characterisation sometimes suffered. The interactions between June and Day still seemed genuine though.
Slow, this novel was very slow. Perhaps that’s because similarly to