Tabula Rasa by Kristen Lippert-Martin

*based on ARC edition

I very much enjoyed this book. I can't find any other titles for this author so I assume this is her debut novel; she hit it out of the park for me. Near the top of my list of why I enjoyed it so much is that it is a stand-alone novel. While there is room for another, theoretically, it ends instead of being yet another first book in a trilogy. I wish I knew whoever started that trilogy trend so I could give them a piece of my mind. Anyway, our main character is under the impression she is getting a memory modifying surgery because she suffers from PTSD, although she does not know what event caused her suffering or whether or not she was a victim or the perpetrator. But things don't make much sense. She and the few other patients are in a massive hospital, the surgeon who works on her isn't even in the same part of the world as she is, and one of the orderlies is acting very strange whenever he is with her. She doesn't know her name or what she looks like, or why Larry keeps quoting Hamlet to her. Then one night, the night she is supposed to get her final surgery, Larry pushes three pills in her hand with a note that says to take one every 24 hours. Then things really hit the fan when the power starts going off and what looks to be a whole army of Special Ops soldiers invade the hospital during a horrific snowstorm. And it doesn't take long before she realizes they are hunting for her. Now she is on the run through the hospital trying to search for answers, her memories, and most importantly, herself.


There is a lot of action, suspense, a little romance, some humor and a big bad you really really want to see be taken down. Tabula Rasa is well-written and well-developed with an engaging and unique story that will undoubtedly hook readers just like it hooked me.

Quarantine: The Burnouts By Lex Thomas

*based on an ARC edition

Well...very rarely am I forced to write a truly negative review, and I am disappointed that this is the one for which I must write one. I loved the first two books of the Quarantine trilogy, The Loners and The Saints, respectively. The trilogy follows the aftermath of a virus that affects only teenagers, in the sense that they carry a disease that makes them deadly to adults. Instantly deadly. So when the virus breaks from a lab, carried by one boy, our main characters are locked into a quarantine inside their high school. Over two years pass in the span of the trilogy and what occurs puts Lord of the Flies to shame. The kids break into gangs; these include the Freaks, the Geeks, the Varsity, the Pretty Ones, the Sluts, and the Loners, kids who couldn't find a gang but made one of their own. There are other kids that have kind of gone insane and live in the ruins of the school with the dead and refuse. As expected the Varsity and the Pretty Ones rule the school, and they do it violently. There is sex, murder, beatings, cruelty, and horror throughout the books, but I thought the first two did a very impressive job. The main three characters are two brothers, David and Will, who have always had a kind of strained relationship mostly due to their shared affection of Lucy. David has been taken out of the picture after the first book, as the kids who "graduate" (they pass out of the holding of the virus and are now susceptible) leave the school. David always loved Lucy and then Will and Lucy found something too.

And boy did they. The Burnouts is a poor way to end such a promising series. The second book ended with a huge gang fight that killed several important people, leaving Lucy hated and hunted, while Will graduates and is gets a shock upon getting to the outside. But Lucy is pregnant with Will's child and when that news reaches him, he can't leave her inside, so he must risk his life to try to save her- somehow. I mean, she can't actually leave so I don't know exactly why this was an option. This isn't the bad part of the book, though. What was upsetting to me is really just the last few chapters. The adults on the outside have decided to just kill all the teenagers and let God sort them out, and because of that things get "resolved" in a messy and too fast way. Two of the main people survive and it seemed to me the one who bought it was the worst kind of deus ex machina. Plus despite living as monsters for two years, none of the very real consequences of their actions was ever addressed in some kind of epilogue; no tying up ends of any kind. And finally, the ending was so abrupt and silly I kept trying to swipe the page on my Kindle, convinced it was broken and there really was more to the ending than that. Authors can make many mistakes when they right, but if you don't write a good ending, the entire thing is toast. Unfortunately this is what happened to The Burnouts. 

I would recommend reading this if you are the type that really needs closure, but it will tick you right off. I give it two stars only because I liked the first two as much as I did.