ISBN: 9780316051590

I was given this book to review.

Twenty Boy Summer, a YA novel about two girls struggling to come to terms with the death of their best friend, hits like a most beautifully wrapped ton of bricks. Frankie and Anna are best friends, journeying on a spectacular trip to California. Last year Frankie’s older brother Matt spend a dazzling month secretly dating their best friend Anna before Matt died of an undiagnosed heart problem.

The book starts out describing how lucky the girls were to have survived the accident (Matt was driving when his heart gave), then proceeds to reveal what a misnomer “survival” is. Even a year later Frankie’s family is torn apart by their loss, and Anna, having sworn to keep her relationship with Matt a secret, is devastated at not being allowed to properly morn her own loss (or even understand what exactly she’s lost).

So the girls make a plan to meet twenty boys in their quest to lose their virginity and leave their heartache behind. But their search only triggers all the fears and emotions left behind, particularly as Anna is terrified that moving on will make what she had with Matt less special.

Twenty Boy Summer is beautiful, heartbreaking and a raw read through and through. While there are very few surprises here, and the plot is all character and angst driven, it speaks, very strongly, to anyone who has lost someone they love and has gone through the mourning process. This is not a fluffy, light-hearted fictional read, or even a fiction tale with serious, dark undertones. Twenty Boy Summer bears a resemblance the nineties film My Girl and the Katherine Paterson book The Bridge to Terabithia, set after the landmark character deaths and in a teen setting. Soulful and beautiful it’s a must, but difficult, read.

If E.B. White and Roald Dahl wrote an adult novel together, it might end up looking something like Slaughter by Marcus F. Griffin.

It’s 1941 and the rural farms of Indiana and Kentucky are abuzz with the story of Slaughter, the colt favored to win the Kentucky Derby — perhaps even the Triple Crown. But to down-on-his-luck farmer Harold, Slaughter’s race is more. To begin with, it’ll decide whether he keeps his farm or loses it to the bank. There’s a lot more going on at the farm than Slaughter’s race though. Two entwined tales of personal spirals into madness are linked into one novel about how the past – and lives around us we often don’t even see – haunt us…Read the full review at Dark Scribe Magazine.

Important Note- 3/24/11: Many Dorchester (which includes Leisure and Kensington and more) authors have recently announced that Dorchester has been failing to send their royalty payments since mid-2010 and is also selling digital copies of books they no longer own the rights to and haven’t owned the rights to since December 2010. Furthermore they are refusing to release rights to books they aren’t paying royalties on and using you, the reader, as their excuse. More information is available here and while there are many wonderful writers under the Dorchester umbrella I have to, at this time, highly recommend that no one buy new books, print or digital, from Dorchester as the money is NOT going to the authors as it should.

Gord Rollo’s Strange Magic is a dark, twisted and only slightly supernatural tale of serial killers, magicians and revenge. Wilson Kemp is hiding a secret that starts with the fact that his name is an alias and deepens to the dark reason why he had to change his name in the first place. But all Kemp’s secrets are about to come to light (again) as a mysterious Stranger arrives in town, determined to enact vengeance on the slobbering drunk Kemp has become. Kemp knows who the Stranger is — his old show partner, who has been dead for over 20 years….Full review over at Dark Scribe Magazine.