These Shallow Graves

These Shallow Graves
author: Jennifer Donnelly
published by: Random House
released: October 27th 2015
pages: 488
my rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars













Jo Montfort is beautiful and rich, and soon—like all the girls in her class—she’ll graduate from finishing school and be married off to a wealthy bachelor. Which is the last thing she wants. Jo secretly dreams of becoming a writer—a newspaper reporter like the trailblazing Nellie Bly.

Wild aspirations aside, Jo’s life seems perfect until tragedy strikes: her father is found dead. Charles Montfort accidentally shot himself while cleaning his revolver. One of New York City’s wealthiest men, he owned a newspaper and was partner in a massive shipping firm, and Jo knows he was far too smart to clean a loaded gun.

The more Jo uncovers about her father’s death, the more her suspicions grow. There are too many secrets. And they all seem to be buried in plain sight. Then she meets Eddie—a young, brash, infuriatingly handsome reporter at her father’s newspaper—and it becomes all too clear how much she stands to lose if she keeps searching for the truth. Only now it might be too late to stop.

The past never stays buried forever. Life is dirtier than Jo Montfort could ever have imagined, and the truth is the dirtiest part of all.


For some unknown reason, I don't read historical fiction books that often, even though I almost always love them. I heard some great things about this book that made me read it and these people weren't wrong when they said it is amazing.

Jo Montfort struggles to fulfill everyones excpectations and just wants to become a writer and ask lots of questions. But before her father dies and she meets Eddie, she tries her best to oppress her feelings and be happy with the life she's given. I think her character was amazing, I could relate to her and her desire to become a writer and know things she's not supposed to know and I think lots of other people can too. But even though she isn't the lady everyone thinks she is, she is still a girl living in the 19th century and behaves accordingly. I liked that aspect of her too, because she was raised to think a certain way after all and to ignore that would make her character less believable and not fitting for the story.

I'm not going to talk too much about the mystery because it's a mystery and everyone needs to find out about it by themselves (duh) but what I will say is that it was very well done. I think I mentioned before that I'm not that good at predicting plot twists but I don't think anyone can see through the whole mystery. Also it seemed to fit perfectly when it finally all makes sense.

The  romance in this book was very well done as well but I didn't like it as much and it was the reason I gave it 4.5 stars. Don't get me wrong I still really really enjoyed it but some things just annoyed me a little. First of all: instant love. I don't really like it but it can still be done in a ok way which the author did here, so I'm not too mad about it. The thing that bothered me way more was that their love (I'm not going to say with who even though it's probably obvious to most people) was secret and forbidden and at the same time she's supposed to marry someone else.

But other than that this book is basically perfect. The balance between living an upper class life and the investigation of murder in the ugliest parts of New York was done perfectly. Also all the people Jo meets throughout this book are really unique and the female friendship is just great. I loved reading those parts most of all and wish there were more of them (girl power!).
The book started out good, a little slow paced at times but promising, but it turned out to be so much more and at some point I absolutely fell in love with it.

The Girl with all the Gifts

The Girl with all the Gifts
author: M. R. Carey
published by: Orbit
released: January 14th 2014
pages: 460
my rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars












Melanie is a very special girl. Dr. Caldwell calls her "our little genius."

Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite, but they don't laugh.

Melanie loves school. She loves learning about spelling and sums and the world outside the classroom and the children's cells. She tells her favorite teacher all the things she'll do when she grows up. Melanie doesn't know why this makes Miss Justineau look sad.

I started reading this book, knowing only as much as stood on the back of the book, so basically I had no idea what this book was about but was very interested nonetheless.

It turned out that this book is basically about zombies- there called hungries not zombies but they behave like zombies, with the whole eating humans and being basically dead thing, so to me they are zombies anyway. I was a little disappointed about that because it was not what I was expecting and to be honest, I think the whole world-overrun-by-zombies/ hungries/ Cranks, etc. is getting a little old, but I kept reading because I hoped it wouldn't focus on that aspect to much. I didn't have a problem with it most of the time and I can't really say it should have been left out because it is a really important part of the book and without the zombies nothing in the book could have happened, so I guess I liked it in a way.

In the end, I enjoyed the plot - it was ok, not something completely new but still enjoyable.
But what made the whole book so much better and unique was the main character Melanie. She was by far my favorite aspect of the entire book. If the whole book had been narrated from her point of view, I would have probably rated much higher but unfortunately that wasn't the case.
Why do I like Melanie so much? Well, first of all she is basically a kid, but unbelievably smart! Reading from a kids perspective is always interesting, but I'm not even sure if you can call Melanie a kid. In many ways she is but also isn't. Also she has this huge crush on her teacher Miss Justineau and it was so great reading about Melanie trying to help and protect her, even though she's the one who would actually need protection. Since Melanie remembers nothing from before her life in the cell, the cell and the classroom are the only places she remembers. At first I thought she was really naiv to trust and/ or wanting everyone to like her- even the people holding a gun to her head but she doesn't know anything else. And obviously she's different from everyone else somehow, it was kind of obvious way before Melanie found out but you'll have to find that out on your own anyway.

The other people in the book were not as great in my opinion. Obviously we have Miss Justineau but even though Melanie loves her, I just thought she was nice. She treats Melanie like a human being and not like some kind of speaking experiment that can blow up any minute (she can't actually blow up :) ).  I understand why Melanie loves her but she definitely isn't perfect or god-like the was Melanie thinks.
Then theres Dr. Caldwell. She isn't a nice person and I don't think you're supposed to like her, which is good because I hated her. She thinks Melanie is the key to finding a cure to the disease and basically wants to cut her open and slice her brain into pieces. So since Melanie is my favorite character in the book, you can imagine why I didn't quite like Dr. Caldwell. But at the same time I had this feeling while reading, that maybe she's right, since she does want to save humanity and that was really frustrating.
Sergent Parks is the soldier of the group and at first I didn't like him either, but he changes his whole mindset during the course of the book and in the end I did like him.
The last character in the book is Gallagher. I didn't really care about him. He was nice, I guess but other than that I didn't feel much about him.

I think that even if you don't like zombies you should still give this book a try. It isn't like the typical zombie books and Melanie makes this otherwise ok book into something truly special.