Wishful Wednesday featuring The Fall by Bethany Griffin

Wishful Wednesday was inspired by Waiting on Wednesday and Desperately Wanting Wednesday by Breaking the Spine and Parajunkee.

Wishful Wednesday is my own little version of "Waiting On Wednesday". Every week, I'll pick an upcoming book that I'm anticipating the release for and showcase it here on the blog. This week, that book is going to be The Fall by the amazingly talented and awesome Bethany Griffin. I've already read her Red Death duology, that was based on Edgar Allan Poe's, Masque of the Red Death and enjoyed that quite a bit. So, I'm really really excited to read The Fall, and see what it's going to be like. It's supposedly another YA novel that's loosely based on another of Poe's classic stories, The Fall of the House of Usher. I love being able to tuck into a great psychological thriller, so I really hope that this book lives up to my expectations. 

The Fall  by Bethany Griffin

Expected Publication: October 7, 2014

Publisher: Greenwillow Books

Age Demographic: YA Psychological Thriller
Pages: 400

Madeline Usher is doomed.

She has spent her life fighting fate, and she thought she was succeeding. Until she woke up in a coffin.

Ushers die young. Ushers are cursed. Ushers can never leave their house, a house that haunts and is haunted, a house that almost seems to have a mind of its own. Madeline’s life—revealed through short bursts of memory—has hinged around her desperate plan to escape, to save herself and her brother. Her only chance lies in destroying the house.

In the end, can Madeline keep her own sanity and bring the house down? The Fall is a literary psychological thriller, reimagining Edgar Allan Poe’s classic The Fall of the House of Usher.

To PreOrder a copy of The Fall by Bethany Griffin visit Amazon & Barnes&Noble!

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Bethany Griffin teaches high school English and creative writing. On her first Christmas she found a book under the tree and had to be coaxed into opening the rest of the presents because she just wanted to read the book. Every year she entered the Young Authors contest. She never won. She has written a re-imagining of the amazing Poe-inspired duology, Red Death.

Don't forget to fan her on her Goodreads page and add her books to your shelves.

Book Review: Cold Light by Jenn Ashworth

Cold Light by Jenn Ashworth

Published: October 16, 2011

Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks

Age Demographic: YA Psychological Thriller

Pages: 352

I'm sitting on my couch, watching the local news. There's Chloe's parents, the mayor, the hangers on, all grouped round the pond for the ceremony. It's ten years since Chloe and Carl drowned, and they've finally chosen a memorial-a stupid summerhouse. The mayor has a spade decked out in pink and white ribbon, and he's started to dig.

You can tell from their faces that something has gone wrong. But I'm the one who knows straightaway that the mayor has found a body. And I know who it is.

This is the tale of two fourteen-year-old girls, best friends, and one terrible summer when lies, secrets, jealousy, and perversion ended in tragedy more tangled and evil than a tight-knit community can possibly believe.

A dark tale with a surreal edge, Jenn Ashworth's gripping novel captures the intensity of girls' friendships and the dangers of a predatory adult world they are just grown up enough to think they can handle. And it shows just how far that world will go, sacrificing truth in the name of innocence.

To Purchase Cold Light:      Amazon

Cold Light is a dark and complicated, richly layered, psychological thriller that will chill readers to the bone. Beautifully written, Jenn Ashworth, plunges readers head long into a suspenseful, yet highly intriguing psychological tale full of secrets, lies, set against the an extremely raw and honest portrayl of teenage jealousy, struggles of friendship, shoplifting, among other things. It's hard to piece together a cohesive review for this novel, because there aren't any likable characters protrayed within its pages. It only becomes much more dark and depressing, as the story progresses yet there are bits and pieces of it, that definitely drew me in and held my attention. The circumstances, for one, and for another the overwhelming powerfully written suspsense and uncomfortable feelings that I was left with while reading.

I did find myself admiring the raw and gritty honesty and incredibly realistic approach that Ashworth tackled with such sensitive subject matters as a pedophile on the loose, death, depression, and the angst of teenage friendship that was riddled with secrets and lies. Cold Light is indescribably disturbing and full of haunting darkness, yet is wonderfully complex and compelling at the same time. It was hard to put it down, in fact, I found myself unable to as I was drawn in by the story and had to see it through to the end. It leaves that feeling of, "you think you know, but you don't really." It's errie, yet it hits the mark definitely head on. The relationship between the characters and the secrets and lies that bonded them together, was written wonderfully well.

Cold Light is definitely one of the most different reads that I've encounted in a long while and it has definitely left me not only confused, but continuously thinking about it. It's definitely gripping, powerfully emotional, and worth the read.

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Jenn Ashworth’s first book, A Kind of Intimacy, won the U.K.’s Betty Trask Award. She lives in Preston, Lancashire, with her family and writes an award-winning blog at www.jennashworth.co.uk.

You can also follow Jenn on Twitter and Facebook.