What Kind of Girl

      I've always been a big fan of Alyssa Sheinmel's, and was very excited to see another book of her's being published this month! What Kind of Girl is a raw, gritty novel that deals with tough, often stigmatized issues such as relationship abuse, self harm, anxiety, and bulimia. I appreciated that the novel started with a trigger/content warning for the topics that would be discussed within the novel's pages.
    The novel deals with two best friends, Maya and Juniper, who are also two of the most popular girls of their private school. Maya is dating the track school star Mike, who everyone loves. What no one knows is that Mike has gotten increasingly violent towards Maya, and most recently a slap has resulted in a black eye for Maya. Maya decides she can't take it anymore, and goes to the school's principal. What follows is the division of the school for who believes Maya and who believes Mike.
   Also woven into the novel is the friendship between Maya and Juniper. Both are dealing with intense issues that they've chosen not to disclose to each other. Throughout the book we see these coming to a head and their relationship transforming and being tested.
   What Kind of Girl started off a little confusing to me -- the chapter headings alluded to more characters than actually exist, but that could have just been me. Also, I don't like when novels finish inconclusive, and this novel left the reader with a lot of loose ends! I didn't feel satisfied when I turned that last page -- I had a lot of questions instead. I don't want to imagine my own ending, I want to know what the author intended for this pair, for better or worse.

One Last Child

      
      One Last Child, by Anni Taylor, is an exciting new thriller and the first in a new series - Tallman's Valley Detectives. Set in Australia, five three year olds go missing from a preschool picnic without a trace. The children aren't seen for years, and there's little to no leads on where they could be, until they're returned, unharmed, one by one to their families. Except for Ivy - the homicide detective's, Kate Wakeland, granddaughter, and all the other children say Ivy is dead. Now the hunt is on as to where the children have been kept for three years and who was behind kidnapping them and killing Ivy.
   With lots of twists and turns, relationship drama, and family turmoil, this book is a page turner that I didn't want to put down. I really appreciated that the main premise of the book was solved by the end of the book, but there was enough of a cliffhanger at the end to keep my excited for the next book in the series. I felt that parts of the book were a little bit too far fetched and too easily tied in a bow, and a couple times I struggled with too many characters, making me not quite able to give this five stars - more like four and a half. All in all a solid book that I highly recommend, especially for those who like thrillers!