I recently read two almost-fall (let’s be serious late August/early September is pretty much fall for all us pumpkin/spooky/sweater-and-boots outfit lovers) new releases from Penguin Teen. Thank you again Penguin Teen for the ARCs in exchange for reviews! The first one was The Companion, a YA spooky horror/thriller by Katie Alender which was just released on August 25th, and the second was Meme by Aaron Starmer, a tech-y psychological thriller by Aaron Starmer.
The Companion by Katie Alender (August 25th)
Let’s start with The Companion. Y’all know I love spooky stuff, and I think this would be a grat option for a spooky YA read, especially if you’re more of a “seasonal reader” type (not me at all) and you’re looking for something spooky but not downright terrifying (and not gorey!) to read for the upcoming spooky season. The Companion follows teenager Margot, who was orphaned after her entire family died abruptly in a tragic car accident. After living at a group home for several months, a wealthy and prestigious family chooses Margot to come live with them as a ward. But when she arrives at their home, she finds out there’s more going on than meets the eye—the family has actually chosen her to be a loyal companion to their teenage daughter, who is mysteriously ill with a condition that makes her nearly catatonic at all times. The longer Margot is at their home, the more she realizes there is something dark lurking beneath the surface, and that this family and the whole situation might not be all it’s cracked up to be.
Also, don’t let the cover or the description/gothic horror vibes fool you—this isn’t a historical fiction or a Victorian era horror. It’s actually a contemporary horror/thriller, just a conveniently isolated horror as the estate Margot moves to is way out in the countryside without Wi-Fi or a cell connection, an aspect which lends itself well to the plot.
This is a good read and I really enjoyed it. I found myself eager to get back to it so I could try to figure out what exactly was happening with this freaky family, and follow the trail of bread crumbs to try to figure out if my guesses were correct. It has a looming countryside estate, a dark mystery that gets stranger and twistier as the book goes on, a cast of shady characters that make you wonder who exactly—if anyone—can be trusted, and even a slightly taboo romance that isn’t too cheesy or forced, and I actually really liked the ending of this one.
I would give this a 4.5/5 or even 4.75 out of 5. There were only slight things that took away from my rating—like some moments that were a little predictable or trope-y—but overall, it was great and you should definitely grab a copy!
Meme by Aaron Starmer (September 8th)
This one I have slightly different feelings about. I’m not saying I hated it, but I didn’t like it nearly as much, especially reading it hot off the tails of such an interesting spooky gothic romp in the isolated countryside.
Let me begin at the beginning: Meme is a YA psychological thriller which opens with four teenagers just straight up murdering one of their friends for what seems like some rather vague reasons but amounts to them saying “he threatened them” (with some very vague threats about he’s going to “take them down” or something because he’s angry and upset about his girlfriend—one of the four—recently breaking up with him). So, yeah, they just actually kill the guy and bury him in the one girl’s backyard. This isn’t a spoiler, it’s the opening scene of the book.
Problem is, in true Pretty Little Liars fashion, technology gets involved. After the murder, they record a confession and bury it with the body, because in their minds this somehow keeps them honest and true—if one of them ever digs him up, their confession will be there with him? The phones will still work and not be damaged at all, no matter how long its been? I don’t know, it’s the logic of a bunch of kids who think problems are solved by killing people I guess, so. There’s that.
Anyway, shortly after murdering and burying their once-friend, a meme surfaces. A meme that happens to be a screen grab from their confession recording that they buried with Cole. And it becomes a viral sensation. And they’re completely freaking out. And then they begin getting messages and communications from their should-be/would-be dead friend. So obviously they are completely freaking out, and mental terror ensues.
This…is once again one of those things that on paper sounds exactly like the type of thing I would like but in execution was just…eh. I mean it was okay. I’m not saying it was bad, I just didn’t have a lot of fun reading this one. A lot of it didn’t make any sense (I mean it was like half the time these teenagers were trying to figure out the Internet, I just…?), obviously none of the characters are likable, and the characters are even difficult to distinguish from one another. Like they each have little things about them that are supposed to make them different, but they’re more surface-level things, and at their core, they’re all just kind of these same basic upper middle class non-descript kids who legit MURDERED A GUY for pissing them off. The POVs change with each chapter, but the voices were barely distinguishable from one another in my opinion. I was interested in some of the corners of the Internet where Cole used to lurk and the characters trying to unravel some aspects of the mystery, but overall it wasn’t that captivating, and as many other reviewers have said, the ending was just really anticlimactic and disappointing.
The other thing that bothered me about this book were just some of the random little comments on certain subjects that were shoehorned in for no apparent reason and passed off as being part of the “character building” but were assigned to multiple characters. For example, one of the smaller side characters lives in a townhome, and we have TWO separate characters talk shit on him for it and make little comments like “I mean that’s okay I guess, but I wouldn’t really consider it a HOME” or act horrified that he has to “share walls with other people”. ???? This is what I mean when I say you can’t even distinguish them from each other. These two characters who are supposed to be two totally different people with different personalities both talk shit on this one person in the exact same way. What’s with the weird opinion on town homes? And why did we need to shoehorn it into a YA novel? Perhaps I’m reading too much into this and it’s just two upper middle class teenage characters who look down on others in the exact same way, but it was weird and really off-putting. (I’d hate to be a young person living in an apartment or townhome and read this and just have multiple characters make me feel awful for having to share a wall with someone, as if that makes me a lesser human somehow.)
I don’t know, maybe I’m nitpicking…maybe no one else even noticed this. Maybe it was a trait the author meant to assign to one character and then decided to change it and it got missed in editing. Either way, it was just another thing that detracted from a fairly interesting concept for me.
All in all, I didn’t hate it, I didn’t love it. I’ve read worse things, but I couldn’t see myself being eager to read anything else by this author. As teen thrillers go, there are better options out there. (Check out There’s Someone Inside Your House, also from Penguin Teen and written by Stephanie Perkins, or even The Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, in which the MC also employs Internet research and modern tech to solve mysteries, but in a much less clunky and much more effective manner.)
I know people love star ratings, so I’d say I’d give this one like a 2.5/5 or a 3. It wasn’t for me, but if you decide to give it a look, it comes out next Tuesday, September 8th. Good for fans of tech-y psychological thrillers, or if you’re looking for a light read that will have you guessing for the first 2/3rds.