Jason Rekulak

📖🍾BOOK REVIEW🍾📖
Rating: 4.5/5 stars

💍 You’re cordially invited to a wedding full of secrets, suspicion, and seriously sketchy rich people. 🥂🔍

⁉️Would you rather have all of your or all of your fiancé's exes attend your wedding?
🅰️Definitely my fiancés!

With suspicious in-laws, too many secrets, and a whole lot of rich-people weirdness, I couldn’t stop flipping pages.

🔎 This isn’t your typical thriller—it’s more like sipping chilled champagne while show more watching drama implode in slow motion. And yes, I loved every messy minute. Sit back and pop a cork! 🍾🥂

This slow-burn suspense starts with an awkward reunion between Frank and his estranged daughter, Maggie—inviting him to her wedding.

However, this isn't your ordinary wedding. It's an ultra-glam event that unfolds over several days at a swanky private resort owned by the groom’s family—the Gardners. They are tech billionaires surrounded by some pretty alarming rumors. You can feel Frank's mix of surprise and apprehension leap off the page. With whispers about this powerful family and a weekend itinerary that reads more like a survival guide, Frank wonders if this “I do” is a fairytale or a potential disaster.

The characters are so well crafted; each one has their own quirks and vibes that make the story shine. There are a few characters I couldn’t help but adore! Their personalities really popped off the page.

The book wraps you in a fantastic atmosphere and spins a clever plot that keeps things interesting. This book topped the first one I read by the same author, and I’m already itching to see what’s next on his list.

Thank you to the author and Flatiron Books for this ARC provided via NetGalley. All opinions are my own. show less

What a delicious mystery!!!

One of my reading groups was rampant with posts about this book, and the last one I read that was hyped on the group turned out to be a disappointment, so this one turning out to be so good, was absolutely a pleasant surprise.

The book is basically about Mallory Quin, a recovering addict, who has been hired by Ted and Caroline to take care of their son, Teddy. A charming and sweet boy who gets attached to Mallory, and has a penchant for art. Except his artwork is show more revealing a sinister theme that pushes Mallory to delve deeper into what is really bothering Teddy. But can she rely on her hunches, given her past? Can she really trust herself and her judgment?

Let me begin by saying, I like Mallory’s character but I wish that there was more character development there rather than detailed descriptions of what she and Teddy were up to every day. But overall, I really enjoyed how she composed herself and that her character wasn’t entirely overpowered by her past drug usage. Ted and Caroline were incredibly solidly written characters - I give kudos to the author for developing them so intricately.

The story is well written, and ends with a twist that one just absolutely could not have imagined. If someone tells me they guessed what was up, before they author triggers that reveal, I would likely call them out on their BS. And that’s what made this book so GOOD. You guessed one thing, then another, then another - with some hunches you felt really close to solving it, and with others it all seemed improbable, and yet you couldn’t come to any conclusions until the author was ready to reveal the plot to you. I was riveted and could not put the book down - the drawings that accompany the book definitely made this mystery a more deliciously creepy read! I HIGHLY HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend this one!!! show less

This is the "ghost story junkie's" kind of story in spades! A disturbing secret that has far-reaching consequences comprises this dark and unusual ghost story. Mallory Quinn is just recently out of rehab and is recovering from a tragedy. She has taken a job as the nanny for a well to do couple living in the ritzy suburb of Spring Brook, New Jersey. A series of strange events start to make her...as well as her employers, begin to question their own sanity. Teddy is her precocious and shy show more 5-year-old boy that she's in charge of. The child seems to be haunted by a ghost who uses his body to draw pictures. These pictures are far too complex and well-drawn to have been the work of any child this young. At first, the drawings are rather typical...rabbits, hot air balloons, trees.... then the illustrations take a sinister, dark turn, showing the grime, gory details of gruesome murders. The drawings start out as stick figures but soon grow increasingly more disturbing and much more sophisticated. By now the reader is so into the story that you can't stop. With the help of an attractive young gardener and a psychic neighbor and using only the drawings as clues, Mallory feels that she must solve the mystery of the house's grizzly past before it's too late. Jason Rekulak does a fantastic job defining all these characters and giving them believable personalities: The story is mostly told by Mallory in the first person. The Maxwells' slightly overbearing parenting style and passive-aggressive quips feel and sound, very familiar; and Teddy is so three-dimensional that he sometimes feels like a real child that you could reach out and touch. The is almost enough to make you believe in ghosts. As my grandmother used to tell us as children..."I don't believe in ghost but I'm very much afraid of them". You will be very much afraid of them. show less

I did not know how much I needed The Impossible Fortress when I picked it up yesterday evening. I had this sinking feeling of despair and the book I was reading was in an unhappy place and I wanted something to lift my mood. I picked up The Impossible Fortress, started at the first chapter and fell quickly and deeply in love with the quirky nerd Billy Marvin.

Billy is one of those kids of whom teachers and administration despair. He’s unlucky enough to be born before people in education show more realized that computer skills were important and meaningful. He spends his time thinking of how to write computer games, neglecting his course and failing. For the people who make the decisions, though, that does not compute.

It’s the 80s and Playboy has just published the famous issue featuring Vanna White. Billy and his friends obsess over the idea of getting their own copy, but the only ones for sale in their town are safely behind the desk and Zelinsky’s and he won’t be selling to any minors. They dream up this idea of getting a copy, photocopying the photos and selling them and making a lot of money. Unfortunately, the one soliciting the investments and holding the money loses it, making it imperative they succeed at their caper as there is no way to pay the money back if they fail.

Billy takes on the last of getting the alarm code to Zelinsky’s by romancing his daughter Mary, less out of serious desire to carry out their ridiculous caper, but more out of a personal connection he felt for Mary, Zelinsky’s slightly zaftig daughter. They had all gone into Zelinsky’s to try to appear old enough to buy the magazine and in talking to Mary, Bill found a fellow nerd.

Together Mary and Billy begin working on Billy’s game The Impossible Fortress in hopes of winning a high end computer in a contest, but during their hours of work, their friendship grows. Billy is even falling for her a little bit and all the urging of his increasingly desperate friends to get that code divides his loyalties. Billy desperately wants to do the right thing by everyone and there’s no way out.

Jason Rekulak created a web-based version of Mary and Billy’s game that you can play. It will feel like playing on an old Commodore. I have never used a Commodore, but it definitely feels like early, early games. It also feels very much like Billy’s odyssey near the end of the book. He really does have to storm a fortress.

I loved this book and not just because I read it on a day when I really needed it. I love the humor and the humanity of it. I love how completely it places us into the 80s, the powerful sense of place…particularly during that grueling effort by Charlie and his friends to reach their own impossible fortress. I love the celebration of geekdom, the unapologetic love of games and computers and friendship that animate this wonderful book. It’s heartwarming without sentimentality, funny without cruelty and engaging without artifice. I hope you put it on your list because I know you will love it.

The Impossible Fortress will be released on February 17, 2017. I received an Advance Reader’s Copy from Simon & Schuster in a Shelf Awareness drawing.

★★★★★
http://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2016/11/09/the-impossible-fortress/

LINKS on my blog post:
The Impossible Fortress game
Jason Rekulak web site
The Impossible Fortress at Simon & Schuster show less