Kathleen Glasgow

"The Glass Girl" is an emotionally raw and challenging read. Fifteen-year-old Bella is grappling with a series of painful events: the death of her grandmother, her parents' divorce, and the recent breakup with her boyfriend, who has already moved on. In an attempt to numb her pain and anxiety, Bella turns to alcohol, and soon her life begins to spiral out of control.

Bella’s journey is far from easy. Every day feels like a battle as she fights her addiction, and the author pulls no punches show more in portraying her struggles. There’s no sugarcoating here, which is what makes The Glass Girl such a powerful and real story. The novel ends with a glimmer of hope, and though Bella’s future is uncertain, I’d like to believe she has a chance for something better. I particularly appreciated her friends, Amber and Dawn, who remained by her side despite Bella’s attempts to push them away.

"The Glass Girl" is an essential story that sheds light on the harsh realities of alcohol addiction among teens and the difficult, often non-linear path to recovery. It was heartbreaking to see Bella fall just a day before she was set to leave rehab, but that painful moment only made the book more poignant and impactful. An emotional and thought-provoking read. show less

Girl in Pieces is a poignant story of a seventeen year old’s stumbling journey towards healing. You see, Charlotte (Charlie) Davis is anything but an average teenager. Charlie cuts herself, the physical pain helps replaces the mental pain. It is what she does when things become overwhelming for her. She should be enjoying youth, life and looking forward to college but is sadly deprived of all this by circumstances beyond her control. Her father committed suicide when she was a young girl show more and was raised by an abusive mother. She never fit in at school and then her best friend commits suicide. Who else is left to help prop you?

A marvelously written story. There is no sugar coating the topic of self-harm, Glasgow throws it out there from the very beginning and strives to show the reader the depth of Charlie’s pain. Hats off to Glasgow, she did an outstanding job. As Charlie’s story unravels you are willing swept away with her on this painful journey.

I received a free copy of Girl in Pieces in exchange for my honest review. show less

It’s been awhile since I read the first book, so it took a moment to get the secondary characters sorted in my mind, especially since this starts at a party so a lot of familiar names are immediately thrown at you, but it wasn’t too long before I settled in once more, again enjoying Alice and Iris’s friendship and the way the various mystery threads gradually wove together.

My very minor issues with this one are similar to the minor issues I had with book one, there’s a tendency to show more recap information rather than trusting that the reader understood/remembered what they read. There were also moments here and there where you might need to suspend a little disbelief but I imagine that’s the case with most mysteries involving amateur sleuths, access to certain clues, putting themselves in precarious situations/wriggling out of them, withholding/taking evidence with little or no consequence, getting away with that kind of stuff is sometimes necessary for this kind of story even if you don’t entirely buy it. But like I said, those are minor issues, the entertainment value easily overrides any of that.

As much as I did enjoy the mystery here, it’s lead characters Alice and Iris who will always keep me coming back for more of this series. While this sequel didn’t show quite as much of Iris’s homelife as the first book did, I liked the realistic handling of where she’s at emotionally, that the scars of what she experienced with her abusive father haven’t magically healed in his absence. I also liked seeing Alice interact with her parents, more than that though I just love the direction Alice is headed in as a person and her potential career going forward, fingers crossed that this series lasts so long that we get to see that career happen, there are so many YA authors now writing adult books, too, so how fantastic would it be to see Alice and Iris age up over many books into adulthood? show less

I itched to buy ‘The Agathas’ when I first saw it. The cover was amusing and the title was intriguing. My finger hovered over the ‘Add to basket’ button. I didn’t buy it because it had two red flags. Firstly, it’s written by two authors. I know that can work, Ilona Andrews and James S A Corey prove that, but it often doesn’t. The second red flag was the Young Adult label. I’m just too old for most young adult books, especially ones set in American High Schools which are as show more remote from my personal experience as attending Hogwarts and even harder to believe in. Eventually, positive reviews from people who I trust tempted me into givng 'The Agathas' a try and I'm very glad they did.

'The Agathas^ was a 'Wow!' of a book. Pure fun from beginning to end.

All the High School tropes from Veronica Mars were there but they were transformed by how well the two main characters, Alice and Iris are drawn and by the way the plot drives the development of their unlikely relationship. It also helped that Alice and Iris had both watched Veronica Mars and were aware of the parallels.

Then there's the Agatha Christie overlay, which is introduced because Alice spent part of the previous summer reading Christie's books. It decorates the plot with Christie quotes and encourages Alice to believe in the viability on amateur sleuthing. It also delivers the occasional Easter Egg like naming the school counsellor Westmacott, which was one of Christie's lesser-known pen names.

What pulled me into the book was that it was told from two first-person points of view in alternating chapters. This gave me an intimate picture of how two girls at the same school: Alice, recently exiled from the elite inner circle of rich kids and Iris, a high-achiever from a poor home who is part of a group of self-declared oddballs who are virtually invisible to the elite, see themselves and each other. Having two points of view allowed more action to be covered and for each of the girls to have a different take on what was going on. It was also an effective way of adding to the tension by flipping points of view at key moments. I loved that each of the girls had a distinctive voice and way of thinking. I listened to the audiobook version where the 'two voices' aspect of the story was highlighted by having two narrators, one for Alice and one for Iris.

The mystery that Alice and Iris eventually become invested in solving is complex enough to be interesting without being too complex to be plausible. The mystery only provides half of the framework for the book. The other half comes from the slow reveal of the recent histories of Alice and Iris, both of whom are hiding secrets about things in their lives that make them unhappy and sometimes, a little ashamed.

As Iris and Alice gather evidence to solve the mystery and as they learn more about each other, they each realise how different the reality of the lives of the students around them are from the image the students project.

To me, this was the best kind of Young Adult book. The teenagers sounded and acted like teenagers and they remained the driving force for the plot but circumstances forced them to take a more adult view of events. It also helped that the adults who involved themselves were credible and did sensible things rather than being presented as obstacles to be overcome or worked around. Even the police, who were not sold on the idea of teenage amateur sleuths working on a murder case, especially ones who were closely linked to the case.

'The Agathas" was an excellent read and a wonderful audiobook. I've already downloaded the second book, 'On The Night In Question'. show less