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Megan Crewe

Author of The Way We Fall

18+ Works 1,257 Members 120 Reviews
There is 1 open discussion about this author. See now.

About the Author

Includes the name: Megan Crewe

Image credit: Photo credit: Chris Blanchenot

Series

Works by Megan Crewe

The Way We Fall (2002) 458 copies
Give Up the Ghost (2009) 262 copies
The Lives We Lost (2013) 168 copies
Earth & Sky (2014) 91 copies
The Worlds We Make (2014) 80 copies
A Mortal Song (2016) 60 copies
Ruthless Magic (2018) 48 copies
The Clouded Sky (2015) 28 copies
A Sky Unbroken (2015) 16 copies
Magic Unmasked (2018) 15 copies
Those Who Lived (2014) 9 copies
Spellbound (paranormal & urban fantasy anthology) (2017) — Contributor — 8 copies
Wounded Magic (2018) 4 copies
Secret Project 3 copies
Virus (2013) 2 copies
Fearless Magic (2019) 2 copies
Beast (2017) 2 copies
Supervivientes (2014) 1 copy

Associated Works

Thou Shalt Not... (2006) — Contributor — 15 copies

Tagged

2012 (9) ARC (11) Canada (10) currently-reading (6) death (12) disease (10) dystopia (32) dystopian (19) ebook (23) epidemic (15) family (11) fantasy (29) fiction (44) friendship (7) ghosts (20) goodreads (8) Grade 7 (11) grief (8) island (7) megan crewe (7) netgalley (6) novel (8) paranormal (10) plague (11) post-apocalyptic (16) quarantine (12) read in 2012 (7) romance (15) science fiction (72) series (30) survival (25) teen (15) to-read (288) unread (10) urban fantasy (7) virus (30) viruses (9) YA (58) young adult (80) young adult fiction (8)

Common Knowledge

Birthdate
1980-12-22
Gender
female
Nationality
Canada
Birthplace
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Occupations
writer
tutor

Members

Discussions

Found: Science Fiction Book about a Pandemic in Name that Book (December 2023)

Reviews

Oh Cass. She is kind of hard to like at some points. Not in the beginning, but as her revenge plot gets under way a little more and her tentative acquaintance with Tim deepens, she retreats further and further into this bitter, brittle shell with a lot of bite. Understandable given the crap she went through because her former best friend decided that she couldn't share the spotlight for even a moment, but it was at times enough to make me want to shake her. Hard. Until her teeth rattled.

She was stubborn, she was pig-headed and she had a pretty black and white outlook on life (or at least high school). She was so vulnerable though that I found it hard not to want to cry when she did. To put it shortly, I went through a lot of the crap she went through with her 'best friend' Danielle. Only I wasn't strong enough (if you can call it that) to bounce back and tune it all out. I admired Cass for that. It might have made her a right witch to be around, but she didn't break because of it.

Tim...he was a lot more complicated then when he is first introduced. His descent into depression is horrifying and startling. Its the little things that start the trend, that make a person slowly wither and die inside. Stuff most people don't notice or care to notice. Watching him struggle and Cass try to figure out what she should do, could do, for him was heart-wrenching. I wouldn't say they were both too proud to ask for help, but it was more like they weren't sure they deserved that help.

If its not obvious the book had me engrossed (let's put it this way--I came home at 6pm to the package containing Give Up the Ghost , ate dinner, watched Dexter and finished the book all before 11pm). I've been looking forward to it since practically ever prayed to the blogger gods that an arc would wind up in my mailbox and had a deuced time finding a copy offline. Thank god for Amazon and for contests!

The story flows at a natural pace, moving from each day at an even clip with an actual sense of time passing. Which I appreciate since it seems more often then not a book will move time wise a lot slower then that narrative eludes to. Crewe doesn't pack an impossible amount of things happening into a relatively short time span and accept for one minor thing, nothing felt rushed or trampled past to get to the next plot point.

The only two things that nagged me mildly was that there was no 'closure' (or at least sense of consequences) against something a student does to Cass later in the novel. At the very least I wanted to hear there would be punishment, but it happens, is mentioned once and then sort of disappears. The other thing was just that I would have liked to know more about why Cass suddenly began seeing ghosts. I assumed throughout it was either the onset of puberty (she was 12 at the time) or the shock of her sister's death that caused it, but by the end I wasn't so sure.

In the end I loved the book, even if it did make me cry several times and it was honestly refreshing to read a YA-paranormal that wasn't romance. At best what Cass and Tim have could be called the beginning stage of 'seeing someone more then a friend', but as they just became friends (and rocky ones at that) I was happy they didn't progress further.
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lexilewords | 28 other reviews | Dec 28, 2023 |
Now, it is unusual I take so damn long to finish Reading a particular book, and a lot of it simply has to do with the fact that I wasn’t gung-ho about this book. It is sort of funny because when I read a book that ends up with a solid 5 stars, I know I am going to love it from the first 15 pages and very unusually I am proven wrong. Luckily I tried to swallow my pride and put up with the sluggish first 30% of the book and then after the 50% mark, I started to actually enjoy it enough to read the ending.
There are plenty of reviews so I have no need to repeat the story. One thing that really struck me was that despite taking place in regions of Japan I have visited a few times which are shown in the book, the characters didn’t have the “voice” and “mannerisms” of real Japanese people. Okay, so Takeo is a brooding bodyguard/potential love interest for Sora, but he could have had any skin color because his personality was so generic. Sora spends 60% of the book engaging in mental ramblings regarding everything now sucks because her entire life as a kami princess was a lie or considering whether to toss the towel and move in with the Ikedas in suburban Tokyo. Nobody really earnestly speaks with the quirks and mannerisms of Japanese people. Save for the Asian names and concept of kamis over a more western supernatural being such as fae, the whole story could have been rewritten to happen in England for example and Stonehenge as a replacement for Mt Fuji and the story would not have been affected.
I haven’t read a lot of fantasy written by Japanese authors mainly because not a lot of them write in English, but there is a book called Zero-Sum Game by American author Cody Martin. That book takes place in Hiroshima and is about an alien who escapes a group of assassins. Badly injured and about to die, he gives his magical super clothes to a terrified Japanese teenager so that she could somehow use the suit with its hidden AI to defeat the bad guys and save her world. The way she speaks with timid softness and how she freaks out when she discovers the mighty supersuit that had temporarily copied her school uniform prompting her to wear it by accident sounds so fluid and close to a real Japanese studious teenager would behave if thrown into a similar situation. Everyone has a certain tone to their speech that sounds insanely authentic. It is obvious the author has lived in the country for a long time.
Setting that gripe aside from Mortal Song, I personally liked Keiji’s character, he is probably the only character with a true personality in the plot and a sort of voice of reason while Sora starts to get used to her human emotions and the advantages she has over true kami during this dire battle. I personally enjoyed the ending of the story, but I do feel like the book could have benefitted hugely if the kami palace had been described in full. We just get a few vague descriptions of the buildings and very little time to enjoy the captured kami to garner a vented interest in their plight or the urgency of calming the volcano before it erupts. If you don’t mind those aspects, the story of how Chiyo goes for the 3 sacred treasures whereas Sora locates the belongings of the bad guy Omori to try to discover a weakness are probably the huge highlights of a somewhat interesting, albeit disjointed read.
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chirikosan | 5 other reviews | Jul 24, 2023 |
I liked the concept of this book. Had a few problems in the way the words went together but it could have been me! I'd give it 2.5 if the option was there. I will read the second.
 
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panamamama | 9 other reviews | Aug 2, 2022 |
This was....meh. It didn't scare the pants off me the way Preston's The Hot Zone did -- although Crewe does cite that book as a source. Crewe throws a large variety of stuff at the wall; besides not all of it sticking, this approach dilutes the power of the story to shock. Instead of a horrifying plague, with its stark numbers of dead, the virus seems like more of a really annoying (but surprisingly accommodating and selective)relative who just won't leave town.

I was underwhelmed.
 
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FinallyJones | 53 other reviews | Nov 17, 2021 |

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Sophie Davis Contributor
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Andrea Pearson Contributor
Dara Fraser Contributor
Ludi Price Illustrator

Statistics

Works
18
Also by
1
Members
1,257
Popularity
#20,410
Rating
½ 3.6
Reviews
120
ISBNs
96
Languages
4

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