Book Review: The Cilantro in Apple Pie by Kimberley Nadine Knights

Fragnut. Confused? Well so is everyone else at Lumiere Hall Prep when sixteen-year-old Rubie Keane rolls in from Trinidad and Tobago talking her weird lingo. Not that she minds the culture confusion; she's determined to leave the past behind her and be overlooked—but a certain stoic blue blood is equally as determined to foil her plans.

Gil Stromeyer's offbeat personality initially makes Rubie second-guess his sanity, but she suspects his erratic outbursts of violence mask a deeper issue in his troubled, charmed life. Despite his disturbing behavior, a gradual bond forms between the two. However, on the night of the annual Stromeyer gala, events unfold that leave Rubie stripped of her dignity and kick Gil's already fragile world off its axis.

Both their well-kept secrets are uncovered, but Gil's revelation proves that sometimes the best remedy for a bad case of lost identity, is a dash of comradery from an ally packed with flavor.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for a review.

I'm going to say right off the bat that I really wanted to like this book.  There is so much potential in all of it, but in the end, I felt like it was all hype and no substance, making it a pretty disappointing debut from this new author.

My biggest complain is definitely about the writing.  It's amateur at best, or at least reads like a first draft.  In fact, it reads like the first drafts I read from new writer sin my FictionPress days, all said replacers and unnecessary adverbs.  I kid you not, things like "'I know that look in your eye,' he accused me knowingly." and "'You've changed, too,' I admitted honestly." are pretty much par for the course in this book and it is so, so grating.  The dialog is also full of cliche phrases and in scenes where there's supposed to be a huge emotional impact, Rubie and the others end up just speaking like robots and ruining it.

And then there was the hook, that Rubie is from Trinidad and has her own ‘weird lingo’ as they put it.  Except I feel like the author tried way too hard on this.  All I can think of is reading books set in Maine thinking “Oh cool, I’m from Maine, I should appreciate this” only to find that they tried way too hard with it and are slapping the reader in the face with the culture and dialect.  She even goes so far as to bold words that are part of Rubie’s Trinidad dialect, which just makes it all the more obvious it’s shouting “LOOK AT ME I’M DIFFERENT.”

Another thing that caused me a lot of trouble was the big reveal, where it turns out that Gil had a twin sister who was stillborn a few days before their due date.  While I can see him perhaps being aggressive and violent as he's portrayed, I definitely don't believe that he could be given hypnotherapy and 'remember' that he 'killed' his younger sister.  The author couldn't even be bothered to throw in a quick 'oh they told me when I was three but I was traumatized and repressed it' to make it believable, but she spends an entire section of a chapter having Rubie look up the consequences of having a dead twin like she realized it sounded unbelievable and was pointing like "Look, science!" when everything Rubie looked at was likely talking about identical twins (which Gil and his sister couldn't have been, being opposite sexes).  Fraternal twins are not part of the same egg even if they end up being the same sex, so that entire sequence did nothing to make me believe the "plot twist" more.

And then was that the entire thing was about how boys and girls can have platonic relationships and it doesn't have to be romantic or sexual at all.  It's a good thing to tell people, but I was put-off that there was nothing to do with alternate sexualities, for instance, and that in the end the reason Gil wanted her to be his friend was because he thought she looked like this girl he saw in National Geographic that he 'felt his sister in.' In other words, the only reason he even approached her was he was trying to replace his sister, thus sort of defeating the point of it.

And the final thing I have to point out is that the last part of the book starting at  ~65% has a lot of mentions of religion that put me off.  I felt like a lot of stuff about Rubie was held back for nothing but dramatic effect and it failed, but the religion thing is one of the worst.  She stopped believing (or at least started questioning) in God after her mother had a stroke and her father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, and when we finally find out, a lot of it is just super gross.  There's even a conversation where it's pretty much said that if you don't believe in God you're wrong and need psychological help.  Not really a message you want to be sending teens who are figuring things out for themselves at that age.  So yeah, fail.

Overall, I'd say it's a two stars just because the plot could've been great.  But too much drama, too much mediocre writing, and too much Evangelizing made it fall flat on its face.  Like I said, I wanted to like this book.  I'm a bit sad it didn't work out.

A little late, but release day for me!

My most recent published piece, a short story called Watch the World Burn, went up on Indestructible Spec, an e-zine for speculative LGBT stories.  You can read it for free here!

Book review: Imitation (Clone Chronicles #1) by Heather Hildenbrand

Everyone is exactly like me. There is no one like me.

Ven wrestles with these contradicting truths every day. A clone of wealthy eighteen-year-old Raven Rogen, Ven knows everything about the girl she was created to serve: the clothes she wears, the boys she loves, the friends she loves to hate. Yet she’s never met the Authentic Raven face-to-face. 

Imitations like Ven only get to leave the lab when they’re needed—to replace a dead Authentic, donate an organ, or complete a specific mission. And Raven has never needed Ven . . . until now.

When there is an attack on Raven’s life, Ven is thrust into the real world, posing as Raven to draw out the people who tried to harm her. But as Ven dives deeper into Raven’s world, she begins to question everything she was ever told. She exists for Raven, but is she prepared to sacrifice herself for a girl she’s never met?

I received a free ARC from Netgalley in return for a review.

Cloning seems to be a pretty popular thing in YA sci-fi in the last few years, and like every other trend, with the oversaturation, there’s always going to be hits and misses.  In this case, I think Imitation was just average.  There were some interesting ideas in this book and if it was really all that bad, I wouldn’t have been afraid to not finish it.

Unfortunately, it really is mediocre to a little below average.  There are things that don’t connect with each other like I’m seeing an older draft in some parts and they forgot to change things to line up with the new direction.  Not to mention that the ARC I received was really poorly formatted so as to distract me from the story at times, which I hope was fixed in the final version.

My biggest complaint is probably where the book ended.  Without giving any spoilers, it was one of those ones that clearly is leading into the next book, but I hate series book endings where there isn’t any actual closure.  Pretty much nothing is resolved and they’d just found out about some things and suddenly, the end.


If I got the chance I might read the next book just to see how it goes, but eh. This one is take it or leave it.

Book Blitz: The Cilantro in Apple Pie by Kimberly Nadine Knights

The Cilantro In Apple Pie by Kimberley Nadine Knights
Published by: Ravenswood Publishing
Publication date: May 5th 2016
Genres: Contemporary, Young Adult

Fragnut. Confused? Well so is everyone else at Lumiere Hall Prep when sixteen-year-old Rubie Keane rolls in from Trinidad and Tobago talking her weird lingo. Not that she minds the culture confusion; she’s determined to leave the past behind her and be overlooked—but a certain stoic blue blood is equally as determined to foil her plans.

Gil Stromeyer’s offbeat personality initially makes Rubie second-guess his sanity, but she suspects his erratic outbursts of violence mask a deeper issue in his troubled, charmed life. Despite his disturbing behavior, a gradual bond forms between the two. However, on the night of the annual Stromeyer gala, events unfold that leave Rubie stripped of her dignity and kick Gil’s already fragile world off its axis.

Both their well-kept secrets are uncovered, but Gil’s revelation proves that sometimes the best remedy for a bad case of lost identity, is a dash of comradery from an ally packed with flavor.

Kimberley Nadine Knights knew when she kept willingly opting out of parties so she could stay
home and write instead, that she was destined to be an author.

Born and raised in the tropical twin islands of Trinidad & Tobago, when this Caribbean girl isn't creating new plotlines for her ever growing lineup of fictional characters, she spends her time strumming her guitar to indie rock songs and snapping once in a lifetime photos halfway across the globe in countries such as Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and France.

She's an avid fan of The Walking Dead series and firmly believes that The Food Network should consider her being a judge on the next Chopped challenge.
Visit her website http://kimberleynknights.wix.com/author and learn more about this up and coming author.

You can buy the book at Amazon or Barnes and Noble.com, and find it on Goodreads!

Book review: Tell the Wind and Fire by Sarah Rees Brennan

In a city divided between opulent luxury in the Light and fierce privations in the Dark, a determined young woman survives by guarding her secrets. 

Lucie Manette was born in the Dark half of the city, but careful manipulations won her a home in the Light, celebrity status, and a rich, loving boyfriend. Now she just wants to keep her head down, but her boyfriend has a dark secret of his own—one involving an apparent stranger who is destitute and despised.

Lucie alone knows of the deadly connection the young men share, and even as the knowledge leads her to make a grave mistake, she can trust no one with the truth.

Blood and secrets alike spill out when revolution erupts. With both halves of the city burning, and mercy nowhere to be found, can Lucie save either boy—or herself?

Celebrated author Sarah Rees Brennan tells a magical tale of romance and revolution, love and loss.

A copy was received for free from NetGalley in exchange for a review.

Sarah Rees Brennan is one of those authors I had heard plenty about but never actually read any of her books.  Reading Tell the Wind and Fire, I can certainly understand the hype: it has a certain magic to it that still, for the most part, is grounded in a reality you can believe.  It’s not from the point of view of someone who knows a whole lot about how light and dark magic came into being or why light and dark magicians are separated despite needing each other beyond what she and everyone else has been told, but you can still get a feel for the society and the strain that the separation and segregation does to it.

I enjoyed this book, for the most part, but I think a problem I had with it was where it ended.  There’s so much more to reasonably explore in this world, and in my opinion, it ended right when the action was really starting.  The climax of the story is hard to pin down because it depends on what you think is most important to the story, Lucie herself or the building revolution. Either way, we’re left with so many unanswered questions that it feels like only part of the story and it left me not wanting more but feeling dissatisfied.


Because of this, I’d only rate this book average.  It was a good read and I’d recommend at least looking at it yourself, though.

Book review: The Art of Not Breathing by Sarah Alexander

Since her twin brother, Eddie, drowned five years ago, sixteen-year-old Elsie Main has tried to remember what really happened that fateful day on the beach. One minute Eddie was there, and the next he was gone. Seventeen-year-old Tay McKenzie is a cute and mysterious boy that Elsie meets in her favorite boathouse hangout. When Tay introduces Elsie to the world of freediving, she vows to find the answers she seeks at the bottom of the sea.

A free copy was provided to me through Netgalley for review.

I had mixed feelings about The Art of Not Breathing.  On the one hand, you have a story that the author seems to have put a lot of thought into, with the twists and turns that don’t just reveal themselves unintentionally right from the start like so many other family mystery books I’ve read.

On the other hand, I found myself not really liking Elsie a lot of the time.  She’s sort of a brat, and nosey as hell (she even spies on her brother and his girlfriend having sex? while still taking about how gross it is? you could look away, you know) and she falls for Tay way too quickly.  It felt less like a ‘teens fall in love quick’ thing and more of a ‘Elsie really wants to get laid’ thing, honestly.  Though I will give it mucho credit that Elsie doesn’t actually end up with anyone in the end.  Though that’s balanced out by the fact that Elsie is such a snob to literally everyone in school, so it’s no wonder none of them really want her.  She’s supposed to be a bullying victim but she turns around and does the same sort of thing to the one guy there besides her brother who’s willing to be nice to her.

All in all, I’d say it’s a good story, but the main character can sort of break you out of it because you find yourself not caring about a girl who can be so shallow and mean.  I’d say it balances out to be about average.

Cover reveal: Seven Deadly Sins, A YA Anthology (Envy)

Coming out April 1st, Envy will be my second publishing credit!  It features short stories from several different YA authors, with the only prompt being that the deadly sin, envy, had to be featured.  You'll be able to get an ebook or physical copy when it's out!  And without further ado, here's the cover.

Isn't it awesome?  Make sure to pick up your own copy when it's out!