Even If We Break by Marieke Nijkamp

Even If We Break by Marieke Nijkamp is a YA thriller about a group of friends, a role-playing game, and a cabin in the woods (up a mountain). It has strong geeky sensibilities (they are, after all, playing an RPG), but is technically non-SFF, though I expect there's be a lot of SFF fans who would enjoy it regardless.

FIVE friends go to a cabin.
FOUR of them are hiding secrets.
THREE years of history bind them.
TWO are doomed from the start.
ONE person wants to end this.
NO ONE IS SAFE.


Are you ready to play?

In this novel, a group of friends go on a last getaway to mend bridges and play one last RPG campaign before some of them go off to college. The story is told through alternating points of view, cycling through all five characters. Aside from being geeky, Even if We Break also has very strong disability and trans representation, dealing with characters in a variety of circumstances.

Nijkamp excels at cramming a lot of action into a short space of time, as evidenced by This Is Where It Ends, which is called "54 Minutes" in some translations. Even if We Break is no different. Although the story starts relatively up-beat (aside from the lingering issues the characters are hoping to overcome over the weekend) but quickly become tense as things turn ugly. The five characters all have distinctive voices and I found it easy to keep the different characters straight in my mind.

I recommend Even If We Break to fans of YA thrillers and to people who wished Pretty Little Liars had disability representation and good trans representation. I expect fans of RPGs and LARPs, including readers who don't usually read non-SFF, will still find much to enjoy in reading about the friends' game and the way in which this is linked to the action. I will certainly continue to pick up Nijkamp's books as they come out.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: September 2020, Sourcebooks Fire
Series: No
Format read: eARC
Source: Publisher via NetGalley

The Enigma Game by Elizabeth Wein

The Enigma Game by Elizabeth Wein is another World War II YA thriller, following some of the same (fictional) characters as Code Name Verity, Rose Under Fire, and the pre-war prequel, The Pearl Thief. I enjoyed and reviewed all of the previous books, as well as the companion Black Dove, White Raven, which followed unrelated characters in Ethiopia. It is not an exaggeration to say that this is my favourite non-SF series of all time.

Windyedge Airfield, Scotland. World War II.

Louisa Adair, newly orphaned and shunned for her mixed-race heritage, has come here to the edge of the world to look after an old lady with a dark past. Jamie Beaufort-Stuart is a flight lieutenant whose squadron is posted to the airfield over winter. Ellen McEwan is a young woman held hostage by the German pilot who lands at Windyedge one wild stormy night carrying a terrible secret.

Three young people desperate to make a difference in a war that has decimated their families, friends and country. When the means to change the course of history falls into their hands, how will they use it? And when the enemy comes looking for them, who will have the courage to strike back?

The Enigma Game is not set at Bletchley Park, which I thought it might be when I first saw the title. It is set near the start of the war, 1940-41, and mostly in the vicinity of an airbase in Scotland. Our in to the story is Louisa, a half-English, half-Jamaican girl, that takes a job looking after an elderly lady near the airbase after both her parents are killed. There she meets female enlistees and the squadron and accidentally gets caught up in wartime secrets concerning an Enigma machine.

My favourite thing about this book was the way in which it addressed identity and perception. Three of the characters do not fit in because of their backgrounds, but only Louisa, the half-Jamaican, is unable to hide it, thanks to her skin colour. The other two — Ellen the Scottish Traveller and Jane the elderly German woman — can pass as British without having to try too hard. And yet, they are both constantly terrified that others will find out their secret (they're not spies, so it's not secret to everyone) and ostracise them for it. Meanwhile, the only reason Louisa got her job near the start of the book was because she was hired over the telephone and her new employer couldn't tell the colour of her skin from her posh English accent. And even better than just having these characters with similar problems in the book is that they all recognised the similarities in each other, which I really appreciated.

The point of view in The Enigma Game is split fairly evenly between Louisa, Ellen and Jamie, the pilot/flight lieutenant. Jamie was a minor character in Code Name Verity and appeared in The Pearl Thief, and Ellen was a minor character in the latter. But all the books stand alone and you don't have to have read any of the others to enjoy The Enigma Game. In fact, since The Enigma Game is set before Code Name Verity, most of the time I was reading, I was dreading/anticipating a crucial event that's mentioned in passing in Code Name Verity. But unlike some prequels which lose tension through predictability, Wein maintained a tense atmosphere throughout basically all the flights we saw the squadron undertake. Especially the climactic part near the end. One bit was so ridiculously tragic that I just knew it had to be based on something that really happened (and the afterword confirmed that it was).  A lot of the book is upbeat and there are even some funny bits, but Wein sure knows how to punch a reader in the feels.

I highly recommend The Enigma Game if you enjoyed any of Wein's other WWII books. If you haven't read them but the description and premise sound appealing, then you can absolutely jump right in with this one. And if you do and enjoy it, there are several more books waiting for you! Sucker for punishment that I am, I hope we get more books set in this "world".

5 / 5 stars

First published: May 2020, Bloomsbury / Little, Brown Books
Series: Code Name Verity series. Set between The Pearl Thief and Code Name Verity.
Format read: ePub
Source: Purchased from Kobo

False Hearts by Laura Lam

False Hearts by Laura Lam is the first science fiction novel from the author that brought us the Micah Grey fantasy YA trilogy, which started with Pantomime. In further contrast with her earlier books, False Hearts is also not YA. (I would be fine giving in to a teen to read, however — I certainly read "worse" in my teens.)

One night Tila stumbles home, terrified and covered in blood.

She’s arrested for murder, the first by a civilian in decades. The San Francisco police suspect involvement with Verve, a powerful drug, and offer her twin sister Taema a chilling deal. Taema must assume Tila’s identity and gather information – then if she brings down the drug syndicate, the police may let her sister live. But Taema’s investigation raises ghosts from the twins’ past.

The sisters were raised by a cult, which banned modern medicine. But as conjoined twins, they needed surgery to divide their shared heart – and escaped. Taema now finds Tila discovered links between the cult and the city’s underground. Once unable to keep secrets, the sisters will discover the true cost of lies.

This is a moderately dark book although this is not because of a dystopian setting. At least, not what I would call a straightforward dystopian setting. It's more of a utopia gone slightly awry. The government seems a little bit questionable, but it's mainly the obvious bad guys — drug cartel, cult leader — who are up to no good. Since the story deals directly with these people, it's falls firmly on the darker side of neutral.

I enjoyed this book, which was told from the points of view of both formerly conjoined twins. I think of Taema as the main character and the central story follows her as she tries to work out what happened to her sister and why Taking on her sister's identity and going undercover forces her to question who she is and what her limits really are, which is an interesting journey for the readers to follow her on. Meanwhile, Tila writes about the twins' youth in the cult of the Hearth and their escape to San Francisco.

Overall, this book is a science fiction thriller and I think it would make an excellent movie. Taema's encounters with the drug cartel are exciting, dangerous and drive the story forward. Meanwhile, the twins' origin story has both happy and sinister moments. Get on it, Hollywood.

I recommend False Hearts to fans of science fiction, especially near-future science fiction. Readers of thrillers will hopefully also enjoy it. There is another book, Shattered Minds, set in the same world but with different protagonists, which I am now keen to read when I can find time in my reading schedule.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: 2016, Macmillan
Series: Sort of? There is another standalone novel set in the same world
Format read: ePub on Kobo
Source: Purchased from Kobo store

This Is Where It Ends by Marieke Nijkamp

This Is Where It Ends by Marieke Nijkamp is a YA novel about a high school shooting. The whole book, except for a brief epilogue, takes place over the span of less than an hour. That should give you an idea of what sort of book this is.

10:00 a.m.
The principal of Opportunity, Alabama's high school finishes her speech, welcoming the entire student body to a new semester and encouraging them to excel and achieve.

10:02 a.m.
The students get up to leave the auditorium for their next class.

10:03
The auditorium doors won't open.

10:05
Someone starts shooting.

Told over the span of 54 harrowing minutes from four different perspectives, terror reigns as one student's calculated revenge turns into the ultimate game of survival.

This was exactly the kind of book I expected it to be. I was concerned I would be forced to read it in a single sitting, sacrificing sleep, but I managed to spread it out over two. (And only because I had to get up early, really.) The tension and horror of the situation is deftly maintained throughout the book.

There are four point of view characters in This Is Where It Ends, all students who were in different places when the shooting started and who have interesting back-stories that tie in with the events. There's the two girls — girlfriends — who are in the auditorium with most of the students and teachers, there's the track team who were exempt from assembly to train, and the two students who had been sent to the principal's office. Each point of view character has some sort of additional connection to the shooter, beyond just being schoolmates. There's the sister, the ex-girfriend, the nemesis, the (other sort of) victim. And they all have other people in the auditorium to fear for. As well as documenting the fifty-four minutes of the main story, we also have a sizeable amount of back-story delivered in flashbacks and memories to flesh-out the characters, making the reader care about them and fear for their lives.

Between chapters there were a few tweets and blog posts from people at and connected to the school, desperate to find out what's happening. Those were probably my least favourite element of the book. They added a small amount of extra sympathy for minor characters, but I didn't feel they brought that much to the story. I didn't hate them either, just meh.

Obviously, this book is a bit on the violent side. People die. People are injured. People watch other people get shot. If you don't want to read about gun violence, for whatever reason, then this probably isn't the book for you. If you are after a tense thriller then I highly recommend This Is Where It Ends.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: January 2016, Sourcebooks
Series: No
Format read: eARC
Source: Publisher via NetGalley