Crushed by Sara Shepard

In #13 of the illustrious Pretty Little Liars series, we get to find out Aria's new secret. We know it happened while she and Hanna were vacationing in Iceland with their boyfriends. Let me say that it. Is. Awesome.

Avert your eyes, folks who don't want to be spoiled. Aria and her boyfriend Noel were having a tiff in Iceland. She was getting in a self-righteous mood, as she does, when she met a hipster named Olaf. One thing led to another, and they were kissing in an alley. Yet another thing led to another thing, and they were stealing a Van Gogh from a villa. I'll just let that absorb for a minute. Olaf played hipster chicken with Aria, and it ended with them trying to return Nazi-stolen artwork to its Jewish owners. That is the best, most outrageous secret yet.

In the present, Spencer decides that enough is enough. They are going to find A and end the torment. The Liars gather and deduce that Alison must have had an accomplice, who must be A. Their suspects are Grant (Tabitha's boyfriend who got all blown up on the eco cruise last book), Iris (Ali's roommate at the asylum), Jason (Ali's brother, not important because he is never mentioned again), and Noel Kahn (Aria's boyfriend, who suddenly became incredibly precious to me when I knew these girls were going to get him murdered).

The girls split up to investigate. Hanna takes back her old volunteering gig at the burn clinic to keep tabs on poor Grant. Emily visits Iris...and ends up breaking her out and helping her with her bucket list of stealing, skinny dipping, and stalking. Aria reluctantly agrees to investigate Noel, but she does so with a heavy heart. Everything she finds makes him look more and more guilty. Spencer goes for Alison herself, contacting the creator of a conspiracy website that claims Alison might still be alive.

The other story is that it's Prom time! Hanna is nominated for Prom Queen, against a formerly unglamorous classmate. Unfortunately, she can't campaign or A will reveal her secrets about Tabitha and Iceland. Spencer's boyfriend, Reefer, wins some elite internship in South America and he breaks up with her, leaving her to attend prom alone in her fancy designer dress. Fortunately, she hits it off with the conspiracy website guy and ends up taking him to the dance. Aria goes with Noel, but things get tense.

There is a constant pattern in these books wherein someone seems suspicious, the Liars suspect that they are A, there is a confrontation, then the suspect ends up dead. I was pretty devastated when they started to suspect Noel (As I already said). Some huge stuff happens in this book, definitely. I really, really need to know what happens next, as there was a huge cliffhanger. Book #14 is also supposed to be the FINAL book, for real this time. I'm very excited for that, the continuation and the ending.

Don't Turn Around by Michelle Gagnon

In the strain of my last couple books, by which I mean the main characters waking up in strange circumstances. In Don't Turn Around, Noa wakes up surrounded by bright lights and connected to a series of tubes. She doesn't know what they did to her, but she has to escape.

Noa is a bit of a lost child, having escaped from the foster care system using her mad hacking skills to forge documents of fake foster parents. This mini Lisbeth Salander is one of the biggest participants in Alliance, a website where hackers work together to bust down firewalls and punish big evil companies.

Meanwhile, Peter is the teenaged son of a wealthy family. Peter runs the Alliance website, seemingly as a form of rebellion against his father, a big fancy person at a powerful medical company. When home alone one night, he decides to hack into his father's company website. Soon after, a group of company thugs break down the door and take his computer and phone. He doesn't know the full story, but he sees that they are trying to protect something called Project Persephone.

Peter and Noa are already tied through Alliance, and Peter asks Noa to check into the files of Project Persephone, where she finds one with her name. Soon, they are both on the run, as they try to find the truth and the goons try everything in their power to stop them and recapture Noa.

I will admit here and now that I am terrible with computers. I prefer to think of anything having to do with them as magic on the Harry Potter end and therefore something unattainable to a muggle like me. So, the hacking stuff went right over my head. Don't Turn Around still offers a thrilling story, full of lots of suspense and action. It's a breath of fresh air in a genre full of dystopian thrillers and paranormal romances (Not that I don't love those too, it's just nice for some variety).

I received my copy of Don't Turn Around from Edelweiss, courtesy of HarperCollins. It is available for purchase now.

Dark Inside by Jeyn Roberts

For a book that starts out with so much action, I have a great admiration for Dark Inside. The chapters are narrated by four different characters, and they are all fleshed out people. You actually care about the characters and want them to survive.

We start out with an earthquake. It shakes something loose inside certain people. They snap, and they start murdering other human beings. Don't worry, this isn't any zombie infection. Nobody will eat you, they just want to bash in your skull or tear you apart, piece by piece.

Our four characters start out separate but end up in the same place. Mason was pulled out of school early because his mother was in a car accident. Soon after, someone set off a series of bombs and killed off his classmates. Aries was on a bus that overturned, killing her best friend and wounding most of the people inside. A mysterious stranger named Daniel helps her get to safety, but he seems to know more about what's going on than he should. Michael witnesses a case of road rage gone horribly wrong, then sees the police shoot the perpetrator. Clementine is attending a normal town meeting when some of the citizens show up with guns. Her mother makes her leave the room, right before these people she has known her whole life start to open fire on the crowd.

Dark Inside was full of action and suspense, though it was occasionally a little too graphic for my taste. Again, I enjoyed getting to know the characters instead of just having them shoved at me. It's also interesting to read about the parts of a post-apocalyptic type novel that you don't usually get. The characters don't have any electricity or running water, so they end up eating lots of junk food and they end up greasy and dirty. The author, Jeyn Roberts, has a degree in psychology, which seems interesting given the subject matter. Some chapters are narrated by Nothing, which seems to be humans who have changed. It might just be in my head, but I attribute the character development and the insights into "the enemy" to the author's psychology background. It all sounds like it comes from someone who knows people fairly well.

I received my copy of Dark Inside from Simon & Schuster Galley Grab. It's available now.

Spooky Little Girl by Laurie Notaro

Lucy's life has gone from bad to worse to worst. She returns home from an indulgent vacation to Hawaii to find all her belongings on the lawn. She even has to fight a homeless woman for her wedding dress. Her (now former) fiance, Martin, refuses to speak to her in order to clarify the situation. At work, events conspire involving a neglected deposit and a positive drug test. Long story short, Lucy gets fired. Without a job, home, or fiance, Lucy decides to start fresh and move in with her sister Alice. On the first day of her new life, Lucy is on the way to the unemployment office when she steps in front of a bus...and Lucy dies.

She ends up in a class with other Sudden Deaths, learning the finer points of haunting. The point of the classes is to teach them to navigate as a ghost so that they can fulfill their mission and move on to the next level. Lucy is assigned to the house she used to share with Martin. He now lives with Nola, a horrible woman with whom Lucy used to work. Nola has taken over Lucy's life and is afraid that Lucy will return one day and take everything away. Everyone, Martin, Nola, and her best friends Marianne and Jilly all think she is going to return because they don't actually know she's dead.

Lucy decides that her mission must be to scare Nola away. Along the way, she has to deal with her feisty grandmother, mysterious lumps on her poor aging dog, and a seance and possible trip to the dreaded white light. The book hooked me from the beginning, as I wanted to know why Martin kicked Lucy out. As it went along, I was as sad as Lucy that nobody came to her funeral, and was waiting for what seemed like forever for any of her friends to find out that she was dead.

I was a little nervous about reading this book because things related to dying give me panic attacks (See my nearly unwatched box set of "Dead Like Me" for evidence). Spooky Little Girl actually made me a little less afraid of dying. That's a pretty good thing in my book.