Ive recently finished SOMEONE IS ALWAYS WATCHING by Kelly Armstrong. (This will obviously contain spoilers)

After reading other peoples reviews I have to say I am a little shocked at how no one seems to mention the ending and how rushed and unfulfilled it is. This book follows a teen girl named Blythe and her group of childhood friends. As the mystery unfolds so to do their memories. Its an amazing read but I find it to be lacking when it comes to the end. Tanya is the sister of the main love interest Tucker. Theres a scene where Tanya appears out of absolutely nowhere and when Devin (one of their peers) asks where she came from, the question goes unanswered. The end of the book is very abrupt and yes its cute, Tucker and Blythe talk about their future after the trauma settles but seriously its so unrealistic how much trauma these people have gone through for them to take a leisurely night swim. I was so into this book I seriously could not put it down so imagine my disappointment when I realized I was somehow at the last page with questions still unanswered. Who was the one tampering with their memories if no one supposedly knew about it? Why did Tanya not get any memories flooding in just as Gabi and Sydney had? WHERE THE HELL IS TUCKERS MOM????? I so hope theres a sequal to this book but as of now its a stand alone novel and nothing more. I would give this an 8.5/10 simply for the lackluster ending.

Currently reading The Do-Over by Lynn Painter, and I'm absolutely obsessed with the fact that Emilie's first thought when her Valentine's Day starts all over again is "oh, gee, my day is in a time loop. It must be grandma's crusty, 50-year-old pepper!"

Hey! I read Katzenjammer in one day and I loved it so so much!!! <3333 I'm planning on buying another one of your books soon! Also, I was wondering about Katzenjammer- If Cat had a cat mask because of her name, and Sissy had tentacles because she had a skin condition that reminded Cat of an octopus (I think she said this, I'm not 100% sure lol), why was Jeffrey made out of cardboard? Was there any meaning behind their changes or am I just reading too much into this??

More Katzenjammer spoilers!

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This is a great question! You're absolutely NOT reading too much into it. Each of the changed students' mutations came from a specific way they were bullied or felt insecure about themselves. For many of them it was a physical insecurity, like Sissy's tentacle, but for Jeffrey, the cardboard was a symbol of his feelings about himself related to his father leaving and his tenuous relationship with his brother.

After the meeting with Jake, Jeffrey fully turns into cardboard for this reason. He literally has trouble holding himself up on his own. He stumbles around. He's structurally unsound.

But the mutated students were just the ones who were outwardly bullied. Even the unchanged students have insecurities, and after that meeting with Jake, he himself starts to show a mutation—his black hand.

The other thing to remember is that this is Cat's purgatory, so these are her projections on these people. The unchanged students don't have mutations because she doesn't seem them as being bullied. Time doesn't have any because she sees him as almost a part of School itself, more powerful than either the changed or the unchanged. Laserbeams is the worst of the changed, not only a full ventriloquist dummy, but one that commandeers the bodies of the other changed.

Cat also had a Cat mask specifically because she remembered being shot in the face. In a way, her base identity was removed, so she could only be what everyone else in her high school knew her as.

I hope that helps! Never doubt your reading intuition.

This is one of my favorite books and this rating is probably the best one ive read. I love that you pointed out the sensless nature of the school with the sensless act of shootings

Katzenjammer by Francesca Zappia

"They're all so dark, Dad said one day, watching over my shoulder as I worked at the kitchen table. Why don't you paint things like a blue sky, or a field of flowers, or a bird flying on a breeze? Something happy that your mom can put on the fridge. She can put these on the fridge, I said. Maybe just one flower? he asked. There are no flowers where I live, I said."

Year Read: 2023

Rating: 4/5

About: Cat has been stuck in School for as long as she can remember. The hallways slowly expand and contract with School's breathing, the showers run red with blood, and the students have divided themselves into changed and unchanged. While the unchanged hide in the fortress of administration, Cat and her friends haunt the courtyard and hallways. Her best friend is turning into cardboard, and Cat's face has become a cat mask made of her own hardened flesh. There are no doors or windows in or out of School, and something is hunting them down one by one in the hallways. To escape, Cat will have to understand why they're trapped in the first place. Trigger warnings: Some triggers are listed at the end of the review because they include spoilers. Character death, guns, violence, blood/gore, dismemberment, body/eye horror, bullying, slut-shaming, vandalism.

Thoughts: Thanks to @ninja-muse for recommending this book, since I'm not sure I would have found it on my own. This is probably my favorite Francesca Zappia novel to date, and one of the best novels on this subject I've ever read (more on that after the spoilers). However, I believe it's best to go into it not knowing much more than the description provides. This book works extremely well as a slow reveal. What starts out as a mindfuck becomes slow understanding as we realize more or less alongside Cat what is happening in School, and you'd be doing yourself a disservice to read the spoilers if you plan to read this. However, it covers a number of very heavy and potentially triggering topics (and it's difficult to gush about how I think it works without giving things away), so I'll include those thoughts at the end. I can't stress it enough though. If you're not easily triggered, stop here and go read this book!

This is also one of the best examples of uncanny horror that I've read in a long time. Zappia expertly manages to capture the quality of a nightmare without sacrificing the continuity. School is creepy and semi-sentient, and the changes it brings about in half the students are a study in body horror. Perhaps even more terrifying are the parallels it draws to some very real life horrors such as bullying and, indeed, I found the flashback chapters of Cat's surfacing memories of her former life of being targeted, bullied, and slut-shamed at school more difficult to get through than the surreal scenes of hacked up bodies or bloody showers in School. Real life horror always affects me a lot more than the supernatural, and Katzenjammer does an excellent job of balancing both. The ending is cathartic and effective, and there's less of a plot twist than a sort of inevitable, dawning horror-- which is honestly the best kind.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS. TURN BACK BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE.

Remember how I said that real life horror is always worse than the supernatural or the uncanny? I stand by that statement. Zappia draws such excellent parallels to real life in her uncanny School that it's almost impossible not to realize before Cat does that the traumatic event that put them there was a school shooting. I've read a couple YA novels that handled the subject fine, but I don't think any of them capture it as well as this one. We need something like the supernatural School and the horror of bodies changing in ways we can't explain to fully grasp the senseless horror of gun violence. Killing children makes no more sense than hallways that breathe or girls who turn into their cat masks. It takes Cat the entire novel to understand the horror and absurdity of what's been done to her and to accept it-- that there are reasons but not excuses, and that we will never know all of them. I cried a little at the end, but I think the real life horror of it is too big for tears. Instead, it's a feeling that will sit with me long after I've turned the last page.