I’m sharing another instalment of my Mini Review Mondays and this is the first one of 2024! In case you haven’t seen any of my previous posts, I do ‘mini’ reviews of books that I’ve previously read and am now ready to share my full thoughts about. You can check out my last Mini Review Monday here.
First up, I’d like to talk about Didn’t See That Coming by Jesse Q Sutanto. Thank you to Electric Monkey and Rachel Quin for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review.
Seventeen-year-old Kiki Siregar is a fabulous gamer girl with confidence to boot. She can’t help but be totally herself… except when she’s online.
Her secret? She plays anonymously as a guy to avoid harassment from other male players. Even her online best friend—a cinnamon roll of a teen boy who plays under the username Sourdawg—doesn’t know her true identity. Which is fine, because Kiki doesn’t know his real name either, and it’s not like they’re ever going to cross paths IRL.
Until she transfers to an elite private school for her senior year and discovers that Sourdawg goes there, too.
But who is he? How will he react when he finds out Kiki’s secret? And what happens when Kiki realizes she’s falling for her online BFF?
Publication Date: 7th December 2023
TW: sexism, sexual harassment, rape threats, death threats, misogyny, bullying, gaslighting, classism
My Thoughts:
Didn’t See That Coming was a burst of sunshine into my life, though it also had an impactful examination of sexism, particularly in ‘purity’ and ‘respect’ cultures and the gaming world.
Going into this, I knew Sutanto had excellent characterisation and writing that hooks its teeth into me from reading I’m Not Done With You Yet, one of her thrillers. This was her first contemporary romance that I picked up and let me tell you, I immediately reserved most of her other works from my local library after reading. Her use of narrative voice is just fantastic – creating these voices that just stick with you and these lovable, three-dimensional characters at the forefront of it all. Kiki was fantastic and I was so hurt for her as she experienced this awful harassment in the gaming space, which translated to bullying by her peers within school. The two spaces mirrored each other well with some interesting and thought-provoking commentary on gendered expectations and the impact of relentless and unchallenged sexism. Sutanto fills the pages with rage and love in equal measure, providing us with a message seared into your heart.
Going into this, I didn’t realise it was the second book within the same character group. It works perfectly well as a standalone but I’ll be picking up the first book to get even more time with these wonderful characters. The chemistry was so well built up and the dialogue flowed with such a natural flair and charisma. I was rooting for these two to see through the obvious and become the cute couple they were destined to be. Their relationship grows naturally and of course encounters more than a few difficulties. They are those classic tropes of unreciprocated love, crushing and friends to lovers meshed into one deliciously sweet story.
Didn’t See That Coming was everything I wanted and more from a contemporary YA romance novel.
Next up, I’d like to talk about True Crime by Georgina Lees. Thank you to One More Chapter for sending me an eARC in exchange for an honest review.
A missing girl. An angry mother. A true crime documentary.
Ten years ago, Katy, a promising young journalist, left her desk and was never seen again.
Someone knows what happened to her…
The controlling boyfriend? The inappropriate professor? The clingy colleague?
When Katy went missing, it wasn’t just her devastated mother, Grace, whose life was ruined. Now, a new documentary delving into the missing person case threatens to open old wounds.
As Grace gets closer to the truth, she discovers just how far people are willing to go to keep the past hidden.
Publication Date: 1st February
TW: murder, death, disappearance, grief, sexual assault, rape, kidnapping
My Thoughts:
True Crime was a compulsive read – keeping me up until the early hours racing through the pages to uncover every last secret.
Lees fills the book to the brim with twists, red herrings and clues to bring it all to an explosive conclusion. The atmosphere and pacing is off the charts. This is massively assisted by the use of the true crime show. The episodes give it a sense of counting down, with the tension rising as the episodes and the pages start to run out. I loved the use of multi-media formats to tell this story with the television show transcripts mixed into the narration. It adds a perspective outside of Grace’s which is important as you get so wrapped up in her head. She is a brilliant protagonist though, consumed by grief and guilt. The mystery of what truly happened that night dominates her life with consequences that are far reaching and unexpected.
This narrative device of the true crime documentary also exposes a grimy side to proceedings. I loved the throughline of the exploitative side of the true crime industry. It is all about, ironically, creating a story and the most attention-grabbing story at that. Very little empathy is shown for the victim and the impact the case still has on those who knew Katy, even those who were casted in a negative light. It shows those rippling ramifications and uproots deeply buried secrets. The contrast of the producers from the initial meeting with Grace to their eventual response is so well done. At the end of the day, her daughter is just the latest in a long line of products for them – stories to grab the headlines and social media trends until the next comes along.
True Crime is an emotive, explosive examination of the exploitation of real people in the name of shock value and stories to hook an audience and feed the true crime industry.
A Short Book Lover 
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