Hello! It’s new release Tuesday, which means that some of the books I read as review copies are being released out into the world for everyone to read! I want to make sure this review, as well as Inheritors are posted so I’m more caught up. As always, here is the link to click in order to support the Black Lives Matter movement in any way you can, and thank you to StarlahReads for compiling these resources.
I’ve taked briefly about BookishFirst when I reviewed the copy of Heiress for Hire I redeemed back in April. It’s a cool site that allows you to read snippets of a new book every week that is being released sometime in the next few months, write a first impression of it, enter to win it in a raffle, and rack up points so you can redeem a copy from this week’s raffle. I’ve been using the site consistently since February, and with writing reviews and first impressions, and sharing them on sites like Amazon, Goodreads, and this blog, I’ve been able to collect quite a few points. And the book I’ll be reviewing here, The Friday Cage by Andrew Diamond, was actually the first book I won through the weekly raffle! I received an electronic copy, so thank you BookishFirst and the publisher, Stolen Time Press, and I just wanted to share a few of my thoughts about the book.
Claire Chastain has recently moved back to Washington D.C. with her grandmother from New York City. She picks up a data analytics job, does good work, and doesn’t make very many friends. After hearing about the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of a childhood friend, Claire starts to notice a few things out of place – a Lincoln Continental tailing her to work, a spreadsheet that should have never made its way to her hands, a window open in her basement, mail missing out of her mailbox. It seems she’s been thrust into a dangerous game she has no interest in playing, but Claire needs to keep the upper hand in order to make things right and stay alive.
I’ll start off by saying that Claire is an incredibly unlikeable character, from start to finish. We learn a bit of her background – father ran off, mother died in a car crash, grandmother emotionally and physically abused her when she was young. I suppose it’s supposed to make you simpathize with Claire, but her actions and thoughts towards others were occassionally unnecessarily malicious. The story sometimes gives you flashbacks to the past – examples include Claire’s childhood and conversations with her grandmother, her job interview at the office in D.C, and the moment she found out about her friend Gavin’s death – and a few times I found it a bit difficult to tell the difference between the past and present. There were some definitely fast-paced moments, and I did enjoy how some little tidbits of information mentioned for a split second became very significant later in the novel. I did like how everything came together in the end, but sometimes I felt like any problem encountered was solved with little to no difficulties, which may be due to the length of the novel but it made things feel a bit unrealistic.
Overall, I’d say this was a pretty average read, and not something I normally would have picked up on my own but I’m still glad I gave it a chance. I believe some others books by Andrew Diamond, Wake Up, Wanda Wiley and Gate 76, was also featured on BookishFirst, so I might give those ones a go as well. If you’re a fan of unlikeable main characters, short reads, and perhaps a few laughable villains, I recommend checking out The Friday Cage, out July 14th, 2020 (which is today if all goes well).
Places to find The Friday Cage:
Amazon (it’s only $0.99 for Kindle)
Goodreads
Andrew Diamond’s site
Thoughts About Things 