The Murder Complex by Lindsay Cummings

Title: The Murder Complex
Author: Lindsay Cummings
Rating: 2 stars

Cover: 

Synopsis: An action-packed, blood-soaked, futuristic debut thriller set in a world where the murder rate is higher than the birthrate. For fans of Moira Young’s Dust Lands series, La Femme Nikita, and the movie Hanna.

Meadow Woodson, a fifteen-year-old girl who has been trained by her father to fight, to kill, and to survive in any situation, lives with her family on a houseboat in Florida. The state is controlled by The Murder Complex, an organization that tracks the population with precision.

The plot starts to thicken when Meadow meets Zephyr James, who is—although he doesn’t know it—one of the MC’s programmed assassins. Is their meeting a coincidence? Destiny? Or part of a terrifying strategy? And will Zephyr keep Meadow from discovering the haunting truth about her family?

Action-packed, blood-soaked, and chilling, this is a dark and compelling debut novel by Lindsay Cummings.

~~~~~~~~~~

In response to the above synopsis...

 You promised me bad ass. You promised me two broken kids on the run surviving from a tyrannical government who has them trapped in a game which they cannot win.

What did I get?

A forgettable male protagonist and a female protagonist who promised to be interesting until about 25% of the way through. A pathetic and confusing storyline, an uninteresting writing style that constantly had me skipping paragraphs, and then going back and reading them just in case--oh, wait, what happened?

Oh, and an absolutely appalling case of insta-love. *gags*

       My synopsis: A young woman, Meadow, has been raised by her father to be merciless and do whatever it takes to survive. A young man, Zephyr, has spent his life picking up dead bodies with his best friend and dreaming of a 'moonlit girl.' (We'll get back to that little bit later) They meet, after spending they're entire lives prior to this point completely separate, multiple times on mere coincidence. One of the times he takes her out walking, where he introduces the new and adrenaline inducing activity of swinging, where they have a lovely conversation and then...he tries to kill her.

You said it, Dean. 

Of course, after seventeen years of living the way Meadow has-in harsh conditions and struggling to survive, not to mention the training to kill in order to stay alive-she just can't bring herself to kill him. Because they shared some truly sensational and memorable moments beforehand. 

From there, our delectable duo embarks on a wondrous journey of chance encounters and action packed close-calls that had nothing to do with the plot line. Wait, what was the plot again? 

Let me think...a girl and a guy running from...the government? Pirates? To...? And what was that about her mom? And her siblings? What's a Murder Complex? Oh, it's mind control. But Zephyr a special Murder Complex baby, I see... Meadow's mom made them...wait, why? I thought she just made drugs? How did they get okay-ed if they sucked? Her mom's alive, and she's evil...and Meadow is the root of it all and that's why the freaking Murder Complex's baby would want to kill her, even though it's existence relies on her survival. Right.

And this desolate new world with random dead people and a tyrannical government rose up in...how many years? Twenty? I could be wrong...

This book was very confusing, and had numerous action scenes and little bits of information that had nothing to do with the rest of the book. There was one scene where they were in a graveyard and a whole bunch of scary people came out to scavenge at night like junk vampires or something. They never had another appearance or even a mention. The only thing they did was just take up pages and cause...what? Fear? Confusion? I don't even know.

The characters.

Meadow. Would've been a decent character had she not fallen apart every time she saw Zephyr, her mother, or anything else that was meant to tug on your heartstrings but ended up just annoying you. Wishy washy with her actions and thoughts, and way, way to many coincidental things happened around her.

Zephyr. He was more feminine than Meadow. His entire character reminded me of a girl on her period, only constantly that level of sad and so, so sweet. He was adorable and nice and completely and utterly forgettable. He was such a hardcore killer who lived a horrible life of shoveling bodies and had dreams of his freaking moonlit girl. His life revolved over this stupid dream he has of his moonlit girl. (Meadow, duh. We all know that.) He couldn't have dreamed of a metaphor, the way Juliette did in Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi. No, he actually had dreams about her, and when he saw her face in person, his life suddenly had a purpose. And then, of course, he tries to kill her. But not on purpose.

Shame he didn't succeed, really. That would have shortened the book considerably.

 

 Meadow's family. Her brother was only there to show how much he sucked and how everyone should be jealous of Meadow's abilities and 'oh, all that wasted potential because you didn't kill him when you had the chance, even though your heart knows it was the right decision.' Her sister was leverage. Her dad would not be winning Dad of the Year, he constantly put his children in danger, despite 'loving them oh so much and he could never loose them.'

Peh.

Meadow's mother was annoying. She wasn't even a good bad guy, or a good good guy in the beginning. She was just annoying.

Wouldn't recommend it, it didn't do anything any other YA dystopian didn't already.

xxAvalon

Dear Killer by Katherine Ewell

Title: Dear Killer
Author: Katherine Ewell
Rating: 4 stars

Synopsis: Rule One—Nothing is right, nothing is wrong.
Rule Two—Be careful.
Rule Three—Fight using your legs whenever possible, because they’re the strongest part of your body. Your arms are the weakest.
Rule Four—Hit to kill. The first blow should be the last, if at all possible.
Rule Five—The letters are the law.

Kit takes her role as London’s notorious “Perfect Killer” seriously. The letters and cash that come to her via a secret mailbox are not a game; choosing who to kill is not an impulse decision. Every letter she receives begins with “Dear Killer,” and every time Kit murders, she leaves a letter with the dead body. Her moral nihilism and thus her murders are a way of life—the only way of life she has ever known.

But when a letter appears in the mailbox that will have the power to topple Kit’s convictions as perfectly as she commits her murders, she must make a decision: follow the only rules she has ever known, or challenge Rule One, and go from there.

Katherine Ewell’s Dear Killer is a sinister psychological thriller that explores the thin line between good and evil, and the messiness of that inevitable moment when life contradicts everything you believe.

Cover: 

Review:

Our protagonist, Kit, is a seventeen year old serial killer. She learned from her mother, who is quite crazy, and she receives requests for kills from a hole in a bathroom stall at a little coffee shop.

But, unlike most serial killers, she's not insane. She kills 'as a consequence of the way I was raised.' 

  

At least, she doesn't think she's insane.

Kit has several very honest character traits, which she is not honest about. She loves gloating. She loves the fact that she can dance around these police officers and give them every clue they need--and still have them utterly baffled. 

She is basically a narcissist. She knows she's good at what she does and she loves it because she's good at it. She tries to tell herself that she can stop at anytime, but she can't. She doesn't have anything to fall back on. She doesn't believe that she can start over, despite what she tells herself. 

She refers to her mother lovingly, despite that fact that the woman is completely bonkers. Her father is gone so much it's as if he's dead and she has no other siblings. Her mother doesn't kill anymore, due to the fact that she almost got caught. She taught Kit how to kill for closure, to know that there is some kind of 'justice' out there.

Which, of course, brings up the question: Who decides whether or not someone deserves to die? Kit's mother believed it was the people's choice, not Kit's. Kit was a means to an end. She was meant to do, not question or decide. But then, Kit begins to wonder, why can't she make the decisions? Isn't she a part of the people?

She forgets, her mother explains, that she--The Perfect Killer--is a symbol. She's not a vigilante or a hero, she's a symbol. The people need her, a disruption, to group together and form a sense of unity. Her mother reasons that Kit's persona is doing much more good than bad, as it unifies the people and breaks them out of a false sense of security.

Ewell could have done more for the psychological feel of the book. Above I highlighted the main points of Kit's crazy, but there was more that the author could have made clear to the reader. The end was also a bit disappointing, but they often are to me. Very few endings make me satisfied with the book.

All in all, for a young writer like Ewell, it was very well written and thought out. But, I don't give slack for that kind of crap, so in the end I liked it alright, but not as much as I might have if Ewell spent a little bit more time on the feel of the book. The feel, the aura, whatever, has to be set from page one or else you lose the reader's emotions. This one was a bit undecided, and right when it seemed to settle into one it swapped out.

I'd recommend it for teen readers who want a thriller to read. It's not a fluff book, and it's not humorous. Attempts at humor fell flat and awkward. It did keep the reader guessing in suspense at most parts, although there were a few very pivotal points that I could see coming from miles away.

xxAvalon