Quick Pick book review: Artemis, by Andy Weir

• Opening lines: I bounded over the gray, dusty terrain towards the huge dome of Conrad Bubble. Its airlock, ringed with red lights, stood distressingly far away.
  
  It's hard to run with a hundred kilograms of gear on - even in lunar gravity. But you'd be amazed how fast you can hustle when your life is on the line.
• Reason I picked up the book: I really enjoyed The Martian, Andy Weir's first book.
• And what's this book about?
Jazz Bashara is a criminal.

Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you're not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire. So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you've got debts to pay and your job as a porter barely covers the rent.

Everything changes when Jazz sees the chance to commit the perfect crime, with a reward too lucrative to turn down. But pulling off the impossible is just the start of her problems, as she learns that she's stepped square into a conspiracy for control of Artemis itself—and that now, her only chance at survival lies in a gambit even riskier than the first. 
• Recommended for: Anyone who enjoys books about space, science fiction, and/or action novels.
• Favorite paragraph: I plodded through the maze of aluminum corridors to my home. At least it wasn't a long walk. The whole city is only half a kilometer across.
  
  I live in Artemis, the first (and so far, only) city on the moon. It's made of five huge spheres called "bubbles." They're half underground, so Artemis looks exactly like old sci-fi books said a moon city should look: a bunch of domes. You just can't see the parts that are belowground.
• Something to know: Nothing I can think of
• What I would have changed: Nothing.
• Overall rating: 4 stars out of 5.
• Where can I find this book? Click here to purchase on Amazon.

*Disclosure: I received an e-galley of this book from NetGalley, for reviewing purposes. The opinions expressed here, however, are my own.

Book Review and GIVEAWAY: Twist of Faith, by Ellen J. Green {ends 7/2}

Guest review by: Becki Bayley

She saw his leg before she knew what she was looking at. It was straight, brown shoe still on his food. She held her breath and walked around the couch. Quinn was stretched out, his other leg at an angle. His face was turned, half in the green carpet. His lips looked bluish. Marie studied him for a full minute, the reality coming to her in pieces. She’d prayed for this, for this man to go away. But his death now opened up more questions than it answered.

Forget what you saw. It wasn’t real, she told herself as she stepped over Jack Quinn’s body. After wiping her prints off the doorknob, she headed out into the night. Get on a plane to France tomorrow. Get away from this place.
Ava Saunders has a hard time opening up to people, but luckily she has two reliable friends when the time comes that she needs help. But the help she needs may incur a few more risks than ordinary friend favors. Why did Ava’s mother have a picture of a house where two murders occurred five years ago? And what other mysteries will that house and murder lead to?

Official synopsis:

When family secrets are unearthed, a woman’s past can become a dangerous place to hide…

After the death of her adoptive mother, Ava Saunders comes upon a peculiar photograph, sealed and hidden away in a crawl space. The photo shows a shuttered, ramshackle house on top of a steep hill. On the back, a puzzling inscription: Destiny calls us.

Ava is certain that it’s a clue to her elusive past. Twenty-three years ago, she’d been found wrapped in a yellow blanket in the narthex of the Holy Saviour Catholic Church—and rescued—or so she’d been told. Her mother claimed there was no more to the story, so the questions of her abandonment were left unanswered. For Ava, now is the time to find the roots of her mother’s lies. It begins with the house itself—once the scene of a brutal double murder.

When Ava enlists the help of the two people closest to her, a police detective and her best friend, she fears that investigating her past could be a fatal mistake. Someone is following them there. And what’s been buried in Ava’s nightmares isn’t just a crime. It’s a holy conspiracy.

In Twist of Faith, there are several layers of mysteries to be solved. Will Ava be able to find more info about her biological family, after being found abandoned at a church 26 years earlier? Or is that a true story at all? Who killed the people at the house in the picture with Ava’s mother’s things? Who were the people killed? Are there more murders, and how are they linked?

To hopefully find the answers, Ava enlists the help of a detective and a paralegal at her office. They do love an interesting crime to solve, right? As more answers are discovered, they all begin to wonder who may be at risk next!

I’d give this book 3.5 out of 5 stars. I feel a few loose ends were never really tied up, and I’m not sure how some events happened, with the eventual revealed killer. While I solved the primary mystery of what crime linked some school boys (including Ava’s grandfather) together forever, the next list of questions weren’t correctly answered until the big reveal of who and why at the end of the book.

{click here to purchase}


Becki Bayley is a wife, and mother of two who has been blogging for more than 15 years at SweetlyBSquared.com. She loves reading, building her Tiny Tower and crushing all the candy.

GIVEAWAY:

Three of my lucky readers will win a copy of Twist of Faith!

Enter via the widget below. Giveaway will end on Monday, July 2nd, at 11:59pm EST, and winners will be notified via email the next day, and have 24 hours to respond, or an alternate winner(s) will be chosen.

U.S. and Canadian residents only, please.

Good luck!

Twist of Faith by Ellen J. Green