The Cortlandt Boys by Laura Vanderkam

Book Blurb (from Goodreads):
A small town high school basketball team wins the Pennsylvania state championship with an improbable last second three point shot. The Cortlandt Cavaliers celebrate their unlikely victory, but good fortune changes the boys’ worlds in unpredictable ways. This story revisits the characters 10 and 20 years later as the ramifications of their youthful success play out over the course of their lives, forever linking them and the people around them to this little town that has its ways of not quite letting you go.








My Review
***I received the eBook free as a review copy from the author/publisher in exchange for an honest review***

Wow, I really didn't expect this book to be this awesome.
OK, so the basic plot of the book: in a very small town, where everybody knows each other. During winter time, the basketball championship was going on.  The Cortlandt basketball team called the Cortlandt Cavaliers made it into the finals and had to play against the Harrison Warriors. It was a close game and the Warriors were in the lead. Then, miraculously, the Cavaliers made a last second three-point shot and they won by one point. Then all the boys in the team were known as the Cortlandt Boys. The story is talking about how the boys evolved after having wonn the basketball championship.
The book is divided into four different parts. The first part is the prologue told by Max, in 1993-1994. The next part is ten years later in 2003-2004 again told by Max. Part three is told by Janie in year 2013-2014. The epilogue is told in Janie's perspective in year 2014.
I really liked Max's perspective. I don't know why, but I felt a kind of connection to Max, which I didn't feel towards Janie. I think this is because I liked the plot more during the first half of the book because there was more mystery and you kept on wondering what the meaning of the actions of the characters were. I also liked Max's personality. She is very curious, active, ready to help, cheerful and generally has a positive attitude. She looks towards the future, wanting to do something with her life, in comparison with the Cortlandt Boys, KC, Lawrence, James, Mickey and Leroy. They seemed to be stuck in the moment of their victory and they didn't really seem to care what they do with their lives. When Max came back to Cortlandt, I felt sorry for the boys and also a bit nostalgic when Max described Cortlandt as timeless.
The writing style also somehow made me want to continue tearing through the book. You instantly had a connection to the characters and the book.
I was a bit confused at the beginning though because there were so many characters introduced at once because there wasn't any world building needed, that I had to check many times to refresh my mind who was who but I got to know all of them well enough later on. I also didn't know any basketball terminology, but I slowly got the hang of it.
I really loved this book, it is definitely worth reading. I give it 4 out of 5 stars!

The Murder Complex (The Murder Complex #1) by Lindsay Cummings

Book Blurb (From Goodreads) 
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?

My review: 

This book has been on my goodreads to-read list for such a long time that I just had to read it. It took me 3 days to finish it, and to be honest I didn't even realize how far I was into the book until I finished it. It was a really quick and exciting read. 

The plot was fast paced from start to finish. It was a tiny bit confusing at the beginning because it was hard to see what everyone's true intentions were. Nobody was who they seemed in this book, not even Meadow or Zephyr. The action in this book was well spread out, meaning that we never got a boring chapter. When there was not action we were getting important information to move the plot along. There was a great plot twist at the end which I love and that ending just kills you in a good but also really bad way. Cliffhanger. I cried so many times in this book. I can't explain how fast a read this book is, you really just have to experience it yourself to understand. 

The characters in this book felt so realistic. Meadow, to me, was easy to relate to. She was always trying to act so strong that I think that she sometimes forgot that he was human too. The parts of the book where she broke down were both touching and heartbreaking. Throughout the book you could see how dedicated to her family she is. She would die for them and almost does on countless occasions. At the beginning of the book she was so desperate to impress her Farther, although as the book progressed you could see her becoming even more independent and moving away from that need to impress him. Zephyr was a completely different story to Meadow. I don't think that he knew how to hide his feelings. You could see that he was so broken inside because of the people that he was forced to murder. He tried to be strong around other people but he was not fooling anyone. He was a strong, almost fatherly, role-model for Talan. Although I do think that sometimes he needed Talan more than anything to hold himself together. If it were not for Talan I think that he probably would of died years ago. It is, in my opinion, thanks to her that we got to see him throughout the book in one piece. The relationship between Meadow and Zephyr sometimes did feel a little rushed and at times forced. It took them 5 pages after they met to fall in love, two pages after that to hate each other but after that it felt well paced. 

Finally is seriously enjoyed this book and I give it 5 out of 5 stars: