Goodbye Days Playlist

Welcome to your second stop on the Goodbye Days tour! Yes, it's my stop today! And am thrilled to be involved (The Serpent King was a gripping debut and I can't wait for you guys to get involved in this book!).

ANYWAY, If you are not aware of what Goodbye Days is about, a quick overview (keeping spoilers to a min, of course). As Carver waited for his three friends to pick him up to go for a drive, he sends a text. The next thing he knows, their car has crashed, all of his friends are dead and there are people - himself included - who blame him for their deaths. If only he didn't send that text...

Then, one of his friends's grandmother ask Carver to take part in a "goodbye day" together, doing things that his friend loved. Soon, the other families want to hold goodbye days. But not everyone wants to forgive and with Carver's own grief and despair threatening to drown him, are these goodbye days helping people cope or doing more harm than good?

As you know with this tour, Jeff Zenter is giving us each a song from his Goodbye Days playlist and a tiny write-up on why this song is important. In exchange, we were asked to write our thoughts on the book or what we would do if we spent a goodbye day with a loved one.

Before I show you today's music choice, I would just like to say thank you to Jeff for finding time to writing this and making me discover a new song (always on the hunt for new music) and for Harriet at Andersen Press for asking if I wanted to be involved in this tour!

Tomorrow's stop is at Chouett.com so check that out! And now, over to Jeff (and myself!)

Book Review - The Serpent King

You can blame Ryan at Empire of Books for making me read this. No, that's a lie. I was curious over this book but when I saw it on NetGalley, I asked if anyone else had read it and Ryan was so positive over this book, I requested it purely on his energy on this book (his review for The Serpent King is here). If you're on Twitter, go give him a hug.

Set in the deep South of the USA, Dill's father is the prison for an unspeakable crime and with everything and everyone judging him over it, Dill finds comfort in his friends, Lydia and Travis. Travis who is obsessed with the Bloodfall series and Lydia who is planning to leave for New York as soon as she can. Dill fears if she leaves, the darkness within his family will consume him completely.

But Dill's not the only one with worries. Lydia is worried about her friends once she leaves and Travis is hiding a secret about his family. All three need to confront their demons, but will they have the strength to do it?

Even though this sounds and looks like an urban fantasy novel, it is very much a contemporary coming of age novel and this is a strong debut. I love the writing style that Jeff showed - and to discover he is a songwriter, the lyrical style makes sense. There are some sentences and paragraphs that were just glorious! Plus, this book felt Southern. When you read a book that is set in Southern USA, I always find it discover feel right. It feels off somehow. But with Serpent King, it felt just right. The way characters acted, spoke about religion, and (from some characters), the narrow-mindedness and the landscape. It felt right, somehow.

With chapters changing POV between Dill, Lydia and Travis, it was good to see each character and fall in love with each of them separately and together. Each has their story and, because the writing was solid, I felt bored with any character and their stories. Which, in one or two cases, was parents who believed that if their lives after bad, so must their kids - yeah, there were times I got angry at the parents.

Religion is a part of this story and, as someone who isn't very religious, I did worry that it might be overwhelming and possibly forced down my throat. And while it is there and it didn't feel overwhelming.

Some people will feel that this book is predictable but I was sucked into this to noticed. This is one strong debut and I can't wait to read the next book from this author (and to annoy him over maybe getting a Bloodfall novella...)

I will leave this review with a quote that ran throughout the book, spoken by Dolly Parton: "If you don't like the road you're walking, start paving another one."