NetGalley ARC | The Business Trip

I received a digital ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Rating: negative infinity stars

Absolute dumbest, most illogical fucking book I have ever read. In fact, it is number one on my list of super shitty books I wasted time on in 2024. You can find that whole list HERE.

Stephanie and Jasmine are two women who don't know each other but board the same flight for different reasons. Stephanie is on a work trip and Jasmine is escaping from her abusive douchebag boyfriend. Pretty soon crazy texts are flying everywhere to all these other pointless characters, then nothing. Complete radio silence. But both women mentioned a man named Trent McCarthy to those pointless other characters and he becomes the focus in their disappearances.

On the surface, this book seems like something I LOVE. But it was all a trick because this book was SO, SO, SO bad. Like, truly a contender for one of the worst books I've ever read.

Here is my initial reaction on Goodreads, followed by an edit when someone commented about the checking-in-to-the-hotel thing. I was so mad, I didn't even care about capitalization, punctuation, or grammar:

"Absolute dumbest fucking book I've ever read in my life. Completely would never happen in a million years because everything just manages to work out so perfectly for jasmine. the whole way through. ***So she just is able to check in to the same hotel toom that 'Stephanie' has already checked into? That's not how check-ins work and it would show in the system that Stephanie had already checked in.*** And jasmine's not even an unreliable narrator, because everything is just so stupid. A million useless points of view, all telling and no showing. Absolutely awful writing, sounded like high schoolers talking instead of adult 40 yr old women. Easily one of the worst books of 2024. From about 40% in I was hate-reading, just to see how stupid it would get. Spoiler: it got reeeeeeal stupid, illogical, predictable, and more stupid.

***EDIT: Apprently she just used Stephanie's ID to get into the room. At that point I was already skimming because it was so bad. But, gien how terrible the rest of the book was, it made sense from my skimming that the author would do something so stupid. God, this book was awful."

Ugh. So, so bad.

As for the hotel check-in thing, I honestly can't remember the scene exactly. But Jasmine swiped Stephanie's credit card and ID on the plane. So even if I misremembered, how was Stephanie able to check into her hotel? How did she not notice those things were missing?

Jasmine is AWFUL. We are supposed to feel sorry for her because she is supposedly stuck in this abusive relationship with her dumbass boyfriend, Glenn. There is no single reason to root for her, because she can apparently murder people withouta second thought, but couldn't manage to come up with a way to just kill Glenn and make it look like an accident? She could have done that in the year it took her to save up money to escape. All the framing and murdering was way more work, and he was the only person in the book who might have actually deserved to be killed. This book would've been a lot shorter, maybe even never unleashed on the public.

Along the way we find out she killed a girl in high school and framed the boyfriend. Being rich as a reason to be murdered will come up more than once in this stupid book.

She frames Trent in the present. AND murders Stehanie to steal her identity and justifies it by basically saying that Stephanie has a lot of money and has probably lived a decent life. But THEN also has the nerve to call herself a champion of women? What in the actual fuck?

I think another reason I am so mad about this stupid book is that it started out strong. I was engaged in the story, until all the different POVs started popping up. So many were unnecessary. And then Jasmine retells the same thing, from her POV. Essentially you read the same thing twice, but the second time Jasmine explains why it's okay for her to murder people who she thinks have it coming because they had the audacity to be rich.

Trent, the guy Jasmine choses to take the fall for her, was also seriously awful, in a different way. It felt like his disgusting behaviors were exaggerated so greatly, so that no one would feel bad when he was accused. He was seriously a charicature of the worst type of narcissistic frat-boy mentality type of guy.

The so-called plot twists are not actually plot twists, because they make absolutely no sense whatsoever. There have to be clues, for it to truly be a good twist. But here it was just Jasmine jumping from one perfect set-up to another and everything working out magically for her almost the entire time.

In the end, there is not even any good, logical reason for Jasmine to steal Stephanie's identity. She escaped the moment she was on that flight. She could have stayed in Denver and started over. Do we really believe Glenn was going to come looking for her? And how would he even be able to do that? Again, a much shorter book, or the possibility of it not existing at all.

And yet, here we are.

Awful. Do not recommend.

The Day Sonny Died

I received a copy of this book from M. Simone Boyd, without expectation of a review of any kind. All thoughts are my own.

Rating: 5 Stars

Whew. Be patient with me, this is a tough one. For many reasons.

I came across this book because of Remembrancy, a blog I became familiar with due to our participation in First Line Friday hosted by Hoarding Books. The book summary really resonated with me because of my job, and due to my interest I was offered a copy by the author, M. Simone Boyd (who actually co-authored the book with her father). For those who do not know, I am a Special Education teacher at a Title 1 school in a fairly tough part of the city. Specifically, I teach in a behavior classroom, so all of my students are diagnosed with emotional disturbances/ADHD/ODD/SLD, and a whole slew of other acronyms that you don't really need to know in order to understand that my job is hard. And I mean, HARD. Every day I am asked to perform miracles and a lot of times I fail. I love my job and I love my students, many of whom could relate to Sonny, and who some I fear will BECOME him. I have to look into the eyes of these babies (who are not really babies, they are third, fourth, and fifth graders) and prepare them for a world that will not always understand them or be kind to them, or give them chance after chance after chance. I have to make them understand why we have to get the anger under control, why we have to learn to count to 10, to walk away, to breathe deep, to not argue in the 'wrong way' even when something is unfair and their anger is justified. On top of that, I also have to teach all my students reading, math, writing, social studies and science. They run the spectrum of reading levels, from Kindergarten to 5th grade, despite them all physically being 3rd/4th/5th graders. I have students who have never left the state, or even the city, students with no life experience except what it is like to take a food bag home on the weekends just to have enough to eat until Monday, or to sleep on the floor after the windows getting shot out one night. Not every student I teach survives in a world that bleak, but even the fact that one or two do should be cause for concern. One little heart hardening over situations like this should make people angry, make them stand up and say enough is enough, we are destroying our future.

Okay, so I think we can agree that this book definitely struck a nerve, right? Right.

It is not a secret that Sonny, this character who seemed to me to be a mash-up composite of so many of my students from the last six years, will die in this book. You don't know when it will happen or how, but it is a forgone conclusion that at some point, it will happen. We get to see in snippets the lives of Sonny's parents before he is born and we get to see the tragedy play out when Sonny is three and his father is murdered in front of him. It is a hard thing to read, to know that slowly but surely everyone who cared about Sonny is taken away. It makes sense in such a heartbreaking way that Sonny too, will not escape this cycle and is doomed to fall victim to the same thing that happened to his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and on and on. Throughout the book I found myself wanting to reach through the pages, grab this kid by the shoulders and give him a good shake. I wanted him to escape and to have the life that deep down he knew he was missing out on. There is an especially poignant scene for me when Sonny comes across a photo of himself at his 3rd birthday, with his mom and his dad. It is not a terribly elaborate scene, but if you really connect with the story, it will really stand out to you. His life could have been so different had so many situations gone the other way, but there is also a point where Sonny also has to take responsibility for his choices himself as he gets older. Throughout his time on earth, he was given the opportunity to grab on to hope, but he never took it. He didn't take those chances given to him and in the end, and I mean The. End., he was shown the error of his ways. I don't want to say too much more about that because I don't want to give away anything that you need to discover for yourself in reading this book. While it is filled with tragedy and heartache, the ultimate message is one of hope. I know it does not make sense based on literally everything else I have just written about but you will see it when you read this one for yourself, and I hope that you do.

Despite having my own plate full with research, reading, writing, and raising a small human, I plowed through this book in just a couple of days. Something in the story called to me, this connection I made between the book and my kiddos, and I had to see it through, as soon as possible. The ultimate story here is of God's love for us and the options He presents to us so we can live out our purpose - which because of our free will, we can choose to accept or reject. Sonny used his free will to reject that love, though I don't actually think he fully understood what he was rejecting. On the other hand, he had so many opportunities, and he chose not to act.

In the end, I highly recommend this one. When and if you get the chance to read it, I would love to know your thoughts.