All the Bad Apples Blog Tour: Review + Giveaway

All the Bad Apples
Author: Moïra Fowley-Doyle 
Genre: YA Contemporary/Mystery
Release Date: August 1, 2019
Publisher: Penguin

Read more about the book: Goodreads

Buy the book in the UK: Amazon | Waterstones | Google Books

Buy the book in the US: Amazon | B&N | Google Books

Other international sites: iTunes | Bookdespository | Kobo

Synopsis:

The day after the funeral all our mourning clothes hung out on the line like sleeping bats. 'This will be really embarrassing,' I kept saying to my family, 'when she shows up at the door in a week or two.'

When Deena's wild and mysterious sister Mandy disappears - presumed dead - her family are heartbroken. But Mandy has always been troubled. It's just another bad thing to happen to Deena's family. Only Deena refuses to believe it's true.

And then the letters start arriving. Letters from Mandy, claiming that their family's blighted history is not just bad luck or bad decisions - but a curse, handed down through the generations. Mandy has gone in search of the curse's roots, and now Deena must find her. What they find will heal their family's rotten past - or rip it apart forever.

All the Bad Apples is a beautifully told story that blends past and present, revealing the same prejudice that exists in both times. The story is a layered one that speaks of several topics that include family, love, forgiveness, hate, fear, guilt, figuring out who you are, loving yourself, believing in yourself, and so many others. As soon as I read the book's description, I knew that I had to read it because it hinted at a family curse and a strange treasure hunt of sorts. I wasn't expecting to really love this novel as much as I did. 

It's hard for me to pinpoint all the aspects of the book that I liked. It's a combination of several things that leads to an amazing story with true emotions and connections. The characters were all well written, even if some of the secondary characters were a bit stereotypical. I really liked Deena as the narrator. She's very realistic and easy to empathize with right from the beginning. She has strengths, weaknesses, and flaws that make her easy to identify with. The other characters are interesting and I liked getting to know each of them and watching their relationships with one another change and grow during the course of the story.

I can't say much about the plot because I don't do spoilers in my reviews. You get a pretty basic idea of what's going to happen just by reading the description, but it's so much more than that. The letters that Deena finds and follows to find Mandy are full of history and stories of their ancestors that were also cursed for being "bad apples." The major thing that got me with this book was the writing style. It's a major aspect for me personally and can literally make or break a book for me. I found that the author's choice of style was interesting and really worked for telling the stories of all of these people. I was able to really connect with Deena right from the beginning of the novel, especially because the main part of the story is told from her point of view. First person POV is my favorite by far because it lets me really get to know the narrator and feel a deep connection with them. However, the letters that Mandy sends Deena that contain the history of the family curse is done in the third person (which I normally don't like). But the author had this amazing way of writing these "letters" that detail the past where I fell right into their stories and lives almost as easily as if it had been done in the first person. I felt deeply connected with each of the individuals we meet and get to know, and my heart hurt for them when we learn their stories. I almost never get emotional invested in books that are written in anything besides the first person POV, so it proves to me the amazing talent the author has because I was feeling all the "feels" throughout the whole book - no matter the POV, narrator, or time frame. All I can say is that I ended up really loving this book, more than I thought I was going to, and I highly recommend it for people who are looking for something different than most stories out there right now and for fans of YA, fantasy, historical fiction, contemporary fiction, LGBTQ, mystery, and magical realism.

 

 

Moïra Fowley-Doyle is half-French, half-Irish and made of equal parts feminism, whimsy and Doc Martens. She lives in Dublin where she writes magic realism, reads tarot cards and raises witch babies.

Moïra’s first novel, The Accident Season, was shortlisted for the 2015 Waterstones Children’s Book Prize & the North East Teen Book Awards, nominated for the Carnegie Medal & won the inaugural School Library Association of Ireland Great Reads Award. It received two starred reviews & sold in ten territories. Her second novel, Spellbook of the Lost and Found, was published in summer 2017, received a starred review from School Library Journal and was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards.

 Prize: Win (1) of (3) copies of ALL THE BAD APPLES by Moïra Fowley-Doyle (UK/Ireland Only)

Starts: August 22, 2019

Ends: September 5, 2019

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