Giant Days, Vol. 1 / John Allison / 128 pages

Giant Days is about a trio of girls: Susan, Esther, and Daisy. They're all freshman in a British university and have come from completely different walks of life and experiences. But their experiences are about to get even more strange and confusing. There is some very odd stuff mixed in with the regular expectations of a college experience, and I really enjoyed this collection of single issues from BOOM!Box. Usually I read books with a college setting and think, “Okay, that was fun but not really similar to my experience.” Volume One was so much like my first two years of college! If Esther was more punk than goth and had a Russian name; my Daisy was taller than everyone and not so naive but just as shy; and I was a less angry and less ambitious (English Lit degree, not medical) Susan. Just the reprieve I needed from a busy life right now.

Dead Scared/ Sharon (SJ) Bolton / 378 pgs

This is the second book in Bolton's Lacey Flint series. Lacey is a British police officer with a very murky past and a sometimes reckless regard for the rules and her own safety. She's still getting over the trauma she suffered in the first book--I liked this realistic aspect--when she's asked by her one-time lover, a higher level officer named Mark, to go undercover at Cambridge University. Mark almost died in the last book and is still recovering physically. It's clear these two care about each other but there is a lot keeping them apart. i.e. the job, the past trauma, their fragile emotions.

Lacey is sent into Cambridge as a supposedly anxious, bordering on depressed, undergraduate because there has been a pattern of suspicious suicides at the university that has some people concerned. Honestly, Lacey didn't do a very good job of being a meek, high-strung student but she's only there for two weeks as things escalate quickly, so... This story is exceptionally creepy, dealing with people who purposefully bully and drive emotionally fragile young women into suicide just for kicks. It's definitely not for the faint of heart. I'm a big fan of Bolton's books and this is a solid entry in the Flint series.