Casting Shadows Everywhere

Great story! Both surprising and clever.Casting Shadows Everywhere is a story that takes the form of a journal. The narrator is a 15 year old boy called Jake. The opening scene captures an early memory Jake has of his Cousin Nick rescuing him from a bully by nearly choking his attacker to death, a frightening start to a story I entered into without having read the description or any reviews or ratings. Yes, I went into this one blindly, didn't even know what genre the book was. I do remember jum [...]

I couldn't put this book down. (I mean, I couldn't put my phone down while I was reading it on the Kindle for Android.) I found out about L.T. Vargus by chance on Twitter, tried the free sample and was immediately hooked. I see that some reviewers think this book has a slow start. AU CONTRAIRE: I was addicted instantly - I mean, come on! This is a fantastic opening paragraph, catnip for thriller-lovers: "Killing someone is a lot harder than you'd imagine. Physically harder, I mean. On TV a guy s [...]

Casting Shadows Everywhere (L.T. Vargus)Fifteen year old Jake is an outcast. Picked on by his peers and lacking in self esteem. He has a major crush on a beautiful girl named Beth, she is his dream girl, the one that boys like him can never have.Jake's older cousin Nick is the opposite. He is a "professional burglar" with a bad attitude and the theory that there is no right or wrong in the world, things just happen. Nick is quick to take Jake under his wing and teach him his criminal trade.Jake [...]

This book felt to me as if it had shades of both Fight Club, and the Basketball Diaries.The story, while divided into chapters, is written as if it were diary entries, but without the dates. As you read the book, it starts of slow, with the main character, Jake wanting to change his life and be "less of a pussy".As I read through the beginning, I became more and more enraptured with Jake's life wanting to know what odd lesson he was going to learn next. Towards the end there were three big plot [...]

Amazing novel in the form of a teenage boy's diary. I don't know whether the author is very young, but she succeeded to give to Jake, her MC, a very realistic teenage voice. The diary too feels real. This is full of this kind of things a teenager would write in his/her diary with a mix of questions about the meaning of life. And this is not dull at all. Since Jake is trained to become a thief by his cousin Nick, there is a little suspense too. His thinking about life or people often made me smil [...]

'Young Adult', the author labels it. But I'm not going to be buying 'Casting Shadows Everywhere' for any 14-year-old I know this Christmas. The story creeps and tiptoes into dark, scary places where 'there ain't no right or wrong' and 'reality is the only true nightmare'. It's a dead-eyed view of morality. No role-models here. No happy endings.But what a beginning for L.T Vargus! For me, this is the debut novel of the year.Jake is a gangling, angst-ridden 15-year old who knows he's a pussy, one [...]

That was a quick read and weird as hell I might have skipped about 15 pages in total There was so many different things yet none to the story? I don't know. So, your man Jake, has been bullied all his life. His dad is gone, his older cousin Nick becomes his role model well a role model in stealing but he's also a bit of an enigma, because he only reads non-fiction and I think, in the end, the reality of what the world really is just turned him into who he was. Smart, but brutal. Then there's Bet [...]

Surprisingly decent for what it was, that is a Portrait of Sociopath as a Young Man sort of thing. Only not quite, because either for personal reasons or in keeping with a YA line of books with morals the authors actually do a 180 toward the end with the always lamed then he woke up. Up until that point the story is consistent and consistently good, even after that point the morality is handed down pretty reasonably, it's just the pivot point is so terribly trite and unoriginal. Still though thi [...]

Holy crap! The main character's voice hooked me right away with a weird blend of funny, detached and dark. I laughed out loud a few times and got creeped out at others. Early on the action was pretty light and amusing, but by the end there were some really intense, suspenseful scenes that had me teetering on the edge of my toilet seat. So yeah, it was rad.

WOW!! Shocking!! Twists you never see coming. I just couldn't put it down.

I was given a free copy of Casting Shadows Everywhere by LTVargas in return for which I agreed to do a reviewE is Jake's story. He is 15 years old, and, for me, he is a mash-up between Holden Caufield and Lenny from Of Mice and Men. When Jake decides to keep a written journal, we become aware of all his thoughts which become influenced by his cousin, Nick.Nick has a somewhat twisted notion of life. Kind of an, "is that all there is" spin, and no matter what the subject or issue, for Nick it's ju [...]

Holy cow, this book was not what I was expecting. So first,don't judge this book by its cover. This book was awesome!The voice in this book was so strong, so realistic, and so like a 15 year-old boy, that I assumed the author was male. She's not. It was amazing, and I was completely caught up in Jake's story. It's written like a journal, so you have a lot of Jake's internalization about his life and what he's feeling and thinking, but it's also written as though he's currently experiencing these [...]

15 year old Jake is searching for meaning, control, and a role-model in his life. He doesn't have much to choose from. In his rambling, slang-filled journal entries he considers how he's always been a victim and begins to learn from his sociopathic older cousin, Nick, how to be "less of a pussy." As he's drawn into Nick's criminal enterprise, he learns confidence but also loses empathy. Jake's a pretty smart kid. It's interesting how he goes from a profanity-laden rant to philosophic musings in [...]

I have to admit, I chose to read Casting Shadows Everywhere because I liked the title. Then I began it with a little bit of trepidation, because from the very first chapter, the dark themes inherent in the book's plot become evident. It is about a bullied teenager, Jake, who is given life lessons by his cousin, Nick, whom we first encounter when he tries to strangle somebody. I like novels with dark themes, but not always; and I was a little bit afraid that this book would turn out to be depress [...]

Jake is fifteen years old and an outcast. His peers pick on him and he is lacking self esteem. He has a crush on Beth she is beautiful and is his dream girl, the ones guys like him never seem to get. Nick is Jakes older cousin and he is the complete opposite of Jake. He is a professional Burglar" with a bad attitude and believes that there is no right and wrong, things just happen. Nick quickly takes Jake under his wing and teaches him how to be a burglar. Jake eagerly wants Nicks acceptance, an [...]

It was really good. I'm a little gob-smacked by the ending still, but I think I enjoyed it a lot. I feel somewhat uncertain about it, because it was two thirds of a great book, followed by one sixth that lurched off in an unwelcome direction and had me questioning the author, and finally ends off with one sixth that brings it home in a really thought-provoking fashion. Although I was jarred out of my comfort zone for a bit and still not sold on the unwelcome sixth of the book completely, the abs [...]

I could not get into this story for some reason I cannot explain. I found the kid Jake to be boring beyond words and I could not connect with him or any of the other characters. I got the idea that he was a wuss and his cousin was supposed to be teaching him how to cope in the world. The problem is I knew the cousin was either a sociopath or psychopath from the first time he was mentioned and it wasn't much of a leap to seeing the kid take on his characteristics. It took me a while to read it be [...]

Awesome book! I loved it. Vargus is the master of plot twists - not huge crazy ones that make you go "WHAT?!" but subtle, minute ones that make you think the book is heading in a familiar direction, and BAM! Suddenly you're in a place that gives you serious deja vu, but is a wholly new experience. Even though this book is YA fiction, it doesn't have the simplistic writing style of most YA books (which is a huge turn-off to me), and the protagonist is smarter than most adults. This book would be [...]

I loved it on the very first page and every single page after that. It's so dark and yet so funny. Intensely thought-provoking. The prose is gorgeous and the character's voice is so strong. The authors describe the book as a cross between Fight Club and Catcher in the Rye and they couldn't be more correct.

I was two thirds through the book, before it got some what interesting. But overall I thought it was pretty boring!

“He's just not that into you if he is a sociopath.”― Coco J. GingerMy best friend in college was a Dead Head. You know, Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia, tie-dye, cool music, and dope. Lots and lots of dope. My friend was way into acid. Not me, I couldn't give up control like that, and besides, someone had to drive, right? And grass just made me sick at my stomach, so no pain. However, my friend told me about her “trips.” It was “trippy” listening to her, to say the least. “Why,” yo [...]

I received a free download of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review. Also never read anything by L.T. Vargus before so wanted to give it a go. Jake is 15. This story is told through his eyes in excerpts from his journal. He is an admitted wimp. He gets bullied on a regular basis and can’t stand up for himself. His best friend is Beth. He is in love with her but too scared to do anything about it. Nick is his cousin and a complete opposite. He smokes, he drinks, he thinks h [...]

Reading as a series of informal diary entries this book is written from the point of view of 15 year old Jake. An American teenager of a single parent family, Jake strives to do more with his life. He wants a reason to get up in the morning.The opening scenes are very vivid, we meet Jake's cousin Nick who will play an important adult role in Jakes next few months. There are few males for Jake to look up to and Nick's air of danger entices Jake. No longer prepared to be a victim to school bullies [...]

"You can't control the world, but you can control yourself. You can change yourself. We're not all powerless and trapped in the roles we find ourselves in. We can change."The delight of reading this book lies in observing how this affirming message emerges from a chrysalis of abduction, bulimia and serial killing. Why are we here? What is the meaning of it all? In the immensity of the cosmos, are there any rules worth following? In a world where might rules and fortune favours the knave, do we t [...]

Fifteen-year-old Jake is, in his own words, a pussy. He never fights back, that is, until his older cousin, Nick, schools him in the ways of the world. Through a series of burglaries, Nick teaches Jake to live without fear. Nick's only rule is "Don't get caught." There's more, of course, rants about the BS passed down from above as conventional wisdom, but the primary message sinks in. When his nemesis confronts Jake in the school hallway, Jake kicks his ass.There's so much to like about this bo [...]

What a find. I got this book as a free offer via the authors, and now they've done gone and hooked me. Possibly for life. My first assumption, based on the title and description, was that I was about to indulge in some contemporary horror or dark urban fantasy. What I got instead was an offbeat coming -of-age story told from the POV of a 15-year-old narrator falling in love with a high school classmate and falling under the spell of a hard-hearted older cousin with a criminal bent. It's filled w [...]

Brilliantly written and insanely thought provokingWhen Jake was 9, he witnessed his then 17-year-old cousin Nick attack and choke out another kid who was bullying him. Several years later, with no father figure to help him through his teenage years, Jake turns to Nick again in an effort to learn how to survive high school life. What he ends up learning is how to enter a life of crime one “lesson” at a time. What he discovers about his cousin along the way takes him down a path he never expec [...]

Great book! Really enjoyed it. Young Adult and Suspense/Drama are not usually my cup of tea, and I honestly almost took a break after like the first 30 pages, but something about it hooked me. It's got a little bit of everything.Written as journal entries, the main character has a great voice, kind of reminded me of like an angsty teenage David Sedaris. So it's got comedy- check. As other reviews have pointed out, it definitely has a nice build up and some great plot twists- really sucked me in [...]

Enter the mind of a teenage boy on a search for meaning in a self-serving world. Jake’s first-person narration is sometimes whimsical, poignant, irreverent, hysterical, and thought-provoking as he faces high school bullies, befriends autistic kids, tentatively seeks a girlfriend, finds a hero with soiled hands, and endures adult condescension. Jake’s thoughts and situations range from laugh out loud funny to chilling danger to teetering on the brink of insanity. Snappy dialogue in what appea [...]

I admit the book seemed to start out slowly. As I progressed through the book, the premise of "teen writing in a diary" scenario seemed to lull me, the reader, into expecting a typical angsty teen novel. This is not the case.Vargus must have done a lot of factual research, because interesting facts are peppered throughout the book, right alongside the story, almost underlining it. I wasn't expecting that kind of attention to detail. But also interesting was how the main character wove these fact [...]