I can no longer subject myself to books with unlikable narrators/main characters. I really could not stand Esther, just as I couldn't stand the MC in The Guest by Emma Cline. Along with that, the writing was also difficult to digest.

The plot line was great and interesting, but did not deliver as I hoped. The one good review I have is the cover art for the book, it is absolutely beautiful.

SCRAP
Calla Henkel

I can handle a lot in the books I read. But if there is ever a situation where part or all of my audience might be offended I make note and do not recommend the title.

That is the situation here.

I have noted the words that were offensive to me and I am not only DNF ing this title I will not pick up any further titles by this author.

Twink

While not always intended as derogatory, "twink" can be used to stereotype or objectify individuals based on appearance.

https://www.them.us/story/what-is-a-twink#:~:text=The%20term%20“twink”%20refers%20to,parts%20of%20the%20LGBTQ+%20community.

Fag

Extremely Disparaging and Offensive. a contemptuous term used to refer to a gay man.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/fag

Dyke:

"Dyke" is a slang term for lesbian that originated as a homophobic slur for women or girls who were masculine, butch, or androgynous. However, some lesbians have reclaimed the term to imply toughness and assertiveness. For example, the Dykes on Bikes motorcycle club uses the term. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyke_(slang)

Thanks to NetGalley and ABRAMS | The Overlook Press for the advanced copy!

SCRAP…⭐️

Just wasn't for me! Started out strong but lost the thread halfway through. Felt it was too close to Gone Girl, even though I knew it wasn't to emulate it. Just couldn't find the unique thread for this one that kept me coming back.

I am so thankful to Overlook Press, Calla Henkel, and Netgalley for granting me advanced access to this galley before publication day. I really enjoyed the dialogue and plot of this book and can’t wait to chat this one up with my friends!

I loved this book and was enthralled with the writing. I loved the character study. Would read more from the author!

Thank you to NetGalley and Hachette Book Group for the opportunity to read this ARC. I enjoyed "Other People's Clothes" , so I had to give Calla Henkel's new novel a chance. She definitely delivered!

The main character, Esther Ray, is a hot mess in the best way. Recently dumped and stuck with a mortgage, she reluctantly takes a scrapbooking gig for Naomi Duncan, a ridiculously wealthy woman, who wants Esther to create a scrapbook chronicling her 25-year marriage. The catch? Esther has to follow a bunch of strange rules, including using a burner phone and including every single piece of paper Naomi sends.

I loved how Henkel used the mundane task of scrapbooking to build tension and mystery. As Esther digs through the boxes of Duncan family memories, she becomes obsessed with their perfect, picture-perfect lives—until Naomi dies suddenly under suspicious circumstances. Naturally, Esther starts thinking her husband, Bryce, might be the killer. The more she unravels the Duncans' secrets, the deeper she gets sucked into a mess of her own past.

This book has some seriously dark humor and a great sense of suspense. It also made me think a lot about the power dynamics between wealth and power, and how easy it is for people to hide behind a perfect façade. Esther's journey from scrapbooking to detective work was full of twists, and I couldn't put it down. If you like dark mysteries with a bit of sharp wit, this one is totally worth checking out!

Stopped reading at 64% (Chapter 14). I rarely don’t finish a book after getting this far into it. However, I really didn’t like this and couldn’t sit thru a second more of it. I thought the premise sounded interesting, this woman hired to make a scrapbook and then trying to solve the owner’s murder? Unfortunatly, I couldn’t stand the main character. I didn’t like her from the beginning but I thought she might grow on me? She did not. I really can’t say a single redeeming thing about her. Even though I didn’t like the character, I tried to stick around for the story. It got to the point where I just couldn’t read anymore about her though. She’s so ridiculous, unlikeable, and gross. I wanted to know who the murderer was but at this point it’s too painful to continue with. I’m disappointed.

I absolutely devoured SCRAP earlier this month and am shocked I haven’t seen it on my bookstagram feed more this month.

This is the story of Esther, a thirty something artist going through a life-altering breakup. Meanwhile, she connects with a billionaire philanthropist, Naomi, who asks her to take on an unusual scrapbooking project for an un-refusable sum of money. The project is shrouded in secrecy and leads to countless questions.

I devoured SCRAP because the pacing of the novel is impeccable. I cracked it open on a Saturday afternoon and before I knew it, two hours and a hundred or so pages had gone by. The pacing remains consistent throughout; I finished in just over 24 hours feeling fully entertained and like I’d ridden a roller coaster (my preferred feeling when finishing a thriller 🎢). However, the plot is FAST, and not all of it lands in a satisfying direction.

It’s fortunately not a novel built entirely on entertainment value — Henkel also crafts a smart story. Esther is a flawed and fascinating protagonist. Her true crime obsession plays an important role in the story; I loved spotting all the ways Henkel wove in commentary on the genre and parallels to it throughout. I won’t say more because 🤐🤐🤐 but if you are in or have ever been in a true crime era, don’t miss this one.

How does SCRAP compare to Henkel’s debut, OTHER PEOPLE’S CLOTHES? It’s different, but not in a bad way. Where OPC surprisingly dips into thriller territory, SCRAP is firmly planted in the genre. It touches on similar themes like classism, true crime, and the value of art, but with a different tone. Though I missed some of the depth of her debut, this further solidified for me that I will follow Henkel’s career in the years to come.

Thank you to @overlookpress and @netgalley for my e-ARC! This one hit shelves on August 20th and I recommend to my fellow thriller readers looking for a smart and original read this fall. I’d love to hear what you thought if you’ve picked this one up! 👇🏼

I usually love a good true crime obsessed female protagonist and when it involves real crime even better. Sadly I couldn't get into this one and ended up DNFing midway through. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an early digital copy. All opinions are my own.

I loved everything about this incredibly unsetting book! I recently listened to Other People's Clothes and was so happy to find out about this book and get an early copy.

After Esther has a chance encounter with socialite Naomi, Naomi hires her for a giant scrapbooking project which turns out to be a lot more than Esther signed up for.

This is a book that the less you know going in to it, the better. The twists it takes caught me off guard and I loved every one of them.

I found Esther to be very sympathetic -- I wanted everything to work out for her. I love an unreliable narrator and she is certainly that -- it's hard to know what is real but I was happy to be along for the ride. As I said, this book is very unsettling, as we are watching Esther obsess and slowly lose track of reality.

I really enjoyed the peek in to the art world as well, and the world of social influencing and social media.

I am now eagerly awaiting more from Calla Henkel! Read this book if you like unreliable narrators, a glimpse in to lifestyles of the the very rich, or the art world.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy of this book!

After a devastating break up with her girlfriend, a true crime obsessed, struggling artist accepts a job offer from an eccentric and extremely wealthy woman. She is tasked with making a series of meticulous scrapbooks about her life, which leads to some amateur detective work and shocking discoveries. The best way to describe this book is entertaining. It’s mysterious, full of humor and mixes rich people problems with the struggles of ordinary people in a way that pokes fun at both. Lesbian Gone Girl for the rich art world - need I say more?

Scrap is a wild ride. Based on the synopsis, I thought, ok, a true-crime-obsessed artist makes scrapbooks for an eccentric millionaire and then ultimately uses them to solve her murder. I'm sold! It even starts off with some fun Gone Girl jokes. LOL, that whole plot is more or less scrapped (sorry) a third of the way in. At no point did I ever have any idea where this was headed, and I could never have guessed the ending.

Overall, there is a lot of plot (maybe way too much?), and the protagonist, Esther, is complicated and challenging to spend all of your time following. This all being said, I still could not put this down. I do think that this could have been edited down to remove much of the meandering that the protagonist does in a way that doesn't really service the central plot. There's even a whole other character that Esther builds a relationship with, and I'm ultimately not sure why we had to see so much of that story play out.

In the end, this doesn't quite fit the bill of your standard thriller; there's a lot more here about family, relationships, and how people respond when their loved ones do the unthinkable. I'm not completely sure how I feel about this in the end, but it definitely gave me a lot to think about.

This is one of the best books I've read all year. The ending was a bit abrupt or else this would easily have been 4.5 stars for me. I still couldn't put this down -- I didn't know what would happen next and I was shocked more than once. If you like Gone Girl, give this one a try... truly surprising and so, so good!!

Scrap comes out next week on August 20, 2024, and you can purchase HERE!

There was something about the unspooling of a sociopath over computer speakers that enabled me to fall into my deepest state of concentration while binding books. Someone is always guilty-this is the intrinsic propulsion of true crime, and after countless hours I was an expert on cell phone towers, cadaver dogs, rogue psychics, genealogists, fibers, and credit card trails. I could recognize a psychopath from speech patterns and I was deeply familiar with the sparked flint of a serial killer's eye. Now that I look back, it was almost as if I'd been preparing for Naomi's murder, lifting the metaphorical weights, readying myself to unwind my red ball of yarn and trace her life on my wall.

A mixed message muddles this one a bit but it's got some intriguing elements. Esther has been hired to create a scrapbook for Naomi, an incredibly wealthy woman who communicates with her via phone. And then Naomi dies in a skiing accident but Esther is convinced that her husband Bryce had something to do with it. So there's the mystery but there's also the story of Esther, her trauma, her obsession with true crime, and the rest. She's interesting, if annoying at times and I liked the use of the scrapbooks. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. For Henkel's fans.

Thanks to NetGalley and ABRAMS for the advanced reader copy.

The premise of this book was interesting--a young artist with a checkered past, who makes scrapbooks, is approached to make a slew of scrapbooks cataloguing the entire life of a wealthy family, and gets caught up in the mystery around the scrapbooks--and Esther is a complicated character who was compelling to follow. The last quarter of the book started to fall apart for me (it didn't really make sense why Esther became so obsessed with Naomi and the conspiracy she dreams up.

What a fun read, almost trancelike.
We follow Esther Ray; an artist, lesbian, true crime fanatic, cop hater. She meets a very wealthy woman named Naomi, who asks her to create a series of scrapbooks portraying her and her families lives. (Dream job, am I right?)
As Esther goes about her new job, we are lurched into a mystery with many moving parts. Naomi’s secrets, Esther’s secrets, intertwining forces that could go up in flames at any moment. (Iykyk.) These two women who have nothing in common on the surface, but if you navigate to the depths - the tight binding full of family photographs, doctors notes, cryptic messages - share a timeline of evidence and trauma. Kismet! I feel like a rereading of Gone Girl is absolutely necessary after this

3.5/5

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher who provided me with an ebook copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All of these thoughts and opinions are my own.

Scrap by Calla Henkel tells the story of Esther Ray, a lesbian artist living in Asheville, North Carolina, who was hired to create a series of scrapbooks by Naomi Duncan, a mysterious woman who she met at a friend’s art opening. While working on completing this less than traditional scrapbooking project Esther is working through the break up with her ex-girlfriend, listening to true crime podcasts at an alarming rate, and wondering what comes next for her in her life. When Esther finds out that Naomi was killed in a skiing accident, she becomes obsessed with figuring out what really happened to Naomi and what the real purpose of the scrapbook is.

Calla Henkel is excellent at writing the manic, obsessed, weird arty girl. I definitely enjoyed this novel more than her previous work, Other People’s Clothes, but there was something missing that was preventing this from being a truly gripping read. The middle felt like the pacing was off, and there were one too many tangents just info dumping on the true crime podcast that Esther was listening to, which I really wasn’t interested in. Ultimately less of the novel is focused on the mystery aspect and more of it is focused on usher and all of the trauma she has gone through in the past that has led her to today. Also, I thought the ending was too neatly wrapped up in a way that didn’t feel satisfying or really make for an emotionally compelling ending to the book.

If you are looking for a thriller, this is probably not the book for you. This is definitely more of a literary fiction with thriller elements than a true thriller/mystery novel. I would classify this as weird books for weird girls. If that’s your thing, you’re probably going to enjoy this at least a little bit.

This book starts with a fairly basic premise : a woman is hired to create a series of memories for another woman's husband. Even with the addition of the more peculiar conditions- that the woman who is paying for the memory project is incredibly rich or that the memory scraps she has submitted for the process are extensive - boxes and boxes of items, the book still presents itself in summary as a regular thriller.

What Henkel has done, however, interspersing the story with tales of true-crime podcasts and testaments, is to create a one of a kind narrator where the reader is unsure how reliable Ester, the true-crime enthusiast is, and if there is a crime at all. To be clear - this is not your run-of-the-mill thriller! This is a uniquely claustrophobic and specific story that will entrance you and haunt you.

Scap is special, amazing and beguiling. Don't take my word for it, pick it up now!
#abrams #scrap #scrapthebook #srabbooking #abramspublishing #callahenkel

The right person will love this; it's a novel about a cynical, true-crime enthusiast and "artisan" whose wife has just left her. She meets a rich woman, Naomi, who tasks her with a scrapbooking project comprised of all of "emotionally hoarded" bits and bobs of Naomi's life, and then Naomi ends up dead. I'm 40 percent in and find our narrator so unlikeable that I really have no incentive to continue. However, I can see this working really well for people who are a couple of years older than I am--the intended audience certainly seems to be millennials, to me.

I was stoked about this one and ultimately a lil disappointed with it. still had a mostly enjoyable ride. it felt at times that there were too many characters and none of them felt particularly fleshed out or likable (other than Patrick <3 and Esther is fine too). the true crime elements sometimes felt all over the place and also quite unrealistic at times but I have a hard time with that in general. did appreciate the queer protagonist representation in the true crime space but otherwise this one left a lot to be desired for me!

3.5 rounded down~ thank you net galley and abrams for the arc :)