Author: Bethany Griffin

Genre: YA, Gothic, Post-Apocalyptic, Plagues, Dystopia

Publication Date: June 11, 2013 (HarperTeen – North America)

Source: Publisher-provided finished copy

Summary:  Araby’s world is in shambles—betrayal, death, disease, and evil forces surround her. She has no one to trust. But she finds herself and discovers that she will fight for the people she loves, and for her city.

Her revenge will take place at the menacing masked ball, though it could destroy her and everyone she loves…or it could turn her into a hero.

☆: 4/5 stars – Going to miss this duology so much!

Review: When I heard that there was going to be a sequel to “Masque of the Red Death”, I was incredibly excited. Almost indecently so. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. And when I did, most of what I’d been hoping for in terms of a resolution to the duology as a whole was more or less lived up to – though there were a few sticking points that kind of prevented this book from becoming from the five star wonder that I was hoping it would be. Regardless, I think everyone who read “Masque of the Red Death” will find something to love in “Dance of the Red Death”.

The great thing about this book is that we get a few new characters, but they’re not major enough to shake up the insane dynamic that Griffin created in book one. Unfortunately, there is still the love triangle that goes on, but Griffin does play with it rather well and turns it into a symbolic choosing of future paths for Araby by containing them in Will and Elliott. I’m not sure most readers will see it that way as it does drag into a rather significant portion of the book, but that’s the way I read into it. This book is takes off right after the events at the end of book one, and really kind of starts with a bang as we realize that April is not getting better, the city is both burning and flooding, and it’s all pretty much going to hell, and the choices that Araby must make are really starting to come fast and hard, and any naivete she might have had in book one is literally being burned away. The characters the Griffin has in this duology are wonderful and unforgettable, and they really help further build the world that doesn’t expand too much, but just enough to fit the events that unfold therein.

What was the best part of this book was watching Araby’s personal character development/journey arc. She changes pretty dramatically, yet keeps most of the charm that made me fall in love with her, April, and the rest in book one. She really grows into herself as a person, and recognizes that she can no longer hide from reality (poverty, disease, violence, and death) by staying at the Debauchery Club (which cleverly gets turned into revolutionary headquarters, I chuckled over that) and by living in her high apartment in the Akkadian Towers. She no longer has the time to waste by throwing herself into oblivion with Elliott’s silver needle, she has to put her big girl panties on and look after April, find the cure as written within her father’s notebook, and also deal with how he was involved with the original weeping sickness and now the red death. Griffin tortures/kills her darlings really well in this book – even moreso than book one, and with no one better than with Araby.

There are a ton of big reveals in this book – the true identity of Malcontent, more on Prospero, the aforementioned roles Araby’s father played in all of these events unfolding, and more. All of this makes for wonderful non-love triangle-fueled tension, to the point where it’s on every page. Where is the cure? Is there really a cure? Is Araby’s father dead? And what’s going on with this “final masquerade” that Prospero is throwing? So many questions, so much tension, and it all gets answered in some way or another by the end of the book in extremely awesome ways – one of my favorites being the end of Prospero himself.

The biggest issue I had: how long the love triangle dragged into the book. While I understand why Griffin did that, I still feel like there could have been another solution. But she did make it up to us by making us see that by choosing Elliott, Araby would have been choosing a more tangible revenge, a lifetime of impulses instead of real feelings and generally, deception. By choosing Will, is she working with the enemy, one that hates her father? But at the same time, she would be choosing a lifetime of true feelings, and in general, truth in all things. Griffin did a great job by really making these two black and white (even with their shades of gray in between), and a very dichotomized choice of future paths for Araby to take.

Otherwise? The world is just as lush, the prose just as gorgeous, and the violence just as eloquent as it was in book one. If you read “Masque”, you definitely can’t miss “Dance”. “Dance of the Red Death” is out now from HarperTeen in North America, so definitely check it out when you get the chance. It’s not part of my best of 2013 list for nothing, guys.

•Grab your current read

•Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

This week’s teaser comes from “Charm & Strange” by Stephanie Keuhn (USAGI):

I don’t feel the presence of God here.

I pace along the far side of the river, my ears filled with the hum of cicadas and the roar of water flowing over the milldam. Vermont is postcard perfect. I could stand on my toes and peer over the current and the cattails and see the whole town spread out before me. Green-shuttered houses. The cobblestone square. The church spire. The boarding school.

But I don’t.

I crave the illusion of solitude.

This week’s teaser comes from Another Little Piece by Kate Karyus Quinn (ASHLEIGH):

They found me in Oklahoma, which was strange, because Annaliese Rose Gordon’s home was in the northeastern part of the country. Western New York to be more specific. Buffalo, if you were looking to stick a pin in a map. According to the GPS stats, that was a distance of almost thirteen hundred miles. From the way everyone kept shaking their heads and saying “Oklahoma” in the same way they might have said “Mars,” I guessed this was far beyond the range where anyone had ever considered looking for Annaliese.

Here’s another GPS-derived fact. Those thirteen hundred miles can be traveled by car in about twenty-one hours. A little less than a day to get from one part of the country to another seems reasonable, but that doesn’t include stops. When you account for stopping early and often, those thirteen hundred miles start to stretch across several days … and they begin to feel like forever.

What are you reading this Tuesday?

Title:

Author: Meg Cabot

Genre: Paranormal Romance, Greek Mythology

Publication Date: July 2, 2013

Source: eARC provided by the publisher via NetGalley

Synopsis: From #1 New York Times bestselling author Meg Cabot, the dark reimagining of the Persephone myth comes to a thrilling conclusion.

Death has her in his clutches. She doesn’t want him to let go.

Seventeen-year-old Pierce Oliviera knew by accepting the love of John Hayden, she’d be forced to live forever in the one place she’s always dreaded most: the Underworld. The sacrifice seemed worth it, though, because it meant she could be with the boy she loves.

But now her happiness — and safety — are threatened, all because the Furies have discovered that John has broken one of their strictest rules: He revived a human soul.

If the balance between life and death isn’t fixed, both the Underworld and Pierce’s home back on earth will be wiped away. But there’s only one way to restore order. Someone has to die.

☆: 4/5 stars – A step up from previous books and a great ending for this series

Cabot’s Abandon trilogy has been a pretty severe departure from the more humorous fare fans like me are used to and at times, it’s been pretty up-and-down because of that. With the final entry in the series, Cabot steps it up with more action, some humor to spice things up a bit, and softening up John a bit when he’s been one of the more troubling elements of the series because of how he behaves. If only the first two books could have been a little more like Awaken!

Pierce is one of the weaker parts of the novel because she’s got a laser focus on reviving John while saying and thinking the most outrageous things. John dies and she’s more distraught over that than what his death does to the Underworld. The flow of souls to their final destinations has stopped completely, the Fates are gone, the Furies have destroyed the boats used to ferry souls,  dead birds are raining from the sky alongside a rain of blood, but her major concern as the sole ruler of the Underworld now? Her boyfriend is dead. GAH.

Her cousin Alex (whose near-death experience has turned him into a very annoying character) even rightfully calls her out on having a one-track mind that’s focused on John, but he gets shut down. No! He’s right! All she thinks about is John, John, John and occasionally her friends and family. If she didn’t have a one-track mind set to John, she’d care more about what his death was doing to the Underworld she ruled up until he came back (don’t even worry about that giving away any twists because it all happens pretty early).

John’s cut it very close in the past, being put one word away from being a guy readers don’t want Pierce to be with because he’s so overpossessive, awful, etc. Awaken softens him up a bit, which was something unexpected! His interactions with Pierce’s parents are hilarious, especially how each parent reacts after John shows off and uses lightning to set the carpet on fire. He’s such a strange mix of overpossessive, creepy, and hilariously anachronistic that I can hardly figure out what to make of him.

In fact, those interactions with Pierce’s parents make it so apparent how hilarious and fun this series could have been if written in the more humorous style of Cabot’s Mediator series (which I swear by because they’re never not fun). There could have been so much lampshade-hanging and genre-savvy jabs at YA paranormal romance, but taking the serious route (well, semi-serious, since things get a lot funnier in this installment; the evil tassels also make a short return) killed it a bit. It’s downright painful to see how great a book can be but know there’s nothing you can do about it.

However, some major contradictions riddle the story. For instance, Pierce makes a big deal out of what John says to her before his early-on and temporary death. This is the exact quote, even: “If only I’d realized then that I’ll be back were the last words I was ever going to hear him say (ARC, p. 55).” The word “ever” needs to be emphasized because it’s so final, but you know what’s not final? What happens to John. He comes back to life. Why does Pierce (who tells the story in past tense and reflects upon what happened to her) say “I’ll be back” were the last words he ever said when they quite clearly aren’t and she knows it as she tells us her story? It’s so blatant that I can only let this slide as an ARC error.

Then there’s also the matter of Thanatos, the personification of death and something of an antagonist. He’s originally described as evil and cutting down large armies with ease and such, but later in the novel, it’s stated his personality changes depending on who he’s possessing. Hoping this is another ARC error because those are two very different characterizations of the same person/entity.

Despite Pierce’s lack of priorities and those big contradictions, Awaken became the high point of the series and it’s a little sad to see it end. If readers like Abandon even a little, it’s worth reading on to get to this book.

Author: Jessica Spotswood

Genre: YA, historical, alternate universe/parallel timelines, paranormal

Publication Date: June 18, 2013 (Penguin – North America)

Source: Publisher-provided ARC

Summary: With the Brotherhood persecuting witches like never before, a divided Sisterhood desperately needs Cate to come into her Prophesied powers. And after Cate’s friend Sachi is arrested for using magic, a war-thirsty Sister offers to help her find answers—if Cate is willing to endanger everyone she loves.

Cate doesn’t want to be a weapon, and she doesn’t want to involve her friends and Finn in the Sisterhood’s schemes. But when Maura and Tess join the Sisterhood, Maura makes it clear that she’ll do whatever it takes to lead the witches to victory. Even if it means sacrifices. Even if it means overthrowing Cate. Even if it means all-out war.

In the highly anticipated sequel to Born Wicked, the Cahill Witch Chronicles continue Cate, Maura and Tess’s quest to find love, protect family, and explore their magic against all odds in an alternate history of New England.

☆: 4.5/5 stars – an awesome continuation to the first book!

Review: Oh my god, those last two pages, you guys – DEFINITELY makes this book a candidate for my best of 2013 for that alone, but this book takes many risks, and I love that Spotswood wasn’t afraid to go into some of the darker places that other sequels would have avoided. It made me love this book, this world, these characters all the more. This one’s going to kick your feels right in the feels, guys, so hold on as we go into rocky territory in “Star Cursed”. I’m absolutely chomping at the bit for book three NOW.

In this installment of the Cahill Witch Chronicles, we leave Chatham behind and go into New London, where our world vastly expands to include the Convent of the Sisterhood, Harwood Asylum, the Prison Ship, as well as all of New London and the Brothers’ Headquarters. Spotswood does a wonderful job expanding her world – the idea of completely leaving Chatham behind as a sensory/physical place was a fantastic idea, and I’m so glad she did it. Here, we isolate all of our players, and see how much we can stress them out, push them to their limits, and see what their limits are. Her sensory imagery and language really shines when she brings Cate and co. to New London, even in the most terrible of scenes and circumstances, and to say the least, it makes this book even more intense when you put it together with the events that go on within it.

Next, characters: we get a ton of new ones, and they also help build the world, which is really hard to do correctly. Happily, Spotswood nailed it – helping to grow the world with the characters and their backstories which interwove with the greater backstory of recent history between the Sisterhood and the Brotherhood, which is how you do it correctly. Not everyone can do this, and it impressed me that Spotswood could do something so complex yet make it seem so easily readable, so simple to understand. The relationship web is used in this book – who’s related to whom and how, etc, and that works well, too. We also have all of our old friends back – all three sisters, Finn, Elena, and Paul, as well as a ton of new players both in the novice area (where Cate and her sisters are) and the initiate area (where the “real” sisters are after they’ve taken their vows). There’s a lot of heartache in these stories, and I found it quite relatable as the world hasn’t changed so much (even if this is an alternate-universe take on New England) in the last 100+ years in its attitude towards girls and literature. We’re both dangerous things that need to be contained, to be burned, to be controlled – and Spotswood’s metaphor of the witches as girls’ power making men afraid was a very interesting take on why certain things happened in our actual timeline (Salem Trials), and why pop culture continues to devalue girls today, as well as be afraid of new ideas in literature/book banning that still happens. Maybe I read a little too much into things, but that’s how I saw it.

The question that pops up in this book a lot (and it’s not even subconscious, mostly towards the end of this installment): why are girls considered so dangerous? Why is educating them dangerous? Why are they feared so much, and in order to control that fear, must be burned, imprisoned, or otherwise punished just because of their gender? It’s a profound question that still troubles us today all over the world in varying degrees (in some places worse than others), and I thought Spotswood snuck that in quite nicely – even if she didn’t consciously mean to.

But to get back to the rest of the book – wow. The general plot and the personal journey arcs for all three sisters are nothing short of amazing, and shows how people can buckle and take sides (much like fighting dogs) under pressure. War is coming, and the girls must take sides. Who will take which side? Who is the prophesied sister that will be the new Oracle? Will there be a new Terror? Or will the Brothers take all? All of these questions and more are not only asked, but much of it answered, leaving us on a fantastic cliffhanger (seriously I can’t even – I was freaking out on that last page) with romance, subterfuge, insubordination and plain ol’ sass from our favorite trio of sisters and all of their new friends (and enemies). The stakes (and Spotswood’s darling kill count) have never been higher, and thus, the writing has never been better.

Final verdict? If you’ve read book one, what are you waiting for? If you liked book one, you are going to LOVE “Star Cursed”. Lots of moral and very brutal questions get asked in a gorgeous way. And warning: your feels WILL get injured. I recommend having a lot of tissues available during the second half of this book. “Star Cursed” is out June 18, 2013 from Penguin in North America, so definitely be sure to check it out when you get the chance! It’s definitely on my best of 2013 list, so read and find out why!

Lydia is Usagi’s ginger queen.

Hey, everyone!

Usagi and Ashleigh here. Thought we’d update you on what’s going on this summer for the blog.

1. HIATUS!: We’ll be gone for the month of August (Usagi’s off to Palm Desert the second week of August and Ashleigh’s back off to school in late August), but we’ll still have some great content for you (more on that later) and scheduled reviews that will go up as planned. There won’t be too many memes, sadly, but we need the break.

2. JULY ON THE BLOG: We’ve got a dual-review/review battle coming up for the blog tour stop for Hannah Jayne’s “Truly, Madly, Deadly”, as well as participating in YA LGBTQ month as sponsored by Once Upon a Bookcase. We’ll be doing a Afternoon Yak-like discussion of the upcoming trans-centric YA book, “Freakboy”, so look forward to that!

3. BLOG TOUR MANIA: As previously mentioned, we’re going to be on the blog tour for “Truly, Madly, Deadly”, but we’ll also be kicking off the tour for Amanda Sun’s excellent “Ink” on the 20th. We’ll also be hosting Bryony Pearce and her debut with Strange Chemistry, “The Weight of Souls”, in August. So definitely look forward to all of these tour stops!

4. MORE FEATURES: We’re working to put some more features in place, but it’s coming a bit slowly, so…be patient. We’ll also have a makeover coming soon, too.

SO, TL;DR:

HIATUS IN AUGUST

LGBTQ IN YA MONTH IN JULY

BLOG TOURS GALORE ALL SUMMER LONG!

CONSTRUCTION/NEW FEATURES ARE COMING

We love you guys, and thanks for being patient with us!

Love,

Usagi & Ashleigh <3

Author: Anne Whitney

Genre: New Adult, Social Issues

Publication Date: June 17, 2013

Source: eARC from the author for review

Synopsis: Marina Phillips has spent her entire life as her father’s victim. But enough is enough. All it took was one moment of realization to send her fleeing across the country into the unknown of New York City with no plans and no money. A new life without the constant torture is all she wants, but what she finds waiting is something she never expected.

Fitz is New York’s premiere playboy artist. Sexy, tattooed, and coveted by women and men alike, his performances are heralded as the coming of a new god of modern art. But when Marina wanders into his show, she becomes the inadvertent piece he’s always waited for – a girl to sculpt, to change, and to craft in his own image.

She never expects to fall head over heels into the world of parties, drag queens, agents, and artists craving for her and her benefactor. She didn’t even expect to begin falling in love with someone like Fitz, the sexy, pretentious man of her nightmares.

Above all, Marina never expects her father to stage a cross-country mission to paint her as a kidnapped girl taken by a psychopath.

With her life on the line, Marina has no choice but to accept Fitz’s proposal – change everything she is, inside and out, for the chance to start anew. But Marina has plans of her own. Plans that will rock her world forever.

☆: 4/5 stars – Finally, a New Adult novel I don’t hate!

A little soapbox moment: I think NA as a category is bull because most of it falls into adult romance or YA and I despise NA in general because so many novels given that label indulge in casual sexism, cheap drama, and abusive, unhealthy, or otherwise problematic relationships. (Beautiful Disaster, Thoughtless, and any Abbi Glines novel, anyone? Bring up Jessica Sorensen and we’ll be here a while.) There are exceptions, but there aren’t nearly enough to satisfy me. Well, here’s one! The Art of Love has my stamp of approval–a stamp NA novels very rarely get to see, let alone earn–because it’s fun, genuine, and there’s nothing anger-inducing.

The Art of Love is a story about art. It’s about how hard it can be to pursue it, all the different ways people can make art, and the art of not letting your past get in the way of your future. Marina struggles to define herself, Fitz struggles to make his kind of part in spite of the pressure his parents and background put on him, and Viridian struggles to make a living on the paltry salary her art makes her, just to start it off. I could make all sorts of points about the trials and tribulations of being a drag queen like Fitz’s half-brother Derek, but his sections were so much fun I don’t want to touch them for fear of not communicating how awesome they are.

But above all, it’s about Marina finding herself after years of living in hell under her father’s thumb. When she has to become someone else to hide from her father and the media firestorm he’s sent after her by claiming someone kidnapped her, she questions the identity she’s taken up and if people like Fitz care for her as Marina Phillips, not as Mary Fenton. Nothing else–the romance, Fitz’s situation, and all–is as important as Marina’s personal story and what she has to deal with after running away from an abusive father.

Fitz isn’t a perfect guy and I’ve got my issues with him (a small alarm rang in my head when he said “look how you make me feel” to Marina because blaming someone else for how he felt made me uncomfortable), but he’s a good love interest and has a lot of potential to grow alongside Marina. He’s far from free of his own father’s chains, after all. He’s got his childish moments and his weak moments, but Marina brings him back from the brink and knocks some sense into him. They don’t necessarily complete each other, but they can keep each other in balance after a while. Need I mention their sizzing sexual tension/chemistry never results from either party being a douchebag?

The only real issues here are some hiccups in prose and maybe an out-of-place Britishism too. Sentence structure like “I’m afraid I’ve not had a lot of time in my life for art” is more common in the UK than the US; here, we tend to say “I’m afraid I haven’t had a lot of time in my life for art” instead. It seemed a little out of place for a girl from Spokane, Washington to use that kind of diction, but that was one of the only instances and it didn’t keep me out of the story for long.

Please, Ms. Whitney, may I have some more (novels from you)?

“Waiting  On Wednesday”

Here’s what we’re waiting on this Wednesday:

USAGI:

♡ Title: “Endless Knight (The Arcana Chronicles #2)”

♡ Author: Kresley Cole

♡ Release Date: October 1, 2014 (North America)

♡ Publisher: S&SFYR

♡ Synopsis: In the second book of the Arcana Chronicles Evie has now fully come into her powers as the tarot Empress. And Jackson was there to see it all. In the aftermath of killing Arthur, the tarot Alchemist, Evie realizes that a war is brewing between the other teens that, following the apocalypse, have been given powers and its kill or be killed.

Things get even more complicated when Evie meets Death, the mysterious, sexy Endless Knight. Somehow the Empress and Death share a romantic history – one that Evie can’t remember, but Death can’t forget. She is drawn to the Endless Knight, but is in love with Jack. Determined to discover why she’s been granted these powers, Evie struggles to accept her place in a prophecy that will either save the world, or completely destroy it.

♡ Why?: I absolutely LOVED book one – it was ballsy and unafraid and just plain awesome so I can’t wait to see what happens in book two. Will Evie continue to be an unreliable narrator? I can’t wait to see and find out! This one’s definitely in my top ten wants for the fall release season so I can’t wait to get my hands on it!

ASHLEIGH:

♡ Title: After Eden

♡ Author: Helen Douglas

♡ Release Date: November 5, 2013

♡ Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Children’s

♡ Synopsis: The day Eden met Ryan changed her world forever. Actually, not just her world. Ryan has time traveled from the future to save the world. In a few weeks, Eden’s best friend Connor will discover a new planet—one where human life is possible. The discovery will make him famous. It will also ruin the world as we know it. When Ryan asks Eden for help, she must choose between saving the world and saving her best friend’s greatest achievement. And a crush on Ryan complicates things more than she could have imagined. Because Connor is due to make the discovery after the girl he loves breaks his heart. That girl is Eden.

Grounded in a realistic teen world with fascinating sci-fi elements, After Eden is a heart-pounding love triangle that’s perfect for dystopian fans looking for something new to devour.

♡ Why?: Despite the cringeworthy cover, it sounds like it could be a lot of fun. Time travel and space travel and all sorts of fun stuff! -looks at cover again- Yep, this is one I’ll get as an ebook.

What are you waiting on this Wednesday (one day late)?

Title:

Author: Sarah Porter

Genre: YA Paranormal, Mermaids, Coming of Age

Publication Date: July 2, 2013

Source: print ARC via Amazon Vine

Synopsis: Mermaids have been sinking ships and drowning humans for centuries, and now the government is determined to put an end to the mermaid problem—by slaughtering all of them. Luce, a mermaid with exceptionally threatening abilities, becomes their number-one target, hunted as she flees down the coast toward San Francisco.

There she finds hundreds of mermaids living in exile under the docks of the bay. These are the Twice Lost: once-human girls lost first when a trauma turned them into mermaids, and lost a second time when they broke mermaid law and were rejected by their tribes. Luce is stunned when they elect her as their leader. But she won’t be their queen. She’ll be their general. And they will become the Twice Lost Army—because this is war.

☆: 3.5/5 stars – The novel drags on almost endlessly, but the ending helps redeem it

YA novels with mermaids as the focus tend to be dark due to all the legends associated with them, but the Lost Voices trilogy stands out as an especially dark take on them. Sure, it takes siren lore and slapped it onto mermaids, but not every series will have people pulled up in nets by helicopters, shot, and/or eaten by sharks who swarm after they smell blood. Coming off a strong second book, The Twice Lost is weaker than it needs to be, but it’s still good. It just needs to trim off some of the excess length and POVs.

I think Luce is fifteen at this point and she’s got so much on her plate it’s ridiculous. She runs herself ragged warning the mermaids, leading them in the fight to keep from being massacred by the US government, and teaching the other mermaids how to control water with their song. That she takes all this up as easily as she does (albeit with hesitation) at such a young age is a little odd, but she’s a fully realized character to be respected. The mermaid army she takes control of is made up of a diverse cast (her two best lieutenants are Asian and African-American) and the lack of feminine drama among them is refreshing. Some books seem to think you can’t put a bunch of girls together without catfights happening, for some reason.

The freedom they’re desperately fighting for and the destructive pasts they’re trying their best to leave behind are very real, very well-written conflicts and their war doesn’t come without sacrifices. Mermaids die in all sorts of gruesome ways and Porter never shies away from it. Still, it’s easy to lose track of how necessary it all is when pacing slows to a crawl and very little happens for almost a hundred pages once the Twice Lost Army gets the blockade going.

The fourteen separate POV segments (give or take two because I may have missed one or two). About half of them can be cut because the information they offer isn’t necessary or the bits of relevant information in them can be given to readers through one of the necessary POVs. The other half of the pacing problem is the war itself the mermaids are fighting by forming a blockade in San Francisco’s harbor. It’s necessary, yes, and real-life wars can drag on for even longer, but being force-fed every single detail doesn’t make for fun reading. A timeskip might have helped.

It also would have helped to have a lot less casual ableism. This is crazy, that’s crazy, he’s insane, she’s psychotic,… I can take it up to certain point due to how normalized it is in real life (unfortunately) and The Twice Lost went far beyond what I can take. When bad ideas/people are called crazy alongside someone who is genuinely mentally ill being called crazy in the same book, there’s a serious problem.

The novel’s ending is what saves it from being a three-star read and a disappointing end to an original, strongly written trilogy. The romance as it was developed and portrayed in Waking Storms sent a single, unmistakeable message and it’s so relieving to see Porter follow through on that message with Luce’s ultimate choice between land and sea and how everything works out. It’s about doing right by Luce, not giving it the same ending almost every other YA novel has. This is the second recent read that prioritizes the characters over the romance and it’s something I want to see much, much more of. Can this be the next big trend in YA, please?

As one of the most female-friendly YA series I can think of despite the horrible things the girls go through to become mermaids, the Lost Voices trilogy is worth a read despite all its pacing issues and unnecessary length in the latter two books. This reminds me I need to get a set of finished copies now…

Author: Elizabeth Ross

Genre: YA, historical fiction, AWESOME, someone did their research

Publication Date: June 11, 2013 (Random House – North America)

Source: NetGalley Review Copy

Summary: When Maude Pichon runs away from provincial Brittany to Paris, her romantic dreams vanish as quickly as her savings. Desperate for work, she answers an unusual ad. The Durandeau Agency provides its clients with a unique service—the beauty foil. Hire a plain friend and become instantly more attractive.

Monsieur Durandeau has made a fortune from wealthy socialites, and when the Countess Dubern needs a companion for her headstrong daughter, Isabelle, Maude is deemed the perfect foil.

But Isabelle has no idea her new “friend” is the hired help, and Maude’s very existence among the aristocracy hinges on her keeping the truth a secret. Yet the more she learns about Isabelle, the more her loyalty is tested. And the longer her deception continues, the more she has to lose.

☆: 4.5/5 stars – a delicious fin-de-siecle tale!

Review: This was actually a really educational read for me – the author’s notes at the end of the book were wonderful, and it was so gratifying to see that Ross did her research on the topic of which I had no idea existed. “Belle Epoque” is a gorgeous tale of finding beauty in ugliness, ugliness in beauty, and most of all, finding yourself in a sea of what people want you to be. This was one of my most anticipated spring/summer 2013 titles, and it definitely did not disappoint. If you’re looking for a well-researched and generally awesome YA historical book this summer, go for “Belle Epoque”.

Fitting in “tough stuff” issues into a historical novel isn’t easy, but Ross did it with surprising grace and made it the basis of her novel. Generally, girls have been feeling “unpretty” in Western culture for years, but I posit that it only got really bad within the last 200 years or so – and only really really intensifying within the last 30 years. That’s where the whole subject of this book, the repoissoirs, comes in – or the “beauty foils”. The idea of capitalizing on girls’ self-loathing and turning into gold is still pretty repugnant, but at least in this book (and in Zola’s original tale on the same phenomenon), it’s honest and said right out there from the jump. In our culture today, we’ve totally hidden (or tried to hide) Durandeau’s greed on making money with “ugly” girls, so it was really quite a breath of fresh air to read something so honest. If anything, it makes me wish that there were more Durandeaus in the world (terrible as that sounds) – it actually might give girls MORE self-esteem about their body image or dysphorias through jobs like these. Which is what eventually happens in this book through various events (which I won’t spoil).

I won’t lie when I say that I do feel like Maude does most of the time throughout the book – unpretty, unremarkable, and forgettable. But at least she’s getting paid for those traits. Maude was one of the most relatable and sympathetic main characters I’ve stumbled across in YA (not just historical YA) in the last few years, and I really got attached to her. I was sad when I got to the last page – but at the same time, happy, because she finally found her groove (so to speak), and it kind of gave me hope that I’ll (hopefully soon) be able to do the same thing.
Where to start? All of the technical areas in this book (worldbuilding, character building, sensory imagery and language, plot/arc) are more or less flawless so I won’t linger too much on those as I really don’t have too many complaints. The pacing is great, too – not too slow nor fast, and gives us just enough time to linger in the places where we should be lingering. While I wish that Paul had a little bit more character development (considering the larger role he plays in the resolution of the story), what I got was adequate, and enough to go on in terms of the semi-open ending.

The other thing that bothered me a bit – Isabelle, her mother, and Maude’s big confrontation at the climax of the story (I think you guys can figure it out from the blurb on the book as I don’t want to spoil you) felt a little rushed, and even though the pace was snowballing into a big finish, I do think that it could have been slowed down just a bit and not lose any of the impact it had on the reader emotionally. I can’t really pinpoint why it felt so fast, only that it did.

My favorite thing in this book aside from Maude and rest of the main cast has to be the sensory imagery. My god, it was as if I was really there – and I’ve never been to Paris! At least, not yet. Ross did an absolutely fantastic job capturing fin-de-siecle French culture, and everything thing felt, tasted, smelled like Paris. If anything, it’s made me want to go there even more.

Otherwise? This is a wonderful, wonderful book, and I can’t wait to get my copy of it. Definitely a favorite of 2013 so far, “Belle Epoque” hits shelves today in North America from Random House, so definitely be sure to check it out when you get the chance.

Author: Eve Silver

Genre: Space Opera, YA Contemporary, Wibbly-Wobbley-Timey-Wimey stuff

Publication Date: June 11, 2013 (HarperTeen – North America)

Source: Edelweiss Review Copy

Summary: So what’s the game now? This, or the life I used to know?

When Miki Jones is pulled from her life, pulled through time and space into some kind of game—her carefully controlled life spirals into chaos. In the game, she and a team of other teens are sent on missions to eliminate the Drau, terrifying and beautiful alien creatures. There are no practice runs, no training, and no way out. Miki has only the guidance of secretive but maddeningly attractive team leader Jackson Tate, who says the game isn’t really a game, that what Miki and her new teammates do now determines their survival, and the survival of every other person on this planet. She laughs. He doesn’t. And then the game takes a deadly and terrifying turn.

☆: 2/5 stars – an absolutely excellent high concept idea, but terrible execution.

Review: Okay. So, this is a review I really didn’t want to write because of the fact that I absolutely LOVED the concept behind it, but the execution of it was just…not awesome. It was extremely confusing to say the least, and it just made me really sad because fighting aliens, time travel, and questionable existences? All of that is awesome, as was the development of most of the technical elements. Most of them. I wish I could recommend “Rush”, but the ARC I read? It needed at least two more drafts to make things really readable. Hopefully all of that gets worked out by the time it gets pubbed. This review may have some spoilers, so you’ve been warned.

I’m giving an extra star for this one for the concept alone. It sounded SO awesome, and I think had it had a few more drafts (as I said before), it would have been four (or possibly five)-star worthy awesome. Aside from the plot (and a little bit of the character building), all of the other technical areas? Pretty well developed. Which is why this is precisely the review I really didn’t want to write.
First: the world. We have three different worlds within the first hundred pages or so – our current world, the alternate universe to our current world, and the space in-between where our main casts fights aliens. It makes me so happy that the space opera sub-genre is finally coming back to YA with a vengeance, and Rush has that in spades. The sensory imagery and language used to describe the Drau reminded me a lot of the Castithans from “Defiance” in terms of their coloring. But what we needed and really didn’t get was why the Drau were so dangerous, and why Miki and the other “chosen ones” (a good trope to use in this book, if any) literally “felt” how “wrong” they were, all the way down to their bones. I found it a fascinating concept that Miki and the others could feel things about the Drau this way, but almost a third of the way in and still no explanation about it. Not a word. And that was disappointing (and frustrating).

Second: the characters. Next to the plot, this was the area that needed the most revamping. While we get to know our main cast and MC on a pretty superficial level, which was sufficient for the parts I was reading. There was no insta-love up until I decided I couldn’t read on anymore as I was getting incredibly confused with the main plot and all of its arcs, which was a blessing, but at the same time, at the point where I stopped (a third of the way in), there should have been more development than there was.

What Silver does best: action/tension and sensory imagery/language. All of the action scenes were absolutely awesome, but it felt like there were too many of them in a row without enough pause for reflection, so the pacing was a bit off there in the sense that it was too fast. There needed to be some rest between scenes, and maybe a little bit more infodumping (I can’t believe I’m saying this as I usually HATE infodumping), or some kind of scene/chapter where we can stop and catch our breath. But the sensory language and imagery was fantastic, and that made up for a lot. A lot, but not nearly enough to save this book for me.
I think a lot of people are going to love “Rush” – I really wanted to, and I loved the idea that started it, but it just got so confusing with so many questions in terms of what came first in building the plot (why having to die? why is killing the Drau a game? why do they need time displacement? and so forth) and how they’re all put in order (or rather, lack there of) so unfortunately, this one just didn’t work for me. But that’s just me! “Rush” is out today from HarperTeen in North America, so be sure to check it out when you get the chance!