Book Summary:
Meet Josephine Foster, or Zo Jo as she’s called in the biz. The best pint-sized photographer of them all, Jo doesn’t mind doing what it takes to get that perfect shot, until she’s sent on an undercover assignment to shoot Ned Hartnett—teen superstar and the only celebrity who’s ever been kind to her—at an exclusive rehabilitation retreat in Boston. The money will be enough to pay for Jo’s dream: real photography classes, and maybe even quitting her paparazzi gig for good. Everyone wants to know what Ned’s in for. But Jo certainly doesn’t know what she’s in for: falling in love with Ned was never supposed to be part of her assignment.

Review:
If you take a minute to think about the title, you can pretty much figure out what this book is about without reading the summary. Jo and her father are paparazzi who spend their time taking pictures of celebrities – Jo’s father is a big deal in the paparazzi industry and Jo is famous among the paparazzo because she uses her young looks to get into places they can’t.

Because of this, Jo gets hired for a super secret job shooting a famous younger star while he is in a rehab retreat. Except it’s the only star that has ever been nice to her, so she has to decide between liking him as a real person and completing her paparazzi job.

It was pretty entertaining to read about a young girl paparazzi, but I did have trouble connecting with Jo for a good portion of the book. I was reading along fine, but I didn’t feel invested in the story.

About halfway through some events twist and things get quite a bit more interesting – I was actually caught quite off guard by some of the developments, and I appreciated Rushby taking her paparazzi story and making it more developed and involved than the romantic comedy I expected it to be after the first few chapters.

Fun change of topic with the paparazzi, a little deeper than you originally expect, but not one of my favorites because of my lack of connection with Jo.

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Book Summary:
Natalie Sterling wants to be in control. She wants her friends to be loyal. She wants her classmates to elect her student council president. She wants to find the right guy, not the usual jerk her school has to offer. She wants a good reputation, because she believes that will lead to good things.

But life is messy, and it’s very hard to be in control of it. Not when there are freshman girls running around in a pack, trying to get senior guys to sleep with them. Not when your friends have secrets they’re no longer comfortable sharing. Not when the boy you once dismissed ends up being the boy you want to sleep with yourself – but only in secret, with nobody ever finding out.

Slut or saint? Winner or loser? Natalie is getting tired of these forced choices – and is now going to find a way to live life in the sometimes messy, sometimes wonderful in-between.

Review:
There are a few contemporary YA authors with published books that I haven’t read much of, and Siobhan Vivian was one of them. I have no idea why I never picked up her books – and it actually made me feel a bit pathetic, since this is my genre of choice.

SO. I procured a copy of Not That Kind of Girl. Then when we moved to Nevada I left in it Michigan for whatever reason. Over the holidays I found it and rescued it, and now it has been read! (Go, me!)

Siobhan Vivian writes in a contemporary style that I love. It all flows very well, and has a great amount of dialogue vs description. Something bad that happened, though? I really did not like Natalie, the narrator.

Natalie is described as someone who wants to be in control, and that is definitely evident with the choices she makes and the things she says. And it’s impossible for me to not like the author because of Natalie, because I KNOW that people like Natalie exist, 100%. She is very authentic in her wants/needs. But I still didn’t like her. At all, really. Ever.

She learns things, as (good) characters do, but I still wasn’t much impressed with Natalie, even at the end. Which made me sad. I really liked the guy she talks to, and sometimes liked Spencer (I actually think the book from Spencer’s point of view may have been a better fit for me, she had some major growth)… but the book as a whole was brought down because of Natalie.

HOWEVER! I will be reading every other Siobhan Vivian book. I know that not all characters or situations will mesh with me, and it wasn’t the author’s fault – so I am excited to have read this one and have other great contemps to add to my list.

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Book Summary:
It all begins with a stupid question:

Are you a Global Vagabond?

No, but 18-year-old Bria Sandoval wants to be. In a quest for independence, her neglected art, and no-strings-attached hookups, she signs up for a guided tour of Central America—the wrong one. Middle-aged tourists with fanny packs are hardly the key to self-rediscovery. When Bria meets Rowan, devoted backpacker and dive instructor, and his outspokenly humanitarian sister Starling, she seizes the chance to ditch her group and join them off the beaten path.

Bria’s a good girl trying to go bad. Rowan’s a bad boy trying to stay good. As they travel across a panorama of Mayan villages, remote Belizean islands, and hostels plagued with jungle beasties, they discover what they’ve got in common: both seek to leave behind the old versions of themselves. And the secret to escaping the past, Rowan’s found, is to keep moving forward.

But Bria comes to realize she can’t run forever, no matter what Rowan says. If she ever wants the courage to fall for someone worthwhile, she has to start looking back.

Review:
I LOVED Wanderlove. LOVED.

I read Kirsten Hubbard’s first book Like Mandarin a few months ago and liked it but didn’t really connect with it. I was intrigued enough by it to be very interested in her second novel, and on a whim I read the first few pages of Wanderlove to see how it was… and ended up not wanting to stop.

The entirety of the book covers about a month in time, and it doesn’t take long at all for Bria to find herself on a trip to Central America. As the synopsis says, she doesn’t quite fit in with the others in her tour group, and finds herself lured away to a group of backpackers.

I honestly think that this book is excellent because Kirsten Hubbard is a traveler and artist herself. There are drawings from the author in the text (which I didn’t realize were by Kirsten until I did more research after finishing the book – and wow are the drawings good!), and you can certainly tell that the author is writing from a genuine viewpoint as Bria travels through Central America.

Bria is an excellent character, as are Starling and Rowan. They are incredibly real, and the interactions they have with each other keep you involved in the story. Since we’re reading from Bria’s viewpoint, we also get to watch as Bria discovers things about herself, which really pulled the book together.

Though it is a piece of fiction, it felt as though the story were straight from a traveler’s journal. There are occasional written entries from Bria, and the entire book is full of emotion.

An excellent sophomore novel, Wanderlove brings relationships and self discovery together in a realistic journey through Central America.

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Book Summary:
It’s the end of the world. Six students have taken cover in Cortege High but shelter is little comfort when the dead outside won’t stop pounding on the doors. One bite is all it takes to kill a person and bring them back as a monstrous version of their former self. To Sloane Price, that doesn’t sound so bad. Six months ago, her world collapsed and since then, she’s failed to find a reason to keep going. Now seems like the perfect time to give up. As Sloane eagerly waits for the barricades to fall, she’s forced to witness the apocalypse through the eyes of five people who actually want to live. But as the days crawl by, the motivations for survival change in startling ways and soon the group’s fate is determined less and less by what’s happening outside and more and more by the unpredictable and violent bids for life—and death—inside. When everything is gone, what do you hold on to?

Review:
Not going to lie – I was a little disappointed when I heard that Courtney Summers was writing a zombie book instead of a contemporary. Her book Some Girls Are is one of my favorite and most recommended contemps (I loved her other ones, too), so when I heard zombie I resolved that I would read it but only because it’s Courtney Summers. I’m not really a zombie person.

BUT. But. The best way I can describe This Is Not a Test is that it is a contemporary that has zombies. Weird, right? Hang with me here for a few minutes.

Something crazy has happened, and a zombie apocalypse has Sloane and several other high schoolers running for their lives. They end up at their old high school where they barricade the doors and figure out how to survive. So you can imagine that this is very close to contemporary, right? Besides the whole surviving and avoiding zombies thing.

Sloane, whose point of view we are reading from, is dealing with the fact that her sister ran away, and as you can imagine the other teenagers have their own demons to battle. Things get quite a bit more intense when you feel like the only ones left and you’re barricaded in a school wondering how you’re going to survive.

And those words may sound desperate but they are so true. Summers doesn’t just write about this apocalypse – she makes you FEEL it and FEAR it and wonder about your own water supply (this actually happened to me when I was washing my hands the day I finished the book). The characters aren’t just there because they happen to be there – they are intertwined, interacting, discussing. And they all don’t just get along, which is the most realistic part of the whole book. How easy would it have been to write about a group of teenagers that band together and love each other just because they are stuck together? And how unrealistic would that have been?

I felt immense hatred and fear and hope and confusion and pressure and love while reading This Is Not a Test. When I wasn’t reading, I was wishing I was reading, or wondering how many canned goods we had in the cupboard just in case.

So. Zombies? Yes. Contemporary? Not really, but yes. Teenagers working through the most difficult situations of their lives while trying to decipher their emotions otherwise? Definitely yes.

This is a must read for Courtney Summers fans (trust me), contemporary fans looking for a slight diversion from the genre, apocalypse fans. Quite honestly, I could probably figure out a reason for everyone to try this one and be satisfied that you’ll feel some sort of strong emotion from it.

Bravo, Courtney Summers. Excellent.

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Related Posts:

• Waiting on Wednesday: This is Not a Test by Courtney Summers
• Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Would Recommend
• Fun Five: Courtney Summers
• Review: Fall for Anything by Courtney Summers
• Review: Some Girls Are by Courtney Summers

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My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick

June 14, 2012 from Dial Books for Young Readers

“One thing my mother never knew, and would disapprove of most of all, was that I watched the Garretts. All the time.”

The Garretts are everything the Reeds are not. Loud, numerous, messy. And every day from her balcony perch, seventeen year old Samantha wishes she was one of them… until the day Jase Garrett climbs her terrace and changes everything.

Jase can sense that his beautiful neighbor is missing something in her sterile home, and as the two fall fiercely in love, his family makes her one of their own.

But when the bottom drops out of Sam’s world, which perfect family will save her–and will her perfect love survive?

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Book Summary from Goodreads.com:
When her boyfriend breaks up with her on the first day of sophomore year, Lucy has no idea how she’s going to make it through homeroom, let alone the rest of her life. Enter three stunning girls with a magical offer Lucy can’t refuse. All she has to do is get a guy to fall in love with her in the next seven days, and then…break his heart and collect one of his brokenhearted tears. As the girls teach Lucy how to hook a guy (with the help of a little magic), she quickly discovers how far she is willing to go—and who she is willing to cross—to get what she wants.

Review:
Love that little star glitter on that cover :p

Lucy gets her heart broken by her boyfriend Alex on the first day of school and soon finds herself hob-nobbing with three girls whom she never imagined herself hanging out with. They put her through several tests and tasks to see if she is worthy of becoming a member of The Secret Sisterhood of Heartbreakers.

This book was just okay for me. I had a few problems connecting with any of the characters (besides one, which I will mention shortly). Lucy was straight obsessed with her ex boyfriend, even though he had been gone all summer and broke up with her right when he got back. If that had happened to me I immediately would have thought another girl was in the picture, but she never considered that – just assumed something was wrong with her. Tsk. The Sisterhood in general wasn’t very endearing either, considering they were heartbreakers and not all that nice in the meantime.

Now onto the character I LOVED: Tristan! Honestly one of my favorite male characters lately. From what I got to read about him. I would have loved for him to be the main love interest in a normal contemporary YA a la Sarah Dessen.

Quite a bit of action, ending takes a few twists-but overall I wasn’t that charmed.

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• Fun Five: Lynn Weingarten
• Waiting on Wednesday: The Secret Sisterhood of Heartbreakers by Lynn Weingarten
• Giveaway: Wherever Nina Lies by Lynn Weingarten

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Book Summary:
When fourteen-year-old Anthony Ant Jones from the ghetto of East Cleveland, Ohio, gets a scholarship to a prep school in Maine, he finds that he must change his image and adapt to a world that never fully accepts him, but when he goes home he discovers that he no longer truly belongs there either.

Review:
While I liked the idea of Black Boy White School, I felt like it lacked depth in a few places.

Anthony Jones gets sent from Cleveland to a boarding school in Maine where he has to deal with being one of the only black kids in a predominantly white school. We get a good background on Ant, as the beginning of the book starts with him in Cleveland around all of his friends and at his school. Once he moves up to Maine the events start to get a bit spaced out, leaving me wanting more – particularly with regards to the characters. At 256 pages, Black Boy White School takes on a big topic but doesn’t have enough time to deal with the topic and allow the reader to connect with anyone (except maybe Ant).

After I finished the book I read somewhere that Brian Walker wrote Black Boy White School based on some of his experiences, which made sense because it all seemed quite authentic, even if slightly lacking. I would have loved for this to have been a longer book, or even if it had been a memoir by Mr. Walker himself.

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Welcome to the INCARNATE Theater Treasure Hunt!

This week, 48 bloggers are celebrating the release of INCARNATE by Jodi Meadows by participating in a treasure hunt with clues, activities, and lots of prizes including signed books and handknit fingerless mitts. You’ve reached a CLUE blog, which means somewhere on this page is a clue to finding the hidden page and grand prize entry form on Jodi’s website. Follow 26 clues to get there!

For more information on the INCARNATE Theater Treasure Hunt, check out Jodi’s post.

A major theme of Incarnate is reincarnation – and whether you believe it happens in real life or not, individuals have been “reincarnating” themselves by attending masquerade balls.

Masquerade balls began in the 15th century as parties for very honorable events, but extended to the public in the 16th century. Only recently, in the late 1990′s, have masquerade balls been an event held in America.

Throughout the centuries of Masquerade Balls masks became more elaborate, and many even disguised the identity of the wearer well enough that individuals took a stand against the Masquerades, unhappy that those with masks could act immoral with no regard to their actual personality.

Some examples of those original masks are below!

My clue is to help you get an extra entry into the grand prize drawing. When you reach the password-protected page (using the clues from other bloggers!), you’ll find a form to enter the grand-prize drawing. One question on the form will say, “What’s the secret blogger word?”

The answer to that is a six-letter word. Five other bloggers and I have clues to this one. Unscramble the word and enter it for an extra chance to win!

My clue is . . . N

Check out these other blogs for more clues!
The Book Vortex
The Night Bookmobile
Never To Be Told

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Book Summary:
Thirteen-year-old Steven has a totally normal life: he plays drums in the All-Star Jazz band, has a crush on the hottest girl in the school, and is constantly annoyed by his five-year-old brother, Jeffrey. But when Jeffrey is diagnosed with leukemia, Steven’s world is turned upside down. He is forced to deal with his brother’s illness and his parents’ attempts to keep the family in one piece.

Review:
What an excellent protagonist!

Heidi from YA Bibliophile recommended the Jordan Sonnenblick books to me on Twitter not long ago, and when B&N had a big sale I bought them. I can’t pass up a contemporary YA recommendation! To add to that, Sonnenblick has a new book publishing in March!

The story in Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie really is kind of sad, because Steven’s little brother Jeffrey gets sick and that is what the book deals with. However, Steven as a protagonist is excellent and has an awesome sense of humor, so it’s not as hard to read about Jeffy being sick (I mean, it’s still not a happy topic, but, you know).

Maybe the most exciting thing to me is that there is a companion to Drums – After Ever After. Which is also a companion to another Sonnenblick book, Notes From the Midnight Driver. Or so I’m told. I love companions! I can’t tell you anything about After Ever After because it would ruin Drums (don’t go read the summary of After Ever After!) but I am very excited that I decided to buy them all at once so I can read them close together

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Author of Cracked

1. What color pen do you prefer writing with?
I’m a big fan of blue. And if the pen has a smooth rolling ball then it becomes one of my favorites. I keep my favs at my desk. All for me.

2. How many pieces of jewelry do you normally wear?
Jewelry and accessories are one of my favorite things to plan when I’m getting dressed. I have one of those tall jewelry armoires and it’s filled with costume jewelry. I love options. I always wear earrings, a right hand ring, and a bracelet. Always. I never take my wedding rings or watch off of my left hand. I’ve been known to rock the occasional pin too.

3. If you could never do one chore again, which would you choose?
Laundry. It’s a continuous uphill battle when you have two active sons. However, I’ve followed in the genius footsteps of my mother and trained my boys to help me with the laundry. They take it down, get it in the washer, switch it to the dryer and bring it up – then I fold. I call it “Walton Teamwork.”

4. Describe your last vacation.
Every year my side of the family heads to a small south Jersey beach town. My late grandfather was an architect and back in the sixties he designed three ultra modern beach houses in the town. My mother’s family has been coming there ever since. Some of my family own houses in the town and some of us rent houses for the week. We’re closing in on 100 people! Nothing is better than watching the 25+ cousins play together while the adults sit and talk—you should see how big the circle of chairs gets on some days.

5. What fashion style do you wish could be abolished?
None. I love fashion. I’m not a slave to it or anything, but I love to express myself in what I wear. I’d hate to stop someone else from expressing themselves just because I didn’t like it.

About Cracked:
Sometimes there’s no easy way out.

Victor hates his life. He has no friends, gets beaten up at school, and his parents are always criticizing him. Tired of feeling miserable, Victor takes a bottle of his mother’s sleeping pills—only to wake up in the hospital.

Bull is angry, and takes all of his rage out on Victor. That makes him feel better, at least a little. But it doesn’t stop Bull’s grandfather from getting drunk and hitting him. So Bull tries to defend himself with a loaded gun.

When Victor and Bull end up as roommates in the same psych ward, there’s no way to escape each other or their problems. Which means things are going to get worse—much worse—before they get better…

More about KM from KMWalton.com:
Writing, it turns out, is K. M. Walton’s favorite thing to do in the whole world. Even the hard parts – and there are a lot of hard parts. She is very, very thankful that she is where she is on her journey as a writer. And she can’t wait to see where the road leads her…

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