Dreaming In Books

Rainbow Thursday: Renfred's Masquerade by Hayden Thorne

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Thu, 23 May 2013 14:00:00 +0000

Title: Renfred's Masquerade

Author: Hayden Thorne

Publisher: Queerteen Press (imprint of JMS Books)

Series: None

Other Reviews for This Author: A crap ton, and rightly so!

Hayden Thorne is a dear friend and will therefore not be getting officially "rated" in this review. That's partially because I love all of her books to bits, and partially because my reviews have bias, especially now that I've gone long past casual acquaintanceship stage with her. That being said: read this damn book. Seriously. You shouldn't even bother reading this review - just go out and buy or borrow the book, because it's wonderful and one of the best examples of an amazing writer of LGBTQ genre fiction that should be getting a bigger marketing push at a big publisher somewhere. Renfred's Masquerade is part fable, part fantasy, and part history. It's Thorne's most personal book to-date and has a sense of timeless storytelling about it that will make it perfect for readers across a broad range of genres and ages.

Renfred's Masquerade is a fairy tale. Nicola Gregori's father is a craftsman, a maker of clocks that astound and amaze with their gothic brilliance. They are works of art as much as they are functioning timepieces. Nicola has always wanted to follow in his father's footsteps in making such brilliant things. Nicola's father has other desires for his son. He sends Nicola off to a boarding school to learn about things that are non-magical and non-creative; the hope that practicality will prevent Nicola from attempting to live the life of a starving artist.

Going away to school doesn't help Nicola. His love of his father's artistry doesn't diminish. Home feels a million miles away, a paradise, as Nicola gets teased for his right leg. It was deformed due to infantile paralysis, a constant reminder that Nicola is different from the privileged boys around him at school. To go back to Papa and the clocks - that is what Nicola desires, just as he desires the ability to craft them. Tragedy doesn't take this childish longing into account, though, as Nicola eventually loses his father and finds himself alone in the world.

A friend of Nicola's father takes him on and boats him away to an islet of deserted mansions and nightly masquerade balls filled with noise and light, a place of ghosts that cannot be shaken. Gustav Renfred, the family friend, lives on the island with his twin, the lady Costanza. The Renfred twins find Nicola a welcome addition to their spectral island, even as he begins to explore the nightly masquerades, uncovering a boy that attends the balls and has connections to the Renfred's. Nicola befriends this boy, Davide, and slowly becomes aware of the reasons behind Davide's presence at the masquerades - and why Davide can never leave them. A fairytale that blends the light and the dark with an Italian twist, Renfred's Masquerade is a tender story about love and recovery that goes far beyond a simple boy to boy romance.

I loved everything about this book - Hayden Thorne has outdone herself with Renfred's Masquerade. Her books show a consistent growth in authorial voice and writing ability, and this piece is probably struck the strongest in terms of emotional connectivity with me as a reader and as a writer. Thorne's writing has always taken great inspiration from fairy tales, whether they are the ones of a dark, sadistic medieval Europe or the comic book stories that have grown popular in the past century. Each of her books has had a level of timelessness to it - even the contemporary stories have that feeling, which is something very special - and that timelessness also seems to effect how well I respond to the book. While I've loved all of her books, Renfred's Masquerade just has this particularly astounding tone to it that feels like it could work for any age of reader. There's a lightness to the story that prevents it from being bogged down with angst or extraneous characters, but it's not underdeveloped or simplified in order to fit a format one would associate with younger readers or a basic fairytale.

Looking beyond that, the tale of Nicola and Davide is one that is romantic in a way that Thorne hasn't explored much in her literature up until this point. Her Masks series has a romance that's parallel to its episodic plots and starts fairly early in the first book, while her historical fantasy books like The Twilight Gods generally feature a slow-burn romance that doesn't necessarily appear until close to the end of the story. While Nicola's story does involve a desire to solve the mystery of the island and the Renfreds, the romance is surprisingly integral and much more of a focus than in the usual Thorne novel. True to form, the scenes are subtle and more about the slowly building tension than they are about sexy kissing, but Thorne pulls that off. I'm a reader that generally enjoys blunt sexytimes, yet this story (and Thorne's writing in general) is just made for romance like this, the kind that just blooms in front of the reader slowly. It's just enough that the reader sees it and is excited about the event, but not so much that the reader is overwhelmed. Nicola and Davide make a brilliant couple that play off of the issues and insecurities that go along with their situation. They learn to love and be confident; they are able to eliminate obstacles, reasons to grieve, because of the strength they gain from wanting to help each other. I loved every second of these two in Renfred's Masquerade.

Honestly, I read this book a while ago, but the plot itself is not too complicated or too overreaching. Thorne goes for the simple, the subtle. Her stories are about finding the meat underneath to discuss, not putting out a lot of surface emotion and conflict that means little to nothing. Readers will find this book to be a gem, something that will work for a reader at any age. This book could be read by a young middle school student, one just out of elementary school that wants some aged-up reading without the aged-up darkness that goes with it right away. This could be read by someone in their fifties and remind them of the way love can be so complicated and so simple, and remind them of what it's like to lose a loved one and overcome that loss. Renfred's Masquerade sets out to do exactly what Thorne intended while impacting the reader magnanimously. There is a message of hope and love wrapped in a story that is elegant and classic; no other writer could have pulled this off with the class and perfection that Thorne did with this volume. My speechlessness, in all honesty, is partially due to the fact that Thorne simply hit all of my readerly buttons. This book is one that I will remember; this is one that I will take with me, on an ereader or on my bookshelf, and turn to when I need something that is a mix of the old and the new, the told and the untold. This book is what it means to write fiction about LGBTQ teens that treats them without prejudice or otherness. Renfred's Masquerade is a beautiful piece that I recommend to anyone and everyone without regret.

Cover: This cover is great. Thorne's had some awful covers from her other publishers, but this one is striking, simple, and totally nabs that dark undertone to the story.

Copy: Received from author/publisher for review (Thank you, Hayden and JMS Books!!)

Review: Pivot Point by Kasie West

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Wed, 22 May 2013 14:00:00 +0000

Title: Pivot Point

Author: Kasie West

Publisher: Harper Teen

Series: Pivot Point #1

Other Reviews for This Author: None

I started this book wondering how the author was going to do the premise justice; when I figured out her method, I immediately was intrigued and scared out of my freaking wits. Readers like me love it when authors do things different - books that are intricate and slightly off-kilter until they wrap up and you understand them, books that use different storytelling styles that manage to accentuate the character voices without ruining the pacing. Those risks can just be rough sometimes. Starting a book like Pivot Point, a book that relies on the same character going through two parallel stories, is therefore a risk. Readers should be called to this book because it's a successful risk. Kasie West has proven to me that she has the chops to write different stuff as a debut author. Pivot Point is far more complicated than one would expect for a high-concept book in today's YA market.

Addison Coleman is a 'Searcher'. In the Compound, that means that she can look into time forwards or backwards in order to see things. Addison's ability is special in that she can look far ahead into the future, the perfect device for making major decisions whenever the outcomes are unclear and conflicting. At the advice of her mother, a specialist in the mental abilities that are a part of life in the Compound, Addison has kept that part of her ability to herself. Explaining it would serve no purpose. Her closest friend Laila knows all about it, but she's the only one outside of Addison's family that truly understands. To see the future, Addison has to have an out-of-body experience and live each and every day she's looking into. A few seconds pass in real time - days, weeks, months pass in her mind.

A divorce forces Addison to take charge and use her ability. Though she hates using it for most things, Addison is forced to when her parents offer up the worst decision possible: go live with dad when he moves off of the Compound into the real world, or live with mom and stay in the Compound? She loves both of her parents; she thought they loved each other just as much. Even if it is a break, Addison's decision will impact the rest of her life. She may have to restart high school, or she may see it as a chance to explore new things and be aware of normal people, people without crazy mental capabilities. Staying in the Compound means staying safe but unaware. Leaving means moving away from her dearest friends, the entire life she's built up and loved.

Life splits into two as Addison looks into her future. One Addison moves away from the Compound and has to adjust to not using her mental abilities every day - not a problem considering that Addison's policy was always to avoid using it unless necessary. This Addison starts at a new high school and makes new friends, as well as meets a cute boy that's attractive but slightly aloof as he watches a football game from the stands one night. The other Addison stays in the Compound and continues to grow in her friendship with Laila, later being encouraged to date the studly football captain that constantly flirted with her. He's not her style, but Laila wouldn't let it rest until Addison finally took him up on his offer to date her. The two Addisons, as per the rules of her ability, have no idea that they are actually just images of potential futures. Their lives go on and become more and more entwined as secrets emerge - dangerous secrets that could threaten the lives of Addison and all of her loved ones.

Pivot Point is an authorial leap of faith that deserves the praise that the blogosphere has been rolling in for it at every turn. Harper Teen is a publisher that I consistently enjoy and devour, but it's very much a publisher that knows what's on-trend. Last year showed a lot of dystopian/post-apocalyptic books in its publishing lineup. This year showed a lot of books that straddled the post-apocalyptic line or were flat-out science fiction and action based in premise. As someone who reluctantly accepted the dystopian trend building up, I'm relieved that books like Pivot Point are starting to show up. They harken back to the paranormal romance reads of the late 2000's in the romantic structure, but they are a lot better at building fun world's and balancing active plots with internal, emotional character arcs. I will grant that Pivot Point is more paranormal than science fiction, but it does try to delineate that the powers are mental powers. (You all will see more of a science fiction edge in some of Harper's later releases like Mila 2.0, which I can attest to being more within the genre, but we'll get to that in a later review ;).

The protagonist, Addie, is a protagonist that I identified with easily without feeling like she was a major caricature. She tends towards the bookish and drops references to a few classics here or there - something I find myself buggy about, yet I always seem to end up loving the books that do it - but is not a character that is super introverted and swept off of her feet by a big strong man that is either extremely brooding or extremely popular. There is also the added benefit of seeing Addie in two settings. In one, she's familiar with her friends and the location and focuses more on the subtleties of the reactions going on around her. In the other, she's unfamiliar with everything and has that rush of newness. Because of that, Addie doesn't come across as someone too boy-crazy and blind. She shows the logical side of herself that is aware of the pitfalls of her relationships and friendships; it just so happens that she has some fabulous moments in there, too. I think Addie's duality of narratives will help keep readers from judging her from her happiness in a relationship because she will have the chance to prove herself elsewhere, and that lack of reader judgement will allow them to notice her intelligence and ingenuity more than they would with other romance-centered heroines. Addie also does very well in showing how she deals with two different types of relationships. The one is with a guy that is more reserved and less popular, yet he is most definitely the kind of person she's attracted to because of personality. The other guy is a jock - popular, prone to getting what he wants, and persuasive. The irony is that he never clicks with Addie in the same way. She proves to readers that she knows what she wants and that she doesn't feel the exact same thing regardless of the life path she chooses.

Looking at Trevor (nice ex-football player) and Duke (popular quarterback) as individual characters, I found myself enjoying the little twists on character that West put into each of them. Both are attractive to Addie - hunky, masculine, handsome, whatever. The usual list of traits are there in enough capacity to have some readers swooning right away, but West gives each of them depth with different character traits that effect them in huge ways. Trevor is nursing a football injury that he can never fully recover from; he has trouble with his body and it makes him less than perfect, though Addie is attracted to him without any qualms about that body issue. He's portrayed as kind, sincere, humble, but still protective and angry in regards to his life. There's untouched resentment over the inability to play football and get a scholarship that way, but Trevor survives and seems all the stronger for it. Duke is the opposite - not in a way to show the reader what Trevor would have been like if he had stayed playing football, just in a way to foil the subtle traits of Trevor. Where Trevor is sincere and subtle, Duke is loud and pompous. He has privilege and flaunts it. He knows that everyone likes him and that his popularity makes him soar. There's also a difference in moral ethics - Trevor is a Normal and therefore has no mental abilities, but Duke lives in the Compound and has mental abilities that he (and the rest of the Compound's football players) use to win games more easily. Each student may naturally have those abilities, but, to Addie, those abilities are seen as cheating when the Compound's team plays against Normal schools that don't even know such abilities exist. As a result, Duke's ignorant. He doesn't have the feelings of awareness, of experience, that Trevor does as a character.

I liked this. Does it sound like one boy is obviously a better person despite the other being more home-grown and polished on the surface? Yes, and I'm okay with that. West takes the bad boy trope and says, "Let's keep some of the aesthetics but focus on the reasons why readers don't want to read about another super-privileged, super-hot jock that already has everything." She doesn't go as far as she could with making Trevor non-privileged, so it's not an extremely serious theme, but it's nice just to have an author that's willing to point out that being in love with two people (or even just dating two people in alternate-future-personae) does not mean that the people and the feelings between them are the same, or that both are still obviously good people that are good for the protagonist. Secondary characters are also populous without being everywhere. I enjoyed the dual perspectives of Addie's best friend - in the scenario where Addie stays at the Compound, Addie's friend is very different than in the scenario where Addie leaves to live with her father. Again - dual sides mean some assuredly different parts of the characters shown. Addie's parents were also refreshing characters. They aren't awful towards each other and are both attentive parents that care. They aren't always the most likable from a teenage perspective, but they are fleshed out and memorable, not just bookends to keep Addie's life from feeling unrealistic. I also appreciated that West made a point of having both parents have integral parts in the plot or the world building of the story.

Pulling off a narrative that is comprised mostly of two parallel storylines that occur to the same character - just in different versions of the future - is tough. Really tough. Not only does characterization have to match up, but it also has to differ. The world has to be strong; the plot can't drag. These are all things that should be in any book, but dual storylines are that much tougher because of the need to tell two different stories that come together without feeling like rehashes. West does everything with admirable grace and understanding. Her writing fits the YA spectrum well, a good commercial kind of writing that still manages to grace the pages with a fun, zesty voice for Addison's narration. Each chapter is designated with a word's definition as it relates to the created world. While not a very complicated world, there is enough to it to have the reader immersed and interested in what West could potentially bring to the table. I loved the idea of the Compound and the mental abilities, not to mention the themes of morality brought in along with them. West chose to explore those themes well, and they worked with the story's many contemporary issues and settings. I would have liked some more detail and logistics regarding the Compound and how it was run, however. West never fully explained how the Compound was able to supply its own media that was different from Normal media, and I felt like there were a lot of untapped questions and small details that would have made the world feel a lot richer and better developed. West's writing was so fun that I overlooked that stuff after a while, but I do think the series will need it in greater capacity in the following books as the Compound and the mental powers become more prominent parts of the world. It's a unique premise that deserves to be fleshed out, and I'm sad to say that West does what a lot of today's YA authors do - shifts the story in a fiercely contemporary direction despite the potential for a world that screams of distinguishable qualities with its supernatural and scientific originality.

Pivot Point is a great debut novel. Arguably one of the best that I've read this year. The risks it takes with narrative style are impressive, and it manages to incorporate some positive themes in among the usual YA romance stuff, hot guys included. I loved Addie's voice and the flow of the writing and the story. Nothing is too surprising, but it will prove to be twisty enough for most YA readers to be satisfied (and, to be fair, I am usually pretty good about predicting things in YA novels, so YMMV.) I think West could work on the world building more in the next book in the series - but that's minor compared to how impressed I am with what she did with Pivot Point. This book works, readers, and I'm so excited to try out more from this author. So. Excited. At least she has a contemporary YA romance coming out this summer to tide me over until her next Pivot Point book...even then, it'll be a painful (but hopefully worth-it) wait. P.S. The ending is brilliant, but it breaks you in the worst way. Even I didn't quite anticipate Addie having to make the decision she makes.

Cover: I so love this cover. While I'm not a huge fan of the model, I love the distorted view versus the regular view, the way the title is vertical and prominent without feeling overpowering. It suggests drama and paranormal that is focused on the female protagonist. Bonus for the model not looking dead or being a cut-off face.

Rating: 4.5 Stars

Copy: Received from publisher/publicist for review (Thank you, Heather and Harper Collins!!!)

Cover Reveal: Tag Along by Tom Ryan

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Tue, 21 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Hey, blog folks and readers that happen upon me for Googling random crap like "bosoms" and "hot latin men". I have something totally awesome to share with you today. Remember Tom Ryan? He participated in LGBTQ Voice last year and was a great sport when I interviewed him and reviewed his debut novel, which was a coming out story with a Canadian twist.

I know, he was pretty awesome, which is why I'm excited to help him feature the cover for his next novel, Tag Along. Tag Along features four different character PoVs, including one for an LGBTQ character, and it all centers around junior prom. Three other blogs - plus Tom's and my own - will be featuring chapters of the book and giveaways to go along with the cover reveal.

First, a little bit about Tag Along (taken from the synopsis):

It’s junior prom night. Andrea is grounded, Paul is having panic attacks, Roemi has been stood up, and Candace is trying to avoid one particular cop. Over the course of eight eventful hours, paths are crossed, plans are changed, messages are mixed, and four near strangers form some unlikely bonds.

Now, for the cover and the chapter reveal. Ta-da!!

What do y'all think? I think it's awesome, myself. The purple, the photographs - it screams like a fun novel full of comedic antics. What goes better with this kind of cover than Roemi's first chapter in the book?

Roemi
Worst. Prom. Ever.

Okay, so you are not going to believe any of this. I had a date. To the prom. A prom date. And this boy is hot to trot, fire and brimstone, one sexy little Abercrombie & Fitch-style love interest deluxe.

John. Hot John. I met him online, and he’s totally sweet and really cool, and he obviously has good taste in men. We hit it off immediately. I was all sup and he was all nahmuch, you? and before you know it, we’re texting, like, all the time! And not dirty stuff (okay, not just dirty stuff--ahem), but mostly just shit like whatcha doin? and just watchin the Kardashians and eatin’ cereal. Shit like that. Cute, right?

All right, so there might have been a couple of minor roadblocks on destiny highway. For one thing, he lives in the city, about a twenty-minute drive away. He’s also hard-core closeted, but that’s cool, because I was closeted for a while too. Like till I was twelve. The thing with John, though, was that he was going to use my prom as his testing ground for coming out. He was worried for a while that if he came to the Granite Ridge prom, he’d end up seeing someone he knew or someone who knew someone or whatever. Closet stress, perfectly natural.

Anyway, it took a few weeks, but I totally managed to calm him down and convince him not to be paranoid. At least, I thought I’d convinced him not to be paranoid.

So the plan was, I’d get dressed up like America’s Next Top Male Model, and John would take the bus out from the city and come to my house to pick me up, and we’d go to the pre-prom party at Terry Polish’s house and do lots of mingling, and maybe sneak a couple of drinks, and then we’d go to the prom, and there’d be lots of pictures, and he’d meet all my friends, and then there’d be a bunch of fast dancing, and then I’d slip the DJ ten bucks and a jump drive with “Don’t Stop Believing” on it, and John and I would end up stealing the show as the lights dimmed and the crowd parted, and then we’d totally fall in love in the middle of the dance floor, melting into each other’s arms as the disco ball threw crystal spheres of light down on us.

Best prom daydream ever, right? Totally! We’d be making history!

That’s probably worth explaining. See, John and I were going to be the first gay couple to ever own the dance floor at a Granite Ridge High School prom. And yeah, the operative word here is were.

So I’m all tuxed up and looking totally fierce, and I’ve got everything prepared. The lighting is arranged perfectly, my dad is ready with the camera, and I’ve been training my mother for a week to press Play on my iPod at the exact moment the doorbell rings. I have a really upbeat dance track queued up. At 5:25, we all take our places. I grab the boutonniere I bought this afternoon and perch nonchalantly on the stool that I’ve placed by the front door. Mom and Dad hang out close by in the living room.

At 5:30, I plaster a million-dollar smile on my face. By 5:40 the smile is a little droopy but still totally ready to snap back to action. By 5:45 I’ve dropped the smile, but my facial muscles are ready to kick in at any moment. By 5:50 my mouth is starting to twitch in an uncomfortable “we don’t know what we’re supposed to do, Roemi” kind of way. Also, my backup has decided to abandon me. My dad has gone into the kitchen to make a sandwich, and my mom is on the couch reading a book.

At six o’clock it’s official. He’s half an hour late, and he hasn’t responded to any of my texts. He’s not coming. I hop down from the stool and toss the boutonniere onto the entryway table before running upstairs to my room. I slam the door behind me, sit at my desk and open Facebook. Sure enough, there’s a dm from John: I’m so sorry.

I’m so sorry ?! The bastard doesn’t even have the decency to text me face to face? Instead I get a three-word Dear John from John on Facebook? Pa. Thetic.

I throw myself on the bed, but I’m too furious to cry real tears, so I resort to stage weeping. I’m loud enough that my parents come upstairs. They stand in the doorway, looking sad.

“Roemi, cheer up,” says my dad. “Why don’t you come downstairs and we’ll have a quick bowl of ice cream, and then I’ll drive you to the prom.” My dad’s solution to everything is ice cream; he didn’t have it growing up in India, even though it was the hottest place on earth, or so they’ve been telling me since I was a kid.

“Listen,” I say, sitting up and releasing the death grip on my oldest stuffed animal, Britney Bear, “I’m not going to prom. Prom is ruined. I bragged to everyone about how I was going to make the most spectacular entrance ever. I can’t just show up solo and hop out of the back seat of your Land Cruiser like some kind of loser. Can you guys just leave me alone for a little while? I want to lie here and feel sorry for myself.”

My mom comes over and kisses me on the head. “I’m sorry, Roemi. Next year, I’m sure you will have the best of all the dates.”

“Let me know if you meet him,” I say.

“When you feel better, come down and have some ice cream!” calls my dad as they head down the stairs.

I go back to my desk and stare for a while at my computer screen. I feel like I should respond to his message, but even though I usually have no problem being scathing, I’m just too depressed to come up with anything. The thing is, I really like John--or as much of him as I know from the Internet and my cell phone--and I thought he liked me. I put my computer to sleep.

Even though I’m not going to prom, I’m not ready to take the tux off just yet. I get up and stand in front of the mirror. I look awesome. It seems a shame for such a glam-tastic outfit to stay locked up in my room all night. Maybe I don’t want to sit around feeling sorry for myself. I quietly walk downstairs. I can hear my parents laughing at a stupid sitcom in the family room. I grab my shades from the kitchen counter and head out the back door.

Enjoy the little snippet? Curious to read more? This is only one of four chapters revealed today - one for each PoV - and you can find the other three here!

To read Andrea’s first chapter, visit Karen at Teen Librarian’s Toolbox.

To read Paul’s first chapter, visit Christa at More Than Just Magic.

To check out Candace’s first chapter, pay a visit to Dianne at Oops! I Read a Book Again.

In case this really resonated with you readers, you can follow Roemi's character on Twitter, as well as follow Tom, and add Tag Along on Goodreads.

Last but not least - Tom is doing a killer preorder contest on his blog here. You all should check it out if you have the chance. :) I'll leave you with a little bit of info about Tom - and please, please check out his books if you feel the need to read about diverse characters in situations that don't reek of angst and depression. Tag Along is sure to be a fantastic sophomore novel.

TAG ALONG (Orca Book Publishers) is Tom Ryan’s second novel. His debut, WAY TO GO (Orca Book Publishers), was published in 2012 and was chosen for the ALA’s Rainbow List of notable 2012 titles for and about LGBT youth, the ALA’s Quick Picks List, The OLA’s Best Bets List of the top ten YA novels in Canada for 2012. WAY TO GO was also a nominee for the White Pine award.
TAG ALONG will be released on October 1, 2013.

Blog Tour: A Complicated Marriage by Janice Van Horne

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Tue, 21 May 2013 03:36:00 +0000

Title: A Complicated Marriage: My Life with Clement Greenberg

Author: Janice Van Horne

Publisher: Counterpoint Press

Series: None

Other Reviews for This Author: None

How do you grade someone's life when it's clearly not a memoir, when there's no definite attempt at sending a message or limiting the information given in order to come across as one way or another? Sure, every autobiography leaves things out - we are all our worst critics and our most wily editors - but the autobiography has much less pomp and fiction behind its conception, and this is why I find myself struggling to discuss A Complicated Marriage in a way that is anything but personal. I can't analyze a plot when there is no plot, just a life. A life that has been lived and relived throughout the writing of this book, a life that is certainly unique without coming across as preachy, self-centered, or dull.

Janice Van Horne married Clement Greenberg in the 1950's with a twenty-year age difference and a cultural division between them that her family could not stand. He a Jewish-German man in his forties, she a girl fresh out of college in her twenties. Clement wasn't the handsomest man in the room; he smoked and drank casually while conversing freely about art and all of its ups and downs. He saw her at a party and it was all over. Not love at first sight, but interest at first sight. It was that interest that jump started a marriage that would continue past Greenberg's death.

Their love lasted through decades; they practiced an open marriage that was a reality of their world, a world where men would occasionally stray for no reason other than necessity, and the women, too, would find themselves in the arms of others. Clement knew from day one that a traditional marriage would be impossible for him. For Janice, a girl raised to be strictly Presbyterian and a model wife (though she couldn't cook worth a damn), this was something to shove aside until the first affair. Marriage then became an adjustment all over again as Janice began to think about her love of Clement and the way that their lives had never fit into the ordinary mold that had been stressed so highly at the time of their marriage.

Art was Clement's life. For the first ten years, it was also Janice's. She had no place until she she had a child and explored a life outside of Clement's, a life that was about coexisting without collaborating at every moment. There were acting classes and trunked scripts of plays that would be performed throughout the years to crowds of all sizes, garnering receptions ranging from glowing to scathing. There were trips to the houses of the great artists and their various partners - each painting a study as Clement was asked for his honest opinion. Janice looked on, living and absorbing but never becoming starstruck, devoted, fanatical about the world of art and its dysfunctional, erratic family.

I didn't anticipate that I would be reading an autobiography, but I'm amazed at how interested I was in Janice's life as a whole. She starts where most love stories start - the time she first meets Clement, the love of her life. She spends the first half of the book describing the life she began with Clem and all of the good and bad that went with it; moving in to a tiny but workable apartment, getting wrapped up in the art world, suffering through amazing (and awful) excursions to see different artist friends. David Smith to Jackson Pollock. It's a tapestry of sights and sounds. Whirlwind emotions are reduced to paper and ink as Janice chronicles those days in great detail. The reader gets to know Clem as the kind of man that is romantic in his everyday life, but not in his actions or his direct words. He is precision over generalities, always taking the time to choose precise words for things he wishes to say. Janice is not the only woman he will ever have sex with or have a relationship with, but he always tells her that she will be the most important person in his life.

The strange thing is that the reader sees this. In a world where most of us can barely survive monogamy at is most strict, let alone polygamy or open marriages, it is amazing to see a woman of Janice's time so forthright about the positivity of acknowledging the need for an open marriage and how it allowed her life to be full of vivacity - pain sometimes, even anger - and love that Clem always provided even when theoretically separated. Their daughter, Sarah, was an important bonding agent that was occasionally overlooked by her parents' high speed lifestyles. Janice would move around, Clem would stay put, yet both would have moments where their paths never seemed to cross Sarah's. Yet, there was still love.

Love's overarching power is what pulls this text together, but what makes it special is Janice's transformation at the midpoint of her life. After spending half of the book defining herself by her relationship with Clement and artists, Janice goes off on her own and begins to realize that she loves acting and writing beyond mere hobbies. She doesn't believe she is perfect or amazing, but she believes in her passion and it creates for a life story that is riveting to someone who understands theater. Readers will find these parts that discuss craft and career as well as personal ups and downs to be the highlight of the book. Van Horne isn't so wrapped up in the drugs/booze/smoke triad that plagued the years she was in theater so as to lose sight of her personal life. Amid the acting and what-have-you, she also spent a lot of time with Clem (and a few others) and had some great stories to tell about traveling with him and being a part of his life.

A Complicated Marriage is still an autobiography. I'm one of those readers that finds their mind wandering with longer nonfiction, and that does occur in Van Horne's book. Her life is interesting and her memory sharp, non-judging, yet there are still some moments that are better than others. Van Horne doesn't spend as much time on her family as I would have liked - an encounter early on with their deeply rooted anti-Semitism caused her to cut ties fast with her marriage to Clem. It's admirable, but I would have liked a few more stories about her childhood so as to provide some backstory for her motivation and thought behind some actions. Van Horne explains it well enough to keep the reader up to date, so it's not a crippling fault in the storytelling, and there's a certain appeal to how Van Horne is so aptly able to identify the stages of her life where emotion occurred over sense. She doesn't regret her actions, yet she doesn't act as though her way of thinking in one time period is justifiable in later time periods. It could be age; or maturity; or experience. Whatever it is, it's something that adds depth to the text and the story of Janice's life.

Van Horne's writing is engaging and has that mentioned self-awareness, but the attention to detail is really what got me. She references a lot of names (many that I didn't know, some that I did) and places that, while not bringing to mind physical images, suggested that her memory is razor-sharp. I especially enjoyed the accompanying exposition that would put the most perfect image inside of my head. Following Janice's life was like following a movie - one filmed in the faded colors of photographs trapped in old albums. It was a real trip down memory lane. I think the length and the subject matter come out a little too personal and non-art related (Clem's life is separated from Janice's for a large portion of the second half of the book) for those who will turn to the text for that. But, for something different? I truly enjoyed reading it and loved what Janice had to say about her life. An open marriage can apparently work and still retain the love that started it all.

Cover: It's very sweet, very true to the image that Janice portrays.

Rating: 4.0 Stars ( a purely personal grade )

Copy: Received from publisher/publicist for review (Thank you, Trish, TLC Book Tours, and Counterpoint Press!)

Review: The River of No Return by Bee Ridgway

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Thu, 16 May 2013 00:56:00 +0000

Title: The River of No Return

Author: Bee Ridgway

Publisher: Dutton

Series:

Other Reviews for This Author: None

I review a variety of genres on this blog - romance, young adult, historical fiction, non-fiction, urban fantasy - but am occasionally aghast at some of the things I get sent for review consideration. Sometimes, the genre just feels completely out of my zone of giving a crap. Others, it's because the book just seems to badly represent one of the genres that I like. The River of No Return wasn't one of those bad requests. It was one of a third category - the category of the book that combines several of those genres in a way that would either appeal to me or make me bored just thinking about it. Luckily, the genres that Ridgway incorporates in her debut novel make for very entertaining reading in blurb form and in book form. Historical fiction, genre romance, and adventure stories all get meshed together in an epic story that is satisfying but still leaves a world of possibilities in its final pages.

Fighting in a Napoleonic war circa 1812, Nick Falcott was faced with death and survived, but not because he was brave, cunning, or stronger than his opponent. Nick Falcott reflexively traveled through time using an ability that he had no awareness of. Time travel. Impossible, yet Nick awoke in 2003, his body in a bed in modern London. A man by the name was there to explain Nick's improbable situation - that of the time travel, the body's fight-or-flight reaction, and the international society in place whose goal was to nurture the time travelers that jumped forward within the river of time. Nick gets placed in this organization long enough to go through their cultural adaptation classes, the goal to have him able to live in modern society at a functional level with periodic stipends provided by the society to ensure a good standard of living.

The society is about far more than getting people like Nick to live normal lives in their new time streams. On a higher level, the society has its secrets and motives that go beyond assimilation. Known as the Guild, this group of time travelers has a reputation throughout the time stream. Reputations breed rivalries, and rivalries breed enemies. Nick gets recruited to go back to the time he came from, or thereabouts, in order to prevent the enemies of the Guild from gaining access to an important item known as the Talisman. The Talisman could be the key to disrupting the flow of the river of time, causing the future to slowly disappear. With time travelers unable to travel past a certain date, it seems more and more likely that something is causing the demise of time itself.

1815 sees the precocious girl Julia Percy in an awful predicament. Her beloved grandfather has just passed away and the estate has been taken over by a spiteful, bitter member of their extended family. Julia's economic circumstances are unfortunately tied to this detestable creature. While he has definite control over the estate, he does not have control over Julia's abilities. Julia discovers that she can manipulate time, perhaps in a way similar to her grandfather, and it dawns on her that her grandfather may very well have wanted to protect that ability from falling into the wrong hands. Little does Julia know that her ability is so much more powerful than she has ever anticipated, and that said ability will lead her into the arms of Nicholaus Falcott and his own time-related journey.

Ridgway's debut novel is much larger in scope than I ever anticipated; the summary above is only the beginning of what this story promises. I think that my expectations were all over the place as a result - the book itself was primarily linked with historical romance plus time travel in my head, so I wasn't quite prepared for the larger-than-life scope that it encompassed. Even in YA stories about time travel, I don't think I've come across an attempt like this at telling the story from such a big view. Each of the characters is complex, slightly unlikable, and very human.

Nick is the hero and is the character we see the most of. Though the story opens with Julia being focused on in the third person perspective, Nick's point of view is the one that we see most often. His story opens in a way that could be very ho-hum; the dropping-into-an-unknown-organization thing has the potential to be a major info dump extravaganza. While not the fastest part of the story or the character arc, it does open up Nick's character and show the reader a bit of what they can expect. Nick's personality comes across as one of a fairly agreeable person that gets caught up in some very unagreeable things, and he struggles with that sense of cowardice and lack of adventure throughout the book as his friends disappear, seemingly because they are much more forward and blunt with their emotions and suspicions than he is. The growth of his character throughout the story as he gets caught up in the gray world of the Guild and his romance with Julia is entertaining and exciting; Nick's character feels a lot more dynamic when the story concludes and shows that he has the potential to be someone who can change the world, something that gets paralleled with his abilities in time manipulation. Despite all of the growth, I had trouble connecting with Nick throughout some of the story because of this non-confrontational nature. He's offset by many characters that aren't afraid to be brutal or over-the-top in order to get their way. We see people like Julia and Arkady that are constantly at odds with one or more people around them, people that have definitive faults but also definitive strengths. Nick comes across as less three-dimensional in comparison to these characters. Possibly because he's the hero, possibly because he just gets overshadowed by Julia. At the end of the day, he has a lot of potential that's shown in his reexamination of his place in the Guild and of its morals, and I think that he'll become a lot more dynamic as this story expands and shows its scope beyond the time period.

One thing that I did love about Nick was his interactions with his family. Specifically, his sister Clare. Ridgway does the cultural confusion of time travel quite nicely. It's never as simple as a character getting used to foreign things for plain humor, though there is a level of humor in how Nick interacts with objects and people of different times due to the narrative's tone. Nick's concerns about his sister are rich and show a lot of his character in a subtle manner. On one hand, he understands that 1815 has certain expectations of women, especially women his sister's age, yet he struggles throughout the book to reconcile that with the knowledge of women's rights and civil liberties that he gained while living in the 21st century for ten years. Then there is the further privilege that he shows of the class that he grew up in up until 1813 when he traveled through time. Nick struggles with these character perspectives throughout the book. He grew up in a conservative era with a lot of money, then matured in an era where he could witness the value of his previous position without so much bias and clouding, and then went back to the era that brought out his old habits that conflicted with his new ones. Clare is just the best example of this because she has so many great discussions with Nick about economics, politics, and gender in the time period that truly give the reader an idea of who these two characters are as people within the context of their time. Clare is strong in a way that Julia isn't because she understands how to use her position in the family to manipulate things to her desires without going against major social convention. Nick is strong because he can use the things that he's learned to better appreciate the women in his life.

You may suspect that I like Julia Percy's character, more so even than Nick's. And your perceptions would be spot on. Julia Percy is my spirit animal. She's a female character in alternate history (though not quite so alternate as...altered...) that is entirely too modern for her time but doesn't come across as being overly modern, if that makes sense. Julia was raised by her grandfather and has a free spirit as a result, but she still maintains some of the qualities that we commonly associate with in regards to women in this period of time. She is surprised when Nick is so bold as to physically touch her in sensual ways. She is surprised at a lot of things that Nick does - as bold and smooth-tongued as he is in front of Julia, he still comes across as unconventional in his courtship. The novel's plot revolves around Nick and Julia being unaware that they share time traveling powers. Julia also knows next to nothing about the Guild, instead discovering her powers in a way that's more of a personal journey than an overreaching story arc like Nick's. Because of this, she gets in situations that make her seem ignorant or less knowledgeable because of her gender, yet she then proves that she is intelligent by figuring things out on her own anyway. Even though Julia does not know the extent of Nick's dealings with the Guild (or what the Guild truly is), she comes across as a girl that could deal with the facts and move forward smartly. Ridgway respects Julia in this way and makes her story, though more diverting and less 'epic' than Nick's in many ways, just as appealing. I was constantly excited for Julia's chapters because of the interest in seeing her powers develop; reading her theories about time travel and Nick's place in her life (and the possibilities surrounding him and Arkady) was so much more enjoyable from a reader perspective than I anticipated. Julia's character is definitely the one derived from the historical romance genre that The River of No Return samples from, and that made her character a comfortable, whimsical voice to slip into after Nick's heavier philosophizing.

The cast of characters is huge and this barely covers it. There are some villains, some helpful allies that show their faces much later in the book, and some background characters that aid the story in nice little ways. Readers will find themselves engaged with most of them, though the cast is much more concentrated in the middle when the dynamic between Nick, Arkady, Julia, and Clare gets developed prior to the development of the Guild's story arc. As a result, some of the later characters feel less touched upon or more outwardly humorous, more as a way to relieve tension than to add to the depth of the story. There is also a habit where some characters go on heavy discusssions involving the nature and philosophy of time; these discussions are intellectually stimulating and fascinating, but can feel a little too dense and wall-of-text for a story that, when at its best, moves briskly.

Ridgway's construction of her world is fantasy over science fiction. Alternative history, time travel done as a magical power released in a life-or-death situation that later gets honed as an ability, potentially expanding to time travel in different directions. Ridgway attempts to cover her bases with the world building by really getting into it, and she avoids a lot of logistical holes because of the world building. Her characters clearly have to work at studying other languages to communicate, though the communication is mostly between time travelers that would be able to handle anachronistic behavior without much trouble. The cultural boundaries are seen as something difficult to overcome but not impossible; characters maintain keepsakes from other time periods, though they don't discuss how that could potentially dilute the river of time (and, yes, the book does describe it as a river based on the Guild's theories.) Ridgway's society felt very constructed and was artfully used as a way to make her characters question themselves. Who is right and who is wrong? Is there justice in blaming those who may not have done anything wrong because of suspicion and ulterior motive? What morals are there are in messing up the time stream in an attempt to fix what people theorize being broken? I loved this world because it was so based on the lack of assurance of the characters. Ridgway has so much mystery in the time travel that's left to be awakened, and the historical settings are lush, rich, and researched. The reader can easily tell that Ridgway knows what she's writing about but doesn't live just for the historical detail.

Debut novels often feel like a recipe that goes wrong the first time - the recipe that has so many ingredients that lead to forgotten ones (sometimes important ones, sometimes the smallest spices), the recipe is too simple and boring, like toast, or the recipe is just a smoking hot mess of char and agony that makes you want to throw up. The River of No Return is of the first order. Ridgway's book has a crap ton of ingredients in it. Ridgway's writing is very solid, engaging and occasionally poetic without drowning in literary self-actualization, and it manages to combine all of the necessary elements in a way that doesn't feel feel like a hodgepodge of all of the individual ideas. I loved the writing in this regard, but the pacing of the story fell into question more than a few times. There are sections of this book that are undeniably slow. It's not a story that's meant to be short, but I felt that there were sections that just capitalized too much on the philosophical and the historical rather than the characters and their places in the plot. That being said, the book does have a much brisker pace towards the end that makes the occasionally ongoing description enjoyable. The nice thing about The River of No Return is that it's a book that, once you get into it, you really get into it. The ending was exactly what it needed to be. Some things tie up, some things don't, and it leaves you with the notion that Ridgway has only just begun to give the reader an inkling of this world.

I want more. While not a perfect read for me, there's something about this book that is incredibly satisfying. Nick's character and the slow pacing both bog down the beginning, but as the story progresses and Ridgway starts intertwining her various genres, plot threads, and characters, there is a special kind of alchemy that comes together and makes it all addictive. The River of No Return is an intelligent debut novel with writing that captures the romantic history of time travel without skimping on the plot and the action. Nick and Julia are a couple that I want to follow through another book or two at least. There's something about this world that suggests limitless possibilities, and what better way to open a series than with an infinite amount of possibility?

Cover: This cover is eye-catching, but I don't think it really meshes the elements of romance, fantasy, history, and action that I associate with the story. The cover suggests more of a historical novel in a very cold region that has lots of depressing things going on. That ain't this book.

Rating: 4.0 Stars

Copy: Received from publisher and author for review (Thank you, Bee and Dutton!!)

Blog Tour: However Long the Night by Aimee Molloy

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Mon, 13 May 2013 16:54:00 +0000

Title: However Long the Night: Molly Melching's Journey to Help Millions of African Women and Girls Triumph

Author: Aimee Molloy

Publisher: Harper One

Series: None

Other Reviews for This Author: None

I haven't read much nonfiction in my past few years, and the amount of nonfiction I've read dealing with non-profit organizations, volunteer work, and general do-gooding has been minimal at best, if not nonexistent. The blurb for However Long the Night struck me because it dealt with a lot of things that I support one thousand percent (women's rights, sexual rights, general civil rights and equality) in a country like Senegal. Specifically, the story as a narrative about a woman's goal-setting that led the country of Senegal to undergo a drastic change in civil opinion on female genital cutting (FGC). I can't say that I could accurately grade this as a work of pure writing because, in this case, the quality of the work is based on presentation and the issues being addressed, not so much the direct stylistic variety presented, but I can certainly try. Molloy's writing itself did not impress me, but the way she presented Molly's story - really, the story of the women of Senegal, including Molly - impressed me. A lot.

Female genital cutting (FGC) has also been known as female genital manipulation (FGM) and female circumcision. It's the action of cutting a female's genitals at some stage in her life for cultural reasons. It almost assures a level of extreme pain at the time, and complications arise afterwords that range from pregnancy troubles to death. Needless to say, FGC is a cultural practice that has been a major thorn in the side of women's health issues in countries that practice it, leading many of them to believe that women naturally have these health issues - or, in the case of the people of Senegal and similar cultures, that these women are inflicted with evil spirits that have come around due to other misdeeds. FGC is something that has become known on the global scale in the last forty to fifty years, but, early on, campaigns to stop it from NGOs were mostly intent on demonizing it rather than understanding it.

Molly Melching set out to change that after she gradually became more and more immersed in the culture of Senegal. A child of the 50's and a college student of the 60's, Molly was a free-spirited go-getter that wanted something strange and wonderful out of her French degree, her foreign exchange time in Senegal leading her to falling in love with the country as a whole. She learned what it meant to be a Senegalese woman; the culture and commitment to immersion was nothing short of a glorious challenge for her. Molly's time led her to promoting education and awareness for women and children, practicing teaching techniques that promoted literacy and better education via the inclusion of a commonly-used language, Wolof, that wasn't recognized by the country's system of education.

Educating the people eventually led to so much more. With brilliant people encouraging her, helping her understand Senegal and its ways, Molly eventually started an organization known as Tostan that used learning modules to help the women of various villages learn about health, project management, civil rights, and other important topics that would empower them as individuals. Molly gave women a voice in their culture, slowly shifting what many believed to be the naturally right image of a silent, burdened woman to one with rights that was included in decisions. In helping women embrace their equality and humanity while retaining their sense of cultural appreciation and rights, Molly eventually was approached with the challenge of helping local women rid the tradition of female genital cutting, known as 'the tradition' locally.

The question was - how to change a centuries-old practice and belief without imposing as an outsider?

Molly's story is simply told, but it works. There's something about the basic, stripped-down prose of Molloy's that makes this story seem amazing. Molly's work as a humanitarian is inspiring because, time and time again, it is presented that she was respected as an individual, as a woman, because she understood the importance of cultural understanding. It wasn't a matter of giving money or instilling a belief of hers unto others in the most aggressive way possible, but a matter of spending years and years teaching, growing, and learning with the people that she wanted to help change. Molloy is very detailed in her explanation of the events that surround the formation of Tostan and, later, the public declarations that villages would make regarding the goal to end FGC. The story is positively brimming with well-handled language; nothing is just about Molly, but instead includes Molly. For everything that Molly does, there is something that the women around her do as well.

That's what made this narrative such a great sell for me. Though it was relatively straight-forward and free of authorial analysis that veered from the factual, it felt like a narrative of depth because the story was about so much more than what it told. The surface issue is huge enough - ending FGC was something that happened in a very fast time frame considering how entrenched it was culturally, often a belief that many people associated with Islam (though Islam does not require it - the belief stemming from a lack of knowledge of the Islamic texts). Ending something so culturally important was huge, and Molly's involvement as a teacher and as a member of the community is what allowed that to happen. The text doesn't separate the people of Senegal from Molly - it's always a collective, textual proof that there is no difference between them save for the individuals they all are. This theme was continually addressed as the narrative unfolded, and it was inspiring to see the consistent stress of community and knowledge in order to bring awareness and change in regards to equality and civil rights. Peaceful protest; the presentation of knowledge; the power of the collective.

This is what will make the book great for a variety of readers, too. Its focus on Molly's idea of cultural acceptance lends that concept to the entire reading experience. Readers want to know more about Senegal and its people. They get explanations as to why people practiced FGC and why it was looked down upon to discuss it or cringe in pain. It showed just how stupid the western cries of 'barbaric' were counterproductive, for no one had thought to consider that a cultural thing like this had roots in love and tradition that many believed to be sacred. Cutting a woman was considered good, as it allowed her to marry and be considered clean. Cutting a woman was thought to be religious; a necessary burden. It wasn't thought to be something done for no reason. It wasn't something considered wrong. They thought it was right. Only in being educated about it, and in considering the pain that it led to physically and emotionally, did its practitioners get strong about wanting to stop it. When they got strong, they got strong.

Where this book lacked was the connectivity to other things. Straight-forward storytelling in regards to nonfiction can be an asset, but I think there needs to be a greater exploration in the depth and understanding of the source material. It would have been helpful to include more about people that weren't Molly, as the chapters following other people within Senegal were fascinating and showed those various sides of the opinion on cutting. Some history, some political background - I think I just expected a more in-depth concept of setting so that this story would feel complete in its immersion. Without it, Molly's story lacked the epic feeling that it needed for how great it really as. The simplicity matched Molly's outlook in many ways, but it could have drawn more parallels with her life and given the reader a more personal connection with Senegal as well as Molly as the subject. Nonfiction books like this need to hit that spot of emotional resonance so readers can better absorb the lessons within them. As invested as I was in learning about FGC and Molly's amazing life, I didn't find myself engaged with the way it was presented to me, which caused the book to lose some of its overall effectiveness.

However Long the Night is important - it tells the story of a smart woman that set out to change the world by being a person and connecting with others organically, letting herself cross cultural boundaries. Molly is inspiring; her work in Senegal is a testament to the positives that go with education and working for organizations in other countries. As a story by itself, this book could not have done a better job at showing me this. As much as I would have liked more in-depth writing, I can appreciate that Molloy brought this amazing story to my attention in the quality that she did. It's a great book that will get people thinking and understanding just a bit about alternative ways to end harmful practices that go against health and civil rights without dividing people into groups of Others in the process.

Cover: This cover is very beautiful; it's subdued in tone like the writing, but the content itself speaks of harsh histories that aren't as reflected. I do appreciate the subtitle's emphasis on female empowerment.

Rating: 4.0 Stars (3 for the writing, 5 for the story)

Copy: Received from the publisher/publicist for review (Thank you, Trish, TLC Book Tours, and Harper One!)

Review: Kissing Shakespeare by Pamela Mingle

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Sat, 11 May 2013 16:47:00 +0000

Title: Kissing Shakespeare

Author: Pamela Mingle

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Series: None

Other Reviews for This Author: None

Chalk up this read to another case of title/cover lust overriding any other reason for reading. Pamela Mingle's debut novel caught my attention with its beautiful front and the accompanying title that promised both romance and theater. While not the biggest Shakespeare fan, I can appreciate the use of Shakespeare as someone who's been exposed to it frequently within theater, and theater will always have me eager to try a book. Mingle's book is not as romantic as it may sound, but it certainly hits all of the right notes for a book about theater - and readers interested in the historical presence of Shakespeare and his works will find Mingle's story to be full of vivid information, even if it doesn't always stand up as a well-paced narrative.

Miranda is following in the footsteps of her famous parents. A daughter of two highly celebrated actors, Miranda has always attempted to prove her worth on the stage to them. Living up to fame is stressful; Miranda's pivotal role in her school's production of The Taming of the Shrew could be exactly what she needs to catch her parents' attention. If only opening night wasn't such a disaster. Miranda just feels embarrassed that she would fail so miserably, especially with everyone expecting the world from her playing a part that her mother had made iconic in the world of Shakespearean theater. She's a failure.

Right out of stage-left comes Stephen Langford, a member of the cast of The Taming of the Shrew that has been observing Miranda since practices began. Stephen has a trust in Miranda's talent that goes beyond a casual acquaintance's - even a fan's. His trust in her is so great that he's willing to offer her the acting opportunity of a lifetime, a role in a drama that spans across the sea of time itself. Stephen wants Miranda to play the role of a seductress. Miranda is recruited to effectively be the girl that will cause William Shakespeare to fall in love. It sounds crazy - time travel? Falling in love with William Shakespeare himself? According to Stephen Langford, the reality is even crazier (if that's possible.)

If Miranda does not seduce Shakespeare and cause him to fall in love, he is in danger of becoming a member of the clergy and never writing any of his pivotal works of theater. What would the world be like without the influence of Hamlet, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night's Dream, or Romeo and Juliet? Where would the western world be without Shakespeare's unusual turns-of-phrase, of his high drama and high comedy that have become keystones of theater and culture in the western world? Miranda may think it's crazy, but Stephen pulls her in because the entire course of history is at stake, and the result is explosive. Miranda has to learn to live and act as though she lived in sixteenth century England while also falling in love, but can she keep up the role she's designated to play? Can she learn to seduce Shakespeare, or will fate make things much more complicated?

When I picked up Kissing Shakespeare, the book suggested a story that was very romantic, a sweeping historical time-travel narrative (or perhaps a story loosely based on a historical figure related to Shakespeare) that was high on the drama and perhaps low on the expository detail, as YA historical novels can sometimes be. Kissing Shakespeare was an unexpectedly enjoyable book because of the detail and the historical attention that it gave, though the plot was a lot lighter than I anticipated it being.

Miranda's a character that, as someone who has done theater in school, I can understand. She has a solid talent that is marred by the reputation of her parents, causing her to feel as though everyone expects her to be amazing and perfect at everything within the realm of acting. Her abilities are called into question because she cracks under the pressure, and Stephen provides a way of giving her an ultimate test that doesn't feel like a test. Mingle creates a character arc for Miranda that's very sweet and on the lighter end of the romance spectrum, focusing on Miranda bumbling around in the beginning as she struggles to acclimate to the sixteenth century - and to get in the mindset of being a seductress, something Miranda has never remotely been good at. There are a lot of silly little mix-ups as Miranda attempts to refine her speech and appear as though she's a woman of the historical era. Then, Miranda proceeds to form a weird friendship with Shakespeare as she tries to get him to love her while secretly falling for Stephen, who also lives in the same estate as Shakespeare. While Miranda doesn't go through anything unexpected or unique, it's a very sweet character arc that ultimately leads to Miranda better understanding herself, the influence of Shakespeare on the western world, and believing in her talent as an actress. Mingle presents all of this in a way that has a light and airy tone, one that would fit well with younger readers who may be unaccustomed to Shakespeare as a reading material outside of class, so Miranda's journey with understanding his works and the history behind them can sometimes feel too bold and too message-y in nature. Miranda is a good heroine that could have had a really complex character arc within the time travel setting, battling all of her past history while dealing with a romance that she knows could not last because of her ties to the present, but Mingle sidesteps the exploration of those difficult personal themes because of her goals in giving a background on Shakespeare. That's a disappointment when there's so much fun material to work with in Miranda's narrative.

Based on the character sketch of Miranda, you can probably guess as to the level of development of the rest of the cast of characters. Stephen is attractive, kind of infuriating in the beginning with how he brings about Miranda's time-travel role, and ultimately adorable as a love interest. William Shakespeare varies as a character - brilliant but also easily led by the call of what he believes to be the call of god, when in reality it's a very convincing priest that has him believing that his sacrifice will be worth it even if his passion isn't really with the clergy. Shakespeare really is the most interesting character in this regard. His conflicts are unique to the time period and feel very authentic. It was easy to tell that Mingle wanted Shakespeare's struggles to be very period-appropriate in both love and career choice, fitting in nicely with the state of religious upheaval occurring in England at the time. The characters don't always have the same feeling of fleshing out that Shakespeare does, and the "villain" of the story can at times feel paper-thin in development, more so than the rest of the characters (though he isn't necessarily a villain-villain.)

For a debut novel, Kissing Shakespeare relies much more on concept and overall narrative execution than anything else, and it mostly succeeds in those points. The plot of the story may rely on a fantastical point like time-travel, but it mostly deals with the historical time period and includes a plethora of period details that are very well-researched and educated in their presentation. While the story slows in pace because of Mingle's amount of expository detailing, I honestly felt like it was worth it. Mingle doesn't skimp on providing her readers with information that gives the period a feeling of richness and vibrancy, and that's appreciated. The historical plot of Shakespeare potentially turning to the clergy is also surprisingly intriguing in its presentation - anyone with an interest in sixteenth century England will probably find it more enjoyable than if it were mainly focused on the romance aspects, and I consider that a good thing with how romance can sometimes impede on historical detail in YA stories. The only problem? The plot that is so in-focus in the book's jacket feels minor in comparison to the question of to-clergy-or-not-to-clergy. Romance and seduction? Pah. It's very clear from the beginning that Miranda's story is not going to be big on either aspect with Shakespeare, that her feelings are going to go in different directions. This isn't awful, but the seduction aspect was such a big part of the selling point of the story that it felt dropped. Mingle's writing feels along the same lines of the plot - historically rich and interesting, but occasionally lacking in brisk pacing and emotional development that would appeal to more experienced readers.

Kissing Shakespeare is the kind of book that will appeal to teacher libraries and middle school to high school transition readings. It has a lot of history and appeal, sending a message that may get readers more interested in Shakespeare as a writer and as a historical figure. That appeal is the kind of thing that will work very well as a supplementary text that will read a lot easier for students than actual Shakespeare. However, it's disappointing in how it feels like it is written for a younger audience and thus lacks the emotional depth and development of more mature YA novels. It's great to have things that will appeal to younger readers without getting challenged by schools, but it's not excuse for a lack of emotional development vital to a resonating story. Kissing Shakespeare is an enjoyable debut novel that will be a welcome romp for fans of Shakespeare and YA time travel romance, but I find myself hoping that Mingle writes a story in a similar vein that capitalizes on those historical talents while improving on the characterization issues.

Cover: Perhaps not as fluffy-looking as the story itself is, but it's very pretty and will attract YA readers. It's not just a model's face or a dead-girl pose, and the coloring of the picture is quite appealing.

Rating: 3.5 Reviews

Copy: Received from publisher/publicist for review (Thank you, Random House!!)

Blog Tour: Tiger Babies Strike Back by Kim Wong Keltner

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Mon, 06 May 2013 21:51:00 +0000

Title: Tiger Babies Strike Back: How I Was Raised by a Tiger Mom but Could Not Be Turned to the Dark Side

Author: Kim Wong Keltner

Publisher: William Morrow

Series: None

Other Reviews for This Author: None

I have not read the parenting memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, but it has been something that I've thought about reading since I first heard about its growing popularity in the literary world. Tiger mothers are a huge image we associate with Asian American culture today, and it's hard to tell as white male outsider what to expect from this image in comparison to reality, when it's pretty evident that most mainstream media hasn't taken the time to flesh out its Asian American characters. My image of Asian American mothers has always tilted towards the tiger mother stereotype, if only because it has gone along with first hand accounts of (admittedly an extremely small number) people that I have met that are Asian American. I was highly interested in Keltner's rebuttal to the memoir praising this type of mothering because she represents a non-tiger mother who can give a realistic and honest portrayal of being parented (and parenting) within the Asian American culture in the United States.

Not having the knowledge of the memoir that inspired this rebuttal memoir, I can't do a side-by-side comparison of it as a reply to BHotTM, but I think that may work better for me because of the desire for fiction like this to stand alone. Tiger Babies Strike Back is a great example of a light memoir that will clue people in on a general aspect of culture that is outside of the normal white male/white female focused culture that we see most often in memoir and nonfiction. Keltner has lived through the events of this memoir since she was born, and she has a great voice that doesn't feel like it speaks universally for everyone in her culture. It still attempts to adapt its discoveries to a larger whole (tiger mothers and their thus dubbed 'tiger babies'), but memoir is personal by nature and Keltner does it best when she sticks to that level of personality.

As a response piece and as a memoir that claims to show the cultural differences in great detail, though, I think it falls flatter than it should. Keltner's piece may be full of anecdotes that leave you in stitches (or cringing), but it lacks an internal organization that feels consistent. Some chapters are relatively short and feel very much like retreads of previous ones. Keltner would often make sure to reiterate one or two points over and over again - the lack of overall feeling in her mother's parenting and the ways in which kids were thought of as extensions of self, thus forcing perpetual modesty at the risk of being deemed full of one's self. Keltner presents her reasoning best when she shows it in her personal stories, yet they feel strangely disconnected from the presentation of her ideas. She would present the idea, tell the story, but seemingly avoid connecting them with her words during and after the story.

It felt like Keltner was holding out on her readers, like there were things that she left un-thought, unsaid, that could have really provided an awesome individual insight as to the culture of Asian American parenting and how it can feel like one big hot mess of expectations. That kind of reservation in memoir feels just...pointless. What is a memoir but a giant reveal of ugly truths and strange, unnerving thoughts? Memoirs should feel painfully honest sometimes, but this one held back too much to reach that level of searing honesty that would make it stand out in comparison to other works. Keltner's stories may not have been personally damning or horrendous in nature, but they had undercurrents of negative behaviors that could have been better explored beyond the tiger mother behavior repetition.

Some of the memoir's aspects really captured my attention. The second half felt a lot more focused, the timeline becoming more linear as Keltner expressively showed what life was like after she left San Francisco with her husband to start a life in a less diverse town that would offer them more financial security in the long run. Her lack of parental guidance led to her detailing her responsive parenting style, one filled with love and positive affirmation of her daughter. She was able to step back and look at what she wanted to do differently, going from a family of tiger mothers to a family of gentle, sensitive mothers. Keltner obviously is in favor of her parenting style - she describes herself often as a big "marshmallow"in comparison to her tiger mother - but notices the care that goes into the relationship between her daughter and her mother, how the generation gap seems to completely switch how a tiger mother deals with a child. These moments of uncensored observation feel inherently more organic and telling of Keltner's experiences and thoughts on tiger mothers than the first half of the memoir, which switches between raw humor, attempted analysis, and anecdote.

Readers will probably find Tiger Babies Strike Back enjoyable and good for a different cultural viewpoint than their own, the humor and history woven into the memoir a brilliant way to teach people without preaching to them. The biggest divide is the varying tones the memoir takes, never quite meshing Keltner's humor with the attempts at analysis and secret-sharing. Keltner's memoir would have been an even quicker read if it had the organization and clear vision I had been hoping for. As it stands, I enjoyed it and would recommend it with reservations, though I do look forward to reading Keltner's fiction in the future. Her random pop culture humor may work a lot better in a novel than in an attempt at battling out parenting styles in Asian American culture.

Cover: This cover is attractive to a point. The prominent title does the subject justice - it's far more interesting than the actual design.

Rating: 3.5 Stars

Copy: Received from publisher/publicist for review (Thank you, Trish, TLC Book Tours, and William Morrow!)

Review: Easy by Tammara Webber

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Mon, 06 May 2013 14:00:00 +0000

Title: Easy

Author: Tammara Webber

Publisher: Berkley

Series: None

Other Reviews for This Author: None

So, you're reading this thinking, "What the hell - another blogger is going to rave about this amazeballs book. And I should care...why?" And you are totally, completely right. I am another blogger that is going to rave about this amazeballs book. But. I am going to try and explain why beyond the squeeing, the hero-drooling, and all of that good stuff. Easy should have been a book that was fun but not memorable. It's a story that we can all imagine being told before, with characters that, in the beginning, seem to fit the mold of most NA characters these days (sensitive college girl and angsty musician). Heck, these were a thing before NA become all the rage online. The question is - why is Easy so amazing if it doesn't have original parts? It's Webber's spin on things that makes it amazing. She takes a story that we've read, heard, imagined, and points out some parts of it that needed changing. Tammara Webber proves that she is a writing rock star.

Jackie made the mistake of going to the same college as her boyfriend, Kennedy. Even though Jackie didn't make the decision just for him, she had no idea that he would break up with her, that their relationship would be toast. Now, she's stuck looking at him during their economics class. Kennedy's career in law and politics has always been a goal of his - and he knows that his days of sexual experimentation are meant for college, before he settles down and has to present something consistent and appealing to connect him to voters. Sowing his wild oats means dropping the girl that he's dated for three years. Abandoned, Jackie is pissed off at Kennedy and not even close to being over him. Three years isn't something you just get over.

Two weeks later, Jackie's friend Erin is dragging her to a college party that she wants no part of. Getting over Kennedy, staying inside and practicing her cello, and avoiding any potential confrontation with said ex are what Jackie can handle, but not going out and pretending everything's okay when it's not. Booze and drugs and making out seem to make up the party. It's bad enough that Jackie just wants to leave. A drunken frat boy by the name of Buck follows Jackie out, drunkenly soliciting her for a hookup until he actually tries to rape her. Jackie's savior is Lucas, a boy who's always been on the sidelines. Until that night.

Saving Jackie was only the beginning. Even as she's recovered from the shock of being violated, Jackie realizes that there's someone else breaching her defenses in a different way. Lucas, her savior, is so much more than a good guy with a convenient uppercut. The brooding exterior has something more, something that attracts Jackie despite her discomfort following her near-rape. Lucas could end up saving her in more ways than one. He could be the guy that lets her forget Kennedy; lets her move past Buck; lets her learn how to defend herself against the men that threaten to take advantage of her, whether it be a guy like her ex or a guy like Buck. Falling in love with Lucas may not be simple, but it may be the best thing to happen to Jackie in a long time.

Here's where selling readers on Easy is going to be difficult. There is an audience for this book that will be pre-disposed to like it because of the makeup (brooding college-aged hero who saves the protagonist who is struggling with self-identity as an independent adult), as we have seen in the recent surge of New Adult books that have been self-published. Rockstars and musicians are hot commodities. Lucas plays the guitar, so he falls into this category of hero that people are swooning over automatically. On the same token, there are going to be readers that think this story is just like the hundreds of others being marketed and sold as awesome reads. Jackie does have a lot in common with these heroines, so I'm going to give a run-down as to why I think she's better than most of them:

Agency: Jackie has a goal that's beyond her romance and beyond her ex-boyfriend. While she may be falling in love with Lucas, Jackie's story is also about self-realization and learning to empower herself. Her character arc is about learning to fight back and to call out the guy that wronged her and probably other girls as well. She becomes a superhero for girls that may have gone through something similar - not only does she reach her goals, but she is able to have a productive and healthy life because she has them, never once shaming those who are traumatized by the experience in the process.

Intelligence: This girl doesn't make stupid mistakes. She doesn't do anything that would have readers proclaiming her stupid and "bringing it on herself". Her intelligence and awareness just allows the potential for slut-shaming to go down, which allows the author's discussion on rape victims and recovery to be developed with less reader conflict on the matter. It also just presents a relief because she acts her age, that of a girl going to college and wanting to make a future. A lot of complaints about lesser-written NA revolve around the protagonist sounding far younger and more immature than their stated age, and Jackie avoids that pitfall in her narrative.

Romance: The way Jackie handles her romance is believable. Granted, there are readers who are rightly concerned with the proximity of romantic and sexual feelings towards Lucas so soon after a rape attempt, but it's worth noting that each victim is different and that Webber wrote Jackie as a type of character that would not avoid everything completely in order to cope with the trauma of the event. Jackie's character type has her wanting to move on - and she does - but her romance with Lucas is complex. They are attracted physically, but she only really comes into a full-on-love attraction when she realizes that she's also falling for him as a personality. His intelligence and scruples are what attracts her. Basically - she goes for a guy that treats her well and is a good person, and that is shown as being the ultimate for their relationship going into forever territory. It's not because he's hot or sexy; it's because he's safe and good for Jackie, and this character decision that she shows in her narrative makes her above some of her counterparts that don't make their decisions quite so clear or positive in their tone.

So, don't get me started on Lucas. He's just great. A bad boy in some ways, but a good one in every way that counts. He's sexy and masculine, but sensitive. Lucas is the kind of guy that you read about and think, "Damn, I want one of him. Make it two. Or twelve." Positive guys like him remind me of why I like YA and NA romance - even when the guys are bad, good authors write them in ways that are positive for the heroine. Lucas may be a little too romanticized or perfect for some readers, but in this case, it works. He doesn't overtake Jackie in terms of character development (it is her story, after all) but becomes so much more than the guy perfect for her self-positive romance. Webber gives him a unique backstory that feels realistic and gives motivation and plausibility for his knowledge of self-defense and his treatment of women. She makes him human; she removes the air of his being "too perfect" by allowing him to be broken prior to his time with Jackie. They repair each other and give each other the chance to shine as individuals. It's beautiful and made this book so full of win that I wanted to shove it on all of my friends as an example of a book with a romance empowering for females.

I can't ignore that this book has a clear message, and that will be another thing that readers will get divided on. The depiction of rape or attempted rape and its aftermath is a highly sensitive subject. Some authors do it so badly that you want to rip their book to shreds after closing it, while others do it in a way that explores the sensitivity and the vulnerability to a point where it could be uncomfortable for some victims to read it. Webber chooses a route that's in the middle - realistic, but not so emotionally entrenched in the potential for depression and self-blame that the story becomes a story about Jackie repeatedly cycling through those thoughts. It won't work for everyone, but Webber has a clear message that, regardless of how one views Jackie's story, rape should not be tolerated. One scene towards the end makes this book. I won't spoil it, but let's just say that Webber has a character vocalize a huge bit about feminine empowerment and the need to address rape regardless of the rapist, that it's not an action to ignore or excuse. It's done beautifully and believably without being a big long speech or tirade, and I think that's where Webber succeeds most. Am I happy with this because I agree with her message? Hell yes. This is a message that needs to be showcased in fiction, and I found myself cheering with the book instead of criticizing the intent (which I tend to do with books that feel like they are written just to Send a Message.)

Webber's storytelling is exactly what this book needed, and it has me really excited to read her backlist when I get around to her. Her writing is not the kind that would impress you if you separated individual sentences - it's the kind that captures you in the overall package; the passages and the chapters flow in such a way that you can't stop reading. She makes the most simple things feel important and shows the snippets of college life well. They don't feel like retreads of boring scenes or day-to-day stuff that gets repeated twenty times, but they don't feel like they are experiences that are too unique to happen to readers. She gets a tone of voice that is more mature than a YA narrator without aging it up too much. Basically, Jackie sounds like an adult that doesn't feel the need to tell her story with a level of literary cushioning. She's honest and real. It sells it. I think Webber knows how to write for her audience as a broad spectrum - teens, young adults, new adults, whatever - and that's why she's a key example that NA writers should follow. She doesn't talk down or talk up to her audience, using the experiences of NA life as a touchstone for how her characters would appropriately react and behave. She gets that journey of realizing that adulthood has begun. I could read NA for a long time if its writers had the same quality and skill that Webber shows in this novel.

Buy this book. Read it. Share it with friends. Put it in classroom libraries, in doom room lounges, in dentist offices and employee break rooms. Give people a chance to read it. This book is empowering. It says something phenomenal in a way that people don't expect, and it's about two people that are confused and slightly broken falling in love, repairing each other and becoming a stronger whole. Jackie and Lucas are people that I will love to read about again - and I don't think that very often. Allow the people in your life, especially girls, to read this and see that they have power and agency, that they are not alone.

Cover: This cover is very commonplace for the NA genre, but I like the model used for Lucas. It just...works.

Rating: 5.0 Stars

Copy: Received from publisher/publicist for review. (Thank you, Rosanne and Berkley!!)

Review: Asunder by Jodi Meadows

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Fri, 03 May 2013 15:43:00 +0000

Title: Asunder

Author: Jodi Meadows

Publisher: Katherine Teagan Books

Series: Incarnate #2

Other Reviews for This Author: None

The first book in this series made me a happy reader - entry-level fantasy, Incarnate had some aspects that were great for readers that wanted magic and mayhem (sylphs and dragons and immortals, oh my!) but with a focus on the romantic relationship between the main character and her immortal love bug, Sam. It was just the thing that some readers in YA look for in light fantasy, but there was something about it that kept me from being totally in love with it. Asunder actually had me very excited. My memories of Incarnate were pretty positive ones, and I wanted to see what Jodi Meadows did with the second book that would improve on the first one. Readers will find Asunder to live up to the previous installment in the series, but I find myself questioning yet again why these books divide my opinion so greatly.

*Warning - will contain spoilers for Incarnate. Read at your own risk. If you are not ready for this jelly, please skip this review accordingly.*

The city of Heart is still at war with itself. Following the attack of the dragons and the brief turn-off of the central tower, its citizens wait in bated anticipation for the first of a new generation of incarnates to appear. The catch? People who died in the attacks during the brief period when the tower was off may not reincarnate, their souls lost to the void as new ones take their place. Heart has already been overwrought with grief and anger at Ana's appearance as a newsoul, but to think that it could happen again - that more newsouls could be made - makes Heart that much more divided on the issue.

Ana and Sam have moved away from Heart to travel and study in the hopes of forgetting about some of its less-than-fine moments. They have collectively decided to delve into the research left behind by Ana's birth father, a man fascinated with the scientific magic behind the sylph. Sylph, a large threat to anyone traveling the world of Range on their own, have never been able to be controlled or understood by Range's inhabitants. Ana's father figured out how to control the sylph long enough to use them to deactivate the tower in Heart. The research Ana and Sam look into is the research that was used to try and control the people of Heart; Ana and Sam walk on very thin ice as they learn about the past, risking the suspicion of even their closest friends and neighbors.

It's when they return to Heart that trouble starts to brew again. The sylph are still mysterious, but Ana may have found something that can connect with them - not necessarily speak to them, but address them as though they can understand her. This only serves to further Heart's general dislike of Ana. Despite having friends in the city, Ana finds herself more and more at odds with Heart's citizens. She tries to look out for the few newsouls that come into the world as babies, yet danger lurks everywhere. Her relationship with Sam also feels strained as she struggles to accept what it will be like to be in love with someone with five thousand years of past history. Will the love of her life be able to keep her trust and remain faithful to her? Will Ana begin to uncover the history behind the magic within Heart and its central tower, the magic that has allowed its people to reincarnate century after century? Or, is evil still plotting within Heart, aiming to take Ana down before she can manifest her questions into an uncomfortable reality?

I'm ambivalent about my feelings for this series. I like it, I enjoy it - but I question it whenever I read it, and it's not the kind of questioning that has me swept away by the sheer force of thought. Whereas I find myself reveling in my ability to think about the narrative choices in other light YA fantasies (Cayla Kluver's Legacy series comes to mind) and how they can relate to broader themes in positive ways, my questioning of Meadows' series has me worried. Asunder is technically on par with its prequel for sure. The narrative, though, isn't for me because of this questioning - and the characters are probably just where they were, which was a combination of love and indifference.

Ana's still a very good girl in a very bad situation. She spends a lot of Asunder attempting to right the wrongs of those around her without the ability to actually fix anything. Her discovery of the impossibility of prejudice is hard, as more than ever the citizens of Heart divide and hate - or learn to understand - her. This was an interesting development in the first book and continued to be interesting in Asunder, perhaps more so with the addition of more newsouls being born into the world. I think Meadows is addressing a very difficult issue with Ana's character arc in regards to prejudice, and with that I have no problem. There's no direct, clumsy attempt at comparing this prejudice to current prejudice, but more a usage of it as a way of giving people an idea on the way that it can seep into a culture and constantly impress itself upon those that it dislikes. Ana learns to become stronger and more reserved as people attack her for things that she has no control over, taking comfort from Sam as she learns and grows as a person. There's a huge development in her character as she tries to protect others that are like her. It gives her a reason to fight beyond herself, and that makes her a character that presents a stronger level of agency to her story. Ana's stand-up moments sometimes felt manufactured for the sake of drama or the story, but, overall, that part of her character arc was well-handled because it wasn't wrapped up in a pleasant little package by the end of the book. Ana will be dealing with this stuff until the end of the final book in the trilogy at least, which is probably the best path Meadows could have taken with her character.

Where Ana bugged me in this book was the way she and Sam handled their romance. I'm usually a big fan of stories that can extend a romantic relationship and showcase the problems of suddenly being devoted to each other, and I think that Asunder was on the right track with doing that until the execution got in the way. Does it make sense that Ana would be bugged by five thousand years of history, including romantic history, that preceded her in Sam's life? Yes. Does it make sense that she would want to know more about his past and doubt herself because of him being busy or showing a lack of interest due to outside factors? Yes. What I didn't like was that the romantic focus in Asunder felt like it extended these issues beyond the needed amount of time. The scent of angst in the air was strong, and I found myself thinking that four hundred pages of it was much when nothing felt like it was getting as explored as it should have been. I love the pairing but wish that it would have more to it in the narrative - again, in comparison, I think of Aimee Carter's book Goddess Interrupted, which did that kind of relationship exploration better for me. Readers that absolutely adore Sam and Ana will find this book to be worth the time and energy romantically - I'm just not one of them and would really like to see the focus be about something greater in the plot and the world.

I feel like this is where I started disconnecting with the work. Sure, Ana's well and good, smart and troubled, etc. There's just enough in her story to keep me reading and liking what she has to do - but the other characters didn't prove to be that memorable for me. Ana's story felt very quiet in its depiction of other characters, using them mainly to chug along the plot or provide Ana with some more conflict. They rarely felt like people of their own accord that just so happened to be a part of Ana's life as well. Not remembering characters after fifty or so pages of refresher about them leaves me worried. Some of them did stand out once I read on, but for the most part they didn't hold up for me - and in Asunder, aside from the villains, I couldn't say that any stood out to me as being particularly fun or so awful that they were fun.

Which brings me to my next point, which is on the world-building. Incarnate and Asunder are what I call light fantasy for a reason - the fantasy is there, but the elements are presented in a relatively basic format that makes it easy for new readers to get a handle on whether or not they like them in the setting, and they don't rely on newly-invented names or definitions. Dragons are dragons. The city is named Heart, for cripes sake. Sequels bring a level of expected increase in world-building ability, and I don't think Asunder provided that. A lot of things about the mythology of the tower in Heart's center felt muddled or didn't make a lick of sense to me. Granted, the context was lost a tad because Incarnate was not something that I reread before reading Asunder, but I didn't feel like there was an intensive reason for how Ana could do some of the things she did in this book (go back into the tower, some of the magic and knowledge she had at her disposal). It felt convenient and didn't register as being entirely supported by the text. I'm all for a romantic-centered fantasy, but I still want the fantasy to feel like a vital and intricate world in and of itself. Asunder just had me questioning that.

I also have issues with the way that reincarnation is handled. In two books, the characters have presented very rigorous and strange ideas of gender and self-identity. Meadows has long established that characters have been reincarnated as different genders before, as well as their significant others. Characters with these significant others tend to bond within each incarnation of themselves. This is scene as romantic, an immortal and cyclical reevaluation of who they are as people. The problem? The characters always seem to be straight and rigid in their gender identities. Despite being of both genders throughout five thousand years, the characters never discuss how they see past gender to personality and person - they always seem to have someone of the opposite sex to be in love with. It's never really explored or discussed the way it should be, and I think Meadows is either simplifying it or ignoring it in the text. Whether it's purposeful or not, it strikes me as being a major negative for the series and the world as a whole. That's something that could have a huge impact on how the reader interprets the story and what it's trying to say, but the logistics of it feel as though they have never been thought of. Why aren't people freer with love? Are people confined to their birth genders - any gender identity - especially with the knowledge of five thousand years of exploring themselves? Though the people of Heart are portrayed as those stuck in old ways, they weren't always that way, and I find myself wondering exactly what the impact of those five thousand years of history was.

Meadows does have a writing style that will appeal, and I can't say that I dislike it. Poetic and concise, it has lovely imagery and drama to it, the kind that you'd associate with masquerade balls and summer carnivals, the kind where people wear sequined masks and dance to dizzying music. It's easy to understand but still brings that sense of something special to it. I just wish that something special was the setting, the history, and the magic of the world that Meadows created. My favorite moments of the story were the ones among the sylph and the rose cottage, which were the moments that really felt like they focused on the story's excellent tone and the mysteries that it could unveil for the reader. Meadows has such a wonderful resource at her disposal with her writing, and I really, really want to see that grow into something more than a romance-centric plot in the final book.

Asunder is a mixed bag for me. It lives up to its predecessor in a lot of ways, but it also made me think about the series in ways that confirmed my issues with some things that made it feel lacking in diversity and individuality. I like it enough to want to read the finishing novel, but I go in worried because of the questions I've been asking myself that don't appear to have answers. I really did enjoy reading Asunder, but I am still questioning - and questioning - and I hope Meadows can answer those questions in a way that surprises me and lives up to the prose that I so adore from her.

Cover: This cover is gorgeous, just like the first one. Not a general fan of the model-centric YA cover anymore, but these ones feel dynamic and gorgeous.

Rating: 3.5 Stars

Copy: Received from publisher/publicist for review (Thank you, Heather and Harper Collins!)

Review: Orchards by Holly Thompson

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 13:48:00 +0000

Title: Orchards

Author: Holly Thompson

Publisher: Ember (Random House)

Series: None

Other Reviews for This Author: None

When this book first came around the blogosphere a year or two ago, it was only mentioned on a few of the blogs I read, and it didn't come with any particular levels of acclaim. I read some good things and some bad things about the voice, and didn't fully know what the book was about. A few years later and I get an email about April being National Poetry Month with this book being one of the recommended reads, its summary mentioning a half-Japanese protagonist that goes to visit her extended family in Japan over the summer following the suicide of one of her classmates at school. That was what hooked me - I had to try Orchards. Color me surprised to find a story that was not only meaningful and accessible for younger readers, but framed by gorgeous border illustrations and poetry.

Kana Goldberg is a series of halves: half-Jewish and half-Japanese, half-friend and half foe, half-family and half-outcast. She has grown up with the knowledge that, while she may belong at home with her mother and father, her family in Japan is different from her in a way that she can never fully make up for. Her mother and father are both loving, as are her relatives. Both her parents and her relatives pressure her to do what they define as her best, no matter how unattainable that best may be. Both see her for a bright young girl that needs a mental reprieve after a classmate's suicide. The difference is that her parents are her family and the rest of her family are strangers.

Shipped off to Japan, Kana spends the days of her summer learning the family practice of farming mikan ( tangerines ) and going to a few weeks of middle school with local girls from other villages in order to prepare for her first year of high school in the United States. Kana lives with her Aunt and Uncle, her grandmother Baachan, and her cousins, Koichi and Yurie. They all are welcoming, members of their own suffering as they continue to mourn the loss of Kana's grandfather, Jiichan, who died three years before.

A summer in Japan allows Kana to experience life in a way that she never could before. Whether it's cycling to one of the villages or suffering June heatwaves in the classic sailor-girl school uniform, Kana's experiences are new and exhilarating. She can't forget the life that she left behind back home, though. Her past still haunts her as she tries to keep in touch with her friends on Facebook and via email. They all speak carefully, refusing to confront the harmful truth: they all had a hand in ignoring the signs of Ruth's depression and even helping to encourage the low point that led to her suicide. Kana grows up among the mikan and her relatives across the summer as she comes to terms with her place in Ruth's tragedy and attempts to honor the memory of the friend that she never truly made.

Getting to know a character through poetry is a bit different than getting to know one through prose. Though still first person and still observational and self-centered, a poetic narrative generally is more sensory and less expository. You don't see the narrator attempting to set the scene or give a lot of explanation beyond their current place. Backstory is minimal, at best. Some authors compensate by writing more detailed poetry or taking the time to make sure that the poetry within the book reflects the needs of a fictional prose narrative enough to allow the book to be accessible to readers. Orchards doesn't do this - and while the poetry is arguably better in some cases because of it, Kana loses a definitive character voice as a result.

The sketch of Kana provided by the summary is basically what we get throughout the narrative. There aren't a lot of twists and turns with her character development. Thompson's poetry matches Kana's character arc perfectly, thriving on subtlety and beauty within the day-to-day life of a Japanese mikan farm. Kana grows enough from the first page to the last to warrant the narrative and the story focus, though I think older readers will be disappointed in the lack of depth to her story as a narrative. Kana's life is so domestic and so focused on her feelings of grief in regards to Ruth that it's really all the reader gets, save for a gradual acceptance and understanding of her family's love for her. That part of the narrative is just as important as Kana's understanding of Ruth's suicide, and it was certainly a pleasure to read a narrative that wanted to discuss friendship and family over a romance. Romance subplot or not, however, I found myself wishing that Kana had more experiences to share - more personal talks with her family members, more memories and thoughts regarding Ruth and suicide. Kana's a young girl going through a major transitional stage in her life, and no transition is complete without a lot of self-discovery, reflection, and uncertainty. A harrowing event towards the end of the narrative does cause her to act in a way that expresses her growth and knowledge about what suicide means, but the lead up just isn't as exciting or as impacting in comparison.

Another downside to the way the prose affects the narrative is the lack of strong secondary characters. The glimpses of Kana's family are gorgeous and have layers to them, but they aren't frequent or expanded upon enough to give the reader a real sense of image and differentiation in the family members, their values, and their reactions to Kana. Save for her grandmother and her one female cousin, I couldn't really say that I had a solid mental image of who the characters were or what their motivations were. As much as I enjoyed reading about the experience of getting to know this Japanese family, I never felt like I knew them any more than Kana did at the beginning of the story. She became more aware of them towards the end, yet I still found myself confused as to who was who, if any of the characters had significant development, etc. This is one of those cases where a higher page or word count may have been extremely beneficial to the story the author was telling, as the struggle to depict and differentiate very different characters is usually a sign that something didn't work well for me as a reader.

Orchards is a beautiful novel because of the poetry that Thompson writes, plain and simple. This book would have felt average and run-of-the-mill if not for the way she could describe a scene and a way of life. Her images of Japan are tranquil and serene, the words effortlessly describing the parts of the country that make picking tangerines and going to school seem like beautiful events that can be beyond proper description. It's amazing how such a simple story has the essence of being evolved because of good poetry, and Thompson does it well. Her poems have a fine cadence to them; they mentally roll off of the tongue in ways that feel like falling water and gusts of wind. While her poems are very short and therefore very fast reads, the reader still tries to take time with them to get the full impact of her words. I may not have come away with solid characterization, but emotion and setting could not have been done better. Kana's voice is at its best when it's looking at life in rural Japan. The book could have been twice as long, still mostly describing the ways of life and the culture, and I would have been just as fascinated and amazed at how well the description conjured a mental idea of what it was like to be sent to Japan to live for a year with feelings of isolationism from my family and other-ness.

Conflicted - that's where I am with Orchards. I love Thompson's poetry and her way of making the story feel calming yet powerful in its emotion, yet I struggled with the sparseness of the dimension of the characters. There was so much more to be explored here, and I don't think Thompson took the challenge of getting the story to its full potential. In that respect, Orchards shows itself as a debut novel far too obviously, making itself more about the beautiful poetry than the story it was trying to tell. I think Holly Thompson's debut novel is above par, all things considered, as it deals with topics in ways that are subtle and beautiful but not super angsty, even if it doesn't do the characters as much justice as it should. Reading her future books will be a must, as I'm highly curious as to how she'll progress as an author (and for those wondering, her next book is coming out this year and has one to two hundred more pages, so I have high hopes for her progression.) Overall - if you want a great book that will be accessible for readers of poetry or fiction to try the other medium, this is a great place to start because of the quality of the writing style, even if not everything works as well as it should.

Cover: I love the design of this book. Not so much the model up top, but the interwoven theme of orchards, tangerines, and the blue and orange colors. Illustrations pepper the inside that are beautiful, if slightly repetitious.

Rating: 3.5 Stars

Copy: Received from publisher/publicist for review (Thank you, Random House!!)

Review: Breathe by Sarah Crossan

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 19:14:00 +0000

Title: Breathe

Author: Sarah Crossan

Publisher: Greenwillow Books

Series: Breathe #1

Other Reviews for This Author: None

Something that you learn early on as a blogger that deals with any form of advanced galley or copy: when a publisher or major editor writes a letter placed at the beginning of the galley that discusses how awesome the book is, there is certainly a push going on regarding said book. It either means the book will be just as good as the publisher says, or that the book being pushed is more dud than stud. Breathe is, unfortunately, more in the dud category than the stud category. A brilliant premise and a great opening have it starting strong, but readers may want to think twice before devoting their time to the rest of the read.

Alina is a thief; a member of the Resistance, her aims revolve around stealing breathable air in whatever way she can. The government controls how their world functions. It's the only way that people can survive, living under a dome with controlled oxygen supplies, both portable and within buildings. Everyone has a limit as to how much air they can take in. What was once a renewable resource that covered every nook and cranny of the known world is now something more valuable than any precious metal or object. Breathable air has been turned into a commodity controlled by the government, and Alina is one of the few people that wants that control to end, effective immediately.

Bea is a thinker; a resident of one of the dome's lower classes, Bea has spent her entire life studying and refining her ability to argue and pass judgements in order to pass the tests provided by the dome's elite. People that pass the debates get positions in the dome's government and systems that provide them with power and prominence. No matter how unlikely the chance is of her, being a member of the lower class, getting the position, Bea's intelligence should make her a shoe-in for one of the dome's prestigious positions. When she gets the notification that she did not accepted, Bea finally has reason to wonder exactly how corrupt the world she lives in is.

Quinn is Bea's best friend; he has no idea that she's in love with him, or that his class privilege has potentially ruined his friendship with her. If Bea is the smart one, then Quinn is the one just behind her. Where Bea has drive because of her class, Quinn has drive because of his parents that seem to manipulate him at every turn, because of his natural charm with his classmates and his friends. A chance encounter with beautiful, fierce Alina has Quinn willing to follow her through reckless things - even as she's escaping the city at the same time that Quinn and Bea go on a camping excursion with two days' worth of oxygen in tow. Quinn's decision to help this unfathomable girl may lead the three of them on an adventure that will test their survival skills and their political mojo as they begin to learn exactly what makes their world's government tick.

Okay - let's start off with the basic idea of what this all means. The first third of this book is set-up. All of these listed personal problems are only the beginning, and they frame a much more action-packed story than a reader would anticipate. Today's dystopian stories thrive more on introspection and political movements than they do direct action, so Breathe is, to go with a recent trend of bad puns in reviews, a 'breath' of fresh air in that regard. It's more action than thought, more running around and adventuring than conversation. I don't always do well with action, but Breathe started off with engaging character voices that had me getting into the story. Action seemed like a logical step from there. Characterization along with action makes for a great read that will resonate with a lot of audiences. You can imagine my excitement as a reader to get something that actually felt like it was hitting all of the right notes for a YA dystopian story that would be something more.

Multiple POVs can fall apart so easily, and Breathe succumbs to this falling apart around when its action starts up. Alina, Bea, and Quinn each have an individual set of goals and levels of motivation. Alina is a rough-and-tough girl with an affection for someone that she's worked with in the Resistance. Bea is a bookish friend of Quinn's that is really in love with him. And Quinn....Quinn is the best friend that falls for someone else. Each has a different set of romantic notions, a different place in the world's economy and social hierarchy, and a different understanding of their government based on their level of privilege throughout their life. This set-up is good. Nay, this set-up is great in theory and, in the beginning, in practice. Crossan attempts to show her readers that her characters have more to them than meets the eye, that they come from all walks of life and can provide different insights as to the world's construction and morals.

So why did I find myself getting bored with some parts of the narration? Crossan's characters felt so well-voiced in the beginning, but after a while they became indistinguishable. When the society was taken away in order to focus more on the adventure story that later led to the Resistance, the characters lost their framing devices and began to feel like they were similar. Alina would show some levels of sympathy she didn't always have, and Quinn and Bea would progressively get better at surviving in the wilds with limited air in their tanks and varying levels of close-encounters with the government, but there was a distinct lack of character growth that felt definitive. I could not honestly tell you which character was my favorite, or which character was my least favorite. There was no character I loved or hated; there were only characters that I felt moderately about, as they never managed to cross the line into memorable beings that each had their own personality despite their location or situation. Those personalities melted away as the action became the focal point of the story.

I can't say that I wouldn't read more about these characters, though. Crossan has created a group of three people that work well together in theory. Honestly, there is more to them than meets the eye, if only because I didn't even think about that level of class differentiation until I started this review. Characters like that have stories to tell, and Crossan hinted at those stories in the beginning of the book. Before the book delved into more chase scenes and random bits of relationship growth or decay, it was something that was intent on exploring its characters in a way that would also explore their discovery of the government's harsh control on everyone's lives via the way it controlled Oxygen-laden air as though it were a product instead of something forcibly regulated in order to maintain governmental control and profit over those living in the city under the dome. I enjoyed the individual bits of each character's personality and motivation, but felt like they never developed they way they should have in this book where so much supposedly happened. Sensitivity, sympathy, and resilience developed, but that doesn't make for a well-crafted character arc.

Crossan did much better with creating a world that worked well with all of this adventuring and running from Point A to Point B. We see enough of the dome society as readers to get a sense of what the positives and negatives are (such as government extortion and monopolistic control over resources) before moving into the world outside of the dome. That world is one where today's society exists only in ruins, the frames of buildings and cars overtaken and desecrated by years of weathering from the non-oxygenated environment. Resistance members have their own base that serves as a setting later in the story as well, which pretty much fills the quota of YA dystopian settings: a dome, a world that is like ours but appropriately destroyed and covered in random crap from pre-dystopia world, and a hidden area for the members of the Resistance/Revolutionaries/Illegal Knitting Club, etc. It's serviceable and intriguing enough to have the reader curious as to how Crossan will use these various aspects of her world. Breathe is a book that, with the right amount of detailed research and science, could be really powerful in its world building.

Science plays enough of a part that I felt comfortable reading Breathe and trusting the author to give me something to chew on. There's a repeated discussion about the percentage of Oxygen needed within air to survive as a human - how the government controls that percentage because they have secretly stopped any attempts at growing trees and greenery in enough capacity on the outside to keep the rest of the world livable, and how the government has slowly gotten people used to air with greater amounts of Oxygen. I'm not science-minded enough to read for scientific errors within my books, and it's also hard to tell because some authors put in logistical errors on purpose (though, stating those errors would also be pleasant). Breathe doesn't offer any sort of list of sources in regards to research, so it's safe to assume that some of the science is probably wrong - whether on purpose or on accident is hard to say. When everything was said and done, I closed the book and felt comfortable enough with it to enjoy the plot, but not comfortable enough to trust that the book was sending me a message that the science was strong and worthy of exploring beyond the story. Some things about Breathe felt convenient scientifically or didn't have enough explanation/basis for me to feel like it was written well. This is an example of a book that just didn't feel expository enough to support its internal world building, especially one that was based on real-world science.

The writing just doesn't work well in the exposition. Action scenes are good in Breathe for a reason - the writing style is very controlled, clipped at points, and prone to describing things that need a fast pacing. It gets to the point where the reader has trouble discerning exactly what the setting is for some of the action scenes because the pacing is so high. Lack of a clear world makes the action feel sloppy, as the reader needs at least a peripheral awareness of the setting in which action takes place in order to understand. Many of these scenes reminded me of the book Possession, another dystopian with great potential that suffered by the hands of writing that focused more on action pacing than development of character or setting, though Breathe admittedly has a better hand at balancing all of these aspects than Possession ever did for me. Some of the writing also tended towards stilted prose, which never works out well when the reader is already out of the story for one reason or another. I would have liked smoother wording that at the very least hinted at some level of exposition and description, even if it would have been intentionally minimal. Breathe's minimalism felt unintentionally so, making me wonder if the author had really thought about the world as much as they should have when writing it.

Readers of YA that love rush-hour pacing and writing that immediately engages them will enjoy Breathe. There's certainly an audience of readers out there that loves these aspects. Breathe, however, just fails on bringing something more to the generally bloated YA dystopian/post-apocalyptic genres, feeling a little too light on setting, world building, and characterization to be the tour-de-force that the publisher was making it out to be. Breathe is a solid debut novel with clear problems that will hopefully be smoothed over as Crossan continues to write more in the series, and the plot and world are just interesting enough to have me wanting to read on. Breathe isn't perfect, but just satisfying enough not to be a disappointment.

Cover: I love that the cover reflects the world of the novel vs. Photoshopped models representing the protagonists. Save for the silhouettes, it's about the world, and I think that sells this book so well.

Rating: 3.0 Stars

Copy: Received from publisher/publicist for review (Thank you, Heather and Harper Collins!!)

Monica's Moment: Dark Parties and Putting Makeup on Dead People

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 14:00:00 +0000

Hey, all! After a week or two of breather to get organized and what-not, we have new reviews from Monica to share! This week's reviews include a dystopian debut novel about a world under a dome (which fits way too well in the recipe for the YA dystopian novel) and a contemporary novel about a girl that wants to become a mortician. I know I'm intrigued (but we've been friends since first grade, so color me biased.)

Dark Parties

Author: Sara Grant

Publisher: Little, Brown

Pages: 308

Summary: Under the dome of the Protectosphere, the air is clean, the food is free of toxins, and everyone has a place in society. A world where uniqueness is highly discouraged. It is the mission of Neva and her best friend Sanna to stand out in the crowd. They mar their bodies with identifying marks that will distinguish them from the rest and host dark parties. Events strictly forbidden by the government, dark parties enable the teens to exist without fear of judgement.

While Neva is completely committed to the cause, her boyfriend Ethan's loyalties appear to have shifted. Ethan longs for Neva to settle down and begin a married life with him, a dream she doesn't share. But, Neva is harboring a secret. During one of her dark parties, she made out with Sanna's boyfriend, Braydon, and felt an undeniable connection. Unable to keep him out of her head, Neva throws herself fully into her work at her father's office. A position she despises, the job enables her to sneak through classified files and search for the many people in her life who vanished without a trace. People like her Grandma and Nicoline, whose very existence is erased by the government.

Neva's only motivation to keep going lies in a letter her Grandma wrote promising a new life outside of the Protectosphere. With the government monitoring her every move, and Sanna joining the list of the list of the missing, a rebellion is on the horizon. Neva must decide whether she will escape the confinement of the dome or stay and fight with those she loves.

Review: Sara Grant strives for excellence in a dystopian debut that falls slightly above par. Grant's Dark Parties is highly entertaining but lacks in originality. She used the typical dystopian dome concept that has become old-hat. When well-executed (as in the case of Pure and Under the Never Sky), this notion can be captivating, but unfortunately, this wasn't the case.

As for her cast of characters, she offers no shortage of conflict and drama. Neva is a rebellious young adult whose lapses in judgement often land her in hot water. A primary example being her secret relationship with her best friend's boyfriend. The way that she was willing to throw away a friendship, all for a boy she barely knew, lowered my opinion of her. I also couldn't stand Braydon's character, finding his cockiness annoying. But the reality is that life is never cookie cutter perfect, and Dark Parties showcases these flaws. Thought it doesn't stand out in a crowd, Sara Grant's Dark Parties is a quick and pleasant read regardless of a few bumps in the road.

Putting Makeup on Dead People

Author: Jen Violi

Publisher: Hyperion

Pages: 326

Summary: Donna Parisi is your typical carefree teenager until the tragic death of her father. Now three years have passed, and she has become a quiet wallflower, more content to blend into the background than stand out, but when she attends a fellow classmate's viewing at the Brighton Funeral Parlor, she meets Joe Brighton, an undertaker. Suddenly, she is hit by a shocking revelation - she wants to become a mortician.

Embarrassed by her gloomy new career option, Donna keepers mum on the subject, only confiding in her eccentric friend Liz. When her mother learns the reason behind Donna's odd behavior, she immediately tries to put a stop to her dreams. Unable to shake the feeling of purpose she experiences when dealing with the dead, Donna applies to Chapman University of Mortuary Sciences behind her mother's back. And when home life becomes unbearable, she moves into a room above the funeral home and begins an apprenticeship. Amongst the dead and the grieving, Donna finds a sense of belonging, as though she is truly making an impact her father would be proud of.

While she excels in her new trade, her love life is a completely different story. Donna briefly enjoys a fling with college student Tim, but his one-track mind causes their relationship to fizzle. And if things couldn't get any more complicated, her mother has started dating her yoga instructor, who strongly resembles an Indian god. Donna can't help but resent him, feeling betrayed by her mother who swore that her father was her one true love. With all of this change in her midst, will Donna sink under the pressure or spread her wings and flourish?

Review: Every so often there comes an author with the magical gift to take you on a journey you will never forget. Jen Violi is that author, and that book is Putting Makeup on Dead People. Brutally honest from the start, this novel is told through the sorrow-filled eyes of Donna Parisi as she struggles to navigate the rough waters of life without her father's guidance. As an adolescent girl who has also lost her father, I think Jen Violi writes a deeply sympathetic tale that touches on the confusion anyone with a departed parent knows all too well.

Violi makes an interesting decision to highlight an unusual career path for a young girl - that of a mortician. The way that the author describes the profession showcases its noble purpose of preparing the dead and guiding those left behind in such a way that one would think a mortician is akin to a superhero. In hindsight, that is what Donna becomes: a better, stronger version of herself. Through her work at the Brighton Funeral Home and the help of her vivacious friend Liz, she is able to embrace her full potential and find inner peace. Violi's quirky writing style is a mixture of heartfelt comments and smart quips that are sure to keep readers smiling through their tears. Putting Makeup on Dead People gives the gift of hope that everyone is born with a mission in life, and once you recognize what that mission is, you can shine.

Review: Hemlock by Kathleen Peacock

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 14:00:00 +0000

Title: Hemlock

Author: Kathleen Peacock

Publisher: Katherine Teagan Books

Series: Hemlock #1

Other Reviews for This Author: None

I was excited for Hemlock - the cover may have an angsty female model and intertwining foliage (don't they all?), but it's striking and hits all of the aesthetic choices that I have come to expect on paranormal covers. Mainly, it was similar enough to things on the shelf that I enjoyed in the past, but the cover separated itself just enough to have me intrigued. What you get with Hemlock is probably what you'd expect from the cover: a story that deals with paranormal/urban fantasy elements, an often-debated love triangle, and a writing style that is accessible and perhaps a lot better than people would give it credit for. Is it without flaw? No, but the book is more than worth reading if you're a fan of YA werewolf novels.

Lupine Syndrome has become either a plague or a series of blessings, depending on how people look at it. More and more people are contracting the disease. It's acknowledged by the US government. Werewolves are no longer a species in hiding, but they are becoming a species that lives on the run. Werewolves have been making the news more and more in Hemlock, not as political subjects, but as the cause of murders. Mac has been struggling to get over the death of her best friend Amy, a victim of one of the werewolf attacks. The culprit? A snow-white werewolf.

A group of people known as the Trackers have entered the city in order to investigate the outbreak of murders pinned on the white werewolf. People infected with Lupine Syndrome, hiding their symptoms and keeping the transformation under wraps as much as possible, live in fear of being hunted by the Trackers because of their uncontrollable condition. The political struggle between werewolves and non-werewolves has caused the city to move in an uproar as those that are infected are in danger due to the cruel methodology of the Trackers.

Mac gets it in her head to solve the mystery of Amy's murder herself. Jason, Amy's former boyfriend, a dark and edgy kind of guy that feels forbidden because of his ties to their deceased friend, falls under Mac's scrutiny, as well as Mac's friend Kyle that also crosses the line from friend into potentially-something-more. Investigating Amy causes Mac to rethink everything she knew about her best friend, Jason, and Kyle. Who is really behind Amy's death? Is it Jason, who appears to be hiding something, or Kyle, or something else that silently haunted Amy? Mac's mystery-solving skills lead to uncomfortable truths and a love triangle that could very well prove to be fatal.

Having read Hemlock some time ago, I am suffering from what I call Shitty Memory Syndrome. SMS is this thing where, basically, I read a book and have it on the review pile for a long time and then forget a good portion of the book's more subtle events because of my lack of copious notes on it. Evaluating books for me is usually an emotional vs a purely analytical endeavor, but I prefer to be well-versed in a book's general process before I discuss it. Books like Hemlock are difficult because they involve a lot of dialogue, a lot of character-to-character conflict, and don't necessarily stand out as plotted pieces of fiction. They don't have the obscurity of literary fiction that allows their plots to be told in three to five sentences, nor do they have plots that are so crazy unique/stupid that they are unforgettable.

Basically: Hemlock isn't a five-star book, even if the initial reaction is one that makes you want to put five stars on the review and call it a day. My Goodreads rating was just that, actually, save for a few minor quibbles I had regarding the cosmopolitan aspect of the world-building, which I'll discuss later. Hemlock is the kind of book that is oodles of fun to read and brings something exciting to the table because the style engages you and feels fresh, but it lacks that certain oomph that lets the book stay with you beyond the first few months after reading it.

From a character perspective, Mac's a strong personality that does well within the story structure. She has that mixture of naivete and resilience that makes for a YA heroine that's fun to read about, with a tendency to get into some hairy (pardon the pun) scrapes throughout the story. Her narrative voice was engaging and had me loving the story from the first page. Mac grabs the reader's attention because her character arc is divided among three people: Jason, Kyle, and Amy. She never has any romantic feelings towards her deceased best friend, but she does have a strong connection to her that leads her through the storyline. Her confusion regarding Kyle and Jason is also a very palpable, very real, but the discussion regarding the protagonist and her best friend struck me as unusual in YA paranormals these days, forcing Mac to think about difficult emotions regarding said friend, to constantly consider the life that Amy led in order to discover the truth about her disappearance.

Where the characterization is more in-line with the plot is the love triangle. Mac's affections for both Jason and Kyle are understood. There's a distinctive difference between the two of them - the best friend's boyfriend that seems to be getting in more and more trouble since his girlfriend's death, the best guy friend that seems to care for Mac in a way that goes beyond mere friendship. Mac's investigation of Amy's demise leads her into learning a lot about both Kyle and Jason in order to determine if either one of them could be infected with Lupine Syndrome, which actually makes for a fairly developed series of romances that make the love triangle feel developed and worthy of investment. Peacock does eventually make a clear winner emerge, which I usually prefer due to the difficulty of writing a character that can realistically participate in high-stakes plots while having constant relationship conflict burning in the background (or, oftentimes, the foreground.) The main problem is that both Jason and Kyle have clear ups and downs that make it hard to really separate them and say that one is a better fit for the protagonist over the other, even though her decision eventually does make a better one clear. They just don't add the same spark to Mac's narrative and character arc that Amy's place in the story does, and Amy isn't even alive.

I do have to say that I loved the other secondary characters, though. Mac's guardian and cousin, Tess, is feisty and a lovely addition to the narrative. I loved seeing a non-parental figure that was still involved in the protagonist's life and care without being a burden. Mac does have the whole orphaned-child thing going for her, but there was still some level of guardianship and responsibility that worked well. Tess and Mac share a sister-like bond that gives them great dialogue exchanges. Characterization in general was really strong through the dialogue and interaction, which is why I think those parts of the characters stood out so clearly. Each of the characters had a tone and a vibe through the dialogue, which doesn't always happen, and I appreciated how Peacock was able to engage me in their individual voices even though Mac was doing her own clear first-person narration.

Peacock's writing works best when showcasing these interactions. Peacock gets dialogue. Her characters have realistic levels of snark and humor that bring out their personalities, and the dialogue feels appropriately modern. There isn't a sense of generality to the tone to mask a lack of awareness of teen speak, or an attempt at doing teen speak that actually speaks down to the audience. I loved how the story moved at a great clip because of the focus on dialogue and character interaction. Even Peacock's action scenes moved well, a testament to the flow of the writing and how it was consistent in its engagement. Where I found the writing and world to be mostly problematic was in the way that the setting was described. Hemlock feels like a city in many respects. It has a bad side of town, the descriptions make it feel like a fairly large area. It has 30,000 people (I believe), which is about triple the size of where I live at present....yet it didn't have a Walmart. This may seem silly, but when you grow up in a significantly smaller town that has a Walmart, you can pretty much be sure that a town of a much larger size will have a Walmart. That kind of thing threw me out of the narrative and had me wondering if Peacock understood her setting. The werewolves were well-done and the mythology felt solid, plus the integration of it as an urban fantasy element was a plus that made the story feel fresh. Closeted paranormal creatures are so blah. I just wish that the setting, which felt off in the aspects that should have been the most realistic, felt more consistent (or at least had some internal reasoning as to why it didn't fit what many would consider to be the norm of an area with its population and level of urbanization.)

Will readers find the plot's intricate points entirely surprising? Probably not, but it's worth the read for the writing that flows well with its modern references and snark, and its characters that jump off of the page. Hemlock is a great trilogy opener that combines humor, romance, and a touch of darkness while making a the story that feels pretty self-contained despite being a part of a series. Readers will love Hemlock's voice and will most certainly want to come back for more. I can't wait to see what she does with the next book in the series, and how her plotting and world-building evolves as her writing matures.

Cover: See the first paragraph of this review. Better than many Harper Collins paranormal books of recent publication, but not super-original.

Rating: 4.0 Stars

Copy: Received from publisher/publicist for review (Thank you, Heather and Harper Collins!!)

Review: The Look by Sophia Bennett

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 16:00:00 +0000

Title: The Look

Author: Sophia Bennett

Publisher: Chicken House (Scholastic)

Series: None

Other Reviews for This Author: Sequins, Secrets, and Silver Linings

If we're being completely honest here (which shouldn't even be a question at this point - I tell y'all way too much about my life), I have been waiting for a new book by Sophia Bennett since her debut novel was published a few years back. It rocked my world - a middle grade novel about a group of friends that come together through fashion in order to help a cause that younger kids, and adults, don't know that much about. Bennett took a familiar story and gave it an excellent twist that had me delighted as a reader, combining the genre's enjoyable elements with elements of the fashion world and the world of social activism. Since then, Bennett's middle grade series hasn't been continued in the US, just the UK. (I frequently consider begging Scholastic to bring the rest of the series here - the ebooks aren't even available, which is a crying shame for such a talented author like Bennett.) The Look is her return to the US publishing world, a YA novel that takes elements from her middle grade series and promises a story with an emotional punch. Not only does it live up to its premise, but it reminded me why Sophia Bennett's writing is freaking amazing and worth reading if you like your fashion with heart.

Ted Trout embodies her name with about as much style as one would expect: very little. Spotlights have always focused on Ted's sister Ava, a girl who is conventionally beautiful and full of the zest that allows others to shine just by being around her. Ted is the type that attempts to blend into the shadows. People very rarely notice her, her tall, thin frame causing her to all but completely disappear before the eyes of her peers. She's rarely ever noticed and likes it that way. There are times when Ted wishes that someone - anyone - would glance at her and see something, not just a girl with an awkward face that appears one minute, leaving the next.

It's a complete surprise when Ted and Ava go outside to busk in order to earn money for Ava to go and see her boyfriend who lives outside of London. Neither play a musical instrument, so the action is fruitless, save for the talent scout that rushes up to them in order to get a better look at Ted. It seems like a joke when he hands them a card advertising a modelling agency, saying that he would like Ted to come in and check it out. Ava may love her sister, but even she thinks that Ted is the sibling less-blessed in the looks department. It seems like a total scam until Ted looks a little closer at the card and realizes that the modelling agency exists, and that said modelling agency is one of the best in the business. Suddenly, Ted considers the possibility that she may actually have something special.

Around this time, Ava starts getting sick. Sick as in fatigued, lying in bed with a fever, finding herself winded or exhausted for no obvious reason. Ted's going off and exploring modelling to the extent that she can without shocking her parents, but her sister's health becomes more and more of an issue as she attempts to break out into the professional world. Photo shoots that take hours and hours, going to calls that result in her being turned down with all but a look. Life is hectic for Ted. Ava's well-being is what sends it all into a spiral. Cancer is something that their entire family never expected. Downsizing their home, living on tighter finances as their father finds time to work...it's a lot to juggle as is, let alone with a daughter needing medical attention. Ted may just have discovered something that she loves to do, but her sister, her best friend, could change everything.

Normal girls that become famous are as common in YA as dukes and earls are in genre romance. We see countless books from publishers, both derived from book packagers and individual authors, that feed on the idea of a normal girl becoming famous and then learning the truth about what it means to hold that fame. Whether it's Jen Calonita, Zoe Dean, Lauren Conrad, or someone else, a writer that takes this trope has to do so much more with it than just create a girl that learns about fame and fashion. Calonita goes for the stories about girls discovering who they are with the fame as a physical journey that frames their mental one, while authors like Conrad and Dean focus more on the shallow aspects of what it means to become famous and fashionable. Both types of stories have their pluses and minuses - their ultimate benefit is that reading about fame and fashion is entertaining to teen readers, and stories including them are pretty likely to find their audience.

What most of these stories involve is a girl that starts off feeling like everyone else, someone that blends into the crowd like Ted Trout, only to be discovered by someone that believes she is pretty, that she has the potential to be something in the world of celebrity. Sometimes this girl comes to know who she is and is a better person as a result. Others, the girl just gets sucked into the world of fame with little reason to look back, focusing on the drama that gets involved with it. Ted Trout is a mixture of these girls. Her story starts out this way, but Bennett doesn't make her blend in because she's a girl that believes herself to be plain. Bennett explores how girls that aren't seen as conventionally beautiful can make it as models. Ted may not be beautiful in the sense that her features are classic or graceful, but her height and angular, unusual face make her into something unique. Her looks are arresting to those that glance her way; she is unnerving because she is an individual, society's standards thrown aside in favor of her ability to make people take a second look when she has confidence. Ted isn't a character meant for reader self-insertion; Ted starts out as an individual; she's an individual that isn't sure of where to go with her interests. She's so used to being in her sister's shadow that modelling is seen as her first real chance to get out in the world and think about her own likes. Those unique qualities that make her special have never been given a chance to breathe before.

Ted's character arc goes from this girl who is unique but unsure to a girl that is firm in her convictions, understanding of what it means to be beautiful and passionate about her subject. Ted doesn't get involved in catty relationships with other models; she doesn't suffer from interacting with cliched characters that all clearly use her because she's in the modelling business. Ted has a legitimate career that has its ups and its downs. Being herself leads her to places that give her opportunity, but it also causes her to look at whether her career at that moment is something she wants enough. Her sister's struggle with cancer also gives her those big thoughts, causing her to appreciate her time at home more. Ted doesn't meet with superficial character opposition at every turn, so her character arc is actually meaningful. It's not about the shallowness of modelling and celebrity, but about Ted becoming a stronger girl who understands herself. Readers will love Ted - heck, I adored Ted. She's exactly the kind of character I want to read more about in books that explore fashion and celebrity. Her story is both moral and realistic, juicy and meaningful. There's just enough of both to satisfy readers looking for those themes, yet it doesn't become preachy or catty. It's the kind of book that will provide its younger readers with a solid role model that acts realistically. I'd love to see this book lauded with the popularity that other books with similar plots have - it's in a league of its own because of the quality of its characterization.

I loved the people that were in Ted's life, too, and that the story focused more on her career and her relationship with her sister than any romantic elements. The Look is primarily about Ted's career as a teen model; her sister plays a huge role in getting Ted to try out the career and later advance in it, and that same encouragement occurs when Ted attempts to have her sister stay strong throughout cancer treatments. Ava is never the jealous one, never the martyr because of her illness and devotion to Ted. She is initially baffled, believing herself to be prettier than Ted, but then gets genuinely excited and enthusiastic about Ted's career. She's a really great big sister, and I loved that she had her own agenda and motivations beyond Ted's story. When Ted dealt with modelling and self-image, Ava dealt with self-image, too, because of her hair loss. Ava also worried constantly about how her long-distance boyfriend would take everything, especially since her treatments seemed to be changing her as a person. The sisterly relationship was strong and rewarding as the novel progressed; if anything, I would have loved even more interaction between the sisters because of the strength and joy found within the bond.

Other things of note include the ever-involved and quirky Trout parents. Both had personalities, sets of worries, and different ways of loving their children. They were in the background throughout the story, constantly providing support (and occasional backlash) as Ted's career started to grow and Ava's cancer manifested itself. Ted also meets a myriad of people through her modelling gigs that lead her to gaining some professional friends and artistic influences, including an attractive boy, son of the woman that ran Ted's modelling agency. The romance was adorable and based more on friendship and mutual interest than mere attraction, though attraction played a part. Bennett took the time to make Ted's story one populated with so many lovable characters; only a few were not likeable, and those purposefully so, but none of them felt like people I had met before. Books about celebrity often thrive on caricatures and stereotypes to create drama, so it was refreshing to read a book that was focused more on the craft than cheaply-manufactured character conflict.

I cannot conclude this review before highlighting one aspect of this book that I should have known would be good - Sophia Bennett's writing skills. This woman is good. I'm talking gets-the-teen-voice, makes-you-crave-the-book good. Bennett's writing has good turns of phrase, observations and themes that set the bar beyond the usual book focused on fashion and fame, yet still keeps the lively tone of a story that would seem much less focused on theme and message. She also knows the world of fashion; Bennett doesn't show her knowledge by name-dropping, but by making Ted's story as authentic as possible. Ted goes months without jobs. Her fame is hectic and surprising, something that was entirely unpredictable. People in Ted's world are not mean so much as they are narrow-minded about their goals and the world of fashion in which they work. Then there was the cancer bit - something that could make the story depressing. Bennett's writing of Ava's condition was great because it wasn't depressing. Ava had moments of hardship, frustration, and sadness, but she didn't make the story a sadsack thing about what a horrible thing cancer was. Ava's subplot was about recognizing her beauty no matter her health, and that message was empowering, not negative and tragic.

Take the time to read The Look. Please. If you like contemporary YA books that feature fun plots with something more, characters that are enjoyable and unique while still feeling relative to the everyday person, you'll love Sophia Bennett's foray into the YA sphere. Her writing is worth keeping around. I only wish that everyone else could share this excitement - a favorite author returning for a second go-around in the hopes that their readers will see what I do. I've been waiting for this story for a long time and am so, so delighted to have finally gotten the chance to read it. Ted Trout's unusual looks are the perfect representation for The Look - it's quirky, familiar but edgy, and full of heart.

Cover: This cover is brilliant. I love the starkness of the white, the way it shows the two different models and their striking looks. Both are unusual and still beautiful. That's exactly what this book is about, and I think the cover artist represented it beautifully.

Rating: 5.0 Stars

Copy: Received from publisher/publicist for review (Thank you, Becky and Scholastic!!!)

Review: Juliet Immortal by Stacey Jay

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 19:23:00 +0000

Title: Juliet Immortal

Author: Stacey Jay

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Series: Juliet Immortal #1

Other Reviews for This Author: None

When I first started blogging, several bloggers constantly proclaimed that Stacey Jay was an author worth reading. This happened so frequently that I followed her on Twitter and bought her adult urban fantasy debut (which I have yet to read - it sounds very good.) Cue Juliet Immortal coming out and me placing it on my immediate to-read shelf only to, for whatever reason, put off reading it until the companion book came out...then put off reading it some more. Mixed reviews and acclaim had me questioning if it would be the right book for me, but I finally read it and found that I highly enjoyed the voice and the story, even if a part of me saw what had other reviewers do a critical analysis of the negative aspects.

Shakespeare's oft-repeated tale of Romeo and Juliet was bull crap. Nothing about their story involved eternal, true love. Juliet may have fallen for Romeo in the beginning, but she never willingly sacrificed herself to be with him - he murdered her to ensure that he would live for all eternity. When Juliet died, she learned that the epic struggle between good and evil, her and Romeo, would not end there. Juliet became one of the Ambassadors of Light. As a soul, she was sentenced to live in a foggy, hazy in-between state until she was needed to work as an Ambassador. Juliet would be called into a body to actively work to save it and bring a chosen body to the light by allowing it to obtain romantic love, just as Romeo would be called to another body close to it in an attempt to bring someone over to the darkness by killing it and mimicking the very thing that he did to get his immortality.

Rivalries such as that of Romeo and Juliet were never meant to be eternal. Their most recent struggle has Juliet coming back in the body of Ariel Dragland, a girl that needs help in order to cope with the lack of a father figure and a damaged mother-daughter relationship that makes her feel like the dirt on the bottom of a shoe. Ariel - or rather, Juliet-as-Ariel - is returning to consciousness in the passenger seat of a car, a boy named Dylan sitting next to her. He's dead. Juliet gets ready to move Ariel forward as Dylan seems to come back to life before her, his eyes changed, reminding her of the boy that she will never be able to forget: Romeo.

Juliet now has to try to work against Romeo. Her goals: find the people around her that need to fall in love or get to a loving relationship that will last, help Ariel improve her life, and prevent Romeo from screwing everything up with his own evil desires. Juliet soon meets a guy named Ben that helps her escape from Romeo post-car-meeting. Attractive doesn't even begin to describe Ben; he's a kind soul that speaks to Juliet in away that she's never truly encountered before in her journeys as an Ambassador. It also turns out that Gemma, a friend of Ariel's from a local rich family, is destined to either fall in love with Ben...or die. Not only does Juliet have to try and push those two together, but she has to combat the growing intimacy between herself and Ben; Juliet cannot let herself fall prey to another tragic love story gone wrong.

The first fifty pages of this book was me struggling to shove myself into the mind-box that is Juliet. When you think of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, modern portrayals tend to overly-indulge the romantic side of Juliet and ignore the parts about her that are awesome - the parts that are intelligent and generally a lot more sensible than those of Romeo. Stacey Jay obviously stands by this sentiment, because her interpretation of Juliet is anything but romantic and perfect. This Juliet is a girl that has a mixture of hundreds of years of experience and a beef with the teenage boy that broke her heart. Talk about internal conflict - Juliet has a crap ton of it, and her viewpoint is one that requires some adjusting as a result. She's very driven to a singular goal in the beginning of the story because of her hatred of Romeo and the organization he works for; that same drive is what prevents her from looking at Ben as a possible love interest for a majority of the book. As one can imagine, this makes Juliet...frustrating. Her mindset is so focused on maintaining the same thoughts to do her job that she will do whatever it takes to make it happen, even though it means that she ignores the important but subtle things going on around her that make her story special and not what she believes it to be.

So, on one hand, this makes it hard to get into Juliet's narrative right away. I struggled with that connection for those fifty pages. I would say that it took probably half of the book for me to get to the point where I understood Juliet and the ways in which she never had the chance to grow up as a soul trapped in a state of in-between. This is why Juliet's status as a teenager in Ariel's body is very applicable - her realness is, well, real. There's a lot of good writing that goes on with her character as Juliet learns about how her miscommunication and lack of perspective negatively effected her throughout the story and her life, and it makes a huge difference in how her character tackles things in the last parts of the book. Stacey Jay doesn't make this girl's journey easy. Partially, it's because it's something that shouldn't be easy, but it's also because Jay wanted Juliet to be something more than a traditional YA heroine. I'm normally a good spot of difficult protagonists, but Juliet does take more warming up to than most, a lot in part because of the fact that she comes across as very mature and contained in the beginning. Jay makes a powerful narrative illusion with Juliet, an unreliable self-analyst, that readers will find hard to break until they get a better grasp of what the story and the world is really about.

I got back on track when Jay introduced Ben, however. Ben is exactly what I like to find in a YA hero - he's not only kind and loyal despite a sketchy past, but he is PoC and oozes sex appeal. It sounds so shallow, but Ben has just enough imperfections to make him perfect; that is so fun to read, and he balances well with Juliet because of his personality. They work well together and clearly make a good couple. What surprised me the most was, as much as this is a romantic story about Juliet and Ben, Dylan and Gemma's development. Juliet Immortal takes the time to develop all four of the characters because of how they weave themselves into the plot. Gemma is a great friend to Juliet in some ways and awful in others; she is almost parasitic underneath the loving surface. Dylan/Romeo has major faults and represents the past that Juliet refuses to leave behind, yet he narrates small interludes throughout the book that show him being just a little less than evil. Jay refuses to make the dark entirely dark or the light entirely light; she hints at both organizations having aspects that are a lot more gray-area than expected. The secondary characters make the story really fleshed out and enjoyable because of this goal that Jay has in telling a story that isn't morally polarized despite the initial setup. I found that it made the romance better and the characters better in general. They all have their own character arcs as Juliet comes into her own, and I liked seeing how her views of each character progressed, how her relationships changed as she went from being more and more ignorant, digging herself into a major hole, before breaking free of the ignorance and shedding light on the people she was getting to know. Where I disliked it was where the tone of Romeo and Juliet the play became such a pivotal point that the romance between Ben and Juliet felt like it was insta-love, even though the story's construction was a commentary on said insta-love. Insta-love is rampant in the play, but a broader relationship timeline and a bit less of the insta-love would have helped the book, as it felt overly speedy in how it attempted to push Juliet and Ben together.

Stylistically, I think Jay has a great way of writing. She has that usual YA style that blends a snarky, solid first-person perspective with good wording and phrasing that will appeal to teenagers. Jay really sets the bar for solid beginnings, both of the book and of the individual chapters. Some were attention-getters, others were the kind that make you read on because they are interesting but also excellently written. It was a good mix that had me appreciating her writing ability while staying engaged throughout. Her grasp of Juliet's voice also felt strong - there was a lovely mixture of historical thoughts (she talks about how prissy she is about olives, for instance, because of olives her family grew back in Verona) and modern-day worries. Sometimes that type of voice can make the world-building come into suspicion, but for the most part Jay kept it together and made me enjoy what I was reading. Jay's world is also highly imaginative, taking the concept and running with it to the point of high-action and intrigue.

I stumbled a bit with the pacing - which was in part due to adjusting to Juliet's narrow-mindedness - and understanding the world, which is just as mysterious to Juliet as it is to the reader sometimes. She knows her goal but doesn't know the true mechanics behind how everything works, and that can make things confusing when it would be better to have some form of clarity to stabilize the world while reading. I have trouble reading a world that is distorted by the character in such a way, at least when the distortion isn't entirely smooth and intentional at every turn. Despite this, I found myself completely engaged in what was going on - there's a lot, certainly, but every bit is fun and unusual. This type of story is much more urban fantasy than expected.

Juliet Immortal was a story worth reading, though my lack of initial connection had me worried. Stacey Jay is clearly an author worth keeping an eye on: her characters and storylines show intent and solid writing, and she doesn't underdevelop her secondary characters in favor of excessive romantic moments for the main couple, though her romances are strong. I loved the evil-but-not Romeo, the hard-headed Juliet, and the world in which she set them. Needless to say, I will be picking up Romeo Redeemed here soon to find out how Jay expands her world and gives the betrayer his story. While not the best thing I've read, it's highly original and worthy of more notice from readers of YA that like stories that challenge their perspectives (and offer up hot PoC heroes...)

Cover: This cover may have a model in a dress looking sad, but it's beautiful and captures the romantic emotions nicely - though it perhaps is not the best representative of the story as a whole.

Rating: 4.0 Stars

Copy: Received from publisher/publicist for review (Thank you, Random House!!)

Review: The Madman's Daughter by Megan Shepherd

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 20:35:00 +0000

Title: The Madman's Daughter

Author: Megan Shepherd

Publisher: Balzar & Bray

Series: The Madman's Daughter #1

Other Reviews for This Author: None

I swear that someone predicted that gothic stories would become en vogue and starting buying up a few of them at publishers. My fascination with gothic romance has had me turning more towards these YA books that have been published over the past few years - the ones that seem to thrive on gothic ideas. The Madman's Daughter is heavily inspired by The Island of Doctor Moreau, but gives the story a strong twist by telling the tale from the point of view of the daughter of the brilliantly misunderstood (or brilliantly mad) doctor. It sold in heated auction and has had enough positive word of mouth to provide it with plenty of reading hope and expectation. Basically, this is a book that will either live up to what people think it is or will fail miserably. I fell in love with it from the first chapter and was swept up in everything that went on with the main character. Juliet Moreau's tale is creepy enough to have you questioning the direction of modern science, even if the story's events are a fantasy.

Orphaned. Abandoned. Destitute. Many girls in Juliet Moreau's London are of this variety - living on their own with little to no chance of success or recovery. These girls often become prostitutes, heralding men, young and old, fat and thin, rich and working class, to take them up on their goods in order to stay alive. Still, others are dropped into the profession because of the harsh world they live in where men find them sexual objects because of their status as the fairer sex. Juliet Moreau is lucky. She has a job cleaning at the King's College of Medical Research, a place where her father, the formerly renowned surgeon Doctor Moreau, used to teach and experiment to find new surgical advances.

Attempting to scrub away blood from the cracks and crevices of tile is the least of Juliet's worries. She has to attempt to live in modern society - no longer Lady Juliet Moreau, now just a Miss - and find a husband or some way of supporting herself. One wrong move could send her to the streets. That is exactly what happens when a member of the college attempts to sexually assault her after she comes back from a meeting with her childhood friend and former servant, Montgomery, whom she believed to have gone and disappeared completely. Juliet's initial meeting with Montgomery had her questioning if her father had really died following London's brutal accusations against him. With her mother several years dead and her father potentially out there, Juliet sees nowhere else to run but to her father's island with Montgomery.

Their journey to the island yields dark tidings. Montgomery tries to warn Juliet away, telling her that her father, while loving her, would not have a great initial reaction to her arrival. He's a different man according to Montgomery. Juliet's faith in the man that she remembers from childhood is unshakable, however, and she accompanies Montgomery and his traveling companion, an islander by the name of Balthasar with distinctive features that toe the line between recognizably human and animal, a reminder of the Darwinian brand of research that Doctor Moreau so enjoyed during Juliet's childhood. A collected castaway by the name of Edward joins them on their way to the island as well, giving the motley group quite the welcome when they finally return to Doctor Moreau. Juliet soon comes to terms with the fact that her father is a changed man, only to start learning things that are perhaps even more frightening that have to do with his time away from London society.

For the sake of your sanity, I tried to keep everything remotely disturbing or plot-specific under wraps. The Madman's Daughter has quite the plot - the gothic description is true to its word because of the pacing and the nature of the plot's discovery and eventual climax. There's a lot that goes on in these pages, and a lot of it builds up to something that is scary if predictable. There's something that Shepherd does that makes it engrossing to the point of never wanting to put the book down, even if the elements have either been seen before or hinted at from the book's summary (which really does reveal a bit too much). The hype machine was right about The Madman's Daughter. There's so much here to talk about; Megan Shepherd really has written something worthy of its inspiration, which is far from the usual Jane Austen retelling.

Appreciating Juliet as a character comes as her narrative goes from London to the island. She's her father's daughter in many respects - equally fascinated and repelled by the bloody goings on of the King's College of Medical Research - and harbors an innocent, intense hope for a life that she has long stopped having. Her memories of her father are seen as happy; she fears prostitution after she witnessed her mother becoming a mistress to an older wealthy man in order to provide them with an apartment following Doctor Moreau's disappearance. Juliet has grown up being afraid of the worst that a girl could go through while never entirely valuing what she does have as a woman of some social standing, fallen or otherwise. Her friend Lucy tries to convince her that she can get married, but the men of the college seem silly and mundane to her. Juliet is thus portrayed as a girl that, while intelligent and realistic, is caught up in conflicting opinions about herself: her intellect has her searching for companionship intellectually above her reaching point, and her life's transition to downgraded social standing has her afraid of becoming a girl that has to sell herself or be taken advantage of, almost constantly degrading her self-worth in the process of her fretting. Juliet shows a side that hints at evil leanings, however, and that's the side that we see more of as the story progresses. When Juliet thinks about the construction of the human hand and how she can free herself from getting sexually assaulted by preventing a man from ever using it again, she shows this scary side of herself that readers come to know amid all of the romance and mystery.

That part of Juliet is what gets brought out with each page. The story goes on and she sees the makings of a mystery that involves her father and his experiments. Readers know very well that her father has something cruel and manic within him, yet the question is - does it translate to Juliet, a girl that has to take medicine every day for a rare disease, a girl that is uncommonly intelligent, interested in science, and is fascinated as well as repelled by her father's obsession with the way humans and beasts intersect. I loved watching her grow into a girl that was able to accept the parts of herself that were scary and like her father. Juliet's story of self-discovery also has a great parallel in the text that you may be able to see coming. No spoilers, but it's a plot point that I found to be very good at up-ing the creep factor of the entire story. Juliet is just a character that's easy to read about - she has the passion and the drive to learn about the world around her, she doesn't want to be undermined by her father because of her gender, and she wants to learn about the truth behind the island and its deadly inhabitants. There's a lot of clear motivation in her storyline that gives her a chance to learn about herself, fall in love a few times, and not spend every moment wallowing in her personal issues. Instead, Juliet does things, and that is oh-so-awesome.

You may have also realized that the summary mentions two attractive boys. Mhmmmm. You can tell where this is going - and for those wondering about the love triangle, we may as well establish the following.

1.) Juliet does indeed admit to strong feelings or love, mentally, for both of these guys throughout the text. This does not involve leading them on or anything douchey. This is not a bad thing.

2.) She admits to loving each in a different way, so it's not just a bunch of the same character populating different personae in the name of tension.

Edward is a classy lad adrift at sea that gets caught up in the whirlwind that is Juliet's life. He ultimately makes an agreement with her father to stay on the island despite the fact that he is not trusted. Edward is the guy that's refined, put-together, and more "sensible". Montgomery is the childhood companion that facilitated Juliet's love of learning and reading, later returning as a sexy man that brought up old feelings - and probably incited some new ones. Both are very much characters and have clearly defined personalities. They aren't interchangeable or mistakable, but it's pretty clear that Shepherd spends more time progressing Montgomery's characterization than Edward's. Edward is more so a character that flip-flops. His refinement and immediate liking of Juliet is seen as a bit strange and not entirely there, whereas Montgomery's history with Juliet has a much more realistic basis for a brewing love affair. Where Shepherd flounders is the way that Juliet falls in love with Edward - it just doesn't feel natural. Edward's not around much, his feelings are pretty impulsive, and Juliet is mainly inclined to him when her father pushes her towards him because he, unlike Montgomery, never held the caste of servant. Montgomery's past is a black mark in Doctor Moreau's eyes - despite his slipping into potential insanity, he still wants a firm hold on social propriety. Regardless of the sense in Juliet starting to like Edward when Montgomery is being pushed away from her, the suddenness of the feelings she develops is hard to shake off. Shepherd doesn't focus on those feelings as much as one would expect her to, which is appreciated, but they still threw me for a bit of a loop.

I found Shepherd's secondary characters to be engaging as well, though several that appear midway through the story would spoil some of the plot twists if discussed. The best part is that Shepherd makes you remember them, either via their descriptions or their actual actions, and incorporates a lot of different ideas as to the island's inhabitants and the way Doctor Moreau has effected them. Doctor Moreau himself is a great character that toes the line of villain-y. The reader is pretty certain from the get-go that he isn't all there, but he shows enough consideration for Juliet and Montgomery at odd intervals to be second-guessed. He has humanity, and it's his humanity that makes him a villain that steps above someone that just spouts evil crap without any justification in their back story. Islander characters like Alice and Balthasar also have their own brand of humanity to them, though they result more in being used to help along the story's plot by giving Juliet different examples of what the people on the island are like and how they retain their connections to her father's research. I can't say I'll forget them in my mind. Shepherd did very well at creating characters that would stand out in mental image if not in the way they were written.

Selling this series definitely required more than these characters, though. Each has their own great branding to them that is distinctive, but Shepherd sells it with her writing. The Madman's Daughter is haunting; frightening, almost. It's the kind of story that has you anticipating everything, sometimes to guess right and others to guess things so very wrong. Being a story that is in some ways predictable, it really benefited from having a writer that didn't shy away from those realities and instead focused on using her writing to express the tone and anticipation of the gothic story. The Madman's Daughter works so well because the reader loves the build up to each event, regardless of whether it's a plot twist that is easily identifiable or not. Shepherd doesn't pull punches. Characters die and do cruel things. Dark sides are embraced as the story progresses and she explores the themes of humanity and the beasts that lie within. Shepherd leaves her readings with nuggets of great ideas that allow them to formulate their own thoughts on what is going on - how animal-like are humans? If our DNA is so similar and only fundamental things are different, are we really so different from the animals? Do we embrace those feral sides of ourselves or attempt to suppress them? I am a reader that adores questions like this. I love shutting a book with these thoughts swirling in my head, and Shepherd puts them in her text in a way that is accessible for most readers but still satisfying to those that are looking for a more analytical purpose behind the story. Now, the ending will be the most difficult part for readers. It's unanticipated but in-character, and pretty much demolishes the idea of this story being a standalone novel from the romantic perspective. I was so angry/happy/frustrated with this ending because of that. Shepherd's punches may not be pulled, but even I didn't expect the ending that she provided. Time will only tell how it translates to the next two stories in this world.

The Madman's Daughter is deserving of all of the hype and praise. Some YA tropes are present - mainly the romantic ones - but the protagonist has a great character arc that mixes her darkness in with her redeeming qualities, and both of her love interests are interesting to read about. Some aspects of the romance had me iffy, but the overall presentation worked well for the tension in the story. The plot is disturbing; the writing a potion of intrigue, deception, and gothic horror. Readers who are looking for something entertaining and thoughtful, creepy and romantic, will find this book to be just the book for them.

Cover: I adore this cover. The model reminds me of a ghost, and the image looks like a painting with a layer of paper decay over it. Lovely and perfect for the tone of the story.

Rating: 4.5 Stars

Copy: Received from publisher/publicist for review (Thank you, Heather and Harper Collins!!)

Review: Pretty Crooked by Elisa Ludwig

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 16:00:00 +0000

Title: Pretty Crooked

Author: Elisa Ludwig

Publisher: Katherine Teagan Books

Series: Pretty Crooked #1

Other Reviews for This Author: None

When I picked up this book, I had a lot of expectations that revolved it around being cute. The cover is cute. The idea is cute. Heck, this particular imprint of Harper Collins leans towards plot-oriented stories, and the freaking title was cute. The disjointed idea of a story that sounded so fun while still involving a conflict-of-morals plotline that would only work in teen or MG fiction (because an adult doing something so blatant like this would not seem cute) could have been the worst thing ever, but I was pulled in. My time spent reading Pretty Crooked was much like this transition: the initial reaction was overwhelmingly positive when I got what I expected, then shifted as the rest of the story came into play and the elements that seemed so enjoyable at first attempted to harmonize. It's a story for people that like fun - but, in thinking about it, it may not seem quite as good as it sounds.

New school, new house, new life. Willa has every right to be in a transitional state - the Valley Prep School is a completely unexpected environment for Willa, a school teeming with new people that represent the best (and the worst) of high school students. There's the Glitterati, a group of girls that owns their wealth and social status, even though the school as a whole is filled with students that have some level of personal wealth, as prep school does not come cheap. There's also the scholarship students; these are the students that fall through the social cracks, the ones that get made fun of by people like the Glitterati because they don't have the latest hot designer clothes, shoes, and handbags.

Willa is pulled between the two. The scholarship students are perfectly nice to her. The Glitterati's treatment of them is clearly unfair and mean. Yet, the Glitterati are also nice to Willa. They see her as someone worthy of making into a friend. Willa doesn't truly understand their capacity for vicious gossip and rumor until she starts hanging out with them, and by then she realizes just how dangerous and constricting their social influence can be. It isn't something as simple as taking the girls down or standing up to them - doing so can only incite so much change, and people like the Glitterati don't care enough to simply listen to what a new girl has to say to them. Heck, even Cherise, a card-carrying member with heart that becomes Willa's friend, has trouble talking to them about important issues.

The obvious solution? Fight back. Willa gets inspired to take from one and give to the other - a Robin Hood for the high school set. People like the Glitterati, their super-big mansions and their even bigger allowances, rarely seem to miss their stuff when it goes missing. A hundred dollars here, a gift card there. Little things that take up space in their wallets - only used when they forget one of their credit cards. Willa knows that she can get away with taking from those that have to much and use it to buy things for the scholarship students so they can have nice things, too, but she finds herself teaming up with the sexy and conniving Aidan Murphy, a guy known for his nature of being off-book. Willa's revenge seems to go well until she starts trying to make up for the social gap in bigger and bigger ways, leading her to situations that might mean the end of more than her life of crime.

When I think back to my reading experience with Pretty Crooked, much of it blends together into a feeling. Not a bad feeling, mind you, but not necessarily, "I loved this character's story arc and this world building concept that was executed well." Blending together pretty much means that I think of this story in terms of adjectives like the word cute, used frequently above. Pretty Crooked resulted in me sitting here to write this review with the question - well, what exactly did happen that was stand out.

Willa was fun to read about. Pure, simple fun. The story sold by the summary and cover copy is pretty accurate - she's an average high school girl that gets taken in by the idea of a group of friends that are cool and popular, yet she wants to change things when those friends make mean comments to people that don't deserve it. It's a pretty simple storyline and is in many ways shallow because of its execution - we're talking, of course, about the fact that simply giving these scholarship girls material possessions paid for with stolen money makes them happy and less bullied in school. That kind of simplistic viewpoint can work in a book if its done in a way that's empowering and very aware of what it's doing. Willa's character is much like this concept. She is shallow, but if she's being written in a very aware way, the reader sees that and understands that there is more at work in the book than they would initially think.

Her character arc is what you imagine it would be. She gets sucked in, makes a friend in Cherise, gets led to the Glitterati, ultimately rebelling by pulling off her pseudo-Robin Hood antics while staying just close enough with the rich girls to keep access to them for her good deeds. She also finds her bad boy love interest, Aidan, and then proceeds to have a character arc with that romance. Nothing wrong about that. Willa ultimately learns her lesson and becomes a stronger character and person for it, though the ending is a little less tied-up than I would have liked for her. There's also an arc regarding Willa and her mother that doesn't get much resolution, presumably to be explored more in the sequel, that would make Willa a much deeper character and give her a solid edge over other characters of her type. My problem with her characterization on the broad spectrum is that she is more like characters from books like The Queen of Kentucky, which focus on younger high school girls that are mainly going through the whole popularity/friendship-or-social-status quandary. It's nothing bad, but I came into the book expecting more of an exploration of the morality of theft and the Robin Hood idea, more of a story that revolved around the intricacies of it. Instead, the character reasoning is based on the surface of things because she's a younger high school girl concerned mostly with social status. That kind of thing is mostly bothersome because this is the kind of plot that could be light and fun while positively exploring different ideas regarding the themes it deals with. Instead, Willa goes through some very basic idea shifts that aren't badly done, just very predictable.

Ludwig's characterization felt like this around the board. I liked that Cherise was a girl of color and featured pretty prominently as Willa's friend, but of course that's not quite the same as a protagonist of color. Adrien was swoon-worthy and helped Willa out when she needed him most. Just bad boy enough to wet the palette, but nice and sweet enough that younger readers won't look for the wrong things for a guy that has the bad boy image (because there are totally guys that look/act like bad boys but are really cuddly teddy bears - right?) There was also the presence of a character that taught Willa how to steal whose name was Tre. He was one of the characters I got very iffy with because he was the stereotypical guy that came from an urban area that knew all about that kind of stuff. Even though the author tried to address that they weren't using a stereotype, it ultimately read like a stereotype anyway. That bugged me majorly. One could probably Google a fair bit of that information or learn about it from a book. When characters are used to teach things, it's really important that they don't come across as being a stereotype based on what they teach - and this was so definitely the case. The book lost points for that, as I think Tre's characterization represented a lot of those shallowness problems I had with it as time went on.

You can probably guess where I'm going with this book in terms of plotting. I have to say, I think that some aspects did work really well. I was totally into the idea of this girl becoming a modern Robin Hood. The author made the Glitterati a believable target and got the girl-on-girl bullying down to an art, which in turn made me invest in Willa's goals even though they weren't the smartest. It doesn't work quite as well as the redeemed thief/assassin trope because Willa lacks the mature self-awareness or understanding that those characters usually have, originating largely from the social stuff that incites her goal. There was also the fact that it was hard to believe that Willa's prep school lacked the funding or the reason to put in a good security system with cameras in and around the classrooms that might catch some of Willa's beginning actions of theft. Not to say it's not possible, but I think that needed more explanation and believability attached than was given. Books like this work best when dealing with a suspension of disbelief, but Pretty Crooked occasionally had me out of the story long enough to realize that some things just didn't add up. Ludwig does a good job of making the story move at a good clip, though there are those times where it gets slow. Nothing too awful, but maybe not the best use of the concept to create a constantly-engaging story.

There wasn't anything that I hated about Pretty Crooked. The tendency to stereotype or drive the story towards the less-unique plot aspects got to me more than anything, and I think the concept was just underused because of the focus on the social struggles that gets explored in a lot of YA fiction already. Willa's a protagonist that younger high school girls will identify with; her goals have good intentions and will no doubt appeal to readers looking for a story that deals with all of the high school drama and then incorporates a fun sub-story, but readers that are looking for something along the lines of Ally Carter's Heist Society series in regards to the capers, tone, and intelligence will want to look elsewhere. Pretty Crooked is good enough to make me want to read on, but not outstanding enough for me to push for others to read it over Carter's superior teen thief/spy series.

Cover: The colors are my favorite part. The model looks a little too blah for me. Her heels are a plus. The font kind of suffers from the same thing - lovely colors and idea, but the word "pretty" just doesn't mesh well with everything.

Rating: 3.0 Stars

Copy: Received from publisher/publicist for review (Thank you, Heather and Harper Collins!!)

Review: Goddess Interrupted by Aimee Carter

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 15:08:00 +0000

Title: Goddess Interrupted

Author: Aimee Carter

Publisher: Harlequin Teen

Series: The Goddess Test #2

Other Reviews for This Author: The Goddess Test

I loved the first book in this series and was terrified that this one would suck.

You've heard it all before, but we all have those books that read so well and then the sequel comes along and sullies the first book with a horrible plot or strange characters or an increase in themes that make you want to pull out your Angry Feminist Gloves (I'm looking at you, House of Night series). Goddess Interrupted was getting so many mixed reviews that I wasn't sure if it was worth exploring, but I remembered how much I loved Carter's voice, so I dove in. Readers: trust the author's voice if you're unsure, because Goddess Interrupted is a much better book that it's been credited as.

*Note* Spoilers for The Goddess Test are probably peppered throughout this. RAYOR. (Read At Your Own Risk.)

Kate is the wife of Henry, who is actually the god Hades from Greek mythology. After passing the set of tests designed to determine if she could become a part of the group of gods as his wife, Kate is ready to get to know the man - god - that she married, especially with her growing knowledge of the gods and their place in her life. Kate's mother, Diana, is actually Demeter, and her best friend, James, is Hermes. Unknowingly growing up with the gods of an ancient civilization has effected Kate's fate from first breath. Her life has been pushed towards becoming a member of the realm of the gods - passing the test has shaken her beliefs to the core, causing her to wonder exactly where she belongs.

A summer trip in Europe had Kate and James getting close before Kate's required six months with Hades came around for the first time. The curse of Persephone isn't quite such a curse when Kate looks forward to getting better acquainted with her husband, but the problems of the gods challenge whatever progress they had made during the initial Goddess Test. Hades and the rest of the gods are noticing a break in the prison that is keeping the King of the Titans alive, and the King of the Titans is pissed. Their lives; the fate of the world rely on whether or not this imprisoned King can get free, the possibility of one of the gods betraying everyone in order to assist him making things even worse.

Danger such as this does not breed a strong relationship. The trust and bond with Henry seems to have feather-fallen away from where it was. Henry seems to avoid Kate at all costs. Is it a fear of intimacy, a repulsion to the idea of sex after their first night together during the Test? As Kate starts learning the story behind Hades and his many loves, she questions him. A woman before her could still have his heart in a way that she never could. Persephone's memory has never truly left Hades, it seems. Kate may just be a replacement, and when Hades assures her that staying is entirely her decision...Kate has to decide if it's worth it to stand by her husband and his family as the world comes crashing down on them despite the way Hades is making her feel. She has to decide if what she suspects is true, or if their communication is blinding both of them from the reality of their feelings.

Since it was so long between books, I didn't go in to Goddess Interrupted with an idea of how much Kate had really changed from the start of the first book to the start of the second. The large character change was primarily her views on romantic relationships and trusting someone like Hades to be able to be worthy of taking a chance on romantically. The Goddess Test was a tumult of things as Kate learned about who she really was and what people expected her to do, befriending a few gods along the way and making enemies of a few others. Goddess Interrupted, in comparison to the first book, makes character development very important, blending the romantic struggles of a post-marriage Henry and Kate with the buildup of tension in the book's plot.

Kate has this really great character arc in Goddess Interrupted. She's not the type of girl to take her treatment without talking, and I think that's where Aimee Carter does this story right. There's a large arc that deals in part with Kate learning to accept the reality of her situation - she's married to a god with a complicated emotional history spanning centuries, and his personality does not lend well to directly communicating his thoughts and problems - as well as the fact that Henry does not treat her with the most respect or understanding during the narrative of the book. It's about balance. Kate has moments where she overreacts about simple things considering the larger situation of the gods being on the brink of war, but the reader still sympathizes with her because of Henry's lack of emotional understanding during the story. Carter doesn't make either character right. She doesn't turn Kate's tale into something that says women are stupid or prone to overreaction. Instead, Carter shows the pitfalls of an immediate love. Kate doesn't really know her husband. She's just come from a trip with a guy that loves her as well, and James has the added bonus of being someone that has gotten closer to her in a way that Henry never has. There's nothing wrong about Kate realizing that, while she doesn't love James, he treats her in a way that is more emotionally understanding and involving than Henry does throughout the book.

This is why I love the conflict of her character arc: Kate continues to love Henry because they get through this time as a couple and learn from each other. It's not about Henry being infallible. It's not about Kate being infallible. Neither of them are portrayed as stupid, or silly, or ridiculous, but simply ignorant of what the other is going through at times because of their own individual worries and focuses. Aimee Carter won me over with this book because the result of turning the last page (save for the cliffhanger ending) is one that has the reader thinking about the importance of communication in lasting relationships, especially with people that may not be ready for them when they first start out. It took something that commonly isn't explored in YA paranormal romance and tackled it - and it's a testament to Carter's abilities that it turned into an engaging story that did what it was intended to do. With a lesser author, the second book in YA PNR trilogies becomes something that is a mess of ideas and attempts at separating a couple over silly things without much context. Goddess Interrupted has context. It gives its heroine a chance to grow emotionally and gain a sense of maturity in her relationship by the end of the narrative. Kate becomes even more awesome because she's less ignorant. How can you say no to that?

To be fair, this does extend to the other players in the narrative. James has this constant desire for Kate, but he always gets friend-zoned (rightly so, being that she actually loves Henry). That doesn't really change throughout. The most interesting part of that is that James becomes a more negative character in some ways because of the ways in which he subliminally tries to influence Kate's decisions regarding Henry. Carter tries to show her readers that it's not as simple as both of the boys loving her. Henry's character arc is developed much like Kate's because of his involvement in the communication issues, and I love how Carter used this to bring in Persephone. Persephone is honestly one of the best characters - she's a character that is endearing by the end of the narrative despite the fact that she tends towards the selfish and the mean. Persephone's perspective on things is very different from Kate's and provides a great contrast, but she also has feelings for the man that she fell in love with that are truthful at the end of the day despite the way that she gets bored. Carter uses a lot of her side characters to explore the tendency of the gods to indulge in affairs and how that translates to the modern viewpoint of relationships. Thematic exploration like that works because it is something that is an integral part of the Greek mythologies, but it doesn't necessarily work in purity for a storyline like this or characters like Kate and Henry. It doesn't mean they represent the Greek gods poorly, but that a modern adaptation of their relationships and a modern girl's place in them would be conflicting.

The crazysauce going on in Kate's romantic life also has a major plot backdrop. Carter works to actually progress a growing threat with the King of the Titans, and it is a storyline that is in many ways an improvement on the one from the first book. Goddess Interrupted shows the reader several sectors of the Underworld and the past of the gods; it provides a look at the world beyond the gods and their relationships. Tension actually grows readily in the plot because it's about a threat that is obviously inevitable but unpredictable enough to cause confusion. I never felt bored with the plot because it worked in conjunction with the romance so nicely. There were times where I would have liked more advancement, or at least more direct involvement with Kate, but this book is clearly setting up the climax of the trilogy in the third and final book, so I could forgive it for wanting to save the biggest part of the plot for later. Carter characterizes her world as something that is really special and fun, something that does the Greek mythos proud without catering to every in-and-out to it. Goddess Interrupted is an improvement to everything the first book was - and considering how I enjoyed the first book, I consider that something very, very awesome.

Readers that liked the first book will either love this one or hate it. They will either see the bickering relationship and call foul or come to respect and appreciate what Carter does with her characters to make them three-dimensional beings. I loved every minute of it; I loved that Carter made me think. Her story and world-building advanced as well, and I think the way that this book peaked above the second in story quality helped reaffirm my enjoyment of the series as a whole. Romance with a strong plot behind it can be fabulous in YA, even if not everyone loves it, and Aimee Carter does some of the best YA paranormal romance. This book proves it, and I am so thrilled to find out how she wraps everything up for these characters and their relationships in the final book, The Goddess Inheritance, which is coming out soon. My only hope is that Carter will continue on this path of increasing her awesome with each book - a reader couldn't ask for more.

Cover: I love this cover in the series. Not as good as the third book, but the design carried throughout the books is beautiful, and the coy smile on the model's face gives a great nod to Kate's spunk.

Rating: 5.0 Stars

Copy: Received from publisher/publicist for review (Thank you, Natashya and Harlequin Teen!!)

Rainbow Thursday: If I Told You So by Timothy Woodward

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 22:25:00 +0000

Title: If I Told You So

Author: Timothy Woodward

Publisher: Kensington Books

Series: None

Other Reviews for This Author: None

I think, somewhere in the bookish universe, the God of Book Ideas heard my cries for an LGBTQ novel in the vein of those summer reads that are fun and flirty, meant to showcase cover models in bikinis, feet in the sand, hot guys looking on with an Instagram-like filter on everything to mimic the humidity and the haze. If I Told You So is the first LGBTQ YA book I've read that really attempts to encompass the summer romance, yet it still veers into coming-out book territory in some sections. This book is a hybrid; a hybrid that works as the story goes on and the author becomes more comfortable with his voice. When I started it, I was worried, but I think I can safely say that there is enough in this story that is different in intent from most coming-out stories to warrant recognition. Summer romance doesn't even begin to cover it.

Summer means a job and growing up. At sixteen, Sean Jackson is taking some major steps into adulthood. His girlfriend Lisa's absence at summer camp is certainly part of it, too. Lisa and Sean are far from clingy - they're the best of friends, and Sean really doesn't see dating as something much more than that. He ultimately gets a job at a local ice cream shop known for its slightly cuckoo owner and the popularity of it as a workplace for teenage girls. It may not be the ideal place for a teenage guy to make his mark as summer starts rearing its head, but it's a job that makes money and gives Sean independence, something he's been craving for a while. A job is also the only thing keeping Sean from working with his dad's landscaping job in Georgia for the summer, which is the last place Sean wants to be.

Working at the Cone does have its perks - namely, the friendship of a new NYC-transplant by the name of Becky and the eighteen year-old employee Jay. Becky is the perfect confidante for Sean to take on while Lisa is away at camp, an occasional IM session via the camp's computer her only way of contacting Sean. Becky is fiesty and has all of that NYC flare that New Hampshire lacks. Jay isn't a fiesty chick that captures Sean's friendship interests. He's a guy that exudes teenage experience that Sean lacks. He's a guy that may like Sean as something more than just a friend or fellow employee.

Complicated, much? Sean has to tread carefully if he wants to explore this part of himself. His possible relationship with Jay isn't bad enough to warrant telling Lisa about him. At least, it isn't yet. Jay's interest in Sean becomes about so much more than Sean's first thoughts of non-familial love. Feeling what he does for Jay is something that Sean never expected. He has to find a way to tell his mother, his father, Lisa, and the others around him as he becomes more aware of his true sexuality. Balancing the awkward feeling of a newly-realized sexuality, a new summer friendship, and an old one that could be broken if he keeps himself a secret for too long, Sean's summer is something more eventful than he could have ever imagined.

I have a major confession to make regarding this book: the first half had me thinking that the story was just a retread of coming-out themes, that Sean was basically a carbon copy of the protagonist in Tom Ryan's novel Way to Go, which dealt with very similar themes (boy gets a summer job, befriends an NYC-awesome-chick that befriends him and gives him support in his newly discovered sexuality) and, again, had a protagonist that was coming into his self-awareness a bit later in his teen years. (This is based on my experiences, as well as those of people that I know - by no means does this make sixteen, or any age above it, one that would not trigger a sudden awareness of sexuality). There is a basic similarity in these plotlines that had me seeing If I Told You So as a story that clearly came from a similar idea seed, which had me yawning. Coming out stories are hard sells for me anymore as a reader who wants something that is more about the post-coming out process and all of its social and personal hurdles. It takes a really strong character voice for me to become totally blind to that type of plot.

Sean's voice doesn't entirely do the job for me in that regard, but it has major strengths in its presentation. There's a lot about Sean that is very naive - how he views his relationship with girlfriend Lisa, how he views his budding relationship with Jay, and how he sees his parents. Naivete is not uncommon in teenagers, but Sean's voice is that of a teenager that really hasn't had to think about these things with a level of depth yet. If I Told You So explores the idea of Sean suddenly needing to look beyond the shallow parts of his relationships in order to better understand himself and his friends. Suddenly, Lisa isn't exactly the best dating option when Sean has to accept that he's gay. Jay seems to be amazing until he starts becoming a reason that Sean gets in trouble with his mother. Sean's mother and father go from being concerned, simple people to people that know more about Sean than he realizes. Woodward's protagonist is one that represents personal awakenings, and Sean's character arc reflects that.

Liking a protagonist is so much more than theme, though, and I really didn't like Sean for the first half because of this tendency towards the naive. It's realistic to a point - there are times when it feels overdone for a present-day teenage male, and those take away from things more than relieve them. Realism is something that I can get behind even if I don't like the character, but it's a little too close to home in some aspects for me to appreciate it. Being that clueless about relationships and my own sexual feelings was a little ridiculous for me, so Sean gave me that uncomfortable feeling that causes you to squirm in your chair like you have to pee. Bad? No. Bad for me? Yes.

But then, the second half of the book showed a character arc that really progressed. Sean starting doing things about his problems and learned. Learning led to him becoming more aware, more tolerable, and a lot less silly about confronting the personal issues in his life. Sean's character arc also became a lot less cliched. Woodward truly does turn this coming out story into something that trends towards a general, universal experience. Sean's narrative is a lot more positive and friendly in its treatment of coming out than I anticipated, which felt like a great step in coming out stories. It allowed Sean to go past his sexuality and focus on the other parts of his story that were giving him trouble, and that made him a better character. Woodward impressed me with this; he honestly went places with Sean's story that I didn't expect him to go, and that was a major plus.

That's out of the way. Moving on to the secondary characters reminds me that this book isn't entirely without faults in its construction. Some of the characters are stereotyped - mainly Jay, who is the type of character that appears in the plot and makes their real purpose known within the first two or three pages. Predictability is this book's greatest weakness, even if it is a read that is meant to have that light, airy summer feeling to it. Becky has a solid personality and makes for some enjoyable moments, and Lisa is genuinely cute and adorable when she IMs with Sean at periodic intervals. Another male secondary character comes in a few times that has potential, though he's never developed much because of Sean's intensive focus on his sexuality worries. Sean's parents, by far, are some of the best secondary characters, if just because Woodward focuses a lot of Sean's conflicts and resolutions around those he needs with his parents. They become full characters and aren't absent from the narrative, lending healthy doses of realism to the text. I appreciated how Woodward tackled Sean's mother and father, and I think more LGBTQ YA novels could do with establishing a set of parents that gives off a positive message to gay teens regardless of how they initially deal with their child's LGBTQ status.

If I Told You So is very much a debut novel in the execution of the first half of the book. Even more so than the character voice. Woodward's first person writing starts off with a prologue that happens in the center of the book to provide conflict, then backtracks to the actual beginning in chapter one. The first half of the book or so just sets things up to the point of the prologue. The first person narrative slips into moments of obvious exposition that feels like a laundry-list of things to describe in a first draft, as well as the moments that feel out of character. The first half is, to put it mildly, a story that we've all read before, thinking later that it could have been so much better if it had been worked on a little more. Color me surprised when the turnaround of the second half in theme and execution made the second half great. Not only does Woodward break away from the stereotypes (well, most of them) that pepper the first half of the plot, but he does so in a way that's fun and keeps the book light-hearted. Coming out stories are so rarely light these days. If I Told You So shows that there is a way to make them no-stress, more about the romance and the personal gain than the sad, angry, confused bits. If the first half of the book were as good as the second, I would have adored it.

Timothy Woodward has a solid debut novel with If I Told You So. The book's first half shows the newness to the publishing scene with a lot of its execution, but the second half changes everything. Sean is relative to today's teenagers when his narrative voice is on, and his various story companions foil his growing self-awareness nicely. His parents are the highlights of the supporting cast of characters, in many ways showing off the best of Woodward's intentions with the novel and its light-but-serious plot. While I may not have enjoyed every moment, the end result was something that I respected and found more than worthy of the reading journey. I look forward to seeing what direction Woodward goes in, as he has certainly showed the potential for great things.

Cover: This cover displays the summery feeling well, but I dislike the various word colors and fonts. The title one especially feels a little cheap. Nothing awful, but the design just doesn't feel clean enough.

Rating: 4.0 Stars

Copy: Received from publisher/publicist for review (Thank you, Craig and Kensington Books!)

Review: Something Strange and Deadly by Susan Dennard

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 21:35:00 +0000

Title: Something Strange and Deadly

Author: Susan Dennard

Publisher: Harper Teen

Series: Something Strange and Deadly #1

Other Reviews for This Author: None

Historical Smarties with zombies. Something Strange and Deadly is most definitely this - a confectionary candy that does little to satiate your stomach but leaves you feeling delighted after its consumption. I don't know about you, but I can't think of Smarties badly. They may not be good for you or have much to offer in the health department, but they taste pretty darn good. *cough* Anyway, Something Strange and Deadly fed a book craving in me that is equivalent to that sugar craving that causes you to run to the cabinet and grab a package of Smarties (or a Milky Way, or a Thin Mint, or an Almond Joy...you get the picture.) Susan Dennard has written something that is a fun ride in its concept and execution, though the characters and situations are common when you get past the initial sugar rush.

Philadelphia's elite have caught on to the latest parlor trend at the most inopportune of times. Zombies have become a very real problem in the cemeteries of the city, occasionally sprawling out and causing mild havoc. In a city where people have alarms for when the undead start to swarm, it seems ridiculous that the more aristocratic residents would cling to the idea of having seances. Eleanor Fitt's mother is one such person, preparing to play host to a seance at their historic family home in the hopes of keeping society in her good graces. Eleanor cannot help but be slightly appalled at her mother in her distraction, especially when she discovers that her brother has gone missing.

The Fitt family's tragedy does not end there. Coming into a period of financial hardship, Eleanor's mother amps up her vivacity for social events in the hopes that society would choose to ignore the Fitt family's financial issues, maybe even help them out. At the very least, Eleanor could be married off to a wealthy Philadelphia family heir - and, as attractive as he may be, he goes against every principle Eleanor has as a strong girl intent on making herself more than a corset and a skill at creating fake seances. Society may have nothing on the horrors of the walking dead, but Eleanor often wonders if the well-to-do of Philadelphia occasionally seem just as deadly, if not quite so literally.

As the supernatural begins to show itself more frequently, Philadelphia's gossips breathe word of a group of misfits known as the Spirit Hunters that set up their base at the Centennial Exhibition. Eleanor was already fascinated by the Exhibition, the new technologies using steam and other marvelous scientific advancements seeming like something out of a dream, but the Spirit Hunters seem like just the thing that Eleanor needs in her life. On further inspection, Eleanor connects her brother's disappearance to the undead that are plaguing Philadelphia, and the help of the Spirit Hunters - especially one dashing Hunter by the name of Daniel - may be Eleanor's best chance at finding her brother.

If you think that you've read a character like Eleanor before - you're probably right. What's a YA historical-paranormal/fantasy novel without a strong female character that *gasp* wants to go against social conventions. Don't get me wrong - there is something very important about writing a book wherein the female character denies social conventions because they are constricting and take away her rights as a person, but there is also something in writing a book in which this is a sensible and viable progression for the character because of her nature leading up to the presented story. Basically, there has to be a reason for it. You can't just write a character that's strong and then give her a major lack of agency for that strength and resistance, especially when she's been raised in a world that would probably define an independent, strong woman as something much more conservative than we would today. It's about finding a balance, and that doesn't always translate in these YA novels where history is used to some degree in order to present a character that is going through these tense social situations.

There was a shallow way in which I connected with Eleanor. Strong-female stereotypes are ones that I try to get pulled into, especially with YA, and that pull can usually be pretty successful. Eleanor's story started out in a way that had me at least mildly interested in how her character arc with it would go. There was the set-up regarding her lack of social decorum mixed with her attempts at flouting it in high society because of her scary parentals, and the more direct path of her attempt at joining up with the Spirit Hunters and using them as a way to save her brother. Girl in corset fights zombies, falls in love, and learns some startling information about her family and the world around her? It's a good formula for some very big character arcs - but that's all that it is. Dennard doesn't really branch out and make Eleanor a character that has an incredible amount of nuances or unique aspects. She's a character that will make the reader happy at the time of reading - that's about it. As interesting as the plot was, Eleanor's character development never felt complex enough for me to invest my complete interest in the parts that were more character oriented.

Secondary characterization felt the same way. Solid in the overall arc but far from perfect in the more detailed execution. Eleanor's various love interests were interesting (as this is not a book that focuses so much on a love shape, so there's really only Daniel that counts as an actual love interest.) We have the family-friend-turned-possible-fiance that likes Eleanor to some extent but does not light her fire the way the devilish rogue Daniel does. Of course, the romance ultimately focuses on that tried-and-true struggle of class, rich girl and poor boy, and it doesn't quite take to readers that look for something more, but it is satisfying enough that readers will at least be entertained by the story. Other secondary characters include the leader of the Spirit Hunters that is intelligent and a bit eccentric, and the Chinese Spirit Hunter that is silent but observant. Dennard does make attempts with her secondary characters to both amuse readers and aid the plot and development of the main characters. The story ultimately was aided by them despite the general feeling of fluff to their personalities.

What I liked best about the story was definitely the writing. Engaging and easy to read, it's a style that, while not period-perfect or stylistically unique on its own, works for this type of story. Dennard creates a plot that's very fun. Her story uses current trends to make things mindlessly entertaining - zombies and steampunk that don't address any of the moral or thematic subtleties that could be included in either story subject, but instead focus on the aspects that make the story exciting, intriguing. I liked this because it was a welcome reprieve from the serious reading I was doing at the time, but it did make some of the story feel slow-paced. The story was tied up in a manner that had me eager to read the second book, so readers may want to have the second one on hand - the best, and worst, thing about Something Strange and Deadly is that you'll be curious to see where Dennard decides to go with her story next.

Something Strange and Deadly is not the most developed story, but there's something very fun and exciting about it at the core. The world is based around trends that are becoming popular today, and Dennard's take on steampunk, zombies, and the themes introduced in historical stories with paranormal/fantasy elements are executed in a way that makes them enjoyable to read, if not in a way that's in-depth. Her characters have strong overall arcs of development but tend towards common types used in YA stories in the same vein. For a debut novel, Something Strange and Deadly is entertaining and certainly a story that's worth reading - but Dennard can improve, and hopefully the next book in the series is even better.

Cover: Okay - this cover is a person Photoshopped in a dress, but I love the creepiness of the cover. This fits the tone of the story pretty well, though it makes it seem a bit heavier in writing tone than it actually is. Bonus for the clockwork doodads in the background.

Rating: 3.5 Stars

Copy: Received from publisher/publicist for review (Thank you, Heather and Harper Collins!!)

Review: For Darkness Shows the Stars by Diana Peterfreund

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 14:00:00 +0000

Title: For Darkness Shows the Stars

Author: Diana Peterfreund

Publisher: Balzar & Bray

Series: Stars #1

Other Reviews for This Author: None

The cover was gorgeous and I was not expecting the content to be just as gorgeous, if not more so.

Diana Peterfreund has written a number of YA/NA series already (her Secret Society Girl series and the Rampant series, featuring killer unicorns, have become quite popular among bloggers) that have gotten varied levels of acclaim, but nothing has seemed to resonate with readers quite on the level of For Darkness Shows the Stars. Having only read a handful of Peterfreund's short stories (which range from meh to great), I went in this book with little expectation of style or talent. Peterfreund simply had to win me over with a Jane Austen-based dystopian story, which sounded a bit too crazy to be doable.

The truth of the matter - not only was it doable, but it was amazing.

Luddites have ruled with the stipulation that their world would no longer perform genetic experiments - that the incidents of several generations past would be avoided. Genetic experiments had seemed so prosperous until they in many ways failed, creating the Reduced, a sector of people that did not have the cognitive development of normal humans. The Reduced were very much people, yet it was clear from the start that they required the assistance of non-Reduced human beings - Luddites - to survive and function in a normal capacity.

Elliot North is a Luddite. Eighteen and living on her family's estate, she is the one left in charge of the family's finances, her father having almost no head for numbers. Elliot is in many ways the caretaker of her father and her sister, Tatiana, now that her mother is dead. Baron North was never raised to run the family estates, using his status for financially draining self-interest instead of innovation. The lack of understanding has not only caused the family to skirt into financial trouble - Baron North has made it clear that his sympathy for the Reduceds running the estate is almost nonexistent. Elliot is one of the few voices for the Reduceds, and, as the youngest daughter, does not have the power to override her father socially, though she would love to try.

Familial social struggles come to a head when an old flame of Elliot's returns. The love of her life, former servant Kai, left the estate four years ago in the hopes that Elliot would elope with him. Torn between her familial duty and her love, Elliot ultimately picked her family, setting Kai on his own journey that resulted in taking on his full name, Malakai, and captaining a ship of Post-Reductionists, a group of people who were sired by Reduceds but retained the normal mental capacity. Elliot ends up inheriting her grandfather Elliot Boatright's shipyard, wherein Malakai and his crew ask for assistance and land rental after a journey at sea. Malakai's presence reminds Elliot of their taboo courtship growing up, an unwelcome inconvenience as she steels herself with the possibility of marrying someone from the neighboring estate to stabilize the North finances. Her worries are compounded upon when a Reduced on the estate accidentally cross-pollinates plants, reminding Elliot of her own genetic experiments that have barely missed discovery.

Elliot has only seen the beginning of her problems. Can she find the strength to do what is right for her family, the Reduceds, and herself? Does that future involve marrying herself off like some toy...or reuniting with the time-hardened Malakai, who may not love her the same way anymore? For Darkness Shows the Stars is an entrancing tale based on Jane Austen's novel Persuasion, showing the struggles that come about when love, family, society, and technology clash as the world begins to change.

Catch me while I swoon all over the place, because this book has got to be one of the most romantic YA novels out there - and with as much romance as I read, that's saying a lot. Overt romance is always fun and heart-pounding on its own, but subtle romance can be just as powerful, and For Darkness Shows the Stars is a masterwork of what it means to write a subtle romance. Jane Austen would be proud, as this book is far from the usual dystopian/futuristic novel. It's far from the usual anything when it comes to the YA genre, and that is what makes it something really, really special.

There is something about Elliot that makes this story very readable. Her character is far from the usual YA heroine in the sense that her place in this futuristic society is more so that of a woman in a historical setting. There is no lack of power in her position, but there is a lack of direct power that can translate easily to strength. Many YA heroines get their power from an external/supernatural source (long-lost supernatural heritage, great powers, Chosen One status, physical superiority, etc.) Historical YA heroines often have their own power within magic, or a secret society. It's very rare that an author of YA does what most genre romance authors have been doing for years - taking a heroine and using her personality and agency as a way to manipulate her social standing without the use of a majority of external factors. Elliot's agency as a heroine starts with manipulating her social status to hide her experimentation with genetics, intelligently used to better the production of crops on the estate in order to gain more profit and help the Reduceds. Everything she does is intent on keeping the careful balance that she has between innovation and familial relations - in essence, she is trying to keep her life afloat by using her wits to take control of many aspects as she can.

Then Kai comes in and makes everything complicated. Elliot is the same strong girl, but she has to deal with her past, changing the dynamic of everything. Elliot goes from being reserved about her future (she will, after all, still have to marry for her family's best interests) to being hopeful, as well as sad and discouraged, about romance. Kai is someone from her past that never truly left; he's changed, though, and not the nicest person after Elliot rejected him. Elliot's character arc not only involves her becoming more physically manipulative of her social status - rebellious, even. The arc involves her reevaluating her priorities between family and love: is Kai someone worthy of getting back? Is the reason that she rejected Kai still withholding after four years, after they have both become older, wiser, and more hardened to the desperate world around them? Readers will be amazed at how Elliot can balance the way that she narrates the story. Though For Darkness Shows the Stars is a solidly romantic novel, the social relationships between Elliot and the other characters in the story are on equal footing with her relationship with Elliot. The romance is slow-burning, giving Elliot time to develop beyond Kai and their detailed relationship.

What is perhaps the best is that this is a rekindled romance, something very rarely seen in YA. (I was just discussing this with Julie Cross on Twitter, hence my excitement in realizing that this book fit the bill.) Rekindled romances are so rare in YA because of the sheer difficulty in writing a realistic relationship between teenage characters that has had the time to develop to the point where it could be broken up for several legitimate reasons and then ultimately be rekindled because the characters overcome their previous hang-ups (or stay together, perhaps, throughout the entire narrative.) Kai is tough - tough tough tough. He's not an asshole to the point where readers will dislike him, but he challenges the heroine because of her previous rejection and her social status. As a Post-Reductionist, Kai knows exactly what Luddites are like, and Elliot ultimately told him at their break-up that she was choosing the life of a Luddite over being with him, making it appear to Kai that Elliot's goals were related to keeping her social superiority. Their romance is very much one of overcoming class, social stigmas, and long-held grief over the direction that their relationship took four years before the story began. Kai's tough exterior erodes as he sees that Elliot is much the same person that he left in all of the right ways while still having matured into a smarter woman. At times, Kai can be infuriating with his refusal to look at Elliot's past, but the circumstances of his guarded emotions are understandable enough that readers will find his situation sympathetic despite its obstinacy.

The world comes to life through its characters that help to showcase the complex social struggles going on within the world of For Darkness Shows the Stars. There's Ro, the simple Reduced girl that becomes so much more in Elliot and Kai's eyes as her humanity and intelligence are expressed in new ways - though both characters have always cared for her as a friend, she grows into a character that is so much more than the initial characterization, and the relationship between these characters never comes across as the cliched one that so many narratives involving slave or serf-like classes do, wherein the more privileged character believes it to be their entire goal to save them despite their upbringing being a major conflict in how they go about this thought process. Tatiana is high-and-mighty about her position as a Luddite. She's the daughter that tries to please her father and stick to her status in life, yet she herself comes into varied revelations as Elliot's relationship with Kai is explored. There are also the neighbors of the adjacent estate that come into the fray with their own levels of romantic entanglement and personality. Peterfreund takes a look at every facet of her society and its characters on this small-scale story, making the historical-futuristic-dystopian elements feel very normal, very real as the characters become three dimensional and provide answers to various situations, both mental and physical.

For Darkness Shows the Stars manages to make this world feel well-built despite a lack of showy aspects. Peterfreund's society is built so well from a social standpoint that it doesn't require flashy technology with fancy names. Rather, Peterfreund uses the social politics to provide the basis for her world, taking a bite of history with a bite of something fresh (the outlawed genetic work that created the Reduceds.) This makes her world amazing - and the science behind things really does make sense, showing Peterfreund's background in research. There's something in there that clearly shows thought, a sensibility that comes out in the world's structure, its adherence to a set of rules set by society as well as by whatever governments occur. The small-scale structure of the story in terms of setting (the island and its estates are as far as it goes - there are no major cities or countries traveled to in this) allows it to flourish, giving Peterfreund the perfect opportunity to create a novel to stand on its own. Though For Darkness Shows the Stars has a companion novel coming out, it works as a standalone flawlessly. Highlights include the fantastic letters that detail Elliot and Kai's correspondence throughout their childhood. Peterfreund nails her characters voices, and those letters are prime examples of how excellent her first-person viewpoints are. I had no idea that this book was around four hundred pages. Though you never want it to end and will savor every word, it goes by far too fast.

This has to have been one of my favorite reads of 2012 (and yes, the book still comes into my mind months later.) Elliot's voice was unforgettable, her journey one of romance and duty that really grabbed me. Peterfreund's characters and writing were absolutely enthralling, and I cannot say enough just how delighted I was to find myself enjoying something that sounded too good to be true: a dystopian/futuristic novel that was something different while retelling timeless source material. You better believe that, whenever I feel the urge to read a Jane Austen novel, I'll pick up Persuasion. Diana Peterfreund has convinced me that it must Austen's best, as For Darkness Shows the Stars is in a class by itself in YA.

Cover: Gorgeous. How can you look at this and not think of sweeping romance, breathless kisses, starry nights?

Rating: 5.0 Stars

Copy: Received from publisher/publicist for review (Thank you, Heather and Harper Collins!!!)

Rainbow Thursday: Call for LGBTQ Voice 2013

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 18:50:00 +0000

Blog readers! April is slowly encroaching, and I find myself having to start planning for LGBTQ Voice 2013. This year, I really want to take those two weeks and focus on some awesome LGBTQ books, authors, and bloggers - and I do have some planned that I want to participate, but I can always use more, as authors are notoriously busy people. :)

I'm looking for authors of LGBTQ YA books (or romance, too, if they want to participate - this blog does not care so much about genre as about book appeal, and many teens read romances) that would like to write a guest post or do an interview for LGBTQ Voice. Previous examples of events include these for LGBTQ Voice 2012 and LGBTQ Voice 2011.

This year, I would also like to highlight authors that are indie or self-pub, so if you are an indie or self-pub author of LGBTQ YA fiction, please don't hesitate to contact me! My only stipulation is that the work has to have been edited. The goal is to find unknown fiction that teens will devour, fiction that will make them feel like everyone else and celebrate their varying sexualities and gender identities without being super angsty and depressing. Previous indie authors that have participated include Sarah Diemer, Patricia Lynne, and Hayden Thorne - but there are so many more out there, I just know it.

Authors with traditional publishers are also welcome to participate, too. Past traditional-publishing participants have included greats such as Nancy Garden, :) Make no mistake - this is a free-for-all event designed to get people noticing books that otherwise get swept under the rug, which happens to LGBTQ YA books regardless of their publishing status.

If you're interested in participating, please contact me at dreaminginbooks AT gmail DOT com . I am also active on Twitter at @dreamingreviews. Just give me a holler and we will work something out for the event. This is something near and dear to my heart, and I'd love to see what can be accomplished in 2013!

Review: Valkyrie Rising by Ingrid Paulson

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 22:37:00 +0000

Title: Valkyrie Rising

Author: Ingrid Paulson

Publisher: Harper Teen

Series: Valkyrie #1

Other Reviews for This Author: None

Imagine me cringing as I initially get excited about a book featuring Norse mythology (I'm looking at you, Starling) and get let down by it, only to have yet another book featuring a similar strand of mythology waiting in my to-be-read pile. Valkyrie Rising is a title that hasn't been promoted as heavily as some of the publishers others, and, as a result, I had little-to-no expectations for it as a reader. If anything, I think I just hoped that the book was better than the hot mess that was Starling. Ingrid Paulson proved that her debut novel was capable of a much more well-formed storyline while showcasing the mythology, though the story is not without its problems. Readers looking for a familiar-but-zesty paranormal storyline may want to look into this title that flew under the radar of so many bloggers and readers.

Norway is not Ellie's idea of the best vacation destination, but she has to go up over the summer to visit her grandmother, a native Nordic that has lived there forever. Ellie has to prepare for days wandering the tiny village of Skavopoll with Grandma Hilda. Fishing wharves and foreign townies; nothing could be more exciting over summer vacation. The only foreseeable bonus (other than seeing Hilda) would be that Ellie could finally live a part of her life without Graham. His looming shadow of protective popularity seemed to engulf her in the states. A summer away from the perfect older brother is just the thing that Ellie needs to come into her own.

Skavopoll, though not a thriving metropolis, does seem to have its share of quirks and eccentricities. Ellie quickly seems to befriend a blonde stud by the name of Kjell that works at the wharves. He's easy on the eyes, cute, and seems to take to her very quickly - which is a surprise, as many people in town seem wary, if not downright scared, of Grandma Hilda. Rumors of the family trait of witchery follow Ellie everywhere, even when she goes out with Kjell and his friends. Though Kjell doesn't seem to notice anything wrong with his new lady companion, everyone around him makes it clear that Ellie is not a welcome addition to their quiet little hamlet.

The rumors that surround Ellie and her grandmother are only the beginning. News of young men in the area getting kidnapped is heard at every turn, and Ellie herself witnesses a trio of powerful women coming into a local bar and seemingly seducing the people in which they come into contact with. They challenge her with their presence, exuding airs of passion, of loyalty. These women have their own label - valkyries. As Ellie learns more about her family history and the potential reasons for the appearance of the valkyries, her brother Graham and his friend, Tucker, join her and Grandma Hilda, making things much more dangerous. Both Tucker and Graham match the profiles of boys that were kidnapped. The valkyries go from being a disconnected threat to something to take very seriously. If Ellie doesn't pull herself together, she may just lose the people she loves most to a part of Norse mythology that seems way too strange to be real.

Going into books like this, it is important to remember that expectations for the story should be kept in check. Valkyrie Rising isn't the type of book that you read expecting something entirely original save for the paranormal concept being written about. Many of the book's aspects - the dust jacket, the opening pages, the style - fit into the very snug idea of YA paranormal romance/fantasy that has been so popular, and Valkyrie Rising is clearly meant to appeal to readers who enjoy reading those plotlines and tropes, just perhaps with a more interesting twist than the usual vampire/werewolf/fae grouping of creatures. Paulson had me waffling between a neutral feeling of 'meh' and the occasional eyebrow raise of promise throughout my time reading her narrative, making me believe that it would be the perfect transitional book for YA paranormal romance readers that want to start reading something different.

Readers will find something very familiar in Ellie. She has a connection to the popular crowd in school (mainly Graham and Tucker) and is liked by many, but she lacks self-confidence and a feeling of identity because her brother and his friends dwarf anything that she does to stand out. Going to Norway is her new start, much like how many YA protagonists move to a new town at the start of the novel. Summer is her time for self-invention, to realize new things about herself that could provide her with an entirely new way of looking at life. Ellie starts off as someone with inner strength and power - she just doesn't fully realize it because she lets Graham be overprotective of her. Valkyrie Rising takes Ellie on a journey where she learns to project her outer strength as a valkyrie. She learns to embrace the heritage that she so rightly deserves to learn about and uses it (and her suddenly gained supernatural powers) to show her brother, her grandmother, and Tucker that she can be heroic and amazing on her own. Ellie makes rash decisions that occasionally feel more stupid than sensible, but Paulson in many ways makes it feel like a genuinely authentic teenage thought process instead of one that is used just as a way to move the plot along with periods of action.

The set-up early on makes it seem as though Ellie will get into a love triangle, but her romantic life is a lot more straightforward than most YA novels in actuality. Kjell is a character that fades into the background as more important things loom. Ellie doesn't spend her entire time thinking about her romantic inclinations, but Paulson does set aside some awkward moments in the text in order to develop a romantic storyline for Ellie. Her romance with Tucker is bland in its idea and conception - and also extremely predictable - but they have an amazing cadence to their dialogue. Ellie's voice is best when it's in dialogue, as she is extremely snarky and humorous. The conversations between her and Tucker are always entertaining and have the best pacing of any scenes in the novel as a whole. Tucker himself is of course attractive, kind, protective, and a worthy foil to Ellie's character, leaving room for her development where Graham refused to. He allows her to grow into her own person and makes that part of the narrative feel very complete, though he doesn't stand out much on his own.

Paulson's biggest problem is pretty evident from here: none of these characters stand out. She does a fine job of giving them each some type of motivation or character arc, but the reading experience doesn't have a particular feeling of zest or uniqueness to any of them. Ellie is enjoyable to follow, her romance with Tucker a highlight with its humor, but they don't carry the book character-wise to the point where it becomes something amazing. Each of these characters has the potential to reach beyond their current characters in the future books - Graham has to deal with being less protective, Hilda with being less secretive - but in this one they really did not have development that felt entirely natural, serving more to advance the plot and stick to the general 'outline' of YA paranormal books than anything. When characters feel as though they exist merely to fill the holes, they lose the chance of feeling like actual people.

Valkyrie Rising has a standard writing style for YA paranormals. The tone has the tendency to slip into wordings that feel more adult than YA, and not in a way that makes me think the protagonist is just unusually mature for her age. It just has that stiffness, the formality about it that makes the story feel more mundane than it should. When Paulson is on, though, she is on. Her dialogue is top-notch and better than some writers that have been writing in YA for years. Her characters feel really special when they get into their conversations, and it takes a really good dialogue writer to differentiate characters that way in a debut novel. If they had kept that differentiation in the exposition, Valkyrie Rising would have been a powerhouse of a book. Paulson is honestly worth reading just to see how she writes her dialogue - it gives the reader hope that the following books in the series will up in quality because of the strong basis she has for it already.

Pacing is the other hairy issue. Valkyrie Rising is a book that drags for the first half, up until Ellie gets her supernatural powers that serve as a plot device. Post-powers, Ellie's story amps up a few notches and becomes hard to put down. The showdown with the valkyries and the gods is highly entertaining and makes the story's concept feel delivered upon to some extent, as well as setting up for future books. It doesn't make up for the slow pacing, but the book at least feels like it's worth the time to finish because of the action seen in the ending that serves as a parallel to the emotional payoff of seeing Ellie become a heroine that saves the people that she loves. Aside from that, Paulson mostly struggles with making her plot feel as though it ups the stakes periodically. Half of the book tries to hard to shroud itself in mystery despite the fact that readers already know the basic concept from the title and the blurb. While the mystery is realistic, it can still be self-aware enough to make readers feel that each chapter progresses things in a way that makes it harder and harder to put the book down.

Valkyrie Rising was a worthy book to read, but it fell short in impressing me once I was finished. Paulson's novel is too mundane and cookie-cutter to stand out in today's book market, though she has some aspects that really shine by themselves, ranging from concept to the style of dialogue. Readers looking for something extremely different and genre-breaking will find this disappointing, but those who prefer to stick to genre conventions - or who are looking to break out of them slowly - will find this book entertaining and fun. I am on board for the second book in the series with the hopes that Paulson will branch out and try to be original with her plotting and characterization, as her writing has the potential to dazzle readers if it is improved. While fun and worth it in the end, Valkyrie Rising blends in more than it shines.

Cover: Meh. I am so over this cover, even though I like the concept of Ellie being flanked by wing-like mountains.

Rating: 3.0 Stars

Copy: Received from publisher/publicist for review (Thank you, Heather and Harper Collins!)

Review: The Turning by Francine Prose

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 14:00:00 +0000

Title: The Turning

Author: Francine Prose

Publisher: Harper Teen

Series: None

Other Reviews for This Author: None

Be Warned: Spoilers in Abundance, Mating with Snark

I should have listened to The Book Smugglers. They are a trusted source of book knowledge for a reason. But we differ on popular fiction, and I tend to enjoy the books that Harper Collins puts out that are aimed at teen readers. The Turning had so much potential, being a modern retelling of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw. It could have been a gothic, a horror, a book that freaked me out beyond belief. Every reviewer hopes to read that book that others have ignored and discover a diamond in the rough - its fulfilling to bring to light something that the publishing world can recognize as quality work. I was so wrong with this one, though. So very wrong. I honestly disliked this book so much that I don't even feel like writing a summary about it.

Basically, Prose sets up the story with the notion that Jack, our protagonist, has taken on a summer job to play nanny towards two children of a wealthy individual that is a friend of his girlfriend's father. The children live on an island in a grand family mansion from a long-forgotten era, everything painted a chipped black. Jack has no real knowledge of the man who has hired him, or the children that he'll be taking care of, but the payment for going a few months without basic electronic devices and excessive human contact seems more than worth it. Plus, what else would he do with his summer, anyway?

Jack sets off on a ferry with his laptop and begins composing a letter to his girlfriend. Let's stop right there, folks, and analyze the current situation that will only appear several other times throughout this novel: Jack is writing a letter to his girlfriend on his laptop. No mention of email occurs throughout this story because, as stated on the back blurb, there is, "No WiFi, no cell service, no one on the island but a housekeeper and two peculiar children in his care." Yet Jack is able to frequently compose letters on his laptop that are later sent to his girlfriend. It is within believability for the island to have a ferry that would take people to the mainland, and that does get used in the story, but never once in this story does Jack mention the need to hand-write his letters because A) he never has WiFi, B) he doesn't have a printer, and C) he does not make any attempts to access either one once he's stuck on the island. We're left with this image of the protagonist typing out his letters and magically getting them sent to his girlfriend and father.

Yeah, right.

It only gets worse from there. The rest of the book proceeds to be several letters - a few return letters from the girlfriend and father that expressed varied levels of interest in Jack's life - until the ending. You can imagine what the plot's huge Logic Fail did for me when the entire book relied on that form of writing. When Jack finally gets to the island (after a slow backstory reveal that can be torture to read), he meets with his two young wards and their housekeeper. The house is creepy, the children speak like they are from another century. Everything that would point to very bad things. Of course Jack is creeped out, yet he goes along with it and starts befriending the children. Then ghost stories about the island and the house come about - lost lovers, bad things at least on of the children has done. Before he knows it, Jack feels surrounded by people that he cannot trust.

Specters and shadows haunt Jack until he starts believing his suspicions. Things are rarely what they seem - his girlfriend, the kids, and the house itself. Jack feels like he has to get off of the island before it's too late for him, ending the story with a trip into near-insanity as he sees things that aren't actually there and makes a huge mistake regarding his girlfriend back home.

It's all meant to be ambiguous and gothic, the slow crawl of the Am-I-Insane? ghost story leading the reader into an excitable mood. Reality makes it pretty obvious that Prose's attempts at being literary and accessible to teens are met with failure after failure. Jack's voice is shallow and cliche, slipping into a style that feels rigid and totally unrealistic in comparison to today's many YA voices - and the label of National Book Award Finalist (the author, not the book) does not make that something easy to swallow, as readers will go in for a much higher expectation in regards to the writing and style. None of the characters develop particularly well, but Jack in particular just gets annoying. He's either ignorant or being ridiculously specific and simple about his observations in ways that ruin any sense of mystery.

Gothic undertones are almost nonexistent. For a book that should be about ghosts and horror, the psychology of the mind versus the potential supernatural, The Turning just turns into a hot mess. Every plot development can be seen a mile away, and they are met with no sense or world building whatsoever. There is no lead up, no steady climb of mystery that will give the reader a chance to feel for the characters, question their motives, believe in the world. It all happens in the blink of an eye, yet the speed only makes the plot's holes and problems that much easier to see. I couldn't help but laugh at the way Jack went insane - it was instantaneous and paranoid, completely devoid of reason. There was nothing around him that would give him the idea that what he believed to be true was, save for a few very left-field assumptions that could have been dispelled quickly. Readers will not get to the end and think that it was a legitimate story of a character going mad - or ghosts pushing him to the point where others believe him to be mad. Rather, they'll think the book was a hokey attempt at scaring young readers from an author that doesn't understand how to write for them.

The Turning was just bad. I honestly have tried to block out portions of it for the simple reason that I found the book to be shallow and poorly written, poorly constructed. There's nothing here that I think will get a teen reader, much less a more critical adult reader, engaged in the storyline, and the only positive I saw was that it was short. Had the book been longer, it would have been a DNF read for me. I may try a Francine Prose book in the future, but The Turning has made it pretty clear that it will be a long time coming before I feel up to trying it. To forget the sting of the read, I think I'll try Adele Griffin's take on the same story, Tighter. At least Griffin's writing is consistent regardless of the type of story she's trying to tell.

Cover: This cover is creepy. This cover doesn't have a person's face or dead body on it. Basically, this is a really good cover that unfortunately got stuck on a book that doesn't quite live up to it.

Rating: 1.0 Stars

Copy: Received from publisher/publicist for review (Thank you, Heather and Harper Collins!)