Dreaming In Books

Rainbow Thursday: Swimming to Chicago by David-Mathew Barnes

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 23:19:00 +0000

Title: Swimming to Chicago

Author: David Mathew Barnes

Publisher: Bold Strokes Books

Series: None

There are some books that we really want to love but can't. Some books that just, for whatever reason, do not work for us as readers. Swimming to Chicago was a book that I had high hopes for. It sounded like a nice romance between two gay teenagers, and I'm always up for reading new LGBTQ fiction written for the young adult genre. However, the novel was less than I expected, and I didn't have many expectations to begin with. A convergence of many things I disliked made the reading experience less than pleasant after a while, and though it had some worthy moments with the LGBTQ characters, most of it fell short for me.

Alex's life has gone through the wringer. His relationship with his mother and father has become strained, and his mother seems more and more depressed as of late. Jillian, a girl that he has been best friends with for ages, is showing interest in him. To many guys, that would be a bright spot. In Alex's life, it's not so. Alex is gay - a discovery that he has kept under wraps for the most part, and he hasn't had the heart to tell Jillian. Jillian may be his best friend, but something so emotional brings out the evasiveness in Alex. It could also be how Alex truly came into it.

It came of an affair with Tommy, a guy that Alex works with. Tommy is a known popular guy that has gotten a steady reputation for being cool and straight. Neither of the boys seemed to fully comprehend what their relationship was when it first came into being, but Alex in particular started realizing more about himself as a result. To think that he never realized that he was gay. The secret is still too fresh; too confusing. He can't tell Jillian about it, although she is most certainly his best friend in the world. His relationship with Tommy is one that he sees as special, although Tommy doesn't treat it in the same way. Alex feels lost in the world - just like his mother.

Throughout the summer and into the school year, the lives of Alex, Jillian, and those around them change completely. Alex falls in love. Jillian falls in love. Alex loses someone dear to him. Jillian feels like someone dear to her is lost forever. The adults in Alex's life try to cope with his impending relationship - and a relationship that they are finding themselves becoming involved in as well. Swimming to Chicago is a novel that tries to encompass the way that people change others' lives, and in particular tries to show the growth of a gay teenager and how he sees the world.

There's really not a lot here to talk about with the main character that I can recommend. Alex is interesting and worthy of some praise, as he is a character that deals with a lot of difficult things throughout Swimming to Chicago. He deals with a mother with severe depression, and he deals with discovering his sexuality and how love comes into play with it. How he can be hurt and healed by his ability to love another man. Something about Alex is very relative, and in that regard he's a strong main character. The problem is that the other characters are focused on just as equally - yet no one ever feels fully developed. Alex's emotions come across as paper-thin in many spots, as do other characters. The time passage between events is so large, too, that one finds it difficult to see a character like Alex truly grow as a character. Between one month and the next, things can change drastically. Alex goes from just meeting a guy to being in love with him and dating him in the span of a few pages. It feels over-the-top, and it makes getting to the heart of his story practically impossible. Where is the reader supposed to go when they cannot even identify where Alex is going and why he is going there?

The other characters are much the same. Jillian has unique conflicts that initially have the reader rooting for her, but her actions quickly become ludicrous and unidentifiable in motivation. Jillian becomes a character that is hard to like because her transformation is simply told to the reader. The reader is just supposed to assume that a simple authorial statement makes up for a non-existent thread of character growth. The same goes for Alex's boyfriend, Robby, and the two adult POVs. Everything in this novel revolves around a writing style that doesn't lend itself well to characterization or multiple POVs. The characters feel like they go in circles, and the reader doesn't spend enough time with any of them to get a sense of who everyone is and what they mean in terms of the novel as an artistic whole.

What, to me, remains the biggest barrier with this novel is the writing as a whole. Barnes' style wasn't an initial turn-off for me. I quite liked it when it first started out. However, as Barnes continued to progress with adding in more character points-of-view and plot twists, I realized that nothing felt consistent or realistic. There was no character investment. People fell in love immediately. People acted unusually. Everything was being told to me. Nothing was being shown. I would get giant paragraphs stating exactly what I should have been able to see with the characters. Multiple points of view are also just hard to pull off in general. One needs strongly established characters that, when looked at through multiple points of view, come across as the same person - just in terms of how another character views them. Swimming to Chicago had none of that, and everyone felt the same. None of the characters makes the reader feel invested enough to continue on with the narrative. So much happens but none of it feels worthy of caring about, as the reader never sees character growth and reaction in relation to what goes on. Something happens from one or two perspectives, then another month passes. The general time skips just didn't work on the whole, and on the whole made Swimming to Chicago feel even more distant as a novel.

As much as I disliked Swimming to Chicago, it had redeeming aspects to it. Barnes does not have a bad style, but all of the technical choices he made with this book didn't fit. I would read him again based on his style working in the beginning of the novel, but only with the knowledge that he didn't have the same technical follies. Barnes also has written scripts before, and therein lies problems that I found within Swimming to Chicago. It felt like a cross between script and novel writing, but the writing felt like it was trying to make everything so clear in the reader's head - like the actual visual of seeing a play or film - that the dialogue and showing that comes from good book writing was left on the wayside. There was a good book in here. Barnes dealt with many serious topics that could have made an excellent (though angsty) LGBTQ YA novel. However, it read like a draft of many ideas that hadn't been fully written yet. Everything was too simplistic, too hippy-hoppy.

Swimming to Chicago just wasn't the book for me. I disliked the lack of full characterization, the way the novel moved around, the technical aspects of the POV switching, and the overt amount of angsty situations without probably build-up and purpose within the narrative. There were some commendable attempts within it, but ultimately nothing about it worked for me. I've read worse, but I've read many books that tackled this kind of LGBTQ angst in a much better manner, too.

Cover: I actually like this cover. It's very dynamic.

Rating: 2.0 Stars

Copy: Received from publisher/publicist for review (Thank you, Bold Strokes Books!)

Review: The Soulkeepers by G.P. Ching

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 03:14:00 +0000

Title: The Soulkeepers

Author: G.P.Ching

Publisher: Self-published

Series: The Soulkeepers #1

Other Reviews for This Author: None

Kindle freebies allowed me to discover this self-published YA novel. I downloaded a ton of them, and The Soulkeepers sounded intriguing enough to warrant a try. I loved the concept of a male protagonist being focused on for once, and the idea of being a soulkeeper sounded interesting to me. Like many self-published books I read recently, The Soulkeepers seemed to be hitting the mark until I thought more about my reading experience. For the price point, the novel is more than enjoyable, but it shares some problems that many other self-published YA novels have, and its problems cause its benefits to neutralize. The Soulkeepers will be worth the time for some readers, but it will depend on how well they can handle some of the issues the book presents.

Jacob Lau has gotten into a car accident. His mother has gone missing and no one seems able to find her, though she was with him that night. His father's been dead. Stranded at the hospital, Jacob is seemingly alone in the world. His perception of who he is shatters when a strange man visits him in the hospital and claims to be his uncle on his father's side. The idea seems preposterous. How could his father never speak of a brother? Everything seems confusing and out of place, and it only gets worse when Jacob is told that he will be going to live with his uncle until his mother returns.

It's bad enough that Jacob's mother may not be found, but having him restart his life at a new school just seems like torture. Jacob has lived most of his life on Hawaii, and his half-Chinese race has never been an issue there. In small town America, however, people seem to take a lot of issue with it. Jacob finds himself being subjected to bullying and name calling from many students at the school. Even his cousin gets in on it. The world seems to be against Jacob, and the rage that results from it is too much to bear. The only person that keeps him sane is Mailini, an Indian girl who understands what Jacob is going through and becomes a true friend to him in the process.

Jacob soon learns that there is more to this town than pain, though. The secrets of his father's life start to unearth themselves as Jacob becomes closer with his uncle. A next-door neighbor takes on Jacob as a worker of sorts after he smashes one of her picture windows in. The ensuing relationship with the world-renowned botanist becomes more than as simple tutor/student one following an incident that involves Jacob's deepest curiosities and her private greenhouse situated in the back of her property. Jacob uncovers countless secrets, and in those secrets he learns things about himself and his apparent supernatural gifts that will change his life forever.

I've not read a protagonist like Jacob Lau in YA for a while, and it was quite a change from the usual strong (or pseudo-strong) female lead characters. Jacob is strong, true, but he's also a male perspective. Ching uses third-person, so Jacob's maleness isn't as overt as it would be in first person, but the masculinity of the narrative rings surprisingly strong throughout the novel. Jacob is a boy that is struggling with everything life is handing to him. His mother is missing. His father is gone. A new side of his family that he never knew existed appeared out of nowhere just recently. On top of that, he's now living in a place that's prejudiced and so much smaller in scope. I could easily identify with some of those feelings, and Jacob's extreme aggression at times was understandable. Jacob's temper occasionally goes too far, though, and it's hard as a reader to be completely sympathetic with just how far it goes. The narrative doesn't justify it as being overboard, but it makes getting to know and like Jacob harder as things go along. Jacob also has some viewpoints that he struggles to accept that readers will find fairly accessible, such as his his distaste of religion because of his life's hardships. Jacob struggles with a lot of viewpoints and iffyness that teen readers will understand, but the narrative tends to speak them in the most blatant black-and-white terms, and it made me dislike his voice in some parts as a result. Religion in particular seemed to go from this gray-matter subject to being something to put in simplistic, dumbed-down terms. Those passages felt like they were over-simplified to attract the reader to later plot points, and Jacob's character seemed to suffer from the over-simplification. Jacob's character growth also faltered after the plot took the full focus, and the transition was not strong in shifting the focus.

Other characters felt similar to Jacob. There were times that I felt they really did well in terms of the narrative. There's the harsh reality of Jacob's relationship with his cousin, who can be flat-out awful despite the fact that Jacob is her newly discovered kin. Jacob's uncle has some surprising depth to him, and Jacob's relationship with him is arguably the most well-rounded of the relationships within The Soulkeepers. Ching writes Jacob's uncle as an understanding character that is dealing with a lot of issues regarding Jacob's place in his life - he wants Jacob to accept life and to work with him on starting it over, but he also has lingering feelings about how his brother left his life, which are feelings that ultimately change how he feels about his brother's son, Jacob. This relationship was actually one worthy of exploring in-depth, and the biggest problem regarding it was the lack of resolution with it on Jacob's part. Jacob holds almost no feelings of care towards his uncle at the end of the novel. He basically transitions from dislike to indifference, and it didn't ring true based on how much Jacob's uncle did for him when he was basically all alone in the world. Malini was a surprising addition - the book didn't read as one that would involve a romantic relationship, and I was delighted to find Malini to be a fairly strong and able character. Her romance with Jacob feels insta-love in nature - they say it about halfway through the novel, or at least Jacob does - and they mostly bond over being outcasts. Malini is a strong female, and I appreciated how she was knowledgeable and knew how to stand up for herself, especially when Jacob made her angry. However, their relationship goes stagnant after a while, and there wasn't enough romantic tension or growth in their relationship after a while to truly have me invested in it deeply.

Ching's world itself is very unique to YA in many ways. It is essentially an angel-story if it is looked at by its bare-bones concept, but in reality there is a lot of intricacy to the idea that doesn't involve the religious aspect. However, the execution is poorly done. Ching introduces a lot of elements such as location-traveling trees, exotic plant species that are beyond the beyond, and confusing mythologies about other-worlds and people that don't feel very well-crafted. The book's world building doesn't start until nearly midway through, and of it there are a lot of concepts that feel too easily accepted. Some of them also feel over-the-top and unnecessary. The biggest issue is that Ching attempts to connect all of this to religious concepts in Christianity, but it is tackled in such a way that things are far too cut and dry. One cannot simply introduce religion without either A) making it a complex part of the world building or B) making it clear that the world building from the religion doesn't mean that the religion has to be the only answer to spiritualism within the text. I'm sure for others it's different, but I am picky about how religions are handled, and most YA books dealing with angels tend to make religion more of a complex issue and focus on how Christian mythology relates to the world building - as opposed to the direct use of the religion. For instance, Malini becomes a source of specific Biblical passages and tries to get Jacob to understand them and accept Christianity as a religion. While the mythos of Christianity ties into the story, the info-dumping about it and how it directly connected to being someone a part of the religion seemed off to me. It's not just the angelic parts, but everything, and it just wasn't to my taste. This was in part due to how Jacob's struggles with it felt simplistic. Making a religious struggle simplistic and then basing the world building off of it? It doesn't ring true, and it's contradictory to how one wants to make the world seem complex and interesting to the reader.

Writing-wise, Ching has some nice stuff going on in this book. Ching has a solid voice that makes the novel enjoyable, and there were easily periods within this book where it was hard to put down. Some of the adventures are eye-catching, and Jacob does have sections where he is compelling as a protagonist for purposes beyond the plot of the novel. However, as with many self-published works published recently, there is a huge issue with pacing. The Soulkeepers has a giant trough in the middle of it that reflects that. The attempt to focus on characters without much character or plot depth in the first half made it quickly go sour. The read is obviously plot-focused, and the characterizations never got to a level deep enough to make the focus on characterization worth the effort. A lot of it became regurgitated conflicts and information, and the actual point behind soulkeepers wasn't made clear until many, many pages had been flipped. Not just that, but there wasn't a sufficient thread of subtle build-up to it. All in all, though, the mythology was made to be interesting. Ching's writing had a level of entertainment to it that allowed one to wave past the initial disappointment in how things were handled and move forward, and there were some interesting dynamics later on regarding good versus evil - they just weren't explored as much as one would like. Some of Ching's descriptions also got old, such as how Jacob's mother's eyes were always described as "almond eyes". It's a common description, but after it's said once I'd rather it not be said again - and again, stereotypical descriptions, especially in regards to racially diverse characters, feel regurgitated and old after some time. The writing in general was smooth enough, although those occasionally problematic descriptions and editing errors got the best of it in some situations. Pricing-wise, this book was still worth the time for the unique aspects, but only if you enjoy a more plot-focused read.

Initially, this review is extremely critical of how The Soulkeepers was handled. The novel in itself was entertaining, and getting it as a freebie meant that it didn't take much for me to feel satisfied with it as a piece of fiction. Jacob Lau was an interesting character, as was Malini, and I particularly enjoyed the diversity of their issues and how they were addressed in relation to living in a small town. However, the characters weren't developed as much as they could have been, and the plot was uneven, confusing, and hard to invest one's self in for some time due to the way things were simplified. The religion wasn't a huge bother until the execution felt lackluster, and on reflection I'm not sure that I'll bother picking up the second one. I may because of how I love to support diverse characters, but I would do so with reservation because of a worry that the second book will show similar issues.

Cover: This cover is nice and reflects the protagonist, but I've seen this general stock image a lot for YA books - self-published and not - and it thus feels rather non-unique.

Rating: 2.5 Stars - My initial reaction after reading was better, but after remembering it for a while I was less than happy with some of the lingering feelings.

Copy: Bought (Note - as a free download for Kindle)

Guest Post: RaeAnne Thayne on Small Town Life and Romance

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 22:53:00 +0000

Hi, everyone! Today, I have author RaeAnne Thayne posting about small town romances and small town life. She is the author of the lovely Woodrose Mountain, which I just reviewed yesterday. Give her a reader's notice and leave some comments if you feel the urge, as I really loved her piece and her book.

An imperfect (perfect!) small-town life

by RaeAnne Thayne

I have to admit, I’m a small-town girl.

Most of my childhood was spent on a small farm in Indiana where even the nearby town of about five hundred people seemed big to us! Our closest neighbors were a half-mile away and our hundred-year-old farmhouse was surrounded by cornfields in every direction (great fun to play in, even when you’re not in a Stephen King book/movie about children and corn!).

(Original image source here)

The town where I live now, in the beautiful mountains of Northern Utah, has a population of about eight thousand (up two thousand people in the twenty years we’ve lived here!) but in many ways, it still feels very much like a small town. People still wave when they drive by, I can’t go to the single grocery store in town without leaving extra time for visiting and I’ve learned if I want to exercise in town, I have to either walk before all my neighbors are awake or drive to another part of town where I don’t know everyone. It’s hard to get your heart rate up into a good workout zone when you’re stopping at every other house to chat with someone weeding a flower garden or sitting on a front porch!

We have a son with some health issues and our neighbors are the first ones at the doorstep when we need help. That’s the kind of town I hoped to create in Hope’s Crossing, the Colorado town that is the setting for my books BLACKBERRY SUMMER (June 2011), WOODROSE MOUNTAIN (April 2012) and SWEET LAUREL FALLS (October 2012). Hope’s Crossing is a place where people reach beyond their own lives and troubles to lift and strengthen each other. It’s not perfect, though. Far from it. I think sometimes when small towns are depicted in fiction, they can be these superficially sweet places, rather like Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon (which I love, by the way!): “Where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking and all the children are above average.”

My heroines are strong and my heroes, of course, are all extraordinarily good-looking :) But in Hope’s Crossing, just like in my neighborhood, people struggle and grieve. They go through divorces, they lose spouses, they endure cancer, they have children who get off-track. Through it all, they learn to lean on each other and make their own lives and the lives of those around them a little brighter.

In the second book of the series, WOODROSE MOUNTAIN (HQN, available March 27) my heroine Evie Blanchard reluctantly steps in to help a brain-injured teenager and her father. In the process, she begins to heal the scars in her own life.

What about you? What do you like about where you live? What do you enjoy about reading small-town romances? What don’t you enjoy? I would love to hear!

Thank you so much, RaeAnne. Note that I added the images, folks. Ms. Thayne is not responsible for the random picture of Ogden. Though it does look very pretty. I truly enjoyed her book and hope you all do as well.

Review: Woodrose Mountain by RaeAnne Thayne

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 22:26:00 +0000

Title: Woodrose Mountain

Author: RaeAnne Thayne

Publisher: Harlequin Books

Series: Hope's Crossing #2

Other Reviews for This Author: None

*Note* Stop by tomorrow to see a guest post from RaeAnne Thayne!

I'd heard great things about Thayne's book Blackberry Summer, which was her first foray into non-category romance with Harlequin, and when Woodrose Mountain got offered to me for review, I was interested in it enough to say yes. I've been reading a small-town romance every month or so for one reason or another, and I've come to find it an enjoyable subgenre with reservations - mainly that some authors treat it as romance, and others as women's fiction. Then there is the gigantic gap between authors who simply show the good aspects of small-town life with a level of fantasy, and others that shove it down the reader's throats as being the purest, best concept of living in today's world. Coming from a small town, I appreciate the former, but the latter is so devoid of reality (and is so entirely wrong if you have ever experienced the prejudice of a small town like I have) that it can enrage the reader. Thayne is going on my list of authors to watch, because while Woodrose Mountain straddles that women's fiction/romance threshold, she writes the small town in a way that is a romantic fantasy and a reality, and she seems grounded in a way that other small town romance writers aren't.

Occupational therapist Evie Blanchard is renowned for her abilities within physical therapy. She's seen many patients through tough times, and she has made a difference in the lives of many people. Evie has been living her dream. She has helped people and touched their lives. However, a few years that are the best - and the worst - of her life make her rethink where she is at in the world. Those years, though cherished,end in a way that emotionally devastates Evie. She can no longer risk getting close to her patients. That's why she moves to Hope's Crossing and now works at a beading store. Her life needs a change. She has no expectation of returning to her old occupation. The risk of investing herself emotionally is too great.

Evie never anticipated what would happen in Hope's Crossing. A devastating accident that kills one teenager, gives another severe brain damage, and causes the accident's instigator to become vilified throughout Hope's Crossing. Taryn Thorne has been recovering from it for a long time, and the news soon spreads that she'll be returning to Hope's Crossing after spending some time in a rehab center. Brodie Thorne, her father and a relatively wealthy and successful businessman, comes to Evie about the reality of the situation. Taryn isn't returning because she's made an astounding recovery - she's coming because she's uncooperative and isn't improving at the rehab center. Brodie could send her somewhere else, but his fifteen-year-old spitfire of a daughter simply will not work with anyone in a rehabilitation center.

The hope for Taryn's recovery is placed entirely on Evie's shoulders. Brodie knows that Evie has the skill to help his daughter. Brodie's mother Katherine works with Evie, and together the duo convinces her to take on the job. Katherine seems more reserved that Brodie to convince the former-therapist to return to her old job, but Brodie is too worried about his daughter to consider why. Evie concedes on the condition that it will only be temporary. Once things get set up, she's out of there and back to her beading. Back to safety. Back to keeping away from emotional attachments with disabled patients. Evie finds it hard to resist becoming attached to Taryn, who is feisty and spirited, and to Taryn's father. Brodie and Taryn touch her heart, and Evie's job becomes infinitely more difficult when she can't just walk away.

Readers will be touched by Evie. There's no doubt about it. Though I never read the first book in the series - and thus missed an introduction to her character - I felt immediately understanding in her emotional complexities regarding the situation. Evie's life has been very difficult, and she has had to deal with a lot of pain because of her responsibility for vulnerable people. She is a person who is almost too kind; too understanding. While it sounds like Evie is perfect, that idea is directly contradictory when one realizes just how much philanthropy she's willing to give up in order to protect herself from further heartbreak. Evie starts off as a woman that has been hurt too much to be outgoing and inspired about her chances for success. She doesn't want to risk anymore. She's content to remain where she is. Beading can't help her recover from her emotional scars, though, and Evie cannot deny the emotional blackmail that Katherine and Brodie provide for her. Watching her come out of her shell and risk emotional investment is scary but thrilling at the same time. There is a strong connection with the reader and Evie's triumphs as a therapist. The reader is infinitely delighted when Evie is, and much the same when she is depressed. Evie connects in a sense that everyone fears that risk of total emotional attachment, and her past is heart-breaking and makes her hesitation easily understandable.

Woodrose Mountain really finds its heart in its other characters. Evie provides a great window to the character that steals the show: Taryn. Specifically, Evie's interaction with Taryn. Taryn is a complex character. A fifteen-year-old girl who is hiding demons of her own, and combating physical ones on a daily basis. Thayne writes her story with an incredible amount of emotion and weight. Many of Woodrose Mountain's pages are devoted to Evie working with Taryn and providing her with the tools and the drive to move forward with her physical skills. Simple things like walking, laughing more, and being able to speak with less pauses are cause for celebration. Evie's relationship with Taryn is what makes this book so hard to put down. The reader becomes entrenched in the need to follow Taryn's recovery and her interactions with Evie. The process itself is insanely difficult and complicated, and I can't imagine someone writing it better. There are many ups and downs, and Taryn is not a perfectly behaved girl - far from it. Her father, Brodie, is the love interest in this romance, but he's not around nearly as much as his daughter is. His absence is what prevents this book from really gaining the label of a pure small-town romance. Brodie is complicated himself, and his relationship with Evie is, again, based on giving someone trust and emotional investment. That theme runs very clearly throughout the novel and the character relationships. However, Brodie just isn't around enough. His chemistry with Evie is loaded and sets the page on fire when they are together, but those moments are so few that it becomes obvious that Evie's story isn't so much about her acceptance of simply Brodie, but Brodie and Taryn. Her rekindled emotional fire allows her to realize that she loves both of them for different reasons, and it's a really touching story despite the sad lack of a strong romantic storyline within it.

My biggest concern with Woodrose Mountain is how to judge it as a reader. I was extremely happy with it. I read it in one day - and with the recent hustle and bustle of the past week, that was miracle. This is a book that refuses to be put down. However, I dislike how it's labelled as a romance, and if I had gone in with harder expectations, I would have been more disappointed because of the lack of a strong romantic thread in the novel. On the other hand, I understand why Thayne made the writing decision she did as a reader. Thayne chose to write a story that required a lot of important showing in regards to patient recovery. Woodrose Mountain comes across as a realistic story because of the focus on Taryn and how Taryn consumes Evie emotionally. It wouldn't make sense to have a story where the therapist is more concerned with the patient's father than with the patient - and it would frankly come across as untoward if that were the case. Evie does like Brodie and is attracted to him in the storyline, but she has no want to focus on that, and it makes sense. So, readers going in expecting a romance will be disappointed. This book straddles the line between women's fiction and romance, and I say this because the writing style still feels more romance-based. The emotions are more complicated and passionate - though not in the sense of an h/H relationship - and there is a lot of emotional showing that I feel doesn't fit the traditional small town women's fiction of, say, Debbie Macomber. That's an individual stylistic observation. Ultimately, I don't hold it against Woodrose Mountain because the novel handled things in a way that did the characters justice.

All of that alone should prove what a talented writer I find Thayne to be. Nothing felt like a lull in Woodrose Mountain. Everything had a purpose, and the amount of emotional connection was amazing. There was so much going on emotionally with Evie as a heroine, and what was great was that it was all shown. Thayne doesn't go on and tell the reader everything - the reader sees it all in Taryn's recovery and Evie's relationship with the Thornes. On top of that, Thayne knows how to write a small town. Hope's Crossing is picturesque and filled with people who are down-to-earth and kind. She nails the fantasy portion of living in a small town. The darker side is also shown. The character that initiated the crash that caused Taryn's brain to be damaged is hated throughout town. Small-town hate can be awful. Evie reaches out to him and shows the reader just how wrong the pure hatred is when it involves a complex and sorry human being. It may not be it every time, but Thayne didn't want to leave this kid as a one-dimensional villain. He becomes a lovely incorporation in the text that also shows that Hope's Crossing isn't perfect. It can easily drive people to dark places if its feelings are misguided. That's what made me love the setting, and Thayne's writing hit all of the right notes.

If you're looking for a pure romance, Woodrose Mountain may not be for you. If the idea of a small-town anything makes you want to crap a brick - it may not be for you. However, if you want a tale of emotional depth between a woman, her patient, and the man she's falling in love with....this book will hit the spot. Thayne respects her characters, respects her setting, and aims to show reality without losing the romantic tone to her writing style. This book has made me a fan, and I cannot wait to read more from Thayne. What's better- this is only the second book in the series, so it won't be hard to catch up.

Cover: This cover is very picturesque and shows the setting well enough, but it doesn't really stand out.

Rating: 5.0 Stars

Copy: Received from publisher/publicist for review (Thank you, Harlequin Books and Planned TV Arts!)

Review: Deadly Cool by Gemma Halliday

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 22:50:00 +0000

Title: Deadly Cool

Author: Gemma Halliday

Publisher: Harper Teen

Series: Deadly Cool #1

Other Reviews for this Author: None

Sometimes, I honestly go into these things with low expectations. I've had varied amounts of luck with Harper Teen's paperback originals. Heather Terrell's Fallen Angel was fun but had tonal issues. The Carrier of the Mark just wasn't for me. Deadly Cool got mixed reviews like those two above, and I just wasn't sure what I was going to get out of it. The general consensus seemed to show that Halliday had a humorous tone, and I was feeling up to the humor enough to give it a try. I was not disappointed. Deadly Cool may be a lighter read, but Gemma Halliday writes the teenage voice and humor with an alarming alacrity that will suck you in.

Boys can be assholes. Hartley knows this, but she firmly believes that her boyfriend Josh isn't one. At first, anyway. He's nice to her and seems to respect her wishes not to have sex right away. Hartley is a girl that needs more than lust in order to give it up, and finding a boy to respect that is hard. Very hard. Josh may very well be the one for Hartley. Rumors persist that Josh is less than sanctimonious, though, and Hartley aims to find out if it's true or not. What she discovers is more than shocking. A leftover condom in Josh's locker - a condom that she had obviously never seen before - suggests that all of the rumors are true. Josh was effing someone else.

The irony of Josh's transgression is all the worse. Rumor persisted that Josh was having the affair with Courtney Cline, a color guard member and the president of the high school Chastity Club. Hartley immediately decides to confront Josh after school, as he avoids every attempt at communication with her about the issue. Hartley and her friend Sam drive to Josh's house after school in order to get the truth. Josh's house is locked, but his car is waiting outside. Believing that he has to be in there, Hartley and Sam perform an act of cat-burglary and sneak into his room via an open window lying above a shed. Illegal? Maybe, but Hartley has more pressing matters on her mind.

She doesn't find her ex-boyfriend in his bedroom, but something much worse. Courtney Cline's dead body. A pair of iPod headphones wrapped around her neck. The clear sign of strangulation; a clear sign of murder. Josh's notorious absence from the scene puts him in as the lead suspect, but Hartley dated him long enough to know that he would never be a murder. At least, Hartley believes that Josh would never be a murderer. The evidence seems stacked against him, and Hartley's instincts are the only things keeping Josh's arrest at bay (okay, so his going-into-hiding from the police helps, too). With the help of Sam and a hot, brooding boy named Chase, Hartley becomes a sassier version of Nancy Drew in her attempts to figure out what really happened to Courtney.

Humorous protagonists are always a win for me. How is it that a protagonist that can make you chuckle wins their way into your heart so easily? I'm not sure, but it's safe to say that Hartley fits the bill. Her humor is brash and crude the way teenage humor is - and being around it and participating in it every day, I can safely say that it feels authentic. Hartley also has the benefit of being a strong heroine. She has a purpose and sticks to it like nobody's business. Yes, at times it can feel misguided and ridiculous because of the mystery-solving aspect, but Hartley makes it seem believable. She's angry and frustrated with her ex-boyfriend, but the murder itself represents a key need for closure in her relationship with him. This furthers Hartley's understandable conflicting feelings in regard to his cheating. Anyone who has had a break-up with someone like that will understand the muddled emotions and how one can easily be unknowing to what they really feel. Hartley is relative in this sense, and her emotional confusion makes sense. One would like her to just kick Josh in the balls and be done with it, but I appreciated the realism and how Halliday made it feel genuine. Hartley's strength as a character also keeps her from being pushed around, and her agency really made the story in this case. The reader is easily invested in Hartley's mystery-solving plotline because they want to see her come out on top with her determination and skills.

As to the other characters, readers will find a suitable cast of people that remains interesting. Hartley's boys are both interesting, and Halliday managed to incorporate both of them while making it clear that it wasn't a love-triangle situation. Josh brings out many confusing feelings in Hartley. He is pitiable in some ways because of his situation. Yet the reader never forgets his cheating transgression, and Halliday manages to make him sympathetic while retaining a level of distance. The reader never finds him attractive, and that keeps his true placement in the plot firmly in tact. Chase, by contrast, is basically Halliday writing to the audience. Chase is brooding and reads classic books, yet he is also sweet and the editor of the school newspaper. But he's also ripped and wears black. I say this because Chase is basically caught up in Hartley's plans, and the reader doesn't see his character as fully as they could. We get a sense of his intelligence, impertinence, and all-around awesomeness, but his perfection was really all we got to see. I did enjoy that his relationship with Hartley started out as something argumentative, though. It happens a lot in romance, but not so much in YA. I liked that they kind of despised each other for a good portion of the book, and the chemistry in their arguments was quite hot.

What astounded me about these characters and other sub-characters like Sam was how realistic they felt. Yes, they tended towards the two-dimensional end because of the mystery focus, but they had realistic voices. Halliday knows how to play up on the various tropes and stereotypes of high-school, though it's amusing in how they can seemingly be reversed. In Halliday's high school setting, the color guard girls are the saints and the cheerleaders aren't so, but in high schools like mine, the reputations are either less defined or reversed completely. She makes it funny, though, and I found it amusing that Halliday knew the workings of teenagers so well. Everything read like a realistic look into the high school of today. At times it shows itself as being a very difficult place for a portrayal of sexuality - every high school is like that, and it's awful - but for the most part I liked how she tackled it. Hartley in particular isn't against sex, but she is very healthy in her want to have it in a healthy relationship. She didn't come across as prudish or overzealous about it, and that worked in favor of the novel. The dialogue in particular flowed with a sharp level of understanding, though I have heard some people comment on the use of "dude" between some of the characters. I did notice it, but it didn't get on my nerves. I found it to be overused in that regard - I don't know of any girls that say "dude" between each other - but I still hear it said today.

The plot of Deadly Cool is pretty self-explanatory. Deadly Cool is a classic genre mystery for the YA set, and in that regard I found it interesting, too. I read mysteries very rarely, and when I do they are usually something light ala Lillian Jackson Braun. The fact of the matter is that I'm very bad with mysteries. I second guess everything to the point where I can never actually see what's coming. My judgement of this mystery is pretty much the same, although in this case I actually did see the solution coming. Halliday does a fair job of leading the reader around for the first half of the novel, but as the threads start to come together it's not too hard to guess as to who the murderer really is. The pieces don't take long to add up, and Deadly Cool doesn't have a plethora of side characters to make the situation confusing - and the ones that are around can be written off fairly easily based on motivation, closeness, and the like. Halliday still makes the mystery suspenseful, though, and I felt like it developed well enough to be entertaining. It surprisingly worked well with the romance, and for the most part I found the ideas pretty ingenious. Although using Myspace as a way for Josh and Hartley to communicate while avoiding the police? The reasoning behind it was funny, but I questioned if it was true or not, as adults tend to be behind the times on social media. If the police force is fairly ignorant as to what's going on, I would assume that would be one of the social media outlets they would check. It was a minor issue, though, and belief was easily suspended for the story.

The ending of Deadly Cool was the only downside I found within the novel that really bugged me. Hartley does in fact make a stupid decision at the end of the novel that results in someone else saving her life, and I thought her strengths as a character would have allowed her to at least succeed on her own...or be smarter. The resulting effect of her actions involved romantic growth, but at that point I mainly felt disappointed that this strong heroine couldn't save the day on her own. Hartley's intelligence managed to get her far enough in the mystery, and like any good sleuth we want her to be the one to save the day should the process get scary. That was the most disappointing portion of the book for me, but it didn't ruin the reading experience by any means. I just hope it doesn't become a pattern, in which case I will find more serious issue with it. Strong characters like Hartley need to stay strong. The other niggle was that Halliday pretty much purposefully took the swearing out of her book - probably at the bequest of the publisher, but still. It's pretty obvious that Halliday is writing a realistic group of teenagers, and when they constantly say "eff" instead of the actual f-word, it comes across as an excuse purely fabricated to avoid that hardcore word. I was humorous for the most part, but at times it took away from the intensity of the story and felt like an unrealistic point of verbal awareness when the word probably would have slipped out - pledge to stop swearing or not.

Readers will have mixed reactions to Deadly Cool. This book is very much a fluffy read that is focused on giving the reader a good time. I laughed - quite loudly, I might add - at many of the scenes and comments in this book. It's hilarious. Think an American Georgia Nicholson crossed with Nancy Drew. The publisher compares it to the show Veronica Mars, which I have not watched, but from what I gather the comparison is not entirely mislead. This book features a strong female protagonist, a surprising subtheme of sex in teenage relationships, and a light mystery plot that will keep you reading until the very end. I found this book very hard to put down, and the problems that came to light after finishing it were mild and didn't diminish any of the fun I had while reading it. I very much look forward to reading more of Halliday's work - both adult and young adult - and hope that she continues this theme of a realistic and snarky teen voice. It's much too fun to let go.

Cover: The creepy teen girl's face I could do without. The eyes are striking but very unnatural. The point, naturally, but not really my thing. I love how the dead look and the headphones tie into the plot, though, and in that regard the cover actually makes sense.

Rating: 4.0 Stars

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

Review: Irises by Francisco X. Stork

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 22:37:00 +0000

Title: Irises

Author: Francisco X. Stork

Publisher: Scholastic Press

Series: None

Other Reviews for This Author: None

I've heard countless things about Stork's books since his debut novel, Marcello in the Real World, was released to critical acclaim in the YA community. He's since published two novels - The Last Summer of the Death Warriors and Irises. Strangely enough, though I love "literary" YA and aim to read more of it, Stork has never struck me as someone to immediately pick up as an author. Irises came as an unexpected surprise in my mailbox, and though the experience started rocky, I can safely say that Stork's reputation as a quality writer of contemporary YA proceeds him.

There is nothing more important than family and God. These are the beliefs that Kate and Mary have known since they were very, very young. Their father, a reverend at a local church, has raised them alone for years. Their mother had become a victim of a driving accident that resulted in her present vegetative state. Medically, they know that there is no hope of their mother returning, but the girls have lived with the slim hope that their mother would be returned to them. Their father loves them, but his strict ways have lacked any kind of gentility and passion that their mother provided them with.

He dies without any fanfare, and the girls find themselves alone in the world. An aunt of theirs drives up from San Francisco to help them settle into things, but Kate, having recently turned 18, is technically an adult and able to take care of Mary and her mother. The death of their father hasn't devastated them directly so much as it has indirectly. The small things that now seem so large. Where will they live? How long will they be able to live in a house designated to the church's reverend, considering that a new one will have to be hired soon? How will they pay for it all - especially considering their mother's medical expenses?

Kate has to become an adult in more ways than one now that things are up to her. She has to determine where she's going to college - if she's going to college - and the choice between a local school and Stanford is beyond difficult. The chance of getting into Stanford with a full-ride is one and a million, but the dream of going there was always something of a secret that Kate had with her mother. Is it worth vocalizing? Is it worth the heartache? Mary has to come to terms with things of her own - the death of her father, the absence of her mother's conscious, and the way that her paintings, though beautiful, have never given her light since her mother's accident. These two sisters must prepare to make some of the most difficult decisions and realizations of their lives, and they will inevitably come out of those decisions with scars.

In a novel of dual-narrations, it is very difficult for an author to candidly portray two separate characters. It is even more so when one or (in this case) both of the characters are of an opposite gender that the author wouldn't initially connect with. Stork starts off on rocky footing with his dual narration, but manages to ease out the characters in such a fashion that they become endearing and believable to the reader's perception. Kate is the eldest of the two girls, and she is the first character that we see into the head of. Of the two girls, Kate is supposed to be the one dealing with the brunt of the emotional heaviness that surrounds the family. Her story is less about her pure grief and more about how the world around her is difficult because of the sudden thrust into adulthood. This status as a sudden-adult makes her voice easier to get into, as Stork writes the girls with a very formal set of emotions and dialogue that gets back to their upbringing. On some levels, this works for Kate more than Mary because of her age and the position she plays in the story. The voice is still initially off-putting, and in some cases Stork misses the voice of a teenager completely in his attempt to portray Kate, but the reader can feel more of a sympathy towards her narrative voice because of the events. Kate's growth is substantial, though, and her relationships with Simon (a boyfriend that is more of a friend than anything) and Andy (a fresh-out-of-school reverend that has worked with her father) are complex and very realistic. Kate ended up being the sister I preferred, as she was genuinely dynamic in the storyline and had a lot of emotional issues addressed within the novel.

Mary, on the other hand, did not work for me as much in the narrative sense. Her voice is similar to Kate's, and while I could get around that, she's also younger and more inclined to speak in different ways. The differences between them were nice and subtle, but at times they got lost in the flurry of the narrative. Mary is also less developed than Kate, and her viewpoint is more focused (and not necessarily on good topics). Mary's concerns are more inclined towards her denial of her mother's vegetative state. Her main issues with Kate and with other things revolve around this complex need for her mother, and the lack of passion she has for painting and other things makes the first half of the novel difficult to get around. Towards the second half, Mary's story really expands to include observations she has on a boy named Marcos, who is himself a troubled artist. Mary's relationship with Marcos is very interesting, but he didn't feel like a stressed presence in the book. More so an afterthought with potential. What grated on me was how Mary's denial was so extreme until the end of the book. She had no issue with thinking that her sister shouldn't take a full-ride from Stanford. Stanford is an extremely difficult college to get into, and a full ride to it? Well, I think anyone would at least consider that it is an opportunity that is hard to pass up. Mary on the whole just didn't grapple with the issues of selfishness that Kate did, and I think that missed out on making some of the overall themes of the novel as strong as they could have been.

Writing-wise, I think Stork has a lot going on that's well done. I can see why people have set him up for critical acclaim. His writing is verbose but each word is weighted, and he knows how to write characters, locations, and situations that feel unique. I love his incorporation of the novel's setting and the numerous PoC characters involved. That type of diversity is always welcome, and one can tell that Stork knows what he is writing about in those regards. The secondary characters all had their own flair, too, and I believe that worked to the novel's advantage. We see the simplicity of the small town via Simon and his satisfied ways, and we also see the relentlessness of the city in Andy's ambition. Stork knows how to make his characters represent something. Marcos in particular is a character one would want to see more of, as his placement in a local gang and the ensuing dialogues between him and Mary because of that are fabulous. Really, in some ways Stork missed out on developing his character to a satisfying height, as he could have gone far within the novel.

The flow of Irises was another matter that didn't sit well with me. The beginning was rocky because of the difficulty in fully believing the voices of the characters. Stork refined them as time went on, and their dialogue felt more realistic as Stork showed them beyond their internal thoughts. Excuses, however, seemed to pervade the text amid the showing for the character's dialogue, and despite the background, the dialogue on the whole retained a level of stiffness that seemed too adult for where they were as characters - especially Mary, who didn't have to grow up as quickly as Kate did. Teenagers would still have an underlying tone to their dialogue, and I didn't feel that tone in either character, and that ultimately made it harder for me to be emotionally invested in the novel. It also takes Stork a while to work up to the actual conflicts of the novel, and though I appreciated the character set-up, at times the pacing just didn't work. Stork's tone saved the pacing, though, and the writing flowed and felt very unique. Stork has a strong voice, and voice can make up for a novel's technical misgivings for a reader. In this case, Stork's voice (combined with the interesting premise) allowed the novel to shine in ways that the pacing would have normally prevented.

What struck me most about Irises was the way Stork established running themes throughout the novel. Some of Stork's threads did not pull together - as stated above - but a few of them wove themselves into the novel's very core. Kate's conflicts with her parental figures, for example, and the debate between what is truly defined as selfish. Kate as a whole has the opportunity to let readers think, but the themes she inspires do so even more. I loved that Stork tackled selfishness with her, and the true meaning of what it means to be selfish versus making a difficult decision that's better in the long run. It's something that people often tackle in real life but rarely understand to the fullest extent - and Stork is not afraid to pose the idea that doing something for one's self isn't necessarily a negative activity, such as Kate's goal of going to Stanford. I also loved that Stork tackled the contrast between Simon and Andy. Andy is lust-worthy, but neither of the characters represent a traditional romance like we see in YA. It's more about what they add to the plot and theme of the story, and both characters are likable and unique in and of themselves. One feels sympathy for Simon, yet at the same time they are glad that Kate is realistic about him - and the same goes for Andy. They also have the representation of theme with Kate's choices in life, and it's so intriguing how Stork manages to have Kate reflect on herself because of her relationships between these two guys, and how Stork shows that both relationships are helpful to Kate and her character growth.

Having reflected on Irises, I'm not really sure how I rate it as a novel. As novelist, I'd rate Stork highly. His novel shows solid technical skills, unique writing, and a strong usage of theme. Irises also has the benefit of sharing an unusual story with the reader that is filled with character diversity and beyond-the-norm heroines. Ultimately, though, Irises creates a barrier with the reader because of the way that Kate and Mary's voices come into play, and Mary in particular remains a character that doesn't feel explored enough on multiple levels. Irises is a solid novel that I enjoyed, but spending so much time with a view that felt underdeveloped kept me from truly finding the story worthwhile.

Cover: I adore this cover. It's emotional, telling, and gorgeous. The way the irises are integrated into the chapter beginnings is also gorgeous.

Rating: 3.5 Stars

Copy: Received from publisher/publicist for review (Thanks, Scholastic Press!)

Review and Giveaway: Dating the Undead by Gena Showalter and Jill Monroe

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 22:13:00 +0000

Title: Dating the Undead

Authors: Gena Showalter and Jill Monroe

Publisher: Harlequin Books

Series: Shares some information with Showalter's Lords of the Underworld series

Other Reviews for These Authors: Intertwined; Unraveled

Have you ever wondered if your Immortal relationship with last? What about the Dorito and video game addiction of your Zombie's? What about which type of Immortal man you'd fall for - a fiery, passionate Dragon shifter, or how about the loyal Werewolf? Dating the Undead promises it all. Parodying the many women's magazines on market today, Dating the Undead is a semi-serious, semi-ludicrous attempt at putting all of that dating advice into terms that a paranormal romance reader can identify with. Who wants to bother with mortal men anyway? All of the good ones become Immortal.

Dating the Undead isn't a traditional book, and as I don't know how to review a magazine, I'm going to try my best to spell out why this was so fun for me, and why you should (or shouldn't) spend money and/or time on reading it.

I'm not a big magazine reader. Some people love magazines, but I'm not one to sit down and read through magazine articles about style tips. They're fun, yes, but there isn't a widely available one for gay men that I have access to, so I generally keep to myself. Dating the Undead is more my style. As a paranormal romance reader, I'm all for figuring out what kind of Immortal man I'd want to date, as well as what to do once I'm in a relationship with an Immortal. I've read so much paranormal romance that this kind of thing is actually something that crosses my mind - and as an aspiring writer, the idea of how the tropes would make sense in a relationship is fascinating. Dating the Undead puts them into a nicely modern context.

The mythology within Dating the Undead obviously doesn't apply to every paranormal romance story on the market, but the general ideas it presents are the same. Some of them are obviously homages to specific paranormal romance series, such as a wine ad that mentions the Carpathian mountains (which is where Christine Feehan's Carpathian series takes place in). There are also a lot of pop culture mentions and jabs, including which celebrities may or may not be Immortal. The addition of pop culture is really what makes Dating the Undead so fun. The adverts mock everything from Calvin Klein to Travelocity, and what's funny is that the products would actually make sense to some degree if our culture did in fact have Immortals in it. It adds something extra to the humor, and they provide a lot of great chuckles as you read.

Subject-wise, the dating advice material in the faux-magazine is by far the best source of reading entertainment in it. There's so much involved in Immortal dating, and the room for humor was used to its fullest effect by Monroe and Showalter. Did you ever wonder if a demon's horn size effected the size of other things? Well, you'll find out (and the news is good...or not, depending on what type of horns your demon has). I have to admit that I actually laughed out loud at a lot of those articles in particular. Everything is written like a serious magazine article, so some of the facts and advice thrown out just makes the laughter burst out of you. If I had one content complaint, it would be that a few of the later articles involving food, cocktails, and vacationing weren't to my liking. I believe the food recipes and cocktail recipes can actually be made, but I didn't have the resources (or the legality in the alcohol's case) to test that theory. They still match the parody well, but it's not exactly the highlight of the read.

How could I complete this review without talking about the way Showalter's series was incorporated into the magazine? Frankly, it was awesome. This is shallow and biased, but the pictures of the Lords of the Underworld alone (okay, so the ones for the various species of Immortal were great, too) made my day. These boys are hot. They are all appropriate, too, but shirtless is more than enough to warrant a second - and third - look at the models chosen. The bios for each of the characters were fun as well, and they got me interested in reading the series. The magazine also comes with excerpts of the first Lords of the Underworld novel and the latest Lords of the Underworld novel. I only read the former because the latter risked spoilers, but it was sufficient enough to get me to want to read the full book, especially as I enjoyed the prequel novella, The Darkest Fire. Readers will find that little supplementary stuff a nice break from the magazine-like content, although reading it in traditional magazine format can be odd at times.

Other things like quizzes and Q&A's make the reading experience fun, too. The overall effect of Dating the Undead is one of pure enjoyment. This is the kind of thing that you buy for yourself or a good friend. You enjoy it while having a spa day. It's indulgence at its best, and what's great is that you can laugh as well as read the type of articles you enjoy while pampering yourself. Considering that Valentine's Day is upon us, it would be a great gift for it, too. I'm going to share it with a friend or two who is also single, as the humor in it is perfect for a paranormal romance reader. They will laugh and be reminded about why they escape into paranormal novels. The hot men. I personally find it more than worth it, myself. The images in this magazine alone will make you swoon, and it will give you a healthy reminder that reading paranormal romance is an enjoyable diversion from mortal romance.

Cover: What can I say? I like it. He's shirtless and in a sexy pose, and it looks very much like a magazine. I love the whole design of the book, really.

Rating: I'm forgoing an official rating, but consider it an endorsement to buy it as a great gift book for yourself or a friend.

Copy: Received from publicist/publisher for review (Thanks, Eric from Planned TV Arts and Harlequin!)

Now for the Giveaway!

Win (1) Copy of Dating the Undead by Gena Showalter and Jill Monroe

Contest ends February 21st, 2012.

Thank you for entering, and I hope you all enjoy this book as much as I did. And happy Valentine's Day, even if you (like me) are jaded romantically.

Review: The Queen of Kentucky by Alecia Whitaker

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 22:23:00 +0000

Title: The Queen of Kentucky

Author: Alecia Whitaker

Publisher: Poppy

Series: N/A

Other Reviews for This Author: None

I think girl-moving-to-high-school-with-social-problems-and-tween-appeal should be a sub-genre. Except it's an extremely long name for a subgenre. I hesitate to call it middle grade or tween, though, because books in this genre often deal with problems that specifically target older teenagers. Regardless, Poppy specifically is a publisher imprint that appeals to this particular type of young-adult book. Jen Calonita's Secrets of My Hollywood Life series and Joanna Philbin's The Daughters series come to mind. The Queen of Kentucky is of the same nature, but puts a country twist on things. Instead of celebrity and fame clashing with high school...it's farming in Kentucky. While initially off-putting, The Queen of Kentucky is a cute addition to books in this genre that brings a more realistic spin to this type of read.

Country-girl Ricki Jo Winstead has always been a hardworking girl. She's had a long-standing friendship with her neighbor, Luke, who lives on a tobacco farm. Ricki Jo is a classic country girl. She loves rolling in the hay, getting dirty, palling around with Luke, and having fun. Ricki Jo has never felt self-conscious about who she is before. Her friendship with Luke has easily been the best she's ever had, and she's never felt like an outcast with him. Ricki Jo and Luke are starting high school, though, and high school is completely uncharted territory. Ricki Jo has the chance to make a transformation. She doesn't have to be the plain country girl who has to read her Bible every night. She could be someone new.

She could become Ericka. She could become a popular girl. A cheerleader. She's been stuck in a fishbowl of a school until now; Catholic school just isn't like public school. The transition promises to make Ricki Jo's - or rather, Ericka's - transformation a very real possibility. However, she doesn't know many people. A new girl by the name of Mackenzie becomes a fast friend to Ericka, and she soon realizes that it could very well be possible to get in with the popular crowd. Mackenzie is just who Ericka wants to be - the spunky and well-liked new girl who manages to ease herself into the crowd of well-known people with ease. Everything seems to go well. Ricki Jo is slowly becoming Ericka, and the farm girl is melting away into the peppy JV cheerleader.

Ericka soon comes to realize that becoming a new person is harder than it seems to be. Her friendship with Luke is on the rocks as she tries to smother bits of her old self. Bits that Luke knows is a part of Ricki Jo, the girl that he's been friends with for ages. Luke's father also has drunken episodes that increasingly get worse, and Ericka isn't there for her friend like she used to be. She also comes to realize that the popularity game isn't so easy - much like cheerleading. As Ericka becomes more and more ensnared in the idea of popularity, she realizes that leaving her old self behind has consequences. Even the romance department gives Ericka trouble. She has an incredible crush on David Wolfenbaker, aka "Wolf", but all he seems to do is tease her. And what about Luke? Is he really like a brother to her, or is Ericka's closeness to him something more?

The first half of The Queen of Kentucky had me questioning my reading choices. Ricki Jo, or "Ericka", is a protagonist that is really hard for the older reader to get behind initially. A younger reader would find her relative, but even as an older teen reader I've read that song and dance before. Without any celebrity issues in the mix, the book was very much focused on Ricki Jo's transition into Erick and how high school was a social challenge for her. As a result, she starts off as a character that's hard to like. She's easily caught up in the popularity machine, and she doesn't stop to think about a lot of her impulsive decisions because of how young she is and how little she knows about traditional upper-school social constructions. She's also very selfish in her actions, and a lot of them in the beginning hurt other characters that the reader very much likes. It's all character behavior that's real, but it's hard for an older reader to get behind supporting a character that acts like that for over half of the novel. The halfway point, however, became a game-changer for the novel. Ericka becomes more aware of how life is complicated, and she changes from a selfish character an endearing one. Some things fall apart around her, and she realizes that it's bound to happen because of her selfish tendencies. It becomes a surprisingly sweet tale of a girl who realizes who she is and who she isn't. Younger teenagers and older middle-schoolers will appreciate Ricki Jo more so throughout the novel, and I have to admit that her character transformation - the intended and the unintended - was well-executed and managed to make her a character worth following.

The secondary characters will endear themselves more readily to the reader, and for the most part they are well-written and engaging. Luke is the easy favorite, as he is intelligent and kind while still dealing with some dark things. The reader sees his pride and self-preservation, but also his awkwardness as he tries to navigate who his best friend has become with their transition to high school. He's also a very attractive country-boy character, and readers will easily root for him and Ericka to become a couple. (Because he's obviously the best one, but that's just me.) Mackenzie, as well as the rest of the girls Ericka becomes friends with, is a character that will at one point delight and another anger. The girls are very high school in that respect. High school girl dynamics are strange and work at those frustrating levels, so readers will naturally come to understand and sympathize with how Ericka reacts to them. Mackenzie becomes steadily more and more genuine throughout the book, but the reader also sees how the other girls can be shallow and less-than-stellar friends. What's interesting is that Whitaker doesn't intend on making them flat-out antagonistic, and I think that helps the realism of the book stay true to form. Wolf was probably the most frustrating character for me, and that's just because I could never get a handle on him. He's very hot-and-cold in how he acts towards Ericka and the other characters, and at times I felt he sent a little too many mixed-messages to get an idea of who he was as a person, and it didn't help that Ericka's viewpoint with him was already biased. Other minor characters get some fairly nice characterization, but overall the only real stress is on Ericka and the kids her age.

Whitaker's writing is, at the heart of the novel, really easy to read. She has such a unique voice for Ericka, and it feels very genuine to the experience that Whitaker is portraying in the novel. It's down-to-earth and normalized to the way of life in that area of the country. She mentions things like reading the Bible and doing chores in a way that is simple but suggests first-hand experience. It also doesn't seem overdone, which tends to happen if the author overstresses what they want the character's voice to project. I also appreciated that the religious upbringing was subtle and didn't make it uncomfortable for someone who isn't religious to read the novel. Whitaker on the whole really gets how to deal with her characters and their issues, and she addresses a lot of very important topics in The Queen of Kentucky, ranging from parental drinking problems to simple popularity and social issues that occur in a teenager's life. Where Whitaker loses things is in the tailoring of it all. As fun as The Queen of Kentucky is, sometimes the plot threads feel inconsistent. One would see a lot of one social issue before occasionally returning to another one, and it didn't feel like the threads were running consistently throughout the book. I would have liked to see more of Luke's family situation, for instance. There's a lot addressed and not all of it feels consistent with the feel of the story. In some ways, I would have liked to see it addressed later on, or at least in a deeper manner. Whitaker does weave an enticing story despite it all, and the only other complaint is that some sections of the book simply drag because of what's being addressed and because of Ericka's attitude.

The Queen of Kentucky is a pleasant romp into a teen girl's journey into high school. The main character will be hard for older readers to connect to at first, but there's a certain charm about Erick and the side characters that keeps the story interesting. Whitaker deals with some heavy themes, and though they don't always come across as fully-developed, she retains a nice theme of realism and quirk to the book. This is a great read for fans of similar books, and I look forward to seeing where Whitaker goes from here as a novelist.

Cover: It's cute, but it honestly doesn't do much for me. I do enjoy the yellow, though.

Rating: 4.0 Stars

Copy: Received from publisher for review (Thank you, Faye and Little, Brown!!)

Review: Spellbound by Cara Lynn Shultz

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 21:56:00 +0000

Title: Spellbound

Author: Cara Lynn Shultz

Publisher: Harlequin Teen

Series: Spellbound #1

Other Reviews for This Author: None

There are some books that you read purely for fun. The type of books that hit all of your reader hot-spots and are executed in a way that makes them enjoyable, even if you've read them many times before. Spellbound was that type of book. It had shades of Warped by Maurissa Guibord (a debut last year that was underrated in my opinion) with its foray into some fairy-tale like flashbacks set in another time period, and on the whole it was structured very much like one of those tales of old. Spellbound is a young adult novel that uses current genre conventions in ways that will appeal to readers who enjoy paranormal young-adult books, but it will surprise in how fresh the enjoyable aspects feel.

Being orphaned is generally not a favorable outcome for one's life, and in Emma's case it leads to a host of unexpected moves and changes that accompany her grief. Emma has to be uprooted to live with one of her aunts in New York City, leaving behind the life of small towns and public schools. She's been there before, as two of her aunts have lived there since she was a child, but she's never been there as a resident. A teenager accompanied by her grief on a move to the big city? It scares the heck out of Emma. She feels comfortable living with her aunt Christine (technically great-aunt Christine), but starting a posh new boarding school while knowing next-to no one doesn't seem too appealing.

Emma clings to her cousin Ashley. Going to the same school as someone she's known all her life makes things easier. Emma is ready to swallow her fear and to get on with things, but she quickly comes to discover that boarding schools are much like public schools. The student body seems to have an unseemly amount of money at their disposal, but the classic high school stereotypes remain tried and true. The mean girl who seems to have a general vendetta against those that she can't boss around. The popular hot guy that everyone seems to love, but who is actually quite sleezy. It isn't long before Emma starts to realize that dealing with high school as a new girl can have stressful side-effects.

Underneath it all, Emma manages to meet a few people that make it worthwhile, including two guys that she can't help but be interested in Cisco, a mildly flamboyant guy she meets after confronting the mean girl, who manages to become one of her best friends, and Brendan, a very attractive loner who seems to have every girl at school lusting after him. Brendan intrigues Emma beyond reason, and as she gradually introduces herself to the social scene, he appears more and more. The connection between them is more than this intrigue. Emma has dreams that seem to involve her and someone like Brendan. Brendan randomly starts ignoring her as the dreams begin to progress, and it isn't long before Emma realizes that there's more to their connection than a crush.

Spellbound was quite a surprise for me, and despite the fact that it was blatantly suggested to me, I was iffy on whether or not it would rise above the genre conventions and utilize them in effective ways. Emma was a great way to break that idea for me. She is a heroine that easily connects, as she is likable and sympathetic without becoming enamored with the darkness of her past. There's something familiar about her actions throughout the book. One wouldn't be surprised to discover that popularity problems and boy-liking problems crop up in a lot of YA books, and in that regard Emma seems like a protagonist that we've all read before. She deals with things differently, though, and that is where she gets appreciated as a unique protagonist in the YA field. Emma stands up to the sleezy guy that tries to come on to her in a scene that is really, really brave and beyond what one would anticipate. She does get assistance during the scene, but Emma herself is bold and it works. She also does more than simply take crap from the mean girl. Seeing a main character have such a strong sense of courage in real life is hard because of how authors often want to relate them to the people who don't feel able to fight back, but in Emma we see a character who shows the reader that fighting back is worth it. She's much the same way with Brendan, and what's interesting is that she manages to make her sudden attraction to him conflicted and worthy of exploration. Emma is a character type that we're seeing more of in YA, and readers will enjoy how proactive she is in relation to her social problems.

The other characters were surprisingly enjoyable. Brendan is very much the perfect-boyfriend figure, and it went along with the fairy-tale feeling of the story. Because of that general theme, I felt like his perfection was more tolerable within the narrative. He's the kind of character you want and need to imagine sometimes, because you just aren't ready to be reading about a difficult hero at that moment. Some readers won't be up for that, which is understandable, but Brendan is mostly sweet and caring. In the beginning he can be anti-social, and that helped to make him seem more dynamic, but his relationship with Emma is sweet, caring, and based a lot on love. Insta-love or otherwise. Cisco was my favorite of the bunch, and it's because he's flamboyant and fun without being a stereotype. I loved that the author created a realistic and fun gay character that was friendly and managed to not only have a boyfriend (!! - they never have love lives, and it always bugs me) but to be his own person. I'm a huge fan of good secondary LGBTQ characters, as they help normalize LGBTQ characters in the young adult world, and Shultz has a winner with Cisco. I also loved that Emma's relationships with Cisco, Ashley, and her aunt were explored to some extent. Her new friendship with Angelique - a girl who is a type of "witch" - was also shown as being interesting, and there was a lot of ground covered that could easily be given depth in a sequel. What was great was that I felt all of the characters had personalities, and that they mattered beyond the romance (as all-consuming as it was).

Shultz has an accessible writing style that will appeal to a lot of YA readers. Spellbound reads quickly, and Shultz incorporates some interesting plot points that make the fairy-tale vibe unique. She deals with curses and mild enchantments without making it too much of a paranormal story, and I liked that it gave some sort of reason for the ultra-fast-acting romance between Emma and Branden. It won't work for everyone, but it was nice to have a reasoning for the two of them being fated for each other. Shultz surprisingly kept things suspenseful and interesting, and I particularly loved the flashback scenes incorporated. The mythology behind the curse that befalls Emma and Branden is rich and fully-formed. It brings to mind classic stories of star-crossed love, and the writing as a whole just seems to relish those moments within the narrative. The dialogue felt modern and so did the characters, and the general feeling of the story was a happy, fast-paced one. The only trouble I had with the plot in particular was the way the ending played out. The villain-y of the characters seemed beyond reason, and I could suspend disbelief for that particular moment of the story. At times the story as a whole was a bit too light, but I was so caught up in the romance and the mythology of the curse that it was a minor reading inconvenience.

Reading Spellbound was a nice break from reality. Everything about it was fun and worthy of taking the time to read, even if the tropes initially sounded like the same-old, same-old stuff. Readers who are fans of the traditionally hot-stuff hero and a heroine who can stand up for herself will enjoy the story, and the tale of centuries-old love will have more than a few romantics enjoying what Shultz has to offer. Some will find the villains and suspense to be over-the-top, and as a result the ending of the book isn't as strong as the rest of it, but the cast of characters and the writing is more than enjoyable enough to assure another go with the second book - which releases in a month, I believe. I'm going to keep an eye on Cara Lynn Shultz, because she is one of those YA authors that reminds me why I find paranormal romance so gosh-darned enjoyable.

Cover: This cover is beyond wonderful. I love the shards, the font, the way the girl and the bridge are fading away...it's eye-catching and unique. Also, the broken lamp post is totally relevant to the story.

Rating: 4.0 Stars

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

Review: The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 22:15:00 +0000

Title: The Girl of Fire and Thorns

Author: Rae Carson

Publisher: Greenwillow Books

Series: Girl of Fire and Thorns #1

Other Reviews for This Author: None

I'm just now getting around to writing a review for what was one of my favorite reads of 2011, and I honestly can't even begin to describe just how wonderful this book was. There are very few books in this world that are high fantasy and avoid using so many arduous tropes. There are so very few books in this world that are of this length and never seem to slow down or have sections that are irrelevant. The Girl of Fire and Thorns is a novel that is unique in so many aspects. This is a novel that would be a surprise from a seasoned author, let a lone a debut author. Its strength as a fantasy and as a YA novel put it among my favorites, and Tamora Pierce's blurb on the front is proven to be more than justified.

She is the princess of a powerful country. She is getting married to someone that she has never met in order to provide their two countries with a strong alliance in the wake of possible war and political unrest outside of their borders. Elisa, at sixteen, has been the wild card of her country. She's been divinely chosen to be of Service to God. A crystal within her navel is her connection to Him. One that warms when she speaks prayers from the Scriptura Sancta, or asks something of Him in the wake of troubling times. Elisa is loyal and devoted, but the thought of being married to someone that she has never met shakes her solid beliefs.

Elisa's marriage to Alejandro de Vega is one that starts of promising. Well, if promising counts as Alejandro not being reviled by Elisa's body. Elisa is actually surprised to find that Alejandro is kind. Understanding, even, of the fact that Elisa would be scared senseless by marrying a man that she's never met before. Their marriage night and the following time before Elisa departs is short. As Alejandro's wife, Elisa must travel with him back to his country. To be the queen to his king. The journey is long and crosses through treacherous jungles. Elisa makes the journey with her new husband and her closest attendants, Ximena and Aneaxi. The journey brings to light the beginnings of Elisa's new life, and the dangers of her new position.

Politics and war are only the tip of the iceberg for Elisa. She realizes all too soon that her marriage to Alejandro was born of many complications, and that her status as his wife and queen will be more than brought into question. Elisa's faith in God and her knowledge of her status as someone chosen for Service grows as well, as she realizes that her life before marriage was ignorant in many ways to the scriptures and legends of her religion. The Godstone, forever living with Elisa, means more than she could begin to imagine. Elisa's journey has only just begun with her marriage to Alejandro. With the Godstone, Elisa will come to question her faith and herself as the world around her becomes ready to burst with thoughts of war, intrigue, and deception.

I cannot express just how much I love Elisa as a heroine in YA literature. She is beyond compare, hands-down one of the best written characters I've read to date within the genre. I always go on about how I love the heroines in YA because most of them have been strong (at least, they've been getting strong) in one way or another, and I'm all for that positivity within the feminine character. We need it. However, it's rare that you see a character go through a very deep and emotionally taxing transformation that makes her strength something more. The heroines often show their strength, but it rarely goes anywhere beyond the narrative. I'm fine with that, but Elisa takes it ten steps further. She starts off as a strong girl with a strong faith in what she knows and understands. However, there is a major contrast with how she views her overweight body. She knows that she is overweight and doesn't like her body image in the least. Elisa still uses her brain in order to make her decisions, though. She starts off as a strong female who cares more about showing that she is equal with her new husband and equal with the people around her, even if she is overweight or has big breasts. That's the kind of girl that you want to read about.

However, Elisa's growth from that period is huge. She transforms when she realizes that she has only seen a small part of the world and its mentalities. Her brain expands and her understanding of human motivation does, too. There's so much about Elisa that refuses to stay stagnant throughout her journey. She comes across new people and lands, and what's amazing is that each one has a direct effect on Elisa. It's not an episodic series of events and actions, but a complex chain of things that is meant to move along Elisa's character development as well as the plot. The connection between Elisa, the world, and the plot was just so strong in this novel. There was no getting around that Elisa became a stronger woman because of her circumstances and the knowledge that she gained from them. Elisa becomes a woman who realizes that her body doesn't have to work against her, and that she can be more assertive and independent, even if people don't believe in her. It's that kind of female character that I love in YA novels these days, and Elisa sets a new standard for them. She's not the average fantasy heroine. She's something infinitely better.

With such a strong protagonist, it's hard to believe that the other characters are equally praise-worthy in comparison. The people that Elisa meets within the book are vast in number, but also in personality and purpose. Ximena and Aneaxi alone provide a lot of great emotional drama and depth to the story, and one doesn't even have much page time when one looks at the novel as a whole. Elisa's connection to her two companions is very compassionate and complex. She trusts them in a way that allows them to immediately challenge the reader with thoughts and ideas about the protagonist and her choices. They also often surprise. These two women are not just simple royal nurses. Then there's the prince Alejandro. At first, he seems to be the perfect, dashing prince that we come to expect from a YA novel. Elisa's viewpoint shifts as she gets to know the prince more, and we realize that he's not so perfect. He's troubled and can be cowardly. He is no more debonair and perfect that Elisa is weak-minded. Seeing how he changed alone because of Elisa's narration showed just how well the characterization was done. Everything had a consequence within the characters, and within pages they would show new faces and ideas that the reader wouldn't catch at first glance. It makes it so much more complicated when new characters are introduced. Servants, spies, priests, and other royals. Love interests. There is a fabulous love interest within this book, and I honestly cannot even begin to describe the frustration that comes with it.

It's also worth mentioning that this book made me cry because of how the characters get into your soul. They stay there and become real people to the reader. It makes it so hard, because The Girl of Fire and Thorns is not an easy book to read at times. Carson does not pull punches. She treats her readers with a sense of respect, and she tells the story like it would actually happen. There are wars and deaths and hardships that one cannot imagine. They are not so numerous as to be devices to capitalize on the angst factor of drama, but they are not so few as to make the book and its plot unrealistic in its execution. This is where the book really takes to its high fantasy roots. The brutality of the narrative and its richness leave the reader feeling drained because of the emotional connection to the story. I was so sucked into this book that I read it in two days, and I could not put it down because I feared leaving the emotional tie for too long. I couldn't leave it. I was frantic in my need to finish reading, and in the process I became mad. My hands would shake during some sections. This book just struck so many chords.

Carson's writing is honed and sharpened like a deadly blade. An author cannot leave me in such an emotional state as expressed above without good writing. Carson's writing is polished and doesn't feel like that of a debut author making her way into the publishing world. It feels like someone who has spent years within the industry and has been able to make their craft sharp and defined. Her descriptions are fluid and unusual. The exposition in this novel alone is lovely and paints a portrait that is not the usual fantasy scene. Carson sets her story in jungles and deserts. Characters are tan and not the usual pseudo-white European types that are seen in almost every other high fantasy work that's become successful. The culture takes so much from Arabic and Mediterranean influences in its foods, mentalities, and settings. The world is rich. It breathes and sweeps the reader right there under the hot, sweltering sun found in a far-off desert. The world-building doesn't stop there, though.

Carson deals with many religious themes and uses within the novel that manage to be extremely intelligent without pushing any kind of agenda. Religion is a key factor because of Elisa's faith and the role of the Godstone within the narrative. Yet, religion never is demonized or praised as something required. The lesson is instead that Elisa can change her own life and take charge. The Godstone can help, but not every action Elisa takes is related to the Godstone and to her faith. It's very easy to tell that work was put into this portrayal of religion, as it is sweeping and shows the motivations that it can bring without any of the prejudice that most authors inevitably have within their works (prejudice either towards or against religion). An author who can pull off such themes for me has to be good, because I honestly find it quite hard to accept a simplistic viewpoint of religion in novels of any type. All of these key elements are packed into this book, and the pacing is marvelous as a result. Nothing results in filler or unnecessary action, and the exposition and world-building are detailed without being info-dumpy. There's always enough information to wet the curiosity and to allow the reader to learn, but never so much that the reader is repelled by the image the author wants to create.

Just read this book. Read it and discover something in it that people have been missing in young-adult fiction. This is spectacular fantasy that will emotionally drain you in the best way. I still think about it and get jittery because of how good it was. I'm typing this review with flying fingers. My brain simply is too excited at the very prospect of this book's existence. Praise is not enough to describe it and how much I loved it. As someone who understands every inch of who Elisa is, I cannot say how fabulous and inspirational it is to have books like this out in the world. The Girl of Fire and Thorns is a novel of epic proportions that has only started to shed light on an amazing new fantasy world - and an amazing new author that created it all.

Cover: Eh. I prefer the UK cover for this book, as it is more accurate with the character's appearance and the setting.

Rating: 5.0 Stars (Can I give it a million stars? Is that allowed? I give it a million stars.)

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

Review: Eve by Anna Carey

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:11:00 +0000

Title: Eve

Author: Ana Carey

Publisher: Harper Teen

Series: Eve #1

Other Reviews for This Author: None

Reading books involved with the book packager Alloy tends to be a very specific type of experience. You usually get a character-centric piece that focuses on how the characters deal with plot twists and other addictive factors to the work. The writing is usually great in tone if not in execution, and the books end up being the kind that appeal to teen readers because of their addictive quality. Eve is one of Alloy's latest projects, and I was interested to see how it would live up to series like Pretty Little Liars. I was also interested to see how debut author Anna Carey would appeal. I had my doubts about it as a dystopian - because I honestly can go either way with dystopian YA fiction - but it was hard to put down despite some issues with story execution.

Eve has always been at the top of her class. She's the valedictorian. The artist. When she goes off to the College, she'll make something of herself. She'll study painting with the best of them. She will provide a contribution to the society that no one else can. That's the goal of the girls at the School: to go on to college and to become someone that can help rebuild society via the City and all of its promising glory. Eve has trusted the School for so long. She has followed their rules, and has never spoken to a man or listened to a man since she arrived at the School as an orphan. Eve has only trusted the King, whose status makes him the only man that the girls at the School can trust.

A girl by the name of Arden ruins all of this for Eve. Arden is the rebellious one at the School. Eve speaks to her one night, shattering the School's fantasy for good. The girls don't really go off to College - they go off and become tools to repopulate the nation. Eve's status as valedictorian means nothing when it comes to artistry and creativity. The only way she's set-up to help the City is via her ability as a woman to produce children. Eve doesn't really believe Arden, but her curiosity gets the better of her. The shocking reality of what the College is destroys Eve's doubts, and her life at the School suddenly comes with a countdown - a horrifyingly morbid one.

Escape is the only option for Eve. She either becomes farmed for children or can risk the untamed worlds beyond the school. The world with desecrated roadways, crumbled buildings, and ruined people struggling to survive amid the chaos. Gangs and wild dogs lie beyond the walls that surround the School, too. There is also the possibility of running into men. Eve has no choice in the matter, and makes the struggle to escape from what has become a prison for her. She manages to get to the other side, but has no idea wait awaits for her. The world is harsh and unforgiving, and Eve's place in it is bigger than she could have ever imagined. Will she be able to survive, or will she break under the pressure and destruction of the untamed lands?

Readers will have a lot of trouble connecting to Eve. Out of everything in this novel, I think she's arguably the most difficult thing to accept. The dystopian premise is something one can shrug off as-needed, but Eve as a main character is a hard sell. She starts out quite ignorant and put-together because of her intelligence and artistry, but as soon as she goes out into the world, Eve is selfish. There is a much different aspect about Eve's personality prior to her leaving the School. She's not there for a long time, but one gets a sense that Eve has more of an idea that her selfish actions involve preservation, and that self-preservation can come at a cost. As Eve goes out into the world, though, her selfishness quickly morphs beyond its initial capacities. She makes decisions and performs actions without much of an idea as to their true effects on the world and the people she comes to know. I dealt with it in the beginning because of Eve's ignorance, but Eve's ignorance seems to prevail throughout most of the work. Her personality deals with some harsh lessons that don't seem to come with enough force until the end of the novel. The result is a character that's hard to stick with. The reader can sympathize with Eve for the abandoning of her initial view of the world, but they will find all of the lack of long-run thinking hard. It's built into her character in such a way that there is some reasoning behind why she is so distorted and unthinking in some instances, but the reward for sticking with her throughout the novel doesn't necessarily meet all of the reading required to get there. However, I did find it intriguing that Carey would go with a main character of this type for a dystopian - a genre which focuses on main characters like Arden more so than Eve - and am interested to see why she did so.

The other characters in the novel are much more interesting in how dynamic they are. Arden is a character that sticks with Eve throughout most of the work, and she has much more backbone and sense to her than Eve does. Arden is the type of character you love to read about in dystopian YA. She's tough and knows more about the world because she is observant and rebellious. Her character isn't new, but it's a character type that allows the protagonist to be less than ideal without ruining the reading of the story. In that sense, Arden functions as a good foil character and allows Eve to make her decisions without the reader completely losing the idea that some people in the book have sense. Caleb - a boy that appears in the wilds and helps the two frenemies - was much more interesting than I expected him to be. Yes, he is very much a YA hero and is mysterious and dark, but he also has a past that keeps the reader interested. He's tough and hardened because of the world around him. His characterization made sense. He also worked really well with Eve. The chemistry between the couple was quite understandable and read as a type of romance that felt fresh despite the usual components. In that regard, Eve felt above-par in the characterization. The romantic aspects worked for the novel and felt accurate. Eve became a tentative girl who wanted to explore beyond the brainwashing she always knew, and she turned to a semi-heroic figure in her life that she felt a connection to. The romantic scenes felt surprisingly sweet and tense.

Carey's writing surprisingly hits a lot of good notes with this debut novel. It's not without it's flaws in execution, but she captures a world that is interesting - if familiar - and gives the novel a tone that is hard to match. The world of Eve is extremely dark and desolate. It manages to convey a very strong idea of the future, though it is a very scary one as well. I loved how dark it was and how Carey tried to keep it simple. I understand that, on some level, it's very bland to just call things the City or the School, but on another level it makes things so much easier for me to process. I could see the world going back and reverting to an aloof simplicity to prevent itself from becoming so emotionally invested in its happenings. It makes sense, really, that we would want to distance ourselves from giving things names because of the fear of their imminent collapse. Going farther into the world building, one finds some pretty disturbing images that make for good reading. There's no expressing just how interested one gets when the realize that the world is so primal in how it is trying to repopulate itself after 98% of the population fell to a terrible disease. People would go to any number of lengths to do those types of terrible things, and it's a horrific but able way to garner control of at least one half of the population. Whether this stuff is realistic or not, I cannot say. Carey's writing puts you in the moment, and you don't find yourself questioning things because the scary stuff seems just real enough to make you feel like it makes sense.

There was an undertone to the book that I felt particularly invested in seeing towards the end, and I think it's worth mentioning because of how interesting it is. This book explores a lot of dystopian themes that deal with the placement of women in society and how it sort of reverts because of the dystopian/post-apocalyptic nature of the work. There is an immediate negative connotation attached to the usage of women as tools for making babies (thankfully), and as Eve escapes the theme of women and their role in the new society becomes more paralleled to the old way of things when Eve and Arden effectively become teachers and cooks to a band of boys who escaped from the work-camps made for male orphans. Eve becomes the female figure the boys put on a pedestal; the girl that teaches the young ones and encourages the sensitivity in a group of people that seemed in some ways like savages. This theme initially came off to me as troublesome, but as I read the book I felt there was more to it than this. The ending of the book takes things in a completely different direction based on where Eve ends up. It and her name suggest a new beginning of sorts to occur within the world, or at least with Eve. She escapes the traditional role that seems to follow her and ends up somewhere. I don't know how much of that was intentional and how much of that was just pure coincidence within the story, but it struck something within me as I was reading.

Readers will take to Eve with either addiction or revulsion. The protagonist strikes a strong chord with the reader, and the enticing nature of the world and its secondary characters may not be enough to lure readers back into the story if Eve repels them. My personal reading yielded some surprisingly intriguing aspects about the book, and I managed to like Eve enough by the ending to want to read the second book - especially because of the romance. This isn't a book for the reader focused on the scientific and social details of the dystopian, but a reader looking for a fun romance and a slower story pace my find a winner in Eve. Personally, it's a fun start to a series that I look forward to being addicted to.

Cover: This cover is very industry-standard right now. I love the background more so than the model. The fading and mist looks really cool with the title font. The model, however, I can live without.

Rating: 4.0 Stars

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

Review: Carrier of the Mark by Leigh Fallon

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 01:05:00 +0000

Title: Carrier of the Mark

Author: Leigh Fallon

Publisher: Harper Teen

Series: Carrier Trilogy #1

Other Reviews for This Author: None

Carrier of the Mark is the first book Harper Collins has acquired from its website inkpop with the intent of publication. I was on the website for a brief time, and that brief time coincided with the rise in popularity of Fallon's manuscript. At the time, it was making waves in the community and becoming quite popular. Carrier of the Mark has since been taken under the wings of Harper Collins, and there is no doubt that it has been subjected to the editing process as a resultant. My reading of the book started on an initial high that dipped lower with the second half of the book. I've read worse than Carrier of the Mark, but I've also read better.

Who moves to Ireland in order to get a fresh start? Megan and her widowed father, that's who. They only moved there for his career, and they've lived in so many places that it could just be one more stop - one more place to settle in quickly before uprooting their lives and moving on. Megan's father thinks differently, though. Kinsale could be the place for them. Megan could finally have a set of friends that meant something. Schooling that would last her for a while. Getting used to a new country suggests to be difficult, but Megan decides to make the best of it. After all, what can she do about it?

It's at Megan's new school that she meets Adam DeRis. He's sexy, aloof, and out of her league. So says his reputation, anyway. Adam hasn't shown more than passing interest in any girls before. The chances are slim that Megan will be the one, yet she can't help her magnetic attraction to him. As Megan becomes a friend to a girl named Caitlin and a group of nice students, she begins to acclimate to her new school life. She also learns more and more about the DeRis kids. Rumors fly about the family. Everyone seems inclined to tell a story that is more mysterious and ridiculous than the last. Adam, his sister, Aine, and their brother, Rian, are all known for being a bit unapproachable and attractive, but no one seems to really know much about their family or their guardian, Fionn.

Megan changes that. Something about Adam has caused her to become smitten. There's no love at first sight, but there's something that pulls her to him. Adam seems to feel the pull as well. He shows her more attention than any other girl at school, and it becomes quickly known that he treats her with a different attitude than he does most girls. As Megan becomes intertwined with one of the bad boys of the DeRis family, she learns more about herself and the world around her than she can ever imagine. Megan will soon come to realize that what she learns is far bigger than a teenage love story, and that the consequences could spell danger to them all.

Readers will like Megan overall. She has a zeal about her, and she's by no means depressed or overly angsty the way some other PNR heroines can seem. The voice is lighter than expected, really, and though it isn't funny, it works for the narrative. Megan starts out the book like many other heroines of her type. She's new to the area, falls for the school's resident mysterious-hottie-hot-hot-boy and discovers that he has secrets. Like, capital 's' Secrets. This means that Megan's growth really revolves around her discovery of who Adam is and, as a resultant, who she is. What's interesting is that Megan's growth is more defined by an evenness of the playing field. She doesn't merely become a catalyst but part of the catalyst. The way the world-building works, Adam and Megan are effectively of similar ability and placement in the world, and it allows her growth to seem more even and progressive than one would see in other paranormals. Because Megan's growth is so directly related to the plot, however, her character growth emotionally is lacking. Her biggest issue involves Adam. Once they become codependent and in love, Megan really doesn't change much because the plot focuses simply on the world-building and the tension heightening for the romance. The plot-heaviness of the second half of the book deterred her character growth and that bugged me more than I expected it to.

To go in another direction, though, I did find the secondary characters more interesting than expected. There are a lot of character 'types' here, especially when you consider the hero, but they work much better than one would imagine. Adam is pretty standard in terms of a YA paranormal romance hero. He has an initial side of mystery and brooding to him, but underneath that is a character that is very loving and protective (thought thankfully not overly so) of the person that he loves. I found myself quite happy with Adam. He doesn't stand out much or go beyond the heroic mold that the genre has come to produce, but yet he is very loving and a nice (if simplistic) escapist tool for the reader. Rian is arguably much more interesting, partially because he is not a part of a love triangle with Adam and Megan. Rian is just angry and prone to more temper tantrums than most of the characters, and I have to admit that I found the violence amusing. He reminded me a bit of Rosalie from Twilight, but more expanded upon. Aine was sweet and caring towards Megan. I liked her well enough. I liked Fionn as well. He plays the role of guardian well, and his backstory alone endears him more to the reader's sensibilities than one would initially imagine. However, I wanted more from the family as the story progressed because of how everything was structured. Pseudo-family structures like this have popped up in so many YA paranormals since Twilight (Starcrossed, Die for Me, ect.) and overall I tend to find the characters interesting, but Carrier of the Mark loses some of the build-up and steam to the characters involved in comparison to those other reads.

What surprised me (in a good way, mind you) was how there were character presences beyond the family. Granted, they got shafted in the latter half of the book like everything else. Considering how little I see of friendships and socialization in YA PNR though, I found it to be nice. Megan gets a solid group of friends that is present in a good portion of Carrier of the Mark. Caitlin is her most prominent friend, and I remember her the most out of the various students. Her personality wasn't as fleshed out as I would have liked it to be, but it was so nice to see Megan deal with a friendship along with her relationship. She actually was a friend to Caitlin before she started dating Adam, and her group of friends and her friendships mattered to her on some level. It got sidelined during the second portion of the book, but she still had to worry about her interactions with Caitlin and keep from becoming a total recluse in the name of love. That kind of friendship aspect usually appeals to me, and it's one of the few executions of the plot that stood out to me as being realistic and surprising in its enjoyment factor.

Realistic friendships aside, Fallon's writing runs into some major issues when it comes to the world-building and plot movement. Fallon writes to the paranormal YA formula pretty well - hence all of the Twilight comparisons being seen in various reviews (including my own) - but that also means that her concepts and world-building have to be well done and original in order to stand out. Fallon gets points for originality, as she uses the concept of the elements in ways that I didn't expect, but she loses points for execution. Positively, one can say that she has created a really complex idea of the world that she wants to show. There's a lot of information and complexity to Carrier of the Mark in that regard. Destinies, prophecies, ancient orders, supernatural powers...it's a potpourri of tropes that manages to work out into something pretty in-depth and beyond my initial expectations. Readers will be initially put off by the amount of information that Fallon seeks to show to the reader within the dialogue and exposition of the text, but they'll find it interesting and quite unlike Twilight after that. It's what differentiated the book from its predecessors. In some ways, it reminded me of Torn by Ericka O'Rourke, which also uses elemental powers, although I felt the world-building in The Carrier of the Mark to be a little more excessive in explanation than needed.

So, you may ask, where does this go sour? In my reading, I immediately found that halfway point to be the breaking point for my pure enjoyment of the novel. The world-building has indeed been thought out to a fairly complicated scope because of the various supernatural laws and relationships, but Fallon's novel maximizes it to the point where the reader just doesn't care. The second half of this book caused a major shift in the enjoyment of the reading. The relationships became stagnant in wake of the plot, and the plot itself didn't move forward so much as get info-dumped for almost two hundred pages. Entire chapters would have pages of dialogue explaining some detail of the world-building. Every chapter had something new to add on, and the relationships between one fact and the next seemed to blur as the book became a constant stream of info-dumping peppered with scenes of actual characterization in between facts. It all just screamed of something that wasn't a polished story. Info-dumping I can forgive if it is one or two times and relatively short, but the info-dumping in Carrier of the Mark was beyond excessive, and it slowed down the reading process exponentially. The book picked up somewhat at the end, and the world and the characters left the story with enough questions to make me consider reading the next book, but the unevenness of the pacing completely balanced out how I was enjoying the initial storyline and characters.

Carrier of the Mark is such a mixture of enjoyment and frustration. I liked some aspects a lot - they appealed to my reasons for liking the genre, after all - but the execution of the paranormal elements threw a huge wrench into the reading experience. I left the book with a bad taste because of it, and I'm still not sure where I stand on book two. I believe that I will read it to see where it goes and hope for improvement, but I think it's safe to say that I'm lowering some of my initial hopes should I read on. There's also the matter of the recent authorial behavior. I found that irrelevant to tackling the book as a whole, and I had all of these thoughts long before that came into play. It is worth saying that I was less ambivalent about continuing the series before it occurred, though. Readers will find it satisfying if they want something that stays with genre conventions and has a unique world to it, but they'll have to be able to get past the technical malfunctions of the plot in order to truly enjoy it.

Cover: This cover is so wonderful. Yes, it does have a girl and an angst-pose on it, but it looks fabulous and dark. I really do enjoy it.

Rating: 2.5 Stars

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

Review: Hickey of the Beast by Isabel Kunkle

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 23:11:00 +0000

Title: Hickey of the Beast

Author: Isabel Kunkle

Publisher: Candlemark & Gleam

Series: Unknown

Other Reviews for This Author: None

Sometimes you have a book in your TBR that you have no idea what to think about. Hickey of the Beast is one of those books. Is it supposed to be a serious title, or a joke? What does this hickey mean? Does it hurt? Will it be an OMG SEXY young-adult book? That bundle of questions seems ludicrous, but I couldn't help but wonder at what kind of endeavor Hickey of the Beast would be. Especially considering I had never read a book from Candlemark & Gleam, a small e-publisher. Hickey of the Beast is a surprisingly quick and engaging little YA book that marks a good start to reading from this publisher. It originally started as a serial, but has since been bound into one singular novel that is available digitally. It's a great way for readers to test the waters of small press YA without losing the idea of quality.

Connie Perez has gone to Springden Academy for a good portion of her life, but not as a student. Connie is the daughter of the headmistress. She's obligated to have known the Academy for years. She's seen her mom at work and gotten to know the faculty beyond where a normal student would, and she's only just becoming a freshman. Connie's age means that she'll finally - finally - get to go to Springden as a student. As a high school freshman. True, there is always the issue of overcoming being the child of a teacher in a small school (except Connie's mother is a little more than a teacher), but Connie is beyond excited.

Things for Connie start off well. She's not new to the way of life at Springden, and though she's with the other freshman in terms of being more than a little nervous and unsure of high school life, Connie is able to move past it and make friends. She does well in her classes - though it's known that you can't simply slack off at Springden - and starts getting crushes. Well, one crush on a very specific person. The hot and adorable Edward. He may not be the sparkly vampire, but he's handsome, attractive, and more than a little lust-worthy.

Connie's life as a freshman sees a huge disruption. She finds herself unable to sleep without occasionally being succumbed to dreams. Horrible, scary dreams where a girl that she knows is basically eaten alive by mosquitoes. Connie is understandably grossed out and confused at the frequency of these dreams. What's worse is that the girls seem to be changed in real life after Connie has one of her dreams. The next day they are often sickly, and that sickness later turns into something that no one can really diagnose. The first time it happens seems like pure coincidence, but the strangeness of the dreams inevitably suggests something bigger to Connie. What role do her dreams play, and why are so many girls overcome with this creepy disease?

Readers will take to Connie quickly, and the tone of the book makes it pretty obvious that the reader will become invested after getting through so much of it. The way Connie is so personal with the reader - as she is telling this story to her friend, Amanda, and thus makes it so - allows her characterization to shadow on the appealing side. We see more of her unedited personal reactions to the narrative, and we see more of the humor and delight that comes from chronicling a heroic story to a friend. Connie is a character I'm seeing more and more of in YA - the incoming freshman girl who is nervous but excited in making her new transition to something more adult. Maybe I'm just reading more MG/YA crossover, but I don't mind seeing this character type because they often come with well-written voices. Connie is no different, and in many ways her voice as a character feels fresh. She doesn't deal with so many contemporary issues, and her humor and tone can be very inviting to read. It also makes the reading experience go generally fast. Connie ultimately doesn't have a lot of growth throughout the novel - she's so focused on figuring out the mystery behind her dreams that she doesn't really get to that level of character awareness that I come to expect from characters of her type - but she still endears herself because of her storytelling. Not all readers will take to her voice, but it's comforting and feels on-level with a girl of that age. Sometimes it felt like the tone fluctuated - there would be no use of swear words, then suddenly you'd see one or two within a single chapter that felt beyond the voice previously established. Little things. I don't mind swearing - or lack of it - but Connie's story was so stressful that I felt it realistic for her swearing to have appeared in the narrative much sooner should she have been inclined to swear. That kind of characterization niggle is minor, but it was something in particular that remained post-reading.

The secondary characters in Hickey of the Beast were minor for the most part. Most of the story revolves more around Connie and the mystery behind her dreams, and I didn't feel like there was a lot of interaction with secondary characters that left a strong lasting impression on me. Connie's two best friends were cute, and I love love loved that Kunkle showed diversity in Connie's social circle. Connie herself is Latino - and nicely incorporated without making it into a big deal, too - and her friends are just as diverse as she is. That goes for a lot of the other characters, too. Kunkle spends a surprising amount of time on the interactions between Connie and her mother. The interactions are small as with Connie's friends, but they are indeed present and show a lot of thought and effort into showing how Connie's background is important without turning it into a big problem that would just over-inflate the plot. Kunkle's diversity extends to even the most minor of characters. There are Asian characters, African American characters, LGBTQ characters...and none of it is a big deal. The characters just exist as the plot moves along, and I loved that Kunkle was writing a genre-fiction story with the level of diversity that she was. It felt realistic. It felt like the real world. Most importantly, I thought it saved the characterization for me in the secondary characters. Though I didn't remember them with the clarity that I would have liked, I found them to be thought-out and hope to see them again on a larger and more detailed scale in the future.

Hickey of the Beast was, on the technical end, a book that both delivered and did not. The writing itself was not bad in the least. On the contrary, Kunkle has a unique imagination in regards to the world she created in Hickey of the Beast. There's more humor in it than you would find in some other YA paranormal stories, and Connie's dreams and strange happenings are not the average event. Giant mosquitoes? One has to admit that it's pretty original. The entirety of the novel in terms of imagination was satisfying because of that. It felt like Kunkle wanted to write a simple, fun story that managed to appeal to her audience while spicing things up with some unique aspects and tropes. As mentioned previously, Kunkle mostly succeeds with tone, too. The tone in particular made the story feel more believable, and it helped keep the mystery of the world building from feeling like lazy writing. The mystery as a whole was fairly standard. It actually took me a while to figure it out, but I'd say after the midway point I had some idea of who it was. I'm a horrible judge for mystery reading, but I know it was satisfying to me as a reader who does not really read for discovering the bad-guy. That part on the whole doesn't start up in the plot until a fourth or more into the book, as so much of the first fourth was just establishing Connie's dreams and their connection to the real world with the subjects involved.

The strengths of the writing swayed for me, however, because of the way the writing felt within the story. I liked Kunkle's voice and the story and characters, but there were parts of it that felt uneven in the way that an unedited serial novel such as this would feel. There were paragraphs of repetition that I would merely skim through because the emotions and plot events being recounted had just happened. The novel lends itself well to a serial format - I doubtlessly wouldn't have been bothered by that kind of thing in a serial, as serials almost require some level of consistent reminder to the readers between chapters - but I felt like the book as a whole felt a bit inconsistent, as if the chapters hadn't been completely melded together into one smooth novel. The repetition and occasional voice shifting (see the comment about swearing above) just felt like visible glue lines on a newly fixed object. It looks whole for the most part, but one can see where it was molded together. It didn't keep me from enjoying the story, but the wish for more of a fleshed out development was ever present, especially considering some of what the story did offer involved repetition. The pacing was still fast, though, and it's the length of the average YA novel. It doesn't have any excessive use of purple prose or purposeless and mundane activities, so readers looking for a book that is to-the-point about the plot will find it more enjoyable than a lot of small press and self-published YA ,which tend to be on the longer side from what I've personally observed.

There's a lot to recommend about Hickey of the Beast. The characters are cute, the writing is fun and easy to read, and the diversity within the book alone is worth taking a chance on. Ultimately, my enjoyment of the book as a whole was diminished by the repetition that occurred - especially close to the beginning. In a compact book like Hickey of the Beast, that type of thing catches my notice more than it should. I also would have liked more memorable secondary characters with more complex interactions. There's enough here that would give Kunkle a chance to expand her world, but even if she goes in a completely new direction, I'd love to see her write some longer YA books, as I did so enjoy spending the time that I did with Hickey of the Beast. It's on par with a lot of YA out there already, and the added diversity and breeziness of the read (plus its origins as a serial story) make it worth checking out if you're interested.

Cover: Eh. It's okay. The hickey/demonic symbol on her neck is interesting, but I'm not a big fan of the font and the stock image. It does suggest a more light-hearted paranormal, though, which is good.

Rating: 3.5 Stars

Copy: Received from publisher/publicist for review (Thanks, Candlemark and Gleam!!)

Review: Subway Girl by P.J. Converse

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:53:00 +0000

Title: Subway Girl

Author: P.J. Converse

Publisher: Harper Teen

Series: None

Other Reviews for This Author: None

Sometimes, there are fabulous books that fall through every publishing crack possible once they are released. You can't seem to find them on the shelves. No one has read them. The book is barely a whisper of a suggestion on Goodreads. It has many iffy reviews because so few people take a chance on it. Subway Girl is one of those books. It has a fabulous premise - two teenagers, one Chinese, one half Chinese - who have a language and understanding barrier between them, but manage to fall in love despite it. This book is one that I would classify as more on the literary side of YA, as it dealt with some themes and tone that I felt could easily fit in a book aimed at adults, but it so hits the mark on giving YA a different kind of contemporary love story. What's better is that it shows the culture of China and two PoC protagonists living within it. One is part American and accessible, but the other, the hero, is full Chinese. This is one of those books that I'm so glad I read and wish that I could put in the hands of readers who need something awesome and off the beaten path.

Simon is failing English. Whether it's working at his parents shop, or his own inability to strengthen himself and study, he's in one of the lowest classes possible because of his poor English grade. Simon struggles with the language - nothing seems to come just quite right. And where could he go in the world without it? The successful students are the ones who come to the language easily, or have known it since birth because of English nannies and English-speaking family members. Kids who could afford to have a multilingual education before they entered the school system. Simon's family isn't like that, and Simon can barely transmute his thoughts in the foreign tongue.

Amy is an American girl embracing her Chinese heritage in the most hands-on way possible. By force. Her family has moved to Hong Kong, and she has been enrolled at a Catholic school as a result. Amy's been raised in a multicultural household, and her mother has always made it a point to teach her Chinese and what is expected of her as a girl who is going to embrace her heritage. Amy is less than overjoyed. She's managed to start dating the most sought-after guy at school, but she really doesn't care about things either way. He's just a boy. She's just a girl who listens to her iPod on the subway, blocking out the world and everyone in it. What Amy doesn't understand is that someone or something can break her barrier - be it a boy, or a language.

The two meet on the subway. Simon is smitten. Amy is intrigued. He can only speak well in Chinese. She hates speaking in Chinese, and doesn't do it very well. She will only really speak in English, and Simon's English is atrocious. These two teenagers should not have a connection when they can barely communicate basic ideas to each other, but something pulls them together. Simon becomes a friend to Amy, and she a friend to him. Barriers between them and their worlds start being broken. Their lives change. Amy deals with several harsh realities that could easily ruin anything she has with Simon and with her family if she isn't careful. Somehow, despite a barrier of language, Simon and Amy manage to start a process that so few people manage to - they begin to fall in love.

Strangely enough, this YA novel requires a look at the male main character first. Simon is the character that begins the journey in Subway Girl, and he's really the one that readers will want to root for because of it. His story is one that people can relate to in one way or another. Because of uncontrollable aspects of his family, Simon is less than proficient in English, yet it seems like the rest of the world is. He doesn't want to be stuck at the bottom anymore, but he can't seem to study and retain the information. Life seems pointless when improving in class means getting a thirty or a forty out of a hundred on an exam. It's hard to get in the mind of a character that doesn't understand something that comes to us so easily, but Converse's third person narration manages to really hit home the feelings of frustration that Simon endures during his schooling with English. It feels like a different beast, Simon does, and reading his narration really does feel foreign because of the school system and the way he goes about things. I can't be a judge of how accurate the viewpoint is - I think the third person allows Converse to write the viewpoint with enough separation to risk a complete cultural inaccuracy - but to me it read as something genuine. It was also nice to see a YA book that followed the guy character as much as the girl character in the romance. It's not a romance in the normal YA romance sense, as it does have its veins more in the "realistic" romance you see in literary fiction (though whether it's more realistic or just less romantic is another matter entirely). Still, Simon is a character that grows in confidence and independence. I was surprised, actually, at how Converse was able to show that the motivation of love and connection can progress to a teenager improving themselves. It felt mature, and what was great was that Simon ultimately was able to be himself around Amy, even if his English abilities needed improving.

As for Amy, I don't know how people will react to her character. I liked her. She was real. She wasn't annoying. She just makes some mistakes and goes through some issues that I can some readers falling flat with. Amy, unlike Simon, has more of a resentfulness towards her language than an issue with learning it. She knows more than she appears to. The Chinese heritage her mother tries to instill in her has turned her away because of how it seems to make her feel like an object. She's dating a guy that everyone wants her to date...yet she could care less about him. He's kind of a douche. Amy is a character that is completely out of her element and doesn't know how to gain the confidence she needs to change her life. She doesn't know how to stand up to her mother, dump the guy that she hates, or feel whole. I felt like one particular event early on in the story really expressed just how trapped she felt in her life. ::Minor Spoilers (highlight to read):: Amy and her boyfriend are together and they have sex, and she tries to make him put on a condom, but he refuses and that ends up being the cause of her getting pregnant.:: End Spoilers:: That event and the ensuing pregnancy really brought me into Amy's mindset. I understood why she was trapped and sympathized with her. I understood why she felt animosity towards her heritage. There was a lot of emotion in there, and the emotional reaction of wanting to protect this character surprised me. I think that's what endeared me to this story most. I wanted the two of these characters to get together and fall in love, because they both deserved something to make their lives more joyful. They needed that infusion of happiness, and Converse made it clear that, while not easy, they could provide that for each other in a way that was meaningful and important. Converse treats this romance like it's an adult romance, and that's where the accuracy of the characters and the relationships comes into play. He doesn't dumb down the importance of their relationship because of their age, and the power of it is really a gut-punch to the reader.

Where this book lacks fullness is the writing. Converse is a skilled writing in terms of evoking some complex emotions and getting a great and unusual story going, but I felt like Subway Girl was a little too short. The problems expressed in this book are complex and could have been more detailed, more fleshed out. When you write about these kind of issues - pregnancy, romance, language barriers - there's so much there that has to be shown without words, and there's so much to explore with the words that are said. I wanted to see more from these characters and wanted less of a rush through their life events. The story is strong on its own, and the writing holds up well enough, but there's just a lack of complication in some areas to what is a very complicated relationship between two teenagers and their lives. I wanted to especially see more of their families, their cultures, and how that effect where they would go and how they were going there. I didn't feel like I got enough of a grasp on what the school system was like in China, and as an American that's foreign to me. I don't know how much more there is to it, but it's something different that readers would probably find interesting - especially if it could have been integrated into the plot. I also wanted to see more of side characters like Simon's best friend. I felt like they were given too much of an aside in this story. Hong Kong is a big and crowded city, but the book is almost too contained to express the entirety of what I can only imagine a bustling and crowded city like Hong Kong can be.

Subway Girl is a little diamond in the rough. Not everyone will appreciate it like I have here, but there's something here that is special and unique. It's a novel that isn't afraid to leave a bit of mystery and hardness to the romance. It feels a little more literary in how it portrays the life of two teenagers who happen to meet one day in the subway. There's so much between Amy and Simon that is strong and well-written, but I only wish their story had more to it, and that the setting felt more like a character. Hong Kong was still expressed well, but there was a missed opportunity in how the culture and setting contributed to the story. Still, it's a short and well-written book that I'd suggest to people who want something a little out-of-the-way. Something that will leave you pondering for a moment after you set it down.

Cover: I quite like the cover, actually. I would have liked to see Simon represented (and the girl's face - I can't tell if she's Chinese or not), but I like the blur and how it invokes the idea of a subway train whizzing past.

Rating: 4.0 Stars

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

In My Mailbox: (4) of 2012

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 18:21:00 +0000

Hi, all. My weekend kind of sucked majorly (SATs, personal life dramas that I'd rather not discuss on the blog at this present time), so I apologize if this post seems impersonal and meh. I got some great books this week, and I'd like to share a bit about them with you. As always, thank the lovely Alea from Pop Culture Junkie for inspiring this meme, and Kristi from The Story Siren for running it. Now, let's see what's in my mailbox!

Review:

Woodrose Mountain by RaeAnne Thayne

Pure by Julianna Baggott (Came with a cute button and a butterfly toy - win)

(Thank you to Harlequin, Planned TV Arts, and Grand Central Publishing for these review books. :) )

Bought:

Moon Spell by Samantha Young (e-book) (Kindle freebie)

Marked by Kim Richardson (e-book) (Kindle freebie)

Fledgling by Natasha Brown (e-book) (Kindle freebie)

Anathema by K.A.Tucker (e-book) (Kindle freebie)

The Mind Readers by Lori Brighton (e-book) (Kindle freebie)

Daughter of the Sea by Mira Zamin (e-book) (Kindle freebie)

(I love Amazon freebies, and what's nice is that I feel like I could take a day next weekend and just READ a few of these and enjoy them. Stress, you will be conquered!)

Library:

The Uncoupling by Meg Wolitzer (e-book)

The Darkest Fire by Gena Showalter (e-book)

The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan

Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce

Teeth: Vampire Tales edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling

I got a lot of freebies/library books this week. After everything that happened, I'm up for a lot of comfort/pure pleasure reading between review books, so expect a review or two from those. I also read Sisters Red, and when I get time here I'm going to write up an analytical post sans normal review structure or grade on it. The book had a lot of parallels I'd like to talk about and dissect without giving a grade to it. So, what's in your mailbox? Have you read any of those self-pub freebies? Are any worth the time?

Review: All These Things I've Done by Gabrielle Zevin

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 21:45:00 +0000

Title: All These Things I've Done

Author: Gabrielle Zevin

Publisher: FSG (Farrar, Strauss, and Gerraux)

Series: Birthright #1

Other Reviews for This Author: None

Literary YA can be fabulous - see Melina Marchetta's amazing Jellicoe Road - but it can fall flat, too. There's a lot of danger writing literary fiction in general because of how gosh-darn-dull it can become. All These Things I've Done is a novel that immediately struck me as being of the more literary end of YA. Yes, there is a love story. Yes, this is a dystopian/futuristic/ect. type of novel. But it's all quiet. This book is not a rock band but a sound machine, and depending on the reader it can either make a strong impression or fall flat. For me, it was a mixture of the two. I found the book enjoyable and could appreciate the way Zevin's skilled writing made the book hard to put down, but on the whole its reaction with me was far more subdued than I would have liked.

For Anya Balanchine, organized crime isn't a simple reality engaged on classic films like The Godfather. Mobsters have been around for decades, and the Balanchine family is more than slightly notorious for their reputation as being one of the biggest and most prominent in the world. Things have changed since the days of Al Capone. The Balanchine can't make their fortune off of just anything, and they don't have the Roaring Twenties backing up their ever-increasing endeavors to sell goods on the black market to the highest bidders. The future has seen the world into entirely new problems that can't be solved by escaping into the realm of flappers and anti-prohibition-booze.

The Balanchines are in it for the chocolate. Chocolate, caffeine, and other substances have since become illegal over the years, and the Balanchine family has had to adjust to it in order to maintain business. They've developed international contacts - especially considering other countries don't have chocolate prohibited - and become a crime family worthy of their title and reputation. The only problem is that a crime family's title and reputation comes at a cost. Anya has lived without her father around for several years because of this cost. This cost has caused her brother to be brain damaged and has caused her mother to die. With just her brother, her dying grandmother, Anya is quite alone in the world. No matter that she has other family working towards the business end of the Balanchine empire. She wants no part in it.

Anya can't escape her birthright. Her uncle and cousins are slowly courting her brother - offering him the opportunity to do some simple and perfectly legal jobs for the Balanchine family facility. It doesn't sit well with Anya. She knows her family's motives better than anyone, and they are rarely clean and anything other than self-serving. There's also the predicament of her personal life at school. Anya's boyfriend is a chocolate addict, and in a fit of rage he nearly rapes her. Immediately breaking up with him, Anya has to deal with intense backlash at school. A new student could potentially help her heart heal, but he's the son of one of the most prominent public officials in the city. A boy like him could never date a mob daughter. With a murder, a motive, and the beginnings of legal unrest, Anya cannot escape the Balanchine name...even if it kills her.

The reader reaction to Anya will either be one of adoration or neutrality. I can see how people would love her character; Zevin is a literary craftsman in regards to making a very realistic and mature young adult character who has had to grow up earlier than one would expect. Anya is strong-willed and calculating. She's the kind of person who can play their life like a game of chess. For those that find the current crop of YA characters lack-luster and stupid, Anya will be a refresher. In many ways she reads like an adult character with a young-adult age. It's all in her actions and the way she separates her emotions from the story in order to get the heart of the world around her and what's going on. There is a huge downside to this: I felt completely unconnected with Anya. I enjoyed the book well enough, but there was nothing there worthy of getting excited about. Anya's narrative feels closed off and cold. Her personality isn't very accessible, and it doesn't feel like she breaks into intimacy enough as a narrator to warrant making the reader invest themselves in the story. Sure, she had unique insights and activities, and she had a good voice to her, but there wasn't a feeling of connection or personalization to her as a character. I am probably in the minority with these feelings, but that problem is one that stuck with me for a while after reading the book, and I usually remember a more emotional reaction on my part towards the protagonist of the story.

The other characters were equally interesting and memorable enough, but via Anya's narration I felt a decided lack of intensity in the characters and their progressions in the story. Leo, Anya's brother, was one of my favorite characters. His progression was better than most, and it was nice to see a character who had mental issues in a YA novel. I don't feel like that comes up prominently enough, and it was cool to see it played out. I would have liked to see him have more depth, but I enjoyed that he was attempting to assert his independence and take care of his family because of the strain on Anya, but it's obvious via the narrative that Anya's the only capable one in the family to do so. Anya's best friend Scarlet was another figure that held interest, although she wasn't explored as much as I would have liked. She had a personality that was quirky and off-set Anya's seriousness, but I wanted more exploration in regards to her relationship with Anya and her budding romance with Anya's abusive ex-boyfriend. The love interest was par for the course, but much more in the sense that he's a solid guy than in the dark-and-brooding sense YA has quite often. Win comes with natural relationship conflict because of his parentage, and the chemistry he has with Anya in the pages is telling enough, but there's just a lack of something at some points. I felt that way with many of the characters - strong personality types and images come to mind with them, but they didn't do much in the way of changing or being dynamic like I would have liked them to.

On to Zevin's writing style. Zevin's writing is really wonderful, and I think it's one of the reasons why she's so highly lauded. I have never read her books before, but there's something about this one that just screams an author who understands their tone and the ability to make a book seem more than what it is. Zevin is excellent at writing a believable protagonist in a world that makes sense. She creates very accurate parallels between her book's version of the future and the 1920's Prohibition period, and it makes the book almost feel like it could take place today. Things are just subtly off and feel like they've grown organically from our present day. There's nothing so fantastical that it seems beyond comprehension, and sometimes I like my dystopian/futuristic books to be like that: so real that they could happen in the next five or ten years. While Zevin's world is great, she takes too long to reveal it to the reader. A lot happens in this book without actually happening. Most of it feels like set-up (albeit good set-up) for events in later books. There's a lot of political intrigue, familial questioning, and the like. Zevin does well with making things interesting and unique in her world, and the grounding of everything kept the seemingly mundane events from losing importance because of how real the world was. As solid as the construction is, though, it doesn't make up for how little progression of any sort came into play.

There's a divide in my mind with All These Things I've Done. On one hand, it has strong world-building and writing that is very polished and worth a read on its own. However, the prose and technicality couldn't make up for a very apparent lack of plot progression and a main character that I didn't connect with. This is a book that I wouldn't say I'm sorry I read - I still enjoyed it, after all - and is one that I would possibly see to the second book, but isn't one I would suggest to readers who look for a dystopian with highly emotional or plot-driven elements.

Cover: THIS COVER IS AWESOME. It is abstract, unusual, gives the reader a lot to be interested in about the book, and is not just another girl's face cover.

Rating: 3.0 Stars

Copy: Received from publisher/publicist for review (Thank you, Zeitghost Media and FSG!)

Review: Dead Rules by Randy Russell

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 22:02:00 +0000

Title: Dead Rules

Author: Randy Russell

Publisher: Harper Teen

Series: Unknown

Other Reviews for This Author: None

Dead Rules is one of those blogosphere reads that a lot of your friends read and say is really good, but manages to slip under your radar anyway. I heard a lot about this book when it came out earlier this year, but I never had the chance or the urge to pick it up right away. The topic sounded unique and like something I would read. There was a lot of praise. I was most likely hesitant in hoping it would live up to expectations. Dead Rules, however, has not gotten much attention in the larger blogosphere, and after reading it I think it's a shame. This book is a paranormal that is unique in its structure and directly gives a middle finger to some of the worse behaviors in YA paranormal romance.

Young love has always been prime for Jana Webster. She's dated Michael for ages. They're peanut butter and jelly. Heart and soul. Bonnie and Clyde. One can't go anywhere without the other. They're utterly perfect for one another. They even work as an acting duo, and both have more than enough talent to go on and make it big as a couple. Jana's life is perfect, really. She has the perfect boyfriend. The perfect relationship. The kind of thing of fairy tales. A passion out of Romeo and Juliet. However, unlike the Shakespearean couple, Jana believes that her relationship with Michael will last longer while retaining that intense romance.

Dying is the one thing that could ruin Jana's plans. A tragic accident at the bowling alley ruins it all. Jana wakes up on a school bus, her head wound still intact. Jana discovers that she didn't just fall at the bowling alley. She died. That death has brought her to what is known as a Dead School - a place for people who die while they're in high school. An in-between world where they learn until they're ready to move on to their destinies. A place with rules that no one completely understands. People can take off their heads or walk around with half of their bodies mangled and destroyed. Death is all too alive, and Jana finds herself unable to cope with it all - especially because Michael didn't die with her.

It isn't long before Jana gains friends and learns something of the social structure at the Dead School. There are the Risers like Jana and her orientation helper/roommate, Arva, and the Sliders. The Risers are the good students who died without an immoral purpose or reason. They're the students that can get away with misbehavior. They get punishments and demerits, but the idea is that the Risers are good and therefore can make mistakes without ruining their lives. The Sliders, on the other hand, are more prone to act out. They're the bad students, and it seems like they can either slide through the system or disappear from it completely. The social construction means little to Jana when she makes it her goal to get Michael in Dead School with her, even if it means killing him herself. With the help of a Slider boy named Mars, Jana soon discovers that death is a lot more complicated than one would think.

What readers will either love or loathe about Jana is how obsessive she is. Jana is not a character that you like. On the contrary, I wanted to pull her hair out during many parts of this novel. She starts out as vastly ignorant, obsessive, and single-minded. You kind of want to punch her in the face. This type of character sounds frustrating and unappealing, and what's good here is that she's supposed to be that way. Russell goes into this novel with a very solid idea of what he wants Jana to represent. Jana is everyone that has gone too far in a relationship - where the relationship is so obsessive and so blind that the person inside of it loses all ability to comprehend the reality of the situation. Jana believes that Michael loves her and is her partner in crime, but the reality is that he found her to be overzealous and crazy, making plans that he didn't want to be a part of. Jana was just a girl to Michael, and she never understood it while she was alive - and she barely understood it after she died. Russell manages to make a very fleshed-out transformation in Jana. I would have liked to see it occur more gradually than it did - the ending is really where we actually see her change and understand - but he gets the message he's trying to send without making her seem like a caricature. She is just a bit over the top, but it's a literary way of examining the feeling of wanting to be with someone forever in that unhealthy, not-reciprocated manner. Readers looking for a protagonist to like won't like Jana, but readers who want to watch a very unhealthy character develop into a healthier one will find her intriguing and worth a look.

Russell works hard to make the other characters worth knowing, and he manages to give them some pretty unexpected depths despite how Jana-focused the storyline is. Mars is a hero that you wouldn't expect. He's a technical bad-boy, but he's really not one at all. Mars is a part of Russell's bigger ideas on social commentary. He's labelled "bad" because of a circumstantial reason, but in reality he's more aware of what he has to do - and more aware of how he has to go about it - than most of the students at the Dead School. What's nice is that he's also just a good person for Jana. They have an attraction, but he also understands that her obsession is far too great for them to develop a relationship, and instead tries to help her learn about herself while improving his own life as well. Janna's friends like Avra are also rather unique, and Russell makes them change quite a bit. He introduces Avra as a character that is supposed to be very kind and organized. The kind of character that will give the main character good advice and be the good friend even when the chips are down. She sounds like she knows what she is doing. Russell slowly uncovers the reality of her character, though, and shows a much darker end to things. How she doesn't really know much of anything, but craves the sense of knowing. The sense that there is an order, a structure, and a black-and-white to her world. What's also amusing is that Russell tells the story of these characters' deaths, and most of them are ludicrous and allow for a nice sense of humor to pervade the story. He makes fun of the death and morbidity that can easily come into YA, and it's pretty darn funny.

Russell's writing was probably the one place I had mixed emotions. The storyline itself is well-done, and Russell does well with building a world that is simple but still gives a lot of information and insight to what he wants his story to do. His characters are well-formed and unique, and his themes are excellent. His writing style is the only thing that didn't particularly impress me. He made good use of the third-person perspective - it was a nice break from the usual first person YA has - but sometimes the plot just didn't move with enough speed to have any effect. There was a lot going on, but the story was so primarily focused on Jana and her development that it felt like it retreaded old ground in some passages before moving forward. Those weren't major detractors from the story, but they did catch my attention because of what Russell was trying to do. His humor helps keep the story from becoming a morbid angst-fest. In some ways, this book is really more of a satirical attempt at examining common themes in YA paranormal romance, and in that regard the humor is also well-reasoned. The intensity of Jana's character issues and the pacing of how she overcomes them easily bogged down some parts, and Russell's writing is to-the-point. To-the-point writing tends to be harder to gloss over as a reader, because the language mainly attempts to move the story and characters forward instead of showing itself off, so the repetitious parts seemed more prominent than they would in other works.

There's not much more that I can say about Dead Rules. It has a little bit of everything to it, and it's a book that will surprise readers with its wit and insight. This isn't a book that you can read just for enjoyment - the protagonist is far too frustrating to purely enjoy - but the story as a whole is fulfilling and leaves one to think that Russell gets it. The pacing and repetition of Jana's obsession got on my nerves, but I appreciated what Russell ultimately did with the storyline. This is a world and a group of characters that I wouldn't mind visiting again, and I hope that Russell writes a connected book of some sorts to show a new side of things. This is a book that will appeal to teen readers of paranormal romance, but also to those readers that want something a little bit more in its construct.

Cover: This cover is pretty average for YA paranormal. I have to admit that the girl's face is very striking, and her eyes really do catch your attention.

Rating: 4.5 Stars

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

Review: Dear Bully edited by Carrie Jones and Megan Kelley Hall

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 23:09:00 +0000

Title: Dear Bully

Editors: Carrie Jones and Megan Kelley Hall

Contributors: 70 Authors such as Ellen Hopkins, Sandra Mitchell, and Nancy Garden

Publisher: Harper Teen

Series: None

I've never graded an anthology like Dear Bully, and I don't think it's partial to a grading system in the same sense that other YA anthologies have been. These aren't stories meant to entertain. These aren't stories meant to go on and expand with characters and go beyond a very specific type of situation. These are small stories that reflect a deep personal experience with each contributor, and their purpose is to be a grandiose symphony of voices in a world that so easily drowns them out. I cannot talk about characters. I cannot provide a litany of summaries for these 70 stories. This anthology is meant to blend as a whole, not as individual authors tying together a particular theme or notion into their very individualized stories.

Bullying is something that our society doesn't understand. It's psychological and physical and completely and utterly incomprehensible in its long-term effects. Like any other milestone in one's life, it can be small and shrugged off. It can be large and haunt you for decades. There is no such thing as bullying that doesn't affect the bullied. Bullying is the reason why we have the It Gets Better campaign. Bullying is one of the main reasons that teens today go into their emotional darkness-es and consider suicide. Act on suicide. Bullying is a subject that strikes such a core with me as an LGBTQ teen who has been through a period of depression before - who knows all too well what can happen to people in the emotional tumult of life.

Dear Bully aims to be a counter-agent to these feelings. Some of the biggest reasons that bullying effects kids so strongly is that their lives don't provide a situation that would allow for easily obtaining help and/or support. It's far too easy for kids to live in homes that would simply say "Man up" or ignore what was going on with their children. These 70 or so authors have written these stories to show teenagers that they are not alone. That bullying is something that is far too common, and that they are not the only ones to have ever felt helpless. It tries to provide a future voice to say that it can get better, a voice that can help prevent so many people from taking their lives.

If there's one thing I dislike about this anthology, it's just that it's hard to get the full effect of it in one or two stories. I read it straight through and felt that the power relied on the reader getting most of the experiences. It's the repeated theme among so many unique individuals that strikes a chord. You always hear stories about one or two people who get bullied and then talk about it afterwords, but what about 70? There is power in the number, and I think that is both a help to the anthology format, but a hurt in terms of the individual accounts. The accounts are also shorter than one would expect, and sometimes it feels like the stories could have been expanded on to include more reasoning, more feeling. There's also a similarity in the types of bullying stories offered. A lot of it is high-school type bullying, and I would have liked to see more bullying that dealt with race, sexuality, ect. It was often included, true, but I felt like that more types of bullying could have been addressed and thus show just how intense and all-encompassing the problem is.

What makes me want to suggest this anthology to every reader is just how powerful it remains. Despite those qualms, there's nothing bad about this anthology technically. This kind of message works well with the anthology formatting, and I think teen readers especially will find themselves devouring it. It's dark and has the edgy flair while being a collection of honest accounts from authors that many people read. It was hard for me to pick it up and read a few stories in between activities. I'd end up reading twenty or so of them instead of getting any work done. There's something compelling about what these authors do. There is a lot of soul baring and emotion in these pages, and it's plain to the reader that, for some, telling these stories is an endeavor that took more bravery than we could ever imagine. There are some that feel raw, and you can't emulate that kind of feeling in a fictional work completely - else it is very, very difficult.

There's really nothing more I can say about this collection. Some stories I was "meh" about. Others struck my heart to the point where I wanted to give the author a giant hug. This anthology is powerful. It's one that should be in every library collection in every school, every city, every state. This is the kind of book you want to hand to teens if you are unsure of how to tell them it will be okay. Dear Bully is a voice. It is a collective of so many smaller voices attempting to speak to people in a way that they have never been spoken to before. This book is not about characters or plot, but about working towards a greater goal in society and keeping teens healthy. Please. Buy it, read it, and share it. Make this book the stunning and powerful voice it has the potential to be in the world.

Cover: I'm not a fan of the face cover. It's dark but very on-trend and meh. Still, I like all of the author's names on it. I think that presents some idea of how packed the anthology is.

Rating: 5.0 Stars (If one could even rate it)

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

In My Mailbox: (3) of 2012

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 06:23:00 +0000

Hey, guys! I've been really busy this week, as it has been production week for my school's performance of Our Town by Thorton Wilder. I've been running everywhere and insanely busy, but I figured I'd have time to make a quick IMM up. As always, IMM was inspired by the incredible Alea of Pop Culture Junkie, and was started by Kristi of The Story Siren. Here's what I got in my mailbox this week:

Review:

Unraveling by Elizabeth Norris

Hemlock by Kathleen Peacock

The Summer Garden by Sherryl Woods

Bubbles Pop by T.K.Marnell (e-book)

Bought:

The Poison Diaries by Maryrose Wood (e-book)

Bumped by Megan McCafferty (e-book)

Lord Scandal by Kalen Hughes (freebie) (e-book)

Last Summer by Theresa Weir (freebie) (e-book)

What did you guys get in your mailboxes? :)

Review: Finding Somewhere by Joseph Monninger

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:31:00 +0000

Title: Finding Somewhere

Author: Joseph Monninger

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Series: None

Other Reviews for This Author: None

I vaguely remember hearing about Monninger's release from last year, Wish, but didn't remember reading any reviews of it. The name was actually unrecognizable to me until I read about the other books he had published with Random House. Thus, I picked up Finding Somewhere with no pre-opinions or ideas of what it would be like, and I was pleasantly surprised with the result. It's a relatively thin and straight-forward read, with a surprisingly touching journey of friendship that involves a horse. There were elements that I didn't particularly find original/well-done, but the overall impression was a positive one.

Speed is a horse that has worked his way into Hattie's heart. She's worked with many horses, but there's something special about Speed. Something that has stuck with her, that has kept him in her heart. Every girl is said to have her horse - the one that sticks with her throughout her entire life. The horse that she considers, above all others, to be the pinnacle of the animal type. Speed, however, is not a young filly anymore. He's old. Downed. A pony that's been used for parades and county fairs. The kind of horse that's never really experienced some of the biggest aspects of a true horse's life.

Still, there's no telling exactly why Hattie can't come to terms with the decision to put him down. He's a financial liability, and he's lived a long life. It's the humane thing to do, as many would say. Hattie just can't except it. Speed is her baby, and he's never had the chance to live. To become a true horse. Hattie's friend Delores is also a horse person. She understands what Hattie is going through, and shares a similar to connection to Speed, though it cannot compete with the depth that Hattie's goes to. These two girls have no want for Speed's life to run out so early. Not when they can feel that he has more left in him; when he deserves more than he's being allotted in life.

Every moment of her time with Speed has led Hattie to her current decision. She, coupled with Delores, has stolen him. Taken him. She wants to be fair to her employers, who are lovely people, but she also wants to be fair to speed. Delores is more set in their decision. She has her truck and a (borrowed) horse trailer ready to go. They load him away in the night and set off on a road trip across the country. Their goal is to get him to one of the ranches designated for horses to run wild in - the closest thing they can get to sending Speed out into the wild. It might be futile. He might die along the way. But they have to let him become a horse for their own sake as well as his.

Monninger, I came to find, is really good with his characters. Hattie is a protagonist that you really want to pay attention to. Finding Somewhere is definitely a YA take on the adult contemporary fiction scene - ie, something more "literary" that focuses on the characters over the actual plot events in terms of what the reader wants to see. Monninger does his development well. Hattie's voice starts out as being unfocused as to her goal in her journey. She's impulsive but not enough to act, and Dolores is the perfect foil to her in those terms. Through her friendship and her slow gain of realization and independence, Hattie becomes a character that is able to fully understand why she needed to get away from her life. She is not a character that goes through a large change. She has no need of true independence, but she does have an idea of what it means to be a horse woman. Her connection to Speed is a connection to her horsemanship in general, and how far she'll go in order to protect it. She becomes a protector to Speed and Delores, really. She's the capable and grounded girl that leaves little mess in her wake. The freedom of the journey that she takes with her friend makes for an interesting way to view Hattie and her sensibility, but it's not a bad thing to see. Hattie is grounded and strong, and the character growth in her is of the subtle and beautiful kind that gets lost in the fray sometimes.

In contrast, the only character we see a lot of is Delores. She's in many ways the more dynamic of the two girls. Her history is filled with struggling with her parents, a crumbled marriage between them, and the ensuing relationships that caused her to become cynical and difficult about her life. All of this is running under her skin. As a character, she's one that you want to learn more about. You see her through Hattie's eyes and notice the little moments of weakness where she cries out for attention, or when she seems almost too impulsive for reality. That's what I loved about Delores. She was consistently becoming more and more of a character that revealed herself and understood herself. There's something so definite about the way this book ends, and I think it shows just how well Monninger understood that his characters came from a time of confusion to a time of basic self-understanding. Monninger also has some minor characters that help the journey along as well. He even introduces a love interest named Punch. Punch! As silly as it sounds, I really did fall for punch and fast. He's not meant to sweep you off your feet. He and Hattie just kind of...happen, and suddenly you realize that they have this unspoken chemistry and assurance that is very earthen and (dare I use the word again), sensible. He's also a cowboy, and I have an admitted weakness for cowboys. So there.

I think Monninger's strengths with writing were in his characters. I can't say the same for the overall tone/plotting of the novel. It was very literary in construction, and I could handle a focus on characterization. Dialogue and character interaction were highly interesting. A lot of this book was dialogue, actually, and it worked to Monninger's advantage, making it readable and easy to get into. The problem is that his lack of exposition can be a problem with the narrative's depth. The story's plot is pretty straight forward, and I was disappointed really in the lack of exploration done in the book considering the complicated characters. It's focus is so on being a horse story that all of the depth in Hattie and Delores is just kind of...left there. I would have liked more flesh to it. More subplots and speculation. It's clean and concise, sure, but once I read it I felt like I had missed something on the initial read. That kind of feeling isn't a good one. You want to realize that you miss things without multiple read-throughs, but at the same time you want to feel like a singular read packs momentum. There's so much about this book that is just too quiet - too unexplored for the reader to really appreciate what's underneath it. Monninger has good pacing and characterization, and he did a lot with dialogue, which I appreciate. I read for dialogue in particular and like it when authors can use it to say a lot. There just wasn't much else to balance out the narrative.

There's something lovely about a book like Finding Somewhere. It's not ground-breaking or particularly edifying to me, but it was a comfortable and surprisingly worth-the-time read outside of my usual fair. It has inspired me to read more Random House books (which I hardly ever read for some reason) and to keep an eye out for authors like Monninger who seem to push boundaries in YA in their own little ways. It's been a while since I read a road trip story - and never one about a horse - but this book was worth the time invested. I loved the dialogue and characters, but the book itself was just too thin elsewhere to really stand out to me as an exemplary read. Still, I can suggest it as a library read for those in general, and a hardcover read for those wanting something a little touching without being overly explanatory about it.

Cover: I find this cover really beautiful. It's subtle, eye-catching, and suggests something unusual.

Rating: 3.5 Stars

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

Review: First Day on Earth by Cecil Castellucci

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:52:00 +0000

Title: First Day on Earth

Author: Cecil Castellucci

Publisher: Scholastic Press

Series: None

Other Reviews for This Author: Geektastic (anthology)

Castellucci is one of those authors that you keep hidden away on the corner of your bookshelf. She's not a guilty pleasure, but a hidden treasure. Her books are always unique, out of the ordinary, and carry a very distinctive tone that is all her own. I first discovered her with the book Beige, and have since become quite a fan, going on to read the anthology she edited with Holly Black, Geektastic. Cecil is an author that writes for readers that like something out-of-the ordinary and characters that are outside the norm, too. First Day on Earth is a unique exercise on writing in the YA field. It's a short book (possibly a novella, but I don't know the exact word-count) that packs a surprising punch to it despite the length.

Mal has always been on the social fringe. He's not the normal high school student, and that shows quite clearly. Mal has also been abducted. By aliens. Some believe him, but others don't. All he knows is that he was missing for three days before he was found. Strange memories of the time suggest an alien abduction. Mal didn't always believe in them, but his experience made it possible - no, made it probable that aliens existed. People aren't supposed to believe in aliens. Mal isn't supposed to believe in aliens. There's no escaping his past, though, and he instead wants to embrace it.

Another important discovery Mal has made: the answer to everything is in a support group. It's a support group for alien abductees, but it's something. Everyone shares a unique story that doesn't seem consistent, but the general consensus of the group remains the same: aliens live among us. Mal meets Hooper through the group. Hooper is socially awkward and seems almost too unaware of things to be human. It's not unusual for one of the group members to be out-of-sorts, but Hooper is different. Mal befriends Hooper, and realizes that his unique personality traits are more than just social awkwardness.

Hooper claims to be an alien. Mal's world spins. Is Hooper serious, or is he just messed up in the head? Sense should tell him the latter, but Mal can't help but think it's the former. With the strangeness of his past, and the feeling that he's always been more of an outsider than he can bear, Mal aims to help Hooper in any way he can. Maybe, just maybe, he'll get to solve his own mysteries as a result.

Castellucci's greatest achievement with this novella (I have decided that this is a novella, but someone correct me if it is otherwise) is her main character. Mal is the perfect brand of outcast. He's complicated. His narrative (which is in first person) reflects a really specific mindset that wouldn't belong to anyone else. Castellucci's voice is fabulous, and she slips into the male point of view with little trouble. Mal immediately starts off the narrative with something interesting. You feel and see that he truly is an outcast in his world; an outlier that has no real feelings towards his life at the present. He's lost, alone, and depressed. This book isn't about him wallowing in his sadness, though, and readers will love that about Mal. He expresses things concisely and simply. Sometimes a chapter will have one or two sentences to maximize the impact of his emotions without making them feel overdone. First Day On Earth is ultimately about Mal's growth as a confident character who is able to move on with his life. His hang-ups regarding being abducted are, in part, representing his more grounded feelings of being unfit for the world he sees around him. In taking up the task of helping Hooper, he learns about himself and is able to reconcile initial feelings about his life.

The other characters left me wanting, however. This book is chiefly about Mal, and I can get behind that, but I think there would have been benefit from more interaction between the other characters. Hooper was the most interesting, though at the best of times he was ambiguous. He was a big part of keeping the mystery of the aliens going, and I liked him a lot as he was used within the book. Posey, the love interest, was an interesting character with some nice revelations, but she really only appeared in the second half of the novel. The same went for Darwyn, an overweight character that was, again, interesting. I think the problem is that both characters send the message that people have more than what we shallowly perceive - and that's just been done and done. It's nothing new, and this book is just too small for me to really feel like these characters bring a new insight on it. There could have been more there. The characters aren't badly done, and I thought Castellucci made a point to make them feel genuine...but the format just makes it difficult to feel like the depth had full effect. This book is solely Mal's, and the other characters really don't live up to him.

The writing style Castellucci uses is an excellent one. She's an author that gets her words just right. There isn't a lot of excessive exposition, and the overall effect on the book is of something tightly formed. Her characters have a lot of particular quirks, and she really nails the feelings of outsiderdom when she tackles them. The style in First Day on Earth is really the height of Castellucci's work in terms of showcasing these particular strengths. Her voice with Mal is fine-tuned, and it never comes across as feeling unusual. Some writers make the writing gap between genders awkward, but Castellucci knows her character well enough to keep the voice feeling authentic and original. First Day on Earth is a novella (in my estimate - I don't have specific word counts available). At the very least, it's probably one of the shorter examples of a YA novel. Such as Elizabeth Scott's Living Dead Girl. Like Scott, Castellucci packs a powerful punch with tight prose and chapters. Some chapters only have a few words in them, such as this one. "My life sucks. So I shave my head." That's an entire chapter. Granted, those short chapters are few, but even the long ones aren't normal chapter length. Castellucci goes for quality in the narrative over quantity, and she delivers for the most part. My biggest issue is that the book probably could have had a bit more flesh to it without losing the punch that it brought to the table.

First Day on Earth is a unique addition to the YA genre from a very unique author. Castellucci has yet to disappoint me with her work, and I feel like readers will find First Day on Earth accessible without catering too closely to YA trends. There's a lot underneath its surface, and readers will fall for Mal and his way of expressing his angst. The mystery of the aliens is fairly ambiguous, but it works for the type of story Castellucci is trying to present. Many readers - myself included - will probably find the hardcover format a little heavy for a story of this quickness, however. It can be read in a few hours, easily. I read it in two. It doesn't lack substance or quality, but it's short and over a little too quickly to feel comfortable with everything. The length caused some overall issues, but I still enjoyed the ride.

Cover: This cover makes me drool. The guy is hot (at least, his back is hot. We can assume the front matches the back) and is actually a fair representation of the character (minus the head shaving bit). Plus, I think it's eye-catching and not like everything else on the shelves.

Rating: 4.0 Stars

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

In My Mailbox: (2) of 2012

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 05:12:00 +0000

Hi, guys! Second In-My-Mailbox meme of the new year. Yay. I'm actually going to keep up with it. Today I'm going to be dealing with the flurry of my first dress rehearsal for my school's production of Our Town, so this'll be short-and-sweet. As always, thanks to the lovely Alea from Pop Culture Junkie for inspiring the meme, and Kristi from The Story Siren for creating it. Here are the books I got this week!

Review:

The Haunted Glade by Hayden Thorne (ebook)

Broken by Susan Jane Bigelow (ebook)

Bought:

Night and Day by Virgina Woolf (ebook)

Huge thank-you's to Hayden and Candlemark & Gleam for providing the review books. Night and Day was a free download on the Kindle. What did you guys get in your mailboxes this week?

Review: Fateful by Claudia Gray

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 22:54:00 +0000

Title: Fateful

Author: Claudia Gray

Publisher: Harper Teen

Series: None

Other Reviews for This Author: Evernight ; Stargazer

When I found out about this book over a year ago, I let out a giant squee. Claudia Gray's Evernight was the start of my love for her writing, and I've been slowly (albeit too slowly) savoring that series. She has a way with words that is addictive and intelligent - like Melissa de la Cruz. When she announced that she had a single-title paranormal coming out, I was quite intrigued. Imagine my reaction to the concept - werewolves on the Titanic! Let me be the first to say that I am a huge Titanic buff. I love learning about it, and the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio is one of my favorites. Fateful is reminiscent of the classic movie, but has a lot of Gray's original twists involved (and this definitely includes the werewolves).

It's 1912, and Tess Davies is in the employ of the Lisles, a wealthy English family that she has been with for years. Her life has been hard, and working as a servant has been the least of her troubles. The Lisle family is a mixture of characters that she hasn't come to care for. The overbearing mother. The drunken oaf of a son. The baby too young to have absorbed their horrid personalities. The diminutive daughter whose kindness is often overpowered by the terror of the rest of her family. Tess has worked for them for far too long, and her treatment as a servant has only led her to decide something vital: once the Lisle family's journey on the Titanic is over, she is getting off in America. Not as a servant, but as a free (but unemployed) girl.

Prior to boarding the Titanic, Tess is attacked by several large wolves after a late night shopping for the Lisle family. The run-in nearly kills her, but she is luckily rescued by a debonair stranger. It doesn't cross her mind that she could encounter the young-man again. Fate works in mysterious ways, and Tess sees him the next day when she boards the Titanic with her employer. The man with rich, chestnut-colored hair. The man that saved her from a pack of wolves on the night streets. Another man is with him, however, and he seems to embody everything about the very beasts that tried to attack her the night prior. Mikhail, the wolfish man, seems to be more interested in her than she imagined. He corners Tess and attempts to take a case of her employer's from her, threatening to do anything to get it.

Alec, the guy who saved her before, comes to her rescue again. Something deeply complicated seems to pass between him and Mikhail, and Tess can't help but think about what the two men would be fighting about - and what it would have to do with whatever is in her employer's family heirlooms. It isn't long before the connection between the two men is revealed, and what Tess learns is more than a little frightening. Alec and Mikhail are werewolves, and Mikhail is attempting to recruit Alec into a dangerous alliance of werewolves based in London and elsewhere throughout the world. Mikhail will stop at nothing to get at Alec, and at what Tess and the Lisles seem to have. Matters become complicated when Alec and Tess become close, and when Alec's condition becomes a danger to her and the rest of the ships passengers. Will they survive their starcrossed romance, or will they be dead beneath the waves long before the ship hits the iceberg?

Gray writes just the most entrancing main characters, and I have to hand it to her - Tess is a winner in my book. Her story is engaging and rife with conflict, and I love how she doesn't back down from danger and action in order to fight for what she believes in. Tess is the type of character that grows with the action going on around her - mainly, that the plot advancement is where we see a lot of her characterization - and I think Gray hits a sweet spot with how that works out. From the first time Tess is locked in with Alec in wolf form, we see a girl who is quite afraid to step up and take risks in life. She has the plans to leave servitude, but yet something has kept her from leaving for a long time. Her past, responsibilities, and friendship with Irene Lisle tie her down, and she just can't fully break free from things. The events that transpire allow her to break from her mold. Her relationship with Alec and the supernatural things she comes to learn allows her to stand up to her demons (and wolves, in this case) to make herself stronger. I loved watching Tess become a strong and able person in this book, and I just loved that she was willing to accept that Alec was a wolf despite the danger that he possessed to her. It was actual danger, and it said a lot for her character and how she was able to self-sacrifice in order to be a kind and brave person. Tess is the kind of character that you like reading about in paranormals. She has the romance and the passion, but there's also a level of independence and action that's subtle but most definitely there. You want her to reach her goals of freedom in America, and that's a huge factor in getting attached to her in this novel.

What I really loved about this cast of characters was the depth in how Gray used them. She has the overbearingly complicated rich family down pat, and I liked that they weren't all of one particular personality. They had their own troubles (some of which are very juicy) and motivations behind some of the actions that she so resented them for. Irene was a dear soul that in many ways represented the person that Tess needed to become. Irene started out timid but managed to have some pull for independence as the novel progressed, though she in many ways shows Tessa what it would be like for her if she didn't go through with becoming an independent person. Myriam, Tessa's roommate, was awesome. She was just as strong as Tessa, and it was awesome to see a story about the Titanic that showed that the ship had different races and cultures aboard. I loved that Myriam was foreign and unique to Tessa, and that they became friends. Myriam even had her own side-plot, a romance, that made me giggle due to the cuteness. There was just something so vibrant about her newly formed friendship with Tessa, and I just *loved* that Gray actively showed that needed diversity in the novel. Mikhail, however, I was less pleased with. I get tired of the whole Russian-name for the villain trope. Why must that always happen? Aside from that name-stereotyping, I enjoyed the spice he added to the story. He was very aggressive and scary, and made for a great antagonist that actually served a scary purpose for the plot.

Alec was just wonderfully sexy and attractive. He was a sweetie who was concerned for Tess' well-being, and you quickly fall for their romance. Their romance itself develops fast - one would think too fast - but Gray makes it believable. An author that makes me like a fast romance like that deserves high marks. I find that Gray often succeeds in making a male hero that you fall in love with in the process, too, and I loved Alec almost as much as Tess did. He has so much darkness about his past, and I loved how Gray waited to reveal it for so long. It really makes you question what goes on between the characters. It's nothing fundamentally new, but the execution was spot-on and made me really invested in their relationship. I also appreciated that she took the less-angsty approach and made his father cool with Tess as a person. It kept the book from being too angst-ridden, and it kept the focus on the supernatural conflict with the werewolves and the possibility of Alec being unable to control himself during transformation.

Gray's writing is always a highlight. Always. I connect with it. Fateful started off kind of rocky for me - in the first 30 pages, I wasn't having that immediate click that I usually do with her books - but after that mark I had the click. It came on and I was flipping pages like mad. There's something about Gray's writing that is addictive but intelligent at the same time. Not that addictive means stupid, but people generally associate that type of writing with guilty pleasures. Gray's characters have smart voices and describe things quite nicely, and they never feel stupid, but simply caught up in intense drama that appears in their lives. That's what I love about her work. There's also the fact that I never realize she's using present tense. Present tense can be a great tool, but in the wrong hands it is clunky and feels very...unnatural. Gray's writing is so absorbing that you don't even notice. You get caught up in the action of the story to the point where you don't even notice that it's being told in a particular tense or form of narration. Let me also say that I found the similarities between this story and the movie present, but not overbearingly so. The starcrossed romance idea is similar, but the plot becomes so focused on the werewolf aspect that you forget about the film starring dear old DiCaprio. I would also be committing a crime if I neglected to mention that the ending made me cry. Believe me, if you cried at the Titanic movie, you will cry at this ending. It's heart-wrenching and so well done. Dramatic, yes, but if you are invested then all you can think of is the characters. I consider that a good accomplishment.

There's nothing here that changes the face of YA paranormal fiction, but Gray does it all well anyway. Her characters are engaging. Her plots are interesting. Her writing consistently captures me. Some readers will find this story dramatic and on the side of melo-drama, but fans of the movie and its starcrossed romance will love what Gray has to offer. Her detailed historical author's note makes it quite clear that she did her research, too. This novel wears its research and history well, and I was quite impressed by how detailed Gray was willing to get in regards to what she manipulated for the story and what was actually accurate. Gray has yet to write a book or a story that I don't like, and I so hope that her books continue to be enjoyable for me - I can't get enough of them.

Cover: Eh. I'm not a fan of this cover. I love the atmosphere it tries to project, but the overall product feels very random and messy.

Rating: 5.0 reviews

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

Review: The Beginning of After by Jennifer Castle

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 23:36:00 +0000

Title: The Beginning of After

Author: Jennifer Castle

Publisher: Harper Teen

Series: None

Other Reviews for This Author: None

When I see a book that gets negative attention from reviewers, I'm always interested into the why's and how's. The Beginning of After is a release that the YA blogosphere didn't seem to take to on the whole, but I read it a bit after reviews set in to see what it was about. There were complaints about pacing and the like, and I was unsure as to where to go from there. The book is billed as one that is hear-wrenching, and the concept is one that you'd think would be an immediate page-turner, but everything sounded different. On reading it for myself, I was reminded about why reviews are objective. Not everyone has liked this book, but when I got between the pages of The Beginning of After, I honestly didn't want to stop reading it.

A person's life can be partially defined by the events that they experience. Big events like marriages and funerals, and small ones. While it may not seem like one event - one day - can change your life, it's more than possible. The first time you talk to your soulmate. The first time you have sex. Routine events like going to the movies or doing laundry. People's lives are often changed by the simplest things. When Laurel looks at the events in her life, she looks at the Before and the After. What changed? What stayed the same? If something truly defined her life, there is always a Before and an After.

The biggest Before and After to appear in Laurel's life has only just occurred. It was simple enough, really. Her parents and younger brother went out for ice cream with the neighbors. She stayed behind, as did the neighbors' son, David. They went their separate ways and did not think about what would happen next. It was assured that they would return. Laurel and David would go on speaking to their parents, and nothing would change. The two had no reason to suspect that life would come screeching to a halt. People rarely suspect many things. It didn't take long for the car containing their families to crash. It didn't take long for their lives to spiral out of their grasp. Time didn't need to do much to make them a new Before and After.

Time, being linear, cannot regress. Laurel can't go back to the little moments that she had with her parents and her brother. She can't go back at all. It's all about moving forward. Her grandmother comes to live with her - to share in the grief of their loss. Her life is empty, and she tries to fill it with things until she realizes that her grief won't recover in the blink of an eye. There is anger, hurt, and blame. Laurel becomes lost in her world, and she begins distancing herself from everyone as a result. Grief continues on when left alone, and Laurel's life needs an overhaul before she can move on with her life. It's not about the Before anymore, but the After, and that's what scares her the most.

Characters like Laurel are common in YA, yet the amount of characterization to them is often more variant than readers would think. Some are shallowly characterized and more focused on other ends than the trauma and guilt associated with such an event. Others are highly focused on it, but move through a more fast-paced read that focuses on getting the character to recovery as quickly as possible. Then, there are books like The Beginning of After. Laurel's journey of characterization is well thought out. Extremely so. There's nothing here that doesn't pertain to her method of recovery and grief. So much of the book involves how she regresses and later progresses. She starts out as a character unaware of the value of her loved ones. Then, she gets snapped into a world where her feelings of affection and appreciation are too late to do her loved ones much good. She goes in on herself and becomes introverted and cold. She tries to act like everything's okay with boys and parties, but it's really not. Life scares her and becomes so harsh that she immediately realizes her mistake. It's only then that she completely wallows in her grief, and it comes to stand that things won't be so easy. Laurel is a hard character to stomach at times. Her grief is intense, and some readers may find it hard to sympathize with the direction of her life. She doesn't make stupid decisions, but Castle doesn't make it easy for her. The end result is powerful, though. Laurel understands how much she needs people and connections to her life, but she also understand the importance of letting go. That Laurel is so much different than the one we see at the beginning of the book. Castle allows her to grow via a slight romance with David (though it is by no means a major part of the book in comparison to the grief) and her job at a veterinary hospital.

The other characters in Laurel's life are hard to pin down in terms of development. I find them developed myself, but the actual chance for them to show said development is minimal. David is probably the most nuanced of the other characters, and he, like Laurel, has a lot of backstory and trouble to go in with it. He's quite a character in that regard. Laurel resents him in so many ways, but comes to realize that she likes him after a long period of time. There's no easy or directness with their romance. It's not a focal point. Laurel even has another love interest, though he is of a much different type than David. What makes David admirable for me is that his relationship with Laurel is about friendship in the end. They need each other in ways that can't fully be described. They understand the pain and the suffering more so than anyone else. Joe is the other love interest, and he is, in his own way, a great one. He is very understanding of Laurel's need to be artistic and inspired, but he doesn't provide the total comfort and knowledge that she needs in her life to make a fully formed relationship. Some readers will prefer him over David, but it's interesting to note that Laurel doesn't scramble for either one to be her boyfriend. She attempts to date and be romantically involved, but it's not something that she remotely deems as being vital to her life.

Other characters such as Laurel's grandmother and her best friend, Megan, were also well formed. Castle's novel is long for a reason. Nana is a great character in her own right in regards to the grieving that she too deals with. The Beginning of After is an exploration of grief that goes beyond its main character, and Nana's grief ties directly in with Laurel's. She has more perspective on how to deal with it, but she still struggles to move forward, especially when Laurel isn't. It was nice to see such a loving, present figure in the novel despite the lack of direct parentage. Megan was also a great character that helped show Laurel's development. She's very much the abandoned best friend, but the reader still sympathizes with how she feels in regards to Laurel. The normalcy between the two is severed by Laurel's grief, and it's a friendship that you really want to follow through to the end of the novel. I would have liked to see more of her, but I wasn't disappointed with what I did see. Eve, a worker at the veterinary clinic, also becomes a strong character throughout the book that changes Laurel's viewpoints. What Castle does with her cast of characters is vital to the novel. She uses each character as a way for Laurel to reflect on her place in the world and what she's doing. Granted, that's done in many books, but these characters are key to Laurel's growth.

What I found most surprising about The Beginning of After was the style of writing. The comparison to Sarah Dessen is rather spot-on in this sense. Both authors have a very word-heavy style that relies on more exposition than one would think necessary. The difference is that Castle's exposition is not as heaped as Dessen (though don't get me wrong, I love Sarah Dessen to bits.) Her words flow at a faster pace, and the exposition is more in regards to what she shows in her novel. The grieving process is rarely easy or quick, and Castle's style reflects that. Laurel grows slowly. She has a lot of setbacks, and a lot of little events are what really propel her forward into an overall state of well-being. This book isn't about a fast-paced, dramatic take on what it's like to lose your parents. This book is about all of the little moments in between. The ones where the main character would look at the world around them and realize that every day, it's just a little bit off; the universe is continually unfocused. Not every reader will take to Castle's style, and the slow pacing could fool readers into thinking that the events that occur in the first fifty or so pages make the novel. It's quite the opposite, really. Castle brings her character into grief, shows her tumbling as she realizes that life can't be the same, and the character's struggling attempts to regain a sense of balance and poise. This book is beautiful in how quiet it is. It's almost too quiet, but for the right kind of reader, it's a book that will stick with you.

I really can't express just how surprising this book was to me. I expected little and came out with a lot. There's more to this book than meets the eye. The writing is accessible, though the pacing is not for most readers. It doesn't seem like it would be such a study of grief, but it is. The characters are beautifully portrayed, and there's something just all-too becoming about the way Castle told this story. I am quite a fan of the end result, and really feel like this is an underrated contemporary YA novel. It has its share of angst, but it's just too well-done for me not to like it. Not every reader will find The Beginning of After great, but if they are looking for a book that brings a lot to the table in a very subdued way, they will love what this book has to offer.

Cover: I love the font and the way that the cover just creams simplicity. The photography of the girl is also quite nice. I think it's very attention-grabbing.

Rating: 4.5 Stars

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

Review: Fracture by Megan Miranda

noreply@blogger.com (John The Bookworm) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:09:00 +0000

Title: Fracture

Author: Megan Miranda

Publisher: Walker Books

Series: None

Other Reviews for This Author: None

This is one of those books that comes out with a big level of fanfare from the publisher. The kind that seems like such a unique concept, yet at the same time is vaguely similar to one or two other books you've read or heard of before. Fracture still promised to be interesting, especially since it involved an immediate near-death experience. I got more and less than I expected with Fracture, and my initial fervor on reading the book has folded back and shown a more complicated reaction to what went on. Miranda's writing as a debut author was impressive, but the book as a whole had more issues than I expected.

Eleven minutes is more than enough time to take a shower, eat breakfast, or drive to school (if you're fairly close.) Eleven minutes is enough time to listen to a lecture before you zone out. Eleven minutes is enough time to start flirting with a guy that you like. You can do a lot in eleven minutes - like contemplate your existence, or wish that things were different. For Delaney Maxwell, eleven minutes was just enough time for something. There was no extra. It was almost the death of her. She was under below freezing water for eleven minutes, and she shouldn't have lived. She lived anyway.

The time spent under the water was a traumatic blur for Delaney, but the aftermath was perhaps worse. Waking form a coma that shouldn't have just lifted. Suffering from brain damage but showing no symptoms. Nearly dying in her hospital room from someone cutting her IV. Except it was her. But it wasn't. Delaney believes she saw someone attempt to kill her, but the doctors believe otherwise. They say that hallucinations are a part of the aftermath of brain damage. Delaney doesn't know what to believe. There's too much that she doesn't know about herself. She can only remember the pain, and the strangeness of being alive when one should probably be dead.

Life goes on. Delaney can barely handle it, but it goes on without her. Her friendships are more and less than what they were before. People seem more attentive now that she's the girl who fell through the ice - yet her popularity is just as flimsy as it always was. The people she hangs out with seem more concerned with using her for their public image than the trauma she went through. Delaney also meets Troy, a boy that seems to know about her despite having never met her before. Troy seems nice enough, but there's a vibe about him that suggests something...more...and it's not necessarily a good thing. Her relationship with Decker, her best friend, is also on the rocks, and Troy's appearance doesn't help things. Will Delaney ever discover what's wrong with her, or will she be swallowed by her own illusions and paranoia?

Getting into the mind of a character like Delaney is tough. You immediately are pulled in by the situation that Miranda paints - Delaney falling under the ice and being unable to act; acting on an acceptance of death. There is something about Delaney's mixture of intelligence and wariness that keeps you interested as you begin to follow her journey. The mind of someone who may or may not be insane is always a difficult place to look into, and Delaney quickly becomes depressed because of how her life seems to be going into shambles. The uncertainty and the sadness quickly overtake the narrative, and at times it was almost too heavy to bare. The issue with Delaney as a solid protagonist is that she doesn't have much going on in the first chunk of the story. She goes through her emotional turmoil and slowly sees her life degrading as she continues to be unsure about her levels of sanity, but the lack of life inside of her can make it cumbersome to read onwards. As her story picks up, she learns more about herself and her abilities, and in that regard I think there's needed growth in her character. The problem is that it takes so long for Delaney to begin working up the need for life again. The trouble with creating a protagonist with such issues in life is that the emotional exploration has to hit a note with readers - they have to say, "Yes, this character's troubles are being explored so well here. I understand what's going on. I feel sympathy for them - or at least get their motives." I got the character motive, but just didn't make the connection enough to feel like there was sustainability in it for the first half of the book.

The side characters were interesting, and I felt like there were some great strides in making them complex and intuitive. What really worked was that they tied well into the second half of the novel. Troy, for instance, may start out as someone who appears to be a part of a love triangle, but he slowly regresses into someone with far more psychological issues than one could imagine. Miranda doesn't overrun the supernatural side of this story with tropes, and what she does as the story reaches its climax makes it all worth it. Troy has a lot of danger and depth to him, and what's scary is that it's understandable. It may seem like an oxymoron to save a life by destroying it, but once you know the fullness of Troy's character, it seems all too understandable. Decker is a love interest that I love because he's not one that just falls into Delaney's hands. Her story involves growing far away from him. He sacrifices so much for her, and you see it early on when he's by her bedside while she's in her coma. Yet she distances herself, and he responds accordingly. He's not this magical boyfriend that defies the laws of sense. He breaks Delaney's heart - and yours - but the ultimate reward in the story makes it feel worth it. I loved that he was so tender and sensitive to her. Decker was my favorite part of this book, really.

Miranda takes a concept that reminds me a lot of books I've read before and twists it. There is the inevitable comparison to Gayle Forman's If I Stay (which this book's marketing points out) with the coma, character emotional arc, ect. There is also a comparison to Jen Nadol's The Mark, which is an underrated release from a few years back that I loved. It involved similar themes in regards to the death and the slight supernatural twist thrown in, as well as the subtlety of the book as a whole. With such comparisons, I found Fracture to be an interesting attempt at blending the emotional complexity of a contemporary novel with the supernatural, and the ultimate effect seemed to be something that used the supernatural to build on the complex emotions. I love the concept and the attempt at blending, but I think it gets hitched in the way the book is formed. It starts off with such a bang, but there is a great lull in the first a hundred pages afterwords. Delaney has some incidents that are used as scary foreshadowing, but the plot movement really doesn't get going until the supernatural is introduced. Once it did, all of the set-up made sense and started clicking into place, but I felt like those pages weren't used as efficiently as they could have been. There was depth going on, but amidst the depth there were parts that I was bored. I'm normally fine with character pieces, but it's hard to pull it off with books like this, and it doesn't hit the high points quite as often as it should. The pacing in general also just made it harder to appreciate. The ending is powerful and strikes so many chords. It's like the bursting of a pipe: something caused by a steadily building pressure that catches you unawares until water is gushing out, and suddenly you're up to your knees in it.

Tying it all together is Miranda's writing. It's beautiful in places. Lyrical. The kind of writing that is literary, but so much so that it loses sight of humanity in the process. It's not really complicated per se, but the reader can tell that she has much that she wants to explore in the book. The writing itself was really solid, and she added to Delaney's voice in a way that provided a really solid tone to the book and the story. Some things were underplayed, such as the magical realism (aka the supernatural element) and its execution, but she did things that were surprising, and the language kept me interested even when the story did not.

Fracture is a book that, while intriguing, misses more than I would like it to. It's above average, but not by much. There's a great voice and writing ability here, but my lack of connection to the main character during the first half and the slowness of the plot made it hard to invest myself in. With all of the emotional complexity, I expected more sympathy as a reader to emerge, and it just didn't happen for me.

Cover: It's an eye-catching cover, but it retains a lot of the "dead-looking-girl" elements most YA has been seeing. Granted, in this case it makes sense. The background adds some spice.

Rating: 3.5 Stars

Copy: Received from publisher/publicist for review (Thank you, Kate and Bloomsbury/Walker Books!)