Thursday, June 30, 2011

Demonglass

Demonglass
Rachel Hawkins
359 pages
Publisher: Hyperion
Source: library
★★★★☆



You can read the Goodreads summary here.

Demonglass picks up a few months after Hex Hall ended.  Sophie wants to go through the Removal, but her father arrives and insists that she come with him to England for the summer to think it over.  She takes her best friend, Jenna, with her as well as Cal, the school groundskeeper and super-healer.  Archer shows up, too.

*swoon*  Archer and Sophie are so cute.  Their chemistry is so real, which is why I loved Hex Hall so much, and also why I loved Demonglass.  Of course, there was a teeny tiny bit of a love triangle starting in this novel and I'm excited to see how that works out in the end.  Some might not agree with me, but I could honestly see it going either way.  Things got a little more complicated in Sophie's world this summer and it made for a great plot.  As usual, I loved Sophie's sarcastic wit, but she also showed a bit of her softer side in this book.

I can't wait for Spell Bound!  Demonglass ended on some big cliffhangers.  If you haven't started this series yet, you're seriously missing out.  I think you'll especially enjoy it if you were a fan of Twilight.  They aren't the same thing, but they have similar undertones.

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Shopaholic Ties the Knot

Shopaholic Ties the Knot
Sophie Kinsella
328 pages
Publisher: Dial Press
Source: PaperBackSwap.com
★★★☆☆



You can read the Goodreads summary here.

Becky and Luke are engaged and planning a wedding!  Er, make that two weddings.  Becky's mother jumps right in and starts planning a wedding in England and meanwhile Luke's mother has hired the best wedding planner in Manhattan to plan a wedding at the Plaza.  Both weddings are on the same day and as that day gets closer, Becky can't bring herself to cancel either one, so she just goes along hoping things will "work out."

I loved the first two Shopaholic novels, but by the end of this one I was groaning.  Becky was really grating on my nerves; I wanted to smack her around and tell her to grow up.  I didn't care for the ending, either.  How is it that Becky never has to have any accountability for her actions?

I couldn't decide whether or not to give this one two or three stars.  In the end, I gave it three because I enjoyed the beginning of the novel and I still like the way Kinsella writes.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

A Marriage Carol

A Marriage Carol
Chris Fabry & Gary Chapman
128 pages
Publisher: Moody
Source: the publisher via NetGalley.com
★★★☆☆



You can read the Goodreads summary here.

I know what you're thinking - a Christmas book in June?  Well, here's what you may not know about me: I am a Christmas-aholic.  I mean I sit in front of the TV for two days straight every July when QVC does their "Christmas in July" special.  I got nuts for the stuff and my favorite books to veg out to are Christmas novels.  So when this popped up in a NetGalley e-mail, I was all over that in a heartbeat.

A play off the classic, A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, A Marriage Carol follows Marlee the night she and her husband get into an accident on the way to their divorce lawyer.  Stranded in a snowstorm with her husband vanished from the car, Marlee finds shelter from a local man who helps her see her marriage past, present and future.

I thought the authors' writing style was beautiful and very descriptive.  It's not a book to over think or analyze, although it may help to analyze your own relationships. Overall, it was a sweet story about a marriage in trouble that gets a second chance.  I would recommend it anyone who likes Christmas stories and also to couples who are having a difficult time in their marriage, even though the book oversimplified marriages in crisis.  This book is definitely a Christian book, so if you don't like that kind of thing, skip it.

A Marriage Carol will be released in September.

PS: I love the cover.  At first glance it looks like a wreath on a front door with a door knocker, but the door knocker is actually an engagement ring!  Very cute.

Bumped

Bumped
Megan McCafferty
323 pages
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Source: library
★★★★☆



You can read the Goodreads summary here.

Harmony and Melody are identical twins that just found out about each other.  In a world where adults can't reproduce, teenage girls are getting pregnant just for the money and swag that comes with giving away a baby, which is what Melody is trying to do if the couple sponsoring her can ever find a match.  Meanwhile, Harmony comes from an uber-Christian community where the girls get engaged at thirteen and Harmony is doing her best to enlighten every person she meets.  When Harmony shows up on Melody's doorstep, things get really interesting.

Most of the feedback I've heard about this novel has gone something like this, "I loved McCafferty's Jessica Darling series, but I didn't like Bumped that much."  Well, I'm the opposite.  I didn't think Sloppy Firsts was all that great, but I loved Bumped.  Loved it!

What I loved the most was that Melody and Harmony couldn't be more different, but as their journey goes on it becomes obvious that they have more in common than they think.  I loved their characters, their personalities, the way the thought and acted.  Of course, I have to give McCafferty points, too, for one of the most creative plots I've read this year.

The only thing that caught my attention and I didn't like was the year the novel takes place, 2036.  That's only twenty-five years from now, which made the dystopian-esque plot less believable.  It would have been better if the story had taken place farther in the future.  I also didn't care for a lot of the words McCafferty made up/changed.  Why change the word "photo" to "foto" or "really" to "rilly?"

But other than that, I loved it!  I seriously can't wait to continue on with this series to see how things work out between the sisters when the next book, Thumped, comes out next Spring.

Monday, June 27, 2011

Ashes

Ashes
Isla J. Bick
480 pages
Publisher: Egmont USA
Source: the publisher via NetGalley.com
★★★★☆



You can read the Goodreads summary here.

Alex has a brain tumor that just won't go away, so she takes a trip by herself into the mountains to try and find herself and to scatter her parent's ashes in their final resting place.  While she is there she meets a grandfather and his granddaughter when something awful happens - an EMP sweeps over the continent killing a lot of people and turning others into zombies...

This book was amazing.  Despite the unrealistic (but still awesome) plot, Alex's character feels so life-like.  She has real problems and tries to solve them in realistic ways.  The same with her emotions - they are real and she deals with them in realistic ways.  The setting was great, too.  The mountains in the winter can be so beautiful, but also so deadly as Alex begins to find out.  I enjoyed all of the characters, especially Ellie, the granddaughter that Alex takes on as a travel companion early on in the novel.

Warning: This book is not for the faint of heart, which unfortunately I am.  There's no sex, drugs, or profanity, but there are a lot of flesh eating zombies and maggots complete with lots of gory description.  Bleh.  But I got through it and enjoyed it because the plot drew me in instantly and the short chapters really kept the story moving.  Then I got to the end.  "Oh, what!?" I thought to myself, "You're going to end this story like that?!"  This book is the first in a trilogy and now I feel duty bound and eager to read the next.

Despite the fact that the main character is female and there is a tiny bit of romance in the novel, I think I would recommend it most for high school boys.  If you like zombies, you're going to want to read this.  Ashes will be released in September.

The Healing (Kentucky Brothers #2)

The Healing
Wanda E. Brunstetter
384 pages
Publisher: Barbour
Source: the publisher via NetGalley.com
★★★★☆



You can read the Goodreads summary here.

Woohoo, Wanda Brunstetter has done it again!  The Healing was a great Amish novel with lots of plot and not too much inner reflection to bog the pace down.  The Healing picks up where The Journey left off, but with the focus on a different brother.  Samuel's wife, Elsie, has just died and he is beyond devastated.  With four young "kinner" to raise, he moves to Kentucky to get a fresh start, moves in with his brother, and gets a job with a local English woman fixing up her inherited house to turn it into a Bed and Breakfast.  In Kentucky he meets Esther who helps watch his children while he works and soon forms an attachment to the whole family.

I really enjoyed that there were a couple Englisher main characters in this novel.  I think they added a unique perspective to the novel and I thought it was great how the Amish and English got along to so well in this novel.  Not that they don't get along in real life, I'm sure most do, but I thought it was great to read about, something I haven't seen in most other Amish novels I've read.  I also enjoyed the fact that the storyline from The Journey was carried over; we get to see Titus and Suzanne finally get married.

I am really enjoying this series and the way The Healing ended, setting up the next novel, I'm really looking forward to that one.  The third brother seems to have some marital problems and I think it will be very interesting to see how to he deals with that.

Be sure to check out The Healing when it's released in September.  These are great books and they aren't overly preachy if you don't typically like Christian fiction.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Passion

Passion
Lauren Kate
420 pages
Publisher: Delacourte
Source: Target.com
★★★☆☆



You can read the Goodreads summary here.

Here was my thinking in picking up this book: I'd read the first two so I thought, "Eh, there's only one more, I'll just read it to find out what happens."  Then I found out at the end of Passion that the final book in the series, Rapture, will come out Spring 2012.  Although I had never read anything saying the Fallen Series was a trilogy, I had assumed.  Now I'm back in the position of "Eh, there's only one more, I'll just read it to find out what happens."  So I'll do that next spring.

Anyway, I had read that Passion was going to be a lot better than Torment, which I mostly didn't like because the relationship between Daniel and Luce seemed so forced.  I had read in someone else's review that Daniel redeemed himself Passion by proving his love.  Well, to Luce he redeemed himself, but to me?  Not so much.  I still found their relationship tedious and overwrought with teenage angst.  It doesn't feel like real love to me.  That was what I didn't like about Passion.

What I did like about Passion was the format of the novel.  Lauren Kate takes Luce on a journey throughout the novel, father and father back in time as she searches for meaning in her relationship.  I am a history buff, and though the book wasn't exactly historically accurate in all ways, I really enjoyed seeing Luce's past lives.  What I really enjoyed was that though Kate could have written the novel with all of the past lives taking place in American and Britain, which is probably what I would have been close minded to do, she took Luce all over the world.

Three stars!  I have enjoyed the covers in this series and I can't wait to see what the cover for Rapture looks like.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

The Eleventh Plague

The Eleventh Plague
Jeff Hirsch
278 pages
Publisher: Scholastic
Source: Scholastic, ARC
★★★★☆



You can read the Goodreads summary here.


A disease sent by the Chinese has decimated North America.  Since then, Stephen has been wandering with his family, collecting anything they can find to trade for food, bullets, even socks.  First his mother dies, then his grandfather.  When a freak accident happens to his father, Stephen finds himself in a real town, confused about how they've survived thus far.  When conflict arises, Stephen must choose - continue to wander, or start over.


The Eleventh Plague was the most realistic piece of dystopian fiction that I've ever read.  I got the feeling while reading that this was possible, that this could in fact someday happen to the United States.  It was freaky.  And in that sense, that makes this dystopian different from all the other ones on the market.  I enjoyed Hunger Games, for example, but it occurred to me after the first few chapters that there was no way American Citizens would let the Games happen to themselves.  In The Eleventh Plague, they didn't have that choice.  It happened against their will and as the book says, "Surviving it, that's the real plague."

That's the books main strength - it's uniqueness.  But it also has strengths in great settings, plot, and interesting characters.  It was great to see what Stephen and his dad found as they wandered south and when they arrived at the town, Settler's Landing, I could picture it so clearly.

I gave it four stars because I would have liked to have seen more about what the "plague" itself was like, how it affected the human body.  But seriously guys, you're going to love this book.  It comes out in September, so pre-order your copy, get on a wait list, do something.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Torment

Torment
Lauren Kate
452 pages
Publisher: Delacourte
Source: Tall Tales Bookshop
★★★☆☆



You can read the Goodreads summary here.

Torment picks up exactly where Fallen left off.  Daniel whisks Luce away to a new boarding school and then for the next eighteen days he and Cam form an alliance to fight the Outcasts.

What I didn't like: BOR-ING.  Also, Daniel is a jerk.  The whole thing read like Luce in Daniel were in love because they were supposed to be, not because they wanted to be.  I hear Daniel redeems himself in Passion, we shall see.

What I did like: Luce's new friends, especially Miles.  They had real chemistry and I would have liked to have seen their relationship grow more because, as I said before, Daniel is a jerk.  Also the events leading up to and including Thanksgiving made for some major page turning.

So why did this book get (a generous) three stars from me?  The majority of the book was boring and I didn't feel like the plot was driven by anything.  The last one hundred pages or so were very good, so when you average it all out, three stars.  It's not going to stop me from reading Passion, which I pre-ordered and is sitting on my shelf right now.

PS: Torment is in paperback now and Amazon has it pretty cheap.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

The Hairdresser of Harare

The Hairdresser of Harare
Tendai Huchu
196 pages
Publisher: African Collective Books Limited
Source: the author
★★★★★



You can read the Goodreads summary here.

Vimbai is the best hairdresser in Harare, or so she thinks until Dumisani shows up to fill a vacancy at the salon where she works.  The good looking man soon multiples business, brings in enough money to give the salon a makeover, and even becomes the manager.  Dumisani moves in with Vimbai to save on rent and the two soon bond over similar family circumstances - both have become family outcasts, though for different reasons.  When Vimbai finally learns why Dumisani was shunned by his family, she must come to terms with her own prejudices.

I absolutely loved this book!  There is pure entertainment value in the book, the characters are unique and setting was painted richly by the author.  I also enjoyed the descriptions of the political climate in Zimbabwe, a situation that hasn't been in the news recently.  But it's also something bigger going on here.  The way the author tells the story, it feels so realistic and undoubtedly there have been people in Zimbabwe much like Dumisani who have faced awful discrimination because of who they are.  I think there's a lesson in this book that every American should learn and I truly hope this novel finds the acclaim in the States that it deserves.

I would recommend this book to anyone: to people who know the lesson and to people who need to learn the lesson alike.  Read it and spread the word!

Monday, June 20, 2011

Guest Post by author William Brown

I asked William Brown, author of the new e-book The Undertaker, to fill us in on how he gets his awesome plot ideas.  Here's what he had to say:




Some writers get their ideas or inspirations from life experiences.  Everyone writes differently, but I think mine come more from my imagination.  So far, that’s been what has worked for me.  I start out a simple one-line concept or situation that sets the tone and the main hook.  In screenplays, they call these one-liners ‘log lines.’  As with the others, the log line needs to be incongruous, immediate, and jarring, like, “Snakes on a plane.”  That is one of the very best.  Screenwriters and producers use them to sell a story, but it is equally useful to help a writer to keep his story focused.  Call it a concept, premise, or log line, but all successful novels are based on a strong one; and no amount of writing or re-writing can make up for a weak one.

 “A guy opens the newspaper one morning and sees his own obituary.”  That is the one-liner that came to me one day and evolved into The Undertaker, my new E-Pub novel.   Once you have that down, you begin asking questions and fleshing it out.  How did that happen?  Was it a mistake?  If our guy is alive, then who is dead?  All the details in the obituary are spot on; it is him!   Worse, there is a companion obituary for his wife!  Who is doing this?  And why?   I then start filling in a basic plot – what’s going to happen to who, and where is it going to end.   Someone with a penchant for sharp scalpels and embalming tables is planting bodies under other people’s names.  That adds a spooky, terror twist that takes the reader from a funeral home in Ohio, bumper-tag on the Dan Ryan, snipers in New York’s Washington Square, a bloody Back Bay townhouse, sleazy lawyers, corrupt County sheriffs, mafia hit men, the FBI, an army of Chicago cops, and the upper berth of an Amtrak train.

The novel I am currently working on begins with another one-liner, “A guy’s in the window seat of an air liner coming in to land at O’Hare.  He looks down, and sees a man strangling a woman on a roof top as it flashes by below.”  Who are they?  What building was that?   Why would he kill her?   What’s at stake?  A crime of passion?  Was he hiding something, or trying to shut her up?  Next, who is our guy in the airplane?   Who are his friends and enemies?  What is going on in his life that this situation will make even worse?  I keep expanding those threads until they form a plot, and simultaneously keep growing those stick figures into unique, well-rounded characters.  In the end, they are what drives the story and make it logical and inevitable.

My most successful novel, Thursday at Noon, is a period-piece spy novel set in Egypt in 1962.   The concept is, “A burned-out CIA agent in Cairo stumbles home one night and finds dead body and a severed head sitting on his rear stoop.”   Obviously, who is the dead guy, why is he there, and who put him there?  What is our protagonist going to do about it?   I then populate the story with characters that are mostly out to stop him, to frustrate him, to create hurdles, or to kill him.  These include a top Egyptian police detective, the radical head of the Moslem Brotherhood, and his own Embassy and CIA people.

As they say, you stir vigorously and put in a 450-degree oven for 12-24 months, and hopefully you have a fully baked novel.  To see more about my books, take a look at my web site, http://billbrownwritesnovels.wordpress.com/

-Bill Brown

The Undertaker

The Undertaker
William F. Brown
322 pages
Publisher: the author
Source: the author
★★★☆☆



You can read the Goodreads summary here.

Peter Talbot is still reeling from his wife's untimely passing when he discovers someone reused his wife's obituary to cover up the death of someone else.  When he discovers several deceased couples' obituaries have been abused in the same way, he cannot let it rest and sets out to find out what's going on and set it right.

When the author contacted me to review his most recent novel, he told me to pull up a beach chair and enjoy.  Well, I sat inside in the air-conditioning (can you blame me, it's in the mid-90s!) but I still enjoyed it.  How could I not when it was a fast paced thriller I could actually understand!  Sometimes when I'm reading a book from this genre I find myself bogged down with details and characters that I don't actually care about, but The Undertaker moved so quickly without boring downtime and useless characters and details.

Aside from that, I also enjoyed that the story takes the readers all over the country as Pete tries to find out who used his wife's death for their own use.  The only real problem I has with the novel is that even though Pete forms a romantic relationship with a character named Sandy, I didn't feel any chemistry between the two as I read.

So yeah, in a nutshell I would recommend this to anyone looking for a thrilling, easy mystery to read on the beach.  Or your living room, if you prefer.

The Twilight Saga: The Official Illustrated Guide

The Twilight Saga: The Official Illustrated Guide
Stephenie Meyer
543 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown
Source: library
★★★☆☆



You can read the Goodreads summary here.

I'd never heard of the Twilight Saga until Eclipse has already been out.  It turned into this obsession for me; I bought Twilight, went back the next day for New Moon, and then again the next day for Eclipse.  Then I had an agonizing wait for Breaking Dawn.  My copies have literally travelled with me to other parts of the world and became irreparably water damaged on our way back to the states from Grand Bahama Island in 2010.  I'm not a twihard where all I read are Twilight books and other similar things, but I am a big fan.  While I don't worship Taylor Lautner's abs, I will admit he's a good looking dude.

So that was my position on Twilight when I picked up the Official Illustrated Guide from the library on Saturday.  I was super excited to read it, to learn some juicy tidbits and whatnot about the series, but in the end I was a little disappointed.  If you really know your Twilight stuff, you're not going to learn anything new by reading this.  I suppose it might be a handy reference guide to own if you're obsessed, but for me I'm fine with it going back to the library.

I skimmed a decent chunk of the biographies.  They were tedious to read.  I could have done without the fan artwork, but that's no big deal.  It wasn't all gloom and doom, though, I promise!  I was happy as a clam to read deleted scenes from the novels and found the interview at the beginning of the book to be enlightening.  The illustrations were awesome, too, as were the international covers.  In the FAQ section, I finally got an (albeit awkward) answer to what happens to Edward when Bella is on her period.  "The blood from a woman's period isn't the same as a cut; it's not freshly oxygenated, not flowing from the heart." (p.541) I call BS, blood is blood, but it's fiction, so I can let it go.

I would recommend this for every Twihard out there, for sure.  If you're a fair-weather fan, you can skim it at your local library.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove

The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove
Lauren Kate
235 pages
Publisher: Razorbill
Source: Kroger impulse buy
★★★★☆



You can read the Goodreads summary here.

This was a seriously twisted story.  Natalie Hargrove is the most popular girl at her school and is practically a shoe-in for Palmetto Princess (aka prom queen).  As she and her longtime boyfriend Mike prepare to become high school royalty, something goes terribly, terribly wrong and Natalie flounders to fix it.

Natalie is a deplorable character; she's selfish to the core, but that's what drew me into the story.  When something goes wrong of Natalie, she doesn't fess up and move on, she tries to fix an wrong with another wrong.  It's like a train wreck you can't tear your eyes from.  Lauren Kate indicated at the end of the novel that what happens to Natalie is fate, but I like to think of it more as karma.  I really can't give more away than that.

One other thing that drew me in was that book took place in the South and the community that Natalie lives in has a right and wrong side of the tracks.  I also enjoyed reading about these high-schoolers' and their social lives - the high school I went to certainly wasn't like that.  (Or, if it was, I obviously was never invited to those parties!)

This book gets four stars.  It was a twisted, delicious read for my Sunday afternoon, but I would have liked to have seen Natalie's relationship with her parents fleshed out more.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

The Crazy Things Girls Do for Love

The Crazy Things Girls Do for Love
Dyan Sheldon
352 pages
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Source: NetGalley.com
★★★☆☆



You can read the Goodreads summary here.

When new student Cody Lightfoot shows up at school the girls are all a twitter.  He's the hottest thing to grace the school's hallways and they all want a chance to be with him.  When it turns out Cody is an environmentalist and joins the "loser" Environmental Club, the girls join with him and begin trying to out-green and out-vegan each other in the hopes of winning his heart.

The author, Dyan Sheldon, wrote this book in the present tense, which really puts the author right in the action.  I thought the chapters were cleverly written and I especially enjoyed the clever and descriptive chapter titles such as "Sicilee doesn't understand it when things don't go the way she wants," and "Sicilee isn't the only one who is unhappy about being ignored," followed by "Waneeda, at least, is used to being ignored."  I enjoyed Sheldon's main characters overall because they were all so different.

It was cute and made me giggle at times but it wasn't amazing.  The title seems a little off, too.  I get what the author was going for, but "going green" isn't really that crazy, even if you do it just to get a guy's attention.  I would recommend this book to a tween looking for a fun read, especially since the ending was so positive.

On a side note, how adorable is that cover?  I love it.

The Crazy Things Girls Do for Love will be released this coming December.

J.K. Rowling Announcement

... so in six days there's going to be an announcement from J.K. Rowling about something or another.  I can't embed this video in my blog, but if you follow this link you can see the owl-y countdown.



I have a hunch of what it might be, but leave me a comment... what do you think it is?

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Room

Room
Emma Donoghue
321 pages
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Source: Target
★★★★☆


You can read the Goodreads summary here.

Jack was born in Room and has never left.  When he turns five Ma finally tells him that there's more to the world than Room and the TV and, after seven years of her captivity, comes up with a plan to escape.

This was a pretty powerful book, told from a unique point of view - that of five year old Jack.  It took some getting used to reading Jack's vernacular, but I think that added to the story.  What was a heinous crime to Ma and the rest of the world was just a way of life to Jack and when he finally saw the outside world, he was overwhelmed.  The great part of this novel is we get to see it all like he saw it.  I'm glad Donoghue decided to tell the story from Jack's point of view, I think it made the story something special and not just another crime novel.  

I also enjoyed the character of Ma.  She easily could have been portrayed as a perfect hero in the novel, but I was actually glad to see her written with flaws, especially towards the end of the book when we got to see her more as a human being than as Ma.

Overall I really enjoyed this book and I'm glad to have finally experienced it.  I didn't feel like I was just reading it, I felt like I was experiencing it because of all the emotions it provoked. 


Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Legacy

Legacy
Cayla Kluver
488 pages
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Source: NetGalley.com
★★★☆☆



You can read the Goodreads summary here.

Princess Alera lives in medieval times and her seventeenth birthday is rapidly approaching, which is also the time she must choose a suitor and marry.  Whomever she picks will be the next king and her father wants her to marry Steldor.  Steldor is self-absored and cocky and Alera is not interested in him.  She instead falls in love with Narian, who was captured by the enemy when he was a baby and has only recently returned to learn about his roots.

I didn't love this book, but I did like it a little bit.  Yes, I'm waffling over it.  I didn't love it because I had some problems with it.  First, it was almost five hundred pages of very detailed prose (right down to what they ate at several different meals and feasts) and that made it quite boring at points.  Second, and what bothered me the most, was the character of Alrea.  She was raised in a kingdom where women have no purpose but to plan parties.  Early on the in the book Alera admits that she should learn to fight, but as soon as her family puts a stop to her lessons she's done.  She doesn't argue about or sneak lessons in.  When battles start occurring in her kingdom, she doesn't sneak off to at least see them, if not heroically partake.  SPOILER ALERT: What's worse is that she married the man she did not love because her father told her to.  I was waiting for her to call it off in the end, but the book ends after the wedding.  She was a female that did what was told of her in a time when women were repressed.

If you like the fantasy genre you'll probably like this book.  I've never been one for fantasy and thus found it a little boring, though not boring enough to put off reading it.  Since I obviously can't make up my mind, it gets three stars.

Legacy will be released June 28th.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Vibrational Passage

Vibrational Passage
Jennifer Dustow & Kimberly Miyasaki Lee
Publisher: self-published by the authors
Source: the authors
★☆☆☆☆



You can read the Goodreads summary here.

This was the first time an author, or in this case, authors, had contacted me to review a book specifically for my blog.  The summary they gave me in the e-mail sounded outlandish, but I was so excited to have my first request that I went against my gut feeling to decline and accepted.  There's a reason people say to always go with your gut.

After I read the first chapter I was sorely confused.  I put it down for a couple days, read it again, and then decided that since it wasn't going to get any clearer to me, I was going to plow ahead and finish the book.  That was one of the first problems I had with Vibrational Passage: too many characters, too many organizations, and too many plot threads that made reading the book confusing on the whole.  I feel like a lot of the backstory was in the author's heads and was not put down on paper, leading to some of the confusion.  In contrast, other parts of the story had too much back story, which made me feel like I was reading a boring textbook at times.

My second problem was the plot itself.  Vibrational Passage is filled with 9/11 conspiracy theory.  Coincidentally, this is one of the reasons I read the first chapter twice; I couldn't decide if I should be offended or not.  This year is the tenth anniversary of 9/11 and quite frankly I think it's too early for such outlandish fiction to be written about it.  Perhaps others will disagree.  Additionally, I found it disgusting that some of the main characters almost hailed the Nazi's medical "research" done by their "doctors" at concentration camps and were trying to continue on with it.  At one point Peter says, "Please do not confused us with the Nazis... If we succeed... there would be compliance without wars or weapons or bloodshed." (p.196)  But one can be a Nazi without war, weapons, or bloodshed.  The whole thing gave me the willies.  This ties into Autism plot thread, wherein some characters were trying to do something (again, confusion) to control the minds of autistic children by using the methods of the Nazis.

Seriously?

Then there is the usual problems found too frequently self-published books.  It could have used a once over by a couple editors.  Too many commas, misspelled words, misused words etc..  For example, the world is not on an "access," it's on an "axis."  I see that they have published this book as paperback as well.  I hope it didn't go to print as it was in the ebook.


Finally, though this did not affect my rating, I didn't care for the fact that the authors had rated their own book on Goodreads.  Their ratings have since been taken down but one of the author's ratings is still on the book's Smashwords page.  This doesn't sit right with me. 

PS: The fact that this book was provided free to me by the authors also did not affect my rating.  Clearly.

Friday, June 10, 2011

Still Alice

Still Alice
Lisa Genova
293 pages
Publisher: Pocketbooks
Source: PaperBackSwap.com
★★★★★



You can read the Goodreads summary here.

Alice Howland is a popular professor at Harvard, has three great children, and a loving husband.  When she starts forgetting things she at first blames it on menopause, but then then gets a scary diagnosis - Early Onset Alzheimer's Disease.  The book follows her progress with the disease.

This book was so many things.  Mainly it was depressing, but it was also eye-opening and beautiful.  The way the author was able to tell Alice's story was great in that it drew me in and I felt a bit of what Alice felt.  In the beginning I felt scared for her and the way the author presented the ending, I also felt a little lost like Alice did.  I don't really know what else to say except that this was an amazing novel and I think everyone should read it.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Butterfly

Butterfly
Jodi Bullock
251 pages
Publisher: Jodi Bullock
Source:  Goodreads First Reads giveaway
★★★☆☆



You can read the Goodreads summary here.

When Brooke's family moves next door to the crazy lady in town, she's at first a little wary.  But soon a friendship strikes up between the two and Brooke learns the truth - she's a dream seer and now an apprentice to Miss Cee Cee.  But when Miss Cee Cee and some of her colleagues are sucked into a bad place, can she and her seer friend Blaze save them all?

The first thing that struck my about this novel were the short sentences.  As I read I felt this book might have been geared more towards the middle grade reader as opposed to the YA reader.  The story also seemed to start out slow, but about halfway through I started getting hooked.  The book redeemed itself by the end because of the imagery.  The storyline might have been basic, but I thought the author did a fantastic job with the imagery in the dream sequence at the end of the book.  I could actually picture the things she was describing and it looked just like a horror movie!  I don't do horror movies and I'm seriously hoping I don't have nightmares tonight.

The book gets three stars because, while it was a great plot idea and the imagery was great, the story felt a little basic and the characters were a little flat.  There were also some technical issues like misplaced quotations marks and I didn't care for the formatting, but I was thrilled to finally read a self-published book that wasn't riddled with spelling or grammatical errors.  Ms. Bullock gets huge props for that.  In the end, I enjoyed the story.

PS: Winning this book and receiving a free copy did not affect my review.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

What Happened to Goodbye

What Happened to Goodbye
Sarah Dessen
402 pages
Publisher: Viking
Source: Kroger impulse buy
★★★★☆



You can read the Goodreads summary here.

Every time she moves, which has been four times in the past two years, Mclean Sweet changes her name and persona.  But after moving so much, she doesn't know who she is anymore.  Still struggling with her parents divorce and trying to fit in in a new community, she finds herself wondering, who is the real Mclean?

What Happened to Goodbye is Sarah Dessen's latest novel.  I don't know what it is about Sarah Dessen's books!  They aren't exactly amazing and maybe a little bit cliched, but I absolutely love them!  Maybe it's because they're so realistic.  The dialogue is realistic, the characters are realistic, and the situations are realistic.  Her books just have that something that have me coming back for more, so much so that I couldn't just wait for my library to finally purchase a copy and I certainly wasn't going to wait through over one hundred people on PaperBackSwap and who knows how many years to get my hands on a copy.  So when Kroger had it for for 30% off, I said "To hell with it, I'm just going to buy it!"

I loved this novel and I kept waiting for Mclean and Dave to get together.  I was also hoping all along that something would finally become stable in Mclean's life and was truly happy for her when she found herself in the end.

American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson

American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson
Joseph J. Ellis
368 pages (421 with notes)
Publisher: Vintage
Source: PaperBackSwap.com
★★★★☆



You can read the Goodreads summary here.

After reading John Adams at over seven hundred pages, I decided I needed a shorter biography for Thomas Jefferson and I thought 368 pages was a reasonable length to tell the story of his life without being verbose.  I was right, but it still took me two weeks to get through it.  Anyway, compared to McCullough's John Adams I loved this book so, so much more.  There was some overlap as can be expected, but I liked how Ellis presented facts as facts and theories and theories without superfluous storytelling.  For example, in John Adams McCullough tells us a fancy tale about Jefferson jumping a bush or a statue in France and breaking his wrist in an attempt to impressive a French lady.  In American Sphinx Ellis tells us this is all speculation, there is no proof that this is true.  I'm more inclined to believe Ellis.

I think I most enjoyed the appendix where Ellis explained the controversy about Jefferson and Sally Hemings.  So many people just assume that their affair happened and that there are who knows how many descendants floating around the country.  I for one have always been a little way of that.  There is no way to prove that these "descendants" are in fact descendants without DNA testing, which is not going to happen.  Ellis presents both sides of the story in his appendix and concludes that more likely than not the affair never happened and the "descendants" belong to Sally Hemings and some other man.

On the whole I thought the book was very well done.  It presented an unbiased look at Jefferson's life in major stages from his time in Philadelphia during the revolution, him time in France, his time as President, and his time after that.

Monday, June 6, 2011

The Creed Legacy

The Creed Legacy
Linda Lael Miller
377 pages
Publisher: Harlequin
Source: NetGalley.com
★★★★☆



You can read the Goodreads summary here.

This was the first book I've read by Linda Lael Miller and thus the first Creed novel I've read, though I've heard lots of good things about the in the past.  I was glad once I started reading and realized that I didn't need to have read the other books to understand the plot of this one.

Brody has returned to "Creed Country" in Lonesome Bend after a haunting past and the reason he left in the first place that he's kept secret. Meanwhile, Carolyn is looking for Mr. Right after Brody broke her heart eight years ago.  The Creed family seems to think they both belong together, but Carolyn isn't so sure, so she joins a dating site to try and find some other options.

Well, I love me some cowboys so it only stood to reason that I would enjoy this novel.  The plot was traditional but had good twists in both Brody and Carolyn's past, which made their characters deep and believable.  I also enjoyed some of the minor characters, in particular Winston.  I thought the big date Brody planned for Carolyn was one of the more romantic schemes I've read in a romance novel, that is until it went wrong.

The only thing I didn't like in the book was the "gypsy skirt."  I had to Google what that was after it was mentioned a few times and when the author suggested it was too fancy for something other than a coronation at Buckingham Palace I had to laugh.  The Googled images I pulled up were not appropriate for a coronation, and certainly not too fancy for a movie date like the author implied.  I didn't care for the way it was described either, "It was composed of what seemed to be hundreds of ribbons and beads, and it swayed and shifted around her like a puff of glittering smoke, or shards of glass in a kaleidoscope." (p. 315).  I don't even know what that means, but it doesn't sound attractive for a skirt.

Iffy fashion aside, including lots of black jeans, this was a good romance novel.  I definitely enjoyed it and I won't hesitate to read anything by Miller in the future.  The Creed Legacy will be published June 28th.

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Delirium

Delirium
Lauren Oliver
441 pages
Publisher: HarperTeen
Source: library
★★★★★



You can read the Goodreads summary here.

It's the future and scientists have finally discovered that love isn't a good thing, it's a disease that needs to be cured.  So every person on or near their eighteen birthday undergoes the cure for love to prevent them from catching the disease.  Lena is just a few months away from her surgery and she's excited to get it, until she falls in love with a young man from the resistance.  Now she must decide - continue on with her planned future, or join the resistance, her boyfriend, and her mother's legacy and fight it.

This book was amazing.  I loved every minute because there wasn't a dull moment.  If I wasn't quickly turning pages to find out how a chase would end, I was quickly turning pages to see how Lena and Alex's romance progressed.  Aside from the clever plot, the characters themselves were something to read for.  They were deep and had distinct personalities.  I was rooting for Lena through to the last page and I even had an affection for Hana who sadly didn't have the courage to resist even though she knew it was the right thing to do.  Their friendship was beautiful and it was sad to see it end and even sadder that it would have had to end no matter what Leno chose.

I give Delirium five stars because there is no reason not to.  It was a spectacular book to read - now go get yourself a copy!

#yasaves



As you probably have seen by now, the entire YA community is in an uproar over an op-ed piece some idiot (Meghan Cox Gurdon) wrote for the Wall Street Journal yesterday.  Here the link if you want to read the insanity yourself.


And here's my problem with Gurdon's piece: she's wrong.  Here's a quote from her article that basically sums up her entire opinion, "If books show us the world, teen fiction can be like a hall of fun-house mirrors, constantly reflecting back hideously distorted portrayals of what life is. There are of course exceptions, but a careless young reader—or one who seeks out depravity—will find himself surrounded by images not of joy or beauty but of damage, brutality and losses of the most horrendous kinds."


"...reflecting back hideously distorted portrayals of what life is."  Not true.  For one, these books she's discussing are fiction and as such have a right to distort things... because they are fiction.  By definition fiction is meant to describe imaginary events and people, so if the YA books she's read (and she damn well better have read every single book she attacks) don't seem like an accurate portrayal of life, it doesn't matter.  They needn't be because they are fiction.  


But what's more, some of these YA books do represent what life is.  She attacks books that include swearing and self-mutilation.  Teenagers swear every day.  Every day at school.  Let's put Ms. Gurdon in a high school lunchroom and watch her implode over the language.  Self-mutilation happens, too.  Teenagers get depressed and it's a part of growing up.  Some deal with it better than others.  She didn't mention it by name, but she would probably be appalled by Jay Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why, a book that every young woman can identify with in some way.  I could quote you a bunch of stats on self-mutilation and suicide, but we all know it happens and it happens to more children than we would car to admit.  If just one of these depressed youth read a book or two, realized they weren't alone, and decided to keep their life then #yasaves.  I don't doubt it's happened; there are examples all over Twitter today under the hash tag #yasaves.


She goes on to say, "a careless young reader...will find himself surrounded by images not of joy or beauty but of damage, brutality and losses of the most horrendous kinds."  Young readers don't need to read a book to find this.  Teenagers get molested and raped.  They get bullied because the look different, because they're gay, or just because.  They get depressed and cut themselves.  They shoot up schools and one another.  This is reality, not a "distorted portrayal of what life is."  Ms. Gurdon, stop living under a rock.


She later writes, "Yet it is also possible—indeed, likely—that books focusing on pathologies help normalize them and, in the case of self-harm, may even spread their plausibility and likelihood to young people who might otherwise never have imagined such extreme measures."  No ma'am.  For the average Joe and Jane in high school, this cannot be true.  They are not unaware of self-mutilation and certainly reading about it will not make them cut themselves if they haven't already.  None of them reads a book about suicide and then suddenly thinks it's a good idea just because they read it in a book.  These things are serious issues youth think about and one who commits suicide has thought about it at length.  It's not a spur of the moment decision based on the reading of a YA novel.  On the same token, reading about a murderer doesn't make one a murderer.  Where have I heard that before?  Oh yes, Ms. Gurdon writes this in the same article, "Reading about homicide doesn't turn a man into a murderer; reading about cheating on exams won't make a kid break the honor code."  Stop contradicting yourself, Ms. Gurdon!


I want to remind Ms. Gurdon that bad situations do not a bad book make.  Just because a book contains violence and swearing does not mean it's not worth reading.  We cannot shelter our youth from real life situations by censoring their reading.  If we did that we would also have to censor the television, newspapers, Internet, and their own conversations at school.  And that's a world that would fit right in with the books Ms. Gurdon doesn't want us to read.


There's more I could say, but I'm tired of dealing with this woman.  I'm hungry and I'm going to get some lunch, and then I'm going to read a YA novel where love is a bad thing and society tries to eradicate it.  Ms. Gurdon would hate that book, too.


*PS: That graph is not mine, but I'm sure whoever created it wouldn't mind my borrowing it. 

Saturday, June 4, 2011

The Strange Case of Finley Jane

The Strange Case of Finley Jane
Kady Cross
77 pages
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Source: Free NookBook!
★★★★★



You can read the Goodreads summary here.

So I wish I had known about this prequel before I read The Girl in the Steel Corset.  Even having read it backwards, though, it turned out to be a really good piece of writing.  It's free for Nook and Kindle and it would be a great way to learn more about Finley Jayne before you start TGITSC.  I'd say if you were on the fence about reading TGITSC it would be a great way for you to discover more about the author's writing style, but trust me, you want to read TGITSC.

The Girl in the Steel Corset

The Girl in the Steel Corset
Kady Cross
477 pages
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Source: NetGalley.com
★★★★★



You can read the Goodreads summary here.

I'd never read a steampunk novel before this one and I didn't know if I would like it.  When I was planning my wedding I came across brides who were planning steampunk weddings and I thought that was the strangest thing ever.  Luckily for me, steampunk novels turned out to be a good thing.

Because of the experiments her father conducted while he was still alive, Finley was born with something extra - a darker side that she has a hard time controlling, turning her into a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde character.  When she runs away from her former employer, she finds herself living with a ragtag group of friends who are determined to stop the plot of The Machinist to remove the current Queen Victoria from power and replace her with something more sinister.

I loved this book!  The plot was exciting and unique and the characters were very distinct as well.  I couldn't help but love each of them in their own way.  I thoroughly enjoyed the mixture of Victorian era dress and mannerisms mixed with futuristic inventions and science.  Despite the fact that this was the first book in a series, it didn't end in a huge cliffhanger, which you know I prefer.  There was definitely a bit of an open end for the next novel, but it didn't feel like the story stopped midway.  I will definitely be picking up the second book in this series when it comes out, presumably next year sometime.

Why is it that Harlequin romances are so mediocre, but their Harlequin Teen line is so awesome?  This book got five stars from me and, even though I haven't read it yet, I've heard really good things about The Goddess Test.  Harlequin needs to do for its romances what its done for its YA line.

Friday, June 3, 2011

The Halo Chronicles: The Guaridan

The Halo Chronicles: The Guardian
Carey Corp
239 pages
Publisher: Carey Corp
Source:  bn.com
★★★☆☆



You can read the Goodreads summary here.

I don't actively search self-published works.  I'm trying to get over that prejudice and I actually have a couple self-published books in the queue.  If it lands my lap, I'll read it.  Still, I heard some buzz about this book and actually bought it for my Nook for $2.99.  I heard it was really, really good so I thought, "Yes, I'll give this one a try!"

So here's what happened: when I started the book I was rolling my eyes a bit.  The sanguine language of yet another angsty, paranormal YA novel.  But the next day when I continued I felt like it got better.  A lot better.  By halfway through I was planning on giving it four stars!  Then last night I finished the novel and I shut off my Nook, lay down in bed, and I couldn't figure out what to rate the book.  It went from "meh" to "great" and then it ended and I realized... nothing had happened!

High schooler Alexia can see other people's halos.  If they're evil their halos are black and she gets stomach cramps looking at them, but if they're yellow or gold the person is a good person and Alex can stomach being around them.  Alexia is a foster child and she's just trying to get through to eighteen, though I don't know why because she'll still see halos after her birthday.  Then suddenly a guardian angel is thrust into her life.  They fall in love.  Some side-plot stuff happens and we find out her guardian angel is only there to save her life.

Apparently "The Gift of the Saints" has been bestowed about Alex, but by the time the book ends the reader doesn't really know what that means.  Supposedly we'll find out in the second novel so maybe that book will have more of a point.  If I remember to look for it, I'll probably buy it to find out what happens.  And I should say, despite the lack of interesting plot, the book was very well written and the characters were enjoyable.  Three stars!

PS:  Why is Justin Bieber on the cover of this book with badly photoshopped hair?

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Flowerbed of State

Flowerbed of State
Dorothy St. James
312 pages
Publisher: Berkley
Source: Tall Tales Book Shop
★★★★☆



You can read the Goodreads summary here.

I checked out a new (to me) bookshop last night and picked up a copy of Flowerbed of State, which has been on my wishlist for about a week.  It's Dorothy St. James' first cozy mystery and I found the setting to be pretty unique for a cozy... no bookstore or bakery here, it takes place at the White House!  Casey is enjoying her job as the new assistant gardener to the White House when one day she wakes up in a flower bed after an attempted strangling.  The discovery of a strangled dead body nearby puts the Secret Service and FBI on high alert to solve these crimes... and Casey, too.  Having read enough mysteries to "know better" she decided to launch a little investigation of her own.

The reason this book gets four instead of five stars from me is that I felt there were a few too many characters.  It was difficult in the beginning to keep them straight, but I caught on enough as I went.  I found the plot to be just as intriguing as the setting and I really enjoyed how the author included the POTUS and FLOTUS into the novel.  I would definitely recommend this novel for anyone looking for a new cozy to read.

An added bonus: there are instructions at the end of the novel for how to plant a pineapple top.  I might have to give that a try someday...

May Recap

This month I read 27 books.  We're five months done with the year (it's already sweltering here!) and I'm already just one book away from achieving my original reading goal.  I've read 99 books out of my 100 and I can't decide if I want to officially up my goal or just claim an early win.  Either way, here's the list of everything I read this past month whether I reviewed it here or not.

Miriam's Heart by Emma Miller
A Courtesan's Guide to Getting Your Man by Celeste Bradley
Teen Idol by Meg Cabot
Divine by Karen Kingsbury
Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin
Blue Bloods by Melissa Cruz
The Promise of an Angel by Ruth Reid
The Phantom of Pemberley by Regina Jeffers
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
The Host by Stephenie Meyer
Ape House by Sara Gruen
Someone Like You by Sarah Dessen
Wake by Lisa McMann
House of Secrets by Ramona Richards
Fade by Lisa McMann
Gone by Lisa McMann
JAG: The Novel by Robert Tine
Millie's Fling by Jill Mansell
Soft Apocalypse by Will McIntosh
Sloppy Firsts by Megan McCafferty
Honeymoon with the Rancher by Donna Alward
Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
Bookmarked For Death by Lorna Barrett
Irresistible Forces by Brenda Jackson
Calli by Jessica Lee Anderson
Daughter of Joy by Kathleen Morgan
Around the Bend / The Other Wife by Shirley Jump