Tag Archives: 2016 new release

Take A Peek Book Review: You Know Me Well by Nina LaCour and David Levithan

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“Take a Peek” book reviews are short and (possibly) sweet, keeping the commentary brief and providing a little peek at what the book’s about and what I thought.

You Know Me Well

Synopsis:

(via Goodreads)

Who knows you well? Your best friend? Your boyfriend or girlfriend? A stranger you meet on a crazy night? No one, really?

Mark and Kate have sat next to each other for an entire year, but have never spoken. For whatever reason, their paths outside of class have never crossed.

That is until Kate spots Mark miles away from home, out in the city for a wild, unexpected night. Kate is lost, having just run away from a chance to finally meet the girl she has been in love with from afar. Mark, meanwhile, is in love with his best friend Ryan, who may or may not feel the same way.

When Kate and Mark meet up, little do they know how important they will become to each other — and how, in a very short time, they will know each other better than any of the people who are supposed to know them more.

Told in alternating points of view by Nina LaCour, the award-winning author of Hold Still and The Disenchantments, and David Levithan, the best-selling author of Every Day and co-author of Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (with Rachel Cohn) and Will Grayson, Will Grayson (with John Green), You Know Me Well is a deeply honest story about navigating the joys and heartaches of first love, one truth at a time.

 

My Thoughts:

This YA novel about connection and identity has a sincerity to it that is so loud and clear that it threatens to overshadow the story itself. The intentions are great, but I felt as though the plot itself was a bit flimsy.

The characters in You Know Me Well are all searching for their own truths, each on the way to becoming a more authentic version of themselves. The storyline takes place during Pride Week in San Francisco. Mark has been out for years, and is secretly in love with his best friend, while Kate finally has a chance to meet the girl she’s dreamed about from a distance. And after years of going to school together but never actually interacting, Mark and Kate connect and form an instant and deep friendship, finding in each other a kindred spirit, someone with whom they can be honest and reveal their inner worries, fears, hopes, and insecurities.

The action takes place over the course of an eventful week, in which friendships are made and broken and love is both found and lost. The condensed timeline keeps the story moving along, but I had some little doubts in my mind about the suddenness of Kate and Mark’s friendship and the complete trust that they establish in seemingly no time at all.

You Know Me Well is written in alternating chapters, as the authors take turns presenting Kate’s and Mark’s points of view. It’s an effective technique, as we get to know the two characters both as they see themselves and as they see each other. Readers of David Levithan’s earlier works will be familiar with this approach, which he’s used with other co-writers in books such as Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares and Will Grayson, Will Grayson, among others.

David Levithan is an amazing writer, and once again we see his beautiful language at play in conveying the inner landscape of young adults on the verge of becoming who they’re meant to be. There’s a nice little homage to his recent novel Two Boys Kissing (review), which is one of the loveliest young adult books I’ve ever read.

You Know Me Well has a lot going for it, and it’s a quick and touching read, but ultimately I felt as though the messaging about positive identity and acceptance was more overt and heavy-handed than it needed to be. Then again, I’m an adult reading the book, and not truly the target audience. I imagine that reading You Know Me Well could be a profoundly important experience for a teen, gay or straight or anywhere along the rainbow, who’s trying to establish a strong self and figure out their place in the world.

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The details:

Title: You Know Me Well
Author: Nina LaCour and David Levithan
Publisher: St Martin’s Griffin
Publication date: June 7, 2016
Length: 256 pages
Genre: Young adult
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley

Book Review: Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel

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sleeping giantsSynopsis:

(via Goodreads)

A girl named Rose is riding her new bike near her home in Deadwood, South Dakota, when she falls through the earth. She wakes up at the bottom of a square hole, its walls glowing with intricate carvings. But the firemen who come to save her peer down upon something even stranger: a little girl in the palm of a giant metal hand.

Seventeen years later, the mystery of the bizarre artifact remains unsolved—its origins, architects, and purpose unknown. Its carbon dating defies belief; military reports are redacted; theories are floated, then rejected.

But some can never stop searching for answers.

Rose Franklin is now a highly trained physicist leading a top secret team to crack the hand’s code. And along with her colleagues, she is being interviewed by a nameless interrogator whose power and purview are as enigmatic as the provenance of the relic. What’s clear is that Rose and her compatriots are on the edge of unraveling history’s most perplexing discovery—and figuring out what it portends for humanity. But once the pieces of the puzzle are in place, will the result prove to be an instrument of lasting peace or a weapon of mass destruction?

My thoughts:

Sleeping Giants is so weird… and I loved it.

The entire story is told through transcripts, a series of interviews and journal entries that, once pieced together, tell the story of a world-changing discovery and the lengths one man in particular will go to see the project through to completion.

While there are a handful of recurring central characters — Kara, the gutsy helicopter pilot, Vincent, a linguist, Dr. Franklin, the project leader — the main character is really the unnamed person conducting the interviews. He (I’m pretty sure it’s a he) sets the wheels in motion for the entire project, and has a cold, logical approach that seems brutal at first, although over time we can also see his brilliance and his absolute mastery of manipulation, even on a global scale.

The hand initially discovered is only one piece of an artifact that will, over the ensuing years, be pursued and retrieved all across the world — even if that involves entering foreign air space and initiating near-catastrophic political and military actions. The reasons for the seemingly blind pursuit of the objects become clearer over time, as the true implications of the discovery and what it means for humanity as a whole are revealed bit by bit. Meanwhile, there’s non-stop action as the tension builds and builds.

Sleeping Giants is really a geeky delight. For people into science stories, this is a good one. It involves decoding never-before-seen language and technology and recreating a device without knowing what its purpose is. For those who enjoy action and thrills, there are plenty, including military expeditions and mad escapes. For those into medical thrillers, there are biological experiments and humans being subjected to all sorts of studies, willing or not.

On top of all that, the characters are just plain fun. Kara is especially terrific — and maybe it’s the combination of her name and being a pilot, but I couldn’t help picturing her as a modern-day version of Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica.

Sleeping Giants is already being developed as a movie, and I can easily imagine it being great. Meanwhile, the second book in the series, Waking Gods, is scheduled for publication in 2017 (and believe me, I can’t wait to see what happens next.)

You know when you read a library book, finish it, and then realize you need your own personal copy? That.

Sleeping Giants is a terrific read. Check it out!

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The details:

Title: Sleeping Giants
Author: Sylvain Neuvel
Publisher: Del Rey
Publication date: April 26, 2016
Length: 320 pages
Genre: Science fiction
Source: Library

Book Review: All Stories Are Love Stories by Elizabeth Percer

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all storiesSynopsis:

(via Goodreads)

In this thoughtful, mesmerizing tale with echoes of Station Eleven, the author of An Uncommon Education follows a group of survivors thrown together in the aftermath of two major earthquakes that strike San Francisco within an hour of each other—an achingly beautiful and lyrical novel about the power of nature, the resilience of the human spirit, and the enduring strength of love.

On Valentine’s Day, two major earthquakes strike San Francisco within the same hour, devastating the city and its primary entry points, sparking fires throughout, and leaving its residents without power, gas, or water.

Among the disparate survivors whose fates will become intertwined are Max, a man who began the day with birthday celebrations tinged with regret; Vashti, a young woman who has already buried three of the people she loved most . . . but cannot forget Max, the one man who got away; and Gene, a Stanford geologist who knows far too much about the terrifying earthquakes that have damaged this beautiful city and irrevocably changed the course of their lives.

As day turns to night and fires burn across the city, Max and Vashti—trapped beneath the rubble of the collapsed Nob Hill Masonic Auditorium—must confront each other and face the truth about their past, while Gene embarks on a frantic search through the realization of his worst nightmares to find his way back to his ailing lover and their home.

My thoughts:

All Stories Are Love Stories has some beautiful writing, but using the destruction of San Francisco to set the stage for an exploration of love, commitment, and abandonment might be a step too far.

The characters in this book have all suffered through childhoods characterized by loss, and all feel some sort of aching hole in their lives. Max and Vashti both yearn for what they’ve lost, despite building lives apart from one another. Gene and Franklin have a happy and loving relationship, but loss lurks around the corner, as Franklin has recently been diagnosed with MS and the resulting deterioration frightens Gene no end.

Much of the core of this novel is interior, as we live within the heads of the characters and witness their ruminations on how they’ve reached this particular moment in their lives.

And then disaster strikes. I was both horrified and fascinated by the depiction of the earthquakes and the utter destruction left in their wake, and yet we see so much of it strictly in terms of how it affects this particular group of people.

The comparison to Station Eleven in the synopsis is wishful thinking, in my opinion. Station Eleven was gorgeous and epic in scope, while maintaining the intimacy of personal experience. In All Stories Are Love Stories, we do get these intense personal stories, but somehow, it feels like the biggest stories are always happening off-screen.

The book does do a very good job of showing love in many different forms — between sisters, between lovers, between parent and child — and the risk one takes in loving. Is loving someone and sacrificing for them worthwhile, even when it ultimately must end in grief?

If anything, All Stories Are Love Stories seems to reinforce the sentiment: “‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” In the sense that this book can also be described as a love letter to San Francisco (a very over-used phrase, but it really applies here), the quote works as well. Despite its geological faults and its sociological flaws, there’s something unique and magical about San Francisco — enough so that people continue to rebuild the city every time it gets knocked down. For San Francisco, and for its people, it’s the loving that matters most, not the loss.

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The details:

Title: All Stories Are Love Stories
Author: Elizabeth Percer
Publisher: Harper
Publication date: March 22, 2016
Length: 350 pages
Genre: Adult fiction
Source: Library

Take A Peek Book Review: At the Edge of Summer by Jessica Brockmole

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“Take a Peek” book reviews are short and (possibly) sweet, keeping the commentary brief and providing a little peek at what the book’s about and what I thought.

At the Edge of Summer

Synopsis:

(via Goodreads)

Luc Crépet is accustomed to his mother’s bringing wounded creatures to their idyllic château in the French countryside, where healing comes naturally amid the lush wildflowers and crumbling stone walls. Yet his maman’s newest project is the most surprising: a fifteen-year-old Scottish girl grieving over her parents’ fate. A curious child with an artistic soul, Clare Ross finds solace in her connection to Luc, and she in turn inspires him in ways he never thought possible. Then, just as suddenly as Clare arrives, she is gone, whisked away by her grandfather to the farthest reaches of the globe. Devastated by her departure, Luc begins to write letters to Clare—and, even as she moves from Portugal to Africa and beyond, the memory of the summer they shared keeps her grounded.

Years later, in the wake of World War I, Clare, now an artist, returns to France to help create facial prostheses for wounded soldiers. One of the wary veterans who comes to the studio seems familiar, and as his mask takes shape beneath her fingers, she recognizes Luc. But is this soldier, made bitter by battle and betrayal, the same boy who once wrote her wistful letters from Paris? After war and so many years apart, can Clare and Luc recapture how they felt at the edge of that long-ago summer?

Bringing to life two unforgettable characters and the rich historical period they inhabit, Jessica Brockmole shows how love and forgiveness can redeem us.

 

My Thoughts:

The synopsis pretty much covers it all. At the Edge of Summer is a book about two people who meet one summer, a 15-year-old orphaned girl and a 19-year-old college student. They form a strong bond and help each other discover crucial aspects of themselves, then spend years apart, separated first by geography and then by war.

The story should have been much more moving than I found it. I simply didn’t connect with the characters in the first section of the book, during their early summer together, so I never really invested in their connection or their relationship. Clare’s artistic aspirations didn’t resonate with me, and I couldn’t envision her as a real person.

Luc is much more sympathetic, and the portions of the story about his wartime experiences are quite sad to read. Still, something about this book just left me cold.

I was interested to see the depiction of the real-life studio in Paris that specialized in masks for men disfigured during the war. I’ve encountered versions of this story before, most recently in a short story in the Fall of Poppies collection (to which Jessica Brockmole contributed a terrific story, by the way). The studio really existed, and its real-life founder, Anna Coleman Ladd, is included in this novel as well.

Stories of the First World War and the horrific experiences of the soldiers, on the battlefields, in the trenches, and upon their return to society, are always moving and startling to read about. Somehow, though, At the Edge of Summer failed to fully engage my emotions. I consider it a decent novel, but wouldn’t go farther than saying that it was a fine read and I don’t regret the time spent on it.

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The details:

Title: At The Edge of Summer
Author: Jessica Brockmole
Publisher: Ballantine
Publication date: May 17, 2016
Length: 336 pages
Genre: Historical fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley

Book Review: The Fireman by Joe Hill

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The FiremanAll the stars. This book deserves all the stars. For a 700+ page book, it sure goes down like candy. I raced through it, and now I’m mad that I’m done, because I want to spend more time in the story!

So yes, I guess you’ve figured out up front that this is a rave review. No big surprise: This is Joe Hill’s 4th novel, and it’s the 4th Joe Hill novel that I’ve loved.

I associate Joe Hill with scary-ass horror, but surprisingly, I wouldn’t call The Fireman a horror story at all. What it is, exactly, is a bit harder to put my finger on, but if I had to come up with a description, I’d say that The Fireman is a post-apocalyptic love story, with crazed dystopian power struggles and hypnotic religious leaders and dangerous cults. And that’s just scratching the surface.

Main character Harper Willowes is a nurse, of the best spit-spot Mary Poppins ilk. She entertains school children with her no-nonsense cheeriness, while helping the medicine go down with a spoonful of sugar. As the story opens, Harper is treating a young boy in the school nurse’s office when she sees a man burn to death out in the yard.

Why did the man burn to death? Because there’s a worldwide pandemic just starting to erupt. Originally seen as a third world problem, the spread of Draco incendia trychophyton — Dragonscale — quickly grabs first-world attention when it starts showing up in cities across the US and other so-called civilized countries.

Dragonscale victims first exhibit black streaks across their bodies, often quite beautiful and flecked with gold, before bursting into flames. Yes. Bursting into flames. Sufferers of Dragonscale are fated to self-combust after several weeks or months, and there’s nothing that can prevent it. Unfortunately, as people burst into flames, they tend to take buildings — schools, hospitals, neighborhoods, even the Space Needle — with them, and soon huge swathes of the country and the world are consumed by fire and ash.

Harper treats the infected while clothed in Ebola-level hazard-prevention attire, but still becomes infected herself, right after discovering she’s pregnant. And here’s where Harper’s husband goes a tad psycho, determined that they should kill themselves together rather than waiting for a fiery end. But Harper doesn’t want to, and Jakob’s insistence on their beautiful co-suicide turns ugly and violent, until Harper barely escapes with her life.

What she escapes to is a group of refugee people, all infected with Dragonscale, who live as a collective in hiding at an abandoned camp, where they learn to control the Dragonscale through their communal worship and connection. It’s cool, but quickly becomes a bit too group-think/hive-mind, as the kindly man overseeing the camp is succeeded by his more fanatical daughter.

Alrighty, I’ll stop with the synopsis. Either this is the type of story to absolutely grab you… or it’s just not for you.

I loved it. I think I’ve made that clear. Joe Hill sure can tell a story. The characters are so distinct and well-drawn. I could picture and hear them all as we went along. The Dragonscale pandemic is fascinating. I loved the origin of the disease and its explanation, the cause, the spreading mechanism, and the explanation of the way the group singing acts to control the combustion.

There’s a lot of humor in the writing itself and in the characters’ often quirky attitudes and sense of humor. I found it completely hilarious that Joe Hill kept throwing in little mentions of all the dead celebrities throughout the book. Imagine being one of them and finding out that you’d been fictionally killed off by a horrible infection! For example…

They were showing footage from last night’s Celtic game, just like nothing was happening. Isaiah Thomas rose up on his toes, fell backward, and let go of the basketball, hit a shot from nearly half court. They didn’t know it then, but by the end of the following week, the basketball season would be over. Come summer, most of the Celtics would be dead, by incineration or suicide.

Then Glenn Beck burned to death on his Internet program, right in front of his chalkboard, burned so hot his glasses fused to his face, and after that most of the news was less about who did it and more about how not to catch it.

The other guns went off, all together, firecrackers on a July night. Muzzles flashed, like paparazzi snapping shots of George Clooney as he climbed out of his limousine. Although George Clooney was dead, had burned to death while on a humanitarian aid mission to New York City.

There are more, but I won’t spoil the surprise (can I even call it fun?) of stumbling across these morbid pop cultural references. There’s even a little throw-away reference to Christmas-land — and that name alone should strike fear into the hearts of anyone who read Hill’s previous novel, NOS4A2.

The Fireman has several parts, focusing first on the end of the world as we know it via the deadly Dragonscale and its fires, then life at the camp and the new society that forms there, and then again in a quest for peace and refuge. Throughout, there are scenes of personal connection, touching and deeply felt, as well as intense and brutal action sequences that are insanely pulse-pounding.

This is a long book, but it flies by. I loved the characters, especially Nurse Harper and the titular Fireman, but also the orphaned children and the loving older woman who become part of Harper’s circle of protection, her new-found family.

The ending is stunning and satisfying, and yet I want more! So far, Joe Hill hasn’t shown a tendency to repeat himself or revisit worlds from earlier books, but damn, I wish there were more to this story. I want to know what happens next!

If you enjoy suspense, destruction, unusual and strong characters, and yes, even love stories, The Fireman is absolutely worth checking out.

Have you read The Fireman? Or have I convinced you to give it a try? I’d love to hear what you think!

For more on Joe Hill’s books, check out my reviews of:
Horns
NOS4A2

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The details:

Title: The Fireman
Author: Joe Hill
Publisher: William Morrow
Publication date: May 17, 2016
Length: 768 pages
Genre: Post-apocalyptic/horror/dystopian
Source: Purchased

Take A Peek Book Review: Rush Oh! by Shirley Barrett

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“Take a Peek” book reviews are short and (possibly) sweet, keeping the commentary brief and providing a little peek at what the book’s about and what I thought.

Rush Oh

Synopsis:

(via Goodreads)

An impassioned, charming, and hilarious debut novel about a young woman’s coming-of-age, during one of the harshest whaling seasons in the history of New South Wales.

1908: It’s the year that proves to be life-changing for our teenage narrator, Mary Davidson, tasked with providing support to her father’s boisterous whaling crews while caring for five brothers and sisters in the wake of their mother’s death. But when the handsome John Beck — a former Methodist preacher turned novice whaler with a mysterious past — arrives at the Davidson’s door pleading to join her father’s crews, suddenly Mary’s world is upended.

As her family struggles to survive the scarcity of whales and the vagaries of weather, and as she navigates sibling rivalries and an all-consuming first love for the newcomer John, nineteen-year-old Mary will soon discover a darker side to these men who hunt the seas, and the truth of her place among them.

Swinging from Mary’s own hopes and disappointments to the challenges that have beset her family’s whaling operation, RUSH OH! is an enchanting blend of fact and fiction that’s as much the story of its gutsy narrator’s coming-of-age as it is the celebration of an extraordinary episode in history.

 

My Thoughts:

If you’d asked me a few weeks ago whether I’d be interested in reading a book about whaling in Australia in the early 1900s, well… let’s just say the odds wouldn’t be in favor of a yes.

So I’m completely delighted to report that Rush Oh! is an awesome, funny, moving, and highly enjoyable read!

The historical elements are amazing, even more so after reading the author’s notes and discovering that the Davidsons were a real family, and that the snippets of breathless newspaper coverage about the whaling crews and their captain are all taken from the actual newspaper accounts of the time.

At times, Rush Oh! has an almost Austen-esque feel to it. Narrator Mary has a somewhat distorted view of her own talents and attractions, so her telling of the story is full of her own little oddities and self-flatteries. At the same time, she bears witness to her father’s fearless leadership and nobility — which comes through even in the most brutal moments of a whale hunt.

The whale hunts themselves are sometimes harrowing and sometimes humorous. The whaling crews of Twofold Bay are assisted by a pod of Killers (orcas), who corral the humpbacks and other whales that wander into the bay, acting with viciousness as well as playfulness, almost like water-dwelling sheepdogs. The Killers are looked on fondly by the townsfolk, each known by name and personality, and seem to have almost celebrity status. What’s really amazing is that these Killers really were a part of the history of Eden in New South Wales, just as described and with the names used in the novel — Tom, the leader, and his cohorts including Hooky, Humpy, and more.

Sounds weird, doesn’t it? But trust me — Rush Oh! is a pure delight to read. Mary’s narration is so funny and quirky, the story of the whaling crew is completely engaging, and the local customs and gossip really are straight out of a comedy of manners. I gobbled up this book in one day, but I think I’ll need to come back to it and savor it again more slowly.

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The details:

Title: Rush Oh!
Author: Shirley Barrett
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Publication date: March 22, 2016
Length: 368 pages
Genre: Fantasy/contemporary/adult
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley

Book Review: The Versions of Us by Laura Barnett

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Versions of Us

UK edition, published January 1, 2015

Are some people meant to be in our lives, no matter what?

In The Versions of Us, author Laura Barnett poses questions about fate and destiny, love and family, and what “meant to be” really means after all. In this amazingly clever and affecting debut novel, we see three versions of the same lives, and how simple decisions and chance encounters can lead to dramatically different outcomes.

In Version One, Eva and Jim meet at Cambridge as students hurrying across campus. An accidental tire puncture brings them together, and there’s an instant connection. But in Version Two, they don’t meet. Instead, Eva is involved with her boyfriend David, a ridiculously handsome theater student with a promising acting career about to take off. And in Version Three, Eva and Jim do meet and fall in love — but after their brief time together, Eva returns to David for practical reasons, and she and  Jim move off into separate orbits.

From here, we follow Eva and Jim through their increasingly complicated lives, together and apart. In one version, they marry and start a life together. In another, they have completely separate lives, but feel drawn together the one time they end up meeting. In another, they spend decades apart, yet never forget the brief love they shared.

Meanwhile, each version has its own expanding universe, with family, friends, lovers, children, careers successful and thwarted, and all the sorts of changes and opportunities that real life involves. Over the years, we see Eva and Jim experience pain, loss, and love; parenthood, betrayal, friendship, and more. The parallels and differences between the three versions are startling — artistic success in one is mirrored by lack of inspiration and progress in another, and a healthy marriage may find its twin in a marriage of distance and polite indifference.

Through it all, Eva and Jim have shining moments. Their characters remain true, wherever their paths take them. Various friends and relatives show up in all versions, although the people and places and meanings may change.

It’s really a remarkable feat that the author has achieved in The Versions of Us. It’s partly a puzzle, sorting out how small decisions result in huge variances between the versions of Eva and Jim’s lives. It’s also a study of the human heart. Eva and Jim are both dedicated to love, family, and responsibility, and try to do the right thing. The little changes early on from one version to the next result in larger disparities in the outcome of their lives, yet certain pieces remain constant no matter where they end up and no matter the version of their lives.

US edition, published May 3, 2016

US edition, published May 3, 2016

The Versions of Us is a unique approach to storytelling, proceeding in chronological order while showing three versions of the same people’s lives. The cover blurb describes the book as “One Day meets Sliding Doors“, and that’s fairly apt, as far as it goes. The Versions of Us also reminded me of Maybe In Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid (review), which I also loved.

It seems rare these days to find a love story that covers an entire life — and here, we see the course of love and devotion over three versions of the same lives. Over the span of 60 or so years, we follow Eva and Jim, seeing not just young, giddy first love, but the ups and downs of marriage, the stress of illness and loss on a relationship, the pressures of parenthood, and the impact of aging. This may make the book seem depressing, but it’s not. The overriding sentiment is one of hope and genuine heart. No matter the challenges, there’s a goodness and sense of caring that flow through all three versions of the story. Each version works out quite differently, but the true emotions and connections remain constant.

I did find it challenging, at times, to keep the details straight, as the chapters go from one version to another throughout the book. Names, number, and genders of children are all different from version to version; careers and spouses vary as well. Still, despite having to flip backward a few times to figure out which version of the story includes which details, it’s worth the effort to concentrate and keep track.

Sigh. I loved this book. I’m a romantic at heart, I guess. But here’s why I loved it — the romance isn’t treacly or all shooting stars and rainbows. And really, I suppose I should say that it’s about love — so many versions of love — rather than romance. It’s about love throughout a lifetime, and how it changes and grows and sometimes fades, but always leaves a mark. It’s about how our choices define our lives in so many big and small ways. And it’s about how the important people in our lives are so vital to us that it seems unimaginable to have a version of life without them.

Between the emotions, the terrific storytelling, and the unusual approach to the narrative, The Versions of Us is one of the most special reads I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing in quite a while. Don’t miss it.

Publication note: The Versions of Us was published in the UK last year, and was just released (with a shiny new cover) in the US this month.

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The details (US edition):

Title: The Versions of Us
Author: Laura Barnett
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication date: May 3, 2016
Length: 416 pages
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Purchased

Book Review: My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix

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My Best Friends ExorcismThis goofy, spooky, surprisingly touching novel by the author of the amazing Horrorstör (reviewed here; you know, the book that looks like an Ikea catalog!) hit just the right spot for me this week. It’s an entertaining, light read that also contains moments of horror, deeply icky things, and a descent into either madness or evil, depending on how you look at it.

The inside covers and pages at front and back mimic a high school yearbook, and it’s pretty hilarious. We see a combination of silly in-jokes, clueless teacher signatures, and even the standard, meaningless “have a great summer!”.

MBFE takes place in the 1980s, and takes full advantage of the music and clothing to create an air of nostalgia that’s fun and a bit cringe-worthy. E.T. posters and roller rinks and Merit Menthols abound. Kids worry about getting VD, and Geraldo Rivera airs an explosive exposé of satanism.

The best friends of the title are Abby and Gretchen. Abby is from a poor family, but her BFFs are part of the old-money Charleston elite. They attend a ritzy private school (Abby on scholarship), where the student handbook is the Bible. An upright life is expected, although money buys a certain amount of latitude for the more privileged students.

imageAbby and Gretchen have been best friends since fourth grade, and their closest circle includes two more rich girls, Margaret and Glee. They’re all spoiled and lazy (except Abby, who works non-stop to afford the things she can’t expect from her do-nothing parents), and one bored summer evening, something goes wrong. After taking an exploratory hit of acid (which does nothing for any of the girls), Gretchen decides to skinny deep in the river… and disappears into the woods, only to be found the next morning, naked, covered with mud, and offering no explanation for what’s happened.

imageThings get weird. Gretchen withdraws into herself. She stops bathing and changing her clothes. She shuts out her friends and begins to alienate everyone. Abby is the only one who refuses to be pushed away, but when she tried to get help for Gretchen, she ends up shunned herself. And things go from bad to worse, as the people around Gretchen begin to have weird and dangerous and scary developments in their lives.

Author Grady Hendrix nails the gross and disturbing bits, from disgusting smells to suicidal flocks of birds to horrible skin outbreaks. I suppose for teen girls, bad acne could be supposed to be demonic! But beneath the horror elements, there’s also a compelling story about friendship and devotion, and the lengths to which best friends will go to save one another.

The 80s vibe is pitch-perfect, with extra points for excellent use of the Go-Gos and Phil Collins lyrics.

image

I read My Best Friend’s Exorcism all in one day, and really just had a great time with it. The grosser, ickier moments are balanced out by Abby’s internal strength and resourcefulness, her dedication to saving Gretchen, and the spot-on depiction of high school cruelty and power plays. The Charleston setting is a nice plus too.

This is a horror spoof, and there’s plenty of humor, but really — take me seriously when I say that if you tend to be squeamish about things like tapeworms, cadaver labs, and horrible skin conditions, you might want to skip this one. But, if you enjoy the horror genre and don’t mind when things get squicky for the sake of a good story, check it out!

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The details:

Title: My Best Friend’s Exorcism
Author: Grady Hendrix
Publisher: Quirk Books
Publication date: May 17, 2016
Length: 336 pages
Genre: Horror
Source: Review copy courtesy of Quirk Books

Take A Peek Book Review: Roses and Rot by Kat Howard

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“Take a Peek” book reviews are short and (possibly) sweet, keeping the commentary brief and providing a little peek at what the book’s about and what I thought.

Roses and Rot

Synopsis:

(via Goodreads)

Imogen and her sister Marin have escaped their cruel mother to attend a prestigious artists’ retreat, but soon learn that living in a fairy tale requires sacrifices, be it art or love.

What would you sacrifice in the name of success? How much does an artist need to give up to create great art?

Imogen has grown up reading fairy tales about mothers who die and make way for cruel stepmothers. As a child, she used to lie in bed wishing that her life would become one of these tragic fairy tales because she couldn’t imagine how a stepmother could be worse than her mother now. As adults, Imogen and her sister Marin are accepted to an elite post-grad arts program—Imogen as a writer and Marin as a dancer. Soon enough, though, they realize that there’s more to the school than meets the eye. Imogen might be living in the fairy tale she’s dreamed about as a child, but it’s one that will pit her against Marin if she decides to escape her past to find her heart’s desire.

 

My Thoughts:

If a book has haunting imagery and some terrific passages, is that enough to get past a plot that doesn’t quite make sense? Perhaps not. In Roses and Rot, we follow two adult sisters who are accepted into an elite and mysterious artists’ retreat for a year. Imogen and Marin have lived apart for years, but their residency at Melete offers them a chance to both hone their art and mend their relationship.

Which all sounds terrific, but there’s more. The school borders Faerie, and the artists who achieve the stunning success that Melete is famous for do so at a cost. Imogen and Marin both want the guaranteed flourishing of talent that will come if they pay the price, but according to the twisted Fae rules, only one can be chosen.

Meanwhile, they and the other artists work and live in a dreamlike setting, with magical fairs popping up from time to time, when the borders between worlds become porous and the Fae walk freely among the humans across the campus.

Everyone seems to accept the existence of the Fae and the odd rules and opportunities without more than a blink of an eye. Imogen and Marin come to Melete with no knowledge of any of this, but they just fall right into it as if it were normal. Imogen has been fascinated by fairy tales her entire life, finding in them an escape from their horribly abusive mother, but it seems to me that it should have been a much bigger leap to accept the fantastic as real. The entire retreat, not to mention the lure of the Fae promises, makes even less sense for Marin, who already has a promising career in ballet just starting to take off when she enrolls in this voluntary seclusion for the year of her residency.

The story is kind of all over the place. I enjoyed the relationship between the sisters, and was moved (and horrified) by the memories of their mother’s incredible cruelty. The interplay between the artists’ success and the debt to Faerie just didn’t particularly work for me. There are pieces that made little or no sense, and some storylines that seem to drop in and then out again without much reason.

Overall, this is a book that includes some lovely writing, but the plot itself lost me somewhere along the way, and the characters seemed more like types than actual people. I just didn’t get swept up, and I think the success of the book as a whole depends on how much you can get lost in the atmosphere of the storytelling.

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The details:

Title: Roses and Rot
Author: Kat Howard
Publisher: Saga Press
Publication date: May 17, 2016
Length: 336 pages
Genre: Fantasy/contemporary/adult
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley

Book Review: Summer of Lost and Found by Rebecca Behrens

Posted in Book Reviews by

Summer of Lost and FoundSynopsis:

(via Goodreads)

Nell Dare expected to spend her summer vacation hanging out with her friends in New York City. That is, until her botanist mom dragged her all the way to Roanoke Island for a research trip. To make matters worse, her father suddenly and mysteriously leaves town, leaving no explanation or clues as to where he went—or why.

While Nell misses the city—and her dad—a ton, it doesn’t take long for her to become enthralled with the mysteries of Roanoke and its lost colony. And when Nell meets Ambrose—an equally curious historical reenactor—they start exploring for clues as to what really happened to the lost colonists. As Nell and Ambrose’s discoveries of tantalizing evidence mount, mysterious things begin to happen—like artifacts disappearing. And someone—or something—is keeping watch over their quest for answers.

It looks like Nell will get the adventurous summer she was hoping for, and she will discover secrets not only about Roanoke, but about herself.

My thoughts:

Such fun! This is a perfect summer book – particularly if you’re looking for something to tuck into a middle-grade reader’s suitcase on the way to a family vacation. I picture reading this one on a blanket on the beach, in between dips in the ocean, maybe while munching on watermelon slices…

Nell Dare is a terrific main character. She’s a city girl through and through, and can’t think of anything more perfect than spending the summer in Manhattan with her best friend. When her dad takes off and her mother forces her to spend time on a weird island to help with research about an old vine, things are definitely not going as planned.

Nell becomes enthralled by the mysteries of Roanoke Island, famous for its lost colonists — the early settlers in the late 1500s who disappeared without a trace, a mystery unsolved to this day. Nell makes a “frenemy” of another girl her age, Lila, who’s also determined to get to the bottom of the lost colony. The race is on! Nell pursues clues with the help of a charming but slightly odd boy, learning her way around the island — but also learning how to get along without subways or taxis, enjoying the forests and dunes and learning the fine art of traveling by bicycle.

There’s a lot of heart in the story, as Nell’s summer is spent worrying about her father’s disappearance and what it means. Neither parent will tell her straight out, so Nell is left to guess and feel bad. She worries too that her best friend back in New York will replace her while she’s gone, and the speed at which texts are answered become talismans for the state of their friendship.

Finally, Nell learns a lot about finding a direction and charting her own path, asking for answers, and sticking things out.

But that’s true, right? Sometimes it’s the places we think we know the best that hold the most secrets: our streets, our backyards, and even our homes.

Nell’s summer adventure, investigating the mysteries of Roanoke, ultimately allows her to find out more about herself and her family. Along the way, she explores friendship and loneliness, and figures out that she needs to stand up and makes things happen herself.

Summer of Lost and Found is a charming middle-grade novel about a summer of discoveries — discoveries about the past, about things that are lost, and about commitment and family. Highly recommended for moms and daughters — this would make a great summer book to share!

Interested in this author? Check out my review of her previous novel, When Audrey Met Alice.

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The details:

Title: Summer of Lost and Found
Author: Rebecca Behrens
Publisher: Aladdin
Publication date: May 24, 2016
Length: 288 pages
Genre: Middle grade fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing