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Book Review: Empire Girls by Suzanne Hayes and Loretta Nyhan

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Book Review: Empire Girls by Suzanne Hayes and Loretta Nyhan

Empire GirlsFlapper-era New York is having a moment. The 1920s in Manhattan seems to be the setting of choice for novel after novel right now — not without good reason, of course. What could be more perfect than the glamour, danger, and reckless freedom of the era, with young women living large, gin flowing freely, and a country going a little bit crazy after the trauma of war years?

Fitting in nicely with this trend is the new novel Empire Girls, focusing on two sisters, Rose and Ivy, and their adventures in the big city. Rose and Ivy have been raised by their widower father in a quiet home in upstate New York. Ivy is the free spirit, going off with her father on explorations and adventures, while Rose is the responsible one, tending the house, making sure dinner is served on time, and trying to keep her family together. But when their father dies suddenly, the girls receive shocking news: They have an older brother, last seen in New York City, who will inherit the house — and unless they can find him and get him to deal with the estate’s debts, they’ll be turned out of their home.

With no other options, the girls set out for the city — Ivy excited, Rose in absolute dread — and head for their brother’s last known address, the Empire House, a semi-respectable establishment renting rooms to young ladies under the watchful eye of a not-terribly-friendly landlady. Once there, the girls have to find their way through the temptations and risks of the city. Never close before, the sisters fight and come together, each finding new facets of herself as they navigate gin joints and speakeasies, charming gents and wild girls, while piecing together the clues to track down their elusive brother.

Empire Girls succeeds in painting the New York of the 1920s, capturing the sights, smells, and unbearable heat of summer in the city. The novel vividly describes the allure of freedom for two country girls, and what they must give up in order to thrive. At the same time, it’s not all fun and abandon: In Empire Girls, we also get a taste of the sacrifices made by the men who lived through the Great War, and come face to face with the darker side of the 1920s in the damaged soldiers who are left to rebuild lives for themselves.

Empire Girls is written by two authors, each taking on the voice of one of the sisters, so that Rose and Ivy each get to “speak” for themselves. This mostly works, although the narrative occasionally feels choppy, and it was sometimes difficult to sort out whose voice we were hearing without referring back to the chapter headers.

Stylistic issues aside, I found the plot to be quite enjoyable, nicely layering the mystery of the missing brother on top of the story of two young women finding themselves and rediscovering each other.

Maybe the New York jazz age thing is getting a bit overdone — but here, it really works. As a showcase for Rose and Ivy and their newfound independence, the Manhattan of the 1920s is a great vehicle for illustrating the changing opportunities available to young women, the wild freedom embraced by people who’ve lived through the awful war years, and the prospect of a future without rigid rules and societal expectations.

And even more importantly, Empire Girls is just plain fun. I enjoyed the characters, the setting, and the plot. It’s a quick book, light but with real emotion, and a great choice for a summer read.

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The details:

Title: Empire Girls
Author: Suzanne Hayes and Loretta Nyhan
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA
Publication date: May 27, 2014
Length: 304 pages
Genre: Historical fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of Harlequin MIRA via NetGalley

Book Review: The Girl With All The Gifts by M. R. Carey

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Book Review: The Girl With All The Gifts by M. R. Carey

The Girl with All the Gifts

The synopsis for The Girl With All the Gifts is certainly intriguing:

Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class.

When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don’t like her. She jokes that she won’t bite. But they don’t laugh.

Melanie is a very special girl.

What kind of gifts does Melanie have? Superpowers? Some sort of incredible strength? A secret radioactive aura?

Nope, nope, and nope.

Stop reading now if you don’t want to know!

Bottom line?

(Look away now! Last chance!)

The Girl With All The Gifts is an incredibly inventive, original, and unpredictable… zombie story.

Yes, it’s a zombie story. And I kind of wish I’d known that from the start. Instead, I began the book wondering what was so special and important about this one little girl and what makes her so dangerous, expecting… oh, I don’t know, outbursts of deadly gamma rays or the ability to kill people with her brain.

But before long, we start to hear about “hungries” — the bands of undead, hungry for human brains, who’ve been preying on the remaining live people in the twenty years since the global disaster known as the Breakdown. Melanie and other children are being held as part of a scientific study conducted at a secure army base, the subjects of experimentation designed to test the fungus responsible for destroying host bodies and taking over. Most hungries are mindless beings, driven only by their need to feed — but Melanie and the other children are something more: Actual, sentient beings with the ability to think, to learn, and to feel. Are they human? Hungries? Or some sort of hybrid?

Teacher Helen Justineau is drawn to Melanie’s quick mind and sensitive heart, and feels compelled to shield her from the cruelties of Sergeant Parks and the cold laboratory of Dr. Caldwell. When the base is overrun, Justineau, Parks, Private Gallagher, Dr. Caldwell, and Melanie form a small band and attempt to survive on the road to the only safe place left in Britain, a sanctuary city called Beacon. But the road is dangerous and deadly, and the odds are very much against them.

As The Girl With All The Gifts moves into road trip territory, we get to know each of the characters as individuals and see them fleshed out from one-dimensional stock figures (teacher, soldier, scientist) into people with histories, desires, pains, and complexities. There are surprises along the way, and all are proven to be much more nuanced than they originally seemed.

The adventure aspects are well-drawn and suspenseful — sometimes almost unbearably so. There’s danger, and lots of skin-crawlingly disgusting encounters with the undead. Unlike the hungries, the plot never shambles — instead, it’s a fast-paced tear from one deadly scene to another. Survival is not guaranteed. Heck, it’s not even very likely. And as the body count rises, we get more and more clues into the origins of the Breakdown, who Melanie really is, and what the future may hold.

I absolutely could not put this book down. With echoes of The Road and Never Let Me Go, The Girl With All The Gifts tell a chilling tale of a future that’s scary and almost — but not quite — hopeless. A recurring theme of this book is the myth of Pandora, who unleashes all manner of woes upon the world but also introduces hope. Melanie herself is but the newest iteration of the disaster that’s destroyed the world as we know it, but she does also represent some sort of glimmer of hope for a world that’s fundamentally different, but perhaps not entirely horrible.

With an ending that’s completely unexpected and yet surprisingly fitting, The Girl With All The Gifts is a fascinating, thrilling read that should not be missed. Whether you’re a fan of zombie stories, post-apocalyptic worlds, or just plain good storytelling, this is one book that you definitely should check out.

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The details:

Title: The Girl With All The Gifts
Author: M. R. Carey
Publisher: Orbit
Publication date: June 19, 2014
Length: 416 pages
Genre: Science fiction/horror
Source: Review copy courtesy of Orbit via NetGalley

 

 

Book Review: Trouble by Non Pratt

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Book Review: Trouble by Non Pratt

TroubleWhen Hannah finds herself pregnant at age 15, it certainly doesn’t come as a surprise to the reader, although Hannah seems to be pretty stunned herself. By the time Hannah gets around to taking a pregnancy test, we’ve seen her out at the park every Friday night, hooking up with whatever boy she can find, whether or not he’s actually available. With her underdressed, oversexed best friend Katie, Hannah is known for her sexiness and her willingness. So is it only a matter of time until it all catches up with her?

And then there’s Aaron, the new boy at school, son of the the new history teacher, and mysteriously unknowable — cool, but not excessively so; accepted by the in-crowd, but just ever so slightly stand-offish, with people to hang with but no close friends.

Hannah is hiding a big secret, and so is Aaron… and when Hannah’s former bestie blabs about the pregnancy to exactly the wrong person, the news is soon all over Facebook and Hannah’s reputation is trashed — until Aaron steps in and offers to pretend to be the baby’s father. Why? Well, Hannah needs a hero, and Aaron desperately needs to do something heroic. The two march forward together through the rest of the school year, watching Hannah’s bump grow bigger and bigger, and in the process, becoming each other’s rock and best friend.

Of course, nothing is perfect. There’s family drama to deal with, and Katie simply will not stop trying to mess up Hannah’s life even further, no matter who gets hurt. Through it all, we get Hannah’s view of life as a pregnant teen — ugly clothes, getting up to pee at night, and suffering the horrors of overly graphic prenatal classes.

There’s quite a lot to like about Trouble. Told in the first person in alternating voices, we get both Hannah and Aaron’s perspectives on themselves and on each other, and the author does a terrific job of showing how perceptive and at the same time how dense a hormonal teen can be. Both teens are funny, smart, and aware, yet they still manage to make foolish choices and hurt each other in the process. Yet it’s their friendship that sees them through, and as they finally break down their own protective barriers and share their personal truths, we get a picture of just how important a true friend can be.

Hannah is a puzzling character, and the author very cleverly shows us Hannah in a certain light early on, leading us to form certain opinions, and not revealing until much later that the public Hannah is not at all a true picture of who she is inside. She’s quite engaging and a terrific character to get to know, and yet, I never quite understood all of her decisions.

Aaron too is quite likeable, and his seemingly illogical nobility in rescuing Hannah from social purgatory eventually makes more sense, as his past and his secrets come to life.

In addition to Hannah and Aaron, we meet their families — and despite their quirks, it’s actually quite a nice change to see a YA novel with parents who are responsible, caring, supportive, and truly present. Neither of the main characters come from messed-up homes or are disadvantaged. In fact, Trouble makes a good point of showing that accidents and bad decisions can happen to anyone, even kids from good homes and with everything going for them. (Irony of ironies, Hannah’s mom is a sex ed specialist — this is not a girl who doesn’t know about condoms, safe sex, and morning after pills!)

Trouble was first published in the UK, with its US release coming up in June. I think it will translate well across the pond, although I’d imagine American teens may struggle a bit with some of the Brit speak and certain concepts specific to the British school system. Still, this should be no more than a mild inconvenience. The story itself is engaging and addresses certain universal experiences, and I think any teen reader, no matter the country of origin, should be able to relate to Hannah and Aaron’s experiences.

Overall, I’d recommend Trouble for anyone who enjoys contemporary YA without too much much of a sugar-coating. This isn’t a traditional love story, so don’t expect fireworks or declarations at the end. In fact, Trouble is refreshing in that it avoids many of the overused tropes of today’s YA fiction, such as insta-love, redeemed bad boys, or realizing that the boy next door is actually much hotter than the hunky, popular boy after all.  Trouble is the story of a girl with all sorts of issues and a big baby bump, and the unlikely friend who steps in to get both of their lives back on track. Hannah and Aaron are an odd pairing, but they become true friends, and it’s both fun and touching to see how they grow and change — together.

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The details:

Title: Trouble
Author: Non Pratt
Publisher: Walker Books Ltd.
Publication date: March 6, 2014 (to be published in US on June 10, 2014)
Length: 384 pages
Genre: Young adult contemporary fiction
Source: Purchased

Book Review: The Farm by Tom Rob Smith

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Book Review: The Farm by Tom Rob Smith

The FarmFamily loyalties, secrets and conspiracies, and questions about mental health lie at the center of the new novel The Farm by author Tom Rob Smith. In this compulsively readable book, the reader is left to wonder just what is true and what is delusion, and unraveling the hints and clues makes for a reading experience that’s hard to walk away from once started.

In The Farm, 20-something Daniel lives in a beautiful apartment in London, supported by his older boyfriend Mark — the boyfriend that he just never seems to find the right time to mention to his parents, especially now that they’ve retired from their gardening business and moved to a farm in Sweden. Although Daniel remembers his childhood as peaceful and happy, he’s drifted away from his parents in recent years, allowing miles and his own secret to create a distance that becomes harder and harder to bridge.

As the story opens, Daniel receives a shocking phone call from his father, telling him that his mother Tilde is in the hospital, having suffered a mental collapse, and is now institutionalized and being treated for a psychotic episode. No sooner does Daniel get off the phone to arrange for a flight to Sweden than he gets another call, this one from his mother, pleading with Daniel not to believe his father’s lies and informing him that she’s on her way to London, where she’ll explain everything.

Tilde’s arrival rocks Daniel to the core. His always cheerful, together mother arrives looking bedraggled and spouting wild comments about conspiracies and crimes. She claims to have proof — a battered leather satchel that she won’t allow out of her grasp. She warns Daniel that they must not allow his father to find them, as he and his partners in crime are determined to lock her away and discredit her as part of their own cover-up.

What’s Daniel to do? His mother’s tales sound too wild to be believed, yet there’s something there that compels him to listen. She’s clearly unstable, and as she displays her evidence and lays out her story, she does sound unhinged — but her tale has enough rationality in it that Daniel can’t dismiss it outright. As Tilde goes further and further into her story, it’s clear that something unexpected happened in Sweden, and that the peaceful country retirement went very wrong, very quickly. But every shred of Tilde’s evidence can be explained away, so who is to be believed? Is Tilde a sick woman, in need of commitment to a mental facility for her own well-being? Or is she a woman who’s been set up to take the fall in order to keep a dark underbelly of depraved acts hidden from view?

Reading The Farm, we’re as torn as Daniel. Much of what Tilde says has a ring of truth, and obviously she believes wholeheartedly in what she’s saying. There are enough errant facts to indicate that something was amiss in the small Swedish community where the couple had hoped to make their home. And yet, Tilde’s wild distractions, her grasping for meaning in small inconsequentialities, leave us to wonder whether Daniel’s father might have been right all along.

I won’t spoil anything by going into an explanation of how it all works out. Daniel’s task is to unravel his mother’s stories before his father shows up to have her committed again, and it’s up to Daniel to figure out where the truth lies. The reader is along for the ride, seeing the bits and pieces as Daniel does, and over the course of the book, trying to fit together the puzzle pieces in order to see the greater whole.

The Farm has a darkness to it, woven in among the domestic details of a seemingly simple life. The empty landscapes of remote Sweden have a sinister overtone, and even the supposed richness of the land and the nearby river betray Tilde, as nothing works out for her as she’d envisioned. The purity of self-sustaining country life that she’d dreamed of is nothing but illusion, and the remoteness of the farm doesn’t shield Tilde and her husband Chris from the pressures and politics of the local farming community and its more influential members. The writing conveys the bleakness and isolation of the farm, the stark beauty of the Swedish countryside adding an element of mythical danger with its deep, dark forests.

There’s a darkness, too, in the depiction of Daniel’s happy family. He remembers a perfect childhood in which his parents never argued or showed signs of the slightest disagreement. He also believed his parents to be completely happy. Sure, some oddities are there — Daniel grew up without siblings or any relatives, his mother being estranged from the parents in Sweden whom she’d left decades earlier. As Daniel uncovers the secrets and lies within his parents’ marriage, he also is forced to confront his own need for secrecy and accept his role in creating the emotional chasms between him and his parents that allowed this crisis to go so far without his knowledge.

The author keeps us on our toes. Like Daniel, we spend much of the book listening to Tilde try to convince us that what she thinks happened is what really happened. The writing here shifts between Daniel’s observations of his mother’s behavior and longer segments in which we hear Tilde’s first person account. This is the unreliable narrator device at its best, serving to keep us off-balance, torn between wanting to believe and knowing something is just… off.

I enjoyed The Farm very much. It’s a quick read, and really impossible to put down once you start. I couldn’t stop thinking about Tilde’s story, knowing that what she says can’t be entirely true, yet knowing too that there must be an answer as to why she believes what she believes — and that even if she is unreliable, there’s enough that’s questionable in her tale to show that something isn’t right at the farm. Perhaps the big, dark secrets and the unraveling of the mysteries weren’t quite as huge as I’d expected; still, the truth that emerges is devastating in its own quiet way. The ending of The Farm is entirely satisfying, true to the characters and adding a sad logic to all of the events we’d heard about.

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The details:

Title: The Farm
Author: Tom Rob Smith
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Publication date: June 3, 2014
Length: 368 pages
Genre: Mystery/thriller
Source: Review copy courtesy of Grand Central Publishing via NetGalley

Guest Review: I Shall Be Near To You by Erin Lindsay McCabe

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Please join me in welcoming my wonderful friend Mary, who consistently recommends superb books to me. Mary is the one who first encouraged me to read I Shall Be Near To You, and so I thought it only fitting to invite her to write a review.

***Guest Review: I Shall Be Near To You by Erin Lindsay McCabe***

***Reviewed by Mary***

IShallBeNear

“His arms pull me tight against his chest and I bury my face in his shoulder. He shakes and it is dark enough I can still say I ain’t ever seen him cry. My heart goes to cracking wide open, but at least I am alive to feel it. I am a different kind of woman now, a wife who knows what this war really is. At least I am part of this war, part of the things Jeremiah’s done here, things that will always be hiding somewhere in his heart.”

New York, 1862. Rosetta marries her childhood sweetheart just before he leaves to enlist with the Union Army. Jeremiah is naive and optimistic about the war, thinking he’ll be gone a short while and return with money enough for them to buy their own farm. Even so, Rosetta doesn’t want him to go. Without Jeremiah, she has to play the role of wife, cooking, mending, making soap, when she’d rather be outside tending the animals or helping with the harvest. Rosetta is stubborn and spirited, and it isn’t long before she hacks off her braid, dresses in Jeremiah’s old clothes and follows her husband to war.

Rosetta is a force, a fighting wife, a woman brave enough to follow her husband into hell. Their love is both fierce and tender, and their connection to one another endures long stretches of boredom, constant hunger, and short bursts of battle-born terror. Neither of them truly understood what war would be, and the author, with well-placed poetic imagery and necessary grit, conveys the realities of a soldier’s life.

 

“I aim careful in the dying light and fire two rounds…the first don’t hit a thing, but the second shot makes a space in the line advancing. Something heavy settles in my belly when the stain blooms on that soldier’s chest, the hole in the line, the tear in the fabric of some other family.”


Rosetta’s voice is strong and straightforward; her struggles and fears are authentic and entirely relatable. The supporting characters are well-drawn, compelling, easy to get attached to. There is just the right amount of historic detail to capture the essence of the time period without inundating the reader with “research.” The way the story is told, the structure and pacing, seems effortless (though I am sure it wasn’t), and thankfully, there is no epilogue to stitch up every last detail. In short, this is as close to perfect as it can get. If you love historical fiction – if you love great fiction – read this book. But read it slowly. Savour your time with these unforgettable characters and their heart-wrenching story. 

And…when you read the last page, close the book and still find yourself unable to let go of the story, read these interesting links:

The title of the book was inspired by a real letter from Union soldier Sullivan Ballou to his wife Sarah. Read it here.

The author’s playlist. Music can strike an emotional chord with me, and I love that the author included the songs she listened to while writing. These echo the mood of the book so well. Make sure you listen to “My Father’s Father” when you have finished the book. So, so moving.

An interview with the author. I love hearing about the process of getting this book revised and published. It was obviously a labor of love.

The original photo from the cover.Were you, like me, curious about the soldier pictured on the front of the novel? I wanted to see his (her?) whole face, and I was surprised to discover that the soldier was actually a Confederate.

A Savage Day in American History. A little more information about the Battle of Antietam.

About the reviewer:

MaryMary is a life-long reader and self-professed book-nerd. She carries a book with her wherever she goes, and if she isn’t reading, she’s either sleeping or dead.

Want to read more of Mary’s reviews? You can find her here on Goodreads — just tell her Bookshelf Fantasies sent you!

Stay tuned:

I Shall Be Near To You is my spotlight book this week, and there are more related blog posts to come!

Book Review: The Break-Up Artist by Philip Siegel

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Book Review: The Break-Up Artist by Philip Siegel

The Break-Up Artist

Synopsis:

Some sixteen-year-olds babysit for extra cash. Some work at the Gap. Becca Williamson breaks up couples.

After watching her sister get left at the altar, Becca knows the true damage that comes when people utter the dreaded L-word. For just $100 via paypal, she can trick and manipulate any couple into smithereens. With relationship zombies overrunning her school, and treating single girls like second class citizens, business is unfortunately booming. Even her best friend Val has resorted to outright lies to snag a boyfriend.

One night, she receives a mysterious offer to break up the homecoming king and queen, the one zombie couple to rule them all: Steve and Huxley. They are a JFK and Jackie O in training, masters of sweeping faux-mantic gestures, but if Becca can split them up, then school will be safe again for singletons. To succeed, she’ll have to plan her most elaborate scheme to date and wiggle her way back into her former BFF Huxley’s life – not to mention start a few rumors, sabotage some cell phones, break into a car, and fend off the inappropriate feelings she’s having about Val’s new boyfriend. All while avoiding a past victim out to expose her true identity.

No one said being the Break-Up Artist was easy.

This YA novel is refreshingly straight-forward: Becca is a girl on a mission. In a school where (paraphrasing here) “you wouldn’t understand, you’ve never had a boyfriend” is the ultimate put-down, it’s no wonder that girls like Becca suffer mightily. Seemingly unbreakable best-friendships are tossed aside the second one friend gets a boyfriend. It doesn’t seem to matter who he is, so long as there’s someone to walk down the hallway with and make googly eyes at. Wouldn’t it absolutely drive you bonkers if every conversation you were subjected to began with “My boyfriend says…” or “Last night, my boyfriend and I…”?

Becca is especially bitter when it comes to so-called true love. Heck, she even claims that Romeo and Juliet were never truly in love — just a couple of hormonal teens who probably would have gotten tired of each other if they’d spent more than a week together. She’s seen her closest friend from middle school, Huxley, transform herself from a really great friend to the queen of the school, with no time to spare for her former (lesser) friends now that she’s dating a supremely popular boy and has reached the pinnacle of the school social heap. Becca has also seen the suffering her sister has endured ever since getting dumped on her wedding day. What’s more, she looks at her parents and sees two people who just live in the same house with not a shred of romance between them. So what’s so great about relationships?

To top it all off, her best friend Val, after years of wanting a boyfriend, finally has one… even though she had to pretend to share his love of movies in order to get him to notice her. Now they make out in hallways and only have eyes for each other, except for when they take pity on Becca, invite her to come out with them, and then get so caught up in each other that they ignore her completely. Val is ecstatic, Becca is dubious… and Becca is conflicted, because Val’s boyfriend seems to have more in common with Becca, and he has the dreamiest eyes! Ugh, Becca, run away! No boy is worth the pain that will fall down on your head if you — wait! Don’t kiss him! Argh. Bad moves galore.

Here’s the thing: Becca’s judgment is, shall we say, not so sound? She starts her business as the Break-Up Artist to  make a little money, yes, but more so out of a sense of righteous indignation over the fate of the singletons in her school. Operating via email and video chat (in disguise), Becca’s clients are her schoolmates, often the friends left behind for the sake of a relationship with a cute boy. It’s a sad state of affairs, and in Becca’s view, almost none of these relationships are real. The truth she continually discovers is that girls stick with jerky boyfriends because even a jerky boyfriend is better than no boyfriend. It’s truly a disheartening state of affairs.

So Becca meddles, not that ingeniously, in my humble opinion, and when it hits the fan — as it was bound to — Becca faces the loss of every friend at school and complete and utter humiliation. So was it worth it? Well, yes and no. Becca does suffer social disaster, but comes to realize some hard truths as well: Not every relationship, no matter how corny or over the top, is doomed to fail. Some teen couples may actually love each other. Some people really can figure things out on their own, without being pried apart by the Break-Up Artist. And maybe what looks like a lack of romance on the part of her parents is really just Becca’s introduction to what a normal, health, mature relationship might look like, once the initial thrill and hormonal rush give way to true affection and devotion.

So, my big picture thoughts about The Break-Up Artist?

On the plus side, the writing is full of quips and zingers that kept me amused and engaged. Here are a few top choices:

 I reread the email about five more times. The words don’t change, but each time they seep in more. I deal with low profile relationships, ones that don’t case major seismic shifts in the tectonic plates of gossip our school rests upon. Huxley and Steve are the San Andreas Fault of relationships. (Wow, I guess our current unit on geology is more fascinating than I thought.)

♥♥♥♥♥

Everything Ezra says needs cheesy background music and sparkles. I wonder if his mom read him greeting cards as a baby.

♥♥♥♥♥

It’s weird when you find out your suspicions are correct. I knew from a young age that the tooth fairy wasn’t real. But I still felt a pang of disappointment when my dad woke me up cramming a dollar under my pillow. It’s not always fun being right.

On the down side, there were quite a few elements that made shake my head or take a step back. Becca’s voice didn’t feel especially authentic — she seemed more to me like a writer’s idea of how a teen girl might think, as opposed to a real girl, if that makes sense. Some of the word and phrasing choices struck me as odd, like the term “singleton” or even referring to herself and friends as being “single”. Maybe they don’t have boyfriends, but I’m not convinced that they’d define themselves using those words.

The emphasis on having a boyfriend at all costs is overdone. The message here is that this is NOT a good way to live life… but it’s a pretty muddled message, based on Becca’s actions and her interactions with Huxley and Val. It’s not a bad thing to have a boyfriend, so maybe the book might have been more convincing if we saw even one couple in the high school following some sort of middle path, rather than becoming instant, extreme relationship zombies.

The author is careful to keep Becca balanced just on the right side of the line dividing a good person making unwise choices from a bad person doing bad things. Becca does act unwisely, perhaps for what she considers good reasons, but people do get hurt, and she makes foolish choices galore. Yes, her worldview has been skewed by her experiences with her former friends and by sister’s ordeal, but that’s not really a valid excuse for what she does. And, let me just add, Becca’s schemes are a bit lame. She breaks up a couple by planting a fake wedding binder in the boy’s locker so he’ll freak out over his girlfriend’s supposed wedding obsession — but who would believe this, really? All of the break-up moves Becca pulls off seem like plans that could only work in fiction or in the movies. Real people just wouldn’t be fooled.

Bottom line? The Break-Up Artist is a fun, fast read, but with some tonal flaws, a main character who can be hard to get behind, and some plot points that strain plausibility way beyond the breaking point. The quippiness is fun and I enjoyed a lot about the writing, but the plot itself could have used some big tweaks in order to resemble anything like real high school life.

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The details:

Title: The Break-Up Artist
Author: Philip Siegel
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Publication date: April 29, 2014
Length: 336 pages
Genre: Young adult fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of Harlequin Teen via NetGalley

At A Glance: She Is Not Invisible by Marcus Sedgwick

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Book Review: She Is Not Invisible by Marcus Sedgwick

She Is Not Invisible

Laureth Peak’s father has taught her to look for recurring events, patterns, and numbers–a skill at which she’s remarkably talented. Her secret: She is blind. But when her father goes missing, Laureth and her 7-year-old brother Benjamin are thrust into a mystery that takes them to New York City where surviving will take all her skill at spotting the amazing, shocking, and sometimes dangerous connections in a world full of darkness. She Is Not Invisible is an intricate puzzle of a novel that sheds a light on the delicate ties that bind people to each other.

My thoughts:

This quiet book is a charmer, although it was nothing like what I’d expected. In She Is Not Invisible, Laureth searches for her missing father by taking her 7-year-old brother on a flight from London to New York — without parental permission, I might add — and based on the barest scraps of clues, spends two days scouring the city for hints that might lead to her brilliant but unpredictable father.

Their father seems to have become obsessed with the study of coincidence in the last several years, focusing especially on certain numbers that show up repeatedly in his life in significant and potentially meaningful ways. As Laureth and Benjamin follow the hints, they too begin to look for the special numbers and odd patterns, the things that seem to be inexplicable yet seem to occur often enough that they must have secret meaning. Or do they?

Meanwhile, Laureth herself is an interesting character. Blind since birth, she wears dark glasses, relies on her IPhones voice capabilities, and has worked out a hand-squeeze system with Benjamin that in essence turns him into her seeing eye dog. She’s a person who forces herself to project confidence and presence; otherwise, as she’s learned, people can’t seem to see her as a real person. So who’s really the blind one here?

She Is Not Invisible includes some interesting thoughts about family and relationships, being different, fitting in and sticking out. The ruminations on the nature of coincidences and whether such things actually even exist are interesting, but don’t really go anywhere. The action is rather muted. The children spend their time rushing from clue to clue, and I could help but cringe at the idea of these two on their own in the city with almost no ability to care for themselves, no way to communicate with their mother, and no way to find their father.

Still, the writing is snappy and keeps things interesting, even when the plot seems to stall out as Laureth contemplates her father’s secret notes and what they might mean. The book contains hints and puzzles of its own, as the author has embedded certain patterns and numbers within the writing itself that are rather fun to track down. (Note: Sadly, this was hard to do, as my ARC was badly formatted, missing the chapter breaks and hand-written asides that end up being important to the story).

Do I recommend She Is Not Invisible? Yes, but. If you’re looking for action, danger, and maybe even special powers or abilities, possibly this isn’t the book for you. But if you enjoy a thoughtful approach with some quirky treats, give it a try!

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The details:

Title: She Is Not Invisible
Author: Marcus Sedgwick
Publisher: Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group
Publication date: April 22, 2014
Length: 224 pages
Genre: Young adult fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of Macmillan via NetGalley

Book Review: The Here And Now by Ann Brashares

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Book Review: The Here And Now by Ann Brashares

The Here and NowAnn Brashares, author of the much-loved, bestselling Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, takes a leap into new territory with the publication of her science fiction novel The Here And Now.

Main character Prenna James makes a rather spectacular entrance, appearing suddenly alongside a river, naked and shivering, with a strange number written on her arm. And the sole witness, Ethan Jarves, has never forgotten what he saw that day.

Years later, Ethan and Prenna are classmates in high school, and apart from a surface friendliness, Prenna gives no sign of a previous connection to Ethan. But then again, Prenna has a lot on her mind.

Prenna is a new immigrant — from the future. Along with a community of about 1,000 people, she and her mother traveled a time path from the 2090s back to 2010. Now, four years later, the community attempts to hide in plain sight by assimilating into the world of the “time natives” — mingling, but never getting close. And there are rules that must be followed at all cost: No changing history. No trying to alter established events. No seeking medical attention outside the community. And absolutely no intimacy with the natives, emotional or physical. And if anyone steps out of line, the “counselors” will see to it that those people conveniently leave town, have an accident, or otherwise disappear.

Ethan is persistent in trying to befriend Prenna, and when Ethan pushes Prenna to talk to the local crazy homeless man, she’s startled to discover that both may know more than they should… and that perhaps there’s a mission for her here that may be worth risking her security for. Because in the future that Prenna came from, the world was reaching its end. Climate change had already destroyed much of the planet. Nothing grows. Nothing new is made. People go hungry. It’s only a matter of time before the earth itself is no longer able to sustain life — and that’s not even mentioning the worst part of all, a mosquito-born blood plague that wipes out everyone it touches and can’t be stopped or cured.

Prenna’s family came to 2010 to seek refuge from a world without hope — but what if there was hope after all? What if, by changing one event, Prenna could change the entire course of the future, saving lives and saving the planet? It’s completely against the rules, of course — but what if this just happens to be worth some broken rules?

The Here And Now mingles a time travel adventure with a love story, with mixed success. Obviously, Ethan and Prenna will fall for each other, big time. And obviously, there will be obstacles. The rules that Prenna is forced to follow caution that the time travelers will spread sickness to the time natives by getting too close. Is this just manipulation to assure compliance, or is there really something to fear? And clearly, sharing secrets is a huge no-no, but Ethan may be the only person who can help Prenna figure out what needs to be done and how. Prenna is torn — trust Ethan, or shut him out? Love Ethan, or protect him by rejecting him? Fortunately, rather than the all too common insta-love formula, the author is careful to establish their relationship as one that has built over years, so that as they move from casual acquaintance to deep friendship to romance, it feels legitimate and real — not just romance for the sake of the well-worn YA formula for such things.

More problematic is the time travel. There’s a sci-fi “lite” vibe here. The time loops of causation and change are a bit mind-boggling, but the pieces don’t altogether mesh or make sense. It’s intriguing , to be sure, to figure out the various timelines and how they’ve changed, but the reason behind all of this doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny. The climate change factor feels almost too politically correct, with good guys and bad guys lining up in a very predictable way. There’s also the issue of teens playing in an adult world: In a couple of crucial moments, Ethan and Prenna easily convince a highly skilled scientist to take certain actions that seem far-fetched. Certainly, the lack of systems security that allow them to change events, as well as the fake instructions they provide to the scientist, would never pass muster in the real world in an actual high-level research facility.

The Here And Now is fast-paced and absolutely held my attention, but the dangers never feel terribly threatening and the resolution seems a bit oversimplified. Kudos to the author, though, for not wrapping everything up in the neat HEA bow one might expect, instead throwing a last-minute curveball that makes everything much more bittersweet. I appreciated the ending very much, to tell the truth, as it would have been easy to make the endgame all about the love story. Instead, we see a future for Prenna’s community and the world at large that that has hope, but isn’t sugar-coated into perfection.

Do I recommend The Here And Now? Yes. It’s an engrossing story, with well-developed characters, believable relationships, and a plotline that hums with tension and action. If you’re a fan of time travel fiction, enjoy The Here And Now — just don’t examine it too closely or expect the pseudo-science and timelines to make 100% sense.

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The details:

Title: The Here And Now
Author: Ann Brashares
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Publication date: April 8, 2014
Length: 288 pages
Genre: Young adult/science fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of Delacorte via NetGalley

At A Glance: Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

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Book Review: Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

Burial Rites

Synopsis:

In northern Iceland, 1829, Agnes Magnusdottir is condemned to death for her part in the brutal murder of two men.

Agnes is sent to wait out the time leading to her execution on the farm of District Officer Jon Jonsson, his wife and their two daughters. Horrified to have a convicted murderess in their midst, the family avoids speaking with Agnes. Only Toti, the young assistant reverend appointed as Agnes’ spiritual guardian, is compelled to try to understand her, as he attempts to salvage her soul. As the summer months fall away to winter and the hardships of rural life force the household to work side by side, Agnes’ ill-fated tale of longing and betrayal begins to emerge. And as the days to her execution draw closer, the question burns: did she or didn’t she?

Based on a true story, Burial Rites is a deeply moving novel about personal freedom: who we are seen to be versus who we believe ourselves to be, and the ways in which we will risk everything for love. In beautiful, cut-glass prose, Hannah Kent portrays Iceland’s formidable landscape, where every day is a battle for survival, and asks, how can one woman hope to endure when her life depends upon the stories told by others?

My thoughts:

Burial Rites, by debut author Hannah Kent, received heaps of critical praise when it was released in 2013. I finally caught up to this unusual book in time for its paperback release this month, prompted by my commitment to a book group.

Burial Rites is based on real events in Iceland’s history, and provides a fascinating look into a little seen world. The landscape is bleak, harsh, and unforgiving, and the people who live there must deal with the elements and the isolation of their land. Even the families who are well enough off to have servants live in dirt-walled crofts heated by dung fires and peat; the cold is everywhere, and the indoors is consistently portrayed as smoky, dark, and generally unhealthy.

In this world, a woman on her own has no chance to change her life. When we meet Agnes, her death sentence has been declared, and all she can do is wait for it to be carried out. Escape is not an option; there’s no place to run to, and no way to survive in the wild. Agnes is feared and reviled, treated with utter contempt and placed into inhuman living conditions, until she is transferred into the care of a farm family for her last months. With no district jails, the burden and responsibility for housing prisoners falls on the local population, and Agnes moves in with a minor official’s family, where she sleeps in the same room with them and works alongside them. Over time, the family begins to view her as a person rather than as a fearsome murderess, and Agnes in turn opens up and finally reveals the truth about the night of the murders.

I started reading Burial Rites not knowing the outcome of the story, and it wasn’t until I was about 50 pages into it that I finally read the back flap and found out the historical facts of the matter. In a way, I’m sorry that I did; my mood while reading the book changed very much once I knew what would happen — but given that the synopsis above doesn’t give much away, I won’t go into details about it either.

The feel of life in 19th century Iceland really comes through in the writing, and we get a sense of the vastness of the empty landscapes, the far-removed farms, and the struggle to make ends meet that features in all of the characters’ lives. Agnes is an enigma when we first meet her, but as her story unfolds, we receive insights into her wants and fears, and it’s impossible not to feel our hearts break for her by the end of the book. The family dynamic is quite interesting, as a simple, hard-working family with two daughters is forced to live alongside a convicted criminal, and the author does an effective job of showing their feelings change from mistrust and dislike to sympathy and even affection.

I struggled a bit early on to get into the story as it unfolded slowly, and found the place and people names quite difficult to decipher and keep straight at first. Once I got into it, though, the story pulled me along, and I ultimately found Burial Rites to be both very interesting and very moving.

Part true-crime story, part psychological profile, Burial Rites is an intriguing story of a notorious woman trapped in a harsh world. I’d recommend Burial Rites for readers who enjoy historical fiction with everyday characters, unusual settings, and literary, descriptive writing.

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The details:

Title: Burial Rites
Author: Hannah Kent
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Publication date: 2013
Length: 352 pages
Genre: Historical fiction
Source: Purchased

Blog Tour & Book Review: The Serpent of Venice by Christopher Moore

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Book Review: The Serpent of Venice by Christopher Moore

The Serpent of Venice: A NovelI’m thrilled to be participating in the blog tour for the brand-new Christopher Moore novel, The Serpent of Venice.

Christopher Moore writes about demons, sea monster, and vampires. Also about Jesus and Impressionist painters, talking fruitbats and humpback whales. In other words, this is an author who defies categorization, yet one thing is for sure: If you don’t fall on the floor laughing at least a few times reading any of his many novels, well… you’re probably doing it wrong!

Moore’s trademark humor is firmly in place in his newest novel, The Serpent of Venice, a follow-up to his 2009 novel Fool. Fool is a retelling of King Lear, with the king’s fool Pocket serving as main character and very clever (and occasionally obscene) narrator. In The Serpent of Venice, Moore returns to Shakespeare with the further adventures of Pocket, using as his framework not one but two Shakespearean plays, plus a little Edgar Allan Poe for good measure.

Loosely weaving together the plotlines of The Merchant of Venice and Othello (trust me, it works), with a bit of The Cask of Amontillado thrown in as well, The Serpent of Venice follows Pocket the Fool as he maneuvers his way through the devilish machinations of a host of scheming bad guys. He meets up with Shylock and his daughter Jessica, confronts the evil Iago, befriends the great general Othello and his wife Desdemona — and plays all sides against one another, with daring, wit, agility, and plenty of Christopher Moore’s trademark “heinous fuckery most foul”.

Remarkably, Moore weaves the source material into his outrageous new work almost seamlessly, so that for those who enjoy such things, it’s possible to take certain scenes and follow along paragraph by paragraph, and compare back to the same scene in the Shakespearean plays. Combining these works, modernizing the language as needed, adding in raucous humor and heaps of vulgarity — plus Marco Polo, a sea serpent, and a monkey named Jeff — may sound like a crazy mess, but in The Serpent of Venice, there’s a certain beauty to the wackiness, and it really  holds together in a way that’s a wonder to behold.

Fans of the author will be gratified, as always, by his quirky, irreverent approach to language, not afraid to take some of the most honored works in the English canon and stand them on their ears:

“Thou mendacious fuckweasel,” said Emilia, almost spitting it, disgusted now rather than hysterical.

“Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” said Iago.

“Methinks the lady protests just the right amount,” said Emilia. “Methinks the lady is just getting fucking started protesting.”

Even from the book’s very beginning, we get a dose of prime Moore in the introduction “The Stage” that lets us know what we’re in for:

Strangely, although most of the characters are Venetian, everybody speaks English, and with an English accent.

Unless otherwise described, assume conditions to be humid.

For me, one of the most amazing pieces of this book is the author’s afterward. After laughing my way through the book itself, it was fascinating to read about the author’s research, his careful study of the source material, the decisions he made about the setting and time periods, and the historical elements woven into the story. Without being too preachy or teachy, he manages to convey a ton of information in these few short pages, so that I walked away from The Serpent of Venice not just having laughed, but also having learned about Venetian history in the 13th century, racism and anti-Semitism in Shakespeare’s time… and what Christopher Moore really thinks about *ahem* being intimate with dragons.

Either Christopher Moore’s crazy approach to life and writing appeals to you or it doesn’t — and if it does, The Serpent of Venice is a treat. Fans will absolutely want to read The Serpent of Venice, and will not be disappointed. If you’ve never read anything by Christopher Moore — and you like to laugh and you’re not easily offended — I’d say give him a try! For Shakespeare with a twist, start with Fool and then read The Serpent of Venice… and if those appeal to your sense of offbeat humor, you’ll end up wanting to read everything else in the author’s catalog of funny, weird, and wonderful books.

About the Author:

CMooreChristopher Moore is the author of eleven novels, including the international bestsellers, Lamb, A Dirty Job and You Suck. His latest novel is Fool, a retelling of King Lear from the perspective of Pocket, the Fool.

Chris was born in Toledo, Ohio and grew up in Mansfield, Ohio. His father was a highway patrolman and his mother sold major appliances at a department store. He attended Ohio State University and Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara. He moved to California when he was 19 years old and lived on the Central Coast until 2003, when he moved to Hawaii.

Before publishing his first novel, Practical Demonkeeping in 1992, he worked as a roofer, a grocery clerk, a hotel night auditor, and insurance broker, a waiter, a photographer, and a rock and roll DJ. Chris has drawn on all of these work experiences to create the characters in his books. When he’s not writing, Chris enjoys ocean kayaking, scuba diving, photography, and sumi-e ink painting. He divides his time between Hawaii and San Francisco.

Christopher Moore’s website: http://www.chrismoore.com/

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The details:

Title: The Serpent of Venice
Author: Christopher Moore
Publisher: William Morrow
Publication date: April 22, 2014
Length: 336 pages
Genre: Adult fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of TLC Book Tours

tlc logoFor further information, visit the author’s website or stop by TLC Book Tours to view other blog tour hosts.