Wishing & Waiting on Wednesday: What You Left Behind

Posted in Wishlist Wednesday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

There’s nothing like a Wednesday for thinking about the books we want to read! My Wishing & Waiting on Wednesday post is linking up with two fabulous book memes, Wishlist Wednesday (hosted by Pen to Paper) and Waiting on Wednesday (hosted by Breaking the Spine).

This week’s pick:
What You Left Behind by Jessica Verdi
(to be released August 4, 2015 )

It’s all Ryden’s fault. If he hadn’t gotten Meg pregnant, she would have never stopped her chemo treatments and would still be alive. Instead, he’s failing fatherhood one dirty diaper at a time. And it’s not like he’s had time to grieve while struggling to care for their infant daughter, start his senior year, and earn the soccer scholarship he needs to go to college.

The one person who makes Ryden feel like his old self is Joni. She’s fun and energetic—and doesn’t know he has a baby. But the more time they spend together, the harder it becomes to keep his two worlds separate. Finding one of Meg’s journals only stirs up old emotions, and Ryden’s convinced Meg left other notebooks for him to find, some message to help his new life make sense. But how is he going to have a future if he can’t let go of the past?

I read Jessica Verdi’s The Summer I Wasn’t Me last year, and was so impressed by the book’s strong characters and honest emotions. This new book sounds really powerful, and I can’t wait to read it!

What are you wishing for this Wednesday?

Looking for some bookish fun on Thursdays? Come join me for my regular weekly feature, Thursday Quotables. You can find out more here — come play!

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Do you host a book blog meme? Do you participate in a meme that you really, really love? I’m building a Book Blog Meme Directory, and need your help! If you know of a great meme to include — or if you host one yourself — please drop me a note on my Contact page and I’ll be sure to add your info!

23Apr2015

Book Review: The Secrets We Keep by Trisha Leaver

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Maddy and Ella, identical twin sisters in their senior year of high school, were best friends since birth… right up until the first week of freshman year, when Maddy’s pursuit of popularity led her to dump quiet, artistic Ella and become the belle of the ball. From that moment onward, the two occupied a home together, but had next to nothing in common. Maddy was always at the center of the in-demand social circle, busy with perfect boyfriend Alex, and obsessed with looks, clothes, and status. Ella found a new best friend, Josh, who shared her interests in art and anime and became her constant companion.

That’s all backstory. Early on in The Secrets We Keep, tragedy strikes. On a rainy night, on the way home from a party, Maddy’s car goes off the road and one twin is killed, the other seriously injured. But who survived? As it turns out, Ella had driven Maddy’s car to pick her sister up — and because Maddy’s clothes were soaked from waiting in the rain, Ella gave Maddy her coat and sweatshirt.

The driver is pulled alive from the wreck, while the other sister is dead at the scene. The car is Maddy’s; the driver is presumed to be Maddy — especially since the dead girl is wearing Ella’s clothes.

When Ella wakes up in the hospital, she at first has no recollection of her name or her circumstances. But there’s a boy holding her hand, dozens of flower bouquets in her room from her many friends, and the name “Maddy” written on the board in her room. She assumes she herself is Maddy, and it’s not until she insists on seeing her dead twin in the morgue that her own memories come flooding back.

And here’s where my belief in this story pretty much went out the window: Ella feels tremendously guilty for causing her sister’s death. She sees how happy her parents are when she wakes up and they greet her as “Maddy”, and she hears from Alex and the nurses how many of “her” friends are crammed into the halls and waiting rooms, cheering for her survival. Ella decides on the spot that her parents wouldn’t be happy if they knew the survivor was Ella, not Maddy. Furthermore, she decides that she owes Maddy a debt for killing her, and the way to make it up to her is to live her life. So Ella keeps her own identity a secret and vows to live Maddy’s life, which becomes a bit harder once she has to attend her own funeral and act like her best friend Josh means nothing to her.

Hoo boy. Things unravel from there. Ella uncovers a dark secret about a very not-nice plot of Maddy’s. Ella does a not-very-good job of impersonating Maddy when she goes back to school, breaking all sorts of rules about appearance, bitchiness, and maintaining mean girl status quo. Instead of going to her own honors classes and maintaining her perfect grades, Ella follows Maddy’s undemanding schedule and has to force herself to dumb down her test performance. In short, it’s a mess.

Does any of this make sense? Not really. Ella’s thinking can be chalked up to shock at first, but she’s really much too smart a girl to actually believe that her parents are happy that Maddy survived and she didn’t. And I couldn’t see any logic in the idea of living Maddy’s life as a way to repay her sister. Maddy is still dead, after all. How can pretending to be her make a difference? And then there’s Ella’s belief that Maddy being alive makes so many more people happy — why does this matter to Ella? She doesn’t even like these people.

It’s really a ridiculous situation, and I found it pretty much impossible to buy the premise. As clichéd as the old stand-by amnesia plot is, the whole set-up here would have been much more plausible if Ella hadn’t regained her memories. If she actually believed herself to be Maddy, it would be interesting to see her trying to piece her life back together, when it was never actually hers. But having Ella pretend to be Maddy for the flimsiest of reasons just defies all logic. The piece about her parents really irritated me, to be honest. So they bury Ella and try to rebuild their lives with Maddy — and then when the truth comes out, they’re forced into a brand-new mourning period for the daughter they believed to be alive, yet they’re supposed to now be overjoyed by Ella’s survival? It’s just weird and cruel, and I felt that Ella’s treatment of her parents was especially callous.

I realize this all sounds as though I didn’t like The Secrets We Keep at all, and that’s not entirely the case. On the more positive side, the writing itself is fast-paced and kept my attention, so even though I kept exclaiming over how unbelievable the plot was, I also didn’t want to put the book down. Granted, a part of me wanted to keep reading to see if there was some great twist coming or if the ending would justify it all. And, well, no, that’s not what happened… but still, I did keep reading and I did want to see how it worked out, so there’s that.

Not every book is for every reader, and despite having a premise — at least according to the synopsis — that sounded really intriguing, the final result just didn’t work for me.

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The details:

Title: The Secrets We Keep
Author: Trisha Leaver
Publisher: Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group
Publication date: April 28, 2015
Length: 304 pages
Genre: Young adult contemporary fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley

2Apr2015

Book Review: The Truth About Us by Janet Gurtler

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

17-year-old Jess has what might seem to be an ideal life: She lives in a huge house in an upscale neighborhood, drives an Audi, and is sent out shopping for whatever she likes, parents’ credit card in hand. She goes to the best parties, where she and her bestie Nance get over-the-top drunk and flirt (and then some) with the best boys. Jess’s party-girl persona is a cover, though — a way for Jess to escape the worries and sorrows that have plagued her ever since a family tragedy two years earlier.

That doesn’t stop her from going too far, and when Jess is busted for daytime drinking, topless sunbathing, and a ridiculously expensive impulse buy on EBay, she’s sentenced to a horrible fate: Jess’s dad forces her to commit to daily “volunteer” work at the local soup kitchen. But Daaaaaad… you can practically hear her whining. So unfair.

Little by little, Jess comes to see the value in what she’s doing. Sure, the shelter is in a seedy part of town, serving lunch to all sorts of homeless riff-raff. And yes, the rest of the shelter volunteer crew and staff look at her as a spoiled little rich girl who’ll never fit in, unable to even walk to the corner bus stop without an escort. But when Jess meets the gorgeous Flynn and his adorable little brother, who come regularly for lunch and then stay to lend a hand, Jess’s heart begins to melt. Not only is she falling for Flynn hard, but she’s also made friends with an old man named Wilf, a widower and the shelter’s benefactor whose grumpy exterior hides the soul of a true romantic… and Wilf can’t resist imparting his own words of wisdom to Jess, including the lesson that love is worth fighting for.

There’s a lot that gets in the way of Jess and Flynn’s exploding feelings. Jess’s dad may want her to learn a lesson by working at the shelter, but he certainly doesn’t want her socializing with a poor boy from a bad neighborhood. Jess’s friends don’t understand why she doesn’t want to drink, flirt, and hook up the way she used to. Flynn’s mother isn’t a fan of Jess, either; to her, Jess is slumming and will only hurt Flynn. But as the summer progresses, Jess and Flynn grow closer, and Jess finally starts to open up about the sadness that threatens to rip her own family apart.

The Truth About Us tackles the subjects of privilege and economic challenges in a thoughtful and sensitive manner. Jess does really seem to have it all — but as the book shows us, even a perfect exterior can hide fractures and difficulty. Granted, Jess never has to worry about the roof over her head or where her next meal is coming from, so I wouldn’t say that her struggles and Flynn’s are equivalent. Still, the story forces readers to acknowledge that pain comes in many forms, and people don’t just get handed happiness alongside their gold credit cards and expensive electronics.

There are moments when the subject becomes a bit clunky:

I use the computer in Dad’s office to go online, and most of the time end up googling things like poverty. My eyes are open to a lot of things I didn’t know about being poor. I always knew my family had money, but it always seemed like everyone else did too.

Googling poverty? It’s really that foreign a concept to her? It’s hard to keep rooting for Jess in certain moments, even though ultimately we know that her heart is in the right place.

The romance in The Truth About Us is perhaps meant to be more of a “forbidden love” than it really seems. Jess’s friends are horrified that she’d get involved with a poor boy. Both Jess’s dad and Flynn’s mother are opposed to the relationship, but they come around eventually. Flynn’s own sense of responsibility toward his mother and brother keep him away from Jess for a time, but we know that these two feel instantly connected and that they’re fated to be together. The obstacles never appear to be truly insurmountable, and it’s not really a surprise when they manage to work things out.

This review perhaps sounds less positive than I actually feel about the book. The writing is witty and sensitive, and I liked the cast of characters very much. The secondary characters, especially Wilf and Jess’s former best friend Penny, are good people with a lot of heart. The story of the disintegration of Jess’s family and their slow steps toward healing is terribly sad, and it’s easy to see how Jess’s life became such a mess. She’s clearly a decent person who means well, cares for others, and wants to make a difference — and once she fights her way out from under her rich girl persona, she starts to grow into the person she wants to be.

I did feel that the realities of homelessness and poverty were a little sugar-coated, and that Jess didn’t see the truth of just how bad things could really be. However, The Truth About Us does show that it’s possible for people from such drastically different worlds to connect in a meaningful way, once they get past their preconceptions and prejudices. I haven’t seen many YA books confronting these issues, and the author should be commended for tackling the topic of economic disadvantage and differences in a way that will hopefully open readers’ eyes.

For more by this author, check out my review of her terrific previous novel, 16 Things I Thought Were True.

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The details:

Title: The Truth About Us
Author: Janet Gurtler
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Publication date: April 7, 2015
Length: 304 pages
Genre: Young adult fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of Sourcebooks Fire via NetGalley

21Mar2015

Take A Peek Book Review: Black Dove, White Raven by Elizabeth Wein

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

“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.

Synopsis:

(via Goodreads)

Rhoda and Delia are American stunt pilots who perform daring aerobatics to appreciative audiences. But while the sight of two girls wingwalking – one white, one black – is a welcome novelty in some parts of the USA, it’s an anathema in others. Rhoda and Delia dream of living in a world where neither gender nor ethnicity determines their life. When Delia is killed in a tragic accident, Rhoda is determined to make that dream come true. She moves to Ethiopia with her daughter, Em, and Delia’s son, Teo.

Em and Teo have adapted to scratching a living in a strange land, and feel at home here; but their parents’ legacy of flight and the ability to pilot a plane places them in an elite circle of people watched carefully by the Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie, who dreams of creating an air force for his fledgling nation. As Italy prepares for its invasion of Ethiopia, Em and Teo find themselves inextricably entangled in the crisis — and they are called on to help.

My Thoughts:

Sigh. I was so looking forward to this book, having absolutely loved (and been emotionally wrecked by) Code Name Verity and Rose Under Fire, also by Elizabeth Wein. Sadly, this new book simply does not measure up.

The synopsis is a bit misleading, for starter. Delia’s accident happens quite early in the story, and we get only a few glimpses of Rhoda and Delia’s friendship and flying adventures. Most of the book takes place in Ethiopia, after Rhoda brings Teo and Em there to start a new life. The book is told via Emilia and Teo’s flight logs, as they record their flying lessons plus their impressions of everything going on around them. While there are interesting snippets, in many ways the overall story feels disjointed and choppy. I didn’t feel that Rhoda’s plans were clearly established, and the ups and downs of their life in Ethiopia are conveyed in choppy episodes that don’t add up to a cohesive whole.

As an added distraction, the book seems to presuppose a certain amount of knowledge of the history of Ethiopia in the 1930s — and I’d guess that most of the target audience would have not the slightest clue. (I relied on Wikipedia to get a basic foundation for appreciating the geopolitics of the time, but how many YA readers would take the time to do this?)

There are some very interesting moments in Black Dove, White Raven, along with a series of dramatic and horrifying events toward the end of the book, but mostly it was a long haul that lacked a real sense of rhythm and flow.

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The details:

Title: Black Dove, White Raven
Author: Elizabeth Wein
Publisher: Electric Monkey
Publication date: March 5, 2015
Length: 480 pages
Genre: Historical fiction/young adult fiction
Source: Purchased

19Mar2015

Thursday Quotables: Black Dove, White Raven

Posted in Thursday Quotables by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week. Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

Black Dove, White Raven by Elizabeth Wein
(published March 5, 2015)

A peek inside the newest book from the author of the amazing Code Name Verity:

Black and white, night and day, that’s what people used to say. On the ground, when people were watching, Momma and Delia milked that contrast for all they could get. But on their own and in the sky they never paid any mind to black and white — they were just two crazy people who loved flying.

One more:

We laughed like cackling chickens. It doesn’t take much when you’re five.

And then the plane started to move and soon it was bumping over the grass and then, without me or Teo even realising what was going on, we were flying. We were so little we couldn’t see out of the cockpit. All we could see was Momma’s arms in the straps over our heads and the upper wing like a big sail and the blue sky all around us, and all we could hear was the engine and the wind singing in the wires. And Delia was flying.

That is my earliest memory.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

17Mar2015

Wishing & Waiting on Wednesday: Weightless

Posted in Wishlist Wednesday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

This week’s pick:

Weightless by Sarah Bannan
(to be released June 30, 2015 )

When 15-year-old Carolyn moves from New Jersey to Alabama with her mother, she rattles the status quo of the junior class at Adams High School. A good student and natural athlete, she’s immediately welcomed by the school’s cliques. She’s even nominated to the homecoming court and begins dating a senior, Shane, whose on again/off again girlfriend Brooke becomes Carolyn’s bitter romantic rival. When a video of Carolyn and Shane making out is sent to everyone, Carolyn goes from golden girl to slut, as Brooke and her best friend Gemma try to restore their popularity. Gossip and bullying hound Carolyn, who becomes increasingly private and isolated. When Shane and Brooke—now back together—confront Carolyn in the student parking lot, injuring her, it’s the last attack she can take.

Sarah Bannan’s deft use of the first person plural gives Weightless an emotional intensity and remarkable power that will send you flying through the pages and leave you reeling.

I’ll admit it: The pretty summer colors and imagery on the cover are what initially attracted me to this book, but the synopsis drew me right in as well. I’m intrigued, and hope to get a copy (maybe an ARC?) in time for those glorious summer reading months…

What are you wishing for this Wednesday?

Looking for some bookish fun on Thursdays? Come join me for my regular weekly feature, Thursday Quotables. You can find out more here — come play!

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

4Mar2015

Book Review: Flat-Out Love by Jessica Park

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

In Flat-Out Love, college freshman Julie learns an important life lesson: Never rent an apartment sight-unseen via Craigslist.

When Julie arrives in Boston from small-town Ohio to start her college adventure, she’s in for a rude awakening. The apartment she’s rented (and paid for via cashier’s check — not smart) doesn’t exist… although there is a bustling burrito place at the same address. Left on the sidewalk with all of her suitcases and no place to go, Julie is taken in by the family of her mother’s college roommate, although the two have been out of touch for years.

Julie is welcomed into their large home, and despite the family’s oddities, finds it warm and comfortable. Odd? You bet… especially the life-size cardboard cut-out that the youngest, 13-year-old Celeste, takes with her wherever she goes. Flat Finn looks just like real Finn, the absent oldest brother who, Julie is told, is busy traveling the world on a non-stop adventure combining volunteer work and thrill-seeking. Flat Finn sits at the dinner table with the family, comes in the car to drive Celeste to and from school, and watches over Celeste when she sleeps at night.

When it turns out that there simply are no affordable apartments to be had and the dorms are all full, Julie’s temporary refuge turns into a permanent arrangement for the year. The family loves having Julie around, and she forms a tight friendship with middle brother Matt, a self-proclaimed geek studying at MIT who lives at home and seems to be Celeste’s main caretaker. Meanwhile, Julie also finds Finn on Facebook and strikes up an online friendship with him… which turns into a flirtation… which turns into a whole lot more.

But why is Celeste so socially awkward and friendless? Why are the parents almost never around? What IS up with Flat Finn, and why will no one explain to Julie? What it with all the underlying weirdness?

Flat-Out Love is a fast-paced read filled with humor as well as sorrows. The Watkins family members clearly have secrets and painful incidents in their past, but author Jessica Park handles it all with a light touch. There’s no needless melodrama here — we see everything through Julie’s eyes, with a mixture of amusement, bafflement, and frustration. Julie truly cares about the family, and is able to slowly gain Celeste’s trust and help bring her out of her shell, and yet she’s still kept in the dark about all of the reasons for the family’s problems, up to and including Flat Finn.

There’s a love triangle, which in many books is enough to send me running for the hills, but it’s actually handled quite well here. Julie spends almost every day with Matt and has a close connection with him, but Finn is the one who makes her feel more, despite never having met him.

An underlying story about Julie’s absentee father and their strained relationship is underdeveloped and feels rather tangential to the whole story. Other than that, the author does a nice job of capturing the excitement of the freshman year experience, including new friends, a new city, the chance to break away from the social pressures of high school and start fresh, and the joy of finding classes and professors who inspire you.

I did pretty much guess the family secret right away (really, it wasn’t hard), but that in no way detracts from the enjoyment of the story — and I still found myself gobbling up the final chapters to get all the details and see how it would all turn out.

The dialogue is funny and breezy, and I liked the little touches such as Facebook status updates from the different characters and ongoing commentary on Matt’s choice of geeky T-shirts.

I was interested to note that Flat-Out Love was self-published via Amazon. I always assume that self-published books won’t appeal to me, but Flat-Out Love showed me that I should perhaps expand my horizons a bit!

I definitely recommend Flat-Out Love. It’s a great choice for anyone looking for a quick and light read that mixes quirky humor with real emotion. I understand there’s a companion novella (Flat-Out Matt) and a sequel (Flat-Out Celeste), and I hope to track down both.

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The details:

Title: Flat-Out Love
Author: Jessica Park
Publisher: Amazon Children’s Publishing
Publication date: 2011
Length: 389 pages
Genre: Young adult contemporary fiction
Source: Library

28Feb2015

Take A Peek Book Review: Fairest: Levana’s Story by Marissa Meyer

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

“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. This week’s “take a peek” book:

Synopsis:

(via Goodreads)

In this stunning bridge book between Cress and Winter in the bestselling Lunar Chronicles, Queen Levana’s story is finally told.

Mirror, mirror on the wall,
Who is the fairest of them all?

Fans of the Lunar Chronicles know Queen Levana as a ruler who uses her “glamour” to gain power. But long before she crossed paths with Cinder, Scarlet, and Cress, Levana lived a very different story – a story that has never been told . . . until now.

My Thoughts:

This slim novel is sure to please fans of the Lunar Chronicles books, finally giving us the backstory of just how Queen Levana ended up so crazy evil. Of course, it will also frustrate fans of the Lunar Chronicles, being so short and including a tease for the next (and final) novel in the series, Winter, due out in November.

In Fairest, we learn about Levana’s horrific childhood with her cruel and deranged sister Channary, and see how Levana, to a certain extent, never stood a chance of being a decent, well-adjusted person. The Lunar ability to create glamours and hide one’s true face is put to full use, as Levana uses a series of mind-tricks in her desperate search for love and happiness. But love that is coerced isn’t love, and Levana’s path from her teen years until the point when her story meshes with the Cinder timeline can be seen as one long, twisted, downward spiral.

There are places where I felt pity for Levana, perhaps even understanding. How could someone raised as she was be expected to turn out with any hint of a moral compass? Still, the sympathy is pretty quickly destroyed as Levana’s mad quest leads her to greater and greater acts of horrifying cruelty and devastation.

The hardcover edition of Fairest includes the first three chapters of Winter, which I decided not to read. I’d rather wait until I have the entire book in my hands!

Fairest answers a lot of questions about Levana’s past and the history of Lunar-Earthen politics and war. If you’ve read the first three books in the series, you’ll absolutely want to read Fairest as well. And for anyone who hasn’t given this series a try yet… jump on board! I was very late to the party, thinking that all the hype around the series couldn’t really hold up, but I was — happily — proven wrong. I really love this series, and can’t wait to read the conclusion… despite hating the idea of getting to the end!

Want to know more? Read my posts on Cinder and my Lunar Chronicles series binge.

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The details:

Title: Fairest: Levana’s Story
Author: Marissa Meyer
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Publication date: January 27, 2015
Length: 222 pages
Genre: Young adult/science fiction
Source: Library

31Jan2015

Book Review: Marly’s Ghost by David Levithan

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

If you ask me, David Levithan can pretty much do no wrong. I’ve now read at least a handful of books either written or co-written by this author, and I’ve love just about all of them.

I recently came across a review of Marly’s Ghost over at Chrissi Reads, and my curiosity was immediately piqued.

Marly’s Ghost was originally published in 2005, but it looks like a new edition is being published in the UK by Egmont Publishing.

This slim novel is a retelling of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, and it’s a retelling in the truest sense of the word. The original story doesn’t just provide a launching pad for a new idea; instead, Marly’s Ghost faithfully follows the original, practically scene by scene, but transposes it into a modern love story that’s both incredibly sad and unexpectedly uplifting.

In Marly’s Ghost, Ben is bitterly mourning the death of his beloved girlfriend Marly, who died four months earlier after a long and painful battle with cancer. Marly was the center of Ben’s world, and without her, he sees no point in anything. He pushes away his friends, sees only bleakness in everything around him, and has a special sort of derision for Valentine’s Day. Marly’s death, to Ben, is proof that love is a crock. It can’t last, it only breaks you when it’s gone, and it can’t be worth pursuing if it only leads to pain.

On the eve of Valentine’s Day, when Ben has once again cruelly rebuffed his best friend’s attempts to connect and has needlessly lashed out at a couple in the early stages of love, he retreats to his room to surround himself with his loss and seek isolation. But his isolation is shattered when Marly’s ghost appears, weighed down by chains forged from a charm bracelet containing every memento of their time together. Ben’s grief is holding her and not letting her find peace. Marly warns Ben that he will be visited by three spirits… and, well, if you’ve ever read or seen a production of A Christmas Carol, you have a pretty good idea of what’s to come.

Ben is visited by the spirits of Valentine’s Day past, present, and future, and each shows Ben a piece of himself and illuminates his effect on those around him. Above all else, Marly wanted Ben to promise not to give up, and the spirits have come to hold him to his promise.

This slim novel brought me to tears at various points. It’s a terribly sad story of loss and suffering, made worse by the characters’ young ages, and yet it’s a pleasure to read as well. David Levithan refers to this book as a “remix” of A Christmas Carol, and that’s an apt description. He sticks to the basics of the original story, but turns it into something new and emotionally rich. The modern-day characters fit easily into the framework of the classic story, and Ben’s transformation from bitterness to hope is believable and lovely.

The book is further enhanced by black and white illustrations by the masterful Brian Selznick, who models his drawings on the illustrations found in the original edition of A Christmas Carol.

I recommend this book highly, for fans of the author and illustrator, for those who love A Christmas Carol, or for anyone who enjoys a well-written, honest look at love and loss. I borrowed this book from the library, but I think I need to own a copy for myself! Marly’s Ghost, along with David Levithan’s The Lover’s Dictionary, proves that in the hands of a gifted author, good things really do come in small packages.

With thanks to Chrissi for inspiring me to track down a copy of this book!

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The details:

Title: Marly’s Ghost
Author: David Levithan
Publisher: Penguin
Publication date: Originally published 2005
Length: 208 pages
Genre: Young adult fiction
Source: Library

29Jan2015

Thursday Quotables: The Darkest Part of the Forest

Posted in Thursday Quotables by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week. Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black
(published January 13, 2015)

First, the opening paragraph:

Down a path worn into the woods, past a stream and a hollowed-out log full of pill bugs and termites, was a glass coffin. It rested right on the ground, and in it slept a boy with horns on his head and ears as pointed as knives.

And later:

Back then, it hadn’t seemed weird to Hazel to have the same imaginary boyfriend as her brother.

They were in love with him because he was a prince and a faerie and magical and you were supposed to love princes and faeries and magic people. They loved him the way they’d loved Beast the first time he swept Belle around the dance floor in her yellow dress. They loved him as they loved the Eleventh Doctor with his bow tie and his flippy hair and the Tenth Doctor with his mad laugh. They loved him as they loved lead singers of bands and actors in movies, loved him in such a way that their shared love brought them closer together.

It wasn’t like he was real. It wasn’t like he could love them back. It wasn’t like he’d ever have to choose.

Except now he’d woken. That changed everything.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
Leave your link in the comments — or, if you have a quote to share but not a blog post, you can leave your quote in the comments too!
Visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!