Summary: Thirteen-year-old Sophie isn’t happy about spending the summer of 1960 at her grandmother’s old house in the bayou. Bored and lonely, she can’t resist exploring the house’s maze, or making an impulsive wish for a fantasy-book adventure with herself as the heroine. What she gets instead is a real adventure: a trip back in time to 1860 and the race-haunted world of her family’s Louisiana sugar plantation. Here, President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation is still two years in the future and passage of the Thirteenth Amendment is almost four years away. And here, Sophie is mistaken, by her own ancestors, for a slave.

At some point during The Freedom Maze, I became so engrossed in the story that I didn’t even want to pause to write down notes for a review later. Unfortunately this means that my review is probably going to be a little all over the place, but oh well.

This is the third novel I’ve read about someone being sent back in time to the mid 19th century and being forced to be a part of the slave plantations. The first, of course, being Kindred, and the second being Zetta Elliott’s A Wish After Midnight.

See the review at On The Nightstand.

Summary: Here are the numbers of Ann Galardi’s life:

She is 16.
And a size 17.
Her perfect mother is a size 6.
Her Aunt Jackie is getting married in 8 weeks, and wants Ann to be her bridesmaid.
So Ann makes up her mind: Time to lose 45 pounds (more or less) in two
months.

Welcome to the world of informercial diet plans, terrifying wedding dance lessons, endless run-ins with the cutest guy Ann’s ever seen—and some surprises about her NOT-so-perfect mother.

And there’s one more thing. It’s all about feeling comfortable in your own skin -- no matter how you add it up!

Being a fat lady myself, I tend to stay away from YA books (or any books really) that deal with weight issues. All too often it ends with the main character losing weight and suddenly becoming beautiful and desirable and wonderful where she wasn’t before. While I do obviously support healthy eating habits and exercise for those who can manage it without damaging their bodies, I get tired of seeing the same message in weight books: Lose weight because you’re worthless until you do, you big fatty.

See the review at On The Nightstand.

Summary: Win and become the King. Lose your armor, lose your life.

A kingdom in chaos, and countless men dead. When Cypress emerges from her village in the forest to seek her fate in the outside lands, she doesn’t bargain on becoming part of the realm’s politics with the Knight’s Game. Twelve men were chosen for the Game, each with his own symbol, and the last one standing becomes the next King. One man wears the sigil of the white stag, an unearthly being from Cypress’ own forest, that draws her into a world she never dreamed of. But when Cypress comes face to face with her spitting image, the father she never knew, she joins the Game to ensure his tyranny will not become law, all while hiding a secret that could get her killed – that she’s a woman.

The White Stag is a good old fashioned fantasy that should appeal to fans of Tamora Pierce’s Song of the Lioness series. Although it sounds similar, it takes a much more original route. It’s like a meeting of Tamora Pierce and The Hunger Games, and it works.

See the review at On The Nightstand.

Emilie & the Hollow World is a young adult fantasy adventure with a steampunk feel.


Read this review on A Wicked Convergence of Circumstance on Blogger.

Read this review on Rena's Hub of Random on WordPress.

Summary: Gerald Faust knows exactly when he started feeling angry: the day his mother invited a reality television crew into his five-year-old life. Twelve years later, he’s still haunted by his rage-filled youth—which the entire world got to watch from every imaginable angle—and his anger issues have resulted in violent outbursts, zero friends, and clueless adults dumping him in the special education room at school.

Nothing is ever going to change. No one cares that he’s tried to learn to control himself, and the girl he likes has no idea who he really is. Everyone’s just waiting for him to snap…and he’s starting to feel dangerously close to doing just that.

In this fearless portrayal of a boy on the edge, highly acclaimed Printz Honor author A.S. King explores the desperate reality of a former child “star” who finally breaks free of his anger by creating possibilities he never knew he deserved.

When I first began seeing status updates and reviews coming in from friends about Reality Boy, a surprising number of them dropped the book because it was a book they had to be in a certain mood for. After having read it, I now see what they meant. Reality Boy is definitely a book you have to be in a certain mindset and place to be able to read and fully appreciate.

Read the review at On The Nightstand.