Entries tagged with fiction: young adult

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Review: Conjured by Sarah Beth Durst

Release Date: September 3rd, 2013
Summary: Eve has a new home, a new face, and a new name—but no memories of her past. She’s been told that she's in a witness protection program. That she escaped a dangerous magic-wielding serial killer who still hunts her. The only thing she knows for sure is that there is something horrifying in her memories the people hiding her want to access—and there is nothing they won’t say—or do—to her to get her to remember.

At night she dreams of a tattered carnival tent and buttons being sewn into her skin. But during the day, she shelves books at the local library, trying to not let anyone know that she can do things—things like change the color of her eyes or walk through walls. When she does use her strange powers, she blacks out and is drawn into terrifying visions, returning to find that days or weeks have passed—and she’s lost all short-term memories. Eve must find out who and what she really is before the killer finds her—but the truth may be more dangerous than anyone could have ever imagined.

A book that relies on a mystery propelling the plot forward runs the risk of no longer being interesting once the reader has found out that mystery. There are several main mysteries in Conjured; who is Eve, where did she come from, why can she not remember anything, why can she do brief bursts of great magic that makes her black out, and who’s hunting her?

Thankfully, even when we finally find all of this out, Conjured is still a great story.

Read the review at On The Nightstand.

Current Mood: accomplished

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Book Review: Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger

Etiquette and Espionage is a young adult novel that takes place in the same universe as Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate series. (It is the first part of the “Finishing School” series.) Our Heroine is a girl named Sophronia who has the kind of childish, Tom Sawyer type adventures that are the despair of any parent that is trying to turn their daughter into a “lady.” After an incident with a dumbwaiter and a trifle, Sophronia is packed off to an elite finishing school.

Sophronia is not on board with the plan, until the headmistress taking her to the school turns out to be an imposter, and their carriage gets hijacked by “flywaymen” seeking a mysterious “prototype.”

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

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Review: Five Flavors of Dumb by Antony John

Summary: The Challenge: Piper has one month to get the rock band Dumb a paying gig.

The Deal: If she does it, Piper will become the band’s manager and get her share of the profits.

The Catch: How can Piper possibly manage one egomaniacal pretty boy, one talentless piece of eye candy, one crush, one silent rocker, and one angry girl? And how can she do it when she’s deaf?

Piper can’t hear Dumb’s music, but with growing self-confidence, a budding romance, and a new understanding of the decision her family made to buy a cochlear implant for her deaf baby sister, she discovers her own inner rock star and what it truly means to be a flavor of Dumb.

This book has been on my radar for a while when it first caught my attention back in November ‘10, when I saw that it had a deaf protagonist. It’s rare to find characters with disabilities in YA outside of an issues book, and the blurb sounded great. Combine that with the fact that everyone and their dog has been praising this book, and my need to read it grew pretty dang high, as did my expectations.

Let’s just say I was not disappointed. At all.

Read the review at On The Nightstand.

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Review: Amy and Roger's Epic Detour by Morgan Matson

Summary: Amy Curry thinks her life sucks. Her mom decides to move from California to Connecticut to start anew–just in time for Amy’s senior year. Her dad recently died in a car accident. So Amy embarks on a road trip to escape from it all, driving cross-country from the home she’s always known toward her new life. Joining Amy on the road trip is Roger, the son of Amy’s mother’s old friend. Amy hasn’t seen him in years, and she is less than thrilled to be driving across the country with a guy she barely knows. So she’s surprised to find that she is developing a crush on him. At the same time, she’s coming to terms with her father’s death and how to put her own life back together after the accident. Told in traditional narrative as well as scraps from the road–diner napkins, motel receipts, postcards–this is the story of one girl’s journey to find herself.

Read the review at On The Nightstand.

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Review: A Wish After Midnight by Zetta Elliott

Summary: Genna Colon desperately wants to escape from a drug-infested world of poverty, and every day she wishes for a different life. One day Genna's wish is granted and she is instantly transported back to Civil War-era Brooklyn.

This is a hard book to read. It deals very intimately with racism and the different forms it takes, small and big, both in the present day and in 1863. The contrast between the two times was well done, showing how much things had changed or not changed, in some cases.

See the review at On The Nightstand.

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Review: Love Devours by Sarah diemer

Summary: We’re all afraid of monsters. They coil in our subconscious, slither along the edges of thought. Still we creep to the crackling fire to whisper their stories.

Love Devours is a collection of new fables for queer women, extracted from the bones of the dark: ominous fairy tales, sinister myths, dystopias rife with nightmares. But in the midst of monsters, love still struggles to find the light.

A witch traps a beast of the sea; a corpse is reanimated out of love; a muse drains her supplicant; a priestess worships in a church of wolves. Six monster stories lurk within these pages. Six heroines, sometimes monsters themselves, unearth romance, rebuild worlds, shatter spells. Their courage unveils the secret faces of humankind’s greatest compulsions: fear and love.

Come into the dark and be devoured.

See the review at On The Nightstand.

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Review: Star Cursed by Jessica Spotswood

Summary: With the Brotherhood persecuting witches like never before, a divided Sisterhood desperately needs Cate to come into her Prophesied powers. And after Cate’s friend Sachi is arrested for using magic, a war-thirsty Sister offers to help her find answers—if Cate is willing to endanger everyone she loves.

Cate doesn’t want to be a weapon, and she doesn’t want to involve her friends and Finn in the Sisterhood’s schemes. But when Maura and Tess join the Sisterhood, Maura makes it clear that she’ll do whatever it takes to lead the witches to victory. Even if it means sacrifices. Even if it means overthrowing Cate. Even if it means all-out war.

Oh, Star Cursed. For all the ways you improved upon Born Wicked, you also fell much, much farther than the first book in this series did.

See the review at On The Nightstand.

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Review: Born Wicked by Jessica Spotswood

Summary: Everybody thinks Cate Cahill and her sisters are eccentric. Too pretty, too reclusive, and far too educated for their own good. But the truth is even worse: they’re witches. And if their secret is discovered by the priests of the Brotherhood, it would mean an asylum, a prison ship–or an early grave.

Then Cate finds her mother’s diary, and uncovers a secret that could spell her family’s destruction. Desperate to find alternatives to their fate, Cate starts scouring banned books and questioning rebellious new friends, all while juggling tea parties, shocking marriage proposals, and a forbidden romance with the completely unsuitable Finn Belastra. But if what her mother wrote is true, the Cahill girls aren’t safe–not even from each other.

Do you ever have one of those books that has pretty much everything you love in a novel, and you’re sure you’re going to absolutely adore it… except then you read it, and while you do like it, there’s one huge detail that’s ruining the entire thing for you?

Born Wicked is that book for me.

See the review at On The Nightstand.

Current Mood: accomplished

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Outlined: Gossamer Axe by Gael Baudino

Gossamer Axe is a stand-alone novel by Gael Baudino. It’s a Tam Lin-like story about a young woman attempting to rescue her lover from the Sidh. This is complicated by the modern setting and the way the Sidh Realm is receding from the world. You can tell this book was written in the late 80s because the cover blurb very cleverly fails to mention that Our Heroine’s lover is a girl.

Our Heroine is stumped at finding a way to defeat the Sidh bard holding her lover captive, until she discovers rock and roll.

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

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Review: Vessel by Sarah Beth Durst

Summary: Liyana has trained her entire life to be the vessel of a goddess. She will dance and summon her tribe’s deity, who will inhabit Liyana’s body and use magic to bring rain to the desert. But when the dance ends, Liyana is still there. Her tribe is furious–and sure that it is Liyana’s fault. Abandoned by her tribe, Liyana expects to die in the desert. Until a boy walks out of the dust in search of her.

Korbyn is a god inside his vessel, and a trickster god at that. He tells Liyana that five other gods are missing, and they set off across the desert in search of the other vessels. The desert tribes cannot survive without the magic of their gods. But the journey is dangerous, even with a god’s help. And not everyone is willing to believe the trickster god’s tale.

The closer she grows to Korbyn, the less Liyana wants to disappear to make way for her goddess. But she has no choice–she must die for her tribe to live. Unless a trickster god can help her to trick fate–or a human girl can muster some magic of her own.

I’ve been a fan of Sarah Beth Durst ever since I read her first novel, Into the Wild. Despite some mishaps along the way, she’s remained one of my favourite authors, and Vessel is yet another winning book from her.

Read the review at On The Nightstand.

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Review: You Against Me by Jenny Downham

Summary: If someone hurts your sister and you’re any kind of man, you seek revenge, right?

If your brother’s accused of a terrible crime but says he didn’t do it, you defend him, don’t you?

When Mikey’s sister claims a boy assaulted her, his world begins to fall apart.

When Ellie’s brother is charged with the offense, her world begins to unravel.

When Mikey and Ellie meet, two worlds collide.

This is a hard review for me to write, because while I can recognize that You Against Me has its great points, there were some things that kept me from really getting into the book and liking it.

See the review at On The Nightstand.

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Review: Fearscape by Nenia Campbell

Summary: He followed her because he wanted to own her. She trusted him because she wanted excitement. There’s a saying that curiosity can kill … but Valerian Kimble is beginning to learn that satisfaction might just be worse.

Fourteen-year-old Valerian lives in an age where antiheroes and bad boys are portrayed as the romantic ideal, and good guys are passe and boring. So when Gavin Mecozzi, the school’s brilliant but twisted loner, begins to show an interest in her after a chance meeting in a pet store, Val is intrigued. He’s charming and poetic and makes her feel things that she thought were only possible in books–

Fear.

Because somebody is stalking Val. Somebody who wants to hurt her. Own her. Possess her. Maybe even kill her.

As her meetings with Gavin unravel into a more complex and frightening relationship, Val can’t help but wonder if the new boy in her life is her depraved and obsessive stalker.

And whether he’s capable of murder.

Time is running out.

Well, this was a wonderfully creepy ride! I think it maybe could have used another draft to really cinch things in, but it’s still a good book.

Read the review at On The Nightstand.

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Review: The Hierophant by Madeline Claire Franklin

Summary: Demons are watching you. They move invisible through our world, hunting for rare prey–most humans don’t see the monsters that lurk in the dark, and as long as you can’t see them, they can’t hurt you.

But Ana sees the demons. Creatures once found only in bedtime stories told by her late mother have crept from the shadows, whispering her name, and stirring ancient magic in her blood.

On the day her tarot deck foretells a disturbing change, Ana encounters an uncanny young man who literally stops her heart. Trebor has strange powers, and an even stranger quest, and for some reason wants to help her. But the closer Trebor gets to unlocking Ana’s power, the more important–and dangerous–his own quest becomes. And in a world haunted by demons determined to find the key to their empire, there is much more at stake than one girl’s soul.

I originally read and loved Franklin’s first novel The Poppet and the Lune. While The Hierophant doesn’t quite reach the same level of greatness as Poppet and the Lune did, it’s still a very solid, good novel on its own.

Read the review at On The Nightstand.

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Review: The Girl Who Could Fly by Victoria Forester

Summary: When homeschooled farm girl Piper McCloud reveals her ability to fly, she is quickly taken to a secret government facility to be trained with other exceptional children, but she soon realizes that something is very wrong and begins working with brilliant and wealthy Conrad to escape.

Sometimes a book doesn’t need to be perfectly written or even perfect to be considered perfect. The plot may be silly, the characters may lack a certain depth, the dialogue may be cheesy… but somehow it elicits such a strong emotional response from you, you’re able to ignore all of that and think, “I really love this book.” It’s sort of like watching a Disney movie; sure, sometimes they have their failings, but it’s comforting to just curl up in a blanket and watch one when you’re upset and need emotional comfort.

Read the review at On The Nightstand.

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fiction: young adult

Review: Anatomy of a Single Girl by Daria Snadowsky

Summary: After everything that happened—my first boyfriend, my first time, my first breakup—jumping back into the dating game seemed like the least healthy thing I could do. It’s not that I didn’t want to fall in love again, since that’s about the best feeling ever. But as a busy college premed still raw from heartbreak, which is the worst feeling ever, I figured I’d lie low for a while. Of course, as soon as I stopped looking for someone, an impossibly amazing—and devastatingly cute—guy came along, and I learned that having a new boyfriend is the quickest way to recover from losing your old one.

The moment we got together, all my preconceptions about romance and sex were turned upside down. I discovered physical and emotional firsts I never knew existed. I learned to let go of my past by living in the present. It was thrilling. It was hot. It was just what the doctor ordered.

But I couldn’t avoid my future forever.

While Anatomy of a Boyfriend explored the situation of having your first love, first boyfriend and first sexual experiences, Anatomy of a Single Girl focuses on what happens after you break up with that first love and start to discover other sexual partners. What a refreshing read it was, too.

Read the review at On The Nightstand.

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Book Review: Anatomy of a Boyfriend by Daria Snadowsky

Summary: Before this all happened, the closest I’d ever come to getting physical with a guy was playing the board game Operation. Okay, so maybe that sounds pathetic, but it’s not like there were any guys at my high school who I cared to share more than three words with, let alone my body.

Then I met Wes, a track star senior from across town. Maybe it was his soulful blue eyes, or maybe my hormones just started raging. Either way, I was hooked. And after a while, he was too. I couldn’t believe how intense my feelings became, or the fact that I was seeing—and touching—parts of the body I’d only read about in my Gray’s Anatomy textbook. You could say Wes and I experienced a lot of firsts together that spring. It was scary. It was fun. It was love.

And then came the fall.

Very rarely do you see sex handled well in YA–at least, not in paranormal YA. Sometimes you do come across a contemporary novel that handles it, but it’s rarely ever the focal point of such a novel. I’ve always been a little disappointed about this, since, despite what people seem to believe, teens do have sex and do all kinds of things society tries to tell them not to do. To not acknowledge this in a novel focusing on teens continues to do them a disservice.

Read the rest of the review at On The Nightstand.

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Review: Cobweb Bride by Vera Nazarian

Summary: What if you killed someone and then fell in love with them?

In an alternate Renaissance world, somewhere in an imaginary “pocket” of Europe called the Kingdom of Lethe, Death comes, in the form of a grim Spaniard, to claim his Bride. Until she is found, in a single time-stopping moment all dying stops. There is no relief for the mortally wounded and the terminally ill….

Covered in white cobwebs of a thousand snow spiders she lies in the darkness… Her skin is cold as snow… Her eyes frozen… Her gaze, fiercely alive…

While kings and emperors send expeditions to search for a suitable Bride for Death, armies of the undead wage an endless war… A black knight roams the forest at the command of his undead father … Spies and political treacheries abound at the imperial Silver Court…. Murdered lovers find themselves locked in the realm of the living…

And one small village girl, Percy—an unwanted, ungainly middle daughter—is faced with the responsibility of granting her dying grandmother the desperate release she needs.

As a result, Percy joins the crowds of other young women of the land in a desperate quest to Death’s own mysterious holding in the deepest forests of the North…

And everyone is trying to stop her.

On the surface, Cobweb Bride has everything I should love in a book. A fairytale-esque setting, the focus on ladies being awesome, Death in love with a bride. I should have loved this book.

Read the review at On The Nightstand.

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Reviews: Twixt by Sarah Diemer & Loki's Wolves by K.L. Armstrong and M.A. Marr

Summary for Twixt: You wake upon the cold ground. As you struggle to rise, as your breath exhales like a ghost, you know only two things: You can’t remember who you are. And you’re being hunted.

No one sleeps in Abeo City. The lost souls gather indoors at night as Snatchers tear through the sky on black-feathered wings, stalking them. But inside the rotting walls of the Safe Houses comes a quieter, creeping danger. The people of Abeo City have forgotten their pasts, and they can trade locks of their hair to sinister women known only as the Sixers for an addictive drug. Nox will give you back a single memory--for a price.

Like the other lost souls, Lottie wakens in this harsh landscape and runs in terror from the Snatchers. But she soon comes to realize that she is not at all like the people of Abeo City. When she takes Nox, her memories remain a mystery, and the monsters who fill the sky at night refuse to snatch her. Trying to understand who she is, and how she ended up in such a hopeless place, Lottie bands together with other outcasts, including a brave and lovely girl named Charlie. In the darkness, and despite the threat of a monstrous end, love begins to grow. But as Lottie and Charlie plot their escape from Abeo City, Lottie’s dark secrets begin to surface, along with the disturbing truth about Twixt: a truth that could cost her everything.

Read the review here at On The Nightstand.

Summary for Loki's Wolves: In Viking times, Norse myths predicted the end of the world, an event called Ragnarok, that only the gods can stop. When this apocalypse happens, the gods must battle the monsters--wolves the size of the sun, serpents that span the seabeds, all bent on destroying the world.

The gods died a long time ago.

Matt Thorsen knows every Norse myth, saga, and god as if it was family history--because it is family history. Most people in the modern-day town of Blackwell, South Dakota, in fact, are direct descendants of either Thor or Loki, including Matt's classmates Fen and Laurie Brekke.

However, knowing the legends and completely believing them are two different things. When the rune readers reveal that Ragnarok is coming and kids--led by Matt--will stand in for the gods in the final battle, he can hardly believe it. Matt, Laurie, and Fen's lives will never be the same as they race to put together an unstoppable team to prevent the end of the world.

Read the review here at On The Nightstand.

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Review of Twixt by Sarah Diemer

I wanted to share my review of this book because it really made an impact on me. Usually when I rate something a 5, I just base it on pure enjoyment, not necessarily on literary merit; but no, this is a good book, enjoyable and quality. It's a story that really makes you think.

Twixt is different from Diemer's first novel, which was more slow-moving and episodic. It's as beautifully written as The Dark Wife was, but this novel is heavily plot-driven and action-packed, filled with mystery, suspense, and intrigue. The world-building is stellar, taking us to a setting that reminded me of the modern-yet-old-fashioned version of Wonderland we encounter in the 2009 Syfy miniseries Alice (an all-time fave of mine), mixed with a little bit of the gritty Victorian world of Libba Bray's Gemma Doyle trilogy.

The romance is slow-building and gradual, giving the reader plenty of time to get invested in the characters and their love story. The characters themselves are also well-rounded and developed, and I grew very attached not only to Lottie and Charlie, but to their friends in the world of Twixt. As the suspense built and developed into a shocking twist (and this one was really a shocker; even though I thought I'd figured it out, I was still thrown for a total loop by the reveal), I grew really anxious for the characters I'd gotten so attached to.

Everything built up to a gripping climax and a moving, powerful ending. I got all emotional at the end, and I'm not usually someone who cries when I read.

I went into this book expecting a paranormal romance novel, and what I found was much more. (I'm trying to keep this vague to avoid spoilers, but I guarantee Twixt will surprise you. Nothing is what you expect.) Twixt was an absolutely beautiful book.

Current Mood: accomplished

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Reading: Daybreak 2250 A.D. by Andre Norton, Part Seven

This time around, let us talk about Dances With Wolves. It is part of a genre where the White Guy partially assimilates and for whatever reason decides to help the culture he assimilated into. See also The Last Samurai. We may or may not have another example in John Carter. So the White Guy steps in to fight the oppression of the Other White Guys who are not as Enlightened as he is. This genre is pretty much a huge turn off for me and I tend to avoid stories with this plot because I am not sure the narrative understands what the hell it is talking about.

What is interesting is Fors, who is debatably white (we know that he is at least light skinned) does not get this narrative.

Read this on Rena's Hub of Random.