Entries tagged with fiction: young adult

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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.

Current Mood: cheerful

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Review: Scarlet by Marissa Meyer

Summary: The fates of Cinder and Scarlet collide as a Lunar threat spreads across the Earth...

Cinder, the cyborg mechanic, returns in the second thrilling installment of the bestselling Lunar Chronicles. She's trying to break out of prison—even though if she succeeds, she'll be the Commonwealth's most wanted fugitive.

Halfway around the world, Scarlet Benoit's grandmother is missing. It turns out there are many things Scarlet doesn't know about her grandmother or the grave danger she has lived in her whole life. When Scarlet encounters Wolf, a street fighter who may have information as to her grandmother's whereabouts, she is loath to trust this stranger, but is inexplicably drawn to him, and he to her. As Scarlet and Wolf unravel one mystery, they encounter another when they meet Cinder. Now, all of them must stay one step ahead of the vicious Lunar Queen Levana, who will do anything for the handsome Prince Kai to become her husband, her king, her prisoner.

Read the review over at On The Nightstand!

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The Girl Who Would Be King by Kelly Thompson

Summary: Separated by thousands of miles, two young women are about to realize their extraordinary powers which will bind their lives together in ways they can't begin to understand.

Protecting others. Maintaining order. Being good. These are all important things for Bonnie Braverman, even if she doesn't understand why. Confined to a group home since she survived the car accident that killed both her parents, Bonnie has lived her life until now in self-imposed isolation and silence; but when an opportunity presents itself to help another girl in need, Bonnie has to decide whether to actually use the power she has long suspected she has. Power that frightens her.

Across the country, Lola LeFever is inheriting her own power by sending her mother over a cliff...literally. For Lola the only thing that matters is power; getting it, taking it, and eliminating anyone who would get in the way of her pursuit of it. With her mother dead and nothing to hold her back from the world any longer, Lola sets off to test her own powers on anyone unfortunate enough to cross her. And Lola's not afraid of anything.

One girl driven to rescue, save, and heal; the other driven to punish, destroy, and kill.

And now they're about to meet.

Despite some writing that needed a run through with a professional editor, some insta-love and some logic missteps, I really loved The Girl Who Would Be King. As I expected when I read the summary, it’s everything I want in a story: Two main female leads who end up being the other’s enemy, with the fate of the world in the balance, all told like a comic book in prose form. And let’s just say I wasn’t disappointed.

Read the rest of the review over at On The Nightstand!

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Project Unicorn Volume 1 by Sarah and Jennifer Diemer

Summary: PROJECT UNICORN, VOLUME ONE is a collection of thirty young adult short stories featuring lesbian heroines. As ghosts and witches, aliens and vampires, the characters in this extensive and varied collection battle monsters and inner demons, stand up to bullies, wield magic, fall in love, and take action to claim their lives--and their stories--as their own.

Written by wife-and-wife authors Jennifer Diemer and Sarah Diemer, this volume of stories, with genres ranging from science fiction and fantasy to the paranormal, is part of Project Unicorn, a fiction project that seeks to address the near nonexistence of lesbian main characters in young adult fiction by giving them their own stories. PROJECT UNICORN, VOLUME ONE contains the full first three collections of Project Unicorn stories: The Dark Woods, The Monstrous Sea and Uncharted Sky.

See the review at On The Nightstand.

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Book Review: The Demon’s Surrender, by Sarah Rees Brennan

In The Demon’s Surrender, the point of view shifts to Sin. Up to this point, her entire life has revolved around the Market, and her family. She is currently in competition with Mae to win control of the Goblin Market. Since Mae is a “tourist,” Sin does not think Mae has what it takes to become the next leader. (Unfortunately, the current leader feels it is an even match, hence the competition.) Sin’s life is also greatly complicated by the escalating war between the Market and the magicians, her home life, her father, and the possibility of a romantic relationship with Alan Ryves. (With whom she was emphatically not interested in previously, so it is a surprise to both of them.)

This book was a disaster in slow motion, and I mean that in a good way.

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

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Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger

Summary: It’s one thing to learn to curtsy properly. It’s quite another to learn to curtsy and throw a knife at the same time. Welcome to Finishing School.

Sophronia Temminnick at 14 is a great trial more interested in dismantling clocks and climbing trees than proper manners — and the family can only hope that company never sees her atrocious curtsy. Her poor mother, desperate for her daughter to become a proper lady, enrolls the lively tomboy in Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality.

But young ladies learn to finish…everything. Certainly, they learn the fine arts of dance, dress, and etiquette, but they also learn to deal out death, diversion, and espionage — in the politest possible ways, of course. Sophronia and her friends are in for a rousing first year’s education.

I am a big fan of Gail Carriger’s adult series The Parasol Protectorate, so when I learned that she was writing a young adult series set in the same universe I was really excited. However I was also a little nervous, wondering how Carriger and her universe would take to the very different beast that is YA fiction.

So how did Carriger and Etiquette and Espionage do? High marks.

Read the rest of Catherine's review at On The Nightstand.

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Dark Secrets: Legacy of Lies & Don't Tell by Elizabeth Chandler

Summary: Two girls haunted by the past…and destined to relive it…

In “Legacy of Lies,” Megan has to stay with the uptight grandmother she wants nothing to do with. She’s determined to get through the visit without any drama, but when she falls into a twisted love triangle with potentially fatal consequences, Megan may be caught up in her family’s legacy in more ways than she realizes.

In “Don’t Tell,” Lauren knows that by returning to the town where her mother drowned seven years ago, she’ll be reliving one of her most haunting memories. When she arrives, she is propelled into a series of mysterious events that mimic the days leading up to her mother’s death. Maybe her mother’s drowning wasn’t an accident after all…and maybe Lauren is next.

We have been seeing a lot of young adult books from the 90s and early 2000s being re-released in bind-up form these past few years – some examples would be the Wicked series by Nancy Holder & Debbie Viguie, LJ Smith’s body of work, and Christopher Pike’s The Last Vampire series and Remember Me trilogy – and they are something that I have been taking great delight in. Why? Because it gives me and so many others a second chance to get my hands on all these wonderful stories – both the ones already read and the ones that would have otherwise not been.

Read the rest of Catherine's review at On The Nightstand.

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Book Review: The Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan

Summary: On remote Rollrock Island, men make their living--and fetch their wives--from the sea.

The Witch Misskaella knows how to find the girl at the heart of a seal. She'll coax a beauty from the beast for any man, for a price. And what man wouldn't want a sea-wife, to and to hold, and to keep by his side forever?

But though he may tell himself that he is the master, one look in his new bride's eyes will transform him just as much as it changes her. Both will be ensnared--and the witch will look on, laughing.

In this magical, seaswept novel, Margo Lanagan tells an extraordinary tale of desire, despair, and transformation. With devastatingly beautiful prose, she reveals characters capable of unspeakable cruelty, but also of unspoken love.

See the review at On The Nightstand.

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Intro, book review and giveaway

Hi everyone, I'm new here. :-) I love reading, and my favorite genres are YA, middle-grade, science fiction, fantasy and historical fiction. My favorite authors include Catherine Fisher, Meg Cabot, Malinda Lo, Elora Bishop, Eloise Jarvis McGraw, and Cornelia Funke.

I actually was lucky enough to win an ARC of Cornelia Funke's newest book, Fearless, which is book two of her Mirrorworld series. I'll share my review below. :-)

( Review of Fearless )

Thanks to a mix-up with the publisher, I was sent 13 copies of this ARC instead of one. The publisher has asked me to give away the extras, and I still have several copies left. If you are a fan of Cornelia Funke, or are looking for a new YA fantasy to try, you can find the details on this post!

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

This is my favorite cover.

Daybreak 2250 A.D. (aka Star Man’s Son) is one of the first books I read by Andre Norton. I first read it when I was fifth grade and for some reason, it was in the adult section of the Library. (The novel actually has a “young adult” feel to it, and one of the hard back editions actually has illustrations.) After re-reading it, I found that it had aged very well, even with the “post-apocalyptic neo-barb syntax,” that makes everyone sound like movie-western Indians type “eloquent.” The general message is the importance of cooperation between groups of people and not judging people by how they look. (There is also some commentary about race, presented in a very subtle fashion.)

Our Hero is one Fors of the Puma Clan of a tribe of neo-barbarians of a community called “The Eyrie.”

Current Mood: accomplished

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Unreview: Trickster's Girl, by Hilari Bell

This is not a book review. I was not able to finish the book or even get farther than three chapters. This is because Trickster’s Girl is kind of awful. It is a “gee, why don’t I write a fantasy with a completely random non-specific hodge-podge of Native American mythology and then completely disrespect it via my heroine!” kind of book. It is a “why don’t I glom together a bunch of Native American belief systems then randomly throw in new agey ley lines!” kind of book. It is a “I have never heard of The Tough Guide to Fantasyland and therefore do not realize how badly I needed it!” kind of book.

Of course, I had my general misgivings just from the summary, which involves "the mythological creature Raven" wanting the female protagonist to help him avert some kind of ecological disaster.

Current Mood: accomplished

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Book Review: Dark Inside by Jeyn Roberts

Fair warning: I did not much care for this book. It was more or less readable, but I had no feelings for any of the characters, who were basically cardboard figures being dragged along by the plot. I also found some of the writing to be very clunky, and flat out disagreed with several of the points the writer seemed to be fumbling toward. (My feelings for this book are nearly the same as my feelings for the The Stand, another apocalypse novel that I really do not like very much.) It has a very open and somewhat weak ending, and the last couple pages are not numbered for apparently atmospheric reasons.

The Dark Inside is an apocalyptic novel vaguely related to the zombie apocalypse genre.

Current Mood: amused

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Book Review: A Conspiracy of Kings, by Megan Whalen Turner

In The King of Attolia, we learned that Eugenides friend Sophos, the heir to the kingdom of Sounis had been kidnapped by rebels and then had disappeared. In A Conspiracy of Kings we find out what happened to him. (Essentially, he manages to jump directly from the frying pan, into the fire, yet manages not to get burned too badly.)

A Conspiracy of Kings opens with Sophos and the magus managing to make contact with Eugenides in Attolia.

Current Mood: accomplished

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Book Review: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children has a lot in common with one of those writing exercises where you take a picture and write a story about it. In this case, we have a novel based on a number of old photographs involving trick photography. The story spun from the photographs is one of temporal shenanigans, people with mysterious magical abilities and tentacle monsters.

Our Hero is a young man named Jacob who has spent most of his childhood hearing fantastical tales from his grandfather about the orphanage where he grew up.

My over all view of the book is that I liked it, but wasn't very sure of the worldbuilding.

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Book Review: The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner

In The King of Attolia, Eugenides has to figure out how to be king, when all he wanted was the queen. (Unfortunately, the queen and the gods are not letting poor Eugenides off the hook.) The Queen of Attolia’s subjects aren’t very enthused by the idea of Eugenides being their king and proceed to cause him a great deal of grief. The palace staff and even his attendants are harassing him, the nobility is on the very edge of insurrection, and there are conspiracies and assassins everywhere. On top of all that, Eugenides must also get used to being married to the woman he loves, who is also the Woman Who Did Very Bad Things to Him in A Very Public Way. (Eugenides and Irene have an extremely complicated and slightly frightening relationship.)

Read the rest at A Wicked Convergence of Circumstances

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Book Review: The Demon’s Covenant, by Sarah Rees Brennan

The sequel to The Demon’s Lexicon is from the point of view of Mae, who is trying to deal with her very complicated life which has been made even more complicated by magic and the presence of Nick and Alan Ryves. (She is also in the dog house with her mother Annabel, who it turns out, is not the kind of parent who would not care if her two children disappeared. She is just the kind of parent who deeply sucks at interacting with children. Unreliable narrators are not to be trusted and should not be trusted because they are unreliable.)

Not long after the events of Lexicon, Mae’s brother James is being approached by the magician’s Circle that had targeted him in the previous book. This time around, they seem to be intent on recruiting him instead of feeding him to a demon, so he’s rather conflicted. When she finds out about this, Mae goes to Nick and Alan for help, but they have problems of their own: the magicians are still after them, and they are on very shaky ground with the “Goblin Market” a group of individuals who stand in opposition to the magicians.

Read the rest at A Wicked Convergence of Circumstance