Book review: Stardust

Stardust by Neil Gaiman

Description from Goodreads (below) can be found here along with other reviews. Add me on Goodreads!

Hopelessly crossed in love, a boy of half-fairy parentage leaves his mundane Victorian-English village on a quest for a fallen star in the magical realm. The star proves to be an attractive woman with a hot temper, who plunges with our hero into adventures featuring witches, the lion and the unicorn, plotting elf-lords, ships that sail the sky, magical transformations, curses whose effects rebound, binding conditions with hidden loopholes and all the rest.

Either at the very end of high school or the very beginning of college, I watched a movie called Stardust with two of my best friends from high school. We knew little about the movie except that it was a fairy tale for grown ups. I think we didn't love it initially, but then we watched the bloopers, and then we loved it.

Fast forward many years and I discovered Stardust the movie was based off Stardust the book, which was written by Neil Gaiman, an author I'd heard loads about but whose work I'd never read.

Gaiman does an amazing job leading you through a world where you slowly notice more and more magic. The book truly feels mystical and magical and brings you into its world.

I loved Stardust the book. The movie followed the storyline of the book pretty well, so there weren't a lot of surprises (until the end, at least -- it's a bit different), but the book was (as most books are) so much more emotional and heartfelt. I loved it. 

If you're interested in trying audio, the author narrates this one himself and it is exceptionally well done. Highly recommended! I gave it four stars.

Have any of you read (or watched) Stardust? What did you think?

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Book review: A Monster Calls

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

Description from Goodreads (below) can be found here along with other reviews. Add me on Goodreads!

The monster showed up after midnight. As they do.

But it isn't the monster Conor's been expecting. He's been expecting the one from his nightmare, the one he's had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments, the one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming...

This monster is something different, though. Something ancient, something wild. And it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor.

It wants the truth.

I heard a LOT of wonderful things about this book before picking it up and it didn't disappoint. 

Conor is a young kid dealing with a really tough situation. As he's struggling to just make it through every day life, a monster starts appearing. It incites him to do some awful things and then disappears, leaving Conor both with the consequences and wondering if the monster is even real.

I don't want to say too much, because if this book hasn't been spoiled for you, I don't want to be the one who does. But it was very well written, very emotional, and something I think a lot of kids could relate to.

If you're interested in trying audio, this one is narrated by the man who played Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies and it is very well done.

Have any of you read A Monster Calls? What did you think?

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Book review: January First

January First by Michael Schofield

Description from Goodreads (below) can be found here along with other reviews. Add me on Goodreads!

A brilliant and harrowingly honest memoir, January First is the extraordinary story of a father's fight to save his child from an extremely severe case of mental illness in the face of overwhelming adversity.

At six years old, Michael Schofield's daughter, January, was diagnosed with one of the most severe cases of child-onset schizophrenia that doctors had ever seen. In January's case, she is hallucinating 95 percent of the time that she is awake. Potent psychiatric drugs that would level most adults barely faze her. January, "Jani" to her family, has literally hundreds of imaginary friends. They go by names like 400-the-Cat, 100 Degrees, and 24 Hours and live on an island called "Calalini," which she describes as existing "on the border of my world and your world." Some of these friends are good, and some of them, such as 400, are very bad. They tell her to jump off buildings, attack her brother, and scream at strangers.

In the middle of these never-ending delusions, hallucinations, and paroxysms of rage are Jani's parents, who have gone to the ends of the earth to keep both of their children alive and unharmed. They live in separate one-bedroom apartments in order to keep her little brother, Bohdi, safe from his big sister--and wage a daily war against a social system that has all but completely failed them. January First is the story of the daily struggles and challenges they face as they do everything they can to help their daughter while trying to keep their family together. It is the inspiring tale of their resolute determination and faith.

I have been intrigued by this book for a long time, but my old library didn’t have it. But my new one does!

January First is the story of the author’s struggles to figure out what is happening in his daughter’s mental health. January, his daughter, is anti social, shows violent tendencies, and is incredibly intelligent. She also has imaginary friends she insists are very real and changes her name daily. After the birth of Schofield’s second child, January’s behavior becomes exponentially worse.

This book was terrifying and fascinating. Schofield catalogs experiences with many mental health professionals, January’s reactions to the various drugs they prescribe, and their inability to find anything that works. It’s so scary to imagine someone you love behaving and suffering the way January does. I definitely got invested in this story, hoping for a happy ending for Schofield and his family.

One complaint/caution I have about this book is that it is only one man’s perspective. He has awful interactions with health professionals and I had to remind myself regularly that the way a person views a situation is not always the whole story. Schofield has a tendency to paint the health professionals as the bad guys. I like to hope they were acting in what they thought was January’s best interests.

Overall, I thought the book was terribly interesting and gave it four stars.

Have any of you read January First? What did you think?

Book review: Roomies

Roomies by Sara Zarr and Tara Altebrando

Description from Goodreads (below) can be found here along with other reviews. Add me on Goodreads!

It's time to meet your new roomie.

When East Coast native Elizabeth receives her freshman-year roommate assignment, she shoots off an e-mail to coordinate the basics: television, microwave, mini-fridge. That first note to San Franciscan Lauren sparks a series of e-mails that alters the landscape of each girl's summer -- and raises questions about how two girls who are so different will ever share a dorm room.

As the countdown to college begins, life at home becomes increasingly complex. With family relationships and childhood friendships strained by change, it suddenly seems that the only people Elizabeth and Lauren can rely on are the complicated new boys in their lives . . . and each other. Even though they've never met.

National Book Award finalist Sara Zarr and acclaimed author Tara Altebrando join forces for a novel about growing up, leaving home, and getting that one fateful e-mail that assigns your college roommate.

If any of you lived in a residence hall in college -- do you remember the terror of meeting your roommate?

When I first went to college, Facebook was not a big thing yet. My roommate and I talked on the phone once before moving in together -- the night before I moved, actually -- and emailed a bit about fridges and microwaves. The emotions of walking into that room for the first time are still fresh in my mind, and living with my roommate was a huge factor in how I experienced my first year of college.

Roomies is about that -- about that first contact with your future college roommate, about figuring out if you’ll still be who you are once you move across the country or state or county and live on your own. Figuring out if you can live with this other person who you may not have a choice about living with.

There’s a lot more going on in Roomies too -- each of the girls are dealing with family issues and figuring out what it means to leave the people in their lives behind. There’s romance and friendship troubles and all the wonders of being a teenager.

I enjoyed Roomies! It was a fun story and a story I’d never read before. Full disclosure: I won this book fo free in a contest, but I honestly truly enjoyed it. Four stars!

Have any of you read Roomies? What did you think?

Book review: Ash

Ash by Malinda Lo

Description from Goodreads (below) can be found here along with other reviews. Add me on Goodreads!

Cinderella retold

In the wake of her father's death, Ash is left at the mercy of her cruel stepmother. Consumed with grief, her only joy comes by the light of the dying hearth fire, rereading the fairy tales her mother once told her. In her dreams, someday the fairies will steal her away, as they are said to do. When she meets the dark and dangerous fairy Sidhean, she believes that her wish may be granted.

The day that Ash meets Kaisa, the King's Huntress, her heart begins to change. Instead of chasing fairies, Ash learns to hunt with Kaisa. Though their friendship is as delicate as a new bloom, it reawakens Ash's capacity for love-and her desire to live. But Sidhean has already claimed Ash for his own, and she must make a choice between fairy tale dreams and true love.

Entrancing, empowering, and romantic, Ash is about the connection between life and love, and solitude and death, where transformation can come from even the deepest grief.

I love retellings of fairy tales. In fact, when I was reading Ash, I was also reading Cinder -- two vastly different retellings of Cinderella.

Ash is much closer to the original Cinderella. Ash is young when her mother dies, and soon after, her father remarries. But, as with the traditional fairy tale, he soon passes too, and Ash is left with a cruel stepmother who blames her and her father for the crippling debt she’s left with. So (no surprises here), she forces Ash to become her servant.

I liked Ash a lot. It takes the traditional tale of Cinderella and infuses it with a lot more fairy magic. It also focuses a lot on the King’s huntsmen -- and, in particular, Ash’s relationship with the King’s Huntress. The tone of the book is mystical, and it adds a lot to the traditional story. The Goodreads summary calls it “Entrancing, empowering, and romantic,” and I definitely agree!

I liked that Ash was Cinderella, but not -- Ash runs with fairies, and (a bit of a spoiler) doesn’t fall for the prince and live happily ever after. Ash brings a bit of diversity to the world of YA, and it’s really well done. I gave Ash four stars. 

Have any of you read Ash? What did you think?

Book review: A War to Believe In

A War to Believe In by Jenna Thomas

A War to Believe In is the sequel to Peace in a Raging Storm. As such, this review may have some spoilers for the first book.

Life wasn't life without the painstaking realization that you didn't belong in everyone else's idea of reality. But Jade was in it. Everyone had a place for her. Everyone had a purpose for her. And Jade was only ever told where she fit in it. Their reality. His reality. Her Sequesfia's reality. Her guardian's reality. Her father's. A graveyard of war pursuits that refused to rest at their markers. But Jade only kneeled at one. Would she find a war to believe in? Or would she take no war at all?

If you’ve been around a while, you may remember my friend Jenna wrote and published a book a while back. Well, the sequel is finally out!

The first book, Peace in a Raging Storm, tells the story of Jade discovering that humans as she knows them are not the only intelligent species on earth. There are several other species blending in with humans, only they have insane magic and powers. There are some humans who are fighting to end the other species and some humans who are fighting to protect them. At the end of the first book, Jade realizes members of her family are on both sides of the war, and some are even responsible for countless deaths.

In A War to Believe In, Jade continues to struggle with these realizations, but more and more gets dumped on her. I liked the first book, but I really liked the sequel -- as Jade (and the reader) get more comfortable with this new world, you come to care for the characters a lot more. You can start to think of the deeper consequences of the war -- for Jade and for each species. And the book goes deeper and deeper into what this life means for Jade.

I think a lot of times the second novel in a trilogy (I think this is going to be a trilogy?) feels like a filler -- just to get you from book one to where the characters need to be for book three. This is not true for A War to Believe In. The whole book is full of action and constantly surprising. I gave it four stars.

Book review: Cinder

Cinder by Marissa Meyer

Description from Goodreads (below) can be found here along with other reviews. Add me on Goodreads!

Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl.

Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.

I think I am way behind everyone else in the world to read this book. And that's mostly because I didn't want to read this book. But I ended up really, really liking it and definitely recommend it!

I think what threw me off before was the fact that Cinder, the main character, is a cyborg. I didn't know what that meant for her characterization and wasn't interested in reading in robot-thoughts.

It's kind of funny that those were my thoughts, as negative impressions of cyborgs are a huge element in the book! In reality, Cinder thinks and feels just like a "normal" person -- she just has some extra features, like an internal system that tells her when her adrenaline is high and  light only she can see that flashes when someone is lying. She also has some bionic body parts.

People in Cinders world don't treat cyborgs as humans, though, so my initial prejudice fit right in with the plot!

I really enjoyed the plot and characters in Cinder. Although I guessed some of the "twists" way before I think I was supposed to (and you probably will too) it didn't ruin my enjoyment of the book! It was definitely one I thought all the time when I wasn't reading it! It also helped me get through the first half of my marathon. :)

Cinder turned out to be a really fun re-imagining of Cinderella, and I've put the next book on hold already!

Have any of you read Cinder? What did you think?

Book review: Redefining Realness

Redefining Realness by Janet Mock

Description from Goodreads (below) can be found here along with other reviews. Add me on Goodreads! Holy long description! I cut it down a bit for this post.

In 2011, Marie Clairemagazine published a profile of Janet Mock in which she publicly stepped forward for the first time as a trans woman. Since then, Mock has gone from covering the red carpet for People.com to advocating for all those who live within the shadows of society. Redefining Realness offers a bold new perspective on being young, multiracial, economically challenged, and transgender in America.

Welcomed into the world as her parents’ firstborn son, Mock set out early on to be her own person—no simple feat for a young person like herself. She struggled as the smart, determined child in a deeply loving, yet ill-equipped family that lacked money, education, and resources. Mock had to navigate her way through her teen years without parental guidance but luckily with a few close friends and mentors she overcame extremely daunting hurdles.

This powerful memoir follows Mock’s quest for identity, from her early gender conviction to a turbulent adolescence in Honolulu that found her transitioning through the halls of her school, self-medicating with hormones at fifteen, and flying across the world for sex reassignment surgery at just eighteen. Ever resilient, Mock emerged with a scholarship to college and moved to New York City, where she earned her masters degree, basked in the success of an enviable career, and told no one about her past.

I first heard of Janet Mock after she had gone on Piers Morgan's show. An actress I follow on Twitter, Laverne Cox, tweeted/retweeted a couple times about how Janet had not been treated well on Piers' show. She later went back on his show and explained why she felt she had been mistreated. 

I didn't watch the interviews at that time, though I have since, but I began following Mock on Twitter. She was publicizing her new book, and I put it on hold at the library.

The transgender community is a marginalized population in the US, and I was eager to read about Mock's experience being a trans woman in America. I went in to reading this book with a base outsider's knowledge about what it means to be trans person, but I don't think you need to have much background knowledge to understand or enjoy Mock's memoir.

Overall, I thought Redefining Realness was incredibly brave. Mock reveals parts of her life that, before she began writing, she had never told even those closest to her. The book takes the reader from when Mock was a very young child figuring out that she didn't identify with the body she had and gender she'd been assigned, through her transition with her family and friends, when she told them she identified as female and asked to be called Janet, through to when she, as a young adult, fell in love with a man and had what must have been some really difficult conversations with him.

The book isn't hard to read, but it's hard to read -- you know? Her struggles and pain are clear throughout the book, and I found myself rooting for her throughout it all.

I gave Redefining Realness four stars -- mostly for her bravery in telling her story and for knowing what a difference it could make in the life of someone facing similar challenges.

Have any of you read Redefining Realness? What did you think?

PS. As always, I trust my regular readers to post only thoughtful comments. If I see anything hateful in the comments, I will delete it.

Book review: Eleanor and Park

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

Description from Amazon (below) can be found here, and more reviews can be found on Goodreads. Add me on Goodreads!

Bono met his wife in high school, Park says.
So did Jerry Lee Lewis, Eleanor answers.
I’m not kidding, he says.
You should be, she says, we’re 16.
What about Romeo and Juliet?
Shallow, confused, then dead.
I love you, Park says.
Wherefore art thou, Eleanor answers.
I’m not kidding, he says.
You should be.

Set over the course of one school year in 1986, this is the story of two star-crossed misfits—smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try. When Eleanor meets Park, you’ll remember your own first love—and just how hard it pulled you under.

I loved this book, and I think the reason I loved it immediately is because it is (at least starts as) a VERY realistic high school love story.

The characters are not supernatural, super beautiful, or a nerd lusting after the most popular (or vice versa).

They don't love each other immediately. (They don't even like each other immediately.)

The plot is, for the most part, filled with extremely plausible events that could and actually would happen.

But still, I found myself so swept up in this story. It had me feeling all the feelings and thinking about the book even when I wasn't reading it. 

I highly recommend Eleanor and Park! I gave it four stars and put Rainbow Rowell's book Fangirl on hold at the library immediately after I finished reading E&P.

PS - I listened to Eleanor and Park on audio and I LOVED it. I'm sure it's good in book form too -- and to be honest, Park's voice was just OK, but Eleanor's voice reminded me of slam poetry. It was beautifully read. Good one if you're looking to start listening to audio!

EDITED TO ADD. Since reading E&P the first time, I have stumbled on some commentary regarding the way Park and his mother are written and the racial implications. You can see an example here, although that is not the only discussion I have read.

This is problematic enough to temper my view of the book. I am privileged in ways that meant the way race is described in E&P didn't resonate with me initially. I'm lucky in that I stumbled on posts from thoughtful, intelligent people who could help me understand their feelings when reading about Park and his mother. I can't imagine reading the book if I had identified more with Park's struggles with his racial identity. I still believe this is a realistic love story, and it still made me have lots of feelings. But there is something problematic in the way Park and his mother's race and their relationship to others in light of their race is handled, and I don't think that should go unacknowledged.

Have any of you read Eleanor and Park? What did you think?

Book review: Graceling

Graceling by Kristin Cashore

Description from Goodreads (below) can be found here along with other reviews. Add me on Goodreads!

Katsa has been able to kill a man with her bare hands since she was eight - she's a Graceling, one of the rare people in her land born with an extreme skill. As niece of the king, she should be able to live a life of privilege, but Graced as she is with killing, she is forced to work as the king's thug.

When she first meets Prince Po, Graced with combat skills, Katsa has no hint of how her life is about to change.

She never expects to become Po's friend.

She never expects to learn a new truth about her own Grace - or about a terrible secret that lies hidden far away...

My mom has been listening to audiobooks lately, and she got to this one before I did and fell into the habit of texting me "GRACELING!!!" whenever it was good.

So obviously, I had to read it.

Graceling is set in a world with kinds and queens and people who are Graced -- skilled at something or another. It could be something like swimming or something like fighting. Or, in Katsa's case, killing.

I loved Graceling because it was full of action, but honest and emotional too. Katsa has always just accepted everyone else's opinion of her as truth. When Po comes into her life -- a Graced prince from a land where Graced people are not shunned, as they are in Katsa's -- and is not afraid of her, she begins to see a different picture of who she is -- who she can be. Through her subsequent adventures, Katsa journeys to finding herself, to figuring out what her Grace really means, and who she can be.

There are also some fabulous characters in Graceling. Katsa's cousin and his bff, Po, and Po's cousin Bitterblue are some of my favorites. Bitterblue is actually pretty BA. As is Katsa (funny how her name is so similar to another fave literary badass, Katniss).

The one thing I didn't love about Graceling (SEMI SPOILER AHEAD BUT NOT REALLY TOO BAD OF A SPOILER) is that the climax of the story happens so fast. But I felt like the whole book built up to something that was over like that. And then, oddly, a lot more stuff happens, and the book keeps going on and on. None of it was bad. But it was weird.

Overall, I do recommend Graceling! I gave it four stars. 

Have any of you read Graceling? What did you think?

Book review: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

Description from Amazon (below, because the Goodreads description sucked) can be found here along with other reviews. Add me on Goodreads!

Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author's own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings that reflect the character's art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he thought he was destined to live.

I heard of this book from the best of sources -- all the Young Adult (YA) authors I follow on twitter were tweeting about this book. Then, I started my master's program with a woman who went to a tribal college and learned more about Native Americans, who recommended the book. Plus, I knew it had won a billion awards (approximately). So, all good things.

The story starts when Junior realizes that his school, which is on a Native American reservation (the res), is still using science books from when his mother went through school. Through a series of events, he ends up leaving the res to go to a suburban school -- a primarily white suburban school -- a primarily white suburban school in the wealthiest part of town whose mascot is an Indian.

Obviously, life gets a little rough for Junior. He's the Other in his new school (as in, us against them), and folks back at the res don't take too kindly to him leaving the res for a white school. The book follows Junior as he tries to make a better life for himself than the one he had always expected.

All in all, this was an eye-opening, entertaining, hopeful and sad book. I highly recommend it.

Have any of you read this one? What did you think?

PS - I've heard that the physical book is illustrated, but I listened on audio, which was narrated by Sherman Alexie, and it was wonderful.

Book review: Blood Red Road

Blood Red Road by Moira Young

Description from Goodreads (below) can be found here along with other reviews.

Saba lives in Silverlake, a wasteland ravaged by constant sandstorms where her family scavenge from landfills left by the long-gone Wrecker civilization. After four cloaked horsemen kidnap her beloved twin brother Lugh, she teams up with daredevil Jack and the Free Hawks, a girl gang of Revolutionaries.

Saba learns that she is a fierce fighter, an unbeatable survivor, and a cunning opponent. And she has the power to take down a corrupt society from the inside. Saba and her new friends stage a showdown that change the course of her civilization.

I loved this book.

Blood Red Road is in the future -- a future in which no society seems to exist, really. Saba, her twin Lugh and their little sister Emmy grow up in isolation, knowing only each other, their father, and neighbors that stop by from time to time. Saba and Lugh are 18 years old and have never been more than a day's walk away from home.

That all changes when Lugh is kidnapped by men who have come, just for him. And Saba takes off after him.

I've read a lot of dystopian/futuristic books, and this one ranks high among them. Young did an amazing job world-building -- making us believe the world that she's created, that Saba has to navigate. It all seems real.

The characters are also wonderful. Saba is stubborn and funny and hard to understand sometimes. That's a pretty good description for Jack and Emmy too, come to think of it. But add "charming" to Jack's list and "feisty" and "determined" to Emmy's.

In Blood Red Road, you believe in the characters. You get attached to them and root for them and you can't stop reading until you know how it all ends.

Loved it.

Have any of you read Blood Red Road? I highly recommend it. 

P.S. The audio version was also quite exceptionally read -- a great one if you've been wanting to try audio!

Book review: Beautiful Ruins

Beautiful Ruins - A Novel by Jess Walter

Description from Goodreads (below) can be found here along with other reviews. I shortened it a bit.

The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks on over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an actress, he soon learns, an American starlet, and she is dying.

And the story begins again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot-searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier.

From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Walter introduces us to the tangled lives of a dozen unforgettable characters: the starstruck Italian innkeeper and his long-lost love; the heroically preserved producer who once brought them together and his idealistic young assistant; the army veteran turned fledgling novelist and the rakish Richard Burton himself, whose appetites set the whole story in motion-along with the husbands and wives, lovers and dreamers, superstars and losers, who populate their world in the decades that follow.

This book delivered much more than I expected.

It begins in a very chick-lit, light beach read fashion -- from the cover to the love-at-first-sight beginning. And I like a good chick-lit book now and then. But the characters and the plot of Beautiful Ruins are deeper than that. And each time you think you know the characters or the story, something shifts and you're surprised again.

There's a lot in Beautiful: there are lost loves, wrong loves, because-you're-here loves. There's what was supposed to be, what actually was, and what might have been. And it's hopeful and it's sad and it's what you want your life to be and it's what you don't want.

I gave it four stars and I think I'll read it again soon. 

Have any of you read Beautiful Ruins? What did you think?

Book review: The Moon and More

The Moon and More by Sarah Dessen

Description from Goodreads (below) can be found here along with other reviews.

Luke is the perfect boyfriend: handsome, kind, fun. He and Emaline have been together all through high school in Colby, the beach town where they both grew up. But now, in the summer before college, Emaline wonders if perfect is good enough.

Enter Theo, a super-ambitious outsider, a New Yorker assisting on a documentary film about a reclusive local artist. Theo's sophisticated, exciting, and, best of all, he thinks Emaline is much too smart for Colby.

Emaline's mostly-absentee father, too, thinks Emaline should have a bigger life, and he's convinced that an Ivy League education is the only route to realizing her potential. Emaline is attracted to the bright future that Theo and her father promise. But she also clings to the deep roots of her loving mother, stepfather, and sisters. Can she ignore the pull of the happily familiar world of Colby?

Emaline wants the moon and more, but how can she balance where she comes from with where she's going?

I love Sarah Dessen. So I was super pumped to get her new book, which came out earlier this summer. I'm not sure I can write a review without being super gushy and fangirling hardcore. But I'll try.

Emaline, the main character of The Moon and More, has just graduated high school and is about to go off to college -- the first in her family, other than her estranged biological father. As she lives out her last summer in her beachfront hometown, she deals with the reappearance of her bio father in her life, the end of her relationship with her long-time high school sweetheart, the shifting of her relationships with her other family members, and with being a permanent member of a community where many people are only temporary -- and discovering that, with her planned departure at the end of the summer, she had become temporary too.

I loved the relationships in this book -- from Emaline's relationship with her boyfriend/ex-boyfriend Luke to the half-brother who is suddenly suuuper attached to the sudden connection to a local artist, I thought they were all so true to life. You'll think Dessen stole them from YOUR life.

There were parts of this novel I cringed -- in that painful kind of way you get when you see someone embarrassing themselves (the way that makes it impossible for me to watch "The Christmas Story"). But isn't that so like life?

Sarah Dessen has often said that she hates trying to answer the question, "What is your book about?" because she ends up rambling on and on, and that's how I feel now. I think because SO MUCH happens in the book and you feel guilty leaving any piece of it out. So I'm not sure there's any more that I can say.

The Moon and More is another home run from Sarah Dessen. I happily gave it four stars and will probably be reading it again soon.

(Interesting side note -- The Moon and More was the third official title of this book. Dessen's first try was "The Best After Ever" but she and her publishers worried people would mix it up and say the best ever after. Then it was "Someone Else's Summer" but they worried bookstores would remove it from shelves at the end of the season.)

Have any of you read The Moon and More? What did you think?

Book review: Persephone

Persephone by Kaitlin Bevis

Description from Goodreads (below) can be found here, along with other reviews.

There are worse things than death, worse people too

The “talk” was bad enough, but how many teens get told that they’re a goddess? When her mom tells her, Persephone is sure her mother has lost her mind. It isn’t until Boreas, the god of winter, tries to abduct her that she realizes her mother was telling the truth. Hades rescues her, and in order to safely bring Persephone to the Underworld he marks her as his bride. But Boreas will stop at nothing to get Persephone. Despite her growing feelings for Hades, Persephone wants to return to the living realm. Persephone must find a way to defeat Boreas and reclaim her life.

I used to loooove reading books based on mythology, so I was super excited to come across Persephone. A modern retelling of a Greek myth, Persephone is the story of a high school girl who discovers she's actually a goddess.

Persephone was a really fun, quick read. It took a minute to get into the book, but once I did, I loved it and flew through. I read it on the plane last weekend and kept laughing out loud and hoping my neighbors didn't think they were next to the creepy girl who laughs to herself. I actually highlighted a bunch of the passages I thought were funny, but I don't want to spoil it. Okay, here's one.

"Everyone secretly wished they were special. But in all my dreams of discovering I was a superhero, or a witch, or maybe even a princess, I'd never gone as far as goddess. That was too pretentious."

Love it.

Persephone takes some fun turns on traditional Greek mythology. A lot of the gods you've probably heard of are there or mentioned, but there were also many I'd never heard of, and even the ones I had heard of weren't what I was expecting. There's also a really cool world introduced -- but I'll let you discover that on your own!

Persephone is a really fun book -- not the deepest or most high-brow book but a lovely book that you'll love reading!

Have any of you read Persephone? I'd love to hear what you thought!

PS: I received a copy of Persephone for my Kindle in exchange for this review. But! All the opinions expressed here are my own. Promise.

Book review: Between Shades of Gray

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

Description from Goodreads (below) can be found here along with other reviews.

Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they've known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin's orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions.

Lina finds solace in her art, meticulously--and at great risk--documenting events by drawing, hoping these messages will make their way to her father's prison camp to let him know they are still alive. It is a long and harrowing journey, spanning years and covering 6,500 miles, but it is through incredible strength, love, and hope that Lina ultimately survives.Between Shades of Gray is a novel that will steal your breath and capture your heart.

Between Shades of Gray is the beautifully told story of a Lithuanian girl taken from her home and forced into labor camps with her mother and brother during World War II.

With books that tell the story of survivors of horrendous conditions, the most amazing thing to me is always how they can be anything but the most depressing book you'll ever read. Lina and her family face awful conditions -- they're separated from her father, forced into train cars with too many others, where they must use a hole in the floor boards as a toilet and toss out the folks who die. And that's just the beginning.

Yet, I couldn't get enough of this book. And I think it's that Lina's story was so full of hope. And that you really want to see the characters survive and succeed.

The narration of this story is realistic and beautiful. It jumps a bit between the present and the past, giving you a view into the buildup of tension in Lithuania and helping you to know Lina and her family as they were, as they would have been without the war.

Despite the conditions she's in, Lina is still a teenager. She still gets annoyed with her brother and jealous of others. And I think that's so realistic.

But she's also fighting for her life, and her mother and her brother. She's fighting to make contact with her father. She's fighting to hold on to the sliver of hope she still has.

Between Shades of Gray is a great read for anyone who loves historical fiction -- especially if you'd like to see a side of WWII that isn't often told. Also, Lina shares my birthday. :)

Have any of you read Between Shades of Gray? I highly recommend it! What did you think?

Book review: Requiem

Requiem (Delirium #3) by Lauren Oliver

Description from Goodreads (below) can be found here along with other reviews. As this is a sequel, my review will by nature include spoilers for the first two books. Check out my review for the first book and the second book. No spoilers for the third book though!

Now an active member of the resistance, Lena has been transformed. The nascent rebellion that was under way in Pandemonium has ignited into an all-out revolution in Requiem, and Lena is at the center of the fight.

After rescuing Julian from a death sentence, Lena and her friends fled to the Wilds. But the Wilds are no longer a safe haven—pockets of rebellion have opened throughout the country, and the government cannot deny the existence of Invalids. Regulators now infiltrate the borderlands to stamp out the rebels, and as Lena navigates the increasingly dangerous terrain, her best friend, Hana, lives a safe, loveless life in Portland as the fiancée of the young mayor.

Requiem is told from both Lena’s and Hana’s points of view. The two girls live side by side in a world that divides them until, at last, their stories converge.

Requiem is the third and final installment in the Delirium series. The second left with a pretty decent cliffhanger: Lena discovered that Alex, her first love who she thought died helping her escape to the wilds, was alive. In fact, he was in front of her and her new romantic interest, Julian.

With that plot twist, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that much of this book was one big fat love triangle. It was somewhat disappointing that this took up SO MUCH of the book, but then again -- when the story is about a world that has tried to eradicate love, of course you're going to focus on the love story!

For the first time in the series, Requiem lets us see the world from another character's perspective -- Hana, who has now been cured. I really, really liked this. I liked seeing through the eyes of a cured person -- there was less emotion, but definitely not less fear, and I think that really made the evilness of the cure and the awfulness of society that much clearer.

We also get to check in with Lena's family a bit and see what affect her disappearance had on them. I thought that was another great view into the society of the cure.

Requiem has gotten a lot of criticism from fans because it doesn't wrap up cleanly -- we don't know what's going to happen next at all. But I think it's a (mostly) fair ending. 

Have any of you read Requiem? Did you hate the ending? I'd love to hear what you thought! Be careful of spoilers in the comments, please!

Book review: The House of Mirth

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Description from Goodreads (below) can be found here along with other reviews.

First published in 1905, The House of Mirth shocked the New York society it so deftly chronicles, portraying the moral, social, and economic restraints on a woman who dared to claim the privileges of marriage without assuming the responsibilities. Lily Bart, beautiful, witty, and sophisticated, is accepted by "old money" and courted by the growing tribe of nouveaux riches. But as she nears 30, her foothold becomes precarious; a poor girl with expensive tastes, she needs a husband to preserve her social standing and to maintain her life in the luxury she has come to expect. While many have sought her, something—fastidiousness or integrity—prevents her from making a "suitable" match.

To me, this book was a mix of Jane Austen and Mean Girls. Really. Even though each of these three things (Jane Austen's writing, the book's writing, and Mean Girls) happened with a hundred years almost between each.

The House of Mirth reminds me of Austen's book Emma in a couple ways: one, both are about society -- high society of the time, to be specific, and about making appropriate matches, according to status, mostly. Secondly, because I'm not sure the main character is entirely likeable. With Emma, I know that Austen did this on purpose. With Lily, the main character in  The House of Mirth, I'm not sure.

Lily is a girl with expensive taste. She likes to spend time with folks with much more money than she has, she spends money she doesn't have, and she gets herself into sticky situations with other people's husbands. She is also VERY aware of her own attractiveness and is very manipulative of the effect her beauty and charm have on people. Just when I was getting to like her, she'd talk about how beautiful she was again, and there it went.

And then there's the Mean Girls part. Like I said, Lily gets herself into a couple tricky situations with other people's husbands. Through the repercussions of these incidents, we see the many sides of society life: the cheating, the manipulation, and where you go when you fall from grace.

The House of Mirth shows the many sides of society life in the early 20th century -- the good, the bad and the ugly. It was a bit of a slow read, as many society books are (more visiting with other people and descriptions of parties than actual action) but super fascinating -- and it took turns I was not expecting. I gave it four stars on Goodreads! Thank you to Pat's dad for the book!!

Have any of you read The House of Mirth or books like it? I love to read books like this now and then!

Book review: Before I Fall

Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

Description from Goodreads (below) can be found here along with other reviews. Linking up with Blonde... Undercover Blonde for Book Club Friday.

What if you only had one day to live? What would you do? Who would you kiss? And how far would you go to save your own life?

Samantha Kingston has it all: looks, popularity, the perfect boyfriend. Friday, February 12, should be just another day in her charmed life. Instead, it turns out to be her last.

The catch: Samantha still wakes up the next morning. Living the last day of her life seven times during one miraculous week, she will untangle the mystery surrounding her death--and discover the true value of everything she is in danger of losing.
I think if you go into this book knowing NOTHING about it -- you will not make it through. Go back up and read that second paragraph of the description again. Looks, popularity, the perfect boyfriend -- these features are important to characters in a lot of young adult books, but at the beginning of this book, it is ALL Sam cares about. And it makes her a mean, mean girl.

Had I not known the premise of the book and guessed a little bit of what it would entail, I wouldn't have made it through the first chapter because Sam does not start out likeable at all. And neither are her friends. They're not sympathetic, their shallow and vain, and they are mean.

But that ended up being one of the things I loved about this book.

Before I Fall does not advocate being a mean or shallow person. It doesn't glamorize that life -- it shows the gritty truth of it -- why the girls behave the way they do, what their thought process is, how they got to be like that. It humanizes the mean girls in a way I've never seen any other book do, but still shows that their behavior is wrong. In the end, I couldn't hate the mean girls at all -- I loved them for their good qualities. Which is so like real life.

I gave this book four stars. Loved it. Which I should have known I would, since it's the same author as Delirium, which I loved. It's got a few mature scenes (parties, drugs, lots of talk about sex) but I think it's great for high school girls who are probably going through all of the same things as these girls. Well. Maybe not living the same day over and over. But all the rest. :)

Have any of you read Before I Fall? What did you think? 

Book review: Hawksong

Hawksong by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

Description from Goodreads (below) can be found here along with other reviews. Linking up with Blonde... Undercover Blonde for Book Club Friday.

DANICA SHARDAE IS an avian shapeshifter, and the golden hawk’s form in which she takes to the sky is as natural to her as the human one that graces her on land. The only thing more familiar to her is war: It has raged between her people and the serpiente for so long, no one can remember how the fighting began. As heir to the avian throne, she’ll do anything in her power to stop this war—even accept Zane Cobriana, the terrifying leader of her kind’s greatest enemy, as her pair bond and make the two royal families one.

Trust. It is all Zane asks of Danica—and all they ask of their people—but it may be more than she can give.

I loved Hawksong from the start. From page one, you're right in the mind and world of Danica -- an avian shapeshifter, heir to the throne in a world torn by war. Danica is to inherit the throne soon and simply can't stand the war anymore. When a member of the enemy's royal family -- a shapeshifter who turns into a cobra -- shows up and pleads for movement to create peace, Danica embarks on a journey toward peace.

The greatest strength of this story is the incredible world building. You will be enamored with Danica and Zane's world. It was one of those books that I listened to every minute I could, even if it was just for a minute, and I couldn't wait to get back to it when I put it down.

There is a bit of action here and there, but a lot of the plot line is emotional. My two complaints about the book are that it was a bit predictable -- I bet you can already guess some things that will happen -- and that the plot lines were rushed at the end -- there was a loooot of buildup for a couple climaxes that were wrapped up all in the final pages. Poof, done.

Still, I really enjoyed this book and have already read the sequel! I have the third of the series on hold at the library now. I gave Hawksong four stars on Goodreads.

Have any of read Hawksong? What did you think?