Kyle
3.5 stars
The first half is very boring to read but it definitely picks up in the second half.
Review to come in a little while.
*as a sidenote, I do see how Clark's writing could be compared to Ellen Hopkins's, although this didn't bother me too much since I love Ellen's writing, although I do hope that the more works she publishes, the more distinct her own voice will become.
This review and more can be found at Book Probe Reviews!
4.5 stars
“Sometimes people think they know you. They know a few facts about you, and they piece you together in a way that makes sense to them. And if you don't know yourself very well, you might even believe that they are right. But the truth is, that isn't you. That isn't you at all.”
Leila Sales's This Song Will Save Your Life is a sure-hit when it's release comes in September. By the time I finally read my copy, everybody was buzzing about this, after praises of how realistic it was to people who had gone through situations like Elise. The synopsis itself doesn't quite hint at how dark this book is at first. The mood is very bleak, depressing, and being in Elise's head is a very saddening – yet connective – time for the reader. I might be pushing it by saying this, but I believe how well you connect to Elise at first may be a deciding factor in how well you enjoy this novel.
Sales has written a glowing cast of characters; from the enigmatic Char to socially clueless but smart and persistent Elise, as well as party-girl Pippa, and rocker Vicky. Every one of these characters is more than what you first see when they enter the novel, especially Char. The route that Sales begins writing his relationship with Elise may seem formulatic and cliche for the YA genre, but what she does at the end of this novel is completely brilliant, and also saddening by how realistic it is. Sometimes, the people who appear to have the most mystery, could possibly be just because we build up people in our mind to be more than what they truly are.
The writing is beautiful but not in a flashy way. It's beautiful in a way for just containing a simple beauty to it about every day things. Even the big revelations like the one at the beginning of this review are written beautifully without needing a page-long tangent.
The incorporation of music into the plot will definitely resonate deeply to people whose lives are dedicated to it, as I know several of my real-life friends are. That isn't to say that only music-lovers will connect. This is a book for music-lovers, people who are or have been bullied, rejected, don't feel like they fit in, depressed, and all those trying times people have as teenagers and at any point in our lives.
So yes, when September 17th comes rolling around, I myself will definitely be making sure to pick up a copy of this beautifully written, complex, and real novel. And I think you should too.
One of the brilliant books about sexual assault in YA, or one of the worst?
Well, I'm not sure I've quite decided yet, but I guess we'll have to figure that out together by the time I finish this review.
Books about sexual assault are tricky. Rape is a very serious issue, and so many people are affected by it, whether it's somebody that you know or if you yourself are forced to have to go through something as horrific as this. So, as a writer you're given such a delicate matter, and you can either face it head-on, unflinchingly, and look through every aspect of it, from the way how it affects a person psychologically and emotionally, to how we as a society react to it (slut/victim-shaming), and to go through the difficult task of how not to make it sound like an after-school special, or you can try and make it just the after-school special, and only have a one-sided reaction to it, where the victim is given oodles of support from everybody and the bad guy/girl is punished for what they did.
In the past, I have read the highly famous Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, which has since become one of my favorite reads, and just last year I read Jenny Downham's You Against Me, which also had a very prominent rape storyline involving the main characters siblings. Both of those books took the more head-on approach, although Speak seemed to focus more on the struggle for the main character to find courage in herself to accept that life would be okay eventually, and that she needed to tell somebody what happened, and You Against Me was more about the reactions of society when somebody says that they were raped.
Fault Line is quite the novel, and is definitely an impressive piece of writing. It is reasonably well written, with a very convincing male voice, which I find extremely important in any genre when a woman is writing from a male POV and vice versa. Ben isn't the most likeable character at time, he slut-shames, and he made me particularly uncomfortable when he referred to Ani in his head as one of the nickname she received after the rape happens.
However, going back a little, the fact that Ben slut-shamed Ani after the rape was very odd to me. It really made me question what the point of the novel really was. So, was it that the author was against victim-blaming, but fine with slut-shaming? That really bothered me, since I felt that the two aren't that different really, and can a lot of times end up falling into the same category in rape cases.
However, when I read Desir's Goodreads profile, particularly the second paragraph, I found that she included some details about her being a feminist as well as a rape victim's activist, and that's when I started to realize how brilliant this was. Looking at it from an activist's point of view, seeing how she crafted the novel and how the characters, although Ben in particular, acted, it all started coming together in my head about how brilliant this book was.
This book shows us the politically correct way that society is supposed to respond to a rape, and then how it actually responds to a rape. This book shows us how we are supposed to help the person cope with what happened positively, and how we sometimes actually do it. This book shows how the rape affects the victim and their loved ones, and how radically different some of these effects are on the individual.
This book shows a side that nobody wants to see in a book about rape, but sometimes it happens. Now, I won't punish the book for realistic, but more praise it for what it's trying to accomplish. Do I approve of Ben's slut-shaming? Er, no. If the author was just throwing that in because she didn't care about slut-shaming than I would've had a huge problem with this whole book.
Do I like that Ben referred to Ani with that disgusting name in his head? No, my stomach was actually in knots when he said that and I had to set the book aside. Yet I can still understand why he said that. And what Ben does later in the book also makes me quite sick as well.
So yes, this novel does still have problems though.
I enjoyed the novel significantly more in the first 35% before the rape actually occurred and it was establishing the relationship between Ben and Ani. After the rape, it's definitely a much different novel, in terms of atmosphere and focus. While I do applaud how these changes were carried, I still just couldn't muster up the same liking for the book I had at the beginning.
Although I did not like the majority of the characters in this book, I thought Ben and Ani were well-fleshed out. But seriously, I don't like Ben. At all. I also found some of the characters seemed to be the embodiment of the after-school special. They were too perfect in how they treated Ani after the rape, and all their dialogue after the rape seemed to from a health textbook, and it made their characterization seemed so flat and insincere.
Still however, I cannot deny how well-written the POV was, the first third of the book, as well as the final quarter, when things started to begin to wrap up a bit more, and the ambiguity of the ending. All in all, I think this is an impressive debut, and one that I would heavily recommend in October when it hits bookstores, and I for one will be eagerly awaiting Desir's next book, Bleed Like Me.
This review and more can now be found over at Book Probe Reviews where I'm now co-blogging!
1.5 stars
I recieved a copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss. Thanks so much! : )
Oh dear Lord, what the heck did I just experience?
Hideous Love wasn't a book that I ever really planned on reading exactly. It was one of those, if I can get it from the library or it ever becomes free on Kindle and I'm looking for a quick read in verse. However, once I saw that I could read this for free and be able to get my opinion about it out early before it's release (and I was about to go on an overnight trip to my aunt's post-Independence Day with my parents), I decided that a book in verse was the perfect read for a 2 hour car ride.
What ensued was an overdramatic tale of forbidden true wuv, musings about love, jealousy, wonderings if Mary's husband was cheating on her with her step-sister, drama-fests, constant traveling, and the occasional mentionings of writing.
Now, I haven't read ANYTHING by Shelley, not even her famous Gothic Frankenstein, but reading this has motivated me beyond belief to read some of her works, because while the actual story was far from enjoyable, nor does this book make me think that Mary is somebody I would've liked in real life, the parts about her writing are definitely the highlights of the book.
The parts about her and Shelley growing closer and traveling with Mary's step-sister (whose name I've actually already forgotten not even two weeks after completing this) were so boring, and so tedious, and seemed to add nothing to the plot except for a rift to grow between Mary and her step-sister. I mean, the writing of Frankenstein and the rest of Shelley's subsequent novel is definitely left as a sub-plot when I would've preferred it to be the central focus of the story.
I believe one of the weaknesses of the plot actually was the lack of structure. What was the central focus? If it isn't the writing, then it had to have been the romantic drama, and even that only lasted a little while before it ended and Mary's step-sister had moved on. It couldn't have been Shelley's multiple miscarriages, for while as tragic as it was, it hardly makes for interesting reading in YA (as a side note, none of this is really a spoiler. You can hear plenty about Shelley's miscarriages on her Wikipedia page. I sure did).
Unlike most verse novels, this was not completed quickly and swiftly. Even other boring verse novels for me have flown by. Now maybe it was because of how busy I was sitting with the adults being the only kid in the house, being bored out of my mind by family gossip I didn't care about, but I had plenty of time in the car to finish this sucker quickly.
Yet the boredom that overcame me was so powerful that the mindless family gossip was more appealing than going back onto my Kindle.
And my family gossip is boring.
Really boring.
So boring that I would rather learn about algebra for another eighty minutes then go through that torture again.
I've found that in really successful cases of verse novels, the verse style actually enhances the writing. This has been repeatedly proven to me in most of Ellen Hopkins's novels, and once by Lisa Schroeder's The Day Before. Stephanie Hemphill's writing, just like her plot, is rather bland, un-evocative, and boring.
Really I could keep going on and on and on about how boring this was, but I'm just going to end it here with one last warning:
I would much rather suggest reading something else besides this when it comes out October 1st of this year. I mean, if you're a Frankenstein fanatic then absolutely go for this, since it does cover the background of why she started writing it. It may have been a small part of the book, but if you're willing to spend $20 on this book to see Hemphill's version of it, then go ahead.
I'm just afraid I won't be joining you on this one, or any of Hemphill's books again.
This review and many others can be found over at Book Probe Reviews where I'm now co-blogging!
3.5 stars
I've already experienced King's writing a few months before in January of this year when I read one of her earlier works, The Dust of 100 Dogs, which I started out having mixed feelings for but ended up liking it quite a lot by the end. So, I brushed it off as having been that since it was one of her earlier works that maybe her writing just hadn't reached its full potential yet, and that by now, with the release of her fourth novel, that her strength in writing would be more consistent.
In fact, I found this novel to be weaker in regards to said earlier work, and I'm not even fully sure where exactly this one fails to impress on the same scale.
Okay, clearly the premise is not at all too original. An American teenage girl is making her way through understanding her sexual orientation with family drama and small-town bigotry. The only really original part about this is the magical realism thrown in regarding Astrid, the main character, sending her love to passengers on airplanes, and then us reading small snippets from various passengers on different flights and getting a glimpse into their lives and troubles.
My initial reaction to the opening chapters of this was more of a “want-to-fall-asleep-put-this-book-down-forever” kind of reaction. The writing wasn't engaging, I wasn't getting any interest in the characters or what was going on in their lives, and the 293 pages was beginning to feel more like a 1000 page epic.
However, once I hit the halfway mark I began to appreciate the story a little bit more, and the aspects that I was on the fence about were beginning to lean more towards what I wanted. Yet even by the time I closed the book, I still get this feeling that it wasn't everything that I had been expecting, and I was still left wanting more of something.
The supporting cast is definitely a mixed bag of feelings for me. While I liked the Astrid's family dynamic regarding her mom and her sister, as well as Astrid and her mother, and even between her mother and father, I never got the sense that I cared for any one of them. Ellis mainly just seemed like your average selfish American popular kid that wants everything to go their way and doesn't seem to have much empathy for what Astrid is going through.
And that whole thing about her dad's marijuana use? Was that even necessary? It added nothing to the plot, and it didn't seem to have a real impact on Astrid's life, more just something equivalent to an annoying gnat that keeps trying to fly right in front of your face.
However I was very pleased by the direction that King took with Astrid's mother, Claire. At the beginning and middle we're given the picture of an egotistical, selfish, uncaring, cold, sort of bitchy ice queen (at least in regards to Astrid and her father). Yet towards the end we are shown that there is more to her than what we're given, and that Claire is in fact a person with substance to them. She might not be a complete 180, but we were definitely given a less 1-dimensional portrayal of her.
The use of philosophy and “Frank” Socrates is one of the highlights of the novel for me. The philosophical musings might get a little tiresome for people, but I wouldn't say it overtakes the novel's plot or drags on and on. It's just some nice brain food for everyone and it was effective for the part of the novel that it played and it made me enjoy the second half a lot more than the first.
The romance going on between Astrid and her girlfriend, Dee, had no real impact on me. I think if anything it was just nice to see a portrayal of a relationship where the word “no” is something to be learned for at least one of the people, since there are definitely plenty of relationships where one person is very pushy in regards to sex with their partner.
In the end, Ask the Passengers is an important book to teens today, especially since now sexual orientation is such a huge topic for teens today, and with the recent movement for gay marriage rights, this is definitely not something to be ignored.
3.5 stars
I respect Young for taking a non-traditional approach to the love story, and for making the ending actually realistic and brave, even if it isn't what readers want to happen. Loved the concept, and the writing flowed pretty well too.
However, I never connected to any of the side characters, and Billy and Jenny weren't strong enough to carry the entire book for me. I also didn't like how the possibility of Billy's dad being bi-polar was just dropped all of a sudden just because his art gallery ended up being successful.
I hate Daisy. I hate Tom. I didn't like Jay or Nick.
I loved this book because of the hate it inspired inside of me and the fact that now all I want to do is move to West Egg and party in the 20s and see Gatsby and all these people that I so deeply hate.
Therefore it's one of my new favorites and I can't wait or the film. Longer review to come.
And have you guys heard the Florence song on the soundtrack? She's my favorite singer, but I didn't care for the song as much as I had hoped to. Upon reading the book, I love it.
What if every day, you woke up in a new body, a new home, a new life? What if every day, you could never have a family, friends, or to follow your own passions and dreams? What if every day, it was a fight just to see the person you love more than anyone else in this life?
That is the life of A in a nutshell. A is an entity who wakes up in a new body every single day, with no restrictions of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, or mental state. A is a drug addict, a girl on the verge of suicide, a goody-two-shoes, a teen forced into a maid service, and everything in between. One day, A awakens in the body of Justin, and, just like he does with all his other bodies, he tries to live out the person's life as well as he can without altering anything outside of what they'd normally do.
Then A meets Justin's girlfriend, Rhiannon.
And A falls maddeningly in love.
So in love that before he knows it, his whole existence becomes a way to try and be with her, despite his predicament.
I've had several past experiences with Levithan's work, and this is by far the most complex work of his. It's also probably the one I've enjoyed the most. It actually made me think, made me feel something, and it also drove me a bit mad at times.
I guess one of the things that stood out to me the most was the discussion of whether or not gender and sexuality was almost like a kind of veil that society has forced upon us. Could we really love anybody regardless of gender? No such thing as heterosexuality or homosexuality? Just love?
While I feel the idea behind the relationship is very interesting and complex and definitely makes you think way more than the typical YA romance, it also has a lot of pitfalls. One of them being that Rhiannon, while an alright character, is hardly somebody I'd say I particularly liked. It almost feel like we only got the shadow of her character, a rough outline, but nothing to ever really fill her in to make her her own person.
A, while definitely being given a lot of layers to A, didn't really have any kind of distinct personality if you ask me. Nothing about A really stood out to me besides the situation. I also found that A's love for Rhiannon was more an obsession and extremely unhealthy. I mean, perhaps for the circumstances it was kind of natural, since Rhiannon was basically the only life A really had to claim as A's own, but dear Lord, this was just too much.
One of the first things we're told in every new body A is in is how he's calculated how many hours away A is from her. You've only known her for a few days! Speaking of the body-switching, talk about conveinent. A and Rhiannon are presumed to live in the Maryland area, and A is never more than four hours away from Rhiannon's town. Yes, I did make a status update about this, and somebody did comment with a part where Levithan briefly explains in the book why that is, but it just felt so forced, put in there just so that the love story was even possible.
If anything, it severely limits the book from its maximum potential. It limits it to only the love story. A much more interesting central storyline in my opinion would've been the further exploration of A's predicament and the possibility of there being others like A, and the idea of possibly being able to take a body for A's self.
A lot could've been done with that kind of a storyline instead of this over-the-top love story that takes place for less than a month and a half.
Still, the writing is quite good, and I was generally interested in some of the lives that A experiences throughout the course of the narrative, and I wish we'd gotten to know some of the hosts that A used instead of more about how A was planning to be with Rhiannon.
Also, that ending.
SO MANY FEELS.
Overall, Every Day is a decent read overall, although I wouldn't go as far to say it is a shining literary perfection.
Still worth the read however.
Read this and more at Living Is Reading!
To say that I was hesitant to read Perry's Killer Playlist is a bit of an understatement. Most sequels as of late have turned out to be unnecessary and just written to put money in somebody's wallet by expanding a stand-alone into a whole series. Au Revior, Crazy European Chick ended pretty nicely for me, and I saw absolutely no need to read an entire book more about Perry and Gobi, even if I enjoy reading about their characters.
While this final (?) installment in the series isn't as good as it's predecessor, it's still an entertaining thrill ride, with guns, explosions, continental manhunts, betrayals, and a seriously badass Lithuanian assassin. I finished this book in a little over a day, since it was impossible to put down with the fast-moving plot and Schreiber's writing that seems to just fly by (as well as the very short chapters).
Let me just say though about Perry's father: that's just fucking wrong. I can't even muster up enough energy to express my utter disgust at this man, but it takes “gross” to a whole new level. I mean seriously. Who sleeps with their son's girlfriend, who is young enough to be his daughter, even if she was of age?
Some of the elements that didn't jive with me very well:
-Gobi's illness. While it did kind of explain some of her actions as to why she does what she does, it just seemed like a plot device to create tension between her and Perry because of what she tries to do when she kind of . . . looses her touch on reality
-The “romance” between Gobi and Perry. It's not an actual romance, but there's definitely romantic tension of some kind. I don't know, they make a great platonic pairing, but I just have a hard time buying into it
-It just doesn't feel necessary. It doesn't truly add anything new to the story. There's no justification as to why it needed to be written and make this a series
-The secondary characters could've been far more developed
-The European setting could've been more taken advantage of, but whatever - guess after Just One Day I expect a little bit more from books set in Europe
I know that sounds like a lot of negatives for a 4 star rating, but I know that these books aren't literary perfection. They're fun, entertaining, the main cast of characters are interesting enough to read about, there's always something happen in the plot department, and the action is very well written and easy to visualize.
A book series that I could pretty easily reccomend to so many people as looking for something to spend a lazy afternoon reading.
