Shade, by Jeri Ready-Smith
Shade is a novel I wanted to read for some time, based on the amazing reviews I'd already read about it. I'm very happy to say that despite having exceptionally high expectations, I wasn't disappointed.
Blurb from Goodreads: Love ties them together. Death can't tear them apart.
Best. Birthday. Ever. At least, it was supposed to be. With Logan's band playing a critical gig and Aura's plans for an intimate after-party, Aura knows it will be the most memorable night of her boyfriend's life. She never thought it would be his last.
Logan's sudden death leaves Aura devastated. He's gone.
Well, sort of.
Like everyone born after the Shift, Aura can see and hear ghosts. This mysterious ability has always been annoying, and Aura had wanted nothing more than to figure out why the Shift happened so she can undo it. But not with Logan's violet-hued spirit still hanging around. Because dead Logan is almost as real as ever. Almost.
It doesn't help that Aura's new friend Zachary is so understanding—and so very alive. His support means more to Aura than she cares to admit.
As Aura's relationships with the dead and the living grow ever complicated, so do her feelings for Logan and Zachary. Each holds a piece of Aura's heart...and clues to the secret of the Shift.
The concept for the novel hooked me before I'd even started reading. It really is a unique idea and Aura'a angst about being torn between both the ghost and memory or her dead boyfriend, and her new feels for Zach are portrayed perfectly. The pace is reasonably fast, which works well because it would have been easy to be bogged down with teen emotions etc and forget the actual plot. There was enough happening to keep me reading cover to cover without putting the book down to breathe!
While I was expecting Shade to be set in the future, it seems to be set in a world exactly like ours, except for the fact that anyone under sixteen can see ghosts. There's a slight atmosphere of anxiety in the world, which Smith-Ready weaves in wonderfully, making the world just different enough to feel almost magical.
The characterization is fantastic, and Aura is a protagonist that I couldn't help rooting for. I think that the reader is expected to feel the "Team Logan" vs "Team Zach" tug. Both boys are very different characters and the time Aura spends with them shows how different they are. The book wouldn't have worked with just Logan-the-ghost. Zach's contrasting personality is needed and very well done.
The book ends with a cliffhanger that had me immediately searching for the second book. Fortunately, we don't have long to wait. Shift is out May 3rd!
A must-read for anyone who loves YA.
Monday, April 18, 2011 | |
Geek Girl by Cindy C. Bennett
Another book read on the nook. I did choose this one on my own because the title intrigued me and I was entertained by the novel. It didn't take me long to read it either.
About the book: 17-year-old Jen decides one day, out of boredom that she's going to make a bet with her friends. That bet is that she will turn one of the school geeks, Trevor, bad. The prize? A lip-piercing to help her make her goal of only staying one year per foster family. But she soon finds herself in Trevor's world of sci-fi movies, charity work and family outings. As the bet becomes less important, Jen must face her past, figure out if she could ever belong with a geek boy and whether the plan to leave the new foster family is what she really wants.
Does the plot sound a little familiar? Not the whole plot, of course, but "the bet" is a plot that has been used before. The movie, She's All That, comes to mind in particular but it's not the only one. And this book does follow some of that plot line, so certain points will be expected but there is more to it than just the bet.
Story:
The story at first I thought would be a little too much about the bet but soon the author provided depth with the main character. At first it was a little rough because page one, the first lines in fact, is the bet. So, we don't know anything about the character except she plans to turn a boy bad in order to get her lip re-pierced, which comes off as a shallow reason but reading past that will show that the book has a deeper storyline than just that. I do wish more of the geek activities were shown. There is a lot of talk about the geeky movies they watch and she starts to love in dialogue but we don't see it except once and even then that time shows the geek boy she's trying to turn isn't all that geeky. I haven't read too many stories yet dealing with foster care and I think that part really did add depth to the novel.
Characters:
The main character is a little hard to feel sympathy for at first. Because we start at once with the bet, it does make her seem not like a nice character. But in the middle of the novel, I really felt for her and at one point in the story she almost goes too far the other way and becomes so mopey that it became hard again. But at the same time, it brought me in as her friend where I wanted to tell her snap out of it. So that works. The geek is a super polite really nice guy but... not very geeky. I wish he had been a little more geeky. I may be biased because I've bowled in leagues since I was 5 (family owns the bowling alley) so I don't think that's a geek thing to do but I'm at least a geek if not close to a nerd anyways. But I expected to see a little more geekiness from him. And having Trevor have an athletes body with a six-pack, disappointed me a little. I know, I'm weird and should consider it a step from the stereotype and I'm not saying he has to be very out of shape or anything, just no six-pack. I rolled my eyes at that. But he was a really nice guy and I like nice guys who actually get to have love in a story.
Overall:
May not be competing with classics but I found this book entertaining. And yes, I even got a little emotional near the end even though I knew some of the plot points that were going to happen well in advance. If looking for a fun read, this might be a good book to check out.
Friday, April 15, 2011 | |
The Red Garden by Alice Hoffman
Bears are a common thread throughout. Blackwell was first known as Bearsville due to the large population of bears dotting Hightop Mountain. The opening story, “The Bear’s House,” revolves around a courageous young woman, Hallie Brady, who founded Blackwell along with three other families. Hallie married at seventeen and joined her forty-year-old husband and three other families on an expedition to western Massachusetts. All except Hallie were beaten down by the snow, the cold, the bears, and the lack of food. No one had basic hunting and survival skills. Hallie, however, was determined to survive. She stepped into her husband’s boots (literally and metaphorically) and tackled the wilderness . Hoffman writes:
She had come all the way from England and she didn't intend to die her first winter out, not on the western side of this high dark mountain.
Hallie smashes the ice of a frozen river and fishes out eels for a stew, builds traps for rabbits, and milks a hibernating bear. She survived.
And Hallie loved “her” bear. Even after the town was established she often “gazed out the window, as if there was someplace she wanted to be, some other life that was more worth living.”
As Hoffman weaves her magic, you can't help noticing that most of the women in Blackwell long for something that’s out of reach. Some pine for the wild, others long for love, but die alone and unfulfilled. Some stay in Blackwell, others venture away. All seemed touched by regret. As one character sadly says: “I already knew I would never get what I wanted."
Hallie Brady is the “first lady” of Blackwell. She introduces many of the themes and motifs that run throughout this collection of stories. Hoffman presents an intense but unstable relationship between humans and the natural world in which they live - sorrow and loss, magic and mystery. Hallie plants the garden of the book’s title in the rich, red soil where every plant that grows there is vibrant and alive with the colour red. Scarlet amaranth and crimson larkspur grow wild; many of the town’s inhabitants have red hair and freckles, and the temper to go with these attributes. Then there's the bones in the garden...
Ghosts continually surface in this book, in almost every story, and since their stories are rooted in the actual history of Blackwell, they remind the reader that stories usually outlive their readers and that the division between the “real” world and the world beyond is very tenuous.
Every story is linked to and enriched by the stories that came before it. And real, historical figures make an appearance in Blackwell. In one story, Johnny “Appleseed” Chapman wanders into Blackwell and plants the “Tree of Life,” an apple tree that will sustain the whole town. The poet, Emily Dickinson stumbles into Blackwell, bringing her dog, Carlos. She’s forever changed by her short stay.
There are other unforgettable characters. There’s the little girl wearing a blue dress who drowns in the Eel River, but whose ghost hovers over Blackwell and is often sighted by inhabitants. “The Monster of Blackwell” is Matthew James, a young man “exceedingly ugly, so ugly he couldn’t look at himself,” a young man with a deformity so severe that he flees to Hightop Mountain, only to fall in love with, and write lyrical poetry to, Kate Partridge, a beautiful woman in the village, the daughter of one of Blackwell’s founding fathers.
The strongest stories in the collection are those where a strong current of magical realism is present such as it is in “The Fisherman’s Wife," a story about a strange woman with long black hair. The wife of a fisherman who’s caught more than one million eels, this odd woman goes door-to-door in Blackwell until something very extraordinary happens, but this being Blackwell, barely causes the inhabitants to bat an eyelash.
As always, Hoffman conveys the extraordinary events in spare, matter-of-fact prose, but there are gems that touched me deeply. In this book we can hear laughter shine “through the darkness, brighter than any light;” we see people falling in love “like a stone dropped into a river;” we watch a toddler “hurtle into each day.” It’s fresh and it’s beautiful and it’s a joy to read.
Hoffman has set the stories against real, historical events – the Civil War, the Depression, World War II, yet sometimes these events seem out-of-place. Like the tale of Ben Levy, a Jewish graduate of Yale in the 1930s. (I can’t imagine many Jews attended Ivy League schools in the 1930s.) Then there’s the fact that while Hoffman uses the Civil War as a backdrop, she never once mentions slavery. Maybe this adds to the enchantment of the book showing Blackwell’s isolation allowed its inhabitants to know what was going on, but were not too impacted by events.
Monday, April 11, 2011 | Labels: Alice Hoffman, magical realism |
Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver
Another book read on the Nook. My sister suggested I read it and since I had her e-reader I figured why not give it a try. And by suggested I mean, repeatedly bugged me because she has a number of books she thinks I should read and finally I'm starting to listen.
Samantha Kingston has it all: the world's most crush-worthy boyfriend, three amazing best friends, and first pick of everything at Thomas Jefferson High—from the best table in the cafeteria to the choicest parking spot. Friday, February 12, should be just another day in her charmed life.
Instead, it turns out to be her last.
Then she gets a second chance. Seven chances, in fact. Reliving her last day 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.
At first, I was unsure about the novel. The first section (sounds more accurate than chapter cause it was 50 pages) took me a couple of days to read. 50 pages where I'm pretty sure the death part happens like 3 times. I lost count even and thought there might have been more than 7 chances but if the description says 7, I believe it. The thing is the main character isn't 100 percent in achieving from me, the reader. She's kind of stuck up, popular type of teenager who had no problem being mean to others for no reason, which makes it hard at first. But after that, I was drawn in. While the first 50 pages on the Nook took me days to read, the next 50 took only a couple of hours. I got into the story and started to care about the main character so by the 5th and 6th chances I was even crying. I had no idea how it would end and I needed to know.
Character:
The main character is a popular teen girl who has her close friends and avoids those that might make her lose popularity. She's not the most likeable or relatable character in the very beginning and that almost makes the reader not mind that she's dead. (This is one of the few times I'll probably be able to say a character dies and not have in be a spoiler.) But once she starts trying to figure her life out, when she starts to experience moments and makes changes, she becomes a good character. I was even cheering for her and certain other characters by the end but it was equally heart breaking to know that wonderful moments would never exist again.
Plot:
The basic plot is what the novel description says. The main character experiences the same day over and over as she tries to figure out how to end the cycle. I had no idea where the story would end even as I neared the last chapter. It brings up the interesting question: if you knew you would die, or did die and had to live the day over, what would you do? Some reviews I've seen related it to Groundhog's Day but I haven't seen that. It felt very well done and original to me even though I had my doubts if I would even like the book at the very beginning.
Overall:
Oh goodness. This book may have started a bit iffy but it became Wow. Seriously. I love the moments in particular. The main character has these moments where she notices something that in the past would have seemed small and forgettable but that time, it's savored. The writer did an excellent job bringing those moments to life. The thing about reading this book is it also causes so many questions to crash over the readers minds. If you have any doubt about where you are in your life, that you're not doing what you want to be doing (like me living at my parents' house after college... X.X) then this book will make you wonder what you are missing. If life ended tomorrow... It makes me want to act, to do something, to move anywhere and yet I feel distracted by too many options. It's an odd feeling.
I say give this book a chance. It's not a perfect book but it is good.
Friday, April 08, 2011 | |
Slide the Corner by Fleur Beale
Slide the Corner by Fleur Beale is not a particularly new book (published in 1993), and I read it when I was younger. Despite the fact that this book is essentially about cars, and from a boy's POV, when I read it at about 12 years old, I loved it. So, when I dug this out of a second hand shop, I knew I had to pick it up and re-read.
Synopsis: Greg is the odd one out at home-he doesn't like computers and isn't a brain like the rest of the family. He's bored at school and misunderstood at home. But when Greg stumbles upon Brad, a mechanic who works on and drives rally cars, Greg suddenly finds his niche. Against his fathers wishes a bond forms between Brad and Greg, and as the two work together to win on the circuit Greg grows in confidence in his chosen sport. The family must come to realise the strength in each of its members ... no matter what that strength might be.
I'm really glad that I found this book again, because on a second read, over ten years later, I still loved it.
Greg is a likable character from the beginning. He's quite self-depricating, especially at the start, but as he grows in confidence and earns his family's respect, he becomes even easier to sympathise with. The other characters feel a little flat at times, and some of them appear to be almost too nice (especially Holly and Brad who help him into rallying). His father is the main antagonist of the story, and he was a fantastic character. I really felt like I hated him at times, especially with his insults towards Greg (he calls him "thick as crude oil" on several occassions). The father does grow too however, and he mellows out naturally, rather than having an unrealistic climax where he suddenly changes his mind (which would have been easy to do).
The novel is set in small town New Zealand, presumably in the '90s when it was published, and while there was a little bit of 'small town mentality' vs 'big city', it really could have been set anywhere, if it wasn't for the obviously New Zealand obsession with cars (which from what I can tell hasn't changed!). Rallying is a huge sport in NZ, although I imagine that Greg's father's objections to it aren't uncommon either.
Slide the Corner is a coming of age story, and I suspect that it would have particular appeal to boys over 12 years old. It's fast paced - throwing the reader into the drivers seat and having them whooping with excitement with the characters. It's also emotionally complex without overstating anything, and at times it had me laughing aloud.
7 out of 10 for me, and a must read for any young teenage boy (particularly those who might be adverse to the idea of reading!).
Tuesday, April 05, 2011 | Labels: boys, middle grade, young adult |
Letters From Wheatfield by Patrick Shannon
Hello readers. So, I've figured out I'm on a list for self-published books looking for review spots on their book tours but I haven't figured out how. I don't remember what all I signed up for when I started this blog besides LibraryThing and a BookBloggers site. But I am and this is one of the books I emailed back about. Sometimes it can be risky depending on how much effort went into a book before it was published but I can say so far I haven't been disappointed. This book is a good example of a well-written and self-published book that readers who enjoy humor when reading will like. Don't miss the interview of Patrick Shannon over on my other blog: author-interview-patrick-shannon.
About the book: What do you do for fun if you live in a small rural town, dauntingly far from the nearest city's plentiful amusements? Upon what resources do you draw to spice up your existence? Letters from Wheatfield provides the answer - and it isn't always pretty.
The fictitious town of Wheatfield is a tiny island in a vast sea of wheat fields and cattle ranges. Its nearest neighboring towns, similarly small, are well over the horizon. But its isolation has no effect on its inhabitants. Theirs is a society of mirthful, blithe, spritely wags - a condition abetted by the presence of not a few eccentric individuals.
In Letters from Wheatfield, two transplants from Manhattan write to a cousin back home about the remarkable community that has assimilated and transmuted them - much to their amazement and great pleasure.
I enjoyed reading this book. Then again, I come from a small town in Wyoming that has some similarities to the town in the novel, which the author placed in Montana. I laughed out loud often, even when my stepdad was in the room. And I liked that. I rarely read humor books even though I prefer comedy in tv and movies but it felt good to laugh instead of crying. Not that I don't like emotional books, honestly, it was just a relief to have something different in the mix.
This is not a typical novel. The story is told in letters that are sent which relay stories from the small town that are being sent to a friend who wants to write a book. It doesn't have the arching type of plot or plot-line and part of that comes from the fact that this is a little like a creative nonfiction book with a bit more fiction. Creative nonfiction tends to be mostly true with elements/techniques of fiction while this book, as the author explained in the interview, contains about 40% true stories with the other 60% being the embellished fiction elements. Despite being different, the letter works and weaves an amusing tale of things that can happen in a small town.
A couple times I wished I could say it was unrealistic. Like the gossip that started with a bit of junk mail calling the letter writer a professor that went from "oh he must have taught at Columbia University" to "he must have taught in the country of Columbia where the drugs are" because it's not the brightest twist on a rumor. But I know for a fact that type of rumor situation happens. We once had an issue with medicare since my family owns a medical supply store and at one point the rumor about what was going on morphed into people saying the business was selling drugs to Columbia. Umm... I'm guessing that's the wrong direction of trafficking but some people actually believed it. Not everyone in town is very bright and rumors are just like that sometimes. So, some of the stories really hit home personally and I'm betting readers from the area and neighboring states will enjoy reading this book in particular.
There is only one problem I had with this book. The editing was good, the tales written in letters really did work and I didn't even mind it not having the normal fiction layout. My problem is with the ending. I won't give too many details but the book basically doesn't have a concrete ending. It just kind of stops.... I was reading along, expecting something to sort of provide a conclusion coming up soon and all of a sudden there were no more pages. None. It was just over. No more. I do wish a little that there had been something, a final letter or one that says more will come later, anything. I'm not a fan of the ending that just stop in almost any novel, so it may just be a personal quark.
Still, I liked the book, overall. The voice, the little stories, and the humor were very enjoyable. I definitely recommend this book for people who have lived in small towns, especially in the west, though I bet others will enjoy reading it too.
Thursday, March 31, 2011 | Labels: humor, self-published |
Port Mortuary, Patricia Cornwell
As the New York Times says - "When it comes to the forensic sciences, nobody can touch Cornwell."
What is Port Mortuary? It is literally a port to receive the dead - and the deaths are mounting, as dangerous secrets from Scarpetta's past come back to haunt her.
The novel begins on Kay Scarpetta's last day at the Dover Port Mortuary where she has been training for six months. She has been mastering the art of 'virtual autopsy' - a groundbreaking procedure that is set to revolutionise forensic science. She is abruptly removed from Port Mortuary to put these new-found skills into practise when a young man is found murdered close to her home. A question is asked - was he alive when he was zipped into his body bag? This is what Scarpetta must ascertain.
Straight off the helicopter, a chilling drive through a blizzard to Boston and into the morgue, Scarletta gets straight to work. She uses revolutionary 3D radiology scans to study the young man's internal injuries. But these baffle Scarpetta and her team. This was definitely murder, not a heart attack as first surmised. The murderer is cunning and cruel. Maybe others have already been killed. She must race to find answers before others die.
In 'A Note to My Readers' at the beginning, Cornwell states that while Port Mortuary is a work of fiction, it is not science fiction. Even though at times it reads like science fiction, Cornwell asserts that all the medical and forensic procedures, technologies and weapons she writes about exist now.
Most of the entities in the book exist, such as the Port Mortuary at Dover Air Force Base and Special Weapons Observation Remote Direct-Action System (SWORDS) and many more. To me, this was quite disturbing news, but Patricia Cornwell uses the voice of Kay Scarpetta to reveal one of the premises of the book:
"Computers, robotics, synthetic biology, nanotechnology, the more off the wall, the better," she says. "... there's no such thing as mad scientists anymore. I'm not sure there's nay such thing as science fiction. Come up with the most extreme invention you can imagine, and it's probably being implemented somewhere. It's probably old news."
A spine-chilling read at times, yet I feel myself falling out of love with Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta. She appears particularly cold in this novel (as do all the other main characters.) I liked her more in her earlier persona where I saw her chopping onions and full of angst over her relationship with her mother, her sister and "phobic and cynical"niece Lucy. I can't warm to her cold-fish husband Benton, (FBI Psychologist) who always appears to be slyly hiding information from Scarpetta. He "died" and rose again in a previous novel. Her long-term love-loathe relationship with detective Pete Marino continues and doesn't get any less weirder. In this novel, her super-rich, super-talented, super Obsessive-Compulsive niece Lucy is just as full-on, and mostly unbelievable. Scarpetta's strange Medical Examiner Jack Fielding who's been holding the fort while she's been away 6 months features a lot in conversations but he's mostly "gone missing."
For all my disappointment with Cornwell's characterisation (and she might think cold characters suit a not-a-science-fiction story) it is still a good page turner and I'd recommend it to those who like to keep up with the latest in forensic science. Well, what do we watch on TV every night? People love it. I'd much rather read about it than see it graphically displayed in the lounge room. Cornwell has certainly done her research and presents these new technologies in a believable way.
Monday, March 28, 2011 | Labels: crime fiction, Patricia Cornwell, Port Mortuary |