Time Between Us

Title: Time Between Us
Author: Tamara Ireland Stone
Narrator: Amy Rubinate
ISBN: 9780307967862 (hardcover 9781423159568)
Discs/CDs: 8 CDs, 9 hours
Pages: 368 pages
Publisher/Date: Hyperiod, an imprint of Disney Book Group, c2012.

And while the thief is distracted by the contents of the safe, three things happen, so fast and overlapping that they seem to take place simultaneously. Bennet disappears completely, and suddenly he’s kneeling next to me on the floor. He grabs my hands and closes his eyes, and I must follow suit, because when I open them, the store is gone. The robber and his knife are gone. And Bennett and I are in the exact same positions–him kneeling, me sitting, still holding each other’s hands–only now we’re next to a tree in the park around the corner, the wind throwing snow violently around us. (99)

Anna sees a teenage boy she’s never met watching her as she does her morning run. Upon meeting her observer at school and identifying him as new student Bennett, she confronts him and he denies the incident. Against the advice of her friends and her gut instincts she is attracted to Bennett, but Anna can’t shake the feeling that something isn’t right about Bennett. During a robbery attempt, Bennett finally reveals that he is hiding a huge secret and is actually a time traveler from 17 years in the future. Pulled inexplicably to each other, Anna relishes the opportunity to fulfill her life long dreams of travel. But as their relationship prompts them to continually break rules that Bennett has established, Bennett’s prolonged presence might be causing consequences that he cannot fix.

More mild-romance than mind-bender or mystery, if you combine Twilight with The Time Traveler’s Wife, you get this book, but in both cases I would go to those other books first. While this book also has a time traveling couple, The Time Traveler’s Wife had depth and substance and emotional draw that this book seems to lack. However, you still having the brooding teenage girl in a relationship that everyone cautions her against yet she feels that unexplainable and instantaneous attraction/attention towards him. I guess that’s actually the problem, because while we see the relationship in Time Traveler’s Wife grow and evolve, I didn’t get that sense here. It feels like their relationship grows out of intrigue rather than love, with all of the long, lingering looks and none of the emotional sparks that are supposed to materialize.

Anna’s friendships, including her relationship with Bennett, are less than appealing. It seems like she’s using Bennett because of the promise of travel opportunities, which she absolutely is intent on taking advantage of. Bennett himself strikes me and Anna’s friends as slightly creepy, what with his popping in and out of Anna’s life. Anna’s friend Justin, whom she has known since she was five, plays a very minor part in the book, and also seems to be used by Anna for music, whether in the form of personalized mixes she can run to or tickets to the hottest concerts. His possible attraction to her is mentioned ever so slightly and then ignored for most of the rest of the story, only to be thrust in our face suddenly towards the end. Even her friend Emma doesn’t seem fully fleshed out, playing the role of comedic side-kick more than a true friend. When the characters fight, which they do sporadically, they all seem to solve their problems by ignoring each other until one or the other gives in for no reason.

This is especially true when applied to Bennett’s rules regarding time travel, which he broke once with disastrous consequences yet that doesn’t stop him from considering breaking the rules for Anna, a girl he’s just met. The time travel portion of the plot is also marginally explained. While Bennett subconsciously/inexplicably realizes that he can’t travel to a time before he was born or into his future, the ending climatic separation between Bennett and Anna has no explanation. I don’t want to reveal too much here, but I wonder if answers will be more readily available in October with the upcoming sequel, which will be told from Bennett’s perspective. Also, as a reviewer pointed out on Goodreads, at one point in the story there are three Bennett’s in the same time line, which was loosely explained as possible because they weren’t “within range of our other selves” and therefore won’t “disappear”, which seems like a flimsy reason.

And don’t get me started on the ending, which I’m sure to spoil for readers who get that far. Let’s say the problem is solved but with no satisfactory explanation to decipher what caused the problem or how it was solved. I honestly wish it had ended differently. Amy Rubinate did a passible job at narrating the material she was given, but the plot left a lot to be desired in my opinion. Goodreads reviews are full of star-struck readers swooning over what I see is a lackluster love story. Maybe it just wasn’t meant for me.

Pandemonium

Title: Pandemonium
Series: sequel to Delirium
Author: Lauren Oliver
Narrator: Sarah Drew
ISBN: 9780061978067
Pages: 375 pages
CDs/Discs: 9 CDs; 10 hours, 34 minutes
Publisher/Date:

The next day, the sky is a pale blue, the sun high and amazingly warm, breaking through the trees and turning the ice to rivulets of flowing water. The snow brought silence with it, but now the woods are alive again, full of dripping and twittering and cracking. It is as though the Wilds have been released from a muzzle.
We are all in a good mood–everyone but Raven, who does her daily scan of the sky and only mutters, “It won’t last.”
On my way to the nests, stamping through the snow, I’m so warm I have to take off my jacket and tie it around my waist. The nests will be green today, I can sense it. They’ll be green, and the supplies will come, and the scouts will return, and we’ll all flow south together. [...]
Red. Red. Red.
Dozens of [birds]: black feathers coated thickly with crimson-colored paint, fluttering among the branches.
Red means run. (126-127)

Lena has escaped from the “civilized society,” but has lost her love and savior Alex in the process. Now she’s living with Raven and Tack, two people she met after escaping, trying to portray an obedient life while helping the resistance from the inside. Through flashbacks to “Then”, we see her being rescued from certain death by a company of resistance fighters, hiding in the Wilds, surviving on what little they can scrounge and preparing for the coming winter and move south. But Lena, Raven, and Tack have to push their harrowing journey behind them if they are to stay hidden from prying eyes. In her task to get close to and watch a young man named Julian who serves as figurehead of the movement insisting upon “the Cure” for all, she finds herself kidnapped with Julian and held with nothing but an umbrella and a tube of lipstick at her disposal. Can she turn Julian into an ally without exposing her own secret, or will they be unable to bridge the gap that separates them?

If you remember, I fell in love (pardon the pun) with Delirium upon my first reading. This sequel made me question what I loved about the first one. I started listening to it as an audiobook, and could NOT get into it. It might have been the narrator, but Lena sounded whiney, overly brooding, and just melodramatic. The writing, which I’m sure was trying to be poetic and descriptive, just seemed to languish. Everything seems to take her breath away or amaze her with either its beauty or its horror. She feels everything and internalized the minutest of details, and Oliver takes the time to explain everything. For instance:

Alex is the only boy I’ve ever known or really spoke to. I don’t like to think of all those male strangers, just on the other side of the stone wall, with their baritone voices and their snorts of laughter. Before I met Alex, I lived almost eighteen years believing fully in the system, believing 100 percent that love was a disease, that we must protect ourselves, that girls and boys must stay rigorously separate to prevent contagion. Looks, glances, touches, hugs–all of it carried the risk of contamination. And even though being with Alex changed me, you don’t shake loose the fear all at once. You can’t.
I close my eyes, breathe deeply, again try and force myself down through the layers of consciousness, to let myself be carried away by sleep. (16-17)

Who thinks like this?! Okay, we get it, you can’t sleep. We got that with the previous, unquoted (is that a word?), paragraph where you talk about the noises you hear. We as readers don’t need to have everything spelled out for us so completely.

Once I got the printed book from the library, I gave up on the audiobook. It went a lot faster, but now I had the narrator’s voice stuck in my head. And I couldn’t get it out. They really need a new narrator for this series, because I know I would have liked it more if I hadn’t been so focused on all the times that Lena went reflective. Even when she’s getting attacked, about halfway through the book, she’s much more reflective in her descriptions than matter of fact. “I am striking without looking, struggling to breathe, and everything is bodies–hardness and enclosure, no way to run, no way to break free–and the slashing of my knife.” Maybe the book should have been written as a novel in verse.

I also struggled with the jumping back and forth between “Then” and “Now”. The timeline of events got confused in my brain, and readers still don’t witness how Lena, Raven, and Tack actually infiltrated the “real” world, which I was most curious about since it seems like people rarely move between cities in this new society. I would have liked it much better if the story had started and finished with Then, and proceeded to Now chronologically.

I have to admit though that Oliver knows how to write the action sequences, even with the overly descriptive passages. Lana is a warrior similar to Katniss from The Hunger Games and she readily adapts and acquires her survival instincts. She fights with the best of them, and is not about to get taken, captured, or killed, especially after Alex tried so hard to get her out and avoid the cure. The ending is a doozy. On the one hand, it is cliche and predictable and groan-enducing that we now have to wait for book three, but I still wanted to stand up and applaud her for her execution as red-herrings were thrown at us from the beginning and had thoroughly convinced me it wasn’t going to happen, ESPECIALLY not on the last page. And the plot twist regarding the kidnapping was also something I did NOT see coming.

Be prepared to read this as opposed to listening to it, and you’ll be able to avoid the overly dramatic whine that permeates my reading now and you’ll enjoy the action much more.

Forever

In celebration of Banned Book Week’s 30th Anniversary, I’m spending the entire week reviewing books that have been challenged for one reason or another. While yesterday’s Robopocalypse was a new release, today’s book of choice has been around for a long time but one I’d never read until now.

Title: Forever
Author: Judy Blume
ISBN: 9781416934004
Pages: 192 pages
Publisher/Date: Simon Pulse, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division, c1975 (renewed c2003)

It occurred to me in the middle of the night that Michael asked if I was a virgin to find out what I expected of him. If I hadn’t been one then he probably would have made love to me. What scares me is I’m not sure how I feel about that. (20)

Katherine and Michael’s first meeting is innocent enough, the exchange of a few words at a friend’s New Year’s Eve party. But they’re both intrigued by each other, and have their first date the very next day. It’s a great way to start off the New Year as their relationship blooms and advances from hand holding to declaring their love for each other. Their parents caution them about first loves, but Katherine and Michael are adamant that this is going to work out. With everyone saying “take it slow” and “this won’t last”, Katherine and Michael have big decisions to make as they finish their senior year, decisions that will affect their lives and relationship.

A refreshingly honest portrayal of first romance and love that still rings true after all these years (and I really didn’t realize how many years it has been). Unlike today’s books where we see instant sparks and love at first sight, Katherine and Michael’s love for each other starts off slow and builds. They attend different schools, so they only see each other mostly on the weekends and some nights. I think this adds to their evolution together, as they aren’t available for hand-holding, walking each other to classes, eating lunch together or stealing kisses in the hallway.

The story is almost timeless, with just one mention of records at the very beginning and a lack of cell phones being the only glaring difference between now and when the book was written more than 35 YEARS(!) ago. It’s older than Banned Book Week, which is celebrating its 30th Anniversary this year. I actually don’t recall reading a whole lot of Judy Blume when I was younger except the Fudge series, although I acutely remember writing a paper on her because years later I found the same book I used to write the report in my library (I recognized the cover photo) so she must have made some impact.

I’m presenting this book during Banned Book Week and I can understand why parents might still object to it all these years later (it was number #16 of top 100 books banned from 2000-2009). While not explicit or overly graphic, it does portray the characters having sex. Katherine is intent on waiting, and although it’s not a very long time (about three months) before they’re seriously considering sex, it’s nice to see a guy who’s respectful of that choice and doesn’t pressure her (much). While everything is told from Katherine’s perspective, we do witness a little bit of what the guy goes through, as Michael complains about pain, there’s premature ejaculation, and also a time when things just aren’t happening. (I’m afraid including these details is going to give me a lot more traffic from people not looking for book reviews, but there’s no other way to describe it. *laughing*) The othering refreshing aspect of the book is it portrays different points of view, with the novel bringing up topics of pregnancy and sex out of wedlock, sexually transmitted diseases, abortions, and questioning sexuality.

Katherine’s family is just as upfront about it as Blume is in her descriptions. Her mother and grandmother (who if you think about it would have been born sometime in the 40s at the latest!) are surprisingly frank but also hands off about their advice, giving Katherine articles about sex and referring her to Planned Parenthood. They do answer her questions when she approaches them, but they let Katherine make her own decisions about when it’s the right time to talk. Katherine’s father is understandably more straight-forward about the discussion. He sits down with her and flatly tells her that he doesn’t “want to see her tied down” and that she’s “too young to make lifetime decisions.” (74) The Planned Parenthood scene is portrayed as very clinical, sterile, and professional, presenting her options and describing the process with again very minimal details.

My physical consisted of weight and blood pressure, a routine breast exam, with the doctor explaining how I should check my breasts each month, then my first pelvic examination. I tried to act as if I was used to it, but I didn’t fool the doctor, who said “Try to relax, Katherine. This isn’t going to hurt.” And it didn’t either, but it was uncomfortable for a minute, like when he pushed with one hand from inside and with the other from the outside.
Then he slipped this cold thing into my vagina and explained, “This is a vaginal speculum. It holds the walls of the vagina open so that the inside is easily seen.” […]
“I’m almost done now, Katherine . . . just a Pap smear . . . there,” he said, passing a long Q-tip kind of thing to his assistant. “And the gonorrhea culture . . . okay . . . that does it.” He took off his rubber glove. (119-120)

Quite obviously meant for teens, I would recommend it to any girl who considered herself in a serious relationship or was thinking about having sex. Katherine and her friends show times of insight that every reader could benefit from. While the challenges are correct that it does portray sex between teenagers, masturbation, and birth control, these are all things that teens should be informed about before reaching college. Katherine shows responsibility, restraint and forward planning, all things that readers are encouraged to emulate, and something that parents should be relieved is being portrayed to their children in a positive and nonjudgmental manner.

The Scorpio Races

Title: The Scorpio Races
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Narrator: Steve West and Fiona Hardingham
ISBN: 9780545224901
Pages: 409 pages
Dics/CDs: 10 CDs, 12 hours 7 minutes
Publisher/Date: Scholastic Inc., c2011.

“It’s the first day of November and so, today, someone will die.”

When Sean Kendrick was ten, his father was killed by a cappal uisce during the annual Scorpio Races on the beach of their tiny island. Ever since, Sean has been taming the cappal uisce for the Malvern family, one of the biggest names in horse breeding. A quiet, brooding young man, Sean trusts his secrets to no one, not even the cappal uisce named Corr who has helped him win the Races several times and who Sean has set his heart on owning one day. Sean’s life is changed when he encounters Puck Connolly, an ambitious young girl who’s terrified of the cappal uisce after they killed both her parents and left her and her two brothers orphans. The only way to keep her older brother from abandoning their family for the mainland is to enter the race, but is she strong enough to overcome her fear?

The story is mainly told from Puck’s point of view, and Fiona Hardingham’s bubbly representation of Puck seems almost effortless. Puck does have her moments of depression, but she is usually able to lift herself out of those depths, if only for the sole reason that she doesn’t want her younger brother to see her so despondent. I think I would get along with her well. Sean, as I said in my summary, is the strong and silent type whose narration counter balances Puck’s effervescent personality. Steve West conveys his reserved nature very cleanly, and voices not just Sean but all the men with clarity and precision. He slips very neatly from Sean’s accent to the horse purchaser George Holly’s American one, with no hesitation or hiccups that I could hear.

This is somewhat different from Maggie Stiefvater’s Shiver, which focused on the more well-known werewolf mythology. Here she’s in her own element, bringing to life the little known legend of the water horses, which she says in her author’s note are named various things depending on the country of origin. I’ve never heard of this myth, as I thought Kelpies were simply water horses as opposed to flesh-eating beasts, more “My Little Pony” meets “The Little Mermaid” than vampiric Black Beauty.

But Stiefvater brings more to the table than that just admittedly simplistic description. Through her writings, readers witness the majesty and fascination that Sean feels for these wild animals, as well as the revulsion that Puck feels for these killer beasts. In presenting both sides, readers can draw their own conclusions, and can debate what they would do and how they would feel if placed in the same situation.

The action and adventure sequences leave readers not only picturing the scene, but reeling from it as the horses strike and death courts the characters at every corner. Her writing is cinematic in nature, especially at the very end when you can visualize the panoramic views and the tight close-ups of faces, reactions, and feelings. Those feelings, and especially the relationship that develops between Puck and Sean, are natural and not rushed. They recognize that they are competitors, with each of them needing to beat the other one in order to win the prize money that they both so desperately need. They’re hesitant to act on what starts as admiration and quickly grows in each of them as something more, and their trepidation just adds to the climatic ending.

A Printz Award Honor 2012 for teen literature and Odyssey Honor Award 2012 for Best Audio Production, along with being named to countless Best Books of 2011 lists, this book is a must read for any fantasy fan, and a must listen for all audiobook listeners.

Back When You Were Easier to Love

Title: Back When You Were Easier to Love
Author: Emily Wing Smith
ISBN: 9780525421993
Pages: 296 pages
Publisher/Date: Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., c2011.

“I never got it, those magazine articles I read when I was thirteen and anticipating romance. Never understood why they went on and on about finding a guy you could be yourself around. I could be me all by myself. I was already me. I wanted a boyfriend to make me more than me.
Zan was that guy. Zan was that guy, and more. I wasn’t myself with him, I was better than myself–Joy 2.0. When I was with Zan my jokes were funnier, my mind was sharper, my vanilla perfume smelled better. I was better read–quotes from books jumped into my memory during conversations with him. [...]
Without him, the world is smaller. Without him, I am smaller. Without him a place like Haven, a place that was small before, shrinks to the size of a fingernail clipping–something so small, something no one needed anyway.
I am not Haven. I shrink without Zan. But with him, I am not insignificant. (26-27)

Joy is a newcomer in the Mormon community Haven. She wasn’t entirely happy with her mid-semester move until she met Zan. Zan becoming her boyfriend made life better, but Zan can’t think of anything except getting out. After finishing high school early, Zan moves to the college at Joy’s old hometown and cuts ties to everything to his old life. Joy doesn’t understand what happened, and maintains to her friends that she needs closure. When a long weekend presents the opportunity, she and Zan’s friend Noah take off on a road trip across the desert intent to find Zan and give Joy that closure. But is Joy really ready for what she’s going to find when she gets there or along the way?

I first posted about this book with my first Waiting on Wednesday almost a year ago, and I finally made it to this book. This is another example of the fact that you can’t judge a book by its cover. The cover shows a couple sharing a library stool surrounded by books (how cute is that), and I was expecting the library to take center stage in the story. But besides Joy’s love of books and the time she spends in the library at school, there really isn’t a whole lot of emphasis on the library. I was expecting a story about a library love, and that wasn’t what I got.

Not that the story that was told was bad, it was just hard to wrap my brain around when I realized how wrong I was. I liked the story for a couple of reasons. First, this is a story about a Mormon relationship and a Mormon community, but it didn’t really stress religion. Instead, the attention was placed squarely on Joy’s feelings and her relationship with Zan. It never got preachy, which is appreciated. Second, can I just gush over Noah? The things you find out about the kind of guy he is just impresses me so much and it’s so admirable the things he does to help Joy. Noah is the real keeper and it gives readers hope that there are guys out there like Noah. Other bloggers talk about their literary crushes… I think I can safely claim Noah’s as mine. Comparing Noah to Zan, readers have a hard time figuring out why Joy is so hung up on Zan, but it’s easy to reflect on that with the hindsight of Zan’s disappearance. Readers also get exposed to Joy and the feelings she enjoyed when with Zan, and that to me solidifies the relationship she had and why she is devastated and so intent to hold onto it when it falls apart. While her fascination with Barry Manilow seems out dated to me, I guess it’s comparable to the fascination that other girls have with other singers today. For me, she’s all the more relatable when she reveals her complete cluelessness to cars, something I suffer from as well.

Overall, it was a cute, clean love story that shatters the stereotype that your first love is the one.

Along for the Ride

Title: Along for the Ride
Author: Sarah Dessen
ISBN: 978067001940
Pages: 383 pages
Publisher/Date: Viking, a member of Penguin Group Inc., c2009.

Hollis’s picture frame was on the bedside table, and I picked it up, looking over the tacky blue stones. THE BEST OF TIMES. Something in these words, and his easy, smiling face, reminded me of the chatter of my old friends as they traded stories from the school year. Not about classes, or GPAs, but other stuff things that were as foreign to me as the Taj Mahal itself, gossip and boys and getting your hearts broken. They probably had a million pictures that belonged in this frame, but I didn’t have a single one.
I looked at my brother again, backpack over his shoulder. Travel certainly did provide some kind of opportunity, as well as a change of scenery. Maybe I couldn’t take off to Greece or India. But I could still go somewhere. (18)

Auden has just graduated from college and realized that she has nothing to show for her high school years except for an impeccable GPA and giving the speech at her graduation. So when the opportunity arises to spend the summer with her father, step-mother, and brand new step-sister, she impulsively accepts. She’s hoping to find something – and become someone— different before she must immerse herself in college life as the over-achieving book-obsessed shy girl. But after a rocky start with the girls at her step-mother’s store and witnessing her father travel the same distancing path with his new wife that he did with Auden’s mother, Auden starts to believe her mother’s saying that people don’t change. Will Eli, the boy who catches her eye and is hiding from the world in his own way, change her mind and herself in ways she never expected?

I’ll admit it: This is the first Sarah Dessen novel I’ve read. I know she’s been writing books for years now and has over a half-dozen books to her name. She’s been described to me as the Nicholas Sparks for teens and college women, and I guess I can see the resemblance. And I found myself enjoying it much more than I thought I would. This book is not just fluff, and it does have teen drama without being overly dramatic. Auden has a split family where neither parent is very attentive, and yes there is some drinking, but I was surprised to reflect back and not be able to pinpoint excessive swearing or violence or drug use or anything that parents find so objectionable about the “dark” young adult novels that are being published and publicized so frequently.

I think what I like best about Auden and Eli, and even the girls that Auden ends up working with is that they are so normal and yet still very multifaceted. In comparison to some of the relationships in fiction, Auden and Eli have a relatively tame but unique courtship, but that’s not to say that it’s instant connection. It’s actually a very rocky start and Auden almost gets pounded to a pulp at a party. Eli sets out to expose Auden to all the normal teenager things, like bowling, she missed out on while pushing herself so hard with her school work. In a similar way, Auden forces Eli out of his comfort zone, and they seem to be well matched as they join each other on nocturnal outings around town away from the prying eyes of their peers. It’s a refreshing spin and a great first impression to an author I’ve had no previous experience. I’ll be sure to recommend her to teen girls from now on. Although by the looks of the well-worn library copy, they probably already know about her.

Matched

Title: Matched
Author: Ally Condie
ISBN: 9780525423645
Pages: 369 pages
Publisher/Date: Dutton Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., c2010.

“Cassia Reyes, the Society is pleased to present you with your Match.”
I smile as Xander’s face appears on the portscreen immediately following the recorded message. It’s a good picture of him. As always, his smile looks bright and real, his blue eyes kind. I study his face closely, pretending that I’ve never seen this picture before; that I have only had a glimpse of him once, last night at the Banquet. I study the planes of his face, the look of his lips. He is handsome. I’d never dared think that he might be my Match, of course, but now that it’s happened I am interested. Intrigued. A little scared about how this might change our friendship, but mostly just happy. I reach up to touch the words Courtship Guidelines on the screen but before I do Xander’s face darkens and then disappears. The portscreen beeps and the voice says again, “Cassia Reyes, the Society is pleased to present you with your Match.”
My heart stops, and I can’t believe what I see. A face comes back into view on the port in front of me.
It is not Xander. (34-35)

Cassia has been looking forward to the day when she gets assigned her husband. Now seventeen, the day of her Matching Ceremony arrives and she is paired up with Xander, her childhood friend and classmate. When Cassia accesses the memory card with information about Xander, the face of a different classmate name Ky flashes on the screen. Although reassured by officials that it was an unfortunate error, Cassia finds herself drawn to Ky. As they draw closer, Cassia begins to question who she loves more and if she feels the way she does because of what she was told. Would having a choice about what you eat, what you do, and who you marry really be all that bad?

This could have been a really intriguing book, and I know it’s getting a lot of rave reviews. I can see the appeal, and I was drawn in by the psychological aspects of the book. Cassia asks herself a few times if she has feelings for Ky or Xander because she was told to love and look at them in a different light. The problem I had is that she really doesn’t examine her feelings for either boy very deeply. The romance is written well, and I’m sure there are camps for both Ky and Xander, but by the end of the book she seems to pick the boy she chooses based on other people and not her own feelings. Ky and Xander also seem pretty apathetic about the situation, and overall come across as flat to me, especially Xander.

The world development is also a little loose. Other bloggers have said the same thing, but the world is earilly reminescent of Lois Lowry’s The Giver in that people’s lives are dictated by authority. Not just their jobs and their partners, but also where they live, what they eat, what they do in their free time, and even what they listen to, read, and view. But exactly how this way of life came about remains a mystery. The only thing that is really explained is that a committee came together to determine the “100 Poems” and 100 Songs, but how that committee was formed, why everyone agreed, and what objections there were are really left unanswered.

I’m interested to see if the second one answers all these questions, but with the lackluster ho-hum ending, there’s really no drive for me to rush out and buy a copy.

Wings

Title: Wings
Author: Aprilynne Pike
ISBN: 9780061668050
Pages: 294
Publisher/Date: HarperTeen, an imprint of HarperCollins, c2009.

Her fingers walked over her shoulder and her eyes flew open wide. She bit off a shriek as her other hand joined the first, trying to confirm what she was feeling.
The bump was gone. But something else had replaced it. Something long and cool.
And much bigger than the bump had been. (44-45)

Laurel has just moved to a new house and started at a public high school after years of homeschooling by her adoptive parents. She’s trying to fit in, but her homeschooling history, vegetarian eating habits and unusual dress and looks are making it difficult. Laurel realizes that she had it easy though when what she thought was a zit on her back turns into wings in the shape of flower petals. Enlisting the help of biology classmate David, Laurel realizes that there is a reason for her differences, and not only her family but also an entire race might be relying on her to keep them safe.

Laurel’s character is I think what brought the story to life for me. She’s catapulted into this live triangle with David and Tamani. She has different reasons for being with each guy. David becomes her first friend and the guy who doesn’t freak out when the plot starts to take a turn for the worst. Tamani knows her past, and is able to educate her in things that she can’t learn from anyone else. With both guys, she struggles to determine whether or not her feelings are more than just gratitude for their different forms of assistance and support. Personally, I’m cheering for David.

Aside from her relationships, Laurel also acts realistically when encountered with new situations, whether it’s public school or the wings on her back. I was thrilled that she gets the chance to “flaunt them if you’ve got them” at the Halloween Dance, because if you had wings you’d want to show off too. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t. It’s also refreshing to find loving parents in teen fiction, as Laurel’s mother and father, however briefly they appear in the book, seem like pretty supportive. Her mother even offers to resume homeschooling Laurel if she still hates it after trying it for a few months.

There is a sequel, called Spells and a third book titled Illusions (apparently called Wild on UK Amazon) if readers want to continue the story. If you’d like more information about the author, the series, or the upcoming fourth and final book, check out her website: http://www.aprilynnepike.com/

Anna and the French Kiss

Title: Anna and the French Kiss
Author: Stephanie Perkins
ISBN: 9780525423270
Pages: 372 pages
Publisher/Date: Dutton Books, c2010.

He’s drunk. He’s just drunk.
Calm down, Anna. He’s drunk, and he’s going through a crisis. There is NO WAY he knows what he’s talking about right now. So what do I do? Oh my God, what am I supposed to do?
“Do you like me?” St. Clair asks. And he looks at me with those big brown eyes–which, okay, are a bit red from the drinking and maybe from some crying–and my heart breaks.
Yes, St. Clair. I like you.
But I can’t say it aloud, because he’s my friend. And friends don’t let other friends make drunken declarations and expect them to act upon them the next day.
Then again . . . it’s St. Clair. Beautiful, perfect, wonderful–
And great. That’s just great.
He threw up on me. (142-143)

Anna is dropped off by her famous author father at a boarding school in Paris for her senior year of high school. Never mind that the only word of French she knows is oui, and that she only recently learned how to spell it correctly. Never mind that she has a great life in Atlanta, with a crush and a job and a best friend. But then she meets Etienne St. Clair, a fellow senior who has it all, and falls for him hard. But Anna can’t forget that not only does St. Clair have a girlfriend, but her new friend at school also harbors a crush for this perfect boy. As she tries to navigate the year by ignoring her crush, Anna realizes just why Paris is called the city of love.

This was a snappy, entertaining, and fast read that would serve lots of teen girls in their quest for romance. The dialogue was witty, with readers really seeing Anna’s insecurities of surviving in a new city and trying to make it on her own. Her activities in Paris mirror what her friends are going through back in Atlanta, and it’s really interesting to see the different sides to the same coin (so to speak). Quite a few chapters end in the manner like the portion quoted above, so you find yourself saying “Just one more chapter” and then realize an hour later that you’re almost done with the book. Great pacing. Although, can anyone tell me how to pronounce St. Clair’s first name? I’d hate to get it wrong when doing a book talk with high schoolers who may or may not know French!

And it’s a clean, chaste romance which still packs a punch and keeps readers interested and begging for more! YES! No sex is shown although it is mentioned and there’s one naked scene but no one sees anything they aren’t supposed to. I could probably recommend it to younger teens, because even though there is some underaged drinking, you see the consequences of such actions and besides, it is legal over in Paris to drink at that age. The story covers the entire school year, which makes the ending more probable as characters grow and change and evolve.

But this is hardly a morality tale, it’s a romance, so none of what I mentioned is really all that important. The cover is adorable, and so is the story. This tale of star-crossed lovers who can’t seem to escape the misunderstandings and jumping to conclusions will have readers rooting for them till the very end.

I LOVED IT. Any librarians doing the Summer Reading theme “You Are Here” should add this to any bibliography of books that take place in foreign countries. (I’m working on such a list for a future post, so stay tuned.) A great girl read that I find myself unexpectedly gushing over.

Party

Title: Party
Author: Tom Leveen
ISBN: 9780375864360
Pages: 228 pages
Publisher/Date: Random House, c2010.

This is dumb.
It’s like I’m already dead. If a tree falls in the forest, does it make any sound? If a girl doesn’t speak, if no one knows her name, does she really exist?
But I have to know. Does anyone know who I am anymore?
This becomes my new motivation: Go to the party. Walk around. See if anyone, just one person, says my name. Says “Hi!” Says “I had Spanish with you sophomore year.”
If no one does . . . then case closed. My high school career, my existence, will be proven invisible.
I force myself up the stairs built into the cliff face, and down Beachfront to the party. I regret my decision the moment I open the door. (12)

News has spread about the biggest party ever being hosted after the last day of the school year. Beckett is going to see if even one person knows she exists. Azize is intent on going to the party to make one new friend. Skateboarders Max and Brent are going because Max wants one last shot at finally talking to the girl he’s been pining over for the last three years and has never worked up the courage to approach. Morrigan snuck out of her house after getting in a fight with her parents and got a ride from her friend Ashley, who is looking out for Morrigan because she broke up with boyfriend Josh. Josh was in LOVE with Morrigan, but just wants to get over her FAST when she dumps him for not sleeping with her. His friends Tommy, Matt, Ryan, and Daniel drag him to the party after fantasizing about ways to kill Morrigan, “because that’s what friends do.” Finally, Anthony, former star football player, wants to put the losing season behind him, but family troubles overburden his alcohol addled brain. All these stories and people combine into one night of regrets and wishes and most people see things differently by the end.

Tom Leveen did a great job of moving the night along through the stories of these eleven teens. The pacing was great, and you really got all the points of views of the characters. This book is somewhat unique in that it could be seen as a collection of short stories, since each point of view is only about 20 pages long, but they all come together cohesively. The ending was shocking, but it still wrapped up all the loose ends. I can’ only imagine the difficulty of deciding who was going to tell what when in order for the ending to be as clean as it was.

While there was a lot going on, it was also only happening to several different people. So while a single story with the various events like the war oversees, racism, family illness and dynamics, sex/virginity, and underaged drinking might get bogged down, for this story it worked. We see that everyone has their own issues that they have to deal with, some more serious than others, and that maybe they aren’t visible to everyone. What’s also refreshing is that Leveen doesn’t get bogged down with clichés. Yes, there’s the teen boy who only wants to sleep around, but there’s also Josh who has decided to wait to have sex not for any strict adherence to religion, but for his own reasons. The characters get balanced out in the end, so the irresponsible get weighed next to the responsible and all in all I think there’s a little something for everyone. At slightly over 200 pages, it’s a slim book that makes an impact.