2012 reading: Catch-up (Part 5)

In an effort to catch up on my reading, I'm writing short reviews of the books I've read so far this year.

Title and author: Divergent - Veronica Roth
Source: Library
Rating: 9 out of 10

Can I just say that I'm loving the dystopian trend? I've always been a sucker for a good dystopian novel, and Roth has created a really interesting world and has peopled it with characters that you actually want to watch. I couldn't stop reading this book (Or, as you'll see in a moment, its sequel) until I had completely finished. I wanted to know what happened, and I really cared about what happened to the characters.

Title and author: Insurgent - Veronica Roth
Source: Kindle
Rating: 9 out of 10

It's hard, for me, to separate this book from its predecessor since I went straight from one into the other. They kind of exist all as one story in my mind, so a lot of my feelings about Insurgent mirror those of Divergent. I did like that Roth began to more fully flesh out the world she created and to give the reader little hints of what may come in the third installment.

Title and author: Forever - Maggie Stiefvater
Source: Library
Rating: 7 out of 10

Last books in series always seem kind of rushed to me. You've had a couple books to really lay out a good story, then you have to wrap it all up in one book. In this case, there really wasn't a lot to "wrap up," but all that wrapping happened in such a small portion of the book that I kind of wondered why I'd read the whole thing. Not to mention that the characters we've seen develop in the last two books are just kind of blah. Grace is suddenly all rebellious and angry toward her parents in a confrontational way; Isabel just existed to answer the phone; and Sam, oh, Sam. Once the hallmark of everything I loved about these books, he turned into a Bella-from-New Moon stand-in -- "Oh, my love is away so I'll just totally fall apart and not sleep and go all emo." Yeah, no thanks.

Title and author: Silence - Becca Fitzpatrick

Source: Library

Rating: 6 out of 10

In a way, I liked the concept of this third book in the series: (SPOILER ALERT) Nora loses her memory right after learning all kinds of interesting tidbits about the fallen angels and the Nephilim, then has to gain it back. Unfortunately, the concept would have worked much better if this were a stand-alone book or the first book in the series. We already know all the stuff Nora needs to find out, so it just makes the entire book kind of boring.

Review: Salvation City by Sigrid Nunez

Title: Salvation City

Author: Sigrid Nunez

Pages: 280 (I have an ARC, so page numbers in finished copies may differ)

Source: Publisher for review

Rating: 6/10

Summary (From back of book):

After a flu pandemic has killed large numbers of people worldwide, the United States has grown increasingly anarchic. Orphaned Cole Vining is lucky to have found refuge with an evangelical pastor and his family in sheltered Salvation City, which has been spared much of the devastation.

But it's a starkly different community from the one Cole has known, and he struggles what his changed world means for him. As those around him become increasingly fixated on their vision of utopia -- so different from his own parents' drams -- Cole imagines building a new and different future for himself.

My Two Cents:

I really liked the concept of this book. A ravaged United States, and world, after a pandemic should create a really rich opportunity to explore a lot of deep issues, right? We should be dealing with food shortages and cleanup and broken families and a crumbling government. But, there's really not much of that here in this book. This book, mostly, is about Cole's suddenly different life, going from an atheistic home of free-thinkers to the home of an almost frighteningly evangelical pastor and his tiny little community of believers.

I think the story line that Nunez created would have worked independent of the flu pandemic. But I didn't feel as if it worked as well as it could have the way it was written. I kept waiting for something to really depend upon the pandemic, but besides Cole being tossed in an orphanage, there didn't seem to be any reason for the pandemic to be used as a device here. Nunez's point easily could have been accomplished had Cole's parents died in, say, a car accident. I guess I was just left disappointed by this.

Salvation City is very well-written. It's an easy read with some great, albeit a little startling at times, detail. Nunez also creates some interesting characters, including Cole and Pastor Wyatt. These factors did keep me going through the book despite my disappointment at the plot itself.

Review: Mothers and Other Liars by Amy Bourret

Title: Mothers and Other Liars

Author: Amy Bourret

Pages: 288 (I have an ARC, so page numbers might be different in a finished copy)

Source: Publisher for review

Rating: 6/10

Summary (From back of book):

As a runaway teen, Ruby Leander could have never imagined the path that would lead her to an abandoned baby. Fast forward nine years: Ruby and Lark have made a home for themselves in New Mexico with their wonderful community of friends -- life is perfect. Until that one fateful day when Ruby learns the truth about her daughter's past. A truth that will change both of their lives, forever.

My Two Cents:

The thing that shines about this book is Bourret's writing and her ability to develop a character. This book was a very easy read, with some nice, lyrical passages. She also made me care about the characters and what happened to them, which is always the mark of a good writer in my book.

However, I just couldn't get over how coincidental so much of this book was. So many things just happened and were accepted as such. I'm not going to specifically say what, because that would ruin the book for anyone planning to read it, but I just couldn't get past a lot of things. Bourret's dealing with what's probably a big hot-button issue was also a little too Jodi Picoult for me. I guess I should have read the back of the book before diving in, or I would've known she's been compared to Picoult.

The other thing that bugged me, and it's such a little thing I feel kind of silly mentioning it, was that each chapter was only a few pages long. In a 288-page book, there are 117 "chapters." Sure, the short chapters made it easy to put the book down and pick it up again, but I just didn't feel it was necessary to separate every single episode or memory out into its own chapter.

Overall, though, I did enjoy this book, despite my complaints about it. If you are a fan of women's fiction (especially books by Jodi Picoult of Marisa de los Santos), then you'll like this novel.

Review: I Am Number Four (Lorien Legacies #1) by Pittacus Lore

Title: I Am Number Four (Lorien Legacies #1)

Author: Pittacus Lore

Pages: 440

Source: Borrowed

Rating: 6/10

Summary (From book flap):

Nine of us came here. We look like you. We talk like you. But we are not you. We can do things you dream of doing. We have powers you dream of having. We are stronger and faster than anything you have ever seen. We are the superheroes you worship in movies and comic books -- but we are real.

Our plan was to grow, and train, and become strong, and become one, and fight them. But they found us and started hunting us first. Now all of us are running. Spending our lives in shadows, in places where no one would look, blending in. We have lived among you without you knowing.

But they know.

They caught Number One in Malaysia.
Number Two in England.
And Number Three in Kenya.
They killed them all.

I am Number Four.

I am next.

My Two Cents:

I wanted to like this book a lot. I really did. As a diehard aliens kind of girl, and someone who gets really sick of whiny female narrators in young adult literature, I think maybe the bar was set a little too high for me.

My first major problem was that I just couldn't like John. It wasn't that I hated him or anything, he just didn't seem well-rounded enough for me to get to know well enough to like. Maybe it was because this book focused a lot on his forming relationships, romantic and otherwise, with human teenagers, so he was wandering around in the dark for a while, but he just seemed really one-sided.

As far as the other characters go, I also felt as if I just didn't know enough about them to form any kind of connection to decide whether I liked them or not. I really wanted to like characters like Henri and Sam (But I never wanted to like Sarah for some reason), but just couldn't get a feel for them.

The concept behind this book was great, and, aside from the flat characters, it was pretty well-executed. You've got an alien teen (As if all teens don't feel like aliens at some point) just trying to blend in on Earth, but always running for his life. Then, things start happening that he can't explain, and he's in for the battle of his life. It works really well as a whole concept, and I really did want to know what happened next. I'm just not sure how the author will extend it into the remainder of the series.

This wasn't a bad book, by any means, nor would I dissuade anyone from reading it. It just wasn't the book for me.