Review: Kristy's Big Idea (BSC #1) by Ann M. Martin

Title: Kristy's Big Idea (Baby-Sitters Club #1)

Author: Ann M. Martin

Pages: 153

Challenges: Read 'n' Review challenge

Summary:

When Kristy Thomas watches her mother call all over town trying to find a babysitter for her younger brother, she comes up with a great idea: Start a baby-sitting club so parents can reach several babysitters at once. She invites her two best friends, and one new arrival to town, to join the fun.

My Two Cents:
I had not read this book since I was probably 7 or 8 years old. It has been sitting back on the library shelves, taunting me, ever since I moved the entire BSC series from the library I closed back in August. I was such a horrible BSC addict when I was a kid -- I had nearly every book (Although I think most of them have since been sold), and I watched the short-lived television series at every opportunity -- but I wanted to re-experience the first book as an adult.

It's easy to understand why the BSC became such a successful series with pre-teen girls in the early 1990s. The characters are so real and relatable that it would be difficult for any girl reading the books not to find someone with whom they can identify. This even becomes easier as the series progresses and new members of the BSC are added. I always identified with Mary Anne, and even more than 15 years later, I still do!

Although the dialogue is a bit tedious at times (There's a lot of, "Okay, great!" and "Yeah" responses in conversation), Martin actually pretty closely mimics the flow of a real conversation. The story flows well, the characters unfold pretty easily and Martin sets the basis for one of the most-beloved juvenile series for girls of all time. I'm so glad that Scholastic has agreed to re-release the books so that a new generation can experience the fun of the BSC.

My rating: 9/10

Review: Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

Title: Shiver 

Author: Maggie Stiefvater

Pages: 390

Challenges: Read 'n' Review challenge

First sentence: "I remember lying in the snow, a small red spot of warm going cold, surrounded by wolves."

Summary:
For six years, Grace has watched her yellow-eyed wolf, the wolf who saved her from death, from a distance. He disappears every summer and returns in the fall, watching. When a local teen appears to have been killed by the wolves who live in Grace's woods, the lives of the human inhabitants of Mercy Falls, Minn., and the wolves will collide.

Sam has loved Grace ever since he first saw her, on a cold night six years ago. He leads two lives -- when it's warm, he's human, but when it's cold, he's something else entirely. Once Grace and Sam admit to their feelings for one another, it's a race against time -- and the weather -- for the teens.

My Two Cents:
I have kept my Twilight-related rants off here thus far, mainly because I haven't read anything in the young adult paranormal romance genre recently. However, I couldn't pass this one by, so, I apologize for the potential length of this review in advance.

The key to any good young adult paranormal romance (or any young adult romance, for that matter) is an object of human affection who is just out of reach for some reason. In Twilight, Edward's a vampire, so that makes him slightly unattainable to Bella. In Shiver, Sam is a werewolf (I admit I giggled at the fact that the werewolf was named Sam, like one of the wolves in Twilight), so that also makes him unattainable to Grace. That sense of longing is what creates a lot of the tension, and throwing in the challenges of a human/mythological creature relationship just intensifies that tension. It's this tension that makes the stories so compelling and so utterly irresistible to already-hormonal teenagers (and adults, as it would seem).

The comparisons to Twilight stop there, however. While Twilight is a fairly compelling story (In that you want to know what happens next, which keeps you reading), it's actually a really poorly written quartet of books.

Shiver, on the other hand, is beautifully written. Stiefvater seamlessly transitions between Grace and Sam as narrators. Where Grace is pragmatic and practical, which shows in her narration, Sam is poetic. I would quote some specific passages here, but I just gave the library's copy to the mother of a teen who I think would enjoy the book. I found myself completely unable to put this book down, which is the mark of a good story, but there also were portions that I just wanted to go back and re-read a few times because they were so well-constructed from a language standpoint.

One of the things I really liked about Shiver's world was that there were actually potentially logical explanations for the folklore (Unlike in Twilight, where Meyer just throws all the previous mythology out the window and doesn't explain why people may have developed those perceptions). For example, Sam explains that he believes people think werewolves change with a full moon because it is traditionally colder at night. Since the wolves in Stiefvater's world change as the temperature gets colder, this seems a logical explanation (Unlike the complete absence of fangs in Twilight or about 1,000,000 other things).

Grace is a character I would have liked to have as a friend when I was a teenager. She's smart, funny and caring. And Sam. Well, Sam is definitely someone I would have liked to meet when I was in high school. He's protective of Grace without being overbearing and he's intelligent and not afraid to show it. His good looks don't hurt, either.

Everywhere that Twilight failed, in my mind (And it's a lot of places), Shiver soared. I was thrilled to learn that this is going to be part of a series, although I'm interested to see how Stiefvater keeps the storyline going. This is one book that needs to get into the hands of every Twilight fangirl on Earth so she can see just how good a young adult paranormal romance can be.

My rating: 10/10
 

Review: The Year of Fog by Michelle Richmond

Title: The Year of Fog
Author: Michelle Richmond
Pages: 369
Challenges: Take Another Chance Challenge ("Read Your Doppelganger"); Read 'n' Review Challenge





From Publishers Weekly:

In this spare page-turner, Richmond (Dream of the Blue Room) draws complex tensions from a the set setup of a child gone missing. Photographer Abby Mason stops on San Francisco's Ocean Beach with her fiancé Jake's six-year-old daughter, Emma, to photograph a seal pup; by the time Abby looks up, Emma has disappeared. Abby, who narrates, flashes back to her growing relationship with high school teacherJake, and sketches its transformation over the course of the search. Emma's mother, Lisbeth (who abandoned the family three years earlier), wants back into Jake's life—even as he is giving up hope on finding Emma. Abby delves into the bereft missing children subculture and into the vagaries of memory. A hypnotist helps Abby unearth promising details of that singular last day with Emma, but the information requires major follow-through from Abby. The book's twist on missing child stories is wholly effective. Richmond develops the principle characters, and Abby's dysfunctional parents make for sharply drawn secondaries, as do local surfers. The book is beautifully paced—one feels Abby's clarity of purpose from the first page. The sure-handed denouement reflects the focus and restraint that Richmond brings to bear throughout.

My two cents:

I chose this book because its author, Michelle Richmond, shares my first name. And, it looked interesting.

I had no idea I was in for one of the most intense reads I've experienced in a long time. It wasn't intense in the thriller kind of way, or the challenging-to-read kind of way, but intense in the, "I-can't-imagine-this-happening-to-me-OMG-I-have-to-find-out-what-happens" kind of way.

The book begins with 6-year-old Emma's disappearance and follows Abby, Emma's father's fiance, through the next year and her search for Emma. It captured me from the first page. Perhaps it's the fact that missing children capture the public's attention on a fairly regular basis, as the situation is a parent's worst nightmare. Perhaps it's Richmond's writing style. Either way, I didn't want to put this book down.

I agonized along with Abby through her long hours of searching and wandering the streets of San Francisco on the ever-dimming hopes that she would find Emma waiting there. I thrilled as she found the possibility of a new lead in the case. I watched as she tried, desperately, to remember every small detail of that foggy morning on the beach.

The sign of a good book, to me, lies in the characters. Do you care about them? Does it matter what happens to them? If you don't, that's usually the sign of a bad book (Although there are a few exceptions). This novel has characters I cared about in spades.

Abby, of course, was the character about whom I cared the most, as she is the narrator. I cared what happened to Emma and Jake, too, as they were directly related to the disappearance. But there were also several peripheral characters of whom I grew fond, and, if you read this book, you'll meet them, too.

This book, obviously, has a lot to do with memory. Abby reads constantly about the attainment of memories and those who have tried to recall past memories. She not only deals with her memories of Emma's disappearance, but also many memories of her life before meeting Emma and her father, Jake.

Richmond has a talent for details and a clear writing style that helps this novel flow along. Sometimes, I would pick it up and in no time flat, realize I had read another 50 pages. That's a sign of an engrossing novel, in my book. And, it's not a difficult read, by any stretch of the imagination.

I would recommend this book with no reservations, although you may find yourself being much more wary out in public with children after reading it.

My rating: 8/10