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.

2012 reading: Catch-up (Part 4)

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

Title and author: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - J.K. Rowling
Source: Personal library
Rating: 10 out of 10

What can I say about this book besides I love this whole series? It had been a good decade since I first read this, though I watch the movie at least once a year. There's so much I forgot about this book that pops up later in the series. I now remember why this series became an international phenomenon: great characters, writing that's simple yet challenging to kids and a rich world that allows the reader to dive right in.

Title and author: O Pioneers! - Willa Cather
Source: Kindle
Rating: 9 out of 10

While I didn't like this novel as much as My Antonia (seems to be a pattern with me this year), I can see why this is considered an American classic. Cather obviously had a love for the prairies on which she was raised and for the hardy people who settled those areas. I loved Alexandra as a character, not only because she was a strong female protagonist who lived contrary to the social norms, but also because she seemed like she would have been a great person to know. Thinking that a character would make a great BFF is, to me, the hallmark of a well-written protagonist.

Title and author: Awakened - P.C. and Kristin Cast
Source: Library
Rating: 2 out of 10

I don't know why I've kept reading this series as long as I have. I wasn't too fond of the previous novel in this series for a lot of the same reasons: The characters are awful and stereotypical, the language is too contrived and the plot just doesn't really move along. I guess I figured, I'd invested in seven previous books, so why not try to finish things out and see what happens? Yeah. Not my brightest idea. Do yourself a favor and just skip this series altogether.

Title and author: The Gunslinger: The Dark Tower I - Stephen King
Source: Kindle
Rating: 9 out of 10

Would you believe this is my first Stephen King? I know, right? This is a great book, and I'm excited to see how the series develops over the rest of the parts. I think Roland is a great character based on a great poem, and a lot of the lore that King builds into his fantasy world is spot-on. Sure, there were times I got a little lost (Kind of happens trying to read this over a nursing baby's head), but I thought that it was a great accomplishment that King could make a world so bleak and deserted so rich with description and mystery.

Review: The Life of Glass by Jillian Cantor

Title: The Life of Glass

Author: Jillian Cantor

Pages: 340

Source: A signed copy from the author herself!

Rating: 9/10

Summary (From book flap):

Before he died, Melissa's father told her about stars. He told her that the brightest stars weren't always the most beautiful -- that if people took the time to look at the smaller stars, if they looked with a telescope at the true essence of the star, they would find real beauty. But even though Melissa knows that beauty isn't only skin deep, the people around her don't seem to feel that way. There's her gorgeous sister, Ashley, who will barely acknowledge Melissa at school; there's her best friend, Ryan, who may be falling in love with the sophisticated Courtney; and there's Melissa's mother, who's dating someone new, someone Melissa knows will never be able to replace her father.

To make sure she doesn't lose her father completely, Melissa spends her time trying to piece together the last of his secrets and finishing a journal he began -- one about love and relationships and the remarkable ways people find one another. But when tragedy strikes, Melissa has to start living and loving in the present as she realizes that being beautiful on the outside doesn't mean you can't be beautiful on the inside.

My Two Cents:

This is one great young adult novel. It has appeal to younger readers without being overly trendy (Ex: Lots of swearing, sex, etc.) or preachy and is readable by adults without being boring. Cantor does a great job balancing this book for her target audience while also allowing a wider audience to enjoy the novel.

Melissa is a great, well-rounded character. She has a lot of the hallmarks of "typical" teen characters -- Insecurity about her looks, fights with her sister, a feeling of alienation, a little bit of a bratty streak -- without being so overly typical that she becomes a stereotype. She also has a decent amount of maturity, but she's not so "grown up" that teen readers won't be able to relate to her. Cantor's decision to make Melissa her narrator really makes this book.

I really enjoyed that Melissa's relationship with and perception of her deceased father is portrayed in a journal of off-the-wall facts and stories he collected. The journal presents some really great scenes for Melissa and serves as a jumping-off point for her adventures, but the plot isn't so heavily reliant upon the journal's contents that its appearance becomes annoying.

Cantor's writing is really fluid. This book was an easy read for me. She includes enough detail to keep things interesting without being so detailed that it feels like reading Steinbeck. There's a great balance in her writing, as in a lot of the novel, that helps it keep a wide appeal.

If you are looking for a coming-of-age, wholesome young adult novel, check out this book.

Review: Warped by Maurissa Guibord

Title: Warped

Author: Maurissa Guibord

Pages: 337

Source: Personal library

Challenges: Debut Author Challenge

Rating: 7/10

Summary (From book flap):

Tessa Brody doesn't believe in magic. Or fate.

But there's definitely something weird about the dusty unicorn tapestry that she discovers in a box of old books. The wild, handsome creature enchants Tessa, and frightens her too.

Soon after the tapestry comes into her possession, strange things begin to happen. Tessa experiences vivid dreams of the past filled with images from a brutal hunt -- one that she herself may have played a part in.

When Tessa pulls a loose thread from the tapestry, she releases a terrible secret. She also meets William de Chaucy, a young sixteenth-century nobleman with gorgeous eyes, an odd accent, and haughty attitude to spare. Will's fate is as inextricably tied to the tapestry as Tessa's is. And although Will might be hard to get along with, he's equally hard to resist.

Together, Tessa and Will must correct the wrongs of the past. But time is running out. The Norn sisters, also known as the Fates, have stepped in and begun to make a tangled mess of Tessa's life. Unless she does their bidding and defeats a cruel and crafty ancient enemy, everything, and everyone, she loves will be destroyed.

My Two Cents:

I struggled a bit with how to review this book. Overall, I liked it, but I had some pretty fundamental problems with the book and its characters, so I couldn't give it a really glowing review.

Guibord's writing flows nicely and the concept she chose for her book is very interesting. It weaves together a lot of legend with modern times, and she didn't choose just any legend. She chose a pretty obscure legend surrounding unicorns. The concept definitely intrigued me and kept me in this book.

Tessa was a character on whom my opinion wavered back and forth. At times, I liked her because she just seemed different from the usual teen protagonist. However, there were times when she was just so... typical ... that I wanted to strangle her. I guess I just didn't have a lot of patience for her throwing fits over her father's girlfriend when there were more important things going on.

My biggest problem with this book, and with a lot of young adult literature, is how quickly Tessa and William "fell in love." Guibord gives a background that they've known one another in a legendary way for centuries, so that's supposed to make their "getting-to-know-you" period a little shorter, but still. I guess I just get a little skeeved out by young adult literature modeling these lightning-fast courtships and head-over-heels loves to girls when that's not really the way a lot of the world works. I just feel as if it sets expectations too high and allows girls to get into the mindset that anything short of perfect, immediate love is not enough for them.

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.

Review: Wither (The Chemical Garden Trilogy #1) by Lauren DeStefano

Title: Wither (The Chemical Garden Trilogy #1)
Author: Lauren DeStefano
Pages:  358 (I have an ARC, so page numbers may differ in final copies)
Source: Publisher for review
Challenges: Debut Author Challenge

Rating: 10/10

Summary (From back of book):
In the not-too-distant future, because of genetic engineering, every human is a ticking time bomb -- males only live to age twenty-five, and females only live to age twenty. To keep the population from dying out, girls are kidnapped and sold into polygamous marriages.
When sixteen-year-old Rhine is taken, she enters a world of wealth and privilege that both entices and terrifies her. She has everything she ever wanted -- except freedom. With the help of Gabriel, a servant Rhine is growing dangerously attracted to, Rhine attempts to escape before it is too late.

My Two Cents:

Dystopian literature is all the rage these days in the young adult arena, and this trilogy by a debut author (Who just happens to be about my age :)) is poised to take its place among some of the greats of the last couple years.

DeStefano creates a world that, in the way that Brave New World is frightening, is eerily prescient in its possibilities. The human race, in an effort to create "perfect" people, engineered an entire generation of perfectly healthy, long-living people. The one thing they didn't foresee, however, was that their experiments caused the life spans of all future generations to become devastatingly shortened. Humanity currently has much of the technology that could pull of this scenario, if given enough time, and the way that designer babies and life-prolonging measures are headed, it's highly probable that something similar could occur in the future. This is one of those dystopian novels that makes you fear for humanity and, in a way, wish that many of the things we know now had never been discovered. I often found myself chilled by the thought that this could happen in the future, and this could be the way humanity exists. Scary.

Rhine is one of those teen characters that I like best. She's got an innocence about her when she's seduced by the glitter that surrounds her at Linden's mansion, and she wants to trust people, but she's still worldly enough to know that all that glitters is not gold. There's a good, solid head on her shoulders, and she's constantly looking for ways out of the life into which she was forced. Sure, she laments the life she once led, but she doesn't get too whiny and mopey (As many teen characters, regardless of whether they're in dystopian novels, have a tendency to be) and pull the "poor me" card. She's always thinking and always observing and always figuring out ways to play her advantages.

The ending of this installment leaves the whole rest of the series wide open with possibilities. What will happen to Rhine? What will happen to all the other characters (I'm not going to say anything because that would give too much away)? Will anyone find a cure for the mysterious virus that strikes at the fatal birthday?

I would highly recommend this book to any fan of science fiction, fantasy or dystopian literature. It doesn't even read as a young adult novel many times; it's perfect for adults and teens alike.