30 April 2012

Review: Cinder by Marissa Meyer

Cover of Cinder by Marissa Meyer Title: Cinder (Lunar Chronicles #1)
Author: Marissa Meyer
Publication Date: 3 January 2012
Publisher: Feiwel and Friends
Source: Library
Summary (courtesy of goodreads.com):

A forbidden romance. A deadly plague. Earth’s fate hinges on one girl...

Cinder, a gifted mechanic in New Beijing, is also a cyborg. She’s reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s sudden illness. But when her life becomes entwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she finds herself at the centre of a violent struggle between the desires of an evil queen—and a dangerous temptation.

From the very first page, Cinder and I had a big problem. You see, someone, somewhere decided that Cinder needed its own special typeface. A typeface that, from page one, I did not like. You want to use a fancy font for your chapter numbers and titles? That's cool. But for the whole book? Yeah, not so much. There's a reason most things with lots of words are written in the same style of font. We're used to it, so it's easy. So for me personally, Cinder had a lot to make up for. If it was going to use its special typeface, there had better be a good reason, or it had better be a damn good story. Unfortunately, I don't think it ever got good enough to overcome my prejudice against it. And now I have invented a new category of low: judging a book by its font.

Cinder reminds me of a lot of things. Cinderella, obviously. Antastasia. Battlestar Galactica. A little bit of Doctor Who. Maybe even some Graceling. As I read, I kept being reminded of all these other stories, and I never felt that Cinder stood on its own and set itself apart. In my opinion there was nothing that made it special or distinct, which is an odd thing to say because I think a lot of people love this book because they feel that it is so different. But for me, nothing was unexpected, nothing was surprising, and nothing made Cinder stand out.

My further problem with the book was that I genuinely did not like Cinder as a character. She is a cyborg, yes. She brings it up constantly. But she is also trying to convince us that she is still a human, still capable of feeling the same emotions as anyone else, even if she can't express them physically. So she sat there telling everyone that of course she knew how they felt, but I never really got the sense that she did. I found Cinder to be very cold and unfeeling, even when she was trying to convince everyone otherwise, and there was nothing in her personality that made me feel any sort of...well, anything for her.

Something I did enjoy while reading Cinder was the character of Prince Kai. It was almost as if Marissa Meyer had taken all the emotion and appeal that she'd intended for Cinder and gave it to Kai instead. He was sweet, he was funny, he was handsome, and he was willing to do what he had to do for his people. I loved reading about him. Another bright spot was Doctor Erland, whose character I also enjoyed throughly.

I think Marissa Meyer had a great idea, but it just didn't come to fruition well enough. There are parts of the story, parts of the history to this society, that I am still wondering about. Some characters were well thought out, while others were unable to convince me of who they were supposed to be. At this point I am unsure if will continue to read the Lunar Chronicles series as the later books are released, because as much as I thought the story had potential, I don't think it panned out successfully and am unsure that future stories will be any different.

Rating:

24 April 2012

Waiting On Wednesday: Fifteen

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.
Title: The Lost Code (The Atlanteans #1)
Author: Kevin Emerson
Publication Date: 22 May 2012
Summary (courtesy of goodreads.com):
WHAT IS OLDEST WILL BE NEW, WHAT IS LOST SHALL BE FOUND.

The ozone is ravaged, ocean levels have risen, and the sun is a daily enemy. But global climate change is not something new in the Earth’s history.

No one will know this better than less-than-ordinary Owen Parker, who is about to discover that he is the descendant of a highly advanced ancient race—a race that took their technology too far and almost destroyed the Earth in the process.

Now it is Owen’s turn to make right in his world what went wrong thousands of years ago. If Owen can unlock the lost code in his very genes, he may rediscover the forgotten knowledge of his ancestry…and that less-than-ordinary can evolve into extraordinary.
I haven't read many books with male protagonists in recent memory, except for Anna Dressed in Blood, which I didn't even finish (which wasn't even the male protagonist's fault).  So I think it will a good way to branch out from my normal reads.  Also, I've always felt a special kinship with the ozone layer since I was born the same year that the GIANT HOLE was discovered (or at least the year they announced that a GIANT HOLE was discovered).  I seriously doubt the ozone has a whole lot to do with the actual storyline of this book, but hey, they brought it up, not me.

23 April 2012

Review: The Queen of Kentucky by Alecia Whitaker

Cover of The Queen of Kentucky by Alecia Whitaker Title: The Queen of Kentucky
Author: Alecia Whitaker
Publication Date: 2 January 2012
Publisher: Little, Brown BYR
Source: Library
Summary (courtesy of goodreads.com):

Fourteen-year-old Kentucky girl Ricki Jo Winstead, who would prefer to be called Ericka, thank you very much, is eager to shed her farmer's daughter roots and become part of the popular crowd at her small town high school. She trades her Bible for Seventeen magazine, buys new "sophisticated" clothes and somehow manages to secure a tenuous spot at the cool kids table. She's on top of the world, even though her best friend and the boy next door Luke says he misses "plain old Ricki Jo."

Caught between being a country girl and wannabe country club girl, Ricki Jo begins to forget who she truly is: someone who doesn't care what people think and who wouldn't let a good-looking guy walk all over her. It takes a serious incident out on Luke's farm for Ricki Jo to realize that being a true friend is more important than being popular.

I have very mixed feelings about The Queen of Kentucky. Sometimes I think about it, and it makes me happy and other times it makes me really mad. I think that can always be a problem with these types of "transformation" novels: you love one part of the character, and you hate the other. The problem with The Queen of Kentucky is that it can be hard to tell if the way the main character is acting is because of who she is trying to become, or if that is just how she really is.

My first thoughts about the novel were that I absolutely loved Ricki Jo. Here we have this adorable little Kentucky girl and she was just too much - TOO MUCH CUTENESS - and I wanted to take her in and put her in my pocket and keep her like a little kitten. Which is really weird and I'm sure sounds creepy, but I promise that it was a totally happy, non-creepy thought. Then she started this journey down the road to popularity and Ericka-ness, and I think the change in her was a little too drastic, a little too sudden, for me to believe that her behavior was completely out of character. Alecia Whitaker presents us with this adorbs character that we can't help but love, and without much warning turns her into a blubbering, helpless, excuse-my-French bitch. Obviously we're not supposed to like this new Ricki Jo I mean Ericka, but I couldn't believe that she would become so senseless so quickly. I went from wanting to tuck her in my pocket to wanting to stuff her somewhere much less pleasant.

That said, I really enjoyed the setting of the novel. I'm from California, and the lifestyle and environment of the South are really intriguing to me. I loved reading about the rural Kentucky area where the story took place. I think one of the best parts of reading is that feeling of escape, and getting to learn and experience things I might otherwise never see.

Overall, The Queen of Kentucky had its ups and downs. The setting is beautiful, and when she's not trying so hard, Ricki Jo can be a wonderful character. It was a quick read, and I loved the ending. I definitely had my problems with it, but still think it was a good read.

Rating:

17 April 2012

Waiting On Wednesday: Fourteen

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.
Title: Jersey Angel
Author: Beth Ann Bauman
Publication Date: 8 May 2012
Summary (courtesy of goodreads.com):
It's the summer before senior year and the alluring Angel is ready to have fun. She's not like her best friend, Inggy, who has a steady boyfriend, good grades, and college plans. Angel isn't sure what she wants to do yet, but she has confidence and experience beyond her years. Still, her summer doesn't start out as planned. Her good friend Joey doesn't want to fool around anymore, he wants to be her boyfriend, while Angel doesn't want to be tied down. As Joey pulls away, and Inggy tours colleges, Angel finds herself  spending more time with Inggy's boyfriend, Cork. With its cast of vivid and memorable characters, this tale from the Jersey shore is sure to make some waves.
I am well aware that the advance reviews for this book are AWFUL.  Nobody likes it.  I think that's maybe why I want to read it so much - to see if I agree or disagree with the horrible things people are saying about it.  It's kind of an odd way of deciding to read a book, but whatever works, right?

16 April 2012

Review: May B. by Caroline Starr Rose

Cover of May B. by Caroline Starr Rose Title: May B.
Author: Caroline Starr Rose
Publication Date: 10 January 2012
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade
Source: Won from Born Bookish
Summary (courtesy of goodreads.com):

I've known it since last night:
It's been too long to expect them to return.
Something's happened.

May is helping out on a neighbor's Kansas prairie homestead—just until Christmas, says Pa. She wants to contribute, but it's hard to be separated from her family by 15 long, unfamiliar miles. Then the unthinkable happens: May is abandoned. Trapped in a tiny snow-covered sod house, isolated from family and neighbors, May must prepare for the oncoming winter. While fighting to survive, May's memories of her struggles with reading at school come back to haunt her. But she's determined to find her way home again. Caroline Starr Rose's fast-paced novel, written in beautiful and riveting verse, gives readers a strong new heroine to love.

May B. is the first novel written in verse that I have read in a number of years. I don't really have a standard to judge it against, because I don't think it would be fair to compare it to the prose fiction that I normally read. Truthfully, the two cannot be compared, as the storytelling and effect on the reader are completely different. Since the reading experience was so new to me, I'm just going to wing it while writing this review, and hope that I can get across how much I enjoyed the story.

The few novels in verse that I have read have all been pretty quick reads, and May B. is no exception. Sure, the book is 300 pages, but those pages aren't as full as with a regular fiction novel. I think this is what bothered me for so long about verse writing. I always thought it was kind of cheating your way into having written a WHOLE BOOK instead of just a story. But reading May B. I can see how much more effective it can be at telling certain stories and conveying certain feelings to the reader. May's story was well told in this format, and I'm not sure her emotions and feelings of dismay at her situation would have come across as well in a more traditional format.

The downside to this way of storytelling is that things happen so quickly it can be difficult to connect. As I was reading, events were occurring in such a succinct manner that I didn't think I felt invested in the story at all. But 3/4 of the way through I found myself gasping out loud, telling my cat, "She wouldn't!" I don't normally talk to my cats about the books I read, mostly because they prefer to sit on them rather than read them, and then there's that whole thing about them being cats and not being able to talk back (tragic). So if I'm so moved by something that I just have to talk about it - even if it is after midnight and the only one to talk to is my poor, unknowing cat - that's pretty great. The emotional connection to the story kind of snuck up on me, and I didn't even know how invested I was until that moment.

I also don't think I would have enjoyed May B. as much if it hadn't been written in verse. While I do enjoy a good historical fiction novel every now and again, this is not a time period I would normally be interested in. But because of the way it was written, the focus was on May and her story, and less on building the setting and filling in the details that prose fiction requires. And for me, and I think for many of the readers in the age group May B. was written for, that was perfectly alright.

Rating:

10 April 2012

Waiting On Wednesday: Thirteen

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.
Title: Second Chance Summer
Author: Morgan Matson
Publication Date: 8 May 2012
Summary (courtesy of goodreads.com):
Taylor’s family might not be the closest-knit – everyone is a little too busy and overscheduled – but for the most part, they get along fine. Then they get news that changes everything: Her father has pancreatic cancer, and it’s stage four – meaning that there is basically nothing to be done. Her parents decide that the family will spend his last months together at their old summerhouse in the Pocono Mountains.

Crammed into a place much smaller and more rustic than they are used to, they begin to get to know each other again. And Taylor discovers that the people she thought she had left behind haven’t actually gone anywhere. Her former summer best friend is suddenly around, as is her first boyfriend. . . and he’s much cuter at seventeen than he was at twelve.

As the summer progresses, the Edwards become more of a family, and closer than they’ve ever been before. But all of them very aware that they’re battling a ticking clock. Sometimes, though, there is just enough time to get a second chance – with family, with friends, and with love.
If you've read Amy & Roger's Epic Detour, you pretty much know how full of awesome Morgan Matson is.  If you've read my review of Amy & Roger's Epic Detour, you pretty much know how even more awesome she is than you originally thought, because despite loathing one of the main characters, I still loved the book.  So to sum things up, Morgan Matson is awesomely awesome, and I bet you this book will be too.

Giveaway: The Autism Awareness Hop

The Autism Awareness Giveaway Hop
Hosted By:

If you have read my bio or About Me page, you may know that I work as a nanny for three children. One of them is an 8-year-old autistic boy, so I felt it was very important for me to participate in this hop.  In anticipation, I sat down with him, and we talked about some of his favorite things: dinosaurs, zombies, foxes, robots, chasing his sisters.  You know, normal eight-year-old interests.  But his favorite, FAVORITE thing right now?  Dragons.  So in honor of him, I will be giving away the first two books in the Firelight series by Sophie Jordan to one winner!

Firelight by Sophie Jordan
Vanish by Sophie Jordan

The third book in the series, Hidden, comes out this September, so this is a great opportunity to get ready for its release!

Rules:
  • Must be 13 or older to enter (please have an adult's permission to share your information if you are under 18).
  • The giveaway is open internationally, as long as The Book Depository will ship to you.  You can find a list of countries TBD ships to here.
  • The winner will have 48 hours to respond after being notified of their win.  If they fail to do so, another winner will be chosen.

Good luck to everyone who enters!  Visit the hosts above to check out more blogs featuring giveaways for this amazing hop.

09 April 2012

Review: The Gathering Storm by Robin Bridges

Title: The Gathering Storm (Katerina Trilogy #1)
Author: Robin Bridges
Publication Date: 10 January 2012
Publisher: Delacorte BYR
Source: Library
Summary (courtesy of goodreads.com):
St. Petersburg, Russia, 1888. As she attends a whirl of glittering balls, royal debutante Katerina Alexandrovna, Duchess of Oldenburg, tries to hide a dark secret: she can raise the dead. No one knows. Not her family. Not the girls at her finishing school. Not the tsar or anyone in her aristocratic circle. Katerina considers her talent a curse, not a gift. But when she uses her special skill to protect a member of the Imperial Family, she finds herself caught in a web of intrigue.

An evil presence is growing within Europe's royal bloodlines—and those aligned with the darkness threaten to topple the tsar. Suddenly Katerina's strength as a necromancer attracts attention from unwelcome sources . . . including two young men—George Alexandrovich, the tsar's standoffish middle son, who needs Katerina's help to safeguard Russia, even if he's repelled by her secret, and the dashing Prince Danilo, heir to the throne of Montenegro, to whom Katerina feels inexplicably drawn.

The time has come for Katerina to embrace her power, but which side will she choose—and to whom will she give her heart?
 
From the start, I had a lot of problems with this book.  The writing seems a little off - like sometimes the narrator speaks like she is in 1888 St. Petersburg and sometimes she reads more like my annoying 14-year-old neighbor.  Also, the blurb says that Katerina, "uses her special skill to protect a member of the Imperial Family," which sounds horribly ominous and terrifying and scary.  She brings someone back from the dead!  WHO COULD IT BE?!  Yeah, don't get too excited about that.  It's a bug.

The idea that magic is ooooooh-super-bad is kind of ridiculous.  In one paragraph, Katerina is telling us how horribly secretive every must be about anything supernatural.  Two paragraphs later, she explains that the Empress and the...someone else (we'll get to THAT in a minute) are faeries.  And their children?  Faeries.  And there's a Light Court and a Dark Court and you must choose who to align with.  Or something.  And EVERYONE KNOWS THIS.  But we can't talk about it.  I don't get it.

Another problem I had with The Gathering Storm is that there is an excessive number of characters, and I could never remember who was who.  It's probably a good thing the story is written in the first person, because I may not have been able to remember who the main character was if she wasn't telling her own story.  Seriously, that is how confused I was.  She'd mention her cousin this, or the Duchess that, and Prince so-and-so, and don't forget that Countess blah-diddi-blah was there too.  And then there were these vampires and those vampires.  These revenants and those revenants.  These evil creature people and those evil creature people.  Were all these people truly necessary to the story? No.  They were just there to confuse me.

And now that I have convinced you that I hated this book, I have a but to throw at you.  And it's a big but.  So I was confused and annoyed and frustrated throughout most of The Gathering Storm, BUT overall, I actually really enjoyed it.  The story, no matter how lost I was, was really intriguing.  Once Katerina stopped bringing insects back to life and real horrible-awful-supernatural things were happening, I was hooked.  I needed to know what happened.  It took me almost a week to read the first 150 pages of this book, and a-day-and-a-half to finish the rest.  And now I'm completely anxious for the second book, The Unfailing Light, which will be out this October.

Also, there's something kind of fun about reading historical fiction, and that's finding out that all these people the author is writing about were totally real.  I'm pretty sure Katerina is a completely fictional character, but everyone else - her friends, her mentors, her arch nemesis - was totally a real person who lived back then.  Let's see some of them, shall we?



Isn't this exciting?!  There's more characters that were, you know, real, but I get the feeling I'm boring some people here.

So anyway, I'm not sure I can recommend The Gathering Storm, or at least I don't know how to recommend it, because a part of me loved it and a great majority of me hated it.  But...I don't know.  I JUST DON'T KNOW, OKAY?!

Rating:
Or something.

Have you read The Gathering Storm?  If so, what were your thoughts?  If not, have you ever read a book that made you feel this confused?

08 April 2012

In My Mailbox: Eight

In My Mailbox Logo
In My Mailbox is hosted by The Story Siren

From the Library
Cover of Where It Began by Ann Redisch Stampler Cover of Bunheads by Sophie Flack Cover of Wanderlove by Kristen Hubbard
Where It Began by Ann Redisch Stampler
Bunheads by Sophie Flack
Wanderlove by Kirsten Hubbard

Cover of Slide by Jill Hathaway
Slide by Jill Hathaway

Purchased
Cover of The Iron King by Julie Kagawa
The Iron King by Julie Kagawa

From NetGalley
Cover of The Princesses of Iowa by M. Molly Backes
The Princesses of Iowa by M. Molly Backes

There were a lot of awesome books waiting for me at the library this week. I am very excited for these ones and I hope they can help pull me out of the reading slump I've been in (seriously, all I read all week was Fifty Shades of Grey and now Fifty Shades Darker. It makes me feel dirty). I am also so thrilled to have been approved for The Princesses of Iowa on NetGalley. It is my first approval, which makes me feel like a little kid on Christmas, and I just featured it last week as my WOW, so I'm happy dancing all over the place.

What did you get in your mailbox this week? Leave your link in the comments and I'll do my best to come visit!

05 April 2012

Giveaway: 100 Followers!

100 Follower Giveaway I am beyond excited to be having this giveaway. I can't believe that I have nearly reached 100 followers, and that is just with Google Friend Connect! I also have 90 RSS followers and 110 Twitter followers and this is just amazing to me. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to follow and read and comment! I know I have not been the best at replying to comments, but I want to take this time to give one giant thank you to all of you who have followed!

To express my gratitude further, I am holding an awesome-tastic giveaway! I want to return the feeling of super-special-fantastic-ness that my followers make me feel. There will be three (THREE!) winners, two US and one international! Here are the prizes:

  • First Place (US only): Your choice of one book by Stephanie Perkins, Gayle Foreman, Jess Rothenberg, or Nina LaCour. I will have this signed and personalized for you when I attend the YA or Bust! Tour on April 18.
  • Second Place (US only): One copy of A Temptation of Angels by Michelle Zink
  • International Winner: One book of your choice (up to $15 USD) from The Book Depository

Cover of Where She Went by Gayle FormanCover of Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie PerkinsCover of The Disenchantments by Nina LaCourCover of The Catastrophic History of You and Me by Jess RothenbergCover of A Temptation of Angels by Michelle Zimmerman

To read the rules and enter the giveaway, click read more!

03 April 2012

Waiting On Wednesday: Twelve

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.
Title: The Princesses of Iowa
Author: M. Molly Backes
Publication Date: 8 May 2012
Summary (courtesy of goodreads.com):
What does it mean to do wrong, when no one punishes you? A smart and unflinching look at friendship, the nature of entitlement, and growing up in the heartland.

Paige Sheridan has the perfect life. She's pretty, rich, and popular, and her spot on the homecoming court is practically guaranteed. But when a night of partying ends in an it-could-have-been-so-much worse crash, everything changes. Her best friends start ignoring her, her boyfriend grows cold and distant, and her once-adoring younger sister now views her with contempt. The only bright spot is her creative writing class, led by a charismatic new teacher who encourages students to be true to themselves. But who is Paige, if not the homecoming princess everyone expects her to be? In this arresting and witty debut, a girl who was once high-school royalty must face a truth that money and status can't fix, and choose between living the privileged life of a princess, or owning up to her mistakes and giving up everything she once held dear.
I feel like drunk driving and car crashes are this spring and summer's vampires/angels/whatever-last-year's-trend-was.  Am I the only one?  Regardless, I'm very excited to read this one.  I tend to love contemporary books that take place in settings completely different from where I live - the third most densely populated metropolitan area in California.  I've built up a pretty great and unfounded-in-real-life love of the South this way, and am excited to expand my adoration to the corn fields of the heartland.  Plus, it's always nice to see the pretty, rich, popular girl learn some life lessons.

Budget Busters: April

If you love books, you've got a book budget.  It's not necessarily written down or typed up with fancy equations in Excel, but at the very least, in the back of your mind, you're thinking, I can only spend THIS MUCH on books this month!  And if you love books, you know that your budget, as complicated or simple as it is, is going out the window as soon as you walk into that bookstore "just to see what they have."

In celebration of blown book budgets everywhere, I am posting the new releases coming out this month, that I will definitely consider breaking my budget on.  I'd be living in a box and eating ramen for the rest of my life if I bought them all, but in my dreams, where the term "book budget" doesn't exist, I will be lining my personal library with all of them.  Click on a book's cover image to be directed to its Goodreads page.

April 1 - 7




April 8 - 14



April 15 - 21

April 22 - 28



What is your book budget for the month of April, and what books are you planning on busting it on?

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