Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
Friday, September 9, 2011
Thursday, September 8, 2011
So Shelly by Ty Roth
Publish Date: February 8, 2011
ISBN: 978-0385739580
Pages: 336
Jacket Art: Sara Lazzeroni
Ok, so if I had known this the book wouldn't have seemed so crazy to me! "If Lord Byron, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley were living adolescents today, how would their literary talents, notorious personas and known fates collide?"
I was warned that the story might squick me out. It did. This is most definitely for the older teens, if for teens at all. There's death, drugs, sex, rape, incest, abortion and a variety of other shadowy things gonig on.
To truly appreciate the book, you need to know about the lives of these people. There is a quite a bit of historical fact mixed in with the fiction. Go read about them before you read this, you'll appreciate it more.
As for the story, here's what we have:
Shelly - goes by her last name, her mom died, her dad behaved poorly then got remarried, they're wealthy, she's radical and writes great stories while she pines for Gordon Byron who is her neighbor and best friend.
Gordon Byron - rich spoiled kid, first novel published in eighth grade, full of himself, athletic, club foot, debauched behavior with women in general (maybe men) and with relatives in particular, divorced parents, some sexual abuse possible in younger years.
John Keats - poor, parents died, brother dying, short and skinny, writes poetry, fear of death, narrator of story.
It's worth reading, just take your time and soak it all up.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Venomous by Christopher Krovatin
Publish Date: 2008
ISBN: 978-1442412989
Pages: 336
Artwork: Kelly Yates
"So then I tackled Tommy Ferraro and bit off the tip of his nose."
So begins Locke's story. It definitely drew me in - what kind of kid does a thing like that?!
Locke is plagued by anger issues, only his anger takes over and he can't seem to control it. Well, chocolate milk seems to help for some weird reason, but not always. He calls his anger 'Venom'. He's pretty solitary just hanging out with his mom, little brother Lon and best friend Randall. One day Randall decides that Locke has been a loner long enough and makes him attend a party to meet Randall's other friends. Locke hits it off with Casey and falls hard for Renee. The other kids at the gathering? They all have issues and are the goths, emo, weirdo's, you name it. They've formed a group called The Tarot. They go by the cards of the Tarot deck.
As for our leading characters:
Casey - gay, in love with a straight guy, rich
Renee - heavily medicated, parentless, jock brother
Randall - the 'steady' one, which can be the hardest thing to be in a group
There's smoking, drinking, vandalism, swearing, violence, fighting and sex. This is not a book for the younger set - but I think 16yo and older would be fine with it. It's not like they haven't heard it/seen it before.
In between the regular chapters are comic book pages of 'Venom'. They aren't really explained, although Locke's brother Lon mentions the Venom doodles in Locke's notebook once. It's a great touch to a fantastic story, I loved them. I also loved when Locke found out that Spiderman's bad guy is named Venom and what he looks like.
The author was only 23 when the book was published and I think, since he was closer in age to the characters, he made them more realistic. It was nice to read about a boy/girl relationship from the boys point of view and realize that boys feel the same way, they just don't always verbalize it.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Books Out This Week: September 5 - 11, 2011
Release Date: September 5, 2011
From Goodreads: Most high school sports teams have rivalries with other schools. At Hamilton High, it's a civil war: the football team versus the soccer team. And for her part, Lissa is sick of it. Her quarterback boyfriend, Randy, is always ditching her to go pick a fight with the soccer team or to prank their locker room. And on three separate occasions Randy's car has been egged while he and Lissa were inside, making out. She is done competing with a bunch of sweaty boys for her own boyfriend's attention. Lissa decides to end the rivalry once and for all: she and the other players' girlfriends go on a hookup strike. The boys won't get any action from them until the football and soccer teams make peace. What they don't count on is a new sort of rivalry: an impossible girls-against-boys showdown that hinges on who will cave to their libidos first. And Lissa never sees her own sexual tension with the leader of the boys, Cash Sterling, coming.
Release Date: September 5, 2011
From Goodreads: Seventeen-year-old Keri likes to plan for every possibility. She knows what to do if you break an arm, or get caught in an earthquake or fire. But she wasn't prepared for her brother's suicide, and his death has left her shattered with grief. When her childhood friend Janna tells her it was murder, not suicide, Keri wants to believe her. After all, Janna's brother died under similar circumstances years ago, and Janna insists a visiting tourist, Sione, who also lost a brother to apparent suicide that year, has helped her find some answers. As the three dig deeper, disturbing facts begin to pile up: one boy killed every year; all older brothers; all had spent New Year's Eve in the idyllic town of Summerton. But when their search for the serial killer takes an unexpected turn, suspicion is cast on those they trust the most. As secrets shatter around them, can they save the next victim? Or will they become victims themselves?
Release Date: September 6, 2011
From Goodreads: To save the life of the boy she loves, Jacinda did the unthinkable: She betrayed the most closely-guarded secret of her kind. Now she must return to the protection of her pride knowing she might never see Will again—and worse, that because his mind has been shaded, Will’s memories of that fateful night and why she had to flee are gone. Back home, Jacinda is greeted with hostility and must work to prove her loyalty for both her sake and her family’s. Among the few who will even talk to her are Cassian, the pride’s heir apparent who has always wanted her, and her sister, Tamra, who has been forever changed by a twist of fate. Jacinda knows that she should forget Will and move on—that if he managed to remember and keep his promise to find her, it would only endanger them both. Yet she clings to the hope that someday they will be together again. When the chance arrives to follow her heart, will she risk everything for love?
Release Date: September 6, 2011
From Goodreads: Anyone who’s had something truly crappy happen to them will tell you: It’s all about Before and After. What I’m talking about here is the ka-pow, shake-you-to-your-core-and-turn-your-bones-to-plastic kind of crappy. Sixteen-year-old Laurel’s world changes instantly when her parents and brother are killed in a terrible car accident. Behind the wheel is the father of her bad-boy neighbor, David Kaufman, whose mother is also killed. In the aftermath of the tragedy, Laurel navigates a new reality in which she and her best friend grow apart, boys may or may not be approaching her out of pity, overpowering memories lurk everywhere, and Mr. Kaufman is comatose but still very much alive. Through it all there is David, who swoops in and out of Laurel’s life and to whom she finds herself attracted against her better judgment. She will forever be connected to him by their mutual loss—a connection that will change them both in unexpected ways.
Release Date: September 6, 2011
From Goodreads: Abbey knows that Caspian is her destiny. Theirs is a bond that transcends even death. But as Abbey finally learns the full truth about the dark fate that links her to Caspian and ties them both to the town of Sleepy Hollow, she suddenly has some very hard choices to make. Caspian may be the love of her life, but is that love worth dying for?
Release Date: September 6, 2011
From Goodreads: Mickey Bolitar's year can't get much worse. After witnessing his father's death and sending his mom to rehab, he's forced to live with his estranged uncle Myron and switch high schools. A new school comes with new friends and new enemies, and lucky for Mickey, it also comes with a great new girlfriend, Ashley. For a while, it seems like Mickey's train-wreck of a life is finally improving - until Ashley vanishes without a trace. Unwilling to let another person walk out of his life, Mickey follows Ashley's trail into a seedy underworld that reveals that this seemingly sweet, shy girl isn't who she claimed to be. And neither was Mickey's father. Soon, Mickey learns about a conspiracy so shocking that it makes high school drama seem like a luxury - and leaves him questioning everything about the life he thought he knew.
Release Date: September 6, 2011
From Goodreads:
Grace just moved to San Francisco and is excited to start over at a new school. The change is full of fresh possibilities, but it’s also a tiny bit scary. It gets scarier when a minotaur walks in the door. And even more shocking when a girl who looks just like her shows up to fight the monster. Gretchen is tired of monsters pulling her out into the wee hours, especially on a school night, but what can she do? Sending the minotaur back to his bleak home is just another notch on her combat belt. She never expected to run into this girl who could be her double, though. Greer has her life pretty well put together, thank you very much. But that all tilts sideways when two girls who look eerily like her appear on her doorstep and claim they're triplets, supernatural descendants of some hideous creature from Greek myth, destined to spend their lives hunting monsters. These three teenage descendants of Medusa, the once-beautiful gorgon maligned by myth, must reunite and embrace their fates in this unique paranormal world where monsters lurk in plain sight.
Release Date: September 6, 2011
From Goodreads: Years later . . . what really happened to Christopher Creed? When Torey Adams posts on his blog that a body has been found in Steepleton—four years after Christopher Creed disappeared—college reporter Mike Mavic sells his laptop and hops a plane to capture the story that will undoubtedly launch his journalistic career. But what Mike finds is a town suffering under a cloud of bad frequency and people with an underlying streak of meanness. To the teens of Steepleton, Chris is nothing more than history—but to Justin Creed, a teen obsessed with his older brother’s memory and balancing on the edge of sanity, discovering what really happened to Chris Creed is a matter of life and death.
Release Date: September 6, 2011
From Goodreads: Phoebe finds herself drawn to Mallory, the strange and secretive new kid in school, and the two girls become as close as sisters . . . until Mallory's magnetic older brother, Ryland, shows up during their junior year. Ryland has an immediate, exciting hold on Phoebe, but a dangerous hold, for she begins to question her feelings about her best friend and, worse, about herself. Soon she'll discover the shocking truth about Ryland and Mallory: that these two are visitors from the faerie realm who have come to collect on an age-old debt. Generations ago, the faerie queen promised Pheobe's ancestor five extraordinary sons in exchange for the sacrifice of one ordinary female heir. But in hundreds of years there hasn't been a single ordinary girl in the family, and now the faeries are dying. Could Phoebe be the first ordinary one? Could she save the faeries, or is she special enough to save
herself?
Release Date: September 8, 2011
From Goodreads: Fifteen-year-olds Cece and Mack didn't expect to fall in love. She's a sensitive A student; he's a high school dropout. But soon they're spending every moment together, bonding over a rescued dog, telling their secrets, making plans for the future. Everything is perfect. Until. Until. Mack makes a horrible mistake, and in just a few minutes, the future they'd planned becomes impossible. In this stark new reality, both of them must find meaning and hope in the memories of what they had, to survive when the person they love can't stay.
Release Date: September 8, 2011
From Goodreads: When Dani was eight, she fell from a building. No one believed her claim that she was pushed by Rachel . . . her imaginary friend. It took years of therapy to convince Dani that Rachel wasn't real. Now fifteen, Dani wants to make it as a dancer. But a deadly freak accident sends Dani a terrifying message: Rachel is back, she's real, and she'll stop at nothing to kill Dani. Complicating matters is Jesse, the school bad boy who's being stalked by his own invisible childhood nemesis. Dani and Jesse join forces to learn why their astral tormenters are back. Their investigation leads to a horrifying discovery—and the terrible experiment that binds them to each other.
Release Date: September 8, 2011
From Goodreads:
A devastated Earth’s last hope is found in Pearls: small, mysterious orbs that fall from space, and are capable of supplying enough energy to power entire cities. Battling to control the Pearls are the Skyship dwellers—political dissidents who live in massive ships in the Earth’s stratosphere—and the corrupt Surface government.
Jesse Fisher, a Skyship brat, and Cassius Stevenson, a young Surface operative, cross paths when they both venture into forbidden territory in pursuit of Pearls. Their chance encounter triggers an unexpected reaction, endowing each boy with remarkable—and dangerous—abilities that their respective governments would stop at nothing to possess. Enemies thrust together with a common goal, Jesse and Cassius make their way to the ruins of Seattle to uncover the truth about their new powers, the past they didn’t know they shared, and a shocking secret about the Pearls.
Release Date: September 8, 2011
From Goodreads: Orange is for energy, pink means love, and I, Cassia Bernard, do solemnly swear to find pure red—my passion—this summer. Dad's raison d'être is art. When he's painting, no one can reach him, not even me. I'm giving basketball a chance. But what I really want to score this summer is the adoration of Graham Hadley—a.k.a. Cutebutt. Then when Dad agrees to mentor Graham with his art project, all of Cutebutt's attention is on Dad—leaving me feeling as colorless as the Miami sky on a rainy day. But I'm not giving up just yet.
Release Date: September 8, 2011
From Goodreads: Braden was born with witch eyes: the ability to see the world as it truly is: a blinding explosion of memories, darkness, and magic. The power enables Braden to see through spells and lies, but at the cost of horrible pain. After a terrifying vision reveals imminent danger for the uncle who raised and instructed him, Braden retreats to Belle Dam, an old city divided by two feuding witch dynasties. As rival family heads Catherine Lansing and Jason Thorpe desperately try to use Braden's powers to unlock Belle Dam's secrets, Braden vows never to become their sacrificial pawn. But everything changes when Braden learns that Jason is his father--and Trey, the enigmatic guy he's falling for, is Catherine's son. To stop an insidious dark magic from consuming the town, Braden must master his gift—and risk losing the one he loves.
Release Date: September 8, 2011
From Goodreads: Brock Koeman always hated werewolves and Others like them. While trying to trap a werewolf pack, he and his brother Chris were attacked and bitten—becoming what they have always feared and despised. While Chris fights for his life in the hospital, Brock faces another kind of battle: stifling his terrible urge to transform. When werewolves kidnap him and the girl he loves, Brock discovers what it means to be Other—wondrous new sensations and experiences, overshadowed by constant danger—and the life that awaits him if he can ever accept his fate.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Do you see what I see?
Stay with Me by Paul Griffin
The song is actually sung by Paul Griffin - awesome!
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion
Publisher: Atria BooksPublish Date: April 26, 2011
ISBN: 978-1439192313
Pages: 256
I was intrigued by WARM BODIES. Oh I know, in Generation Dead there's a living girl and a zombie guy dating and it was ok. But the zombies weren't feeding on people and decaying. WARM BODIES is narrated by R. He can't remember his name, just the first letter, he is of course a zombie. He thinks a lot, his listens to Frank Sinatra, rides the escalators at the airport for fun...he's not your usual zombie.
Then there's Julie. She's the living girl R rescues/kidnaps. She lives in a sports dome with tons of other people. She's on a mission with her kind of boyfriend and best friend when the zombies attack and she sees one of them kill her kind of boyfriend. When R decides to take her, he disguises her as a zombie and hides her in an airplane. Julie seems to actually enjoy the diversion after a bit.
R has a lot of deep thoughts, he just can't articulate them, but he communicates with his best friend, M, pretty well. They have a bit of sarcastic humor throughout the book and it was pretty funny. R is changing though and the Boneys don't like it, not one bit. The Boneys seem to be the self-appointed rulers of the zombie hives, they are, as the name suggests, just bone. No one knows if they looked like the rest of them before, I mean R even wonders how long they've been zombies. He has no memories of anything.
I've always wondered why zombies eat brains. Is it the delicacy of the human body? Wouldn't the spleen taste just as good? R explains it to us: when the zombies eat your brain, they experience your memories, your life, your emotions...and in color. It's almost like a high and then they go back to their gray lives. R doesn't gloss over the more disgusting habits of zombies, I like that. He explains them and moves on.
I buy into zombies having their own society - every creature does - why not them too? He touches on zombie children playing and learning to kill, zombie marriage and the lack of zombie sex. (thank goodness!!) I think that two of the best scenes are when the zombie children are learning how to kill a Living and when Living children are learning to kill a zombie. It shows that even though different, they're all the same. They're all just trying to survive.
At the bottom of the story is that sweet little love story between R and Julie. It was always there, but it wasn't mushy or gross or weird. It was just sweet. I LIKE R and I want you to like him too.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Facebook Pages to Like
I know you all have Facebook, right? These are some great pages that you should like (besides mine!):
Treasured Tales for Young Adults
BookVille
Michelle Warren, Author of Wander Dust
Jennifer Anne Kogler, author of Death Catchers
Gena Showalter, author of Twisted
TeenReads
Young Adult Review Network
YA Contemps
YA Indie Princess
We Heart YA
Treasured Tales for Young Adults
BookVille
Michelle Warren, Author of Wander Dust
Jennifer Anne Kogler, author of Death Catchers
Gena Showalter, author of Twisted
TeenReads
Young Adult Review Network
YA Contemps
YA Indie Princess
We Heart YA
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