Monthly Archives: June 2012

Review: A Spy Like Me by Laura Pauling (@LauraPauling)

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Not too long after I started this blog, I had the privilege of being approached by the very first author to request a review from me: Laura Pauling, author of A Spy Like Me. I was kind of torn. On the one hand, an author was contacting me with a request to review her book! What an honor!

On the other hand, I hadn’t yet ventured into the world of indie books. Doesn’t “indie” = bad? Plus, although I adore Alias so much it makes me forgive Bradley Cooper for all of his dubious career decisions since then, I wasn’t entirely sure that a spy novel was up my alley.

But, after an internal debate with myself, I decided to at least give it a shot. After all, it’s not every day an author asks you to review her book (or at least, not every day for me. Yet). And the reviews on Amazon seemed positive. How bad could it be?

The Plot 

17-year-old Savvy Bent is working to adjust to life in Paris with her dad, following the abrupt and unexplained departure of her mother a year ago. Life consists of pastries and lattes at a neighborhood bakery with her best friend Aimee, working at her father’s theater-of-life company Spy Games, and most recently, a date with cute neighborhood waiter, Malcolm.

But everything Savvy knows goes topsy-turvy when her romantic date with Malcolm ends in gunshots and Savvy running for her life.

Soon, Savvy finds that her pretend spying has morphed into the real thing as she struggles to separate spy from friend and client from killer, all while she races through Paris’ most famous tourist attractions in an effort to find the truth.

My Thoughts

I was honestly completely surprised by my reaction to this book. I was winding down from a bad day, and decided to just take a peek at the first chapter, to see if I was in for an okay read or a big stinker (I was in a bit of a pessimistic mood at the time).

Next thing I knew, it was past midnight and I had torn through half the book. The only reason I forced myself to put it down then was because I have small children who WILL be up at 7 am, no matter how late I stay up, and they don’t let me stay in bed if they’re awake.

Savvy was funny and sassy, and I liked her immediately. My heart went out to her poor fumbling spy-wannabe father, and I was guessing about the other characters right along with Savvy for most of the book. And the Parisian setting was a lot of fun, even though all the pastries made me ridiculously hungry.

The pacing of this book was very quick, and the chapters felt like they were just flying by. Each time I’d reach the end of a chapter, I couldn’t just stop there, so I’d read “just one more.” There is a good amount of action, escapes and intrigue, and while I predicted some of the plot twists, some of them definitely took me be surprise.

I did have a few issues with the book. The first (and I have this problem with YA heroines a lot) is Savvy’s willingness to just let things go, or not ask about them out of spite. Without getting into spoiler territory, I’ll just say that something shocking and potentially catastrophic will happen, Savvy will be consumed by curiosity…and then someone with the power to clue her into what’s going on will annoy her, then offer her the missing information. And she will pass, because she’s being spiteful. I kind of wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her. Doesn’t the knowledge of why someone is trying to kill you trump your bruised ego? Apparently not.

Also, I found Savvy’s reactions to the romantic story line far-fetched. One minute she’s cowering in fear, afraid that her discovery could lead to her torture or death, and the next minute she’s…kissing? I could buy it if it was done in a spy-like way, using her feminine wiles to get herself out of a tricky situation, but that’s not the way it happens. Instead, she seems totally at the mercy of her hormones, which are utterly oblivious and independent of her fear and anger.

I’m sorry, but even as a teenager, if I was afraid the boy in the next room kidnapped my friend and was trying to kill me, I am pretty sure my hormones would be dormant, if not completely extinct. I don’t care how cute he is.

And I was a fan of the crazy roller coaster plot right up until the end. A couple new elements were introduced to the story line close to the end of the book that I felt muddled the plot rather than helped resolve it. I would have been happy just learning who was trying to kill who and why, without bringing in new characters and associations.

But despite my complaints, they really didn’t do much to detract from my enjoyment of this book. I could overlook them because I was enjoying the pacing and the characters so much. This was a fun, witty, fast-paced book that I’m thrilled I agreed to review. Thank you, Laura Pauling, for having faith in a new blogger. I’ve now read enough great indie titles to know that indie does not = bad, and I’m glad I overcame my unfounded misconceptions to read this book. I enjoyed it immensely, and am excited to read about more of Savvy’s adventures.

Content Guide: Spy violence, amorous activity

Top Ten Tuesday (June 12): Beach Reads

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Welcome to another Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly meme hosted by the fabulous folks over at The Broke and the Bookish!

In celebration of summer and sun and flip-flops, this week’s topic is:

Top Ten Books I’d Recommend As Good Beach Reads

Of course, I live in a completely land-locked state, so I’m going to have to think of these as pool reads instead of beach reads, but the concept is the same. Minus the sand and the salt.

Also, please forgive me for being a bit dense, but I’ve never understood the concept of “beach reads.” I will personally just take whatever book I’m currently reading to the beach and continue reading it. My reading environment plays a very small role in my reading selection.

So, that said, I tried to think of books that I enjoyed, and that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to be seen reading in public, in a bathing suit. Because being in a bathing suit in public…that’s enough. I also tried to pick books that wouldn’t evoke any serious freak-outs, like ugly-crying. You could possibly do a dignified single-tear-trickle with a couple of these, but that’s not so bad in public.

I’m kind of all over the place with this list, genre-wise. We’re going to assume that’s okay.

 

Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen

Gifted by Liz Long

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

The Host by Stephenie Meyer

Hourglass by Myra McEntire

The Princess Bride by William Goldman

The Selection by Kiera Cass

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Do you have books you designate as “beach reads?” And what does that mean? Please help me clear up this mystery.


Review: Shadows in Flight by Orson Scott Card

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As you are probably well aware by now, I am a huge fan of Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, along with its sequels and its spin-off series, Ender’s Shadow. I enjoy Card’s logical and intelligent way of telling a story. I love the intricate sci-fi world, the wonderfully developed characters, the smart twists and turns of the plot. So when I found out about the newest installment of the Shadow series, Shadows in Flight, I eagerly grabbed it from the library.

The Plot

[Warning: There is no way to summarize any of the plot of this book without spoilers from the Shadow series. If you haven’t read it yet, you’ll want to skip this review until you’re caught up.]

Shadows in Flight picks up five years after the ending of Shadow of the Giant. Or rather, five years for Bean and the three children he and Petra unwillingly doomed to his fate: extraordinarily enhanced intelligence, but at the cost of an early death by giantism. Knowing the only hope for finding a cure for his children within their lifetimes was a lower gravity environment and the relativistic effects of near-light-speed travel, Bean and the children have been traveling on the spaceship Herodotus, searching for a cure, while back on Earth, hundreds of years have passed.

Life on the Herodotus is getting a bit strained for the 6-year-old super-geniuses: Ender, Carlotta and Cincinnatus. Even after hundreds of years of Earth’s scientists researching their condition, they are no closer to a cure. Plus, they live constantly waiting for Bean, who they refer to as “The Giant,” to die. They’re actually surprised he hasn’t already. The only reason he is alive is that he is completely inert — prone and trapped in the cargo bay, still with access to the ship’s computer system, but unable to get up or exert himself in any way.

But their situation abruptly changes when their course takes them near an interesting new planet. Especially when they see what else is there.

My Thoughts

Oh, how I wanted to love this book. I love Bean. I love the Shadow series. But much as it pains me to say it, this latest installment felt a bit…lacking.

First off, it’s very short, almost closer to a novella than a full-length novel. Although the Enderverse is expanded and explained a bit more, as is the case with every book in the series, not much really happens. There’s barely a hint of the action, suspense and strategic thinking under fire that are peppered nicely throughout the rest of the series.

Then we get to the characters. I still love Bean. His scenes were my favorite of the book, mostly because he is still true to the Bean we have come to know throughout the rest of the series, but as with every book in the Shadow series, he has grown (no pun intended). I am a big fan of every time we learn something new about Bean, and in this book, we get to see him as a disabled father. How he handles it is touching and very true to his character.

However, Bean is not the focus of the book. The majority of the book focuses on the children, Ender, Carlotta and Cincinnatus. And here’s my problem with them: they’re essentially Ender, Valentine and Peter.

I love the dynamic between the siblings of the Wiggin family. Always have, and came to love it even more as we got to know them all throughout both the Ender and Shadow series. But I’ve already read about that family dynamic. And this is basically the same one. Yes, they’re smarter than even the Wiggin siblings because of their genetic altering, but their personalities are basically the same. Cincinnatus is basically Peter (the more mellow, adult version of Peter). Carlotta = Valentine. And Ender = Ender.

And when you take that group of personalities and genders and explore the sibling relationship between them for 8 books, and then introduce basically the same thing but with different, new characters and explore it for only one book…it’s bound to come up short. And it did.

It’s not that it wasn’t well-written. It’s not that the characters weren’t interesting, and it’s not that the story wasn’t good. It’s that it felt like a lesser version of its prequels. Maybe if we had learned something monumentally new (there is new information given in this book, but it wasn’t earth-shattering like some of the revelations in previous books), or if there had been some heart-stopping action, or if the stakes had been higher, I could have overlooked the obvious similarities to the Wiggins. But alas, it was not meant to be.

I’d still recommend this book for die-hard Enderverse fans. It’s not a bad book, and if you are itching to find out what happens next in Bean’s story, this answers your questions. But for me, I think I’ll be content with Shadow of the Giant as the last Ender book on my shelf.

Content guide: Contains brief mild violence, brief murderous plotting

Review: Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer (@HMHkids)

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I’ve been intrigued by the premise of Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer since I first heard of it. It’s another “what if” book, but unlike dystopians and sci-fi, this book is set in current times, with the technology of today. What would happen to our lives if we were suddenly faced with an unexpected global disaster? How would it change our families, our friendships, our communities? These are the questions posed in Life as We Knew It.

The Plot

Life as We Knew It is written as the diary of 16-year-old Miranda. As it begins, Miranda has the same concerns of most 16-year-old girls: grades, friends, extracurricular activities, finding a date for the prom. There’s an event that her teachers and local news anchors seem excited about: an asteroid is predicted to collide with the moon, and it’s supposed to be visible to the naked eye. But Miranda doesn’t see what all the fuss is about; it’s not like the moon has never been hit by an asteroid before.

But on the night of the anticipated collision, Miranda dutifully joins her family and neighbors outside to watch this once-in-a-lifetime event. And the world’s excitement turns to horror when something completely unexpected happens.

The asteroid was denser than astronomers believed, and instead of the harmless impact they were anticipating, a quarter of the moon is destroyed. The moon is also knocked much closer to the Earth, and suddenly looms huge and menacing in the sky.

Soon, the altered gravitational force of the moon begins to cause relentless and catastrophic natural disasters all over the world: tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanoes. Electricity becomes a luxury, then a memory. Communications with other states and countries fail.

Through it all, Miranda diligently keeps her diary, chronicling her family’s struggle to keep the lifestyle they once had, which turns into their struggle to simply survive.

My Thoughts

I was totally captivated by this book. Everything that Miranda’s family went through seemed feasible in our current world, and I found myself wondering how my family would cope in a similar situation. It was chilling and frightening, because her family doesn’t react to their new circumstances like heroes in a story; they react like a regular family.

Miranda was an excellent narrator. Somehow, Susan Beth Pfeffer was able to really crawl inside the mind of a 16-year-old girl. She had the invincibility syndrome that so many teenagers have, convincing herself time and time again that nothing was going to change, that everything would soon return to normal, that things couldn’t possibly get any worse. I found myself infuriated with her when she argued against her mother’s rationing of their food, or her brother’s stockpiling of firewood. I groaned inwardly every time she mentioned that she couldn’t imagine how things could get worse, since obviously, they could. But she reacted the way I expect many teenagers would react — she resisted the magnitude of the situation, and opted instead to focus on whether or not there would still be a prom, or how her favorite figure skater was doing. But my frustrations with her character are actually a testament to the strength of the writing — I believed I was listening to a 16-year-old.

On the flip side, I loved Miranda’s mother. She was level-headed, forward-thinking, and did a marvelous job of looking out for her family. Yes, she made mistakes, had her moments of selfishness, and there were occasions where Miranda’s conflicts with her were perfectly justified. But no matter how bad things got, Miranda’s mother continued to display the kind of sacrifice and perseverance that I feel exemplifies a parent’s love for her child.

I also enjoyed the development of Miranda’s brothers, Jonny and Matt, and their neighbor, Mrs. Nesbitt. I came away from the book feeling like I really knew and understood these characters.

As for the progression of the story itself, I found it mostly believable. Miranda’s family found themselves situated in the best possible scenario in the case of global disaster: their house had oil heat, a gas stove, a wood-burning stove in a separate room, and well water. Convenient, yes, but not unrealistic — these houses do exist, after all. There were parts of the story I found far-fetched, such as being able to immediately hop onto the Internet and surf fan sites every time the electricity turned back on for 10 minutes, but those irritations were minor in the grand scheme of things. There was also a bit of propaganda the author wove into the story that I thought felt a bit awkward and out of place, but again, it didn’t really lessen my enjoyment of the overall tale.

The way the world slowly crumbled around Miranda and her family seemed disturbingly accurate. Humanity didn’t simply plunge into chaos; it descended in increments. Businesses stayed open. Currency still held value. Schools held classes. It was only as the weeks and months progressed that the direness of their situation is truly revealed. I found myself holding my breath as I wondered what could possibly happen next.

Overall, I found this to be a sad yet hopeful look at family, society, and friendship. It was a story of strength, survival and triumph, but also loss and regret. The story progressed in a quiet manner, with very little action or fanfare, and was more pensive than nail-biting. Its strengths were the characters, the relationships, and the incredibly well though-out progression from life as we know it to the world that Miranda’s family unwillingly finds themselves in.

Note: While this book does have two sequels, The Dead and the Gone and This World We Live In, I felt the ending was satisfying enough for this to have been a standalone novel. I do intend on reading the sequels, but if they didn’t exist, I still would have been satisfied.

Content Guide: Survivalist scenarios in post-apocalyptic modern world, starvation, death of several characters

Review: The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness (@Patrick_Ness)

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I picked up The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness because some poor misinformed soul somewhere had labeled it a dystopian, and I was endeavoring to read ALL THE DYSTOPIANS for Dystopiaganza (P.S. If you would like to read the guest post that prompted all the research, it’s posted here). But as far as I understand the definition of a dystopian, this is not one. Or it is, but only by the slimmest margin. But by the time I figured this out, I was already well into it, and I wanted to finish.

I’m not going to lie. This book wreaked havoc with my emotions. Partly because of the writing style. Partly because of the premise. Partly because it was just so different from any other book I’ve ever read. And partly because it made me feel like throwing things. And then the end…

Don’t worry, I’m not going to spoil it. Just let me say, there’s a reason this book was in my Top 10 Jaw-Dropping Endings post.

The urge to throw things was never quite so strong. Fortunately, I was in bed next to my sleeping husband, so I didn’t throw it. Which is good, because it was a borrowed copy, and I had promised my friend I wouldn’t so much as dogear a page, much less hurl the book against the wall.

So. Let’s get down to it.

The Plot

Todd Hewitt lives in Prentisstown with his guardians, Ben and Cillian, and his dog, Manchee. But life in New World is different from what we know. First, there is the Noise. All the men and animals on New World project their thoughts involuntarily to all those around them. Second, whatever infected the men and animals with the Noise has killed all the women. So the men and Todd (the last remaining boy in Prentisstown) live their lives surrounded by Noise, knowing that without any women, they will eventually die out and Prentisstown will become a ghost town.

Todd was the last child born in Prentisstown, so all he has ever known is a womanless and Noisy life. He’s a month away from his 13th birthday, when he will become a man, and looks forward to no longer being the only boy in town. But one day, he and Manchee discover something disturbing in the swamp – an area in the bushes with no Noise.

Todd has never known any area to be completely absent of Noise, so he tells Ben and Cillian about it, thinking it is a curiosity. But much to Todd’s surprise, Ben and Cillian are afraid, and immediately start packing up so that Todd and Manchee can flee Prentisstown. Confused and hurt, Todd reluctantly leaves the only family he has ever known behind, to venture out into the world beyond Prentisstown. And what Todd and Manchee discover will change everything.

But even as Todd and Manchee search for answers, danger follows them. For the men of Prentisstown are not willing to let Todd go so easily.

My Thoughts 

The first thing that hit me about this book was the writing style. It takes some getting used to. Todd is the narrator, and he is uneducated and mostly illiterate, so the narrative is full of improper grammar and syntax, misspellings, and run-on sentences galore. If that’s going to bother you, this is not the book for you, because it doesn’t improve a bit throughout the entire book. It’s not like Todd goes to college while trekking through the swamp.

As for Todd, he also had to grow on me a bit. I had to keep in mind that he was a 13-year-old boy (although he is about to turn 13 in Prentisstown, he says that a New World year is 13 months, which means that in our time, Todd is nearly 14), and therefore he wasn’t going to be the wisest or quickest or most sensitive character. He’s fairly bull-headed and slow on the uptake in the beginning, plus his treatment of Manchee is horrid. But after they flee Prentisstown, Todd begins to mature and grow, and his relationship with Manchee actually became one of my favorite parts of the book.

Speaking of Manchee, he quickly became one of my favorite literary animal characters. Even with the limited vocabulary and intellect of a dog, Manchee was fiercely loyal and protective of Todd, and I found him incredibly endearing.

Then we get to the villains. And there are a lot of villains. One in particular, Aaron, is so freakishly creepy that I’m surprised I didn’t have nightmares about him. The only complaint I have (because really, a super-creepy villain is not a complaint for me) is that he’s still supposed to be human, even though he’s crazy and evil and lives on an alien world. And several of the things Aaron manages to pull off throughout the course of the book seem decidedly inhuman.

Maybe he was a Cylon. Maybe that’s a twist in the next book. I don’t know. I haven’t read it yet.

As for the plot in this book, the action and suspense never lets up. Todd barely has a moment’s peace from the moment he flees Prentisstown until the end of the book. The danger is constant and terrifying. And with each twist and turn of the plot, the situation just seems to become more dire and bleak. A constant theme running through the book is that hope is necessary for survival, but it seems that every time Todd scrapes together a sliver of hope, it is snatched away from him and replaced with heartbreak and horror.

It’s kind of hard to deal with.

But. Todd was able to rally just enough each time for me to want to keep reading. And interspersed in this incredibly dark story were moments of innocent joy and humor that would pop up at completely unexpected times.

And then there was that ending. Ugh. Don’t start this book if you need things resolved by the end. It doesn’t happen.

So now I have many feelings about this book. I loved the story, loved Todd and Manchee, loved the incredibly unique world that Patrick Ness created. But it also made me feel so sad and frustrated and disappointed so many times — not because the book was disappointing, but because Todd was disappointed. It’s hard to mesh all those feelings together into a coherent opinion.

Overall, I would say that The Knife of Never Letting Go is a different type of Young Adult book; it’s darker, it’s scarier, and it’s grittier than most of the YA sci-fi out there. It will not appeal to you if you’re squeamish about violence or yearn for neat and happy endings. But it features wonderfully developed characters in a brilliant new world (no pun untended) that I’m excited to keep exploring — even if it drives me crazy.

Content Guide: Contains extensive violence and suspense, profanity, and some very upsetting deaths.