Category Archives: Young Adult

Review: The Archived by Victoria Schwab (@veschwab @DisneyHyperion)

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I was super-excited when I received an advance copy of Victoria Schwab’s newest book, The Archived in my mailbox. This has been one of the year’s most anticipated releases across the blogosphere (yes, I’m aware it’s only January, but still) and the concept sounded fascinating and original. I’m excited for you all to be able to experience it when it releases TOMORROW.

The Plot (from Goodreads):

Imagine a place where the dead rest on shelves like books.

Each body has a story to tell, a life seen in pictures that only Librarians can read. The dead are called Histories, and the vast realm in which they rest is the Archive.

Da first brought Mackenzie Bishop here four years ago, when she was twelve years old, frightened but determined to prove herself. Now Da is dead, and Mac has grown into what he once was, a ruthless Keeper, tasked with stopping often-violent Histories from waking up and getting out. Because of her job, she lies to the people she loves, and she knows fear for what it is: a useful tool for staying alive.

Being a Keeper isn’t just dangerous-it’s a constant reminder of those Mac has lost. Da’s death was hard enough, but now her little brother is gone too. Mac starts to wonder about the boundary between living and dying, sleeping and waking. In the Archive, the dead must never be disturbed. And yet, someone is deliberately altering Histories, erasing essential chapters. Unless Mac can piece together what remains, the Archive itself might crumble and fall.

My Thoughts:

This story was amazing. Victoria’s prose is gorgeous and atmospheric, and it was easy to lose myself in the story. She reveals the workings and mythology of The Archive in bits and pieces instead of info-dumping all at once, so when I started out, it took me a little bit to get my bearings. But gradually, without really noticing it was happening, I began to understand. And before I knew it, I was totally immersed in Mackenzie’s world.

What I liked about Mac was that she was strong, but flawed. She constantly tried to do her best, but made some very bad decisions. She had been trained to be so secretive that she didn’t ask for help when she needed it. She had closed her emotions to the point where she didn’t notice warning signs and ignored her gut instincts. But what was amazing about this is that because of the way her character was developed, I understood why she was doing those things. I may not agree with them, but it made sense. I liked that she wasn’t perfect and sometimes didn’t piece together the clues about what was happening until it was too late.

I know I’m painting her as kind of clueless, and you may be wondering what’s so appealing about a closed-off and ignorant character, but she was also smart, resourceful, and determined. She was just a very well-rounded and human character, which in a story with such fantastic elements, kept it grounded in the believable.

Then there was Wes, who I thought was fabulous. Although there’s hints of romance between him and Mac, he’s so much more than just “the love interest.” Wesley has his own struggles and complexities. I loved how his approach to life not only differed from Mac’s, but challenged her, and how while Mac is undoubtedly the hero of the story, Wes has his moments of heroism as well. I can’t wait to learn more about Wes in the sequels.

The plotting and pacing of The Archived was excellent. I felt like I was constantly gaining new insight into the world while asking new questions. Victoria is a master at keeping the reader turning pages, giving enough information to appease, but not so much that you stop asking questions. She weaves small details into the early pages that you don’t realize are important until the end, so that a savvy reader may be able to figure out what’s going on…but probably won’t. I like when plot twists are subtly foreshadowed, because it makes the payoff that much more satisfying.

Ultimately, I thought The Archived was a beautifully written, tightly plotted, brilliantly original story. I was riveted from beginning to end, and can’t wait to see what Victoria has planned next for these characters.

Review: The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken (@alexbracken @DisneyHyperion)

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I received a copy of The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken from a friend, and I honestly had no idea what it was about. I must live under a rock, because I hadn’t heard all the buzz surrounding this book. So I went into this one blind, on a whim, and guys — it was a good whim.

The Plot (from Goodreads)

When Ruby woke up on her tenth birthday, something about her had changed. Something alarming enough to make her parents lock her in the garage and call the police. Something that gets her sent to Thurmond, a brutal government “rehabilitation camp.” She might have survived the mysterious disease that’s killed most of America’s children, but she and the others have emerged with something far worse: frightening abilities they cannot control.

Now sixteen, Ruby is one of the dangerous ones.

When the truth comes out, Ruby barely escapes Thurmond with her life. Now she’s on the run, desperate to find the one safe haven left for kids like her—East River. She joins a group of kids who escaped their own camp. Liam, their brave leader, is falling hard for Ruby. But no matter how much she aches for him, Ruby can’t risk getting close. Not after what happened to her parents.

When they arrive at East River, nothing is as it seems, least of all its mysterious leader. But there are other forces at work, people who will stop at nothing to use Ruby in their fight against the government. Ruby will be faced with a terrible choice, one that may mean giving up her only chance at a life worth living.

My Thoughts

From the first page, I was riveted by this story and this world. The concept of a disease that either kills or gives superpowers — and that death may be preferable — was amazing. It’s never explained why it only affects the children (and apparently, only American children), and it doesn’t really matter. Ruby doesn’t know, so we don’t need to know.

Then Ruby is sent to a “rehabilitation camp,” which reeks of all the ugliest parts of human history. Ruby spends her adolescence in constant fear and misery. She has a power she doesn’t understand and doesn’t want, one which has stolen all the most important parts of her life. She’s learned to hide it, more through instinct than through knowledge, but eventually, it comes out. And Ruby escapes, but her problems are far from over. It seems everyone she encounters either wants to use her or kill her, until she chances upon a group of renegade kids who are also on the run.

The kids she encounters — Chubs, Liam, and Zu — are all amazing characters. They’re different and well-developed, and I loved the different ways they approach their relationship with Ruby. Zu, in particular, impressed me, because Alex Bracken managed to make her this amazingly sympathetic and beautiful character, without a word of dialogue. Then there’s Chubs, who’s suspicious and harsh, because of his fierce loyalty to his friends. And Liam, who is trusting and gentle and wants nothing more than for his friends to be safe. My heart broke for Liam again and again, because while he was trying so hard to lead their little ragtag group, there were moments where I remembered, he’s just a kid. He’s not cut out for this, but he’s trying his best.

Ruby herself is both strong and fragile, broken but determined. She wants to believe the best of others but the worst of herself, and sometimes makes poor decisions because of this. I like that she was a very flawed and damaged character, and that one of her main struggles wasn’t external, but internal. Watching Ruby learn to — maybe not embrace, but accept her powers was wonderful. I did have one small complaint with Ruby, and that is for a kid who went to the camps at ten and lost all contact with the outside world, she seems to know quite a bit about pop culture and classic rock. I mean, she can recognize the synthesizers and vocalist of Pink Floyd, even though she doesn’t know the song? Maybe I’m out of touch with the ten-year-olds of today, but that seemed like a bit of a stretch for me. However, that’s a tiny complaint. Just something that took me out of the story now and then.

As for the pacing, this book is kind of a slow burn. There’s a lot of tension, but not a lot of action for long stretches of time. I personally was a big fan of this, as I thought it added to the story’s atmosphere, but if you’re looking for a book brimming with action and adventure and superpower battles, this isn’t it. Those things are certainly present, but they’re not the main drive or focus of the story. But I was never bored. The dialogue is fabulous, and as I said before, the characters are wonderful.

I don’t want to say much more about it, because there are some fabulous plot developments that, while I saw some of them coming, were just so perfect for the story and Ruby’s growth as a character. And the ending is heartbreaking, but perfect, and left me itching for the sequel.

Overall, I thought this was an excellent book with strong characters, a fascinating and terrifying world, and a tense plot that kept me rapidly turning pages until the end. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you should.

Edit: So I know this video has been out for over a year, but I just saw it last week because I am not hip enough to see things when they come out. And it IMMEDIATELY made me think of this book. So much so that if the kid was a girl and they stuck the book’s title at the end, it could almost be a book trailer.

Also: most. Aggressive. Earworm. Ever.

Review: Linger by Maggie Stiefvater

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Received from the publisher in exchange for my honest review

Linger is Book 2 in Maggie Stiefvater’s Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy. If you’ll recall, I recently read the first book, Shiver, and while I thought the writing was lovely and the premise was intriguing, I had some problems with certain aspects of the plot. But even so, I was anxious to read Linger, in the hopes that perhaps my qualms did not…er…linger.

Warning: Spoilers for Shiver ahead.

The Plot (From Goodreads)

In Maggie Stiefvater’s Shiver, Grace and Sam found each other. Now, in Linger, they must fight to be together. For Grace, this means defying her parents and keeping a very dangerous secret about her own well-being. For Sam, this means grappling with his werewolf past . . . and figuring out a way to survive into the future. Add into the mix a new wolf named Cole, whose own past has the potential to destroy the whole pack. And Isabelle, who already lost her brother to the wolves . . . and is nonetheless drawn to Cole.

My Thoughts

Once again, conflicting emotions. The good news is this book doesn’t spend nearly as long dwelling on the girl-falls-in-love-with-an-animal plot point, which I still find creepy. Grace and Sam are now both human and in love (in a relationship which may be a tad too obsessive to actually be considered healthy) and…happy? Well, no, not really happy, because Sam still has angst about being a wolf, and about the rest of his pack who is currently a wolf, and about the strange unknowns of the new wolves. Sam is just an angsty kind of guy.

However, Linger is not entirely the Sam-and-Grace show, because now we add in the viewpoints of Cole and Isabelle. Cole was not a very likable guy. I’m not even sure if I was supposed to like him. He’s charismatic and charming, but not the kind of person I really want to spend any time with. Add in that half the characters also don’t like him, and I think it’s okay that I didn’t either. He was interesting. Just not likable.

However, I did like Isabelle, which is funny, because she’s also not a very likable person. But a lot of the time, she had the sole voice of reason, making the same observations I was and pointing out obvious things that really should be priorities for the other characters. And despite everything Isabelle went through in the first book, she was surprisingly non-angsty and down-to-earth. Yes, there was the weird thing between her and Cole, which was kind of out-of-the-blue, but it wasn’t a central plot point like the Sam-and-Grace relationship. For the most part, the Isabelle chapters were my favorites.

The plot for Linger is, in my opinion, more interesting than the one for Shiver because there’s a bit more mystery about the whole thing, a bit more of the danger and unknown that makes a story interesting. Also, less focus on the romance (although it is still very much present), which was good because while I love a good romance, I need it to be more sub-plotty and less main-plotty.

My biggest problem with Linger was Grace’s conflict with her parents. I got SO FRUSTRATED with that whole thing, and it was for three reasons.

1. Grace’s parents’ concerns were totally valid, as were their reactions to what Grace was doing and the way they decided to deal with it. If anything, I thought she got off easy.

2. Grace acted like a disrespectful brat, throwing out basically every teenage angsty cliche in the book, driving her parents bonkers, then acting like their reaction was completely unreasonable and over-the-top, and being utterly narrow-minded and self-centered. I honestly couldn’t stand her in those chapters.

3. Grace’s relationship with her parents for all of Shiver and the first part of Linger undermined them when they actually attempted to do some decent parenting, and I hated that that was the case. While I still don’t think Grace’s melodramatic hissy fit was justified, I can at least understand why she was disinclined to listen to her parents’ concerns after they spent most of her life decidedly absent.

Everything about this part just rubbed me the wrong way, and while I understand that it makes sense for the characters (because after all, Grace is a teenager in the throes of her first serious relationship, and her parents are uninvolved 95% of the time), it was beyond frustrating. I think this is a matter of perspective, not the writing or storytelling. If I was a teenager reading this, I may have completely sided with Grace. But I’m a parent, so I couldn’t. You may think this is the best part of the book, and if so, good for you. I’m glad you don’t have to be frustrated.

Then there was the ending, which was actually kind of neat. I saw half of it coming, but the ultimate resolution took me by surprise. It’s the reason I’m going to keep going and read Forever, because I’m really curious how they’re going to work out a solution to this problem. I’m just hoping they don’t turn Cole into a deus ex machina, because I could see it going there. I’m also hoping that we get less angst, less brattiness, and more Isabelle-as-the-voice-of-reason.

Content guide: Language, drug use, profanity, sexual situations, implied violence.

Review: For Darkness Shows the Stars by Diana Peterfreund

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I have had For Darkness Shows the Stars sitting on my shelf since summer, because as soon as I hear the magic words “sci-fi Jane Austen retelling,” I am SOLD. (Not that I hear those words often, which is sad). But life and procrastination and over-commitment being what they are, I didn’t actually read it until over Thanksgiving. All the while being berated by friends who had red it and liked to yell at me, “WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?” And it was getting ridiculous, so I read it.

The Plot (from Goodreads)

It’s been several generations since a genetic experiment gone wrong caused the Reduction, decimating humanity and giving rise to a Luddite nobility who outlawed most technology.

Elliot North has always known her place in this world. Four years ago Elliot refused to run away with her childhood sweetheart, the servant Kai, choosing duty to her family’s estate over love. Since then the world has changed: a new class of Post-Reductionists is jumpstarting the wheel of progress, and Elliot’s estate is foundering, forcing her to rent land to the mysterious Cloud Fleet, a group of shipbuilders that includes renowned explorer Captain Malakai Wentforth–an almost unrecognizable Kai. And while Elliot wonders if this could be their second chance, Kai seems determined to show Elliot exactly what she gave up when she let him go.

But Elliot soon discovers her old friend carries a secret–one that could change their society . . . or bring it to its knees. And again, she’s faced with a choice: cling to what she’s been raised to believe, or cast her lot with the only boy she’s ever loved, even if she’s lost him forever.

Inspired by Jane Austen’s Persuasion, For Darkness Shows the Stars is a breathtaking romance about opening your mind to the future and your heart to the one person you know can break it.

My Thoughts

You know what Jane Austen does really, really well? Break my heart. She has this knack for making her characters suffer and suffer and suffer — all internally, where no one else can notice — and then, when you are pretty much ready to throw the book, she turns things around. In a way that is beautiful and immensely pleasing and redeems all the prior suffering.

This is what Diana Peterfreund does extremely well in For Darkness Shows the Stars. The childhood letters between Elliot and Kai, spanning all the years of their friendship, are an excellent illustration of what sort of relationship they had, and why Elliot is so heartbroken when he comes back cold and distant. I loved the character development, and Elliot’s struggle between loyalty to her family, her people, Kai, and the people under her care. All of the many ways she is pulled make sense, and there’s no obvious answer to what she should do. And of course, there’s the Austen-esque dilemmas of characters who are constantly trying to do what they think is best for another person, and of propriety and decorum keeping people from speaking their minds. Even though For Darkness Shows the Stars takes place in the future instead of Victorian times, the way the world is constructed makes the Austenian society work.

I also liked the premise of the world, and the back story of what happened with the Luddites and the Reduction. It was fascinating, and I actually wish the details had been more fully explored. All we ever got was a broad overview of what happened, and while it didn’t leave me with any confusion, I still had questions.

The only thing I had a problem with — which unfortunately kind of tainted my overall feelings of the book — is that Kai does something that Elliot has a huge ethical problem with. It’s a major conflict in the book, and there are extremely legitimate reasons why she SHOULD have a problem with what he did. And yet, by the end of the book, it’s like she’s decided this major thing — the thing that kept them apart four years ago, the thing that’s kept her from being able to trust him when he comes back — that thing suddenly is a non-issue. And it really shouldn’t be. I wish it had been addressed. Even a look into Elliot’s head at WHY this thing no longer mattered to her would have been helpful. As it was, I felt like a huge part of her character and the plot was left kind of unresolved, and that bothered me.

Did I still love the slow, torturous romance between Elliot and Kai? Absolutely. Did I cry reading Kai’s final letter? Buckets. The emotions were handled masterfully in this book, and again, the characters are wonderful. It’s just that pesky logic thing that kept me from absolutely LOVING this book. As it stands, I really, really enjoyed it.

Content guide: Contains mentions of physical and sexual abuse

Review: Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

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Review copy received from Scholastic

I have never read a purely werewolf book before. Werewolves as part of other stories, sure. But never a book that was only about werewolves. I wasn’t sure how I would feel about it, but I’ve heard good things about Shiver and I knew I liked Maggie Stiefvater’s writing style from reading The Raven Boys. And then Scholastic was awesome enough to send me the entire trilogy to review, so while I was on vacation last week, I plunged into the first book.

The Plot (from Goodreads)

For years, Grace has watched the wolves in the woods behind her house. One yellow-eyed wolf–her wolf–is a chilling presence she can’t seem to live without. Meanwhile, Sam has lived two lives: In winter, the frozen woods, the protection of the pack, and the silent company of a fearless girl. In summer, a few precious months of being human . . . until the cold makes him shift back again. Now, Grace meets a yellow-eyed boy whose familiarity takes her breath away. It’s her wolf. It has to be. But as winter nears, Sam must fight to stay human–or risk losing himself, and Grace, forever.

My Thoughts

My impression on this first book was kind of a mixed bag. On the positive side, I still really like Maggie Stiefvater’s writing. She has a great way of pulling a reader into the story and describing things in ways that are almost tangible. Of course, a huge part of Shiver revolves around the highly unpleasant sensation of being cold, which I hate, so sometimes I kind of wish her writing had been a little less visceral…but that’s what I get for reading a book called Shiver. That’s really much more my problem than the book’s.

I liked Grace and Sam (Sam probably a bit more than Grace), and while the book alternated their first-person points-of-view, I never found their rotating voices confusing. Each had their own distinctive ways of thinking and reacting (Do emo rockers really make up spontaneous song lyrics all the time? Is that a thing?) and I actually found it a bit refreshing to not stay with the same character the whole way through the story. I think either of them on their own for the entire book would have been a bit much, as both of them are preeeetty intense and kind of obsessive. So switching was good.

I also liked the way the werewolf mythology was handled. It was an interesting take on the archetype, presented very straightforwardly without a lot of bells and whistles. The characters even say on several occasions that the transformation from human to wolf is scientific, not magical (although it never really does explore this supposed “science,” which kind of takes away from that argument). But I like that the origin story of the wolves was not the focus. They simply were werewolves, which they dealt with, then moved on.

Now the parts I wasn’t so sold on. First, Grace’s obsession with the wolves is creeeeepy. Seriously, the girl really should have been in therapy for most of her life. She had a crush on a wolf. A wolf she had no idea was human for several months out of the year. So basically, she has a romantic attraction to an animal and this is somehow okay because we know he’s a wolf. But she doesn’t.

Sam does the same thing. At one point, another character asks them how long they’ve been going out, and he answers “six years.” Grace muses, “Of course he would count the time that we’d been two entirely different species.” (p.282)

WHY ‘OF COURSE’? WHY WOULD YOU COUNT THE TIME WHEN YOU WERE DIFFERENT SPECIES AS ‘GOING OUT’? WHY IS THIS NOT EXTREMELY CREEPY?

And this leads to my other issue with the book, which is because they both are apparently under the impression that they were carrying on some sort of romantic relationship while Sam was a wolf — and Grace had no idea he could turn into a human — they plunge right into a super-serious relationship the second he turns human. Even though their entire scope of interaction until that point has been staring at each other across her backyard. WHILE HE WAS A WOLF. This is now something on which to base a deep, borderline-obsessive relationship, apparently. It seemed very instalovey to me, and I know it’s not supposed to because of the aforementioned wolfy staring, but I just can’t count that as the basis for any sort of healthy human relationship.

So. Obviously that bothered me. And their obsession with each other really was a significant portion of the book, which means a significant portion of the book bothered me.

However. I will read the rest of the series, and not just out of obligation. See, I’m pretty sure that I’ll only ever have to experience Grace and Sam “falling in love” (while he is a four-legged furry animal) in this first book. Hopefully subsequent books focus on other parts of the story, like the interesting secondary characters, and the aftermath of the end of this book (which is a pretty solid ending), and the other werewolves. And those are all things I’m interested in reading about.

Content guide: Contains violence and teen sexual activity