Category Archives: Young Adult

Review: Perception by Kim Harrington (@Scholastic)

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Received from Scholastic for the purpose of review

Perception, by Kim Harrington, is the sequel to Clarity, which I reviewed (and enjoyed) here. Clarity was a quick, fun read, and I jumped right into Perception the moment I put it down, anxious to hear about more of Clare’s psychic mystery-solving shenanigans.

The Plot

Clarity “Clare” Fern, teen psychic, is adjusting to her newfound social acceptance after using her powers to help solve the murder of a teenage tourist over the summer. Her ex-boyfriend, Justin, has made it clear he’d like to start over, and she’s also being pursued by the dark and smoldering new detective’s son, Gabriel. In addition, the girls who previously shunned her at school are now clamoring to be her friends, with the glaring exception of arch-nemesis mean girl, Tiffany.

But as the school year starts, the air is abuzz with gossip about the recent disappearance of a girl no one really knew. Did she run away? Or was she taken?

Meanwhile, Clare starts receiving notes from a secret admirer, and Justin and Gabriel swear it’s neither of them.

Clare decides to dust off her detective skills again: to discover not only what’s happened to the missing girl, but to unveil the identity of her mysterious suitor.

My Thoughts

Much like Clarity, Perception is an exciting, fast-paced teen mystery channeling the essence of Veronica Mars, but with psychic powers. (P.S. If you’ve never watched Veronica Mars, you really, really should).

The love triangle between Clare, Justin, and Gabriel is still a huge part of the story, even moreso than in Clarity, since the secret admirer plot line obviously places a lot of attention on Clare’s love life. I still see why she’s torn between the two of them and why the choice isn’t obvious, but I am happy to report that she does make a decision by the end of the book, and that it makes sense.

Clare was still smart and sassy, although occasionally painfully oblivious. She suffers from severe tunnel vision in some instances and misses some pretty big clues, but overall she was still an enjoyable character. And after all, she’s not really a trained detective, so it actually makes sense that she wasn’t picking up on everything.

Justin and Gabriel didn’t grow a whole lot from the first book. I still liked them both, but didn’t gain a lot of new insight into either of them. Yes, we learn a couple new things, but my opinion on both of them remained pretty much unchanged. It would have been nice to peel back a few more layers. But since I liked them in Clarity, I still liked them here.

The character who changes the most is Clare’s brother, Perry. The events of Clarity hit him the hardest, and it’s sad to see what has become of his character. While on the one hand, he is no longer the flippant womanizer of the first book (which is a bonus, in my eyes), his new personality isn’t much of an improvement. I still like him, in spite of his flaws, but he wasn’t a “fun” character in this book (and he wasn’t supposed to be). I actually really appreciated that the huge developments in Clarity didn’t just roll off his back, and that he needs to take time to process and overcome them.

As for the mysteries, I was a little less satisfied in this book than in the prior one. I felt like the clues were more obvious, and I’d figured out who the bad guy was really early in the story, despite a red herring that practically jumped up and down and screamed, “LOOK AT ME! I’M A RED HERRING!” It was still engaging and entertaining to solve the mystery alongside Clare, but didn’t have the same impact that the first book did, in my opinion.

Overall, I really enjoyed this follow-up to Clarity, and would be interested to continue reading about the mysteries that Clare solves.

Content guide: Contains violence, profanity.

Top Ten Tuesday (July 17) – Top Ten Books For People Who Like The Hunger Games

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Welcome to another Top Ten Tuesday, brought to you by the masterminds over at The Broke and the Bookish!

This week, we’re picking book recommendations for people who liked a certain book, and while I’m sure my choice is going to be popular, I’m doing it anyway because when I finished this book, I could have used a list like this. Don’t get me wrong — this list exists, all over the Internet, and I’m sure many more versions are going to pop up today. But the ones I found led me wrong. They suggested books I didn’t like. So I’m making my own.

Warning: I’m going to genre-hop a bit.

Top Ten Books for People Who Like The Hunger Games Series…

…for the Action

The Maze Runner by James Dashner.

…for the Dystopian Setting

Delirium by Lauren Oliver

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi

…for the Action AND the Dystopian Setting

Divergent by Veronica Roth

The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa

…for the Strong Heroine

The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson

Defiance by C.J. Redwine

Graceling by Kristin Cashore

…for the Plot

Battle Royale by Koushun Takami

[Disclaimer: I have not read this book, but I hear the plot is very similar to Hunger Games. I’ve also read interviews with Suzanne Collins where she said she didn’t know this book existed prior to her writing HG, and I believe her. Sometimes people just have similar ideas. It’s happened to me. It could happen to you. But I also think this list would be incomplete if it didn’t include the book that Hunger Games is most often compared to.]

Happy reading everyone!

Review: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (@realjohngreen @duttonbooks)

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If you follow any book blogs that are not my book blog, you’ve probably heard that John Green is the best thing to happen in the world of books since Gutenberg. At least that’s the way I understood it. And I wasn’t sure what all the fuss was about, since I’d never read a John Green book.

So I decided to remedy this problem by checking out his newest book, The Fault in Our Stars. All I knew was that it was about kids with cancer, and it was supposedly heartbreaking and life-changing.

The Plot

The Fault in Our Stars is the story of Hazel, a 16-year-old 3-year survivor of Stage IV thyroid cancer. Hazel’s diagnosis has never been anything but terminal, but she still tries her best to live a normal life and stay positive for her parents. And one of the things that helps her parents is for her to attend a support group of other kids with cancer.

One day, Hazel arrives at support group to see a new boy in the circle. His name is Augustus “Gus” Waters, and although he has lost a leg to osteosarcoma, he says he’s mostly there as moral support for a friend. Gus takes an immediate interest in Hazel, who is initially reluctant to open up to anyone new. But eventually, Gus and Hazel decide to take the plunge, even though their future is uncertain.

My Thoughts

First of all, this book wrecked me. Wrecked. Me. I was a sniffling, sobbing mess starting about 2/3 of the way through the book. My husband came in and was like, “Hey, got something in your eye?” (Because he is a heckler and has a heart like a STONE), and I choked out between ugly-cries, “It’s about KIDS with CANCER! LEAVE ME ALONE!” And he skedaddled out of there.

So if you want a book to make you cry, I’d suggest this one.

But this book is not all tears and angst. It’s actually full of humor and sweetness. Considering it’s a book about KIDS with CANCER, I was not expecting to laugh so much. But laugh I did.

The highlight of the book for me was the characters of Hazel and Gus. It’s funny, because I was reading along and thinking “Wow, Hazel and Gus remind me of some of my friends from high school. Especially Gus, who is pretty much EXACTLY like this guy I knew, except for the cancer thing.” And then I went online and read some reviews, and the first ones I read were complaining that Hazel and Gus were unrealistic, and no teens act or talk like them. Just goes to show that how we perceive things is heavily dependent on our own life experiences.

So just for the record, yes, some teens act and talk like Hazel and Gus. Some teens have large vocabularies and use SAT words in everyday conversation. If you take out all the cancer references, I swear I had some of the Hazel-Gus conversations when I was in high school.

Yes, I was a nerd. But that’s neither here nor there.

On top of the great characterizations and dialogue, the storytelling was excellent. I was riveted by the first page, and couldn’t find a good place to put the book down, so I wound up reading the whole thing in a day. Which is no small feat when you have to also be parenting and cleaning and cooking and all those other things responsible adults do.  But it was just one of those books that you have to keep reading, even when you realize it’s going to rip out your heart and stomp on your soul.

I loved the friendships in the book; I loved the sweet and sad way that Gus and Hazel’s relationship developed;I loved the glimpses into their friend Isaac, Hazel’s and Gus’ parents, and the members of their support group. I loved how real and raw and honest Hazel and Gus were about what they were going through. Basically, I loved everything about this book, except for the way it utterly ruined me. And I even kind of loved that.

Some people say this book has a twist. I didn’t really think of it as a twist — nothing in the book surprised me — and I think if you go into it expecting it to shock and amaze you, you may come out disappointed.

However, if you read this book for the great characters, fantastic dialogue, and gut-wrenching levels of emotion, you will be satisfied. At least I hope you will be. I was.

Even though it wrecked me.

Content Guide: Contains sex, profanity, and difficult situations dealing with cancer and death.

Review: Glitch by Heather Anastasiu

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Glitch is the first book in a new sci-fi dystopian trilogy by Heather Anastasiu. I received it as a digital review copy from NetGalley.

Plot

Set over a hundred years in the future, Zoe lives in the Community, where humans have been implanted with technology to rid them of their emotions and dull their senses. Logic and duty reign supreme, and the population is kept calm and unified by a constant connection to the Link network.

However, recently Zoe has been “glitching.” Her connection to the Link has turned sporadic, and she has started experiencing emotions. Initially terrified, she contemplates turning herself into the Regulators to be repaired. But the more emotion she experiences, she less sure she is that she wants to be repaired.

Her situation is further complicated when she meets two more “glitchers.” One, Adrien, is a a member of the Resistance, currently working undercover in the Community to find and protect other glitchers. The other, Max, is an association from school who has very different ideas about what the glitching means for Zoe and the Community.

Additionally, glitchers’ brains have to rewire themselves to get around the Community tech,  and sometimes — like in the cases of Zoe, Max and Adrien — this rewiring leads them to develop unique and unprecedented new powers. Powers like telekinesis and shape-shifting.

Now the three of them must work together to keep themselves out of the hands of the Regulators. If they are discovered, it could mean deactivation…or worse.

My Thoughts:

Glitch is a fun, fast-paced cross between sci-fi, dystopian, and comic books. At times, it really feels like a bit of a grab-bag of pop culture. The law against emotion is reminiscent of Delirium. The superpowers-as-the-next-step-in-human-evolution plot reeks of X-Men. The villain is a hybrid of baddies from Uglies and Mockingjay. And then of course there’s the ubiquitous love triangle, which could remind you of the Twilight saga, or, you know, almost every YA book written in the last few years.

So yes, it’s somewhat formulaic. But the characters and the way they react to their world are unique, and again I must reiterate: there really are no new ideas in books. Just variations on tried and true themes. So does it bother me that Glitch reminded me of at least 5 other stories that I enjoyed? No.

Taken on its own merits, Glitch was a really enjoyable read. The pacing is quick and there’s not a ton of world-building, but it’s direct and understandable. I liked Zoe fine, although I liked Adrien more (despite his frequent and annoying use of future-expletives “cracking” and “shunting”). They jumped quickly from one perilous situation to another, with very little down time, making the reading experience akin to watching an action movie.

I hated Max, and probably my biggest complaint with the book  was the fact that Zoe cared so much about him. He was controlling, manipulative and petty. I kept waiting for the book to peel back a layer of his character that would reveal him to be someone I should care about — at all — but every time we learned something about him, it just made me dislike him more. I hope the “love triangle” aspect of the story gets kicked to the curb immediately in the next book.

I found myself vacillating between thinking the characters were behaving in a way that makes sense in a world with no emotions, and thinking there is no way they would act like this if they had no previous experience with emotions. It must have been a hard line to walk in the writing (it would have gotten old, really quickly, for Zoe to have been shocked and confused every time she felt something new, and to never have a name for what she was feeling), but sometimes it just seemed a little odd that she knew exactly what she was feeling.

For example, she seems to have no trouble identifying when she feels angry, or scared, or sad. But she is completely flummoxed when it comes to her feelings of infatuation and friendship. Granted, those are more complex feelings, but the fact that she’s able to so quickly put a name to her negative emotions while being utterly baffled by the positive ones is a bit contradictory.

The superpowers were fun, albeit not explained very well. We’re meant to understand that if a brain can rewire itself to glitch, then it can also rewire itself to have superpowers. And hopefully, you can accept that at face value, because that’s all the explanation we’re given. But in the world of superheroes, suspension of disbelief is a must (after all, other superhero origin stories include a radioactive spider bite, genetic mutation, secret ooze, and accidental exposure to a gamma bomb).

Overall, I’d recommend Glitch to sci-fi and dystopian fans looking for a quick and exciting read with some comic-y cheesiness thrown in for good measure. It’s not going to inspire deep thoughts about the nature of the universe, but it would make a pretty neat Michael Bay movie.

Content guide: contains some violence and sexual content.

Review: Clarity by Kim Harrington (@Scholastic)

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Received from Scholastic for review purposes.

I’ve had Clarity by Kim Harrington sitting on my shelf for a few months now. Scholastic was awesome and sent it to me, along with its sequel, Perception, very shortly after I started blogging. While I was intrigued by the summary and the covers are gorgeous*, I hadn’t gotten around to reading them yet. I like mysteries, but I need to be in the right mindset. However, I finally got “there” recently, and read them both back-to-back.

It was a lot of fun.

The Plot

Clarity “Clare” Fern has always been different. She is a psychic, and through touch, she can sometimes pick up on memories associated with objects. Her gift wasn’t a big shock – her mother is a telepath (can read people’s thoughts), and her brother Periwinkle, “Perry”, is a medium (can speak to  the dead). Their supernatural gifts are just something inherited through their genes, and they use them to make a living in the family business: doing “readings” in the tourist town of Eastport, Massachusetts.

Clare has always been a bit of an outcast because of her gift, but one day she gets thrust into the spotlight when a teenage tourist is killed, and the police reluctantly enlist her help to solve the crime. Now Clare finds herself at the center of a mysterious and dangerous web of secrets, while forced to work alongside her ex-boyfriend, Justin, and Gabriel, the skeptical son of the new town detective.

My Thoughts

Clarity was kind of like Veronica Mars, if Veronica was raised by her mom instead of her dad, wasn’t actually a trained detective, and was psychic. Which kind of sounds not at all like Veronica Mars, but just bear with me here. They’re both social outcasts, sassy and sarcastic, and solve crimes by tying lots of seemingly insignificant details together (although Veronica uses her razor-sharp intelligence to do this, while Clare mostly uses her psychic powers). And although both have significant trouble fitting in at school, they seem to have absolutely no problems getting all the town’s most eligible bachelors to go gaga over them.

So that said, this book appealed to the part of me that loves (loves) Veronica Mars. I enjoy reading about a sassy teen girl solving crimes, and I even enjoy the far-fetched lovey-dovey angst (normally I am heavily anti-love-triangle, but I felt like it worked in this book, even though I still fail to see how the town outcast gets all the most desirable boys in town swooning over her).

I liked how the mystery was presented. Clues were dropped throughout the narrative, making it possible (but difficult) for me to guess who the killer was, and what their motives were. I had it narrowed down to a couple options by the time the book hit its culmination, and while I can smugly say “I was right,” I was also wrong. And I definitely changed my mind a few times throughout the course of the story. I felt like the story had great pacing and the momentum built nicely all the way through to the climax. And while the ending was certainly open to sequels, it was satisfying.

The characters were enjoyable, and I liked how most of them actually served a purpose. There were very few filler characters, which means if someone was mentioned, it was relevant (at least in a minor way). I really enjoyed Clare’s brother Perry, as well as her mom, even though both characters had major flaws. And although there was a love triangle, it wasn’t terrible, and you could actually see why she would be conflicted over these two guys (as opposed to many books where one choice is obviously wrong).

There were parts of the plot that were far-fetched. For some reason, although Clare can’t seem to make friends to save her life because of her psychic ability, her brother (the medium) is described as being popular. There were times when the police allowed her and her family to do things and go places that I don’t think would ever be allowed by the real police. And as far as I know, “son of a detective” isn’t actually anything, and would not entitle Gabriel to any rights or privileges whatsoever in real life; but in the book, he seems to have been practically deputized. So if it’s going to bother you that stuff happens in this book that would not happen in real life (supernatural abilities aside), then you may want to skip this one. A healthy suspension of disbelief is necessary.

However, as far as I’m concerned, Clarity was a fun, exciting, entertaining read that kept me guessing until the end and left me satisfied once it was over. And that’s really all I wanted, so I was happy.

Content guide: Contains violence, some talk of sex, and occasional profanity

*Disclaimer: The original cover art for Clarity, which is what I have, is actually this. But I’ve shown the updated cover on this post, because it matches the sequel cover art, and because I think it matches the story better.