artsy musings of a bibliophile

contemporary

Review: Life by Committee by Corey Ann Haydu

by

CAHLBC

ABOUT THE BOOK

Life by Committee by Corey Ann Haydu
young adult realistic contemporary published by Katherine Tegen Books on May 13th, 2014

Some secrets are too good to keep.

Tabitha might be the only girl in the history of the world who actually gets less popular when she gets hot. But her so-called friends say she’s changed, and they’ve dropped her flat.

Now Tab has no one to tell about the best and worst thing that has ever happened to her: Joe, who spills his most intimate secrets to her in their nightly online chats. Joe, whose touch is so electric, it makes Tab wonder if she could survive an actual kiss. Joe, who has Tabitha brimming with the restless energy of falling in love. Joe, who is someone else’s boyfriend.

Just when Tab is afraid she’ll burst from keeping the secret of Joe inside, she finds Life by Committee. The rules of LBC are simple: tell a secret, receive an assignment. Complete the assignment to keep your secret safe.

Tab likes it that the assignments push her to her limits, empowering her to live boldly and go further than she’d ever go on her own.

But in the name of truth and bravery, how far is too far to go?

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Review: The Taking by Kimberly Derting

by

KDTT

ABOUT THE BOOK

The Taking by Kimberly Derting
young adult contemporary science fiction published by HarperTeen on April 29th, 2014
first book in The Taking series

A flash of white light . . . and then . . . nothing. 

When sixteen-year-old Kyra Agnew wakes up behind a Dumpster at the Gas ’n’ Sip, she has no memory of how she got there. With a terrible headache and a major case of déjà vu, she heads home only to discover that five years have passed . . . yet she hasn’t aged a day.

Everything else about Kyra’s old life is different. Her parents are divorced, her boyfriend, Austin, is in college and dating her best friend, and her dad has changed from an uptight neat-freak to a drunken conspiracy theorist who blames her five-year disappearance on little green men.

Confused and lost, Kyra isn’t sure how to move forward unless she uncovers the truth. With Austin gone, she turns to Tyler, Austin’s annoying kid brother, who is now seventeen and who she has a sudden undeniable attraction to. As Tyler and Kyra retrace her steps from the fateful night of her disappearance, they discover strange phenomena that no one can explain, and they begin to wonder if Kyra’s father is not as crazy as he seems. There are others like her who have been taken . . . and returned. Kyra races to find an explanation and reclaim the life she once had, but what if the life she wants back is not her own?

THE RATING

 

THE REVIEW

The Taking is an engaging read but only if you can get past the falling-for-my-ex-boyfriend’s-little-brother part. I couldn’t get past it and so, I’m really the only to blame for wanting to read The Taking. I read the summary, I knew she was going to fall for Tyler AKA the little brother but, I guess I just didn’t pay attention. Also, it kind of reminded me of Jacob imprinting on Renesmee and not in a good way (spoiler alert: there’s no good way).

What makes it so creepy is the fact that, for Kyra, it only has been less than a day since she was 16 and forever in love with Austin before she disappeared. For everyone else in her life, it’s been 5 years since Kyra disappeared and they’ve tried to overcome her loss and eventually moved on, because that’s life. However, for Kyra, that’s unfair because she was pretty much having the time of her life at 16 and now everything is a mess. Then there’s the mystery of what actually happened to her.

Much of the first part of the book is slow because it’s all about how Kyra feels alienated (no pun intended) from her parents and that is true. She does feel that way and no one around her seems to understand this except Tyler. So, she naturally gravitates toward him and immediately starts having all these feelings for him. Tyler, on the other hand, seems like has been waiting for something like this to happen ’cause he had a crush on her and now has a way of actually showing it which ew. I did like all those chalk drawings he did for her though, but that’s about it.

Kyra could care less about why she hasn’t aged and what happened to her which really made me want to shake her because man, why are you so disinterested in your own disappearance? Her father has all these theories about what happened to her and when he mentions it to her, she freaks out on him. Really freaks out. Her mother is another issue because she really has a hard time connecting with Kyra after so many years. Understandably, Kya is angry with her but thinking ‘she’d squeezed out her new kid’ about your mother? Not cool.

What finally pushes Kyra to investigate her disappearance is another character’s approach when he basically saves her life by warning her on time. I still don’t know how I feel about the whole alien abduction part of the story and the ending was, in a word, predictable. For the plot to work, that had to happen. It finally clicked, though, the reason why Kyra fell so fast for Tyler. Yet I just feel like the The Taking was planned in a way that it works for the story but not the characters themselves and that’s just disappointing.

THE QUOTES

‘Sometimes those few seconds of hope were worth the crash back to reality.’

Review: Panic by Lauren Oliver

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ABOUT THE BOOK

Panic by Lauren Oliver
young adult contemporary thriller published by HarperCollins on 4 March 2014 

Panic began as so many things do in Carp, a dead-end town of twelve thousand people in the middle of nowhere: because it was summer, and there was nothing else to do.

Heather never thought she would compete in Panic, a legendary game played by graduating seniors, where the stakes are high and the payoff is even higher. She’d never thought of herself as fearless, the kind of person who would fight to stand out. But when she finds something, and someone, to fight for, she will discover that she is braver than she ever thought.
Dodge has never been afraid of Panic. His secret will fuel him, and get him all the way through the game; he’s sure of it. But what he doesn’t know is that he’s not the only one with a secret. Everyone has something to play for.
For Heather and Dodge, the game will bring new alliances, unexpected revelations, and the possibility of first love for each of them—and the knowledge that sometimes the very things we fear are those we need the most.

THE RATING


THE REVIEW

For the town of Carp, Panic is more than just a feeling. It’s a rite of passage. It gives the town’s sheriff something to investigate on and the townspeople something to look forward to in the summer. Most importantly, it gives its winner a chance to get the hell out of Carp. Panic is very real. But proving oneself worthy of winning more than 50K is more real than that. The catch? You’ll never know who the judges are and you won’t know what the challenges are until the day of. It’s like a reality TV show that really has no script.

So something can always go wrong. And it does.

For starters, the stakes are high. The police are after anyone who may be playing Panic. The players are in for some real surprises and the ones who are really good at it do not even want the money so much. There’s just this need to prove that they can play which is just really disappointing. When doing tasks, the players are all afraid but right before and after them, they’re all…casual. This is what made Panic so drudging to me. The challenges are stupid and reckless but they really require hardcore courage to complete them. But I never got that from either Heather or Dodge.

Heather takes part in the game on a whim; though it’s very clear what, or who, spurs her decision. Her life is hard and the only people who are constant in her life are her little sister, Lily and her best friend, Bishop. But Lily is having a hard time dealing with how things are at home while, Bishop seems distant right when Heather admits to herself that she might be falling for him. Nat, her other best friend, is just busy trying to win Panic so she can go to Hollywood to and start her modeling career.

Dodge is playing Panic for revenge. Despite everything that led him to that decision, I could never discount the feeling that the revenge aspect was stupid. Probably because it is. And that’s all I got on him even though half the book is from his perspective. His role is typical; will-do-anything-to-win which got really old, really fast.

As a game, Panic isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. There is never any sense of desperation, the desperation to win. The competitive streak. That could be because of the way things proceeded because the revelation wasn’t surprising to me as I picked off on all the hints before. By the time the end rolled in, everything just fizzled out.
I was never fully invested in the characters because their reasons for playing Panic did not equal the risks involved. Moreover, the tiny hints about the whole mystery took the surprise out of the whole thing. With a plot that never really grabbed me and characters who acted predictably, for me, Panic turned out to be a forgettable read. 

THE QUOTES

‘Why did time have to be the wrong kind of relative?’ 

‘It was so strange, the way that life moved forward: the twists and the dead ends, the sudden opportunities. She supposed if you could predict or foresee everything that was going to happen, you’d lose the motivation to go through it all. The promise was always in the possibility.’

Review: No One Else Can Have You by Kathleen Hale

by

KHNOECHY

ABOUT THE BOOK

No One Else Can Have You by Kathleen Hale
young adult contemporary mystery published by HarperTeen on January 7th, 2014

Small towns are nothing if not friendly. Friendship, Wisconsin (population: 689 688) is no different. Around here, everyone wears a smile. And no one ever locks their doors. Until, that is, high school sweetheart Ruth Fried is found murdered. Strung up like a scarecrow in the middle of a cornfield.

Unfortunately, Friendship’s police are more adept at looking for lost pets than catching killers. So Ruth’s best friend, Kippy Bushman, armed with only her tenacious Midwestern spirit and Ruth’s secret diary (which Ruth’s mother had asked her to read in order to redact any, you know, sex parts), sets out to find the murderer. But in a quiet town like Friendship—where no one is a suspect—anyone could be the killer.

 

THE RATING


THE REVIEW

No One Else Can Have You is a weird book with a strikingly odd main character, Kippy Bushman, who lives in a safe, small town of Friendship, Wisconsin. I am aware of all the did-not-finish, what-a-slut-shaming-main-character, what-the-hell-is-this-book responses out there and you know what? All that coupled with a healthy dose of unease is a vital part of No One Else Can Have You. The reader has to be far out of reach of their comfort zone to read and enjoy it. So yes, I understand why certain readers couldn’t stomach all the weirdness that is this book but I could, I did and it was gruesomely aweinspiring.

The prologue of No One Else Can Have You sets such an eerie-ingly horrifying tone and that it’s hard not to cringe. It’s about a page long and it’s so disturbing that it still lingers in the back of a mind.

Kippy Bushman is equally flawed in her judgements of people and in her awkward quirkiness. She’s obviously had a hard time connecting to people which is painful to read about. Her relationship with her father, Dom, is as bizarre as the turtlenecks that are her standard choice of apparel. Ever since she lost her mother to madness and imminent death, Kippy Bushman has been overly attached to her only friend, Ruth Fried. But now that’s Ruth dead, well, that is enough of a push she needs to spring out of her shell.

You see, despite being her best friend, Ruth did not like Kippy. Sure, she appreciated their friendship but she wasn’t as good a friend as she seemed to be. And to know that your only friend in the world thinks that you’re pathetic to the point of being nauseous and that she was having an affair with a much older man only a few hours before that friend’s funeral is all just too much for Kippy to comprehend. So it’s no wonder that the funeral turns out to be the disastrous of funerals which is only the beginning.

Kippy is torn between her grief and anger over Ruth’s murder. With Ruth’s parents out of town, Dom acting all soft towards her and Ralph being his usual video-game-obsessed-neighbour-slash-second-best-friend, she turns to Davey to express her unease over Ruth’s murder and her alleged killer. Davey is Ruth’s brother back from war in Afghanistan minus one of his fingers. The almost-strangers-to-each-other duo manage to work together for a while before it all goes even further south for Kippy. With an avenging Sheriff, an overprotective father and a sketchy old lawyer, Kippy has her hands full trying to sort it all out but with a history of unintentional violence, it’s only a matter of time before the nice small town of Friendship turns on her for supporting the alleged killer.

No One Else Can Have You is a debut that tests the reader with its endless oddities. Despite being a little wary to pick it up, the disturbing prologue and the engaging mystery soon replaced my wariness. Whilst there are some things that are somewhat ridiculous and a bit exaggerated, they’re dismissible enough to not affect the murder mystery. Guessing and trying to sort out the mystery coupled with a dark and looming tone of the story makes the experience of reading No One Else Can Have You unique. If you are into reading an uncomfortable, character-driven story of a strange girl with her stranger behavior who’s too cool for a town named Friendship, this book is for you.

 

THE QUOTES

‘But I guess I still have this fear that you can catch invisible things from other people. That someone else’s insanity can creep under your skin and fry your brain.’


‘Now that I’m awake, I think of what I’ve lost and tumble between utter remorse and childlike hope, anxiously retracing all my wrong moves and praying for time machines. Part of me imagines clawing through the jungle surrounding this asylum, and crawling all the way to Davey—playing some kind of love song on a guitar outside his window, even though I don’t know how to play guitar—and begging for his company back.’

Review: The Promise of Amazing by Robin Constantine

by

RCTPOA

ABOUT THE BOOK

The Promise of Amazing by Robin Constantine
young adult contemporary romance published by Balzer + Bray on December 31st, 2013

Wren Caswell is average. Ranked in the middle of her class at Sacred Heart, she’s not popular, but not a social misfit. Wren is the quiet, “good” girl who’s always done what she’s supposed to—only now in her junior year, this passive strategy is backfiring. She wants to change, but doesn’t know how.

Grayson Barrett was the king of St. Gabe’s. Star of the lacrosse team, top of his class, on a fast track to a brilliant future—until he was expelled for being a “term paper pimp” Now Gray is in a downward spiral and needs to change, but doesn’t know how.

One fateful night their paths cross when Wren, working at her family’s Arthurian-themed catering hall, performs the Heimlich on Gray as he chokes on a cocktail weenie, saving his life literally and figuratively. What follows is the complicated, awkward, hilarious, and tender tale of two teens shedding their pasts, figuring out who they are—and falling in love.

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