artsy musings of a bibliophile

young adult

Review: Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

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LBSAB

ABOUT THE BOOK

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
young adult fantasy published by Henry Holt and Co. on May 17th, 2012
first book in The Grisha trilogy

The Shadow Fold, a swathe of impenetrable darkness, crawling with monsters that feast on human flesh, is slowly destroying the once-great nation of Ravka.

Alina, a pale, lonely orphan, discovers a unique power that thrusts her into the lavish world of the kingdom’s magical elite—the Grisha. Could she be the key to unravelling the dark fabric of the Shadow Fold and setting Ravka free?

The Darkling, a creature of seductive charm and terrifying power, leader of the Grisha. If Alina is to fulfil her destiny, she must discover how to unlock her gift and face up to her dangerous attraction to him.

But what of Mal, Alina’s childhood best friend? As Alina contemplates her dazzling new future, why can’t she ever quite forget him?

Glorious. Epic. Irresistible. Romance.

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Review: Wicked Games by Sean Olin

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ABOUT THE BOOK

young adult contemporary thriller published by Katherine Tegen Books on 10 June 2014

To all the locals in the small beach town of Dream Point, Carter and Lilah seem like the perfect It Couple-but their relationship is about to brutally unravel before everyone’s eyes.
Carter has always been a good guy, and while Lilah has a troubled past, she’s been a loyal girlfriend for the last four years. When smart, sexy Jules enters the picture at a senior-year bash, Carter succumbs to temptation. And when Lilah catches wind of his betrayal, she decides that Jules needs to pay.
By the end of the summer, the line between right and wrong will be blurred beyond recognition. Blood will be shed. Nothing in Dream Point will ever be the same.
This juicy summer read will keep readers turning pages until the shocking, nail-biting finale.

THE RATING

THE REVIEW

Wicked Games is one big cliché of a book. First off, it misled me into thinking it’s going to be steamy hot. It wasn’t. I also thought it was going to be nail-biting except we all know what happens to psychos ninety percent of the time, I worked past that because I thought it was going to be shocking. It ended with a twist alright, but then the epilogue killed it. Lastly, there were some cringe-worthy moments where Lilah does some really ugly stuff. However, it also made me roll my eyes because Carter couldn’t handle Lilah and Jules was so scared and paranoid that it was plain annoying.

There’s obviously something wrong with Lilah because she goes into periods of intense depression where she hurts herself. It has severely affected her current, as well as future, life. In her various failed attempts to hold on to Carter, she actually manages to push him away further. And oh, she’s got the I’m-going-to-keep-following-you-to-the-edge-of-the-world-until-you-realize-how-much-you-need-slash-love-me routine perfected to a tee.

However, the cheating aspect is downright stupid and wrought with oh-please-don’t-give-me-those-lame-excuses-about-how-Jules’s-so-beautiful-but-Lilah-but-oh-well-fuck-it. The thing where he doesn’t want to leave Lilah because he’s afraid of what she’ll do to herself is nullified in that moment, because you really do not have the integrity Jules think you do. So you know your girlfriend is disturbed and I get that you’re too annoyed at her to care, but going skinny dipping with an almost stranger is bound to end up the way it did. And then there’s Jules who’s had this big crush on Carter since their freshman year which is supposed to justify his sudden interest in her? Just… no.

Lilah’s instability is obviously a plot device in the book which I feel wasn’t handled all that well. She was smarter than Carter and Jules combined despite her mental insecurities and is probably the best character in the book. She’s just fixated on being with Carter no matter what and that’s much more admirable than Jules daydreaming about how Carter is such a gentleman. Aw shucks.

I don’t have anything against characters that are hard to like because of the things they do and that is never something that makes me hate a book. Why I had such a problem with Wicked Games is because how stupid Carter and Jules act. Carter has been in a four year relationship with Lilah and one night he just ups and stop caring about her despite knowing she’s going through series stuff? That is not okay. Then he tries to help her on his own which is idiotic at best. On the other hand, Jules is made to seem like she’s sexy, smart and artsy but in reality she’s just not that much of a nice-girl victim she’s seems to be.

In short, Wicked Games is one big no-no and that’s just sad. I’m just happy that it was a quick read because I wanted it all to be over. I also actually couldn’t stop reading it because I was intrigued. Then I figured out what was about to happen and it went down from there. I guess if I didn’t have so many expectations from it, I’d have enjoyed it more but then I’m not so sure. Oh well.

THE QUOTES

‘You can only be you. No matter how much you might want to be the person they think you should be, you can’t change who you are. It’s up to them to accept you.’ 

‘She felt like her life and everything it had ever contained were crashing down and burying her alive.’

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.’

Trend Alert: YA Adventures in Parts I

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Of trends and lesser-knowns.

Last September, an article in the Publisher’s Weekly asked some agents their thoughts on new trends in YA. Divided into several sections, there were talks about realistic contemporary being all the rage, a fifty-fifty speculation on whether thrillers are going to be the next big thing (a YA Gone Girl, anyone?), and an overall trilogy, paranormal and dystopian burnout. 
What struck me was a consensus of opinion on trilogy fatigue that is resulting in publishers completing two-book deals: two standalones / a title and a companion / a title and an undefined book. Debut as well as well-known authors such as R.C. Lewis (Stitching Snow, 2014), Stephanie Oakes (Minnow, 2015), Neal Shusterman (Challenger Deep, 2014), Anna-Marie McLemore (The Weight of Feathers, 2015), Corey Ann Haydu (Life by Committee, 2014), and Alexandra Sirowy (The Creeping, 2015) have all completed two-book deals in the last few years.

There’ve also been a rise in ‘duology and a third book’ deals. Yet these hardly seem to make a dent in an endless onslaught of YA trilogies.

ON THE COUNT OF THREE

We all love to hate and hate to love trilogies. An average reader has finished at least (this is totally my guess) one in their lifetime. It’s like adventure in three parts.

Only way to YA. (Source)

There’s always been talk of readers getting tired of trilogies that we now have a roadmap to guide us. Or at least, Asti does. We talked about duologies and trilogies on Twitter and I ended up asking her what first and third books in a trilogy entail as she wrote a blogpost on second book syndrome a while back. I get curious easily. Asti did an awesome job of coming up with these.

FIRST BOOK TRIAL

‘If you love it, great, continue series. If you don’t, no harm done, just move on.’

Except sometimes I want to live in a world where I don’t discontinue any series I start. Ranging from disappointing to phenomenal, first book are trials of all kinds. If the first book is perfect, it sets the bar high for the rest of the trilogy. If it has potential, it might either get better in the next one or end up suffering from second book syndrome. If it sucks, it feels like a waste of everything.

SECOND BOOK SYNDROME

‘Watch out for disappointment. Tread carefully. There’s no turning back now.’

There really is no turning back because the reader is now invested in the trilogy. If the second book turns out to be a filler book where the characters just seem to drift aimlessly, well, it’s rage-worthy and heartbreaking. The wait? Not worth it. But if everything from the first book is intensified in the second one, the story punches harder and everything is alight with feels.

THIRD BOOK REDEMPTION

‘Was the book worth it? Has your entire life been a waste? It’s all up to how that final book ends.’

Trilogy finales are tricky in that they represent the last 50 pages of a standalone book. From plot to the characters, everything can start to go downhill just as the end nears. But everything can also just twist and turn the reader’s mind all the way to the last page. It’s one hell of a ride ’cause series enders have a habit of burning too bright. A ride that have equal chances for the trilogy to be labeled as either trash or terrific.

You got trilogic feelings in your stomach? Totally legit. (Source)

Simply put, excess of anything is exhausting and trilogies have been around a long time now. From the mere number of series I’ve finished, I might just get tired of going through the same steps over and over. Every now and then, we all need a break.

So what if we want a different option for our break? An option that changes the way we look at series?

GOING ONE, GOING TWO

Duologies are strange. It seems lazy to just label them as series because it’s really just a book and its sequel. Why not just add a book instead and call it a trilogy. But is it all that simple? The answer is… complicated.

There are dualogies where we get to read both the main characters’ point of views in two different books instead of just one where they alternate. In such girl-and-boy-dualogies, there’s no need for the third book. Then there are books with sequels that fast-forward years later into a character’s life. There are also duologies which could have been awkward and really long standalones, instead.

Dualogies are becoming Forman’s forte. (Source)
So where all the stats at? I went number hunting because I want more of ’em in my life.

Despite a relatively recent surge in YA duologies, the ones that came just before 2012 were few and far between. If I Stay/Where She Went by Gayle Forman is the most popular YA duology ever.

– A Need So Beautiful and A Want So Wicked by Suzanne Young
– Clarity and Perception by Kim Harrington
– If I Stay and Where She Went by Gayle Forman
– Inside Out and Outside In by Maria V. Snyder
– Juliet Immortal and Romeo Redeemed by Stacey Jay
– Jumping Off Swings and Living with Jackie Chan by Jo Knowles
– Leaving Paradise and Return to Paradise by Simone Elkeles

But 2012 seemed to be a defining year for duologies with the release of popular titles like Rachel Hartman’s Seraphina and Kendare Blake’s Anna Dressed in Blood.

– Anna Dressed in Blood and Girl of Nightmares by Kendare Blake
– Breathe and Resist by Sarah Crossan
– Dark Kiss and Wicked Kiss by Michelle Rowen
– Every Day and Rhiannon by David Levithan
– Fracture and Vengeance by Megan Miranda
– Masque of the Red Death and Dance of the Red Death by Bethany Griffin
– Pretty Crooked and Pretty Sly by Elisa Ludwig
– Seraphina and Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman
– Silver and Gold by Talia Vance
– Slide and Imposter by Jill Hathaway
– Struck and Aftershock by Jennifer Bosworth
– The Creative Fire and The Diamond Deep by Brenda Cooper

2013 only arrived with most duologies till date. Gayle Forman’s Just One Day and Kasie West’s Pivot Point were two of the popular duologies of the year.

– Arclight and Meridian by Josin L. McQuein
– All Our Yesterdays and Untitled by Cristin Terrill
– Dualed and Divided by Elsie Chapman
– Control and Catalyst by Lydia Kang
– Gated and Astray by Amy Christine Parker
– In the After and In the End by Demitria Lunetta
– Just One Day and Just One Year by Gayle Forman
– Linked and Unravel by Imogen Howson
– Mind Games and Perfect Lies by Kiersten White
– My Life Next Door and The Boy Most Likely To by Huntley Fitzpatrick
– Not a Drop to Drink and In a Handful of Dust by Mindy McGinnis
– Pivot Point and Split Second by Kasie West
– Reboot and Rebel by Amy Tintera
– Starglass and Starbreak by Phoebe North
– Starters and Enders by Lissa Price
– The Program and The Treatment by Suzanne Young
– The Rules for Disappearing and The Rules for Breaking by Ashley Elston
– The Ward and Untitled by Jordana Frankel

 

2014 looks like an exciting year for duologies. We’ve only passed the first quarter and some of the duologies have already been released. Jenny Han’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before seem to be the most anticiapted release for the year.

– Alienated and Invaded by Melissa Landers
– Avalon and Polaris by Mindee Arnett
– Blackbird and Untitled by Anna Carey
– Dark Metropolis and Untitled by Jaclyn Dolamore
– Disruption and Corruption by Jessica Shirvington
– Landry Park and Untitled by Bethany Hagen
– To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and P.S. I Still Love You by Jenny Han
– Uninvited and Unleashed by Sophie Jordan
– White Space and The Dickens Mirror by Ilsa J. Bick

Is this trend going to continue in 2015 and beyond? My answer is a yes. Just look at all the awesome in the list.

– A Darker Shade of Magic and Untitled by Victoria Schwab
– Kalahari and Untitled by Jessica Khoury
– Kissing in America and Untitled by Margo Rabb
– Passenger and Wayfarer by Alexandra Bracken

TREND AND GO.

What I like about the trend is that duologies offer the chance to get into a genre without the burnout factor. Currently, I’m more willing to read a dystopian duology than I am a dystopian trilogy because it just seems easier in every way. This also gives a chance for contemporaries to expand beyond one book. Right now, there either seems to be never-ending series (re: Sara Shepard’s Pretty Little Liars) or just standalones for the genre.

In the end, it may seem as if duologies are pointless because why not just add a book? I’ve often wondered about this and after finishing two duologies, they didn’t seem redundant to me. However, my opinion of them is still evolving. Meanwhile, I’m ready for series that aren’t trilogies.

Are you partial towards YA adventures in parts? Willing to duology or are trilogies enough? Excited about any of the titles? Any other thoughts?

P.S. I’ve also made a Goodreads list for duologies and companions.