These Broken Stars

I don’t know what to say about this one.  I honestly don’t know if I liked it or not.  Basically, your average Joe small-town war hero crash lands on a deserted planet with the daughter of the richest guy in the galaxy.  Drama ensues.  I thought a lot more could have been done with the world they landed on, especially since so many hints were dropped along the way that “something wasn’t right.”  It was another story (yes, another one!) where I was really excited that the author was going to take me on this awesome journey and wrap it up nicely without me having to take a giant leap of faith, and the actual conclusion left me a little disappointed as I scratched my head and wondered what moment took it too far.  Sigh.  At least this story did not contain a giant flying squid.  That would have pushed me over the edge.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13138635-these-broken-stars?from_search=true

Poor Little Dead Girls

Also known as Barbie and the Secret Society.  Interesting at first, almost pulled me in, then became too contrived and lost my interest.  It took too long to figure out exactly what the plot was, and the resolution was…hmmm….odd.  And I totally called it.  I wish the story could have focused more on the issues of the scholarship girl trying to make it in high society and less on the creepy hospital and Skull and Bones-like underworld.

His Fair Assassins

I listened to the story GraveMercy, book 1 in this series, mostly while riding around on my ATV.  I thought the premise of the story was very creative and interesting.   The characters were engaging, but the plot dragged for me and I get bogged down by the abundance of political intrigue.  I honestly can’t remember how it ended… but I think I will put it on my list of books to go back and reread because I think it deserves a second look.

When Nothing Else Works

This is a book for early childhood professionals that addresses challenging behaviors in the classroom.  Now, it reads much like a textbook (maybe it is used as one) but contains much useful information.  The book is divided into chapters that help look at behaviors from multiple views including personality, needs, environment, and reactions.  It gives well-documented proof that the views it puts forth are sound principles.  The one short-coming is that everything in it is quite generalized.  Of course, this is necessary in a textbook situation where you are trying to equip a beginning teacher with tools to enter the classroom with, but it would be frustrating to a seasoned professional who may not be able to tell where to look for answers to an ongoing issue because they do not know where a behavior stems from.    That being said, I believe this text would be a welcome addition to early childhood curriculums and many parents could benefit from reading it as well.

Money Run by Jack Heath

Teenagers looking to get rich often get themselves in loads of trouble.  Which, fortunately, can make for some very good literature if the author knows what he is doing.  Mr. Heath was well up to that challenge.   Ashley and Benjamin get in way over their heads when an assassin shows up on scene when they think they are about to hit it big.  And then you won’t stop reading until you finish, famished and uncomfortable because you haven’t eaten or taken a bathroom break for several hours.

All Our Yesterdays

Oooo, this one was niiiice.  We have ourselves a little time-travel story all mixed together with a mystery/thriller.  You will not be disappointed with the twists that the author added here.  Em and Finn are great characters, and you really feel for everyone.  It’s really just a bad situation that got out of hand. I buy that.  Happens all the time.  I was very happy with the final pages of the book and had to give props to the author for having everything mapped out nicely without sharing it with the reader until the very end.

Rose Under Fire

Nothing I can write in a review can give enough credit to this book.  From the author of Code Name Verity comes a great World War II story that takes the reader into a believable, yet horrifying look into the Ravensbruck concentration camp from the view of a female pilot.  My advice for Code Name Verity was to read it.  My advice for Rose Under Fire is this: read it, and tell the world.

Lies Beneath by Anne Greenwood Brown

The first mermaid…uh, merman book I have honestly ever read.  Definitely not my genre, but nonetheless a good read.  I enjoyed that the mermaids weren’t solidly the Disney stereotype, but also avoided being slimy, fanged harpies.  Not sure I would read more like it, but I enjoyed the trip with this one.

A Study in Silks

Sherlock Holmes’s niece Evelina is trying to enter high society and solve a steampunk/sorcery case at the same time without getting herself into a whole heap of trouble.  Of course she ends up in a heap of trouble.  Oh, and she’s magical, but shhhh, it’s a secret.  And she grew up in a circus.  But we’re keeping that under our hats as well. I really enjoyed reading this story and it wasn’t until after I finished that I took the time to think through all of the craziness that author Emma JaneHolloway had just passed under my nose with a “just go with it” attitude.  Now I think that marks a good author: that they get you to buy into their crazy without realizing it.  Two more books, A Study in Darkness and A Study in Ashes will most likely make their way into my “to read” collection.

Inhuman by Kat Falls

Can I read it again for the first time please?  So if you’ve read my review of Save the Pearls you know I do not buy human chimera stories just because they are thrown my way.  But Inhuman was completely different.  I couldn’t remember what this story’s premise was when I opened it on my kindle.  (Sometimes that is a good thing and I get a pleasant surprise.  Lots of times, however, I get burned for reading a genre I was not in the mood to endure.)  So I thought maybe this was a book about zombies.  Oh, super virus running rampant? Zombies.  Walled off cities? Zombies.  Hyper-paranoia about risk of contamination?  Zombies!  And then it totally wasn’t zombies!  Big fan, right here.  I was reading about Lane (the main gal) sneaking into the Feral Zone at dawn in my tree stand while out hunting.  I could almost see mutants and hybrids stalking their way through the woods around me.  *Appreciative shudder*  The language that the author created and/or repurposed worked well, though I almost gave up at chimpacabra, not gonna lie.  I also loved the way Mack’s storytelling wove things together without being overwhelming, just a nice background reminder.  Yeah, if more of these show up on the shelves, I’m not going to be sad. 5 out of 5 plush monkey dolls to the author.  Well done!

Rose by Holly Webb

Rose was amazing.

This was an innocent, fantastic story about orphans and magic, finding who you are, and overcoming evil.  Done.  Meant for a younger audience, this book was both entertaining and well-written.  I recommend this book without reservation to…anyone.  Maybe not guys who only read Field and Stream, but I can see this being a quick, enjoyable read for young adults as well as a charming adventure for younger audiences.

Ooey Gooey Glory

Do you want gore?  Do you want blood?  Do you want some vicious vampire action?  Here it is.  I kept stopping to mull over the fact that this book sounds like it was written to be a movie:  lots of action, contrived situations (that didn’t really bother me) and an unlikely love interest.  There’s even some nice inclusion of vampire references from historical and pop culture.  Oh, and FREAKING FRANKENSTEIN IS THERE! But really, it’s about the gore.  Gore, gore, and more gore.  If you are having problems getting a 14-year-old boy who plays Call of Duty to read a book, give him this.  Who doesn’t want to own your own personal stake-on-a-spring to kill vampires?  The book stands alone well, but is part of a new series.  I might read the next one, but I need to take a break from gooey explosions for a while.  4 out of 5 gold bags of O Negative to Will Hill.  The book, by the way, is Departent 19.

Pretty Dark Nothing

Oh, the demons.  The demons!  I’m not sure if this is a coming-of-age story, mean girl story, boy-meets-girl story, teenage angst story, or demon/angel story.  I think it’s all of them.  That’s right; you get five distinct categories of story in one book.  Aren’t you lucky? ...Not really.  There is just too much going on all the time.  ALL THE TIME.  You get to hear the happenings as you ping-pong between the POV of Aaron and Quinn (aka – the angst-y musician and the girl who sees demons) as things fall apart.  Quinn is quite literally going insane as she is hunted and tormented by evil, scaly demons who materialize at the most inconvenient times.  She’s pining after her ex-boyfriend and has started sucking at life.  Aaron was in a car wreck, oh wait, SPOILER ALERT, that killed his mom and sister. Or was he? Dum-dum-DUM!  We’ll leave it at that.  Well, he also has some nasty scars and personal issues stacked higher than Kilimanjaro.  Sounds like a real catch, no?  So, can Aaron save Quinn from the demons, and, quite possibly, herself?  Don’t plan too much on finding out.  Quinn is such a train wreck, which in all fairness is the point, that nothing ever seems to really get resolved. The end of this book, which I suppose is meant as a cliffhanger to the next installment, left me annoyed, but not trolling the internet wildly searching for leaked editions of the next book.  One thing that I do give the author high props for is finding sneaky spots to include some interesting vocabulary which can introduce readers to some words that actually may make them grab a dictionary…or at least Google it.

Aliens: Pretty, creepy, or pretty creepy?

The Rules by Stacey Kade was such a fantastic find!  I'm not sure where to begin.  Told in two voices, the story moves along at a nice pace and transitions nicely between the two characters.  Ariane is a completely believable character and, honestly, a little scary.  Zane is almost believable and, honestly, a little bit of a downer once in a while, but he grew on me.  The plot was balanced well between back story, big events, and daily life.  I loved learning about Ariane's "lab life" and watch her discover different aspects of herself.  Oh, and Rachel is spot-on.  She could star in the next Mean Girls movie. 
Is this story really possible?  Meh, maybe not, but this story made me not care.  How do I say this? It found a way to make an alien story not just about aliens without pretending that the alien is just a human with different colored skin or a bad hair day (ie - the original Star Trek :-P) even though our alien does suffer from some bad hair days.
Basically, I LOVE IT!  If there are more, I will read them.  Now, please excuse me; I'm going to look up Stacy Kade and find more things to read!

If You Find Me by Emily Murdoch

So you hear the stories on the news about people living in the woods in tent-and-tarp homes, keeping their children in isolation, and often acting as crazy as possible.  You know that you always want to hear more when those stories come on.  What did they eat?  How did they survive the winter?  Why didn't the kids try to leave?  Enter If You Find Me.  What a great find!  This story is completely believable.  Often, authors want these stories to be sensational and overdone.  But Ms. Murdoch did a fabulous job of having a balance:  the mom is only half-crazy, the kids aren't Tarzan, and they aren't afraid of running water.  I bought Carey as a possibly real person, but her little sister was even more believable.  Character development and the IV drip of back story throughout kept me interested from beginning to end.  Definitely a book I looked forward to sitting down to read.  4 out of 5 violins for this one.  A very well-done story.

Dualed by Elsie Chapman

You're a twin. You must prove your worthiness to use up some of the communities' valuable resources by murdering your twin if you want to live to be an adult. And there's a time limit. And you can't just nuke everyone, but a few deaths on the side aren't a big deal. And rich kids hire assasins to do their dirty work for them. Alright, take the love story drama between Katniss and Peeta and shove it into this world and BAM! you've got Dualed.  It's fun to read, but the last quarter felt too much like Hunger Games to me.

Prisoner B-3087

This is a very difficult review to write. Prisoner B-3087 reads as a retelling of what happened to Yanek Gruener as he faced horrible terrors in the ghettos, camps, and marches that so many Jews faced during WWII. I was so incredibly moved by everything that this young man went through, but then something happened that kind of broke the spell for me. This book is fiction, based on the life of Yanek Gruener, but not everything that happened in the story actually happened to him. Yes, they happened to someone, but I wish it could have been told that way. I don't remember the incident, but something happened in the story that made me think "Hey, I read that somewhere else. But it wasn't about this kid." So, instead of focusing on Yanek's amazing story, I became skeptical, wondering if each event actually happened to him, or if artistic license was making someone else's story into his own. The revolting crimes of the Holocaust are bad enough without having to create a character who single-handedly experienced all of them. I really enjoyed this story, but wish it could have been a non-fiction telling of Yanek's life so I could have had an honest look at what he personally faced and overcame. That being said, I would recommend this story with the understanding that it toes a fine line: sounding like fact, but admitting to fiction. I also recommend reading it in small parts and reading something more upbeat in between, or you may have trouble sleeping.

League of Strays by L. B. Schulman

Dark and creepy! Bullies and revenge! Hate and manipulation! League of strays unites a groups of social outcasts under a too-sexy-too-be-true bad boy whose motives are a lot worse than you at first anticipate. I read this while hunting and found myself a little too creeped out as dusk fell in the woods. I would not want to run across Kade in a dark alley...or a wooded path...or Walmart. 3 out of 5 gravestones to L. B. Schulman

Don't hate me 'cause I'm cursed

Blackwood was a quick read for me. Maybe because I wanted it to be done. It's about Roanoke Island, then and now. (That's where all of those peeps disappeared a long time ago in case you can't place it.) So this story is supposed to explain a tad what happened and *shocking* have some supernatural goings-on that make it link up to the present day. We've got curses, bad guys, young love, and mystery. And it was only OK. Not a bad read, but a car trip story to me. Not an "I finally have a whole evening to myself and want to lose myself for hours on end in the best story I've ever read and don't you DARE come home early and interrupt me" story. It gets 4 out of 5 golden snake tattoos for the effort and because I think younger readers would have enjoyed it more than I did.

"See how the sunlight catches in her hair?" "Yes, it's charging her battery."

This is what I wait for.  This is why I slog through YA series after series, author after author, mundane retelling after mundane retelling:  to find a story that makes me go "SQUEE!!!"  (That's an overexcited happy sound to those of you who have never owned a guinea pig or chinchilla.)  Oh my, oh my.  The Different Girl by Gordon Dahlquist had me so confused I was writhing in literary anticipation.  I got the gist of what was going on only after I got over my pig-headed determination that the "different girl" would not be one of the four gals I had already decided upon.  Even after the soft reveal, I wanted more. I wanted to know everything.  I don't know how to say it without giving it away!  I wanted to stop in the middle of the story, call the author, and ask him for more details, more back story, more more MORE!!!  I am not saying that the author left too much out, he just revealed it so casually and slowly that I was thirsty for more right away.  One reveal got my mind spinning and rethinking everything I had already read only to have another one pop up a little while later.  (See what I mean?  SQUEE!!!)  5 out of 5 mustard-less sandwiches to Gordon D.  Great story if you like sci-fi that is not out of this world and just creepy enough to contain a grain of truth.

Life ain't Always Beautiful

So I just finished The Tragedy Paper by Elizabeth LaBan and must say that I was pleasantly surprised.  The basic plot is a boarding school kid gets a gift from the boy that had his room last year.  It turns out to be CDs that tell the story of a tragedy that took place the previous year, which is supposed to help this year's kid (Duncan) write his tragedy paper: an epic assignment dreaded by every senior at the Irving School.

I was surprised at how driven I was to find out what was going to happen next.  I should probably note that I did not READ this book, but popped it on my Kindle and used the text-to-speech feature to have it read to me.  Definitely the right approach, by the way.  I would solidly recommend that you find a way to listen to this story.  It gives you the sense that you are hearing Tim's story unfold exactly the way Duncan does. 

I think this would be great to give to high schoolers and then MAKE THEM DISCUSS IT!!!  They'll learn some great literary terms and might actually care what a tragedy or tragic event is if they read about it this way instead of having Shakespeare as the only inspiration.  4 out of 5 golden earbuds to Ms. LeBun.  I had a great time listening.