Review: Little Fish

Little Fish 
by Ramsey Beyer

Book Description:
Told through real-life journals, collages, lists, and drawings, this coming-of-age story illustrates the transformation of an 18-year-old girl from a small-town teenager into an independent city-dwelling college student. Written in an autobiographical style with beautiful artwork, Little Fish shows the challenges of being a young person facing the world on her own for the very first time and the unease—as well as excitement—that comes along with that challenge.

Review: 

This book is perfect if you are going to be going to college for the first time or even if you are just going through a totally new phase in your life. It's easy to read, easy to relate to, and made me laugh out loud in spots. Ramsey chronicles her first year in college through lists, journal entries, and zine articles. Each page felt as new and different and exciting as Ramsey's foray into Baltimore...her very first city experience.

As some one who occasionally has trouble following comics or graphic novels, I'm very pleased to report I had no trouble at all with this one. Each character is distinguishable from the others and are introduced in ways that make them pretty easy to remember. It's just like making new friends in real life. In fact, I found myself heartbroken to leave them all behind at the end of the year...and I'd actually love to read about Ramsey's sophomore year to catch up with them again!!

As a book set in college, this is not a book for younger readers but I think that older high school readers and those already in college will relate to and thoroughly enjoy this one!

Review - Redemption

Redemption
by Veronique Launier
Hearts of Stone, book one

Book Description:

Aude Vanier is a sixteen-year-old rock star with a problem—stone monsters keep attacking her. And when they do, she finds herself chanting in a language she doesn’t understand.

Guillaume de Rouen has been stuck as a gargoyle on a church for the last seventy years, until Aude’s chanting releases him back to his seventeen-year-old human form.

An ancient Iroquois prophecy about the destruction of Montreal is coming true. Together, Aude and Guillaume can stop it. But Aude is the descendant of a centuries-old coven of witches—a coven that Guillaume failed to protect seventy years ago. This time, if they fail, the world will never be the same.

Review:

Okay, I have to admit first thing that I am very fond of gargoyles. I love books with gargoyle characters. This stems directly from one reading the Xanth series by Piers Anthony, which brought some amazing character concepts to life for me, including Geis of the Gargoyle's, Gary Gargoyle. That combined with my interest in art history and the beautiful stonework that exists on many historic buildings leads to a love and fascination for gargoyles and other stone creatures.

I found Launier's debut book to be great conceptually. It combined the existence of gargoyles with a very spiritual and pagan sort of witchcraft. Added to that mix is a Mohawk prophecy about the end of the world and you have a very, very intriguing sort of end of the world story.

I really liked Aude and Guillaume as the main characters. Aude, or as she likes to be known "Odd," is a rock princess who generally knows what she wants from life. When her life is thrown into chaos, she very realistically goes through some stages of denial, acceptance, and general WTHeck?! I really liked how in some respects she was very much in charge of herself and knew what to do to handle things and in other scenarios, she accepted that she couldn't control the things happening around her. Guillaume was able to help keep her safe and to give her a touchstone in the crazy new world she had to deal with, but he also respects that she is powerful in her own right. At first, I didn't like jumping between their perspectives, but as I continued reading I actually found it to be a great way to see all facets of the story.

This was a great summer read for me. Fast-paced, interesting and with a romance thrown in to boot. I'm really looking forward to seeing where the next book in the series goes...

Review: Guitar Notes

Guitar Notes 
by Mary Amato

Book Description:

On odd days, Tripp Broody uses a school practice room to let loose on a borrowed guitar. Eyes closed, strumming that beat-up instrument, Tripp escapes to a world where only the music matters.

On even days, Lyla Marks uses the same practice room. To Tripp, she’s trying to become even more perfect—she’s already a straight-A student and an award-winning cellist. But when Lyla begins leaving notes for him in between the strings of the guitar, his life intersects with hers in a way he never expected.

What starts as a series of snippy notes quickly blossoms into the sharing of interests and secrets and dreams, and the forging of a very unlikely friendship.

Challenging each other to write songs, they begin to connect, even though circumstances threaten to tear them apart. 

Review: 

I really enjoyed this book! I'm not much of a musician, though I used to play the clarinet eons ago, but I do know what it's like to feel passionately about something and not always have other people understand. Or to have people too much pressure on you just because you are good at something. 

I loved the two perspectives of this book and I loved reading the notes that Tripp and Lyla left for each other. It was very cool to see how their friendship developed and how they supported each other completely.  I highly recommend this book to any middle or high school age reader! 

Review: City of a Thousand Dolls

City of a Thousand Dolls
by Miriam Forster
The Bhinian Empire, book one

Book Description:
Nisha was abandoned at the gates of the City of a Thousand Dolls when she was just a little girl. Now sixteen, she lives on the grounds of the isolated estate, where orphan girls apprentice as musicians, healers, courtesans, and, if the rumors are true, assassins. She makes her way as Matron's errand girl, her closest companions the mysterious cats that trail her shadow. Only when she begins a forbidden flirtation with the city's handsome young courier does she let herself imagine a life outside the walls. Until one by one, girls around her start to die.

Before she becomes the next victim, Nisha decides to uncover the secrets that surround the girls' deaths. But by getting involved, Nisha jeopardizes not only her own future in the City of a Thousand Dolls—but also her life.

Review: 

I really enjoyed this book. Forster introduces a new world where the eastern influences of our Asian cultures are highly evident but the fact that the world is also completely cut off from anywhere else gives it its own unique presence. There also used to be magic in this world, though it has now disappeared...

Nisha is an interesting main character. While there were moments that I grew somewhat frustrated because she could not see what was happening when I had already figured things out, I have to give her credit for her reactions once she did. This is not a girl to take things lying down. She refuses to let others decide her life. She is gutsy, bold, independent, and her stubbornness and loyalty take her a long way. She also has a strict sense of right and wrong that I highly admire. I cannot wait to see where the second book in the series will take her.

Review: Dead is a Killer Tune

Dead is a Killer Tune

by Marlene Perez

Dead Is series, book seven

 

Book Description:

High school freshman Jessica Walsh is a Virago—a woman warrior who must protect her hometown from danger. And in Nightshade, California, trouble is always lurking. At the town’s Battle of the Bands, Jess’s boyfriend, Dominic, and his band, Side Effects May Vary, are up against Hamlin, a band so popular, their fans follow them everywhere. Soon, the competing musicians are doing risky, illegal, and even fatal things—and claiming that they heard strange music that compelled them to do it. Can Jess and her friends track down the tuneful tyrant before it’s too late?

 

Review:

I love this series and I love Jessica as the new main character. It's great to see some of the main characters from the first five books in the series make cameos, but the new crop of "Scooby Gang" keeps things going just fine! I really like the Virago angle and still find Nightshade to be a town full of mysteries.

I thought that the Pied Piper element of this story was very well done. I loved the way that it integrated into the battle of the bands. The introduction of some new characters and elements also paved the way for some intriguing romantic developments...

These books may not be stellar literature, but they are one of the series that I have to read as soon as the new book comes out. Each book is just a fast, fun little foray into an intriguing world and I rip through these almost *too* quickly. If you're looking for a quick read, I would wholeheartedly suggest the first book Dead is the New Black.


Review: It's Kind of a Funny Story

It's Kind of a Funny Story

by Ned Vizzini

 

Book Description:

Like many ambitious New York City teenagers, Craig Gilner sees entry into Manhattan’s Executive Pre-Professional High School as the ticket to his future. Determined to succeed at life—which means getting into the right high school to get into the right college to get the right job—Craig studies night and day to ace the entrance exam, and does. That’s when things start to get crazy.

At his new school, Craig realizes that he isn't brilliant compared to the other kids; he’s just average, and maybe not even that. He soon sees his once-perfect future crumbling away. The stress becomes unbearable and Craig stops eating and sleeping—until, one night, he nearly kills himself.

Craig’s suicidal episode gets him checked into a mental hospital, where his new neighbors include a transsexual sex addict, a girl who has scarred her own face with scissors, and the self-elected President Armelio. There, isolated from the crushing pressures of school and friends, Craig is finally able to confront the sources of his anxiety.

 

Review:

I really need to listen to my teen readers at the library more often. The trouble is I usually have such a huge stack of books that I'm dying to read any way that when a teen suggests a book I tell them, "oh yeah, I'd like to read that...it's going on my list" and then it takes ages for me to get to it...

 

 

I had three different teens recommend this book to me. I'm so glad I finally picked this one up. It was indeed a great story! Others have said this, but it bears repeating...for a book about a suicidal teenager, this was actually a surprisingly funny book. Vizzini manages to make this book feel achingly "real" precisely because it covers such a huge range of emotions. There are NO one dimensional characters and the plot is utterly realistic. What a well done book.

 

 

I highly recommend this one (and I'm going to check out the movie...I want to compare it to the book...)

 



Review: Live Through This

Live Through This
by Mindi Scott

Book Description:

If Coley Sterling’s best friend would stop hating her, if her dance-team captains would lighten up, if her friends would stop asking her about Reece, the geeky sax player she’s crushing on—then her life would be perfect. Right? After all, Coley’s stepdad is a successful attorney who gives Coley and her siblings everything, and her mother will stop at nothing to keep them all happy and safe—including having escaped ten years ago from the abuse of Coley’s real father. But Coley is keeping a lot of secrets. She won’t admit—not even to herself—that her almost-perfect life is her own carefully crafted facade. Now, Coley and Reece are getting closer, and a decade’s worth of Coley’s lies are on the verge of unraveling—along with the life she thought she knew.

 

Review:

This. This is a doozy of a book. It is gripping, it is un-put-downable. Once I had gotten about 20 pages in, there was no stopping. I read straight through until the last page, tears streaming down my face in several spots, shivers running down my spine. I could not tear myself away.

This is not a book for everyone. The author doesn't really worry about being very open about what's happening between Coley and her boyfriend, or Coley and the person who has crossed the line with her... For some people this book may be a little too much. Too hard to read.

I would really only recommend this book to very mature readers in grades 11 and up.



Review: Seraphina

Seraphina

by Rachel Hartman

 

Book Description:

Four decades of peace have done little to ease the mistrust between humans and dragons in the kingdom of Goredd. Folding themselves into human shape, dragons attend court as ambassadors, and lend their rational, mathematical minds to universities as scholars and teachers. As the treaty's anniversary draws near, however, tensions are high.

Seraphina Dombegh has reason to fear both sides. An unusually gifted musician, she joins the court just as a member of the royal family is murdered—in suspiciously draconian fashion. Seraphina is drawn into the investigation, partnering with the captain of the Queen's Guard, the dangerously perceptive Prince Lucian Kiggs. While they begin to uncover hints of a sinister plot to destroy the peace, Seraphina struggles to protect her own secret, the secret behind her musical gift, one so terrible that its discovery could mean her very life.

 

Review:

It has been a little while since I have read a story about dragons that has left me in awe. It's not that the dragon books out there aren't great...it's that they all seem to have very similar lore these days. Not so in Seraphina. Though I have read books where dragons could take human form before, Hartman writes about this process and other dragon-y aspects in such a way that it felt utterly new and brilliantly done.

 

I could picture the painful process of a giant dragon folding in on itself to take Saar (human) form. I could empathize completely with how they must feel trapped and utterly alien amongst humankind. I understood their mathematical and scientific brains, revolted by human feeling and floundering as emotions they did not want flooded their systems.

 

Hartman manages to convey excellently drawn perspectives of both humans and dragons as they beome embroiled in political strife. Seraphina, who can see both perspectives, is the perfect narrator. Her struggle to fit in, yet hide herself from scrutiny is fascinating. Her relationship with dragonkind draws readers in effortlessly. Her struggle to fight off feelings for the one man she should never pursue...

 

A phenomenal fantasy debut, absolutely recommended to all fantasy readers, and well worthy of a shiny, shiny (dragon scale shiny, LOL) gold star: 

Review: Five Flavors of Dumb

Five Flavors of Dumb

by Antony John

Book Description:

Piper is a seventeen-year-old high school senior, and she's just been challenged to get her school's super-popular rock band, Dumb, a paying gig. The catch? Piper is deaf. Can she manage a band with five wildly different musicians, nurture a budding romance, and discover her own inner rock star, though she can't hear Dumb's music?

 

Review:

I really enjoyed this book. It was easy to read, it had heart and it made me laugh. I liked Piper's character a lot. Yes, she had her sarcastic, typical angsty teen moments, but she was also tough and determined to make her own way in the world. I loved her connection to music, even as she acknowledged that she couldn't hear it and would never experience it the same way as everyone else could. I loved the way that this family dealt with their issues and came together as a stronger unit by the end of the story.

For a touching and uplifting, easy to read book this summer, think about picking up this book!

Review: Mindblind

Mindblind
by Jennifer Roy

Book Description:
Fourteen-year-old Nathaniel Clark lives in two worlds—the outside world of his family and friends and his own, special, inside Aspie world, where he’s not forced to interact with people or worry about wearing his clothes right-side out. The world where he can solve mathematical problems that elude even the brightest graduate students. The world where he feels he can find his own inner truth. People say he’s a genius, but Nathaniel thinks differently. According to a book he once read, a true genius uses his talent to make a contribution to the world. Nathaniel takes the definition literally, and begins his quest for genius status.

Review:
I really enjoyed this book. I thought that it was a really accessible glimpse into the mind of someone with Asperger's Syndrome. Nathaniel's mind worked very differently from say, mine, but the author took pains to write so that it was not so foreign that it would be off-putting as a reader to try to understand.

Nathaniel was interesting and driven. I love that he truly strived to become a positive addition to society. He longed for nothing more than to become the true definition of a "genius" - someone who produced something incredible. I loved that Nathaniel also had "normal" friends and that he was so high functioning. Being in a band and going bowling or playing video games with friends seem to be things that a lot of autistic/Aspie kids can't do and it was heartwarming to see a character that was inspired to participate so much by his family. I loved the relationship he and his mother had...and while I didn't like his relationship with his father, I understood how it could have developed and thought it was very realistic. It was nice to see his loving stepmother, too.

All in all, I thought this book was very well done and I recommend it anytime you are looking for something a little bit different!

Review: If I Stay

If I Stay
by Gayle Forman

Book Description:

In the blink of an eye everything changes. Seventeen ­year-old Mia has no memory of the accident; she can only recall what happened afterwards, watching her own damaged body being taken from the wreck. Little by little she struggles to put together the pieces- to figure out what she has lost, what she has left, and the very difficult choice she must make.

Review:

I loved it. It was sad. Heartwrenchingly sad. I listened to the audio version of this and basically cried my way to and from work for three days. Sucky on the makeup, but totally worth it!
I hadn't realized that this book takes place so much from Mia's point of view as she's in a coma. It reminded me of The Lovely Bones, another *great* book. I love getting to experience that kind of outsider perspective, but with tons of insider insight. It's a really neat device in stories.

Plot-wise, obviously this book is terribly gutwrenching. I think that Forman managed to make the whole scenario even more devestating after she solidly introduces Mia's fantastic family. They truly are one of the coolest families I've read about in YA in quite a while. It was so sad to think of the tragedy that befell them.

My one and only complaint about this book was how abruptly it ended. Now, don't get me wrong. It was beautiful. It was right. *BUT* I immediately wanted more!! Thank goodness, not only do I know there's a sequel, but it's already out so I can read it ASAP!! 

Review: Dead is a Battlefield

Dead is a Battlefield

by Marlene Perez

Dead Is series, book six

 

Book Description:

Jessica Walsh is starting her freshman year at Nightshade High and trying to forget about the tragic events surrounding her brother’s graduation. She wants to have a normal high school experience. But that’s easier said than done in Nightshade. There’s a new guy at school who seems to be turning the girls into lovesick zombies. And Jessica has other worries—like her crush on a cute but moody lead singer, and the mysterious tattoo that appeared on her arm one day that lets her know whenever there is trouble brewing. Jessica learns she’s a Virago, a woman warrior chosen to fight evil whenever it threatens her hometown. But does a lowly freshman really have what it takes to keep Nightshade safe?

 

Review:

I LOVE this series. 

 

They are fun to read, super quick reads and each turns out to be a pure guilty pleasure.

 

Technically this is book six in the Dead Is series, but it feels totally fresh because there is a new main character. The first five books (starting with Dead is the New Black) feature Daisy Giordano as the main character.  She is a sassy psychic trying to navigate high school, dating, and family issues while living in a town populated by vampires, werewolves, ghosts, psychics, and more! Daisy is a super fun character, but so is Jessica Walsh.  She is also actually the younger sister of Daisy's best friend's boyfriend, so while Daisy and her crew have all graduated from Nightshade High and moved on, there are still great ties to the first five books. 

 

I cannot wait to see what happens next in Dead is a Killer Tune (coming out in Sept.)!

Review: I'll Be There

I'll Be There

by Holly Goldberg Sloan

Book Description:



Sam Border wishes he could escape. Raised by an unstable father, he's spent his life moving from place to place. But he could never abandon his little brother, Riddle.

Riddle Border doesn't talk much. Instead, he draws pictures of the insides of things and waits for the day when the outsides of things will make sense. He worships his older brother. But how can they leave when there's nowhere to go? Then everything changes. Because Sam meets Emily.

Emily Bell believes in destiny. She sings for her church choir, though she doesn't have a particularly good voice. Nothing, she feels, is mere coincidence. And she's singing at the moment she first sees Sam.

Everyone whose path you cross in life has the power to change you--sometimes in small ways, and sometimes in ways greater than you could have ever known. 

Review:

This novel reads beautifully. It is touching and compelling. I think that almost every reader would find something here to love.

While Sam and Emily find each other, the romance is only a fraction of this book. There are great examples of familial relationships and there is also the perfect example of a horribly dysfunctional family.

There is danger, there is excitement, there are secrets, betrayals, and hidden agendas.

There is beautiful music, art, and cooking.

There are facets and hidden nooks in this book that make it wonderful and it reads very quickly. I would highly recommend this book to anyone.