Do You Know about SYNC??

Sponsored by AudioFile Magazine, SYNC offers free Young Adult & Classic audiobook downloads in the summer months to introduce the listening experience. 

FREE!! 

Teens and other readers of Young Adult Literature will have the opportunity to listen to bestselling titles and required reading classics this summer. Each week from now until August 15, 2013, SYNC will offer two free audiobook downloads.

Mermaids, monsters, and mistaken identities start the summer of free audiobook downloads from SYNC YA Literature Into Your Earphones off with a splash.

This Week’s Audiobooks:
Available to download free May 30 – June 5, 2013

Of Poseidon
By Anna Banks
Read by Rebecca Gibel
Published by AudioGO

Galen, prince of the Syrena, is sent to land to find a girl he’s heard can communicate with fish and after several encounters with her Galen becomes convinced Emma holds the key to his kingdom.

The Tempest
By William Shakespeare
Performed by a Full Cast
Published by AudioGO/ BBC Radio

A storm rages. Prospero and his daughter watch from their desert island as a ship carrying the royal family is wrecked. Miraculously, all on board survive. Plotting, mistaken identities, and bewitching love follow as the travelers explore the strange place of spirits and monsters.

I already downloaded Of Poseidon this morning! 

For the full list of titles available between now and August 21st, you can go here. 

Downloading is super easy once you install Overdrive Media Console on your computer.  To download titles check here each week! Enjoy!! 

Review: Every Day

Every Day
by David Levithan

Book Description:
Every day a different body. Every day a different life. Every day in love with the same girl.

There’s never any warning about where it will be or who it will be. A has made peace with that, even established guidelines by which to live: Never get too attached. Avoid being noticed. Do not interfere.

It’s all fine until the morning that A wakes up in the body of Justin and meets Justin’s girlfriend, Rhiannon. From that moment, the rules by which A has been living no longer apply. Because finally A has found someone he wants to be with—day in, day out, day after day.

Review: 

This was a real page-turner for me! I opened this book and three hours later flipped the final page. I was captivated from start to finish.

Levithan creates a fantastic character in A. You have no idea (as s/he doesn't) whether A is a boy or a girl, what s/he looks like, you only have a sense of his/her personality. What an intriguing concept! What a great way to get down to the real root of a character.

I loved, too, that Levithan did not let A take the easy route in any of his/her choices. The book ends perfectly in a very realistic and believable way. Though we may want true love to triumph at all time, logistics become a huge factor in real life. I was rooting for Rhiannon and A all along, but I really loved how Levithan wrapped things up...

Definitely worth picking up if you haven't already.

Gold Star Review: For Darkness Shows the Stars

For Darkness Shows the Stars
by Diana Peterfreund

Book Description:
It's been several generations since a genetic experiment gone wrong caused the Reduction, decimating humanity and giving rise to a Luddite nobility who outlawed most technology.

Elliot North has always known her place in this world. Four years ago Elliot refused to run away with her childhood sweetheart, the servant Kai, choosing duty to her family's estate over love. Since then the world has changed: a new class of Post-Reductionists is jumpstarting the wheel of progress, and Elliot's estate is foundering, forcing her to rent land to the mysterious Cloud Fleet, a group of shipbuilders that includes renowned explorer Captain Malakai Wentforth—an almost unrecognizable Kai. And while Elliot wonders if this could be their second chance, Kai seems determined to show Elliot exactly what she gave up when she let him go.

But Elliot soon discovers her old friend carries a secret—one that could change their society . . . or bring it to its knees. And again, she's faced with a choice: cling to what she's been raised to believe, or cast her lot with the only boy she's ever loved, even if she's lost him forever.

Inspired by Jane Austen's Persuasion, For Darkness Shows the Stars is a breathtaking romance about opening your mind to the future and your heart to the one person you know can break it.

Review:
Wow. I loved this book. It had all the romantic and sweeping, yet understated elements that you find in classic Austen, but they were wrapped in the most intriguingly imagined post-apocalyptic world. Persuasion is one of Austen's books that I really love (my favorite is Emma, in case you were interested) and I was a little afraid that Peterfreund might have taken on a little too big a task in modernizing it.... I should have had faith! She's one of my favorite authors for a reason. Peterfreund nailed it!!

I found myself wrapped in a world where I could see the connections to Austen's original work, but had no trouble at all losing myself in the new story, forgetting that it was anything but what it was. This world is similar to our own, but Elliot's family and friends are so far removed from our society that it feels very foreign. I liked the religious aspect that helped develop their philosophies and how it felt organic without becoming an overwhelming aspect of the book.

The romance. Ah, the romance. I loved it. It felt very real. Both characters had reasons to feel hurt and both had reasons they were unable to let go. Elliot and Kai were two very strong personalities that were stuck in a tough situation that could easily have torn them apart forever. I loved that Peterfreund made Elliot strong enough to not only be herself, and only herself, to succeed in the things she tried to do, but also strong enough to fight for the man that she loved with all her heart.

Though Elliot may be younger than the original character Anne Elliot that she's based on, in the post-apocalyptic world that Peterfreund created her emotions and convictions ring true in the same way, regardless of time and place. Peterfreund’s retelling effortlessly blends a new world and a new, struggling society with the heart and soul of Austen’s tale. The science fiction themes are easy to understand and seem to integrate themselves seamlessly into the story so that even readers shy about delving into the genre will have no trouble navigating this foreign world.

I recommend this book to all readers, regardless of whether or not you've read the original Austen tale that inspired it. I give this book a GOLD STAR and can't wait to see what Peterfreund does with The Scarlet Pimpernel in the upcoming Across a Star-Swept Sea.

Review: Please Ignore Vera Dietz

Please Ignore Vera Dietz

by A. S. King

Book Description:

Vera’s spent her whole life secretly in love with her best friend, Charlie Kahn. And over the years she’s kept a lot of his secrets. Even after he betrayed her. Even after he ruined everything.

So when Charlie dies in dark circumstances, Vera knows a lot more than anyone—the kids at school, his family, even the police. But will she emerge to clear his name? Does she even want to?

Review: 

This book didn't really do it for me. I liked it...mostly, but I in no way experienced the deep love that I had been anticipating. I have no idea of that's in part due to the high bar I set for the book (I've only heard over and over and over how good it was) or because I listened to it on audio, so couldn't completely immerse myself in Vera in the fifteen minutes here and there that I was listening... I just didn't get it.

I found Vera to be a very real and fully formed character. I liked the storyline and thought that it was very thoughtful...but I was never "wowed."

I am hoping to pick up ASK THE PASSENGERS soon. I've heard again that this is a stellar book, so hopefully that one will hit me the right way. If not, I guess it may be that A.S. King's books aren't for me. We'll have to see...

If you're a high school reader, try this one and let me know what YOU think...maybe I'm the only one who didn't really get it! 

Review: Midwinterblood

Midwinterblood
by Marcus Sedgwick

Book Description: 

Seven stories of passion and love separated by centuries but mysteriously intertwined—this is a tale of horror and beauty, tenderness and sacrifice.

An archaeologist who unearths a mysterious artifact, an airman who finds himself far from home, a painter, a ghost, a vampire, and a Viking: the seven stories in this compelling novel all take place on the remote Scandinavian island of Blessed where a curiously powerful plant that resembles a dragon grows. What binds these stories together? What secrets lurk beneath the surface of this idyllic countryside? And what might be powerful enough to break the cycle of midwinterblood?

Review: 

I've never read anything of Sedgwick's before, but I'd heard nothing but good things, and now, I'm not surprised. His writing is...sophisticated? I'm not sure if that's exactly what I mean, but this book was definitely intricate and beautifully dark. In fact, while I was reading, I kept thinking that this book is what I usually define as a "YA/A crossover" book...one that is meant for the oldest, most sophisticated teen readers and for adult readers.

I really enjoyed this book, but it read "adult" to me theme-wise. I loved the intertwining stories of the reincarnated characters. I thought that the theme of sacrifice was really well done and things were revealed at just the right points in the stories. I would definitely recommend this book, though probably only to older high school readers.