Obsessed with YA- My thoughts on many books

Over the past couple of weeks I've read some fantastic YA books but never carved out any time to post them to my blog. So today I decided to do a mini-review for these wonderfully written gems.........

Perfect: A Novel
Author: Natasha Friend
Published: 2004
Genre: YA

Short Synopsis from Goodreads:
Isabelle Lee has a problem, and it's not just Ape Face, her sister, or group therapy for an eating disorder, or even that her father died and her mother is depressed and in denial.Caught in the orbit of popularity and appearances, Isabelle must navigate a world with mixed messages, false hopes, and potentially harmful turns, while coping with her own flailing family and emotions.

My thoughts:
This author does a great job of introducing harmful body image and eating disorders to the 12 year-old demographic and above. I have found that my middle-school students really like reading her books and we find a lot to talk about. I know of girls who at the early age of 10 don't eat lunch and think they're fat. Friend takes the reader into the life of Isabelle and shows the reader how through depriving herself of food, Isabelle thinks she's controlling a part of her life that she feels is totally out-of-control. The author does list quite a few resources for parents and girls who find this story a reflection of themselves.
____________________________________________________________________


Wicked Lovely
Author: Melissa Marr
Published: 2007 by Harper Teen
Genre: YA/Fantasy/Fae/Faeries

Background info from Goodreads:
Rule #1: Don't ever attract their attention. But it's too late. Keenan is the Summer King, who has sought his queen for nine centuries. Rule #2: Don't speak to invisible faeries. Rule #3: Don't stare at invisible faeries. Aislinn has always seen faeries. Powerful and dangerous, they walk hidden in the mortal world.

My thoughts: This book for me was wickedly DELICIOUS!! I loved it. In fact, I loved it more than any of Holly Black's books....please don't kill me Black fans! This book was just the right mix of faerie, real-life, intrigue, and a little romance. I'm so happy that this is a trilogy because I really enjoyed Marr's writing and I wasn't ready to leave this world behind. I brought home the second book this week from the library!!! I have a lot of girls at school all in a tizzy because I've been gushing about this book constantly and my favorite thing to say about it is this:

After I read Wicked Lovely, I said to myself.....Edward who?
I'm officially in love with Keenan- the Summer King and
Seth, who is Aslinn's mortal boyfriend.

Keenan was staring at her, too intently for comfort. "I don't know why certain people shine for others. I don't know why you and not someone else." He gently pulled her forward and whispered, "But it's you I think of when I wake each morning. It's your face in my dreams."

He didn't move, he just stood there in the middle of the room, watching her. "You're what matters.""Hold me? if you still want to, I mean. She looked away."Everyday"- and then he was there, lifting her into his arms,holding her like she was fragile and precious- "I want to hold you every day. Nothing will ever change that."
- scene between Aslinn and Seth

Do you understand now? I'm swooning!!!!!
Read this!

Other Reviews:
The Written World
Books and NeedlePoint
Em's Bookshelf
A Striped Armchair
Unmainstream Mom Reads
Beth Fish Reads
Things Mean A Lot

Tomorrow I will post two more reviews of some of my all-time favorite YA books that I've read this year....Wintergirls and If I Stay.....hope to see you then!!

Review: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Author: Sherman Alexie
Genre: YA
Published: 2007
Pages: 230 of some of the best writing I've ever read!!

From Goodreads:
In his first book for young adults, bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.






My Thoughts:

My son read this book last year and told me how much he loved it. I'd been meaning to get to it sometime but kept letting other books get in the way. Saturday during the Read-a-Thon this book was in my short list of possible reads. Marc came in to check on my progress and said, "Mom, you have to read this book next." So I did and I have to tell you that it blew me away!! I can see why it won the National Book Award. This is a story of a young man who has only known life on the "rez." This life encompasses poverty, alcoholism, funerals, and a school where not much is expected or given in return. Junior is smart, too smart for reservation school. His teacher tells him that he must get out of the rez so that he can be saved. The only way for him to do that is to go to an all-white school 20 miles away. When he decides to do this he experiences racism ,not only from the white kids, which he expected, but also from his own people. Through this ordeal Junior deals with his emotions and experiences by expressing himself with his art. The added bonus in this book is the marvelous illustrations. You will cry, laugh, and root for Junior every step of the way. His journey will give you hope. You will want everyone you know to read this book so that they too can be inspired by this special kid who didn't let anything stand in his way of becoming a better person. This book is at the top of my all-time favorite YA books and one of the best books I've read this year. Run don't walk to the library to get your hands on this one!!

Book Review: Pretty Little Liars

Pretty Little Liars
by Sara Shepard
Published 2006
Genre: YA
304 pages

From Goodreads:

In the exclusive Philadelphia suburb of Rosewood, Alison is the Queen Bee of her elite seventh grade hive. BFs Aria, Hanna, Spencer, and Emily vie for her attention, even as each of them hides a hideous secret only Alison knows. So when Alison goes missing after a slumber party, never to be seen again, each girl is heartbroken, but also a little relieved. Now it is three years later, and though the four girls have grown apart, they are each still hiding something.When the girls begin receiving threatening text messages and emails that from someone known only as "A," they must confront the fact that against all odds, it appears Alison is back. Could Alison still be alive? And if so, why is she so determined to uncover all their dirty little secrets?

My thoughts:

I had passed this book several times when I was browsing at Barnes and Noble and I have to admit that the cover with the Barbie doll girl made me think "FLUFF" immediately. Boy was I wrong!! This book is smartly written with characters that come to life within the pages of the story. You get a peek into each of the girls lives since Alison has went missing and you learn little by little each of their dirty little secrets. Hiding in the background though is an even bigger secret that is shared by all of the girls, including Alison and someone out there knows all!!! The mystery behind the story has captivated me and I need to know what the 'SECRET' is and who is behind it all...could it be Alison? If you enjoy a great mystery with interesting characters and fast plot line then you just may enjoy this book which is the first in a series of 5 books to date.

Check out Pretty Little Liars Website for more information on this fantastic YA series!


Other Reviews:

J. Kaye's Book Blog
Book Girl's Bookshelf
Peeking Between the Pages

If I missed your review, let me know and I will link you!!!

Living Dead Girl- my thoughts

Living Dead Girl

Author: Elizabeth Scott
Genre: Young Adult
Published: 2008
Pages: 170

From the inside jacket:

Once upon a time I was a little girl who disappeared.
Once upon a time my name was not Alice.
Once upon a time I didn't know how lucky I was.

When Alice was ten, Ray took her away from her family, her friends -- her life. She learned to give up all power, to endure all pain. She waited for the nightmare to be over.

Now Alice is fifteen and Ray still has her, but he speaks more and more of her death. He does not know it is what she longs for. She does not know he has something more terrifying than death in mind for her.

This is Alice's story. It is one you have never heard, and one you will never, ever forget.

I read this story in one day not because I was in love with it, rather because I needed it to end. Don't take this the wrong way. It was a good book, but the subject matter made me uncomfortable and sick to my stomach. I know that this happens to kids, both boys and girls, all over the world. I realize that there are sick and twisted people that walk among us. But this book brought these people off of the pages and into my world. The book starts out fast and furious and never lets you go. I found myself being truly disgusted with Ray and wanting to kill him with my bare hands. He used psychological terror and deprivation of food to control "Alice," to make her bend to his every whim and sadistic pleasures. Your heart will literally ache at the abuse she endures and how she feels absolutely hopeless. The hardest part of the entire book, for me, is when Alice realizes that the only way out for her is to help Ray find a replacement Alice and how happy that thought makes her. This is not an easy read for anyone and if your child is thinking about reading it I would totally recommend that you TALK about this book with them. Read it before them so that you know what's going on. There is plenty here to discuss and to be totally honest, this book could give you or your child nightmares, especially if you read it before going to bed. I found so many powerful passages but I don't want to weigh this book review down with those so I'm just going to highlight a few that really were gripping and stark.

The day I got too tall to wear the white dress with short, puffy sleeves and little tucks along the chest, he filled the kitchen sink with water and shoved my head into it.

"You'll hold her," he says, and everything I own is easily pushed down, away, clothes falling off me like water. "You'll hold her, and I'll love her."
He grins at me. "You'll like that, won't you?"
I nod because he wants me to. I nod because I will. She will get his love and I will hold her down to take it all because then there will be none for me.
I cannot save myself, and I do not want to save her.

Other reviews:

The Story Siren
Heather @ Book Addiction ***This review is what prompted me to read this book ***
Dewey's Thoughts @ The Hidden Side of a Leaf
Lenore @ Presenting Lenore
Maw Books Blog
Jenn's Bookshelf
Bookshelves of Doom

For other passages I marked please see my other blog, Quotes and Passages.

Bliss- my thoughts

Bliss
by Lauren Myracle
Published: 2008
444 pages
Genre: YA

From Goodreads:
When Bliss’s hippie parents leave the commune and dump her at the home of her aloof grandmother in a tony Atlanta neighborhood, it’s like being set down on an alien planet. The only guide naive Bliss has to her new environment is what she’s seen on The Andy Griffith Show. But Mayberry is poor preparation for Crestview Academy, an elite school where the tensions of the present and the dark secrets of the past threaten to simmer into violence. Openhearted Bliss desperately wants new friends, making her the perfect prey of a troubled girl whose obsession with a long-ago death puts Bliss, and anyone she’s kind to, in mortal danger.

I've read the TTYL series and really enjoyed it. When I saw this book I picked it up because of the author and the front cover. I'm glad I did because it was a very creepy read. The story setting is during the 1960's and while Bliss is going to school the country is riveted by the Manson murders. What really added to the scare factor was that Myracle used transcripts from the Charles Manson murder trial as chapter dividers!! So you would read these horrific snippets and then dive back into the story. Then the next chapter divider might be a short passage from The Andy Griffith Show. Which shows such a quaint and picturesque state of America. The one that Bliss is aware of, not the dirty, dark, murderous part of society that Bliss has been sheltered from all of her life. I quit reading real scary books a while ago because my husband works a swing shift and I just don't like reading that stuff knowing that I'm home alone, because I have a very imaginative mind!! But this book didn't scare me like that, it was just one of those books that can give you the willies. I always have kids that want a scary or creepy book and this one would be right up their alley. The book has 444 pages but the pacing is fast and the story is just hard to put down. I will leave you with two my favorite passages in the entire book:

"I had to honor her," Agnes says. "Don't you see?"
"What is it?" Sandy asks. "A piece of her scalp?"
Agnes's eyes blaze. "It's what came free. I wasn't.....I didn't have time to be picky."
"Agnes, that's disgusting," Sandy says gleefully.
As for me,I'm slogging through the horror of my thoughts. Liliana died...she jumped from the window and her skull smacked the ground...and Agnes kept a piece of her?

p. 215

My tears make everything waver, but I'm perfectly capable of seeing what Sandy does. She dips her finger in Staci's blood and, looking straight at me, puts it in her mouth. When she pulls it out, she smiles.

**I changed the name to mine so I wouldn't spoil anything for a future reader!!

.

I Love You, Beth Cooper- my thoughts

I Love You, Beth Cooper
by Larry Doyle
Published 2007
272 pages

From Goodreads:

Denis Cooverman didn't want to give a typical graduation speech, cherishing memories and embracing challenges and crap. So, instead, he stood up in front of his 512 class-mates and their 3,000 relatives and said some-thing really important:

"I love you, Beth Cooper."

It would have been such a sweet, romantic moment. Except that:

Beth, the head cheerleader, has only the vaguest idea who Denis is.

And Denis, the captain of the debate team, is so far out of her league he is barely even the same species.

And then there's Kevin, Beth's remarkably large boyfriend, in town on furlough from the United States Army.

Complications ensue.

Denis comes of age overnight in this exhilar-ating, endearing novel that reminds us why we can't wait to escape high school but can never leave it behind.

Honestly, reading this book is like jumping on a roller coaster, forgetting to buckle your seatbelt, and you didn't have enough time to pull the bar down. So now you're flying all over the place, screaming your damn head off, swooping over the hills, feeling like you're going to throw up, ducking your head so you don't get decapitated, and then finally you pull back into the station, look at your partner that rode next to you and say..."Dude, that was one freakin' awesome ride. Let's do it again!!!!!!"

It's a mixture of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Porky's, American Pie, and whatever coming-of-age movie you can think of. I had a great time reading this book and totally loved the pictures of Denis at the start of each chapter. As you work you're way through the book, his face gets a little bit worse for wear. But in the end he clearly feels that the best time he ever had in high school was this one single night!! If you're looking for a fun YA book to read then I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this to you, but it won't change your world like, say, a John Green book would, but you will laugh and you just might see a trace of your "teen self" in some of these characters and their experiences!!

I leave you with a funny passage that made me laugh:

Denis took a calcaneus to the temple. He staggered backward into a corner, trapped. So this was it: boned to death in his own room. Not exactly the tragedy he had always dreamed about. He thought of his mother finding his bloody pulped remains, and then he thought of that copy of Celebrity Sleuth: Women of Fantasy 15 on the floor, lying open to topless shots of Kristanna Loken, the Terminatrix. Embarrassing. If he had time, he would try to eat the magazine before he died.
p.87

nick & norah's INFINITE PLAYLIST- my thoughts

Notice: This post contains the F-bomb. I normally do not like to post this word on my blog so I apologize in advance if I offend anyone....that is not my intention. However, I felt that I needed to keep the word and use it within the context of the book.

nick & norah's INFINITE PLAYLIST by Rachel Cohn & David Levithan

from the inside jacket: Nick's just seen the girl who dumped him walk in...with a new guy. What else can he do but ask the strange girl next to him to be his new girlfriend for the next five minutes? Norah would do anything to avoid conversation with the not not-frient girl who dumped Nick...and to get over the Evil Ex whom Norah never really totally dumped. What else can she do but answer Nick's question by making out with him? With one electric, unexpected kiss, the five-minute couple of Nick and Norah set off on an uncharted adventure called the "first date" that will turn into an infinite night of falling in and out (and in and out, and maybe in and maybe out) of love. Theirs is a first date of music, laughter, heartache, confusion, passion, taxi driver wisdom, and a jacket named Salvatore. And of course a killer soundtrack. As Nick and Norah wander through the middle-of-the-night mystic maze of Manhattan, they share the kind of night you want to never end, where every minute counts and every moment flickers between love and disaster.

The jacket blurb had me sold. I couldn't wait to take this ride and music, I love music!! But let me tell you I couldn't name 1/3 of the bands listed in this book. I'm too old!!! I wanted to love this book but unfortunately I feel very luke-warm towards it. The biggest contributor to this feeling is that the authors over use the word f&^*. I’m not a prude, I don't mind this word being used in a book, heck I throw it around every now and again, but on one page this word showed up 25 times in just 3 paragraphs!!! After a while it just became weary to hear this word coming out the mouths of these characters that I really wanted to like. I think the authors could’ve developed Nick and Norah personalities, made them more than just teenagers who can’t express themselves without using excessive profanity. They did try to give them some depth towards the end of the book but for me it was too late. I had already made up my mind that this read was o.k., nothing stellar and certainly not one that I would rave about to others, especially my middle-school kids! The premise of the story is very original, two teens who have never met, agree to be each other’s boyfriend/girlfriend for 5 minutes in order to make past love’s jealous. This book could’ve shined without all the extraneous f-bombs.

There were moments though that I did enjoy:

Norah ditches Nick at a nightclub and takes off in a cab. She’s still wearing his jacket that contains his cell phone.

Norah answers on the fourth ring.
“Who the hell is this?” she asks.
I mean, I knew she would answer. But still I’m dumbstruck.
“Is Nick there?” I finally ask.
“No,” she says. “He’s out defeating a minor threat. Do you want to call back for his voice mail?”
It’s like I can’t help it. I am absolutely falling back into conversation with her.
“Can you give him a message?” I ask.
“Do I need a pen? Cuz if I do, you’re so fucking out of luck.”
“No. Could you just tell him that he totally blew it when he let Norah get away in that cab?”
There’s a pause. “Who the fuck is this?”
“And could you let him know that I’m really fucking relieved that he has finally unshackled himself from that Tris bitch?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“And could you pass on the message that it’s not enough to be sitting alone on a sidewalk writing a song for a girl if you don’t have the guts to at least try talking to her again?”
Another pause. “Are you serious?”
“Where are you?”
“Veselka. Where are you?”
“Doesn’t matter,” I say. “I’ll be at Veselka soon. In the meantime, can you pass on my message?”
I hang up before she can reply.

Pages 120-121

There are other moments like this throughout the book, so I feel let down because it could’ve been really, really good. For me it just wasn’t.