What I've Read Lately - July

I thought I wasn't going to have too much to share with you all this month, what with getting a brand new nephew and mending an armload of his sisters' princess dresses, but it turns out that I didn't do too badly after all.  Here's the rundown:

I think I may have set a new record for number of pages read before abandoning a book with Danielle Paige's Stealing Snow.  I made it through 197 pages before I convinced myself that it was NOT GOING TO GET BETTER.  In fact, it had been going downhill for a while before I gave up on it.  If you want to know why, see my post here.

Wayfarer, by Alexandra Bracken, is the sequel to Passenger (see mini review here).  I liked the way this book matched up the characters in different combinations and then developed those relationships this time (this means I didn't have to deal with the unrealistic love story so much).  I liked the way the story examined the difficult choices the characters had to make and the way it shaped them.  I liked the way the threads of the mystery were unraveled.  I really liked the way the whole thing was wrapped up in the end.  I didn't like the actual time travel stuff as much as in the first, because the concept had some confusing flaws in this one.  I didn't like the way the characters received serious, even mortal, wounds time and again and then miraculously healed from them in no time at all (They may be time travelers, but otherwise they are ordinary humans).  SO unrealistic and distracting.  And I really didn't like the book's recurring comments about white male privilege.  Bracken could have made her point about the injustice of racial discrimination without assigning a negative stereotype to a whole different portion of the population -white males - based on race.  (Hmmm.  A bit racist, isn't that?)  Way to go Ms. Bracken - alienating half of your potential readers is a great way to make a point and sell books.  (Reading Level: 6.7/ Upper Grades)

I thought that Bumped, by Megan McCafferty, was going to be a dystopian novel, but it wasn't exactly.  It IS about a not so distant future where women can no longer bear children once they reach adulthood, resulting in a push for teens to have as many babies as possible and give them up for adoption.  But it really doesn't have anything to do with an oppressive government.  Instead, it examines how peers, parents, personal and corporate interests, and especially the media can shape the way society thinks and affect the choices that people make.  It was kind of quirky and a bit funny (I'm not really sure that's what the author intended, but that's how it came across to me), and although I had trouble getting into it at first, it turned out to be not a bad read at all.  (Reading Level: 5.2 / Middle Grade +)

The Night Sister, by Jennifer McMahon, was another book intended for adults.  As I've mentioned before, I don't read too many of those, because they always seem to throw in too much unnecessary stuff, or are so boring I can't get through them.  I used to think it was the subject matter that made them boring (you know, adult life in general), but with this book I realized that the real problem is that they are usually written in the third person, which just makes them plod along for some reason.  (Well, that, and they also tend to be so annoyingly verbose!)  This book was a mystery horror/thriller type book, with the main focus on the mystery.  It was much better than most of the adult fiction I've read (or should I say tried to read), and didn't have anything that would be inappropriate for an upper grade reader.  Chapters that alternated between the present and the past help move the story along nicely, and we pretty much get all of our questions answered in the end.

Ten Cents a Dance, by Christine Fletcher, is a historical fiction novel set in the early 1940's.  It was pretty interesting.  It was about a poor girl in Chicago who left her job in the slaughter house to become a taxi dancer - without her mother's knowledge, of course, because she is only 15.  (This is a big part of the story.)  I'd never heard of taxi dancers before, which is one of the things I love about historical fiction - you get to learn history without the boring history book.  Anyway, there was nothing spectacular in the writing, but there wasn't anything to complain about either, so if you like historical fiction or stories about good girls falling for bad boys and sneaking around and deceiving their parents and getting into messes and then having to figure out how to get back out of them, you should give this book a try.  (Reading Level: 4.2 / Upper Grades)

I had been waiting to read Prophecy of the Sisters, by Michelle Zink, for like three years, and it was always checked out of the library.  So, was it worth the wait?  Definitely more worth it that most of the books I wait forever to get my hands on.  It was pretty good.  It could have been better, because it would move along nicely and then have a lapse into boring-ness before moving along nicely again.  That's my only complaint.  It is a historical fiction mystery, though, which I for some reason was not expecting, but that was okay for me because I like historical fiction.  It is the first part in a trilogy, so I'm hoping the second book has a bit more excitement to it.  (Reading Level: 5.4 / Middle Grades +)

I really liked Livvie Owen Lived Here by Sarah Dooley.  It is about an autistic teenager and the troubles her family has finding and keeping a place to live.  But it is also about family relationships and her struggle to fit in and find her place and feel comfortable in her day to day life.  It is funny, and heartwarming, and does a fantastic job illustrating the challenges that people on the autism spectrum (as well as their families) are faced with.  You should read it.  (Reading Level: 5.3 / Middle Grades +)

Lion Heart, by A. C. Gaughen, is the final book in a trilogy.  I loved, loved, loved, the first two books (see my review here).   This one, however, not as much.  It wasn't bad in any way at all, it just wasn't special.  It focused much more on the romance and much less on the action and adventure and mystery, and didn't have nearly as much of all that good stuff that I loved about the other installments.  It did wrap up the story in a way that was satisfying, which is more than I can say about a lot of trilogies, but I just wish the author would have given it a little bit more.  (Reading Level: ? / Upper Grades)

Flutter, by Gina Linko, had been sitting on my waiting-to-read bookshelf for weeks and weeks and I just kept passing it by for some reason, thinking that I wasn't sure that I really wanted to read it.  I started it yesterday morning.  I already finished it.  It was really hard to put down.  It was a paranormal mystery, I guess you could say, and it was really well done.  Although it wasn't all exciting and suspenseful, the author put the chapter breaks in just the right places to get you to read just one more!  And she kept the clues coming at just the right pace to keep the reader satisfied and interested.  I'm not giving it rave reviews or anything (because I very rarely do that, you know), but it was good. (Reading Level: ? / Middle Grades +)

Too Much of a Good Thing

So, I have a friend (who shall remain nameless).  And this friend thinks that if eating four brownies is good, and eight brownies is great, then eating 12 brownies (in one sitting, mind you) must be even better.  So he does.  Eat 12 brownies in one sitting.  Then, an hour later, he wonders why he has a stomachache.  Hmmm.  Maybe because you overdid it on the brownies.  It’s called too much of a good thing, silly.  Because that is a real thing, you know.  Like those extended songs on youtube that my son will periodically listen to.  If the four minute song is so catchy we can’t get enough of it, somehow a ten hour version is just the thing we need!  Ummm, no.  Sometimes more just isn't better.  Sometimes it is a lot, lot worse.

Well, apparently Danielle Paige (and her editor, and agent, and whoever else is responsible for getting a book published) didn’t get the memo, because Stealing Snow is a perfect example of what I’m talking about here.

  

First kisses sometimes wake slumbering princesses, undo spells, and spark happily ever afters.

Mine broke Bale.

Seventeen-year-old Snow has spent her life locked in Whittaker Psychiatric—but she isn’t crazy. And that’s not the worst of it. Her very first kiss proves anything but innocent…when Bale, her only love, turns violent.

Despite Snow knowing that Bale would never truly hurt her, he is taken away—dashing her last hope for any sort of future in the mental ward she calls home. With nowhere else to turn, Snow finds herself drawn to a strange new orderly who whispers secrets in the night about a mysterious past and a kingdom that’s hers for the taking—if only she can find her way past the iron gates to the Tree that has been haunting her dreams.

I liked the concept.  It was different.  A girl is locked in a mental hospital when she is a little girl for trying to walk through a mirror into a magical land.  Only she isn't really crazy, she really can walk through a mirror into a magical land.  The first part of the book, where she is in the mental hospital, was actually pretty good.  I guess that's how I managed to get so far into it (197 pages!) before quitting.  My only real complaint about this part of the story is this:  why, if she is committed at like five years old for trying to walk through a mirror, is she still in there like 12 years later, because sometimes she has anger issues (not because she is delusional, mind you).  What, 12 years of anger management therapy and countless drug trials couldn’t fix the problem well enough to let her out???  That was a pretty stupid premise, but I was like, hey, I can go along with it because we're going to get to the real story pretty soon.  The good part.  Too bad that didn't happen.

This is a story about magic.  And the author must have thought, hey, if a little bit of magic is good, a whole lot of magic is even better.  Well . . . not necessarily, and in this case definitely NOT.

Danielle Page threw in so much magic it just made a mess of the whole story.

Our magical heroine (who just so happens to be the daughter of two different magical types of parents) enters into a magical land through a magical mirror, to rescue the boy she loves (who they haven't yet said is magic, but it's pretty obvious he will turn out to be).  Once there, she falls into a river and is magically revived (because she was dead but that doesn't mean anything if you have magic) by a magical witch who has an apprentice who is not a witch but can magically become a magical cat-beast and is training to control her magic.  The magical apprentice grows magical plants on her free time.  (Who knows why.  The book spends forever describing them for no reason.  They are just there in greenhouses next to the cages that are full of weird animals.)  Then, there is a magical king who uses his ice magic to put a spell on the land, magically making it always winter, and he also makes magic ice animals that attack our heroine, who has to fight them with her own ice magic, which she magically learns how to control in three short lessons with the witch.  Oh, and then there is some guy called The Enforcer or something like that, who wears a suit of armor and can't be stopped, because he's magic, and the king can magically see through his eyes.  He also attacks our heroine, and she has to use, guess what, more magic to fight him.  And then there are people who sell magic potions, and these magic potion sellers cloak themselves with magic to make themselves all beautiful and whatever, and, when they are not in the magical villages selling their magic, they all live together in a magical castle in an illusionary forest created by magic, and they are trying to steal our heroine to use her magic for themselves.  Or something like that.

As if the overload of magic wasn't enough, there is even more wrong with this book:

This book reads like a sketch with a bunch (too, too many at a time) of details thrown in randomly here and there.

The characters are not only not interesting, but they are downright boring.  And annoying.  Especially the one guy who doesn't have any magic (go figure).

The story keeps trying to set up a love triangle (or maybe a quadrangle - there are three guys involved), but it is very, very not well done.  (I can't even begin to describe how bad it is.)  The heroine goes to the magic land to get back Bale, the love of her life.  She keeps telling the witch she has to rescue him.  The thief who lives with the potion making/selling girls keeps popping in and out of the story, telling her that he will help her get Bale back, but she has to come with him first.  There is something about him that she is attracted to.  Or not.  The dude without magic is always angry because he hates magic, but the heroine is sympathetic to him because the cat-girl is his sort-of sister so she understands him.  You can just tell that the author is trying to get them together sooner or later - but what about Bale, the love of her life???)  Uuugggghh.  

The action scenes, well, I guess they are action scenes.  But they are not one little bit suspenseful.  I don't know why exactly.  I didn't realize it was even possible to write an action scene that wasn't action-y until I read this.

What else?  I'm sure that if I made it through the rest of the book I could come up with a half a dozen more complaints, and I am astounded that this is actually a three book series.  

It's a perfect example of a good concept that should have been written by someone else.  Someone who understands that too much of a good thing is not good.  It's just too much.