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 +)