What I've Read Lately - April

So, I only managed to get through six books this month, because I have been spending  A LOT of time on another project, leaving me very little time for reading.  Hopefully I do better next month, because I have twelve library books on my waiting-to-read shelf with rapidly diminishing renewals.

After reading the prologue of The Named, by Marianne Curley, I thought to myself, Wow. That was boring.  And annoying.  And not very well written.  Then I read chapter one.  And I thought to myself, still boring, even more annoying and just as poorly written.  Which is when I tossed the book onto the couch next to me and started watching House Hunters Tropical Getaway or something like that.  Which was way more entertaining than this book.  Don't even bother trying to read it.

So, my sister gave me Daughter of Smoke & Bone, by Laini Taylor on Easter and said I should read it because it is really good.  She said it was about angels and demons but not really, and she said it was really different and some other stuff I don't really remember now (even though it has only been a week!).  I was kind of skeptical, because, to tell you the truth, I am usually not into books about angels and demons (translation -  human girls falling for hot ones).  But, I took it home and was too lazy to walk down to my office after abandoning the first book I attempted this month, so I grabbed this one from where I had left it on the snack bar and gave it a try.  Well, she was right. It was really, really good.  It was about angels and demons, but not really.  And it was really different.  In fact, it was so incredibly original, it is almost right up there with Maggie Stiefvater's Raven Boys series.  (If you read my review of that, here, you will know how significant that is!)  Anyway, it took me a little while to get into it, but once it introduced the 'demons' and started the whole mysterious thing with the TEETH, I was hooked.  And it just got better from there.  So thank you, Janelle, for the fantastic recommendation.  And you all can thank me for passing it on, after you read it, too.  (Reading Level: 5.8 / Upper Grades)

I had Thanks for the Trouble, by Tommy Wallach, sitting on my shelf waiting to be read for so long, I forgot what it was even supposed to be about.  It turns out that it is about a teenage guy who doesn't talk and a teenage-looking girl who claims to be 246 years old.  The girl tries to get the guy to realize that he's not really living, but should, and the guy tries to get the girl to realize that she hasn't yet lived enough.  It was super interesting and also funny, had great writing, and the characters were so full of personality it was unbelievable.  It does have quite a bit of profanity, though, so it's probably best for the older readers.  (Reading Level: 5.5 / Upper Grades)

Wow.  The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender, by Leslye Walton, was eerily similar to All the Crooked Saints, but with an entirely different feel to it.  So I decided to add it to the longer review along with that book.  If you haven't already read it, you can find it here.

The Sweet Revenge of Celia Door, by Karen Finneyfrock,was an okay read.  It is about a social outcast bullied by the mean girls, who is befriended by a new guy in school who shares with her his secret that he is gay.  The author did a nice job with the pacing and thought processes of the main character, Celia, and I really enjoyed the banter between the two new friends.  I also really enjoyed some of the poetry she wrote.  What I didn't care for was the way the author kept throwing in these email exchanges between Celia and her older cousin who constantly spouted social justice messages at her.  They just felt like the author's attempt to stand on her soapbox and indoctrinate this generation of youth.  Also, I found the descriptions of the books Celia was reading quite bizarre - she is a freshman in high school and English is her favorite subject.  She is working her way through the library by the Dewey decimal system.  She has already read The Catcher in the Rye, but also recently read Charlotte's Web (Did the author just pick famous books and slap the titles into her story?), and she says that The Fall of the House of Usher is about a house with a crack that gradually gets bigger until the whole house falls down.  What? (Has the author actually READ that story?) Not a bad read if you have plenty of time for a lot of books, but if you have to find time to squeeze reading into your busy schedule, you are probably looking for something better.   (Reading Level: 5.7 / Upper Grades)

I loved, loved, LOVED Spellbook of the Lost and Found by Moira Fowley-Doyle.  It is hopeful and sad, ugly and beautiful, and creepier than the creepiest thing I have ever read.  The writing is absolutely stunning, and it is overflowing with original ideas.  The only thing I wish the author had done differently would be to leave out the short but graphic scenes (rated R material) - she could have explored the relationships in the story without throwing in the explicit details.  Definitely a book for more mature readers, but if you fall into that category, you seriously have to get your hands on a copy.  (Reading Level: ? / Upper Grades)

What I've Read Lately - March

So this month I finally finished my haul of library books from two months ago and actually got to go to the library again and get more.  Which is good, because I get this itch to pick up new books every few weeks. And you'll be happy to know that I showed some restraint this time and only came home with twelve.  And, I managed to put a sizable dent in those, probably because I ended up with so many good books that I spent more time than usual reading.  (Well, that and the fact that my husband kept telling me that he had catered meetings at work and I didn't need to cook dinner . . . which saved time washing the dishes as well!)

I think I might have actually read My Louisiana Sky, by Kimberly Willlis Holt years and years ago, because it seemed really familiar as I was reading it.  It is about a twelve/thirteen year old girl who lives with her grandmother and parents, both of whom are considered 'slow' or 'simple.'  It is kind of like a coming of age novel, except that the heroine is becoming a teen, not an adult, but other than that it fits the bill nicely.  It is set in 1957, so it also gives an interesting glimpse of the culture at the time, both in a rural and urban context.  It is a pretty quick read, and although I don't think I would give it quite four starts, it is a very nice story for middle grade kids, offering encouragement to those who are struggling to fit in, and perhaps leading to empathy for those who aren't, but might be oblivious to their peers who are.  (Reading Level: 4.6 / Middle Grades)

The Bitter Side of Sweet was written by Tara Sullivan, who is the author of Golden Boy (see my review here), a book meant to call attention to the plight of albinos in Africa today.  This book shows us the world of child slaves who harvest cacao in Ivory Coast.  It is a fantastic novel, full of emotion, with amazing characters and a plot full of suspense.  It is another wonderful read for students looking for ideas on how they can make a difference for others.  Although the AR book finder recommends it for upper grade readers due to profanity (I didn't really notice this) and violence (it does describe brutal beatings), I think it would be fine for upper middle grades and even some middle grade readers as well.  (Reading Level: 5.1 / Middle Grade+)

You Don't Know My Name, by Kristen Orlando, is about a teenage girl who has been training her whole life to be a super secret government agent, and then has to use her skills in a crisis situation.  I must have picked this one because I thought it would be a nice action story - I don't really remember.  Well, it does have action, but most of those parts of the story had me saying Oh, PLEASE, so many times that it wan't any fun.  I should be an editor.  I would have totally told the author to fix those things that were either implausible or downright annoying.  It's pretty sad that the parts of the book I actually enjoyed were the ones in the middle that were all about the heroine's relationships with her friends and the guy next door, not the ones that had anything at all to do with the secret agent stuff.  This book isn't bad, it's just not as good as other teen secret agent books out there, like I Am the Weapon by Allen Zadoff and Nobody by Jennifer Lynn Barnes.  You should read those instead.  (Reading Level: ? / Middle Grade+)

Yankee Girl, by Mary Ann Rodman, is another middle grade historical fiction novel.  This one takes place in Mississippi in 1964, and is told by a girl whose FBI agent father has been transferred from Chicago in order to help protect African Americans who are trying to register to vote.  Not only does the story do a wonderful job of illustrating the attitudes of many Southerners at the time and the injustices they led to, but it also teaches a lesson about integrity and standing up for what you believe in.  This is a great book for middle grade kids learning about the civil rights era, and for middle grade kids struggling between doing what is right and wanting to fit in with the popular crowd.  (Reading Level: 3.7 / Middle Grades)

I was gong to wait to check out The Becoming of Noah Shaw, by Michelle Hodkin, until book two was out, but it was sitting on the library new releases shelf just waiting to be plucked up so I said why not?  It wasn't as good as I was hoping it would be.  The story line was fine, but what made the first three books in the series (Mara Dyer trilogy - see my mini reviews here) so great was Noah.  In this book Noah is still a disfunctional bad boy, but he seems to have lost much of his charm, so the dialogue wasn't nearly as entertaining.  I did like the way it ended, however, and am looking forward to reading the next book to see how things develop moving forward.  Definitely a book for older readers, though, probably even more so than the first three books.
(Reading Level: 4.8 / Upper Grades)

Dull Boy, by Sarah Cross, is another one of those books that sat on my waiting-to-read bookshelf until it was the very last one left, because I just didn't feel like reading it, but then turned out to be pretty good.  It is a book about a teenager who discovers he has super strength, and then he becomes friends with some other teenagers who also have superpowers and there is a Cruella de Vil-like nemesis they try vainly to not get involved with.  The book has humor and suspense and action and angst and bonding, and moves along at a nice pace.  The best part - it is totally appropriate for younger readers, but still interesting and relatable for older readers too.  (Reading Level: 5.1 / Middle Grade+)

I really, really liked My Name Is Not Friday, by Jon Walter.  It is the story of a free black boy who is sold into slavery during the Civil War.  Now, I am already partial to historical fiction, but this one was something special.  It did a fantastic job of creating a unique voice for the main character, of developing the relationships in the story, and of illustrating unique and seldom portrayed aspects of the time period.  I also really, really liked the way that the story showed the complexity of human thought and emotion, helping the reader to look at slavery through the eyes of various characters, making this novel a perfect choice for teaching students not only about this time period in American history, but also for teaching them that, because people's choices are influenced by such a broad range of perspectives and motivations and even social conditioning, the hows and whys of historical events are almost always more complicated than they seem at first glance.  (Reading Level: 5.0 / Middle Grade+)

Wow!  Maggie Stiefvater is a creative genius!  Her new novel, All the Crooked Saints, is brilliant!  Read more about it here.  (I haven't actually finished and posted it yet, so check back later, kay?)

Okay, so I didn't finish reading Gilda Joyce, Psychic Investigator, by Jennifer Allison.  I started it because I was looking for some good middle grade fiction to recommend for my niece.  I made it half-way through the book, and I have to say that as far as middle grade fiction goes, it was pretty good.  It was a quirky story about a quirky girl and I found it interesting and sometimes funny.  But do you know what I didn't like about it?  Although the main character is an almost 14 year old girl who has just finished eighth grade, the book is marketed to younger kids.  Accelerated reader lists it as being for middle grade readers, and the library has it shelved under juvenile fiction.  The problem is, although most of the book (as far as I got anyway) was perfectly acceptable for 4th graders (and even a gifted 2nd grader for that matter, as it is a pretty high reading level for a juvenile fiction book), there were three things that I found highly inappropriate:  two references to porn, and a scene where another 13 year old character takes some of her dad's sleeping pills because she is maybe feeling suicidal.  Who puts that kind of stuff in a lighthearted book for kids?  What a shame that whoever was making the final content decisions decided to leave those things in there.  (Reading Level: 6.5 / Middle Grade+)

Our Dark Duet, by Victoria Schwab, is the sequel to This Savage Song  (see my mini review here), which I absolutely loved.  Not only was the first book spectacularly original, but it did a great job of developing the characters and their relationships all while weaving in those aspects that make a novel deeper.  This second book wasn't as good as the first one, probably because it had less of those things I just mentioned, since they were already mostly taken care of in the first book.  If you take them together as just two volumes of the same story (which is what they are), though, the shortcomings of the second installment will probably not be noticeable.  So pick up a copy of them both at the same time, and I guarantee you won't be disappointed.  (Reading Level: 5.8 / Upper Grades)

Kill the Boy Band, by Goldy Moldavsky was quite the eye-opener.  It is about a group of fangirls who end up kidnapping a member of the boy band they love, and then things spiral even more out of control from there.  Now, I didn't really have any idea how different our modern fangirls (and fanboys) are from the groupies of yesteryear until  my son showed me some videos of a bunch of tween Jake Paulers several months back.  But I still didn't really realize how stalker-ish they can be until now.  I have to say, the book was kinda disturbing and somewhat surprising and actually downright frightening.  It made me ask myself how our society has come to a place where it is creating so many sociopathic/ psychopathic teens.  On the bright side, though, the book was actually pretty darn funny and totally entertaining.  I definitely recommend you read it.  (Reading Level: ? / Upper Grades)

O.M.G.  The Forgetting, by Sharon Cameron, was amazing.  This book has it all.  Dystopian.✔  Science Fiction.✔  Romance.✔  Action.✔  Mystery.✔  Suspense.✔  I couldn't put it down.  I actually read it for like four hours straight yesterday and the day before, that's how un-put-down-able it is.  I wanted to write a full length post about it, but I couldn't figure out how to say what I loved about it (everything) without giving too much away.  So you'll just have to take my word for it.  If you enjoy any of the above mentioned genres, I'm certain that you'll enjoy this book.  So what are you waiting for?  Go out and get a copy already!  (Reading Level: 4.8 / Upper Grades)

Whew!  Deacon Locke Went to Prom, by Brian Katcher, was my thirteenth book this month!  It was pretty good, just like almost every other book I read in the past four weeks.  This one was about a really tall guy who is a social misfit who decides to take his grandmother to prom as his date, causing his life to change in all sorts of ways.  It is mostly funny, and sometimes sad, but pretty interesting with an original concept.  And although the main character is an 18 year old guy graduating from high school, I don't recall there being anything in the story that would make it inappropriate for a junior high age reader.  (Reading Level: ? / Middle Grades +)