What I've Read Lately - August

August seemed to stretch on and on and on, like FOREVER.  And yet, I couldn't seem to get through my reading selections very fast at all.  Maybe because most of the books I chose weren't super great.  Maybe because I really didn't spend all that much time reading this month.  Probably a little bit of both.  Here's what I managed to get through:

Mira, Mirror, by Mette Ivie Harrison, is a story about, you guessed it, the fairy tale magic mirror.  The book begins with a brief sort of backstory to the wicked queen and her mirror, and then spends the majority of the time trying to develop the theme of sisterhood.  But instead of subtly weaving it into the story, she gives us a long and tedious rambling about the two teenage girls she is traveling with.  Near the end it looks like this might be a mashup of (sort of) Snow White and Beauty and the Beast, because there is a vaguely beastly nobleman finding his bride, but then it just sort of drops that and goes back to the whole sister thing, which, if done well would have made a nice ending, but instead came off as being remarkably unbelievable.  It took me a whole week to read this book, and it wasn’t even very long.  And I didn’t enjoy it.  I only finished it because I abandoned so many books last month.  If you are looking for a (very) different take on the Snow White story, read Donna Jo Napoli’s book Dark Shimmer instead.

Sasha Dawn likes to write books about missing people and buried bodies and maybe-murders.  Her first book, Oblivion, was absolutely fantastic (see my review here), and her second one, Splinter, was nothing special but still well done (see my mini-review here).  Her latest book, Blink, is about a guy who lives in a small town where a little girl went missing twelve years ago, who meets a girl who may have a connection to that other missing girl.  It took me about half the book to get into it, because the first part was mostly about football and the guy's relationship with his terrible mother (oh, and it had its fair share of bad behavior - see this review), but then it started to fall into the groove of the mystery and it got a lot better.   (Reading Level ? / Upper Grades)

Almost three years ago I wrote a post called Give That Author a Second Chance!  Well, guess what?  I have now given Trisha Leaver her second chance and I think I might very well be done with her.  I actually started Sweet Madness last month.  It is supposed to be about Lizzie Borden, the infamous axe murderer (murderess?), and I thought I would like it because A) - I haven't come a cross a book about this before and B) - I love historical fiction.  Then I noticed that it was written by the same author as another book that I've read, and really didn't like, so I was like oh great.  And then I noticed that the picture on the cover is the exact same picture as used on a book published four years earlier and I was like, extreme eye roll.  But I decided to give it a try anyway.  It was SOOOOoooo boring.  And I had already struggled through and abandoned several books in a row.  So I set it aside to give a try later.  Well, now it's later and I decided to just not bother.  If you want a good book that is historical fiction with a murder, skip this one and go to my Historical Fiction Book List  and do a keyword search for 'murder.'

Don't be fooled by the blurb inside the front cover of this one - it is not a scary creepy story.  It is actually quite absurd.  Lucky for me, when it comes to books, I love the absurd.  There is just something about stories like The Willoughbys, A is for Aarrgh!, A House Called Awful End, The Fall of Fergal, and A Whole Nother Story that I find too, too funny.  Wax, by Gina Damico, was one of those books, but like, for older readers.  It is about a girl whose town is being taken over by a century-old couple who keep reincarnating themselves inside wax replicas.  Since the girl is the only one who knows what is really happening, it is up to her to save everyone.  The book reads like a full feature film length version of one of the sketches from the Disney Channel show So Random! (If you haven't seen it, check out this video.)  It takes a couple of chapters to really get into its groove, but after that - super entertaining.   (Reading Level ? / Upper Grades)

Unbound, by Neal Shusterman, is a companion novel to the Unwind series that I previously reviewed here.  So, I say it is a companion novel, even though I guess it is actually a series of short stories, because the original books were written in a way that followed different characters, some of which overlapped with others at different points in the story.  So the story was divided into 'chapters' that switched back and forth between those different characters, and at times seemed like a bunch of different stories all mixed up together.  That's kind of how this book feels as you get further into it.  I say as you get further in, because near the beginning the 'stories' focus more on the backstory for certain characters in the series, then it presents more details to parts that took place in the original books (you know, like scenes that were cut from a movie), and finally, it moves into things that happened after the fourth book in the series ended.  Kind of like the next chapter in the story.  So, what did I think of it?  Was it as good as the original four books?  Well, at first I wasn't very in to it.  But the farther along I got, the more I liked it, and by the last story it felt like I was reading an extended version of the fourth book.  Interestingly, the series is being scripted for film right now, and the ending to Unbound adds what would be a much better ending for a movie, so maybe that was part of the idea behind publishing it.  Overall, if you liked the first four books you should like this as well.   But I wouldn't read it as a stand alone - it won't make a lot of sense and so won't be enjoyable.  (Reading Level 5.5 / Middle Grade+)

I LOVED Munmun by Jesse Andrews.  It was absolutely brilliant.  Too bad for you I'm not going to say anything else about it right now.  Stay tuned for a longer review coming up later this month.   (Reading Level 6.6 / Upper Grades)