Sunday Sunshine: Up-And-Comers

This week's Sunday Sunshine covers a few cool upcoming releases I read through NetGalley and Edelweiss, and best of all--they'll all be available within the next month! 

What I Read This Week: 

Glitch by Heather Anastasiu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Well, I guess I'll start from the beginning: it took me quite a while to get into this book. I can't tell exactly how much of it, since I read it as an e-galley, but definitely a big chunk of the book passed before the first "whoah" moment. But then there was that first "whoah" moment, and in short order a second, and a third. By the end they were coming pretty fast and I'm definitely curious about what happens next.

A little bit about what actually happens, with as few spoilers as possible: Zoe (or "Subject Zoel", as she is officially known) lives in a community where everyone is connected through computer chips in their brains. Then one day her chip starts glitching. Basic enough, right? Ok. Then she finds out that she is not alone. And when she meets others like her, she starts to learn secrets about her world and the people who control it. (I'm not great at summary and also don't want to give away any of the "whoah" moments. But this much, I figure, is just sort of genre standard.)

In the interest of writing a balanced and honest review (and explaining what made this a three-star read--which, it bears repeating, means "liked it" and is still, on the balance, solidly positive), I will mention that two things bugged me a little: one was the slang terms, which felt a little arbitrary and which were used more often than I would have liked (BUT which did signal a plot element at one point, so I at least see the purpose) and the other was a little bit of InstaLove (although I guess if you'd never felt feelings before, and suddenly you FELT ALL THE FEELINGS, that kind of thing could happen.) So, not huge issues, but ones which I'm hoping will ease up a bit in the second book. (Yes, I did like this one enough that I plan to read the second book.)

NOW, the good stuff! The moments when I thought this book really stood out were some of the big reveals and action sequences. In particular, the first thing that made me sit up and take notice was one of the most horrifying action sequences I've ever read. Heather Anastasiu, I want you to know that I will be having nightmares based on your words, so, well done there. I was also impressed with the number and variety of obstacles thrown at the characters, particularly Zoe. They were never allowed to get comfortable for too long, and I thought the twists and turns were often surprising (I gasped at least once, having been caught totally off-guard in the best way--the "oh my god DUH" way) and definitely made me want to keep reading. That's hard to do and I think it was managed pretty deftly here once the story really got flowing.

To sum up: if you're a fan of stories about dystopian societies with heavy romantic elements, give this a shot, and be patient if the first few chapters don't grab you. Once this one hits its stride, it plays out really well, and I think the potential conflict that's set up by the end could make for an even better second book.


Something Strange and Deadly by Susan Dennard
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Oh man, I just finished this book, and my pulse is racing. I am slowly starting to come around to the idea that I think zombie books are pretty awesome. This one is a little different from others I've encountered, though, in that the zombies are created and controlled by a necromancer--they're not contagious, just terrifying. I was a little iffy on that twist at first, because I *am* a little bit worn out on books with dark magic plots. Ultimately, though, I thought it was really well set up and it definitely worked for me. I don't want to give anything away, because this book definitely surprised me a couple of times. It took me a little while to get into it but for the last two-thirds or so I couldn't put it down. You may not know that you're a fan of steampunk zombie mysteries, but once you read this, you will be!

Between You & Me by Marisa Calin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm so all over the place on this one. I think it does a lot of big things well, certainly, and I would recommend it for plenty of people. On the other hand...there were some things that bugged me.

1) This book depicts the feelings of a teenage girl who is dealing with a crush on a teacher--a female teacher--when previously she has only had experience with boys her age. While I am a bit touchy about anything that even remotely resembles teacher-student relationships that cross the line, I thought this book handled Phyre's feelings in a way that realistic and sympathetic while also making clear that Mia (the teacher) cared deeply about Phyre as a student--and nothing more. I appreciated the deft handling of what could be really tricky subject matter, and I give bonus points for working in the especially strange and often intense bond student actors sometimes feel with their adult directors (here I'm relating through my own remembered experiences on the student side; my directors and theater teachers rivaled only my parents in terms of influence in my teenage life.)

2) This book did pretty well, I thought, in portraying the way high school theater works; I draw the line at the swimming pool, which I didn't totally think was necessary, but fine--there's no indication that this school district is in any way cash-strapped, so maybe they did go crazy and build a swimming pool in the stage, what do I know (no amount of time will lessen the bitterness my perpetually broke inner-city high school peers and I felt toward the ritzy suburban high school ten minutes away. There were rumors that while I was devoting my Saturdays to building rickety staircases and re-painting old flats for our sets, the suburban kids were doing Titanic the musical with a hydraulic mechanism to sink the ship right into the stage.) But I liked the degree to which the play actually shaped the way Phyre thought about things; that's definitely something I experienced.

3)POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD; ONLY AS MUCH AS YOU CAN READ IN THE GOODREADS SUMMARY, BUT HEY, NOW YOU'VE BEEN WARNED (loudly, sorry for that.) I liked the screenplay and play-within-a-screenplay formats, if only as a novelty--I believe that a kid like Phyre would tell her story that way. That rang true. And I like the idea of the ambiguously-gendered, second-person best friend--but I wish that I hadn't been told from the beginning that the character could be read either way. (I thought maybe that was just the note at the front of the ARC, and that the finished copy wouldn't do that, so I was going to leave it out of my review--but then I realized it's right there in the Goodreads summary. So, the cat's outta the bag, I guess.) I think I would have loved to realize that at the end--like, hey, this character that you thought was a [gender 1]? Could have been a [gender 2], couldn't it? It's a cool device and a lot of care was taken with it. However, going in with that primed in my brain--I couldn't decide. It was a little like reading a choose-your-own-adventure book and checking out all the choices before actually turning to a page (which, ok, I did all the time; yes, I know that's cheating at books; sue me.) So I wound up doing double readings of each scene as I went, where I think I would have preferred to read the whole book again after realizing there was another option. OK, SPOILERS ARE DONE NOW.

In short--this is definitely a story worth reading. I actually talked myself up a star while writing this review, because as I thought back over the story I realized how much I liked. A few distracting things don't take away from a really original, truthful story, and I would recommend this to the following groups of people:

--theater people, especially people who were theater people in high school
--anyone who's been confused about their feelings toward someone
--anyone who's felt ignored by someone they cared about
--anyone who's ever realized they were being a jerk to someone they cared about
--so, basically, all the people, because if you show me someone who says that none of the above apply to him/her, I'll show you a liar.

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**Disclosure: I received free e-galleys of all three of these books in exchange for honest reviews.**

 

Awesome Alert: YA Highway 3rd Anniversary Giveaway!

You guys.  Do you like books?  (If not...how did you get here?!?)  I thought so. 

Run, don't walk, to YA Highway's 3rd Anniversary Giveaway!  I don't know why WE get the chance to win such awesome prizes for THEIR birthday...but frankly, I'm ok with that confusion.  Because the prizes are that great.  SO MANY ARCS.  Also books.  And critiques.  And the grand prize is your choice of  a Nook or Kindle. 

But since it's their birthday, I thought I'd also use this post to celebrate them a little bit.  After all, they do bring us together as a community with features like Road Trip Wednesday and the YA Highway Bookmobile!  They offer all kinds of tips for writers: practical ones like this article about how to ALWAYS back up your work, craft-related ones, like this article that gives Four Steps to Nailing Your Character's Voice, and then ones that will help you become not just a better writer, but frankly, a better citizen of this planet, like this fantastic article about how to speak to people about the ways in which they are different from you.   And on top of all that, they serve up a weekly digest of  everything interesting that has happened on THE ENTIRE REST OF THE INTERNET every Friday. 

So, here's to many happy returns, YA Highway!  Thanks for all the hard work--it's definitely appreciated by your fellow YA bloggers!

RTW: Book-To-Movie Successes

I totally love this week's Road Trip Wednesday prompt--it's something about which I have very strong feelings.

What movie have you seen that actually (gasp!) improved on the book?

I like how positive they are, so I will try not to spend this entire post loudly complaining about blonde girls playing brunette characters (Shirley Temple and Liesel Matthews, I'm looking at you guys.  Sara Crewe did. not. have. blonde. ringlets.)

Nope.

Instead, I'll talk about a trend I've noticed--the weirder and more whimsical the book, the more I love the movie.

So, naturally, a few of my favorites are adaptations of Roald Dahl books.

 1) Matilda.  This might be my all-time favorite movie based on a book (depending on whether we're counting Anne of Green Gables with Megan Follows as a movie or a miniseries.)  However, like Anne of Green Gables, and also like Little Women (the one with Winona Ryder), I love the book so much that I'm not sure it's right for today's post.  In all three of those cases, I feel like the movie is worthy of the book--but can I say better?  I don't know.

2) Ok, here's one where there was no contest for me as a kid.  The movie is hands down better than the book.  It is also terrifying.  I found the book a little hard to follow and therefore kind of slow-moving.  That said, we're talking about my experience when I was like, six, so I may owe the book another go.  (The movie, on the other hand, has continued to hold up over twenty years of frequent viewing.)

3) My winner today is surprisingly not a Roald Dahl adaptation.  It's an Ian Fleming adaptation.  "Oh," you're thinking, "one of the James Bond movies, huh?  Interesting, interesting--"

WRONG.

It's Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

 I tried to read this book as a kid.  I really tried.  I wanted to love it.  But I just couldn't.  BUT THEN.  I must have borrowed the VHS tape from the library, I think--we certainly never owned it--then I discovered the bizarre glory of this movie.  Whistling sweets, a flying car, Dick van Dyke pretending to be a wind-up toy...I can't even.

AND HEY GUESS WHO WROTE THE SCREENPLAY:

That's right--Roald Dahl.  So, kid, the moral of today's story is that Roald Dahl is the king of book-to-movie adaptations.  Whatever you're doing on this fine summer afternoon, raise a glass of lemonade or snozzberry juice or whatever to the very pleasantly deranged and dearly departed Mr. Dahl.

Awesome Alert: "Among The Nameless Stars"

Go here!  Download!  Read!

This is just a quick post to alert everyone that Diana Peterfreund, in addition to writing the excellent For Darkness Shows the Stars (which I reviewed here), has also written a short prequel, which is available FREE on her website.  It covers some of the time that Kai and Elliot spent apart, and it is pretty wonderful.  And let me tell you--I have a mind like a sieve, and two weeks after reading a book, usually the details are GONE.  But I started reading "Among the Nameless Stars" and found that the whole world was just waiting there in my head like I had never left.  I so hope for more in this universe--it's so vivid and unique.  Anyway, enjoy!

(Early) Sunday Sunshine: Heat Wave Edition!

Have I already had a Heat Wave Edition?  I don't remember.  It's been a pretty warm summer so far here in New York City, but these last few days it's been "don't leave the apartment" hot.  Thank you, air conditioners, for your excellent work.

Anyway, I've been doing a lot of fun indoor stuff this week, and I've been making sure to include plenty of reading.  Really, you can only play so many computer games,

(Source.)

and you can only watch so many episodes of ludicrous ABC Family original programming on Netflix.

(Source)

And trust me, I've been getting at least 300% of my recommended daily allowance of both of those things.  But in between, I've read several delightful books:

What I Read This Week:

One for the Murphys by Lynda Mullaly Hunt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Wow. This book packs a punch. Most of the contemporary I read is pitched, I think, at slightly older readers, so it was different for me to read a book that focused entirely on family and friendship without even a glimmer of romance. In One For The Murphys, Carley Connors finds herself thrust into a foster family that she desperately wants to be part of--and she can't stand how great they seem. Carley is a prickly, clever, mercurial twelve-year-old, and she is clearly a product of her life before the Murphys. Her mother, who calls her in school to sing "Happy Birthday" at the moment of her birth, and who has midnight song-and-dance parties with her, is in the hospital after doing something unforgivable. Carley doesn't want to be around her--but she doesn't want to accept Mrs. Murphy's over-the-top kindness, either.

I was completely drawn into this story by the end of the second chapter. It was a very quick read for me because I was so absorbed. What could read like a movie-of-the-week is elevated far beyond that with characters who feel three-dimensional (even the four-year-old talks like a real four-year-old; exaggerated baby talk is a pet peeve of mine but Michael Eric Murphy passes the test.) Nothing is ever 100%; the characters aren't "good guys" or "bad guys" (well, except Carley's stepdad, who remains off-page) and the situations resolve in ways that feel realistic (and had me reaching for the Kleenex.)

I would heartily recommend this to anyone in middle school or older who wants a powerful, non-sappy story about what it means to be a friend or a family. Adult readers who have worked with children, or have children of their own, will be especially moved by Julie Murphy, I think. (I know I was. I want to know her.)


**Disclosure: I won a copy from the YAMazing Race, organized by The Apocalypsies. This is my honest review of the book.**


Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Eeeek! (I don't really love the word "squee", but I mean, I guess it's appropriate here.) I can't stop grinning. What a fantastic read. Stephanie Perkins writes what it feels like to be falling for someone SO WELL. And what it feels like when that gets complicated. And when you're trying to make new friends. And when you're awkward and confused and don't know what to do. And when you think everything is wrong. And when you find out everything is right.

Other people have talked about this book way better. But (to quote Jon Stewart talking about Bruce Springsteen) "if you like joy" (or other emotions, they're pretty much all in here), go read Anna and the French Kiss. It's a perfect summer read.



Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I. Love. Lola. Nolan. Anna and the French Kiss was a great book, and I finished it in a day. Lola and the Boy Next Door was an even better book--the kind I kept putting down after a few chapters because I didn't want it to end. (Still, it only took three days. Sigh.) Lola is such a fabulous protagonist--she screws things up in such REAL ways, but she's someone I would be friends with for sure. Her screw-ups don't condemn her to "bad person" status--sometimes she is a bad friend/girlfriend/daughter/employee/whatever, and sometimes (more often) she is a good one. She is one of the most authentic-feeling characters I've ever read. And what's more--the people around her are the same. Her best friend Lindsay, in particular, is a good-but-not-perfect friend. Both girls annoy each other sometimes, and hurt each other sometimes, and it's not end-of-the-world-level drama, because they've been friends forever and they both really care about each other, so they get past it.

Cricket Bell, on the other hand...well, he might be a little too perfect. But I guess I can live with that. Twist my arm. GEEZ is this guy a dreamboat.

I also have to give points to St. Clair and Anna (but really St. Clair in particular) for speaking up for the "easy" relationship. Growing up, as I did, on a steady diet of romantic comedies (R.I.P. Nora Ephron), I briefly labored under the delusion that real love has to be complicated on like, an epic scale. Then I met my husband and realized that actually, relationships that make both people really happy most of the time, that are "easy" (well, relatively; all relationships take work) and drama-free--those relationships are pretty great. And those relationships are really underrepresented in literature, film, and television (which I understand; you need conflict to tell a story), so it was really nice to see one here.

Stephanie Perkins, I'm sold. You're going on my "must read" list: Maggie Stiefvater, John Green, Kristin Cashore, Libba Bray--and you. Good company, yes? (Yes. Very yes.)


Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I don't know what I expected. Whatever it was, I was wrong. In turns eerie, gripping, funny/sad, bizarre, and heartbreaking, Where Things Come Back is probably the closest in style to contemporary adult literary fiction of any YA book I've read. I say that last piece not as a value judgement, but simply to note that it felt different than anything I've read lately. There was a moment, about three-quarters of the way through this book, when I was suddenly seized with the notion that perhaps everyone else in the world had disappeared--and it felt really plausible after being submerged in the world of Lily, Arkansas and Cullen Witter.

I won't try to summarize Where Things Come Back; I'm bad at summarizing under the best circumstances. But I can tell you that it's about loss, faith, belief, community, and perception. I read it in one afternoon; I recommend that method, as long as you have an afternoon plus some recovery time. This book didn't make me cry but it did make me feel truly anxious and confused in ways that I found really satisfying.

Oh, for Pete's sake, it won the Printz: more coherent people than me have written about it, so you can look for their reviews--or you can just go read it.

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Waiting in the Wings:

I have a bunch of titles on Netgalley that are about to pass the all-important "30 days to publication" marker, so in the next few weeks I'll be giving them priority.  I don't want to mention titles here because I don't post reviews unless I can honestly give at least three stars, but check in next Sunday to hear about some upcoming releases!

Great Expectations

It's summer--and you know what that means!  Time for some great beach reads!

There is a box of books hurtling towards me as we speak (by LASERSHIP, which is the coolest name for any kind of shipping ever, and which I will totally miss when I leave Manhattan, because it gets B&N orders to me in like a DAY):

Now, you may be thinking, hey--one of these things is not like the other!  And, ok, SURE, I guess you're right.  But I'm pretty psyched for all three.  I mentioned before that I'm reading Great Expectations with a few of my students this summer, and I did in fact set up a blog for my notes.  I'm hoping to get some other contributors--I'd love for my students to contribute, but it IS their summer vacation and they ARE already reading a Dickens novel for fun, so I think they've already earned their readerly "cred" for the summer.  If anyone wants to follow along and share thoughts in the comments, awesome; if anyone wants to guest-post, awesomer.

You can find the blog here:
Great Expectations Readalong

But I'll still be blogging and reviewing here.  This is just a little internet experiment, so if it's not your thing...then, carry on!  Nothing to see here!

Sunday Sunshine: End of the School Year Edition

Since this was the last week of school/first week of summer vacation, I had a strange (but lovely) week of reading.

What I Read This Week:

 Dash & Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a really fun read. I read Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist at the beginning of the school year, and LOVED it, so I was excited to read another book by the same authors. While I think I prefer Nick and Norah to Dash and Lily, there was a lot that I really enjoyed about this one. First of all, it was set in and around my neighborhood. A few pretty memorable encounters take place in Washington Square Park (which I walked through twice today) and Dash even goes to my supermarket (Morton Williams) on an ill-fated yogurt run.

I liked Dash and Lily--I feel like I would really have loved them when I was in high school, especially Lily--but I found that I liked the supporting characters better. I especially liked Dash's exuberant friend Boomer (I'm pretty sure at least 3/4 of his sentences ended with exclamation points) and Lily's great-aunt Ida, aka Mrs. Basil E.

This is a great Christmas story, and a great New York City story. If you're in the mood for one of those, you can't go wrong with this one.

Persuasion by Jane Austen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After reading For Darkness Shows the Stars by Diana Peterfreund, I decided I should re-read the source material. I like Persuasion better every time I read it, which I think has everything to do with the fact that the first time I read it, I was in college. As Goodreads points out, Anne Elliot is the oldest of Jane Austen's heroines. She's in her late twenties, and had an Austen-esque love affair when she was younger--but it didn't have the traditional happy ending. Persuasion picks up several years later, when Anne has had some time to reflect. Many of Austen's heroines are marked by greater thoughtfulness and maturity than those around them, but they still get to experience the first-big-love thing on the page. Anne's story is a bit different, which I think is why it took me a while to warm up to it. Now, though, I really enjoy Anne's sightly older and wiser take on everything. In particular, I think Anne's relationship with Lady Russell is really interesting. Anne's always looked up to and respected Lady Russell, especially because Anne's mother died when Anne was 14. Lady Russell is presented as a generally sensible, likable character--but we get to see Anne realize that that "sensible and likable" does not equal "infallible".

And of course, there's all the usual Austen: a whole range of goofy, outsized, occasionally vile, occasionally wonderful characters, and a slow-burning, swoonworthy romance. Oh, and an amazing letter. I definitely recommend this to Austen lovers...just know that it's a quieter novel than her others.

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