Insta(gram)-Love

...she held out a hand toward Honor. A small, ambiguous gesture, it still had the power to untwist Honor's stomach, for it said: I am running away. Help me. She and the woman were now linked by that gesture.

In Tracy Chevalier's The Last Runaway, Honor Bright, a fresh new arrival and Quaker from England, stepped upon America's shores carrying within her an idealism bred from years of an upbringing that taught her that,

“...everyone has a measure of Light in them and though the amount can vary, all must try to live up to their measure.”

Honor feels feels bound by her morality and what she believes are universal truths to take a stand, which ultimately requires she follow her heart. Her heart would lead her to take a road less taken, to defy her husband's wishes and the law of her newly-adopted country.

Robert Frost put into words the dilemma that played upon Honor's sense of right. She looked upon the horrors of slavery that opened before her and knew she must choose. Two roads lie before her and one she must trod upon.

Honor's first less travelled road was prompted by her decision to accompany her sister to America where her sister planned to marry and settle in Ohio with her betrothed and settling into life as a farmer's wife. This road for Honor began as a roiling and wretched seasickness lasting the entire trip across the grey sea. The experience left a horrible memory for Honor. She determined sea travel was not an adventure she would elect to again experience, so staying in America was to be her fate.

Upon arriving in their new county, Honor's sister succumbs to illness and dies before seeing the man she intended to marry. Honor continues the trip to Ohio alone where she temporarily stays with her sister's intended spouse.

In England, morality was familiar and ordered, righteousness a way of life--in America, the lines blurred.

Jan 31

Jan 31 Mini Reviews: 3 Kate Shugak Novels by Dana Stebenow

I separate thrillers or mysteries into two distinct categories.

I love the old fashioned sleuth stories consisting of smart detectives whose investigative skills rival Sherlock Holmes, where probing investigation and a nose for ferreting out truth pull you into the heart of the story. A second category is the titillating serial-killer aka psychopath who has no qualities except to do evil with a smart detective ready to take the disgusting psycho-human down.

Dana Stebenow's writing falls solidly into the first category with her Kate Shugak series.

Kate's a petite five-foot Aleut and a P.I. who lives on a 160-acre homestead in an Alaskan National Park. Her beloved companion Mutt is an impressively sized half-wolf half-husky who weighs significantly more than Kate. Mutt's love for and loyalty to Kate take them through adventures in the rugged Alaskan wilderness that completely satisfies my love of epic detective tales. (And stories involving dogs.)

Stabenow's written eighteen novels with Kate and Mutt delving into secrets and solving crimes. Old Sam Dementieff, her uncle who raised her as his daughter, her adopted teenage son Johnny and her love interest Trooper Jim Chopin are a colorful and always entertaining cast of characters.

Kate's home in the wilderness is a half-hour trip to the closest settlement, the Ninilna village along the 600 mile long Kanuyaq River, a waterway rich in salmon that feeds into Prince William Sound. She comes in contact with recluses, dog mushers, miners, hunters, fishermen, park rangers and other natives: Aleuts, Athabascans and Tlingits. There's an inexhaustible array of individuals and an extensive history of Alaska. This in itself makes the reading of Stabenow's books a joy beyond good storytelling.

I recently read three of Stabenow's books, each one with a unique quality and story. I did not read them in the order they were written, which would be a preferred chronology, naturally. They are well-written and any references to past events are clearly delineated within each book. In fact, I read the most recent book first and will review them in the strange order in which I read them.

Jan 30

Jan 30 Review: Crazy Thing Called Love by Molly O'Keefe

My reviews of Molly O'Keefe's Crooked Creek Ranch series are probably starting to get a bit dull.

Here's a quick synopsis of the crux of each of my reviews,

Wow! These characters are fully fleshed-out, complex people. I completely believed in their romance because their path toward happiness was hard and took work, but the payoff was completely worth it! This pushes the boundaries of what we talk about when we talk about characters and stories in romance! Exclamation points!

Each of these three novels explores the path of challenging, driven, damaged people as they find happiness together. Crazy Thing Called Love features Madelyn (formerly known as Maddy), a rising star who hosts a morning talk show in Dallas, and Billy, an aging hockey enforcer whose career is at rock bottom.

Oh, and Billy and Maddy used to be married.

This is a scenario I usually would avoid reading, because generally speaking, it seems that relationships run their course for a reason, so the reconciliations generally read as superficial or not long lasting in the context of real life. However, in the case of Crazy Thing Called Love, the setup works.

Billy and Maddy married young--way young--and while they were in love, they were also immature and their marriage was rooted in their mutual desire to escape their lives. Billy's hockey career was their ticket out.

Maddy left Billy, having lost herself and her identity amidst Billy's rising stardom and remade herself into a polished, confident local media star. But in a strange way, within her job she also loses a piece of herself,

AM Dallas needed her to be the trusted, knowledgeable, well-dressed, and skinny best friend every woman in Dallas wanted to have. She didn’t have opinions, or outrage or passion. She smiled and told people about the delicious wonder that was gluten-free cheese.

Billy's in desperate need of a new image after spending the season riding the bench for the Dallas Mavericks (yes, this makes me snicker, because the Mavericks are a basketball team, not a hockey team). He has a lot of anger and bitterness and has the potential to go in a very dark direction.

When Maddy's talk show proposes proposes a makeover of Dallas's notorious bad boy hockey player--clothes, hair, etiquette, the works--she balks, not wanting to revisit that part of her life and definitely not wanting her coworkers to know her past. But Billy embraces the chance to reconnect with his ex-wife.

Their forced renunion after 14 years is challenging, to say the least.

As a rule Billy didn’t believe in fate, but having her come back into his life when it was at its very darkest, that seemed important. Like something he shouldn’t ignore. Something he didn’t want to ignore.

Jan 24

Jan 24 Early Review: Nobody But Us by Kristin Halbrook

We gotta be hidden here in this new world we made. Just silence keeping all the shit of the real world away.

I rarely reflect on authorial intent when reading. I figure, once a book's in the wild, it's meaning is up to each reader's interpretation.

I think readers will find each of those concepts in Nobody But Us, depending on what they want or hope to read, but I'm still unsure as to what the intention of this story may be.

Regardless, what I do know is that Nobody But Us is a strong debut, and a stark depiction of teens facing horrid circumstances which they're ill-equipped to handle.

Nobody But Us is told in alternating (and very distinct) perspectives from the points-of-view of WIll and Zoe. Will has just turned 18 and aged out of the foster care system. Now legally an adult, Will hopes to escape his dead-end, hard-scrabble, small North Dakota town with his girlfriend. Zoe is younger, 15, and flees with WIll to escape her violent father. The pair sets out on a road trip, destined for Las Vegas where they hope to blend into the anonymity of the city and remake their lives.

Before I knew escape, life was something to be endured, passively. Now I hunger for it.

Except running from the past is a hard thing.

Jan 21

Jan 21 Mini Reviews: Three DNFs from Rebeca

Rebeca aka Renegade

I used to be a die-hard, must-finish reader. If I started a book, by God, I would finish it--even if it made my eyes bleed.

These days I’m much more relaxed; if a book doesn’t speak to me I don’t force myself to finish it. Since I started school again full-time I’ve had less reading time and even more DNFs to my name. These are a few of the books that I’ve abandoned over the last few months.

(Keep in mind this may say more about my own reading habits than about the quality of the books themselves.)

Thief of Shadows by Elizabeth Hoyt

I love fairy tales and re-imagined stories of all kinds.

Elizabeth Hoyt’s The Princes Trilogy, a series of historical romances with fables woven into them, is right up my alley and I’ve become a fan of her work. While I haven’t enjoyed her Maiden Lane series quite as much I was still excited to read the fourth installment, Thief of Shadows.

This book follows Winter Makepeace, headmaster of a home for foundling children who is also secretly a Batman-style vigilante named the Ghost of St. Giles. When he is rescued by Lady Elizabeth Beckinhall after another close brush with death he struggles to protect his identity from the lonely society widow.

Jan 21

Jan 21 Review: Ultraviolet by R.J. Anderson

I realized then that even though I was a tiny speck in an infinite cosmos, a blip on the timeline of eternity, I was not without purpose.

Once upon a time there was a girl who was extraordinary. She could hear colors, and see sounds, and taste the difference between truth and lies.

Let go of your preconceived notions of reality. Then imagine a new reality, one where you hear colors, taste words and see sounds. You understand your sensations exist on a plane that others do not experience, so you cloak yourself in a garb of false normalcy hiding your true self and your understanding of the world from others. Even love has a unique flavor and sound only you can know.

When the music stopped, I'd been afraid even to look at him, sure he could hear my rapid heartbeat as clearly as I could see his steady teal-green one. When he'd slid away from me and gotten up, the wanting inside me had ached so hot that I'd had to stifle a whimper. Inwardly I'd berated myself, not just for feeling more than I should but for coming so close to sowing it.

At sixteen, Alison's life has turned into a nightmare.

R.J. Anderston creates a portrait of extraordinary senses in Ultraviolet beginning with her awakening in a mental institution where she pieces together her tangled memory to discover what occurred to bring her there. She's stunned by her condition, by the yellow-gray stink of sweat surrounding her. She believes her worst nightmare as become her present reality.

She's gone crazy. Alison is sure of it. Her mother has locked her away.

Jan 18

Jan 18 Review: Uses for Boys by Erica Lorraine Scheidt

Sometimes the idea of a book is ultimately stronger than the story within.

In the case of Erica Lorraine Scheidt's debut novel, Uses for Boys, I found myself distracted by the innovative take on teen sexuality. However, once I was stuck into the story, the execution ultimately did not work.

Uses for Boys opens when Anna, whose first-person point-of-view is told in a stream-of-consciousness, real-time style, is a child, alone with her mother, never having known her father. She believes that, together, she and her mom can take on anything. But soon, a string of stepfathers and a career mean that Anna rarely sees her mother, she believes she has no family.

I want to go back to the tell-me-again times when I slept in her bed and we were everything together. When I was everything to her. Everything she needed.

She soon discovers that boys can make her feel needed, that they can fill a void for her. The attention makes her feel special, even if it means that the girls shun her and call Anna vicious names.

The first few chapters of Uses for Boys make for powerful stuff.

The perspective of young Anna as she decides to allow herself to go down the path of allowing boys to use her, to abuse her, is heartbreaking. She eventually starts playing house with a boy every day and they become sexually involved. This makes her feel important and grown up. This boy needs her in a way her real family never did.

Of course, it's all just a fantasy and it doesn't last.

And then he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t say he’ll miss me or that he’s sorry. Does he know he’s leaving me? That I’ll have to ride the bus home alone and come home alone and be home alone? They leave, I think, just like my mom says.

Jan 16

Jan 16 Review: Unsticky by Sarra Manning

“We're broken. It's like we have all these jagged edges that scare other people off, but when we're with each other, our jagged edges fit together and we're almost whole.”

On paper, Sarra Manning's Unsticky has all the trappings of a novel I should hate: a wealthy man; a desperate, naive young women and an outlandish scenario throwing the two together.

And yet, it came highly recommended by Angie, whose taste is excellent and is very similar to my own. (also excellent) taste. And where other books with similar plots enrage me, Unsticky enthralled me. I lost sleep and fought through weary eyes to get through this captivating 550-page novel.

Grace is a recent almost-grad (there was an incident at her senior show that prevented her from actually graduating from college) who partied too hard, hooked up with too many losers, is drowning in debt and working in a dead end job at a fashion assistant at a magazine where she seems destined to never get her shot.

At one of her lowest moments, Grace meets Vaughn, an older--extremely wealthy art dealer--who has an intriguing, and disturbing proposition for her: in exchange for thousands per month, she'll be at his beck and call, host his parties, and be his arm candy whenever she's needed. Desperate for cash and in need of something--anything--different in her life, Grace signs a six-month agreement and she's quickly drawn into Vaughn's world of privilege and society.

Sound familiar?

Actually, Unsticky isn't what you think.

Jan 9
Jan 9 Early Review: Hooked by Liz Fichera

It’s been well-documented that I’m on a quest for a quality sports-themed young adult novel, particularly one with a female main character.

Unfortunately, much of the time my enthusiasm for the newest sports book is immediately tempered by the sports serving as mere window dressing to bring the protagonist together with a Very Attractive Boy.

But I keep soldiering on, seeking one of these stories that really works. However, I almost passed on Liz Fichera’s debut, Hooked, which features a Native American girl in Arizona who makes a splash with her golf mastery while negotiating a burgeoning relationship with a boy on her team (I haven’t had great luck with Harlequin Teen titles). But, a short interview with Liz on Stacked piqued my interest and I thought I’d give it a try, and despite some flaws, it was a surprisingly compelling read.

Fredricka (Fred) Oday lives on the Gila reservation, which abuts the city of Phoenix, Arizona. Like many kids growing up on the reservation, Fred’s options after graduation are pretty limited. Except she’s got something special going for her: a killer golf game. She learned to play because her father works at the golf course. Over the years, she’s excelled to the point that her high school’s golf coach adds her to the boys varsity team (there isn’t a girls team).

However, despite her phenomenal skills on the golf course, she’s not welcomed with open arms. A player with a bad attitude and mediocre game, Seth, is removed from the team to make a space for Fred and the boys aren’t happy. They’re furious that a girl is on their team, but they are even more upset about a girl from the reservation on their team that replaced their buddy.

Then my eyes lowered to my seat, the empty one at the front of the row. There was a folded newspaper waiting on my desk, maybe the same one that Ryan had shown me in the library, and my stomach somersaulted all over again. Quickly, I placed my backpack underneath my desk and slipped into the seat. My smile faded when I found the photo on page three of the sports section, the same one where I was holding my driver on the fourth tee. Someone had used a black marker to draw a band around my forehead with feathers on each side. A crude Indian headdress. My nostrils flared and my breathing quickened. The photo turned cloudy the longer I stared at it. I had to swallow back the bile building deep in my throat. I folded and then crumpled the newspaper and stuffed it inside my backpack. I wanted to shred it into a million tiny pieces.

Despite the tensions among teammates, there’s chemistry between Fred and Ryan, the team’s other top golfer with whom she’s paired at tournaments.

Told in alternating points of view from both Fred and Ryan’s perspective, Hooked explores all of these tensions against a backdrop of the American southwest.

Jan 8
Jan 8 Review: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

You probably know by now that I love a good thriller, so I bought Gillian Flynn’s much-buzzed Gone Girl with high expectations.

It’s received high praise, been lauded as a frightening portrait of psychopathy that’s brilliantly-written with twists and turns to rival Alfred Hitchcock. Glowing reviews snagged my attention and I bought it despite Sarah’s warnings that it may not be my sort of thriller.

A seemingly perfect, beautiful wife who is well-known as the template for a series of children’s books titled “Amazing Amy” and a husband, Nick, who’s become disillusioned with his life and his wife give some backbone to the claim that this suspense thriller will chill and thrill its readers. Amy and Nick Dunn finds them living where neither wants to be with no income other than Amy’s money from her parents who are as wacky and unlikeable as all the other characters in Gone Girl. In a rented McMansion along the Mississippi River they bemoan their fall from a life of luxury in New York, loss of jobs and their loss of passion for one another. Into this mix comes Amy’s disappearance on what should have been a celebration of their anniversary.

This bland, yet strangly intriguing, plot concept could be viable, but it fell apart for me thanks to Gone Girl’s wholly despicable characters.

Amy aka Amazing Amy made her parents a great deal of money. They patterned her actions, her relationships with her friends, even her appearance into a series of books that found their way into grade school classrooms, libraries, bestseller lists and finally into the hands of nearly every child in the U.S. But shocking as it becomes for the country, Amy the icon disappeared leaving her husband as the prime suspect for her disappearance. Suspicion of murder becomes stronger with each weird clue that surfaces.

The first section of Gone Girl centers around the investigation into Amy’s disapearance. We discover that Amy is a mean-spirited, manipulative creature whose sole purpose is to make others miserable, to condemn everyone she comes in contact with and to sharpen her killer instincts with each ugly action she takes. Amy has plans and wickedly ugly and cynical thoughts to condemn anyone unfortunate enough to fall under her spell.

Getting into the mind of a person with no redeeming qualities does not make for an enjoyable read.

Jan 7
Jan 7 Review: Reawakening by Charlotte Stein [NSFW]

Rebeca aka Renegade

It has recently come to my attention that Clear Eyes, Full Shelves has been pigeonholed as a YA blog—while simultaneously being blocked from several servers for indecency.

WTF? How dare they constrain us to simply a single category? We’ve got our own official adult romance correspondent! We review everything from the latest True Blood to Japanese horror novels! And when did chest-waxing become an indecent topic*?

In an effort to really earn that indecency label and prove, once and for all, that we aren’t only interested in YA, I decided to review Reawakening by Charlotte Stein, a book about how the zombie apocalypse forced a one woman and two hot men into a threesome.

Yeah, you read that right. Zombies and the fun kind of threesomes. (You get this is NSFW, right?)

Reawakening takes place two years after zombies have changed life forever. No-one’s really sure what caused the crisis; no-one knows what changed the majority of the population into strange creatures that sure resemble zombies.

‘They’re not even fuckin’ zombies, really- people just went crazy, you know they did. Probably, like, some mutated rabies virus or some shit like that. And I bet it weren’t even a bomb or some kind of chemical warfare. I bet it was something fuckin’ ridiculous, like GM crops or a new kind of Aspirin.’

Civilization has crumbled, leaving random pockets of survivors and a hell of a lot of flesh eating creatures. June has managed to survive the zombie apocalypse (so far) but she’s definitely hurting. She’s rescued in the first chapter by a weirdo in a Hawaiian shirt named Jamie who takes her to his safe island.

Jamie lives on an island fortress, surrounded by mines, alarms and all sorts of weaponry along with his friend Blake. At first June has difficulty adjusting to this new, less dangerous reality. With such an impregnable fortress between them and any danger, Blake and Jamie haven’t had to abandon everything that makes life worth living.

Jan 4

Jan 4 Review: Falling for You by Lisa Schroeder

Falling for You by Lisa Schroeder on Clear Eyes, Full Shelves

I hadn’t had many people in my life who made me feel special. You know what happens after awhile? You start to wonder if you matter.

I mean, really and truly matter.

And the more time that goes by, the harder it is to believe that you do.

Lisa Schroeder has quickly become one the select few authors whose books I love to revisit.

The Day Before, her 2011 novel in verse is one of my all-time favorites reads and I often pull it from the shelf in my office (uh, I just realized that “my” of this book is actually Laura’s—whoops!) and read a couple of passages at random.

Lisa’s books work for me in a way that a lot of contemporary YA novels do not. She talks about families and life and friendship and love in a way that’s universally understandable, regardless of whether you’re 15 or 35 or 55. There’s a thread of goodness that runs through her stories, and each has left me feeling a bit better about the world. None of this is what’s popular and trendy in teen fiction, so her books are a breath of fresh air on the crowded teen fiction shelves.

With that said, I was admittedly sad when I learned that her 2012 young adult novel, Falling for You, wasn’t a verse novel. I love verse, and Lisa’s verse novels are some of my favorites.

However, after reading Falling for You, I’m actually quite happy that Lisa chose to write this novel in traditional prose because it will allow verse-averse readers to try one of her books and perhaps the numerous poems in Falling for You will be a gateway to her four verse novels.

Rae is a teen in a small-ish town in Oregon. She works hard at a flower shop, Full Bloom, where her coworkers and the other people who work at the nearby businesses are as much her family as her actual family—perhaps more. She lives in a challenging home environment where money is always tight and made tighter when her stepfather, whose job loss early in the novel creates further financial pressures and tensions in Rae’s household.

At the same time, Rae quickly becomes involved with Nathan, the new boy at school whose devotion sends off alarms bells for Rae. She quickly realizes that this relationship is too much, too fast and the situation frightens her. Meanwhile, her friend Leo, who’s home schooled and works in his family’s coffee shop near Full Bloom, senses that things are wrong in Rae’s life, and desperately wishes to help her, if only she’ll let him. Leo—whose life has a lot of complications as well—introduces Rae to his hobby of making YouTube videos and his positive outlet seems to subconsciously inspire Rae to take her poetry more seriously.

These events all happen in the form of extended flashbacks, which make up the bulk of Falling for You. In the present, we know that Rae is injured and in an intensive care unit, clinging to life. Interspersed within both are poems written by Rae which are published in the poetry section of her school newspaper. These poems lend further insight into Rae’s real feelings about her family, her boyfriends, friends and job—through these poems we see the real Rae.

I’m not the floor
to be walked on
or the hammer
to be used.

I’m not the choir
to sing your praises
or the commercials
to be ignored.

I’m the baby bird
wanting to fly
and the orchid
starting to bloom.

The overarching them in this surprisingly complex and dark story is the tension between darkness and light.

Jan 2
Jan 2 Review: The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

“Yo, padre!” he’d say. He’d challenge the priest about the unscientific impossibility of the miracles and when the priest continued to ignore him, he’d get mad and yell out something about Pope Alexander VI’s bastard children, or Pope Leo X’s hedonism, or Pop Nicholas III’s simony or the murders committed in the name of the Church during the Spanish Inquisition. But what could you expect, he’d say, from an institution run by celibate men who wore dresses.

These words flowing from the always opinionated mouth of Jeannette Walls’ father made her worship time memorable and short.

She begins her memoir, The Glass Castle, speaking not of her early childhood memories, but rather of herself as an adult sitting in a taxi worrying about whether she had overdressed for the evening’s events when she spots her mother digging through a dumpster. They’re only fifteen feet apart but in truth, a world of differences separate them. She watches as her mother hoists items from the dumpster, examines them and then laughs with glee at what pleases her. Her mother’s hair hangs tangled, dirty and matted while her eyes sink deep into her face making her sockets look like caves.

Feeling panic rising in her chest, Jeannette slides down into her seat and asks the driver to take her back to her home on Park Avenue. She’s come a long way from poverty, hunger, icicles hanging from the ceiling as she struggles to stay warm. She fears that someone going to the same lavish party as she will spot her if she speaks to her mother. Then her secret would be out for all to see the darkness from where she came.

This memoir struck a chord deep within me.

Dec 21
Dec 21 Mini Reviews: Experiments in Romance

That post title sounds slightly naughty, doesn’t it?

Mission. Accomplished.

Ever since Renegade wrote her excellent post on a beginners’ guide to romance reading, I’ve been seeking out a big R romance title every once in awhile—particularly books from her list, but also titles that seem like they may suit my taste. A few I’ve reviewed here—my most notable discovery being my a new favorite in the form of Molly O’Keefe’s excellent single-title romances.

(I bet Renegade is really proud of me for properly using the term “single title romance.”)

Within Reach by Sarah Mayberry

Rebeca wrote a glowing review of Australian author Sarah Mayberry’s novel about love and grief, Within Reach—and since she’s a tough critic, I knew I had to give it a chance even though the weird cover and “Harlequin Super Romance” branding would normally send me running. I have to say, this is an outstanding book that I accidentally read in a single sitting.

Renegade’s review pretty much covered why this book is so good, and I echo all of her thoughts. I was so surprised by what a sad book this is, despite that it’s a romance, and you know a happy ever after is a given. What struck me the most is how much both Angie and Michael love Billie, who died suddenly at 32. Nothing feels forced or rushed, as both have to figure out who they are without their best friend and wife, respectively. The two having to figure a way forward for themselves as individuals first made Within Reach feel emotionally authentic, which is my litmus test for romances. Both are also decent people, who want to do the right thing by Billie’s memory and for Michael and Billie’s children.

My main niggle with Within Reach would be that there’s a huge time jump between the first chapter when we see Billie’s death and the second, which takes place ten months in the future. I would have liked to see more about the immediate aftermath of losing Billie, because it would have created more context for the connection between the two in terms of losing Billie. And, again in this book, like in many romances I’ve read, the condom use (or lack thereof) is suspect. The two’s first sexual encounter is a frantic sort of situation and they don’t even discuss condoms, which makes sense in the context of the story. However, after the fact, Michael (rightly) apologizes for that and Angie tells him she’s on the pill and it doesn’t matter. In her internal monologue, she thinks something along the lines of,

“Plus, she trusted Michael.”

First off, “trust” is not adequate protection against STDs. That’s sex ed 101. Secondly, in this case, Michael is the one who should have pressed this issue because while he’d been in a monogamous relationship with his late wife for many, many years, Angie was single and who knows who else she told she “trusted” and didn’t need to worry about condoms. I know people don’t like to deal with this in books because it’s not sexy, but like I always say, gonorrhea is also not sexy.

But, despite these two minor reservations, Within Reach is definitely one I’d put on my yet-to-be-developed list of Romance for People Who Think They Don’t Like Romance.

Note: Within Reach is currently priced at the odd, but nevertheless low, price of $3.82 for Kindle.

Amazon / Goodreads

Dec 13

Dec 13 Review: Sean Griswold's Head by Lindsey Leavitt

He said focus. The word focus. I hear angels singing. Everything goes dark except for a light that beams down on Sean. It is a God-given sign- like when people see the Virgin Mary in their grilled cheese, except this isn’t religious and I’m actually not a big fan of dairy. I stare at the back of his head. His HEAD. Something I see every day but never really see because it’s been there forever. Since the first day of third grade.

I crumple up my web. I don’t need it. Praise be, the Focus Gods have spoken.

I am going to write about Sean Griswold’s Head.

According to her guidance counselor, fifteen-year-old Payton Gritas needs a focus object-an item to concentrate her emotions on. It’s supposed to be something inanimate, but Payton decides to use the thing she stares at during class: Sean Griswold’s head.

In the first few pages of Lindsey Leavitt’s Sean Griswolds Head, I found myself thinking this was too young and immature for me, but it wasn’t long before I was hooked into a story that has fold upon fold of serious and not-so-serious issues.

Payton, whose point of view the story is from, is a young high school girl who excels at everything she does. There’s nothing she doesn’t do or handle well until she stumbles upon her mother giving her father an injection which they clarify isn’t for recreational purposes—her father has MS.

They just change. Their body changes. Their abilities - the things they do that make them who they are - leave, sometimes temporarily, sometimes forever. Every day they wake up with that big what if?

And nothing is scarier than a life filled with what ifs - living by day without predictability and control. Some people end up losing feeling. Some have uncontrollable spasms. Some can’t function. Some end up blind or in a wheelchair. Some end up bedridden and paralyzed.

It’s hard to know who “some people” will be.

Dec 11

Dec 11 Review: Leasing the Tempest by Jenn Bennett

It’s no secret that Jenn Bennett’s Arcadia Bell series is one of my favorite urban fantasy series, up there with Patricia Briggs’ wonderful Mercy Thompson books.

In fact, the two series share a lot of commonalities. Both are packed with memorable, multi-faceted characters, good humor and warmth.

The long wait between books in this series is mildly torturous (though, thankfully, each wraps up a complete story) but fortunately, Leashing the Tempest is a fun novella which fills the gap between Summoning the Night and the third book, Binding the Shadows (out May 2013).

Leashing the Tempest finds the series’ core characters—Arcadia (an extremely skilled magician with a complicated past), Lon (Cady’s older demon boyfriend), Jupe (Lon’s charming teenage son) and Kar Yee (Cady’s best friend and business partner)—on a day cruise on the Pacific coast near their hometown in northern California. The contained environment of the boat is the perfect chance to test Jupe’s newly-developed knack (his magical skill) on Kar Yee, who’s agreed to serve as a volunteer. (There’s an amusing ongoing story in the series of 13 year old Jupe’s crush on Kar Yee which adds to the already funny premise for fans of this series.)

Naturally, it being Cady and Lon, a day cruise can’t be just a ride on a boat, but instead an angry storm is unleashed and something’s suspicious about the boat’s captain. It’s up to Cady and Lon to save everyone on the boat and stop the magical force that’s ruined their day.

For fans of the Arcadia Bell series, Leashing the Tempest will seem familiar.

Dec 9

Dec 9 Review: All These Things I've Done by Gabrielle Zevin

“May God forgive me for this and all these things I’ve done.”

Looking at the books I’ve read the last year, dystopians have been the biggest bombs. Since everyone jumped on the futuristic, world-gone-to-pot bandwagon, there’s just not a lot of fresh, creative takes in the overly-saturated dystopian sub-genre.

As a result, when I bought Gabrielle Zevin’s All These Things I’ve Done when it was a Kindle Daily Deal, my expectations were incredibly low, but I figured at a buck or two, it was a low-risk proposition.

I was surprised that All These Things I’ve Done—despite wildly disparate reviews from readers whose opinions I trust—was a fresh and compelling entry amidst a slew of uninspiring dystopian trilogies.

It’s the 2083 and Anya Balanchine, daughter of a notorious—and murdered—crime boss, spends her days trying to hold her fractured family together in a future New York City where commodities including chocolate, caffeine, paper and cotton are illegal or hard-to-obtain. At 16 Anya’s tasked with caring for her ailing grandmother (who’s her legal guardian) and her siblings, including her older brother who suffered a traumatic brain injury as a result of her family’s involvement in organized crime.

“I wasn’t an expert on the chocolate ban as it had happened before I was born, but there were definite similarities. Daddy had always told me that there was nothing inherently evil about chocolate, that it had gotten caught up in a larger whirlwind involving food, drugs, health, and money. Our country had only chosen chocolate because the people in power needed to pick something, and chocolate was what they could live without. Daddy once said, ‘Every generation spins the wheel, Anya, and where it lands defines ‘the good.’ Funny thing is, they never know that they’re spinning it, and it hits something different every time.’”

She works hard to keep herself out of trouble so she can legally care for her younger sister once her grandmother passes away from an extended illness. She’s prickly and unbending, which means she has very specific expectations of herself, her role in her family and how others must behave. She’s judgmental and not necessarily “relatable,” though she has wit and humor that made me root for her.

Dec 5

Dec 5 Review: Defy the Stars by Stephanie Parent

This is
warmth all around me.
a new
world opening.
two stars colliding. And I think
I’m drowning.

The blurb for Stephanie Parent’s self-published novel in verse, Defy the Stars, says that it will appeal to fans of Ellen Hopkins and Lisa Schroeder. While I disagree that this novel will work for fans of Lisa’s gentle style of storytelling, I imagine that the issue-driven, highly-dramatic style of Defy the Stars will appeal to Hopkins’ readers.

Unfortunately, like Hopkins’ novels, while Defy the Stars was well-written and readable, I never felt engaged with nor sympathetic to the characters.

Defy the Stars is told from the point-of-view of Julia, a classical piano student headed to a top-notch music conservatory. She meets Reed, whom she describes as a “stoner” in English class where they engage in a debate about Romeo & Juliet and the notion of love at first sight. The two—thanks to a series of coincidental meetings—quickly begin an intense relationship, but like Romeo & Juliet, find that their love is likely impossible.

The biggest obstacle to the couple’s happiness is Reed’s involvement in drug culture and drug abuse.

“Yeah,” I say aloud, “he skulks around like he’s collapsing under the weight of his own personal rain cloud.”

Julia is quickly finds herself drawn into Reed’s world, and experiments with methamphetamines several times. Meanwhile, Reed continues to spiral downward, taking Julia—who’s distracted by the intense relationship—right down with him. As their relationship unfolds, a tragedy changes everything for both teens, leaving them at a crossroads.

I’m going to say this straight up: I missed that this is a cautionary tale about drug abuse until I was about a quarter into the book.

This isn’t particularly apparent in either the book description or reviews I’ve read. If I had known this, I probably would not have read Defy the Stars, because I don’t care for novels about drug abuse. Hand-in-hand with stories about this subject matter are chapters and chapters of characters making poor decisions, over and over again. Because of Reed’s drug use, I had a very hard time believing in him as a romantic interest, and while I understand the Julia was interesting in him because he’s attractive and a good musician, I just couldn’t root for them, even as Reed appears to make positive changes in his life.

Nov 26

Nov 26 Review: Moonshifted by Cassie Alexander