{I Love} The Novels of Rosemary Clement-Moore

Sandra
I Love

Editor’s Note: This is a special guest post from my mom. Sandra is a retired high school English teacher with a lot of opinions and a newfound love of YA literature and urban fantasy—she’s a longtime fan of horror, campy mysteries and police procedurals. As a kid, her goal was to grow up to be Nancy Drew, so much so that she carried around a notebook to report on her neighbors’ potential criminal activities.

In my little Pacific Northwest town of the fifties, women stayed home, took care of the house and centered their lives on their families and husbands. Nancy Drew, the brilliant and virtuous sleuth, gave preteen girls a glimpse of another world, of what could be.

Independent and clever, she drove her blue roadster into mysteries that never quit evolving, into places where atmosphere cloaked young girls in other worlds and thrilling tales.

I loved Nancy.

And, I’ve found a new love.

{Review} Truth by Julia Karr

{Review} Truth by Julia Karr

Sarah Moon
Books

On the day before I started reading Truth, the sequel to the excellent 2011 release XVI, I tweeted the following:

I kind of feel like I just need to quit dystopians cold turkey. At this point, they’re just aggravating me. Hopefully ninjas or something will be the next big thing, because I need something new.

Actually, yes, ninjas would be excellent.

Then I picked up the sequel to my favorite 2011 dystopian release* and remembered that the subgenre isn’t quite on life-support yet. 

Truth picks up shortly after XVI left off—if you have not read XVI or need a refresher, here’s a quick rundown of the premise and what I appreciated about it (my Goodreads review is here): 

  • Nina Oberon lives in a future version of the United States ruled by a misogynist Governing Council with the aid of a corrupt version of the media;
  • One of the main keys to the government’s control over the population is their control over the sexual availability of girls once they are 16—each girl gets a tattoo of “XVI” on their wrist and is therefore deemed available to any man who wants them, it is a culture that encourages rape and sexual control, and it is extremely disturbing;
  • The role the media plays in pushing teen and tween girls to act and behave in a way that encourages this culture is even more disturbing because it is not all that different from modern Western society;
  • Nina’s family has a history of involvement in the resistance movement and she becomes increasingly involved in it herself as she approaches her sixteenth birthday. (This is one of the things I most appreciated about XVI—there was context for her fighting the powers that be. In so many YA dystopians, the lead is just  a special snowflake and we’re just supposed to accept that’s why she’s fighing the bad guys.); 
  • Karr’s writing is tight and makes the Nina’s hyper-commercial, disturbing world come to life; and
  • I read XVI as a standalone, not knowing it was a planned trilogy and it actually worked as a single book!

If you have not read XVI, and don’t want to be spoiled for that book, I strongly recommend you do not continue reading my review of Truth! Do not pass Go!, instead, read XVI, and come back and read my review of Truth.

{I Love} The Kowalskis by Shannon Stacey

Maggie
I Love

I recently texted my friend,

“I’m in love with a fictional character.”

 

 He responded,

“Matthew Crawley?”

 

I said,

“Please. Is there a Downton Abbey of Doom?? I think not.”

Him,

“WTF are you talking about?!”

 

This is what happens after you read Shannon Stacey’s Kowalski Family series.

First comes love,

Then comes mass texts to friends,

Then comes the delusional break from reality in a Kowalski carriage!

It’s awesome, even as it ruins other fictional men for you.