Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Bookish Anticipation #47

Bookish Anticipation is a feature I do every once in a while to spotlight future releases I'm excited for. It was inspired by Breaking the Spine's Waiting on Wednesday. You can check out more of my Bookish Anticipation posts here.


The Cost of All Things by Maggie Lehrmann
Release date: May 12th 2015
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind meets We Were Liars in this thought-provoking, brilliantly written, and totally original realistic contemporary debut about three teens who must deal with the consequences of spells cast on them in the wake of their classmate’s sudden death.











P.S. I Still Love You by Jenny Han
Release date: May 26th 2015
Lara Jean didn’t expect to really fall for Peter. She and Peter were just pretending. Except suddenly they weren’t. Now Lara Jean is more confused than ever.
When another boy from her past returns to her life, Lara Jean’s feelings for him return too. Can a girl be in love with two boys at once?

In this charming and heartfelt sequel to the New York Times bestseller To All the Boys I've Loved Before, we see first love through the eyes of the unforgettable Lara Jean. Love is never easy, but maybe that’s part of makes it so amazing.




Tiny Pretty Things by Sonia Charaipotra & Dhonielle Clayton
Release date: May 26th 2015
Gigi, Bette, and June, three top students at an exclusive Manhattan ballet school, have seen their fair share of drama. Free-spirited new girl Gigi just wants to dance—but the very act might kill her. Privileged New Yorker Bette's desire to escape the shadow of her ballet star sister brings out a dangerous edge in her. And perfectionist June needs to land a lead role this year or her controlling mother will put an end to her dancing dreams forever. When every dancer is both friend and foe, the girls will sacrifice, manipulate, and backstab to be the best of the best.


The Notorious Pagan Jones by Nina Berry 
Release date: May 26th 2015
Pagan Jones went from America's sweetheart to fallen angel in one fateful night in 1960: the night a car accident killed her whole family. Pagan was behind the wheel and driving drunk. Nine months later, she's stuck in the Lighthouse Reformatory for Wayward Girls and tortured by her guilt—not to mention the sadistic Miss Edwards, who takes special delight in humiliating the once-great Pagan Jones.
But all of that is about to change. Pagan's old agent shows up with a mysterious studio executive, Devin Black, and an offer. Pagan will be released from juvenile detention if she accepts a juicy role in a comedy directed by award-winning director Bennie Wexler. The shoot starts in West Berlin in just three days. If Pagan's going to do it, she has to decide fast—and she has to agree to a court-appointed "guardian," the handsome yet infuriating Devin, who's too young, too smooth, too sophisticated to be some studio flack.
The offer's too good to be true, Berlin's in turmoil and Devin Black knows way too much about her—there's definitely something fishy going on. But if anyone can take on a divided city, a scheming guardian and the criticism of a world that once adored her, it's the notorious Pagan Jones. What could go wrong?
Joyride by Anna Banks
Release date: June 2nd 2015
It’s been years since Carly Vega’s parents were deported. She lives with her brother, studies hard, and works at a convenience store to contribute to getting her parents back from Mexico.
Arden Moss used to be the star quarterback at school. He dated popular blondes and had fun with his older sister, Amber. But now Amber’s dead, and Arden blames his father, the town sheriff who wouldn’t acknowledge Amber's mental illness. Arden refuses to fulfill whatever his conservative father expects.
All Carly wants is to stay under the radar and do what her family expects. All Arden wants is to NOT do what his family expects. When their paths cross, they each realize they’ve been living according to others. Carly and Arden’s journey toward their true hearts—and one another—is funny, romantic, and sometimes harsh.

Extraordinary Means by Robyn Schneider
Release date: May 26th 2015
At seventeen, overachieving Lane finds himself at Latham House, a sanatorium for teens suffering from an incurable strain of tuberculosis. Part hospital and part boarding school, Latham is a place of endless rules and confusing rituals, where it's easier to fail breakfast than it is to flunk French.
There, Lane encounters a girl he knew years ago. Instead of the shy loner he remembers, Sadie has transformed. At Latham, she is sarcastic, fearless, and utterly compelling. Her friends, a group of eccentric troublemakers, fascinate Lane, who has never stepped out of bounds his whole life. And as he gradually becomes one of them, Sadie shows him their secrets: how to steal internet, how to sneak into town, and how to disable the med sensors they must wear at all times.
But there are consequences to having secrets, particularly at Latham House. And as Lane and Sadie begin to fall in love and their group begins to fall sicker, their insular world threatens to come crashing down. Told in alternating points of view, Extraordinary Means is a darkly funny story about doomed friendships, first love, and the rare miracle of second chances.

What releases are you anticipating this week? 

Monday, March 09, 2015

Review: Everything That Makes You by Moriah McStay


Title: Everything That Makes You
Author: Moriah McStay
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Release date: March 17th 2015
Pages: 352
Genre: Young Adult contemporary
Source: NetGalley - I received a free eGalley of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Thanks!
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One girl. Two stories. Meet Fiona Doyle. The thick ridges of scar tissue on her face are from an accident twelve years ago. Fiona has notebooks full of songs she’s written about her frustrations, her dreams, and about her massive crush on beautiful uber-jock Trent McKinnon. If she can’t even find the courage to look Trent straight in his beautiful blue eyes, she sure isn’t brave enough to play or sing any of her songs in public. But something’s changing in Fiona. She can’t be defined by her scars anymore.
And what if there hadn’t been an accident? Meet Fi Doyle. Fi is the top-rated female high school lacrosse player in the state, heading straight to Northwestern on a full ride. She’s got more important things to deal with than her best friend Trent McKinnon, who’s been different ever since the kiss. When her luck goes south, even lacrosse can’t define her anymore. When you’ve always been the best at something, one dumb move can screw everything up. Can Fi fight back?
My rating: 2 out of 5 stars

The concept of Everything That Makes You sounded interesting, but it's not the most original; Cat Patrick and Suzanne Young's Just Like Fate and Kasie West's Pivot Point are pretty similar in set-up. In order to make this done-before concept work, the writing and the plot would have had to be great, and to be honest, they just... aren't. There isn't much that's technically wrong with Everything That Makes You, but I didn't really see this story going anywhere or a point to all of this, and I didn't connect with it. 

Even if the two-lives thing has been done before, the idea of seeing where Fiona's life is going with or without this accident could have been interesting. I would have wanted to see some kind of progression and a message at the end about how you end up where you're supposed to be, regardless of what goes wrong, or something along those lines. But that isn't really the case; these are really just two pretty average stories that don't seem to go anywhere, and there's nothing that ties the two stories together in the end. I just didn't get the point of it all.

One issue for me was that it was hard to tell the two stories apart; I had to keep checking back to make sure which girl's story I was reading at any given moment. I think that's mainly because the two stories have all the same characters, just in slightly different roles: Trent as a friend/love interest in one and a distant love interest in the other; Jackson as a friend one story and the love interest in the other, and her family is pretty much the same in both stories. I kept forgetting who played what role in which story because I don't think Fi and Fiona's voices were different enough to really set them apart. 

It also didn't help that Everything That Makes You spans such a long period of time; it starts halfway through junior year of high school and ends after freshman year of college. With two stories to tell, I think that's just too long for a 350-paged book because this it doesn't leave enough space to fully explore any of the storylines. For example, Fiona's obsession with Trent seems really random (considering he's a hot douchebag she knows nothing about) and doesn't go anywhere, and the tragedy in Fi's life didn't make me feel anything because we didn't have enough time to really get to know the characters. The characters aren't bad, necessarily, but we don't get to know them well enough for me to actually cares what happens to them.

Everything That Makes You just didn't work for me. These are just two average stories that don't seem to really go anywhere; maybe another reader will get something out of them, but they didn't really have a point, for me. The characters and the stories aren't developed enough to get me emotionally invested, so I just didn't care all that much about what happened. To be honest, if you like this kind of concept, I would suggest picking up Just Like Fate instead.

Thursday, March 05, 2015

Review: Bone Gap by Laura Ruby


Title: Bone Gap
Author: Laura Ruby
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Release date: March 3rd 2015
Pages: 368
Genre: Young Adult magical realism
Source: Edelweiss - I received a free eGalley of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Thanks!
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Everyone knows Bone Gap is full of gaps—gaps to trip you up, gaps to slide through so you can disappear forever. So when young, beautiful Roza went missing, the people of Bone Gap weren’t surprised. After all, it wasn’t the first time that someone had slipped away and left Finn and Sean O’Sullivan on their own. Just a few years before, their mother had high-tailed it to Oregon for a brand new guy, a brand new life. That’s just how things go, the people said. Who are you going to blame?
Finn knows that’s not what happened with Roza. He knows she was kidnapped, ripped from the cornfields by a dangerous man whose face he cannot remember. But the searches turned up nothing, and no one believes him anymore. Not even Sean, who has more reason to find Roza than anyone, and every reason to blame Finn for letting her go.
As we follow the stories of Finn, Roza, and the people of Bone Gap—their melancholy pasts, their terrifying presents, their uncertain futures—acclaimed author Laura Ruby weaves a heartbreaking tale of love and loss, magic and mystery, regret and forgiveness—a story about how the face the world sees is never the sum of who we are.
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I'm not sure what I was expecting going into Bone Gap, but it wasn't... this. I honestly don't know how to describe this novel; it's just really, really weird, in the best way possible. You could maybe compare it to Jellicoe Road, in the sense that you have no idea what's going for 90% of the book but it all makes sense in the end, or to Nova Ren Suma's writing, in the way both combine magical realism with contemporary mystery and superb characterization. But really, Bone Gap is unlike anything I've ever read before. It's a very unique book you'll either love or hate, and I happen to be on the love side.

Bone Gap took me a while to get into. It's very literary, and it's more challenging than most of the YA I read: it takes a while to process what's happening because half the time I didn't really know what was going on. And sometimes you have to stop and just admire the beauty of Laura Ruby's writing. So Bone Gap is definitely not a quick read. It also took me a while to get used to the narrative: Bone Gap is written in the third person and mainly told from the POV of the four protagonists, but every once in a while there's a chapter written from a secondary character's POV, or even some from the town's collective POV. Since I'm someone who usually prefers a simple first-person narration, this took a while to get used to, but the characters make it work.

The characters are what really makes Bone Gap come to life. Finn is an amazingly special character; he's incredibly fragile and vulnerable but fiercely loyal and strong at the same time, and I loved him from the first page on. How Finn sees the world differently from other people is excellently explored, and the reveal of his condition, or however you would call it, is fascinating, as it's something I'd never heard of before. I especially loved how that reveal is worked into his relationship with Petey. Their romance is perfectly handled and so realistic; I loved everything about them.

Even more so than Finn, I loved Roza and Petey. Both of their stories are fascinating and heartbreaking, albeit in very different ways. I really loved the contrast between the two female characters within the context of beauty: Roza is "the most beautiful" and might have to pay the ultimate price for it, while Petey is the ugly girl the whole town pities. The exploration of how beauty or a lack of it affects a person and is expressed in deep insecurities in both of these characters is expertly handled. I identified more with Petey's story, but both of them are very relatable and realistic. I absolutely loved both of these girls and very much appreciated the message the story sent in regards to beauty and gender.

The secondary characters all have their own stories too and seem almost as realistic and complex as Finn, Roza, and Petey. The only character that I didn't think was explored quite enough is Sean; I wish we had a couple more chapters from his POV in order to really understand him, and understand his relationship with Roza.

I'm still not sure what to make of the magical realism in Bone Gap. To be honest, it got a bit too magical for me at times; the ending seemed closer to paranormal than to contemporary. As someone who usually reads contemporary, I wanted a real-life resolution of Roza's disappearance, rather than the magical one we got. But that's a personal preference. If you like both contemporary and paranormal, this should be perfect for you! And I loved the characters and the writing so much that I didn't even really mind all the magic.

I am very, very impressed by Bone Gap. With a lyrical, enchanting writing style and eccentric, complex characters that I know will stay with me for a long time, Bone Gap is a unique story I absolutely loved. It's so weird and different that I don't even know how to explain it; you'll just have to experience the weirdness yourself. I can see how this book isn't everyone's cup of tea, considering how confusing it is at times, but it's a must-read for any fans of magical realism - or anyone who enjoys lyrical writing and unique characters, really.

Tuesday, March 03, 2015

Review: We Can Work It Out (The Lonely Hearts Club #2) by Elizabeth Eulberg

Title: We Can Work It Out (The Lonely Hearts Club #2)
Author: Elizabeth Eulberg
Publisher: Scholastic
Release date: January 27th 2015
Pages: 320
Genre: Contemporary YA; romance
Source: Bought
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When Penny Lane started The Lonely Hearts Club, the goal was simple: to show that girls didn’t need to define themselves by how guys looked at them, and didn’t have to value boyfriends over everything else. Penny thought she’d be an outcast for life . . . but then the club became far more popular than she ever imagined it would be.
But what happens when the girl who never thought she’d date a good guy suddenly finds herself dating a great one? She doesn’t need a boyfriend . . . but she wants it to work out with this particular boyfriend. And he wants it to work it out with her.
Only, things keep getting in the way. Feelings keep getting hurt. Words keep getting misunderstood.
Penny Lane worked hard to declare her independence. Now she needs to figure out what to do with it -- and how to balance what she wants with what everyone else wants.
My rating: 3 out of 5 stars

I really don't know how to write this review. I didn't love We Can Work It Out, but I don't think I can really blame the book for that. I really loved The Lonely Hearts Club when I first read it, but that was four years ago, and I think I've just grown up too much to enjoy the sequel as much. We Can Work It Out isn't any worse than The Lonely Hearts Club - they're really similar - but it just didn't work for me as well this time.

In The Lonely Hearts Club, I really liked Penny Lane and related to her a lot. But in the sequel, to be honest, I found all of her drama kind of exasperating. Not because she's more dramatic than she was in the first book; I just got more annoyed with it this time because I didn't relate to it as much anymore. The whole novel focuses on Penny Lane trying to balance her relationship with her dedication to the Club, but considering both are very understanding and she's really the only one putting all this pressure on her, I really just wanted her to calm down, and I didn't like her as much this time. The secondary characters are still pretty good, though; I really liked Ryan, who seems to be the voice of reason in all of this; the other members of the club; and Penny Lane's parents, even though their whole Beatles obsession is kind of exaggerated.

Considering Penny Lane's struggle to balance these things is basically the main plot and I was annoyed with this drama, the plot didn't really do much for me this time. I still love the idea of the club, but the whole thing is kind of exaggerated, which made it a little cheesy this time around. Some of the secondary storylines were interesting, though; I really liked everything relating to Bruce, the new exchange student, and to Ryan's problems aside from Penny Lane, with Todd and his family. And even if the way it was transmitted was too melodramatic for me, I do still really love the message of girl power, balanced with the new message that includes all people.

I don't really know what else to say about We Can Work It Out. It didn't really work for me because I was kind of annoyed by all the cheesiness and melodrama. But it's still a good sequel; it's exactly what I expected and has all the same qualities as the first book. So if you think you would enjoy The Lonely Hearts Club if you read it again today, you will definitely We Can Work It Out, even if it wasn't for me.

Sunday, March 01, 2015

New Releases March 2015

New releases:


Bone Gap by Laura Ruby: March 3rd
Vanishing Girls by Lauren Oliver: March 3rd


Not Otherwise Specified by Hannah Moskowitz: March 3rd
Little Peach by Peggy Kern: March 10th


The Brilliant Light of Amber Sunrise by Matthew Crow: March 10th
Everything That Makes You by Moriah McStay: March 17th


Hold Me Closer: The Tiny Cooper Story by David Levithan: March 17th
Under a Painted Sky by Stacey Lee: March 17th


The Wrong Side of Right by Jenn Marie Thorne: March 17th
The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma: March 24th


Liars, Inc. by Paula Stokes: March 24th
Solitaire by Alice Oseman: March 30th


We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach: March 31st
The Start of Me and You by Emery Lord: March 31st

New in paperback:


The Summer I Found You by Jolene Perry: March 1st
The Geography of You and Me by Jennifer E. Smith: March 3rd


Open Road Summer by Emery Lord: March 3rd
This Side of Salvation by Jeri Smith-Ready: March 17th


The Promise of Amazing by Robin Constantine: March 24th
Dear Killer by Katherine Ewell: March 31st
The F-It List by Julie Halpern: March 31st

So many exciting releases this semester! Which ones are you most looking forward to?
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