Young Adult

Front and Center

2010, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Fiction, Young Adult /

When my library re-opened, I spent awhile reserving books that were on my Amazon wishlist – books that were coming out but not available for reserve and sequels to series we’ve started but fallen behind on. Front and Center was from the series we’d fallen behind on – and I remember why we fell behind, I don’t really love DJ. I really liked her in the first book and liked her very little in book two. In book three… I barely liked her at all.  I am glad she made the decision that she did (finally) make about where to go to college.  I liked that storyline – I just wished I liked DJ better. 😉

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The Splendor Falls

2010, Books in Bed, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Young Adult /

I’m a fan of Rosemary Clement-Moore’s Maggie Quinn series and only discovered The Splendor Falls by accident, when I was looking to see if there’s a new Maggie book… I knew this wasn’t related to Maggie in any way but I don’t think I expected it to contain anything paranormal or supernatural. I thought maybe it was a straight YA romance or something… my library copy has a purple rose on the cover and it really looks romance-y. And it is a romance but it’s got some freaky ghost things going on, too.

I liked it but it was long – a little too long, maybe. I just wanted the story to move a long a little bit and then when it did move along, it rushed the ending. Can I get just a wee little rewrite? Heh.

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The Dead Tossed Waves

2010, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Young Adult /

I thought TW might kill me when she realized I reserved book two in the Forest of Hands and Teeth series… she really didn’t love the first book. But – as we listened to Dead Tossed Waves on audio, she was the one most likely to turn off the radio and turn on the CD. Maybe it helped that the reader was different? And the story was about Mary’s daughter and not Mary? Then again – the  writing was the same. Imagine a YA book about Zombies aka the Unconsecrated aka the Mudo written by Rebecca… yea. It’s like that. Wonderfully written but OMG you just want to shake her and say get on with it already. Stop with the flowery writing and the over-thinking, over-writing and just tell the story already. When the writing gets in the way of the story, it’s a problem and that’s what happens in all of Carrie Ryan’s work.

That doesn’t stop me from reserving book three though. The next one appears to be about Catcher and Annah… and the cover has another dead-looking girl on the front (misleading since the main characters don’t ever seem to die or even become unconsecrated…)

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Crashed

2010, Books in Bed, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Young Adult /

Crashed is another book from a series that I thought I’d catch up  on. A YA series that I started reading because RJ recommended it. Well. When I read the first book, Skinned, I liked the storyline – eventually, but I did not like a single one of the characters and I really disliked Lia. In this book, pretty similar problem. Love the storyline, hate the characters – all of the characters until the last 30 pages of the book… at which point, Lia becomes likeable and so do some of the supporting characters.

And now I want to know what happens next so I’ll probably slog through book three, hating everyone until the last 30 pages.

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Recycler

2010, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction, Queer, Young Adult /

I loved Cycler and was really looking forward to Recycler… Now that most of my challenges are pretty much finished (I’m glaring at you children’s libraries all over the northern suburbs) I’ve got time to read stuff I’ve really been looking forward to. So – Recycler.

What were Jill & Jack going to do, once their secret was revealed oh so publicly at Prom? That’s what we find out in Recycler… and I’m not sure I really approve, particularly regarding what happened with Ramie. I get it – and I think I get where the story is going (there IS going to be another one, right?) but I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as I’d hoped. Tie it all up nicely in the next one, please.

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Cracked Up to Be

2 Comments / 2010, Books in Bed, Cybil Challenge, Favorites, Young Adult /

I cannot believe how long it took for Cracked Up to Be to appear on my holds list. I reserved it ages ago – some darn teen checked it out and kept it for a very long time, didn’t she? Hmph. Teens should be more responsible than that… but not obsessively so. Which is kind of what this little book is about. The perfect girl who is so perfect that she’s having panic attacks… and then “something” happens and she gives up being perfect, gives up her friends, tries to push everyone away (and punish herself) because that horrible “something” that happened was her fault…

Excellent book. Depressing in that perfect girls, bad stuff happens to good kids sort of way. I wonder what RJ would think of this? She’s probably think Parker was nuts… sigh.

(Two more books to go in my Cybils Shortlist Challenge… I’m getting worried because as long as it took for me to get this one, it’s taking even longer to get these other two… people. Bring your books back to the darn library! People are waiting to read them!)

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Into the Wild Nerd Yonder

1 Comment / 2010, Books in Bed, Cybil Challenge, Fiction, Young Adult /

I had a hard time getting started with Into the Wild Nerd Yonder. I read the first five words about fifty times before I got anywhere and then I was pretty amused with the whole thing. There’s an awful lot of teen sex talk in this little YA novel. Girls giving blow jobs. Girls contracting STDs from said boys. Lots of trying to fit in with this crowd or that crowd. In the end, it all works out for the best – which often doesn’t happen in high school. And, this story almost made me wish I played D&D… and sewed. Almost.

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Ascendant – Some spoilery things so don’t click it if you don’t want spoilers.

1 Comment / 2010, Books in Bed, Fiction, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Young Adult /

One of the books I was most looking forward to reading this year was Ascendant, sequel to Rampant. Killer unicorns are awesome, even if Rampant has some troubling virginity themes.  It took forever for the book to be ready for me at the library and while I waited, Sassymonkey read it – and wrote about it. Uh oh. So when it arrived, I knew there were some potential problems waiting for me but since I don’t always agree with Sassymonkey – I dove in and tried to ignore what she’d written.

But, it started slowly. I struggled. And I struggled with the pace for the entire book – just as Sassymonkey said.

I also really hated what was going on with Cory (and the clueless Astrid) in the first 50 pages. I think that’s what bugged me most about Ascendant – the clumsy Cory storyline. Either tell us about the problem with lesbian virgin hunters or set it up properly so you can tell us in the next book (the book that you don’t actually have a book deal for…) Clumsy. I like the idea of addressing it but I do not like the manner in which it was addressed (It felt like maybe Peterfreund doesn’t really know what the problem might or might not be with lesbian virgin hunters… thus the clumsy handling of it.)

And Astrid, oh Astrid. Teen girls are not the most mature of creatures but I’m getting a little tired of the warrior making so many poor decisions. I know she has mother issues, who wouldn’t with Lilith as a mother, but good grief – Astrid should have been just a little smarter than that. There were moments when it was worse than reading Bella (Twilight).

None of this means that Ascendant was a bad book – it wasn’t. It’s still an excellent story. The actaeon storyline – brilliant. I do still want book three. Scratch that –  I need book three since this one was so much of a muddled up mess in places.  I hope we see more of Wren and Flayer (who it was nice to see again – they made their first appearance in Zombies vs Unicorns and I really loved that story.) And I hope Peterfreund can fix the Cory problem properly.

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Three More Cybils

1 Comment / 2010, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Favorites, Fiction, Young Adult /

All three of these were pleasant surprises. Very pleasant surprises.

Dinosaur Hunt is a short chapter/easy reader that’s way too easy to be in the short chapter book category – kind of like the Mo Willems books. It can’t compete with Mo, unfortunately, but I liked it an awful lot. A cute little dog heads out to hunt dinosaurs in the yard – and he ends up building a dinosaur out of every day stuff you find in the yard. I liked it. Fun. Cute. I like Max Spaniel.

And then there was Anything But Typical – I was not expecting such an awesome book in that particular package. It’s one of those softcover paperbacks that you see in school book order forms – Scholastic type. I hope a lot of kids read this, expecting it to be lighter and easier than it was. I loved the Storyboard storyline and the Storyboard convention. I liked the online girlfriend twist. I like that all of the characters felt very real to me. I think that’s tough sometimes when you’re writing about autism.

The biggest surprise of all was Heart of a Shepherd. I didn’t remember this being on the Cybils list. When it came out of the library bag, at first I thought it was a Christian fiction large print that we had grabbed for TW’s mom. But no, it wasn’t large print. It also didn’t seem like something TW would have just plucked from the shelf. I shrugged, but it on the cart and forgot about it… until I needed another book, checked my Cybils post and discovered that book was MINE. Huh.

It started on a ranch and felt like some sort of old fashioned “western” story. I thought that’s what it was for a few pages until the boy’s dad was being sent to Iraq.  Then I wasn’t so confused. And I was pretty much hooked. I have no idea why the author had the boys’ mother living in Italy but whatever, it’s a small piece of an otherwise excellent story. And in the end, it could have been a very nice large print Christian fiction for TW’s mom. If it had been in large print. I’m guessing there will be a lot of kids who turn their noses up at this one. Too bad because I liked it.

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