tiny pink books

Sorry folks (if there are any folks who read this blog!), I’ve been off having the busiest summer of my life. It’s been a few months of moving, getting married, traveling, and moving some more.  Despite the fact that I’ve been living out of a backpack for the past few months, I have been reading.  Here is my summer, in books:

This World We Live In

This World We Live In by Susan Beth Pfeffer

The end of the world continues in the final (?) book of the Last Survivors trilogy.  The two companion books, Life As We Knew It and The Dead and the Gone, told the harrowing sagas of two, unrelated teens and their experiences of survival through catastrophic environmental changes after the moon is knocked off balance by an asteroid.  While I found the suburban story of 15-year-old Miranda in Life As We Knew It to be riveting, I was less than thrilled with the darker, more macho-fueled story of Alex leading his sisters through starvation in New York City in The Dead and the Gone.

As life becomes more and more complicated, both in terms of survival and emotions, our two leading characters finally meet in This World We Live In.  Love, chaos, and more disaster (as if these guys haven’t seen enough!) ensue.  The result is an entertaining, albeit slightly melodramatic, story that was worth reading, though maybe not worth putting at the top of the pile…

It’s Not Summer Without You by Jenny Han

Jenny Han returns with a sequel that’s as breezy, romantic and summery as The Summer I Turned Pretty.  Like its predecessor, this is a beach book with plenty of depth that promises to keep the tears flowing.  The characters, places, and emotions are as realistic and lovely as ever.  Highly recommended!

Chosen, Untamed & Tempted

House of Night #3 Chosen, House of Night #4 Untamed & House of Night #5 Tempted by P.C. Cast and Kristen Cast

Perhaps it’s reflective of the chaotic past few months of my life, but I feel like the House of Night books are starting to blend together for me.  While they are just as addictive and readable as ever, I admit that the story is nothing we haven’t seen before.  It doesn’t matter though.  This is junk food for readers and I like it!

The Beach

The Beach by Alex Garland

I picked this up, appropriately, in a cheaply bond photocopy format from a vendor on the street in Vietnam.  A sort of Lord of the Flies for international backpackers, The Beach is the suspenseful tale of Richard, a British traveler who stumbles upon a map to a secret community of travelers hidden on a perfect beach in Thailand.  Of course, paradise comes at a price and this is an incredibly suspenseful psychological thriller–a heart stopping, stay up all night read!  Highly recommended for travelers and non-travlers alike!

Sidenote:
I have to stop and admit here that the 2000 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio was my first introduction to The Beach.  I saw the movie while I was in college, before I’d ever traveled anywhere outside of the US and I was captivated, even though the movie was quite poorly done.  Still, I think that movie might have helped spark the travel bug inside of me and certainly the scenery was somewhat responsible for my undying need to see Thailand for myself, a few years later. Stumbling into reading the book, years after seeing the movie, was wonderful!  The characters and the story are just so much richer and the suspense is downright harrowing in written form.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo & The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson

I’m not much into mystery/crime novels, however, with the entire world frantically reading this series, it’s hard to avoid.  I finally turned through these while on vacation and, while I enjoyed them well enough, I’m not sure that I’ll pick up the final book.  I do see the appeal.  You’ve got your quirky, yet familiar, characters, your tightly written mystery

The Girl Who Played with Fire

drama, and, of course, your exotic Swedish local.  The result is an entertaining series with a memorable cast of characters and enough suspense to keep you turning pages to find out whodunit in the end.

I can’t say why, exactly, I’m not dying to read the final book…but I am perhaps the only person in the world who has the problem of falling asleep, almost instantaneously, upon opening these books.  Let’s just say that it takes me a long, long time to get through these.  Perhaps I’ve been feeding my brain too much chicklit teen junkfood to keep up with books for grownups anymore?

Mockingjay

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Finally, finally, finally the much anticipated final book to the Hunger Games Trilogy is here!  Mockingjay may not be as action packed as the first two books of the series, but it packs an emotional punch that cannot be denied.  Katniss Everdeen continues in her strugle for survival in the dreary, now war torn, near future.  With open war between the rebels and the Capitol, the love triangle between Katniss, Gale and Peeta grows more complicated and Katniss must once again face danger and drama to save herself, her family and her friends from certain doom.
I loved this book!  It’s slower, darker, and more bleak than the rest of the series and I wouldn’t have wanted to see things end any other way.  I don’t want to babble too much and give away the ending, but I am so amazed at the way Collins ended her series…I feel like Mockingjay wrapped up in such a pitch perfect ending, the pieces and emotional fallout that has been building through the series just fell so perfectly into place.  Loved it!

Tithe:  A Modern Faerie Tale by Holly Black

Tithe

Kaye is just your average goth teenage girl with a bad, rocker mother.  She skips school to work and support herself and her mother, she wears steel toed boots and, of yeah, she discovers that she has connections to the faerie world.  As she discovers her real place in the world, Kaye becomes involved in a struggle for power after an unbalace in the faerie courts.  There’s lots of complicated faerie world building, a hot faerie knight, and, of course, a human sidekick.  Not the best book that I ever read, but I certainly felt compelled to finish it.  My main annoyance with Tithe:  A Modern Faerie Tale is that it’s faerie world and characters just got too complicated for my tastes.  Dedicated urban fantasy readers might enjoy this one though.

House of Stairs by William Sleator
(first published 1974)

A small group of unrelated 16-year-old foster teens finds themselves trapped in an endless room full of impossible stairs and ledges.  They don’t know how or why they got there or what they are supposed to go.  They find a machine and quickly learn that it will give them food when they perform seemingly random tasks.  As the machine manipulates them to further and further degrees, personalities among the group begin to clash.  Tensions grow and the stakes are raised in this strange psychological mystery.

I can’t say that I loved The House of Stairs (however, I can say that I LOVED this cover…I mean, just look at it!).  Despite the teen age of the characters, this is most definitely a children’s book rather than a teen book.  I liked the intriguing plot elements and setting, however, the emotional drama of the book was really predictable, with the characters acting more like archetypes than people.  I picked it up after hearing that it was a good readalike to The Hunger Games or even Maze Runner and, after reading it, I could not disagree with the comparison more!  The plot is simple, the characters are whiny and act much, much more like children than teens and the story, while mysterious, does not actually include any action.  I think kids and tweens who are really into science fiction might enjoy this one, but I’d be much more likely to direct them to John Christopher’s work instead.

The Passage by Justin Cronin
Ballantine Books, 2010.

You may have been wondering, “Where the heck is Laura?” during these past few weeks.  Well, dear friends, I’ll tell you where I’ve been–stuck with my nose buried in this monster of a book, The Passage.  I received an ARC of this at a conference and, despite the 700+ pages, decided to start a long process of lugging this brick around until I finished it.  It’s not exactly a page turner, for me anyway, but I slogged through every page for, despite it being the opposite of the type of books I like, it was compelling enough that I absolutely had to finish it.

A suspense/horror/scifi novel, The Passage is about vampires (or a vampire-like monster anyway), the end of the world, the last remaining people of the human race and their salvation.  Epic plot to go with the page length.  Recommended for readers who like Stephen King’s epics.  For me, I found The Passage more intriguing and interesting than frightening, but that’s fine by me.

The Gardner by S.A. Bodeen
Feiwel and Friends, 2010
Mason lives a small town in the Pacific Northwest with his hardworking, but troubled single mother.  The town is centered and run around a scientific research company.  Scarred at an early age from a dog attack, Mason is quiet and avoids being the center of attention, despite his linebacker size and stature.  Most of all, Mason likes helping others and being a hero.  It’s this hero complex that gets him involved in the rescue of a mysterious and beautiful girl from the nursing home where his mother works.  As Mason learns more about the girl, he discovers that the scientific lab running his town is connected to the girl, himself and his mother in strange and sinister ways.

I was a little disappointed in The Gardner and I almost feel guilty about it.  I picked up the ARC at a conference and was so excited because I absolutely loved Bodeen’s previous book, The Compound, as both a thriller and a YA book for boys.  The Gardner is definitely an interesting and original book, but I’m not sure that it has enough oomph to its plot to captivate teen readers.  The mystery plodded along and, while it did have cleverly paced action sequences throughout, the action and the conclusion just fell a bit short of gripping.  The character of Mason was appealing, although a bit predictable, but the girl character and romantic interest never really gets to develop a personality (to be fair, she is semi-comatose through much of the book-but that’s just the problem!).  As a result, the relationship between the two main characters felt forced.

Some things I did like, however, were the environmental message and the Pacific Northwest setting.  Both make The Gardner stand out.  The science fiction elements were well written and just realistic enough to be believable and just gross enough to be fun.  I’m sure there will be teens (and teen boys) who can enjoy this novel, but I don’t think it will have the same kind of appeal as The Compound.

Gone by Michael Grant
Harper Teen, 2008

One day in a small coastal Californian town, everyone over the age of 14 disappears.  One second, they’re there and the next…gone.  It’s an interesting premise and the book completely delivers enough movie-like thrills to keep even a reluctant reader turning the 500+ pages.  As the children and teens left fend for themselves and start to form their own society, some fight for survival while others fight for power.  Add to the mix a rise of superhero-like mutant powers that start springing up amongst the people (and animals!) and you have yourself a very fun, very action packed read.   It may be simple and a bit formulaic, but the plot moves along at television/movie paces, delivering consistent action and dramatic highs.

The start of a series with two other books now out, Gone is a great book for boys (though it has a diverse enough cast to appeal to action/scifi seeking girls as well) and would work pretty well for the middle school set.

Maze Runner by James Dashner
Delacorte Books, 2009

The first in a soon to be trilogy, Maze Runner is a YA science fiction book about a colony of boys living in a strange, isolated environment surrounded by a giant maze.  While their general memories are in tact, mysteriously enough, the specifics of their memories (who they are, how they came to be there, etc.) are gone.  When 16-year-old Thomas arrives to the colony, slowly, things begin to fall apart.  The writing is basic, but it gets the job done with an efficiency that works.  With enough fast-paced action and psychological mystery to keep most readers turning the pages, Maze Runner is a fun and intriguing read.  Although the ending leaves a little to be desires, I’m pretty sure I’ll still be excited to read the sequel when it comes out.  While there’s an inevitable comparison to The Hunger Games, Maze Runner is different, with much less character development and internal drama.  It’s a fun, fast paced book that sets up a trilogy.  Recommended to reluctant readers!

Lockdown:  Escape From Furnace by Alexander Gordon Smith
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), 2009

When fourteen-year-old Alex is framed for a murder, he is sent to the Furnace, a new, state of the art prison for juvenile offenders.  The Furnace is a brutal place, built deep in the bowels of the earth, offering tortures far worse than death.  Facing violent gangs, hard labor, mutated evil monsters, and more, Alex must try to do what has never been done before–escape.

A roller coaster from the very beginning, Lockdown is definitely a page turner.  While the writing feels a bit simple and the plot and characters are a little predictable (though it’s easy to identify with them), the book remains fun and exciting from cover to cover.  It’s violent, dark, and brutal, yet never really pushes the gore or language too far for younger readers.  Complete with cliff hanger ending, this is thriller that will leave readers hanging for the next installment.

I’d recommend this book to reluctant readers (boys, mostly!) who want to move onto something a little bit darker than the Alex Rider books.  Although I can see those readers crossing over and enjoying this too, I think readers who enjoyed books like The Compound will be satisfied with Lockdown.  Definitely not for readers seeking melodrama, sophistication or lyrical language though.

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
Simon Pulse, 2009

In Leviathan, a steampunk alternate history of World War I, Scott Westerfeld has created a wonderfully imaginative world with characters as likable as they come.  Telling the stories of Deryn Sharp, a spunky and tough girl posing as a boy soldier in the British army and Aleksander Ferdinand, son of the Archduke and on the run from his own country of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  In Westerfeld’s world, the British, known as The Dawinists, have followed Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theories with a twist of genetic engineering to create animals for battle and transport.  The Germans, known as the Clankers, use engine powered iron machines (think steampunk meets mecha) to do their bidding.  The result is a spectacular adventure–fun, imaginative, and meticulously detailed (yet never dry).

If you can tell already, I loved this book.  I’m a fan of Westerfeld’s previous work with the Uglies series and Leviathan has surpassed my expectations.  I should also mention that the illustrations, by Keith Thompson, are excellent and really contributed to the feel of the story.  I guess the thing that I was most impressed with in Leviathan, was Westerfeld’s ability to create a world with so many details, both historical and fantastic, yet still have lifelike characters and an exciting plot with much drama.  Go Scott!

I’d recommend this book to, uhh, everyone.  But seriously, this book is timely in that it is decidedly steampunk, which is currently exploding on the hipster front (has anyone picked up Make magazine lately?).  I can see this book working for a lot of different audiences (the fantasy readers, the scifi readers, the nostalgic adventure readers).  I think this is be a great book for adults, teens, and tweens who want adventure, a little imagination, and a lot of fun.

Liar

Liar by Justine Larbalestier
Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2009

Told from the point of view of an admittedly compulsive liar, Liar is a psychological mystery with just a dash of the supernatural.  Micah lies constantly.  From pretending to be a boy at school, to her father’s occupation, Micah is compelled and fascinated with telling lies.  When her classmate and secret boyfriend Zach is found dead in Central Park, everyone suspects Micah, the liar, as his killer.  As Micah takes readers through the last few days of Zach’s life, she spins a web of strange and dark secrets.

Liar was an odd book.  From the very beginning, it has a strange, haunted feeling to it.  The lonely and dark tone of the writing at first reminded Speak (and books like it), but with a plot so uniquely crafted, I can’t fairly compare Liar to anything.  Without giving too much of the book away, I will say that there is a major revelation, mid-book, that changed the story completely.  At first I was frustrated (I actually threw the book down, shouting, “Seriously?!”), but I plodded on and became quite fascinated by the end.  Liar was definitely one of those books that grows on you over the read and in the aftermath.  Thought provoking and strange, writing becomes somewhat captivating.  I wouldn’t recommend it to reluctant readers, but for a special reader who wants a book that is intriguing and mysterious, this is your book!  A little bit science fiction, a teensy bit fantastic, and a lot of deep, almost tortured, character study, Liar is quality book that will hopefully find an audience between these genres.

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
Scholastic, 2009

The much anticipated sequel to The Hunger Games, Catching Fire picks up where The Hunger Games left us.  Katniss Everdeen has returned to District 13 to a new life of luxury after winning the brutal, teenage deathmatch in the last book.  Although she has space, money, and food to spare for the first time in her life, Katniss is not at peace.  Tormented by nightmares and trapped in a fake relationship with her companion winner, Peeta, Katniss misses the woods and her best friend/potential true love, Gale.  Peace does not last long.  With the Districts growing more and more restless, inspired in part by Katniss’s move to defy The Capital and refuse to kill her partner, Peeta, in last year’s Hunger Games, Katniss knows that she and those she loves will never experience peace from the controlling Capital.

I’m not going to go too far into the plot so as not to spoil it for anyone, but let me just say this:  Catching Fire is just as full of nail biting excitement and action as The Hunger Games.  I thought that The Hungers Games was an outstanding book and Catching Fire lives up to it in every way.  Catching Fire is a little bit more mature and a little bit darker (in both violence and mood).  The characters are more developed, as is the political landscape of the world in which they live.  While the ending leaves off at a cliffhanger, I think readers will be more than satisfied.  This series is turning out to be one of the most widely appealing, fun, and thought provoking ones available.  Recommended to teens and adults who want a page turner with action and a well crafted dystopia.