"Stolen" by Lucy Christopher

Sometimes nothing will do but a re-read of a much loved book. Even though you know the story and the characters, some books are so special that you can read them again and again and still find something interesting, new or fascinating in them while at the same time the known provides a certain comfort. Last weekend I needed that comfort so I snuggled under the duvet with one of my favourite YA reads, "Stolen" by Lucy Christopher. 

The story is an unusual one. Gemma is a lucky 16-year-old girl. She lives in a wealthy part of London with her financier father and art dealer mother and it is a pretty easy life until one day, it is all taken away from her. She's travelling to Vietnam on vacation with her family, when she meets a handsome young man in Bangkok Airport. He buys her a cup of coffee and suddenly everything is blurred. Next thing she knows, Gemma is in the Australian outback, hundreds of miles from the nearest city, far away from her family and friends. The only one there is Ty, the young man who has abducted her. Why he has taken Gemma and what he wants from her is a mystery to her and is slowly revealed to both her and the reader. 

This is YA as it should be. Powerful, convincing, different and realistic. There's no paranormal romance here, yet it has some of the same qualities. As with many paranormals, this is set in a world very different to the one you and I live in and the rules are completely different. It is realistic yet it has the same magic as a good paranormal romance would have and it will appeal to the same readers. 

What is interesting is that even though there are only really two characters in the plot, it still feels dynamic and full of action with lots of interesting dialogue. These two main characters are well-written and come to live, their personalities spring out of the pages, so real are they. The work that Lucy Christopher has done on her protagonist Gemma and the difficult Ty means that this novel is classes above many of the other YA books on the market. It is simply of a different - and better - quality and so much more interesting and powerful. 

The story is scary, worrying, while at the same time being gripping and sorrow-ful. The way that Gemma matures throughout the book is rarely seen in the genre and it makes her a good literary role model for teenage girls. It reminds me of Sophie McKenzie's "Girl, Missing" but this one is better written with a more believable plot and more engaging characters. So if you're wondering what to get your teenage daughter/niece/friend for Christmas, I'd say that "Stolen" is a good contender for a great present. 

Read it if: You like intelligent, emotionally mature Young Adult literature with a twist. 

Harry Potter or Edward Cullen? The King's verdict...

"Harry Potter is all about confronting fears, finding inner strength, and doing what is right in the face of adversity. Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend." 
- Stephen King 

(ps. there seems to be some controversy about whether or not Stephen King actually said this but I am going with the majority who seems to think yes) 

A Replacement for "The Replacement"

Sometimes you come across a book so uninteresting and so blah that reviewing them seems like a task instead of a hobby. I am sorry to say that "The Replacement" by Brenna Yovanoff is one of those books. From the tenth page and onwards I kept losing interest and by the time I had actually finished it, I wasn't sure that I could have made it another ten pages. 
What is so frustrating is that the plot idea is really good - the story line could work really well - but in the end it (as so many other books) is dragged down by a cast of cardboard, 2D characters! 


On amazon.co.uk the product description is this: 
Mackie Doyle is a replacement - a fairy child left in the crib of a human baby sixteen years ago, to replace the baby when it was stolen away by the fey. So though he lives in the small town of Gentry, Mackie's real home is the fey world of tunnels and black, murky water, a world of living dead girls ruled by a little tattooed princess. Now, because his fey blood gives him fatal allergies to iron, blood and consecrated ground, Mackie is slowly dying in the human world. Mackie would give anything just to be normal, to live quietly amongst humans, practice his bass guitar and spend time with his crush, Tate. But when Tate's baby sister goes missing, Mackie is drawn irrevocably back home to the fey underworld of Gentry, known as Mayhem, where he must face down the dark creatures, rescue the child, and find his rightful place - in our world, or theirs.


Mackie as a character is quite boring and quite self-obsessed, he never seems to sit down and think about things from Tate's perspective or from Alice's or from his sister Emma's. After a while that becomes really annoying. Tate is not much better, she seems to be there merely to fill up a gap in the plot and only acquires an actual personality when fighting... 
As for the relationship between Mackie and Tate... oh dear. They make Bella and Edward Cullen seem like the perfect, normal, happy couple. All they ever do is fight and make-out - when Mackie is not busy chasing after other, more cheerleader-ish girls. 


So if you are considering reading "The Replacement", I suggest you think again - you can spend you time better, there are so many other good books out there! However, if you are very very keen to read about fey and faery creatures living inside a hill why not try "The Elfin Hill" by H.C. Andersen? 
A beautiful haunting classic - allow me to finish with this quote from the fairytale:


Then the elfin girls had to dance, first in the usual way, and then with stamping feet, which they performed very well; then followed the artistic and solo dance. Dear me, how they did throw their legs about! No one could tell where the dance begun, or where it ended, nor indeed which were legs and which were arms, for they were all flying about together, like the shavings in a saw-pit! And then they spun round so quickly that the death-horse and the grave-pig became sick and giddy, and were obliged to leave the table.

Review: "Forever" by Maggie Stiefvater

I am going to be brutally honest here people and start out with one thing I absolutely hated about this book: the title! What kind of a naff, boring title is "Forever"? It just screams teenage romance in the worst possible way. But let's not now judge a book by its cover (which by the way is too sparkly and silvery for me...) or its title. Let's crack on with reviewing what is actually on the pages!

*If you haven't read Shiver and Linger, DON'T READ FURTHER*

So Grace is a wolf, Sam is heartbroken, Isabel is grumpy and Cole is hyper. So everything is pretty much as when we left off in "Linger". And that is both good and bad really because it is slightly... dare I say boring?... at the beginning. The story is quite simple actually. Isabel's horrible father wants to shoot all the wolves - from a helicopter with sharpshooters... With Beck out in the woods in wolf-form and Grace constantly shifting, there is pressure on Cole to find a cure (scientist, the obvious next step from being a rock star...not). Sam is out of his head with worry and with being accused by the general society for having killed Grace, who sees that her only chance to save him from accusations is to reappear and speak with her (still horrible and cold) parents.

So quite a lot is going on. Lots of sort of action but somehow it just never makes it out of "kind of interesting" territory. Sam and Grace are just bloody boring, Cole and Isabel are the interesting characters but they don't feature enough in this book - they deserve so much more spotlight.
Basically, I only read it because I had the two others, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered with it I am afraid. Worst part of it was the ending actually.
It is too bad really because Maggie Stiefvater is actually a good writer with a great sense of story and character. "Forever" is not the ending that The Wolves of Mercy Falls series deserves and this is an author who could have done better.

Read This If: You liked "Linger" and "Shiver" and want to know how it all ends. Otherwise, don't.

Review: "Linger" by Maggie Stiefvater

The other day I published the review of "Shiver" by Maggie Stiefvater, the first book in the Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy. Today, time has come to review "Linger", the second book in the series. If you haven't read the "Shiver" and do not want spoilers, please do not read this review :-) I'm not afraid to admit that I read "Shiver" more or less in one go (had a few breaks to make tea and dinner and so on) but with "Linger", I did not have that luxury so instead I read it over a few days.

The story continues where "Shiver" left off. Sam is now a boy, this time forever. No longer does he have to fear the weather or the cold and he is slowly getting to grips with the implications that this has. Suddenly he has a future and he has to consider what he wants to go with his life - will he go to college? Will he pursue his passion for music? All he knows for certain is that he wants to be with Grace. She is everything to Sam. However, he also has to deal with the fact that being permanently human, he still has a responsibility for the other wolves and with the new wolves that Beck has created, this is a little more trouble than Sam wants.

One of these new wolves is Cole. A famous rock musician who screws up everything he touches, he has become a wolf to forget. For him it is the ultimate drug to heal his broken soul. Another person with a broken soul is Isabel. Meanwhile Grace is happy to have her Sam but as her parents are suddenly starting to take an interest in her life, their relationship becomes more and more difficult. To further complicate things, Grace's health is rapidly deteriorating and the doctors can't find anything wrong with her. The situation becomes more and more tense as "Linger" takes us deeper into the story of The Wolves of Mercy Falls.

 I really like "Linger" - not least because focus is less on Sam and Grace, who to be honest are not the most exciting characters ever and more on Isabel and Cole who are so much more interesting. These two are seriously damaged goods which is probably why they seem to attract each other and they damages make them interesting. I love the fiery Isabel who has opinions and is not afraid to voice them. This girl is cool. The Sam and Grace story on the other hand is really cute and the way they get into trouble with her parents should be something that many teens can relate to...

 All in all "Linger" is a great sequel and I thoroughly enjoyed it! Hope you will too.

 Read it if: You read "Shiver". Otherwise read that one first, then read some Rainer Maria Rilke and then read "Linger".

Review: "Forbidden"

The story of how I came to actually read "Forbidden" by Tabitha Suzuma is a bit stumbly. I read a blogger review and bought it immediately, received it in the mail and kind of changed my mind... then left it on shelf for a few weeks, decided to give it a try, read two pages and gave up. Then desperately needed something to read before an afternoon nap last weekend (I know, I'm in my mid-20s but had worked out and been for a long walk so needed sleep) and decided to give it a second chance. And then something happened because I never got that nap. Never went to the shops to buy food, neglected to cook a nice dinner for my boyfriend as I had planned and spent the afternoon and evening reading. The first three hours I didn't even move but then my boyfriend came to say that he would go buy take-away at which point I relocated from bed to sofa. Without letting go of the book for a moment... I read it until I had turned the last page and then I spent days thinking about the characters and story.

Maybe you've heard about the plot already - it has been given some attention in the blogosphere. "Forbidden" is about five siblings who are just children but who have to take on adult responsibilities because their dad has left and their mother is too busy drinking and being with her boyfriend. The two oldest are Lochan and Maya who not only have to go to school but also have to be parents to their siblings, one of whom is only five and one who is a troublesome teenage boy with a rebellious side. Lochan is ambitious and responsible, willing to do anything for his family and a star pupil. He is also shy to a degree where it becomes a disability. Maya does okay in school and she is well-liked and has lots of friends. But she is a 16-year-old girl who lives the life of a 30-year-old mother of three. All the have is each other and one day brother and sister fall in love.
Now you are probably thinking something along the lines of sick, disgusting, creepy, wrong. But actually I didn't think it was - I was far more affected by the neglect of the parents, the pure and utter lack of love and responsibility, than I was about the sister/brother relationship.
By the end of this book I was ready to adopt the lot of them. They were so real to me and I felt so horrible for them, I was so sad when the book was over, I just wanted more. Which is why I am very happy that Tabitha Suzuma has written several other books that I will definitely be reading soon!

Review: "Girl, Missing" by Sophie McKenzie

Review in short: great books for tweens and teens. I guess you'd like a bit more detail though? So here it comes, a full review of Sophie McKenzie's young adult book "Girl, Missing". The girl in question Lauren is not actually missing. She is living in London with her parents and she has always known that she is adopted. This has never really been an issue for her - what is an issue, however, is the fact that Lauren is very much becoming a teenager with all the mood swings and the feelings of being misunderstood and not fitting in. Luckily Lauren has a great friend, Jam, who is always there for her through thick and thin. So when Lauren finds a picture online that looks strangely like her as a toddler, she of course tells Jam. Trouble is, the picture is on a website about abducted children. Years ago a toddler in USA disappeared, a girl with almost the same name as Lauren and almost the same looks... Soon Lauren and Jam are on a transatlantic hunt to find out the truth about the toddler on the picture and about Lauren's childhood but someone definitely doesn't want Lauren to unearth the secrets of the past and it all gets dangerous...

Had I been 13 or 14 years old I would have absolutely loved this book. As it is, I am probably too old for it - nah, definitely too old for it - and I have to say that I found it hard to sympathy with Lauren. Her teenage moodiness and mood swings and her general being unfair to her parents and to Jam is pretty exhausting if you ask me. I understand but it is tiring! Luckily she realises her own selfishness at some point but it is a little late for me, I must say.

Read it if: You love contemporary quality YA or if you are 14 years old.

Review: "Passion"

So now the time has come to review "Passion", the third book in the series about the eternal love of Daniel and Luce which is written by Lauren Kate (btw. such a cool name for an author!). The first books "Fallen" and "Torment" had something. I loved the black school uniform in book one and the graveyard and the firsts meetings between Cam and Luce. "Torment" was good as well, it had something. The last scenes were powerful and that leads me nicely to "Passion" which starts where "Torment" began. However, the plot of this one is quite different and if you are a huge Lauren Kate fan, then please forgive me for this review. I am going to be honest (because otherwise what's the point?) and it is not really going to be nice...

The plot is ridiculous. At best. The idea is actually good but the actual story is not only unimpressive, it is downright awful. In order to understand the eternal love of Daniel and Luce and the curse that means that Luce dies whenever their love becomes to passionate, Luce travels through time. Literally. She uses the announcers to travel through her past lives and observe or even take part in her past lives and what lives, she has led... And boy has she led some interesting lives. She seems to have been in all the right places on the right times, at least in a historical context. Thinking about this in a reasonable way, one would assume that she had had maybe one exciting life and a lot of normal lives outside of the main historical events. Not so Luce. She was lady of the manor in Victorian England, a friend of Shakespeare and the reason for the fire of the Globe Theater, a slave at the court of Pharaoh, a Chinese king's fiancee, a Princess of Savoy at the court of the Sun King... She has experienced quite a bit! And I can see why otherwise this plot may have become boring quite fast because Kate doesn't take the time to really explore any of these lives, instead she seems to try to fit as many past lives into one book as possible. And feature the devil as well plus a strange dialogue featuring God... Have to say I don't like it. At all.

If you loved "Fallen" and "Torment" please don't get your expectations up... If you loved films such as "Shakespeare in Love", "Mulan" and "The English Patient" then you might like it because the author seems to have borrowed a bit from these and other movies. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, except that she has not done it in a very elegant way and that rather annoys me. Honestly, this book seemed to me as if it had been written in a hurry and that's really too bad. I hope that the next book, "Rapture", will be better because even though I was less than impressed with "Passion", I still have to find out what happens to Luce and Daniel.

What is it about vamps?

Saturday night I went out for dinner with a girlfriend and after having discussed the big questions in life (i.e. why are men so different from women and what are we going to do when we grow up), we went for drinks at a popular bar. While we were sipping a happy mix of passion fruit, vodka and somthing else delicious, we ran into a friend of mine and his friends.




Somehow - as one drink turned into two turned into three - we stumbled into a conversation about... vampire fiction. For us YA lovers here in blogoland that is not so special - I mean we have all taken part in Edward vs. Jacob/Peeta vs. Gale discussions at some point - but for professional men in their mid-thirties with good careers to be discussing the merits of Eric Northman vs. Bill Compton... It was so surreal!

Apparently even men like these are susceptible to the charms of the True Blood series and yes, they had actually seen the Twilight movies though they were not keen on admitting it. However, they were not afraid of admitting their love of True Bloood and miss southern belle Sookie Stackhouse.

I saw that Harvard (yes the Harvard University) was offering an online course in vampire fiction - it is a genre that has suddenly been revived and also changed quite a bit. In the classic vampire fiction - Bram Stoker's Dracula and Anne Rice's vampire world - the vamps are definitely not the good guys. Even in Buffy, the vampires are pretty awful.

Then True Blood, Twilight and House of Night comes along and now the vampire seem to be plauged by a lot of conscience and only feed from willing humans - or even go vegetarian. Quite a change. However, it seems to have made vampire fiction much more palatable that they vamps have become tamed, de-fanged, bloodless.
So people, I ask you: what is it about vampires that is so fascinating? Why do you read vampire fiction?

Review: "Marked" - Another brand of vampires

Since reading Twilight a couple of years ago, I have gone for a bit of exploration down the paranormal and paranormal romance road. As you all know there is a lot of different themes and topics in the genre but vampires seem to be the paranormals featured most often - I guess they have been around in YA fiction and YA culture for years in different forms - like Buffy the Vampire Slayer who was a big hit when I was a teen.
Having seen "Marked" by Kristin and P.C. Cast featured on a lot of blogs and paranormal fiction sites, I decided to give it a go. To be honest after my recent disappointment with "Need", I was a bit hesitant but as they say you need to get back up on the horse, so I did and I actually quite liked the book.
The vampires in "Marked" are different - bascially vampirism is a recognised part of normal society as it is a phenomenon that hits some teenagers. They become marked which means that they have to go to the boarding school The House of Night to become apprentice vampires, fledglings, and if they survive until adulthood they will become real vampires. Zoey Redbird is a normal girl until the day she gets marked and has a strange experience where she meets Nyx the Vampire Goddess. She has to go to the House of Night where she very very fast makes enemies with one of the leading girls, Aphrodite, and friends with a gang of fledglings who introduce her to the life as an almost-vampire.

I enojoyed the book. In the beginning the very very teenagey dialogue and the use of slang annoyed me - I generally don't like that too much - but I got used to it and as the plot unfolded it didn't really matter. The vampire world in the House of Night series is a sort of cross between "normal" vampire lore and witchcraft. There is a lot of magic and spells - and not of the cute Harry Potter kind, something all together darker. I don't particularly like witchcraft in YA novels, for some reason I find it a bit 90s. However, apart from that this was an enjoyable read. Zoey is cool and I loved her grandmother, an Indian wise woman, and her roommate who has real charm and personality. Not to mention the boy in her gang whose parents are alright with him being a vampire but very uncomfortable with his homosexuality. That had me laughing. I wish that more time had been spent on the (bad) relationship between Zoey and her mother as there are a lot of tension there that could have been really interesting. However, as this is a series maybe it will follow in one of the later books. For now, I am looking forward to reading the sequel - and to see what happens with Zoey and Aphrodite, the ultimate cheerleader-vampire!

Review: "Need" - Need not read!

"Need" by Carrie Jones - have you read it? I have. Read it just the other day after having waited in suspense for it to land in my mailbox. I have to say that you need not read it. Sorry but it just isn't worth the time if you ask me.

The plot actually is pretty cool. Zara has lost her father and sunk into a deep depression so to try and wrestle her out of her stupor, her mother has sent her to Maine to live with her cool grandmother Betty.
Zara keeps seeing a mysterious man and find speckle of gold dust where he has been. Also there is something fishy about her new friends, Nick and Ian, and suddenly she finds herself tangled in a web of paranormal mystery.

So far, so paranormal romance. What is so bad about this book is the fact that none of the characters ever come to life. The only one that even slightly intersted me and seemed real was grandma Betty - a really cool lady full of energy and life. The rest of the bunch, including Zara, never come to life. They are two-dimensional and their dialogue is unbeliable and at times even painful to read.

Now I have asked my trusted little sister - a true conneiseur of YA fiction - to read it and give me her opinion. If she disagrees with me, I will be back with more about this book.

Review: "Torment" - Yes Indeed...

This weekend I had a little something waiting for me: "Torment" by Lauren Kate, the sequel to "Fallen" which I quite liked. My experience is that often the sequel is better than the first - at least that's how I felt about Twilight and Hush Hush. So after reading "Fallen" I was of course really interested in getting my hands on "Torment" and so I devoted most of my Saturday to enjoying this one. So what did I find when I was done reading "Torment"?

Well actually, I found that the title was very appropriate, it was tormenting. And not really in a good way either. Let me explain. "Torment" begins where "Fallen" left off. Daniel is escorting Luce - the love of his eternal life - to a new and safer boarding school in California. And just as grim, grey and forbidding as her former school was, just as free, luxurious and posh is the new one. Here Luce is put in a class for specially advantaged kids - a phrase used to camouflage that the kids in this class all have some angel running in their blood.
Luce is fighting to adapt and to make friends with her less than friendly roommate, she is fighting to keep up in class and she is parted from Daniel. With this parting comes the opportunities to get a lot of new information about her boyfriend and also about her former lives. Wanting to know more about herself and get to know about the things that Daniel remembers and she doesn't, Luce persuades her friends to help her tackle the shadows that hold the keys to her past. This quest leads her into not so few life-threathening situations and it leads to some so relationship-threathening knowledge.

All this is quite good but something was missing. I not sure exactly what it is but there seemed to be a lack of storyline going through the book. I wanted more glimpses into the past and less boarding school. It took away from the love story - which was further diluted by the lack of Daniel in the book. And then there was the ending which was a bit of a mess really. Too much, too fast, too confusing. Too many characters and loose ends.
So all in all not a favourite with me - tormenting having to read it and not being swept away and tormenting having to wait for "Passion" (third in the series) and not knowing if the mess left behind in "Torment" will be untangled.

Review: "The Hunger Games" - I'm hungry for more!

After seeing so many people out there in the blogosphere raving about the Mockingjay series I thought I would give it a chance but to be honest I did not expect much. I kind of expected something rather interesting where I would read the first book in the series - "The Hunger Games" - and then decide that this was nothing for me. How wrong I was. Once I began reading this book there was no putting it down again. I read everywhere until I had turned the last page - and when I say everywhere I mean everywhere. On the bus, at the gym, while walking to the gym, even while cooking (and that cannot be recommended unless you are a trained read-while-you-do'er).

So for those of you who haven't yet been convinced to read this yet, what is this all about? "The Hunger Games" is the story of the teenager Katniss who grows up in North America sometime in the future. The world has changed drastically and American has been renamed Panem and is divided into twelve districts, of which Katniss lives in the poorest district where most people work in the coal mines. Katniss has had to take responsibility for her mother and her sisters and is the main breadwinner of the family. She is fiercely protective of her family and when her sisters is called on to take part the hunger games, Katniss volunteers to take her place, thinking that this is sure to be a death sentence. Because the hunger games is not just any old games - it is a reality tv-show where 24 teenagers are forced to fight until only one is still alive and is crowned the winner. Katniss' chances do not look good but she would die for her sister and alongside another teenager from her district, she goes to the capitol to fight for her life.

Normally I am not one for these futuristic/dystopian tales - the only other one I have ever liked is "The Handmaid's Tale" but not liking this book was not an option for me. This is YA at its best. It is well-written and the universe that Katniss exists in is well-constructed and believable. It is logical in the way that it is build up and nothing sticks out as seeming wrong. It is no pleasant universe though. The rules and rulers are evil and inhuman and it takes a lot of courage and cleverness to survive.
Even more courage and cleverness is needed to survive the hunger games and I really enjoyed reading about the way Katniss handled herself. Trying to survive while sticking to her ideals and principles. As a main character I loved Katniss. She has lots of flaws and she is not aware of all of them herself but she is a cool chick with a lot of backbone and a lot of personality. She lets no one mess with her but at the same time she is vulnerable and doesn't always find it easy to understand other people. I loved her instantly.

My only complaint is that I did not buy the next two books in the series when I bought the first one - but I only have myself to blame for that :-)

So here is a question for those of you who have read "The Hunger Games", what did you love most about the book? For me the best part was Katniss, I can't wait to read more about her.

Review: "Big Mouth & Ugly Girl" - The Big Ugly Teenage Truth

Lately I've seen a few posts out there about how the girls and boys in YA are always really hot/sexy/cute. However, then I suggest you meet Matt and Ursula from "Big Mouth & Ugly Girl". Ursula Riggs is a big girl. Not fat - but tall and big and a little big clumsy but she refuses to give into the cheerleader-world-domination standards. Instead she has created an alter ego: Ugly Girl. Ugly Girl doesn't take any cr-p. She is true to herself and her ideals at all times - being a vegetarian, standing up for people, refusing to give into group pressure. She is a loner but a strong loner and I honestly found her cool!
Ursula/Ugly Girl's sense of justice is awoken when her classmate Matt - a popular, goofy, kind guy that everyone loves - is accused of having made a bomb threat. Suddenly Matt's life is falling apart, his friends are disappearing, his position at school changed but Ugly Girl stands up for him and an unlikely friendship blossoms.

This is a short but really cute book. It is easily read and perfect for teens because it tackles a subject that is really difficult but does it in a clever and very well-written way. This is the book I would give to a 13-year old cousin for Christmas. I love the way Ursula is described, so strong, yet with a range of emotions and things that she is worried about. She is a real person, a great girl with a lot of ideals and thoughts that I found inspiring. Read it if you want some clever YA that deals with the real and difficult things in teen life.

Review: "Crescendo" - No more hushing up the truth

A couple of days ago "Crescendo" by Becca Fitzpatrick landed in my mailbox to my utter delight! I read "Hush, Hush" a couple of weeks ago and though I had not been craving the sequel, I was still really looking forward to reading it. I didn't really have time to read during the weekend but I found time - in my bed, under my duvet with a flashlight trying not to disturb my boyfriend.

The story of "Crescendo" starts where "Hush, Hush" left off. Nora has put the dramatic events behind her and is enjoying her twosomeness with gorgeous Patch, her guardian angel (who btw. is definitely not the angelic type!). However, not long into the book Patch starts getting weird. He hides stuff from Nora and when she says the three big words....he drives off!!
So Nora - being a cool chick with a good deal of sense - decides not to let herself be used as a doormat and breaks up with Patch! I so did not see that coming but I was delighted that Nora turned out to be such a strong girl.
Then a new guy Scott - aka Scotty the Potty aka Scotty the Hottie - moves to town and very early on it becomes clear that he has a past. A scary, bad sort of past.
However, as Patch is now spending time with Nora's sworn enemy Marcie, Nora needs Scott to show Patch that she is over him. Let the action begin.

I have to say that my expectations weren't that high for this sequel but I was so surprised. I actually liked "Crescendo" better than "Hush, Hush". Mostly because Nora steps up to the plate and tells Patch where to go because he really lets her down and acts like a total jerk. So good on Nora for standing up for herself.
Also I have to say that I enjoyed the little catfights between Nora and Marcie - that girl really has a fighting spirit - but at times (will not say anymore to avoid spoilers) my heart was aching for Nora.

This book was great as paranormal romance goes. A really good book that left me feeling 16 years old again. Also it was full of twists and mysteries, especially surrounding the death of Nora's father.
If you like Bella&Edward, Luce&Daniel or any of the other romances out there, this one will not let you down!

Do you want to read what other bloggers though of this book?
BrittLit: http://thelifeofateenlibrarian.blogspot.com/2010/10/review-crescendo-becca-fitzpatrick.html

The Compulsive Reader: http://www.thecompulsivereader.com/2010/11/crescendo-by-becca-fitzpatrick.html

Ink And Paper: http://jo-scrawls.blogspot.com/2010/09/review-crescendo-by-becca-fitzpatrick.html

Review: "Inexcusable" - When good guys do bad things

Another day, another YA read. I don't know what it is about me but these days I am really in a YA mood, reading all young adult books to come my way :-) In my mailbox this week, yesterday actually, I got "Inexcusable" by Chris Lynch which I ordered after reading "Speak" by Laurie Halse Anderson as this book tackles the same difficult topic. Date rape. This is a topic that I think is really important and I commend these writers for dealing with it and making it approachable for teens.
In "Speak" we heard the story of Melinda who was date raped and suffered from a depression as she failed to cope with the emotional turmoil that the assault left her in.

In "Inexcusable" we meet Keir Sarafian, a senior at the local high school, a prominent football player and allround good guy. At least this is how he sees himself - but just like Eva in "We Need to Talk About Kevin", Keir insight into his own personality and he reflections on his own actions are lacking... To say the least. As Keir sees it, he is a the American Good Guy. He has come to fame in the local community after a game in which he - accidentally, maybe - hurt a player from the opposite badly. He lives in perfect bachelorhood with his dad, as his sisters Fran and Mary have left for college and he has a teenage crush on Gigi Boudakian.
However, the book alternates between scenes from a room, a situation where Gigi is accusing Keir of having raped her, and the past few months leading up to this where Keir argues his case. He is a good guy. And good guys do not rape the girls they have a crush on.

This book was a really quick read. It is written for teens and the language and the style is perfect for this segment. If I had read this when I was 13, I would have been so crazy about it and I have to say that I am impressed by the way that Lynch handles this subject. The story line is a difficult one - it is not a main character that you easily find yourself liking but somehow, despite all his flaws, Keir is quite likeable. He is a spoiled kid with a bad grip on reality and no understanding of himself or his actions but he is not mean.

I will save this books and give it to a teen someday. It is a really good YA read in the sense that it does not condescend, it understands and explains. If you are an English teacher teaching 13-15 year olds, this is a great read to introduce them to, just as "Speak" is.

Review: "Fallen" - Luce and the bad boys

Right, so I am in a bit of a YA mood at the moment and this week, one of the books I have read this week in the YA genre is "Fallen" by Lauren Kate - one of the ones that has been feautered rather heavily here in the blogosphere lately as the sequel "Torment" has just been published. So I thought I would give it a try as a lot you out there have been positive about this.

The main character in "Fallen" is Luce, a normal girl who have been haunted by shadows hovering on the edge of her life since she was a small girl. Something terrible happened to a friend of Luce and she is suspected to have caused it so now she has been thrown out of her posh boarding school and is sent to reform school. And when Lauren Kate writes reform school, she means reform school.
Sword and Cross Reform School is a grim place and the students there are a far cry from Luce's former classmates. However, Luce is quick to make friends with the rule-breaking cool kid Arriane and the popular guy Cam seems to have his eyes set on Luce as a love interest. Luce is attracted to Cam but at the same time she also feels a strange unexplainable attraction to Daniel, who alternately rejects her and is nice to her.

I read this book in one day because from the beginning I was really fascinated by the reform school life - this is as far from Hogwarts as it gets. I liked the cool students and the school parties and the love entanglements between Luce, Cam and Daniel was fascinating. It is the classic story of girl being attracted to two guys and trying to figure out which one is the one for her. But I have to say that the ending was really disappointing. I don't want to spill any spoilers but let me just say that I thought it all became overly dramatic and over the top. It seemed like the author had saved all the action for the last thirty pages and it was too much for me.

Will I be reading the sequel? Good question. I think it depends on my mood, at the moment I don't think so. What are your thoughts on "Fallen"? Did you enjoy it?

Review: "Speak" - Let's talk about this

This book has been reviewed extensively in the blogosphere and that is where I first stumbled over it. "Speak" is written by Laurie Halse Anderson and published in 1999 and it has even been made into a movie starring Kristin Stewart as Melinda - the main character.

Melinda is starting her freshman year in highschool in the worst way possible. Something happened at a party during the summer, something which Melinda cannot think about not to mention talk about.
So Melinda has gone from being part of a gang of girls to being a social outcast. Her only friend is new-in-town Heather who have ambitious plans for how they will become part of the social scene at the shool. However, Melinda is slowly spiralling into a depression and she has no interest in social ladder climbing. Instead she locks herself in - both physically and mentally - and the only subject in school that she has any interest in is art. Art class is a free space and the teacher Mr. Freeman supports and encourages her but even this in time becomes unbearable for Melinda who shies away from the world, skips classes and withdraws from the parents and Heather.

"Speak" deals with an incredibly difficult subject - daterape - and it has been one censured in some countries for its outspokenness and honesty. In my opinion this is a book that all girls should read when they become teenagers because it is so absolutely honest, heartbreakingly so. It is a story of all of the difficulties that an emotionally incompetent young man puts an innocent young woman through. It touched me and even gave me tears in my eyes. It is beautiful and Melinda is a sweet, good, clever girl who when she is confronted with evil tries to protect herself as well as she can. I will read this book again and I will recommend it to anyone who likes a good book about being teenager.

Review: "Hush, hush" - Kiss kiss, bang bang

I've read so much about this book. As a Twilight-lover I have been on the lookout for some YA to satisfy my craving for teenage romance and I was quite sure that "Hush, Hush" by Becca Fitzpatrick would fit the bill. And it did actually.

The storyline is YA classic. Teenager Nora Grey lives with her mother who is never home and goes to the local high school where she hangs out with her best friend Vee. However, when she ends up sitting next to the next and slightly mysterious guy Patch Cipriano things suddenly begin happening. Patch knows things about her and he makes her feel insecure and unsafe. He stalks her, makes her feel uncomfortable and she is worried that someone (Patch?) is trying to kill her. The chemistry between Nora and Patch is undeniable and as the story moves forward, they come closer and closer.

I liked this story. It delivered what it promised, nothing more nothing less. It had no real depth and it was quite predictable but at the same time it satisfied my desire for a real YA novel. I enjoyed the banter and chemistry between the two main characters and most of all I enjoyed Nora. She has so much more spark and energy than Bella from Twilight. She is actually really cool - the kind of girl that I wouldn't mind hanging out with. She is a good friend, a brave girl who has a sense of humor.

If you liked Twilight, I think there is a 99% chance that you will like "Hush, hush".