Category Archives: book review

Review: The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater (No Spoilers!)

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raven king2So. The final book of The Raven Cycle came out on Tuesday. I was lucky enough to get my copy on Friday, so I got to read it early, but I’ve been lying low, waiting for others to read it before I posted my review. Even so, there won’t be any spoilers for The Raven King here, though if you haven’t read any of the books in the series, perhaps you should close your computer screen and go track these books down.

It started with meeting Blue and the Raven Boys in book one (review), learning more about Ronan and his dreams in book two (review), and falling more in love with the deep, complicated characters in book three (review). Now it was time to wrap everything up.

Listen. Maggie Stiefvater is a genius. I’m convinced. She wields words like weapons that swipe at your heart, and I love her for it. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect of the final book in the cycle, but I had certain small pieces I sort of banked on, and she delivered on them all.

The most important thing in these books (and Maggie agrees) is the characters, and the whole point of the series was to navigate their friendships. It was a joy to go along for the ride. It’s killing me that Stiefvater will be in St. Paul next week and I can’t go to her event.

Read these books. I realize I haven’t really said much about them, but it’s all in the characters, people. You need Blue, Gansey, Adam, Ronan, and Noah in your lives.

Review: When We Collided by Emory Lord

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when we collidedWhat an apt title! When We Collided is the story of Vivi, a girl with bipolar disorder, and Jonah, a boy whose family is falling apart, when they meet one summer in Verona Cove.

Vivi is a unique character, for sure– all bright-red lips and Marilyn Monroe hair. Almost immediately I decided she was a mix of Stargirl (Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli) and Finch (All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven). Cue my terror.

(If you’ve read those books and made that connection, you’d prepare yourself for an impending meltdown.)

Jonah was lovely. His family too, all six Daniels kids. He was strong and cute and, in my opinion, probably could have dealt without having a tornado named Vivi storm into his summer.

See, that was the hard thing. Vivi was a little tough for me to like. Yes, she was a marvelous character. Yes, she was fascinating. But she was also a tornado. Early in the book we learn she is not taking her medicine. I knew this would get scary.

The writing is phenomenal. The characters are inimitable. But any book about mental illness is going to be difficult to read– maybe especially for someone like me, who has her own brain disorder and for whom books like this raise so many personal issues and questions.

I have only read one other book by Emory Lord– her debut, Open Road Summer, which wasn’t my favorite (but probably because I am not a huge fan of road trip novels). I could see her growth as a writer in this novel. If you read it, please let me know what you think! It’s not an easy book– but then again, I’m not big into easy books.

Review: Mara Dyer Trilogy by Michelle Hodkin

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mara dyer

This is actually going to be less of a review and more of an introduction, so that I can steer away from spoilers.

First of all, those covers! Gorgeous.

The Mara Dyer trilogy is about a girl who survives the collapse of an abandoned asylum she was exploring with her best friend, her boyfriend, and her boyfriend’s sister. Shortly after the collapse, her family moves to Florida to start over … only things are getting super weird. Enter Noah Shaw, this cocky British schoolboy who knows he is gorgeous, and things really start to get interesting.

Thrillers aren’t really my thing. But I loved this series.

Mara is a badass. The dialogue is hilarious. The intrigue is intense. And Noah Shaw is … well … Noah Shaw.

“You’re supposed to say, ‘All I want is your happiness. I’ll do whatever it takes, even if it means being without you.'”
“Sorry,” Noah said. “I’m just not that big of a person.”

Yes, he’s a little over the top sometimes. (Okay, a lot over the top.) But those over-the-top things are a-ok with me when said in a British accent. I listened to the audio versions of this series, which was narrated by Christy Romano (you know her as Ren Stevens and the voice of Kim Possible), and while a lot of people took issue with her attempt at a male British accent, I was okay with it.

I like that the books were intriguing but not wholly scary. I’m not big into freaking myself out. If you like books that will keep you guessing, dive headfirst into this series.

Review: Noggin by John Corey Whaley

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I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a book cover misrepresent the story inside so much as this one. Let’s take a look at it.noggin

What do you expect from this title and cover?

I pictured a Grasshopper Jungle type of story– weird and wild and fast and sort of hard-to-believe-but-I’ll-go-along-for-the-ride, you know?

Not at all. This story was the most emotionally exhausting book I’ve read so far this year. And maybe for ALL of last year too. In fact, I can’t remember a book putting my heart through the meat-grinder quite like this one did since I read The Fault in Our Stars. My gosh. I’m still reeling.

First of all, what’s this book about? Travis Coates is the second person to have a successful head-transplant surgery. When he died, his head was cryogenically preserved while they figured out the procedure– the medical organization he was with suspected they would have a solution within twenty years, though, secretly, neither Travis nor his friends or family thought it would ever work. So, when only five years later, it does work … well, everything is different. Most notably, Travis is still sixteen and in love with his girlfriend Cate … who is now 21 and engaged to someone else.

This book was intense. All the feels. Multiplied exponentially. While I often love to just binge-read through a great story, I couldn’t with this one. I could only handle small doses– an hour of reading here, a half-hour there. And when I finished it today, I just sobbed and sobbed and then took a nap to deaden the feelings.

Noggin was incredible. Layered characters. Meaningful story. Made my head spin and my heart break. This book was so much more than I ever anticipated.

 

 

Review: Calvin by Martine Leavitt

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calvin.jpgSo.

This book is about a boy named Calvin undergoing a schizophrenic break.

He has always had a connection with the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, being that there are so many similarities between his life and the comic strip (including a toy tiger and a girl next door named Suzie), so when Hobbes starts talking to him again at age seventeen, Calvin decides the only way to make it stop is to take a pilgrimage across Lake Erie to meet Bill Watterson, the creator of the comic strip. If he can make one last strip about a seventeen-year-old Calvin who is “normal,” Calvin will be healed.

And so he heads off.

I loved it. I loved everything about this book: the format (it’s a letter to Bill Watterson and the dialogue is written like a play), the main character (brilliant, brilliant boy; adored Calvin!), the humor, AND the fact that I didn’t know if what I was reading was actually happening in real life or in Calvin’s head. I thought it was so rife with thought-provoking conversation and delightful humor. I read over half of it in one setting and finished it off the next night.

Fans of Calvin and Hobbes will especially love this book, all the references to the comic strip and to Spaceman Spiff, what a great dose of nostalgia. I’m not sure how close it was to describing a real schizophrenic break– it had a tremendously different tone than Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman (review), which I read a few months ago.

It was a total delight, one of my favorite reads of 2016 so far. If you read it, let me know! I wanna hear your thoughts– Goodreads is a little split, and it’s hard for me to understand why!

Review: Underwater by Marisa Reichardt

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It feels like a million years ago that Marisa Reichardt first contacted me– she wanted to interview me for The Sweet Sixteens (interview here). I sent her a PDF copy of Truest, since there weren’t even ARCs at that time. Since then, Marisa has become so dear to me, someone I can go to about all my writer-problems, someone who gets it and is brimming with compassion and empathy.

underwater3Now it was my turn to read her book!

Underwater is Morgan’s story– readers learn in the earliest pages that she was witness to a school shooting and has since been dealing with agoraphobia. Yes, Morgan has not left her family’s apartment in months. Then a new guy moves in next door, and things start to change.

My favorite part of this book was how much I understood what Morgan was going through– the panic, at first, then later, as she begins to venture out (starting with just the welcome mat!), the way she has to sit with so much uncertainty and fear– but how she accommodates to it! I had the distinct thought, “This is exposure therapy. This is also how you treat OCD.” Afterward, I looked it up online, to see if my guesses were right. The sites that I looked at talked specifically about exposure therapy being the best treatment for agoraphobia.

Mind. Blown.

Here I thought we with OCD had the corner on the exposure therapy market! Not so.

Some reviews I read said that the book is a little dark and heavy– but I disagree. Well, time out. Yes, it begins dark and heavy. But it should. We are dealing with PTSD here, people, not a hangnail! But what I loved most about Underwater was how it bent toward the light.

Review: The Weight of Feathers by Anna-Marie McLemore

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weight of feathersFirst of all, can we just pause and admire that cover? So gorgeous.

The Weight of Feathers a magical, enchanted story along the lines of Romeo and Juliet. The Palomas and the Corbeaus have been rivals and enemies for over a generation. Both are traveling Romani families who perform their “magical” shows– the Palomas have a mermaid show, and the Corbeaus have a winged-birds-in-the-trees show, both of which are fascinating. Each believes the other family uses black magic, and these families are serious rivals: to even touch a member of the opposite family could mean death or shunning. But when an accident happens, Lace Paloma is rescued by Cluck Corbeau, and that opens up the world of the Corbeaus to her.

It’s so beautifully written. It’s magical realism at its finest. I’ve seen comparisons to The Night Circus (which is one of my all-time favorites), and I agree with the description. Beautiful writing, lovely characters, fascinating setting, and a few WHOA twists and turns make this book a joy to read. I tore through it.

I wanted a little more from the ending (justice! revenge!), but overall, a lovely, lovely book.

Review: Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys

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salt to the seaI’m not sure whether to say that the paragraph below this is a spoiler or not. It’s not a traditional book spoiler– it’s the historical event this book is based on. But if you want to go into this book completely blind, best to skip it.

Last summer, when Ruta Sepetys was in St. Paul, I had the chance to hear her speak passionately about a bit of nearly-lost history: a ship called the Wilhelm Gustloff that was carrying WWII refugees to safety was torpedoed by the Soviets, and about 9,000 of the 10,000 passengers died. Most of them were children and youth. The Nazis tried to cover it up, so even though more people died than in the sinkings of the Titanic and Lusitania combined, many people don’t know about this tragedy.

Till now.

Ruta Sepetys brings it to life in Salt to the Sea, and it’s wonderful. There is a slow build throughout the story with the climactic event taking up a surprisingly small part of the story. The characters are well-drawn, there are plenty of secrets, and there’s a sweet romance too.

I did think the book wrapped up fast, but that was fine by me. I stayed up late to finish this one, and I was pretty emotionally ragged by the end. Also, it’s been a while since I read Sepetys’s debut Between Shades of Gray, so it took me a looooong time to catch a connection between the two books that was in pretty plain sight. Once I did, it delighted me.

This is one of those books where knowing the historical truth behind the story does nothing to diminish it. It only amplifies, and you hold on for the ride.

2016 Poetry Campaign: A Mouthful of Forevers by Clementine Von Radics

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I have 8 creative goals this year, and behind door 7 is reading a book of poetry every month. Want to join me? You can see what book I’ll be reading each month here. January’s book was A Mouthful of Forevers by Clementine Von Radics. Join me in February reading It Becomes You by Dobby Gibson, which will be a re-read for me, one I’m excited about.

mouthful of foreversA Mouthful of Forevers was young, fresh, edgy, sexy. I read it in one sitting, to be honest, and thoroughly enjoyed it. If I had to summarize it, I might say something like “Looking for love in a time of modern scars.”

Here were some of my favorite parts:

What no one ever talks about
is how dangerous hope can be.
Call it forgiveness
with teeth.

I also loved the imagery here:

Your voice is right here
coloring my voice. Nothing is helping me
forget your hands, how they shook
like apologizing mountains
hollowed in suffering.

She had a really interesting poem about, of all things, Salome and Kim Kardashian, which– I’m not kidding– gave me a fresh look at KK. I loved these lines so much:

Salome
moves like a dream
half-remembered.
Salome dances
like a siren song.
All the men ache to see
the hot sugar
of her hip bones.

Verdict? I really enjoyed the collection and am hoping it helps me push the envelope. Join me next month with It Becomes You by Dobby Gibson. You won’t regret it!

Review: Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

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brown girl dreamingBrown Girl Dreaming is a memoir in verse by Jacqueline Woodson, and it’s a treasure. Even if you haven’t read any other Jackie Woodson books, this one is still not to be missed. It’s a beautiful story about her childhood as an African American in the sixties and seventies.

My favorite parts were watching the author develop her love for stories and realizing the power of story and how to wield it. So lovely. It made me reflect on my own childhood as I was learning the same things.

Read it. You’ll be richer for it.