We're an Open Book
Cam “Skip” Smith is going to graduate from a prestigious prep school. Cam Smith is going to Princeton in the Fall. . . just as long as no one finds out Cam Smith is really Philips O’Rourke, the youngest member of a thieving, scheming family. Skip thought he left his family behind when he ran away at thirteen but they are pulling him in for one last job. This job could be the “big one”, but it could also be fatal.
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- Release Date: August 23, 2016
- Pages:368
- Genre: Contemporary-ish
- Publisher: Dutton Books for Young Readers (Penguin)
This book probably had the easiest elevator pitch ever; students at a New Jersey high school start spontaneously combusting. The entire town, and eventually the entire world starts looking for answers including senior class member Mara Carlyle, the snarky, foul-mouthed, irreverent narrator who takes us through this story.
I have read a lot of weird YA. I’m talking giant man-eating grasshopper YAand girls-drink-bat-and-sees-future-anti-feminist hellscape weird. But this book takes the Kafkaesque cake.
I was so morbidly curious about this book after hearing about it a BEA because I wanted to see how they handled the combustion. Do the students go poof gone or it is something more gruesome? Well, let me put it this way, when it first happens people assume it was a suicide bomb. So, it mentions blood but it never gets too gross. Starmer focuses more on how students react to what is…leftover.
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- Release Date: April 26, 2016
- Pages: 336 pages
- Genre: Contemporary YA
- Publisher: Point (Scholastic)
When Ellia Dawson wakes up in the hospital with a head injury the first person she sees is Liam McPherson, her boyfriend of two years. The only problem ? She doesn’t remember him. In fact, she doesn’t remember anything about the last two years of her life. Now it’s up to Liam to help her remember her past and Ellia to discover if they still fit together. But that gets pretty complicated because it seems like everyone is hiding something from Ellia.
I wanted to like this book. I really did. But I was just so annoyed by parts it, specifically by Liam who was just so freaking righteous. I’m going to rant a little here. From the beginning we know he was with Ellia when she was injured and she has some questions, but instead of just telling her what she wants to know she has to wait for him to finish the book he is writing about their relationship because he is such a special snowflake or something.
And then the worst is this scene when Liam sees Ellia walking out of her therapy session with another guy and he just walks up and makes out with her. I was shouting at the page: SHE DOESN’T REMEMBER YOU, BRO GET OVER IT !
That said I liked the character of Ellia, she’s an extreme extrovert which is nice change up for a YA female protagonist. Ellia’s journey is all about reconciling the person she was with the person she is now. The last thing she remembers is being excited about going to high school and the next thing she knows she’s a junior in high school. This honestly could have been a story on its own without Liam.
One of my favorite podcasts is Read it and Weep and they have this game called No Retreat, No Surrender where they discuss side characters in films they wish they could follow instead of the main character. I wanted to follow Cody, the boy Ellia meets a therapy who lost his short term memory in a surfing accident. Cody is only in a few scenes but all I could think about what how interesting it would be to have a relationship with where one character can’t remember the past and the other can’t remember the present. I also liked seeing how Cody used technology and other strategies to get through life with no short term memory. I was really hoping he’d take over the plot, but he doesn’t.
Keep Me in Mind had an interesting set up, but a romance I couldn’t invest in. However it did remind me of how much YA contemporary is my jam and I want to get back into reading more of it.
Um… So….This Book….Yeah, I think it’s time to borrow this meme from my Grasshopper Jungle review:
I got this audiobook from my library because I got it confused with some other book and thought it was about Victorian-era spies. But, since the audio was only 5 hours I figured I could knock it out in a week.
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Since Brie Larson took home an Academy Award for the film adaptation of this book, I finally decided to give it a read on audio. Room is told from the point of view of 5-year-old Jack, a boy who has lived his entire life in captivity with his mom in a shed.
I did this on audio and at first I was like nope, nope, nope when I heard narrator Michal Friedman’s 5-year-old boy voice. But once you settle into the story– it works. I think the little boy voice is close to her speaking voice because she has also done some chicklit with a similar tone. She did a great job and her voice is so unique. I was sad to see she died a year after this came out
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You’d think after reading seven In Death books about the surly and biting New York City detective Eve Dallas that reading about Hannah Swenson, a sleuthy cookie shop owner in a small Midwest town, would be a cake–er–cookie walk
And it is.
But the more I thought about it the more I realized that Hannah Swenson is pretty scary. Cause when the local milkman is found shot in an alley Hannah (because her brother-in-law is investigating) gets swept up in the case as she finds clues, makes connections and solves the murder !
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