Books and Sensibility

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★★★

Audiobook Review: Insiginia by S.J Kincaid

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  • Release Date: July 10th 2012
  • Genre: Sci-Fi 
  • Length: 15 hours 18 minutes
  • Publisher: Katherine Teagen Books

I was exploring
Scribd in all its audiobook glory  because  I’ve really been in the
mood for action adventure YA.  When I heard  Lincoln Hoppe’s
performance it instantly grabbed my ear, he has this great laid back teen voice and I jut wanted to hear more.

I knew nothing about
Insignia going in and it took me a while to center myself. The book takes place
in a future much like today, except virtual reality is common place for things like gaming and schooling. There is also a war brewing that is  fought in the final frontier. . . space,  with mechanized drones controlled on earth by  teen combatants who train for the war in the Pentagonal Spire.

Okay, so maybe it’s not a future much like today.

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Like No Other by Una LaMarche

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  • Release Date: July 24th 2014
  • Pages: 368
  • Genre: Contemporary 
  • Publisher: Razorbill (Penguin)

Like No Other has an easy pitch; take the star crossed lovers trope and apply it to a  Hasidic Jewish girl  and West Indian boy in 21st century Brooklyn with a meet cute in a broken elevator during a storm.

 I really like  what this book is doing in terms of the current state of YA publishing. It’s like yeah diversity in YA,  yeah diverse cover art and oh look The New York Times is reviewing a diverse book by a female author.  But despite my cheering for its successes I kind of take issue with LaMarche’s portrayal of the male protagonist Jaxon

I didn’t necessarily hate his character. Jaxon is a nerdy first-generation West Indian who represents the average teen boy and I actually like many of his introductory paragraphs.

It’s funny; I forget sometimes how I might look to other people. I could be reading The Great Gatsby on the 3 train, or walking down the street listening to a podcast on my phone, or coming out of the orthodontist’s office with Invisalign braces feeling like the biggest nerd on the planet, but some people don’t notice anything but an almost six-foot-tall black man.

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Audiobook Review : Reboot by Amy Tintera

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  • Release Date: May 7th, 2013
  • Pages: 365 
  • Genre: Dystopian/Thriller
  • Publisher: HarperTeen

I’ve been in a bit of a fictional hangover. Which is to say I binged watched Nickelodeon’s The Legend of Korra series and was searching for a book to fill this void. I wanted adventure, world-building and action girls so I immediately started browsing YA dystopians. I settled on Reboot after getting a rec from a regular reader….

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Now and Forever by Susane Colasanti

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  •  Release Date: May 20, 2014
  •  Pages: 273
  •  Genre: Contemporary YA
  •  Publisher: Viking Juvenile (Penguin)

So, I’m starting to realize I may have a new book kryptoniteand it’s the what I like to call “I’m with the band” stories.  These are the books were either a friend, parent, or the love interest is a rock star. I haven’t read many of them, but if I see one it instantly goes on to my TBR pile. I’m not sure why I’m so interested in this.  Maybe its because my guilty pleasure movie is the Disney Channel Original Movie Starstruck or that Sarah Dessen’s This Lullaby was my favorite book as a teen. Either way, pair this knowledge with the fact that I’ve been meaning to read Susane Colasanti for years and Now and Forever was the perfect choice….

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A Thousand Pieces of You by Claudia Gray

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  • Release Date: November 14th, 2014
  • Pages: 368
  • Genre: Science Fiction
  • Publisher: HarperTeen 

Marguerite Caine’s parents are geniuses. Literally. They’ve invented the Firebird, a device that allows a person to travel into alternate universes. Just as they are about to go public their graduate assistant, Paul Markov steals the technology, kills Maugerite’s father and escapes into another dimension. Now, with the help of their other assistant, Theo, Marguerite is going after Paul to figure out what his plans are and avenge her father’s death.

 I don’t typically read the trendy science fiction YA books, but this cover is so unique and I always liked Gray’s ‘I’m not like the other girls‘ blogpost and I needed to break my contemporary kick.

Jess is always telling me how time travel books can always be hard to understand and as I started this I imagined alternate universe traveling would be even more confusing. I hand waved most of the science stuff, but  basically the book  says that all around us multiple alternate universes exist where different choices have created different timelines. When you travel you are put into the consciousness of yourself in that dimensions and when you leave the version of yourself has no memory of you being there.

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Cruel Beauty By Rosamund Hodge

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“You’re just as foolish as the others. You think you are clever, strong, special. You think you’re going to win.”

Hodge, Rosamund (2014-01-28). Cruel Beauty

  • Release Date: January 28th 2014
  • Genre: Fantasy/Fairytale
  • Pages : 342
  • Publisher: Balzer & Bray

Cruel Beauty is a fantasy retelling of Beauty and The Best, where beauty is an angry and selfish (read: cruel) young woman named Nyx. Out of desperation Nyx’s father made a bargain that would result in Nyx being married off to the Gentle Lord, a powerful demon who has ruled over Nyx’s people for 900 years. Nyx mission isn’t just to marry the Gentle Lord, but she has been trained to take him down, but could there more inside this beast than darkness ?

 

Cruel Beauty is sold as a Beauty and the Beast retelling
but the story feels more like the tale of Bluebeard. A man whose young innocent wife discovers the benevolent Bluebeard keeps the bodies of his previous wives who disobeyed him. There is this sense of isolation and dread in the original tale that we see a bit of in Cruel Beauty. Nyx is also one of many of wives who have joined the Gentle Lord and, like in the original tale, he allows Nyx to roam the rooms of his magical house—expect for the locked ones. The Gentle Lord also keeps the dead bodies of his previous wives in one of said rooms, so I was really getting Bluebeard vibes

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