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Book Reviews

The Rose Society by Marie Lu

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  • Release Date: October 13th 2015
  • Audiobook Hours: 11 hours 7 minutes
  • Genre: Historical Fantasy
  • Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Son (Penguin)

Child sex trafficking, slave camps, genocide and a one sided love triangle ?

Yep, I must be reading a fantasy YA novel !

We’re back in Marie Lu’s vaguely Italian 12th century where the scarred children who survived a blood fever are known as malfettos and some malfettos known young elites have developed special powers. After the events of the last book all malfettos have been banned  from the city and forced into refugee camps for the safety of the city (stop me if you’ve heard this one). There is a lot going on in this book but most we follow along while our heroine Adelina Amouteru goes off to find other young elites outside the city.

The Rose Society has to be one of the most subversive and creative YA books I’ve ever read. I liked the first book in this series but this second book has really hooked me. Marie Lu is breaking a lot of the typical YA fiction rules and I am here for it.

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Magonia by Maria Dahvana Headley

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Release Date: April 28th 2015

Pages: 309

Genre: Fantasy

Publisher: HarperCollins

When Aza Ray Boyle dies in the middle of an unusual storm; one life ends and another begins. Because her true destiny lies with the captain of a ship that sails the sky, but not everyone on Earth is ready to let Aza go.

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Before The Fall by Noah Hawley

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Release Date: 5/31/2016

Pages: 391 pages

Genre: Suspense

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Ten people step onto a plane. Eighteen minutes later the plane drops out of the sky leaving only two survivors.

And one of those survivors, artist Scott Burroughs, wasn’t supposed to be on there. Who is Scott and more importantly. . . why did a perfectly operational plane fall into the ocean?

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More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera

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Release Date: 6/2/16

Audiobook Length :  8 Hours 25 minutes

Genre: Contemporary 

Publisher: Soho Press

The expectation to be happy can be overwhelming, but Aaron Soto is going to try. He is going to happily spend the summer hanging with  his friends, nerding out over comics and finally telling his girlfriend he loves her. He won’t think about the things that threaten his happiness like his father’s suicide or Tomas, a neighborhood boy whose friendship could spark something more. Looming in the background of this happy summer is the divisive Leteo Institute, a facility that claims that can make memories go away.

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Heartless by Marissa Meyer

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  • Release Date: 11/08/16
  • Audiobook Length :  14 Hours 34 Minutes
  • Genre: Fairytale
  • Publisher:Macmillan Audio / Feiwel & Friends

Katherine Pinkerton knows better than dream of owning her own bakery baker, she knows her destiny lies in becoming the queen of a wacky, quirky, surreal little Kingdom of Hearts. On the night she is to be betrothed she sets eyes on the handsome court joker, who has more than cards up his sleeves.

Unlike the Lunar Chronicles where the fairytale aspects are subtext and set in a modern world, Heartless is an overt-played-straight prequel to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Meyer digs into the Kingdom of Hearts and all its little oddities. It’s a place where animals talk, playing cards are courtier and if one bring something back from a dream. . . well then so be it. 

What we don’t really get to dig into in this novel is the plot. Plot points in the novel are hung like painting with no nails, there are a lot of them, you want to see them. . . but they have a tendency to fall off. One of the many plot in this book is about a forbidden romance that never really started for me. There is also a beta romance, a monster, intrigue,  war and magic. . . but we never get fully invested in any of it.

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The Sun is Also A Star by Nicola Yoon

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  • Release Date: November 1, 2016
  • Pages: 384
  • Genre: Contemporary
  • Publisher: Crown (Random House)

Tasha Kingston’s family is 24 hours away from being deported to Jamaica after her father drunkenly tells a police officer they’ve been in the country for over a decade on expired travel visas. Tasha isn’t ready to leave America, she has a fake social security number and was prepared to go to college and become a data scientist. She resolves to spend her last day doing everything she can to find a way to delay the deportation. What she doesn’t plan on is meeting Daniel Bae, the idealistic aspiring poet  who believes their meeting was an act of faith. Tasha is pragmatic and doesn’t believe in fate or soul mates but as they spend the day together Daniel starts to change her mind and get inside her heart. But what does any of it mean when in 24 hours she won’t be allowed back in the United States ?

Honestly, I was kind of lukewarm on the romance, I just have a hard time investing in romances in such a condensed timeline. To me the most interesting thing about this book is how the story is structured. Not only do we get Daniel and Tasha’s POVs we also get these mini sections called “brief histories” that give you a minor characters past and future or give you a history on a certain subject. I liked the way these sections broadened the 24 hour timeline a little bit.

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