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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Release Date: November 10, 2015
Pages: 320 pages
Genre: Contemporary YA
Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Chelsea Ford gets the opportunity of her dreams, when she is asked to step in as the lead singer of the rock band Melbourne for their summer tour. While she has chemistry with the band onstage the same can’t be said for offstage. Chelsea’s struggles to be accepted by her three male band members and it doesn’t help when teen heartthrob actor, Lucas Rivers, takes a liking to Chelsea.
Teen drama ensues as the band travels from city to city. The deeper into the summer they go the less sure the band is that it will still be together by the end.
The heart of this story is in the details. I saw on Huang’s website that her husband has connections to the music industry , so she has probably seen so much of what she is writing about. Huang brings to life the landmarks and eclectic venues where the band performs.
Her female characters are allowed to have sexual agency without slut shaming. Huang swiftly subverts the asexual Asian trope by having the band’s Chinese member, Malcolm Ho, be the biggest ladies man.
Soapy, flirty and fun this story of life in the spotlight will have readers ready to rock.
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The Lunar Chronicles series is like a snowball rolling down a hill. We start off with the singular story of Cinder, a plucky cyborg mechanic. Cinder discovers she might be something more and soon a viscous plague, the future of the empire and the fate of a moon kingdom might be in her hands
As we roll down the hill with each book in the series we pick up new characters and story lines that are all incorporating and mixing together to form the giant snow ball finale that is Winter, which comes in at 900 pages or 23 hours of audio.
While the sweet and quirky Princess Winter is our titular character this book brings the entire gang together (Cinder, Thorne, Iko, Cress, Scarlet, Wolf and Kai) for one last mission to overthrow Queen Levana. Meyers just knows how to juggle a cast of characters. But she probably didn’t need to do it in so many pages. There were a lot of section I felt weren’t necessary.
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