Books and Sensibility

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Audiobook Review: Will Garyson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan

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Join Kat as she reads and reviews the works of David Levithanfrom his debut novel to his National Book Award shortlisted novel, Two Boys Kissing

“It’s hard to believe in coincidence, but it’s even harder to believe in anything else.” 

― John Green, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“I think the idea of a ‘mental health day’ is something completely invented by people who have no clue what it’s like to have bad mental health. the idea that your mind can be aired out in twenty-four hours is kind of like saying heart disease can be cured if you eat the right breakfast cereal. mental health days only exist for people who have the luxury of saying ‘i don’t want to deal with things today’ and then can take the whole day off, while the rest of us are stuck fighting the fights we always fight, with no one really caring one way or another, unless we choose to bring a gun to school or ruin the morning announcements with a suicide.

 

― David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

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  • Release Date: April 6th 2010
  • Pages: 304
  • Genre: Realistic Fiction
  • Publisher: Dutton’s Children (Penguin)

Will Grayson, Will Grayson is probably David Levithan’s most well-known co-authorship and served as my introduction to David Levithan 2 years ago. I’d liked John Green’s vlogbrothers channel and decided to start reading his books. I got what I expected from Green’s writing, but Levithan’s just blew me away. It reminded me of how unique and diverse the voices in  YA writing can be. For Days of David Levithan, I did a re-read of Will Grayson, Will Grayson, but decided to switch it up with the audiobook

Will Grayson,Will Grayson  is told in the alternating perspective of two 16-year-olds named WillGrayson,each leading separate lives unknown to each other. Until faith and a little bit of bad luck has them cross paths. From that moment the story unravels as each Will Grayson is forced to examine everything they thought they knew about love, relationships and coincidence….

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Adaptation by Malinda Lo

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  • Publication Date: September 18th 2012
  • Genre: Science Ficton
  • Pages: 386 (hardcover)
  • Publisher: Little Brown For Young Readers

Synopsis: Across North America, flocks of birds hurl themselves into airplanes, causing at least a dozen to crash. Thousands of people die. Fearing terrorism, the United States government grounds all flights, and millions of travelers are stranded.
Among them are Reese and her debate team partner and longtime crush David, who are in Arizona when the disaster occurs. On their drive home to San Francisco, along a stretch of empty highway in the middle of the Nevada night, a bird flies into their headlights. The car flips over. When they wake up in a military hospital, the doctor won’t tell them what happened, where they are–or how they’ve been miraculously healed.
Things become even stranger when Reese returns home. San Francisco feels like a different place with police enforcing curfew, hazmat teams collecting dead birds, and a strange presence that seems to be following her. When Reese unexpectedly collides with the beautiful Amber Gray, her search for the truth is forced in an entirely new direction-and threatens to expose a vast global conspiracy that the government has worked for decades to keep secret.

Sitting in a Phoenix airport, Reese Holloway’s biggest problem is the humiliation of losing a national debate competition and letting down her partner and crush, David Li. And then things start falling out the sky. …

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Days of David Levithan : Boy Meets Boy

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What is Days of David Levithan ?

 

  • Release Date: Sept. 8th 2003
  • Publisher: Knopf 
  • Genre: Contemporary
  • Pages: 185

It’s pretty fitting to start my reading David Levithan with his debut novel Boy Meets Boy. In fact, Boy Meets Boy just released its 10 year anniversary edition which has an excellent Q&A with Levithan in the back and I’ll be referring to a bit.

As I was reading this Q&A I began to think about how this novel is pretty significant to the “YA canon”, if there is one. In a lot of interviews about this book  Levithan talks about how in 2004 there weren’t many books featuring queer teens, and if there were they usually leaned on the Bury Your Gay and the Gayngst tropes–that is a gay teen usually ended up dead or in another equally angsty situation at the end of the day. That’s not to say the intolerance doesn’t exist in the novel, but what Levithan  does is offer a new narrative, a story of hope for those gay  teens who never see positive stories about themselves.

Boy Meets Boy is exactly what it says on the cover. It’s about what happens when boy meets boy, but the plot is about if  boy can keep boy. At the National Book Festival Levithan called this a “dippy happy love story” and I think that is the perfect description.

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Book Review: Living Violet by Jamie Reed

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“Love indulged the masochist”

 -Jaime Reed, Living Violet

  • Publication Date: December 27, 2011
  •  Genre: Paranormal Romance
  • Pages: 304
  • Publisher: Kensington

He’s persuasive, charming, and way too mysterious. And for Samara Marshall, her co-worker is everything she wants most–and everything she most fears. . .Samara Marshall is determined to make the summer before her senior year the best ever. Her plan: enjoy downtime with friends and work to save up cash for her dream car. Summer romance is not on her to-do list, but uncovering the truth about her flirtatious co-worker, Caleb Baker, is. From the peculiar glow to his eyes to the unfortunate events that befall the girls who pine after him, Samara is the only one to sense danger behind his smile.But Caleb’s secrets are drawing Samara into a world where the laws of attraction are a means of survival. And as a sinister power closes in on those she loves, Samara must take a risk that will change her life forever. . .or consume it

 

 




Samara Marshall has never understood the attraction women seem to have to her co-worker Caleb Baker, besides his violet eyes, Caleb is pretty average. Yet all of the women who enter Buncha Books can’t keep their hands of him and when people start dropping dead in Samara’s hometown of Williamsburg, VA she learns that Caleb has his own secret; he is being possessed.

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Audiobook Review : Burn For Burn by Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian

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  • Publisher : Simon & Schuster
  • Audio Book Length : 7 hours 1 min
  • Release Date : September 18th 2012

 Synopsis : Postcard-perfect Jar Island is home to charming tourist shops, pristine beaches, amazing oceanfront homes—and three girls secretly plotting revenge. KAT is sick and tired of being bullied by her former best friend. LILLIA has always looked out for her little sister, so when she discovers that one of her guy friends has been secretly hooking up with her, she’s going to put a stop to it.MARY is perpetually haunted by a traumatic event from years past, and the boy who’s responsible has yet to get what’s coming to him.None of the girls can act on their revenge fantasies alone without being suspected. But together…anything is possible.With an unlikely alliance in place, there will be no more “I wish I’d said…” or “If I could go back and do things differently…” These girls will show Jar Island that revenge is a dish best enjoyed together

The Gist : On the small New England island of Jar Island, secrets, drama and betrayal are running rampant and at its center are three girls; Kat, Lillia and Mary. These unlikely friends are out for revenge, but what starts out as a way to get even soon becomes more than they can handle. All is not what it seems on Jar Island.

Jess’ Takeaway

“Well that took a turn.” is the one way I would describe this book, and I don’t just mean the plot twists. Nothing is ever what it seems in this book. Han and Vivian ever so slightly take tropes associated with high school  and turning them around.

What really makes this book stand out for me is that this story isn’t overtly focused on a romance. Finally a YA novel where the girls characters work together and take center stage over a typical boy meets girl romance.

As for the writing there wasn’t a large attempt at trying to “sound like teenagers”, instead it felt  nostalgic. They captured the everyday down and lows of being a teenager (picking prom dresses, winning high school football games, the over dramatics of being in a teen etc.)

What makes this novel a must read is  pitch perfect setting of Jar Island The mix of local color and lifestyle of the residents down to the local coffee shops and tourism made it seem so real. I literally Googled Jar Island just to see if it was a real place. (BTW it’s not). I’m not a big contemporary (or is this comtep . . . ?)  reader but this book was exciting and devious. I couldn’t wait to see what kind of trouble these girls were going to cause next.

Unfortunately the audiobook was kind of hit or miss. I loved how they used 3 different voices over but the recording sounded off. Mary’s voice actor’s recording sounded faraway and Kat’s voice took a little getting used to.

Kat’s Takeaway

Reminiscent of Pretty Little Liars and Mean Girls,  Burn for Burn is what happens when girls stop playing victim and start getting even. This is a different type of story.  As someone who reads a lot of contemporary and for me Burn for Burn was just okay. So much of the book was fueled on getting to the end, that there was no real sense of complete story. Like certain plot points were brought up, but never really resolved or discussed through the book.

I liked listening to this in audiobook form, and unlike Jess I actually like the narrator of Kat the best. I thought from the very beginning her voice had the perfect mix of attitude and snark with a dash of vulnerability

 All three narrators also did a great job of mimicking the other narrator’s voices. One of my pet peeves is when a characters tone is so vastly different when a different narrator is speaking as them, so I think they handled this well. I’m  not sure why the audiobook sounded so strange at times, like Mary’s narrator was far away or something, but now I’m beginning to think this was on purpose.

Overall, I thought the writing was good and Han and Vivian created a great sense of place in their writing. You can really feel the claustrophobia of having to live on a small island town and the kind of social issues it creates.

Audible|  Barnes and Nobles |Amazon

Strictly Indie : The Crimson Hunt by Victoria H Smith

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 Books and Sensibility’s month long dedication to indie 

It’s hard to be in the YA book blogging world without noticing all the upcoming indie novels and novelists. So, to open myself up to  more independent and self published authors, I am   going Strictly Indie for the month of May. I will be focusing on reviewing, discussing and posting about indie novels and even have a few guest posts along the way. 

  • Release Date: November 12th 2012
  • Pages: 340 pages
  • Genre: Science Fiction Romance
  • Price: $3.99 ebook; 13.99 paperback

Synopsis: Ariel
Richmond’s everyday life consists of wrangling in her crazy best
friend, Piper avoiding her enemy Lila Hicks and finding salvation in her art, and the peanut butter brownie at her favorite cafe Demitasse.
But, the day Ariel makes eyes with Luca Grinaldi, murder and death begin to surround her. Ariel soon learns that people aren’t just dying–they are being hunted. And she and Luca’s meeting is a not just a coincidence, but destiny.

I’ve been following the publication of this novel since I happened upon Victoria’s blog for a contest. At the time she was being repped by Curiosity Quills, but deferred to self publish. It’s been interesting reading her blog and seeing the journey she has taken to self publication.

The Crimson Hunt is my first voyage into the New Adult category and I can definitely see the appeal. Being in their early 20’s New Adult characters are slightly more mature than YA characters, but still in the “I’m invincible” stage common to YA. While some Big Six publishers are dipping their toes in to the NA water, indie authors are heading in full force.


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