Books and Sensibility

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YA Mystery

Love is The Drug by Alaya Dawn Johnson

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  • Release Date: September 30th 2014
  • Pages: 352 
  • Genre: Science Fiction
  • Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books (Scholastic)

A few months ago I read Alaya Dawn Johnson’s The Summer Prince as my starting point to support the  We Need Diverse Books campaign and to start including more diverse books in our blog. The Summer Prince started out kind of rocky for me but morphed into an intricate, creative poignant dystopian tale. When I saw Johnson’s next book on NetGalley  I jumped at the chance to review it.

In the political, power-hungry world of Washington D.C. Our main character 18-year-old Emily Bird occupies a curious space as a black upper-class teen in D.C. society. Bird grits her teeth and bares it as her mother, who raised herself up from the lower-income Northeast DC neighborhood, pushes Bird to join the Ivy league crowd whether she wants to or not. But when  Emily loses hours of memories right before a pandemic flu turns D.C into a quarantine zone, she becomes a girl of her own making. With the help of Coffee, the son of a Brazilian diplomat and new friends, they will uncover her memories and who is trying to keep her from remembering….

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Audiobook Review : Cress By Marrisa Meyer

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  • Release Date: February 4th, 2014
  • Genre: Sci-Fi/Adventure
  • Audiobook length: 15 hours 40 minutes
  • Publisher: Macmillan

Cress is the third book in Marrisa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles Series. In this book, we get introduced to Cress who briefly appears at the end of Cinder. Cress is a highly imaginative teenage girl who has spent most of her life in isolation aboard a satellite. When the chance comes for her to embark on a real adventure with the crew from the previous novels; her will, smarts and survival skills are put to the test….

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The Great Greene Heist by Varian Johnson

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Publication Date:

Pages: 240

Genre: Contemporary

Publisher: Arthur A. Levine (Scholastic)

 

The Great Greene Heist caught my attention during the #weneeddiversebooks campaign when John Green promised 10 signed copies of TFiOS to any bookstore who hand sold 100 copies of The Great Greene Heist. The synopsis felt Curseworker-ish (sans magic), which was enough for me to delve into reading my first Middle Grade as an adult.

13-year-old con artist Jackson Greene is cleaning up his act. After the Kelsey Job, or the Mid-Day PDA as his friends have dubbed his last con, Jackson is hanging up his cons for good. That is until he gets recruited by his best friend Charlie de la Cruz to rig the school election for his sister Gabby, the girl whose heart Jackson will do anything to fix.

The atmosphere in this novel felt very campy and sort of like a satire. I don’t know if this is a typical of middle grade or if it’s just this novel. The students exist in a school where they are never in class, principals easily accept bribes and all clubs have a budget that the school council president controls. As I read this I imagine it as more as a cartoon or Nickelodeon sitcom than real life.

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We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

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  • Release Date  :  May 13th 2014
  • Genre: Contemporary
  • Pages : 240 
  • Publisher : Delacorte

Okay This is going to be
a hard review to write. One of the reasons I had to read We Were Liars was
because I  kept hearing that this was the
book to read, but you can’t know what it is about. . . you just have to read it.

Honestly, if you
don’t see it coming (which I did but the book made me doubt myself)  I think this book will shock you and have you flipping back and re-reading over and over again.

We Were Liars
centers around   Cadence Sinclair and
the extended Sinclair family. Each summer  he family summers on their private island. Blonde, pretty and
privileged on the outside the Sinclairs seems to have everything, but on the inside  greed,
jealousy and denial threaten to take over.

Something happens on  Cady’s  15th summer at the island that she has no memory of, now two years later she’s going to find out how far the lies go.

This was exactly the type of contemporary novel that works for me because it takes on so many topics. Lockhart explores  race, class, romance and family in a way
that makes you doubt what you know and what you think you know about the characters. 

…

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Book Review : Tokyo Heist by Diana Renn

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  • Release Date: June 14th 2012
  • Publisher: Viking Juvenile
  • Genre: Contemporary/Mystery
  • Pages: 384

Synopsis:
When sixteen-year-old Violet agrees to spend the summer with her father, an up-and-coming artist in Seattle, she has no idea what she’s walking into. Her father’s newest clients, the Yamada family, are the victims of a high-profile art robbery: van Gogh sketches have been stolen from their home, and, until they can produce the corresponding painting, everyone’s lives are in danger–including Violet’s and her father’s.                                                                                                                                                                                   

Diana Renn’s debut novel , Tokyo Heist, is a van Gogh heist mystery crossing the Pacific Ocean; from the Seattle art scene to Tokyo, Japan. The mystery element is a fun twist on the contemporary genre. It will leave you on the the edge of your seat trying to figure out this whodunit.

Our protagonist, Violet Rossi is an American teenager who is a bit of an otaku–a fan of Japanese pop culture. For whatever reason, I went through an anime phase in college so it was fun to see her narrative sprinkled with references to real manga and otaku culture. The life and blood of most manga fandoms are teenage girls, so, I’m surprised it isn’t present in a lot of YA fiction. 

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Book Review : Deadly Cool by Gemma Halliday

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Synopsis: Hartley Grace Featherstone is having a very bad day. First she finds out that her boyfriend is cheating on her with the president of the Herbert Hoover High School Chastity Club. Then he’s pegged as the #1 suspect in a murder. And if that weren’t enough, now he’s depending on Hartley to clear his name. 

I purchased the Kindle version of Deadly Cool on a whim when Amazon had it on sale for 2.99. This is the second book I’ve gotten from the Harper Steals and Deals sale (the first being Unearthly) and  I have to say,these steals have yet to disappoint.

The book opens right into the plot and instantly took me into the world. When Hartley finds the corpse of a popular girl in her ex-boyfriend’s house, she finds herself trying to solve the murder and clear her ex’s name.

Deadly Cool is similar to a cozy mystery, but with a  modern high school face lift and pop culture sprinkled narrative. Having a murder mystery driven plot was an interesting take on the contemporary genre.

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