Books and Sensibility

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YA Paranormal

Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children

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  • Release Date: January 1, 2011
  • Pages: 352
  • Publisher: Quirk Books
  • Genre: Paranormal Historical



Jacob has always felt that his life was just ordinary, especially compared to the stories he heard from his grandfather about the halcyon days and Peculiar children during World War II. But these strange stories are just stories though, right? After the traumatic death of his Grandfather, Jacob begins to see things– things that can’t possibly be real. Soon, Jacob finds himself traveling to the small island of Carinholm, Wales,  the place of his Grandfather’s stories, where he discovers the past and present may not be that far apart at all….

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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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A Matter of Fate: If I Stay by Gayle Foreman & Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

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At first these two books seem worlds away, one a much-praised modern literary classic the other a backlist YA contemporary climbing its way up the NYT bestsellers list with a film release weeks away.  

I found myself reading both books at around the same time and the more I thought about writing the individual reviews, the more I realized these books have a lot in common. Both main characters, Kathy  H. in Never Let Me Go and Mia in If I Stay, are young women trying to figure out their future. While Kathy’s path has been laid out  since  birth Mia gets the opportunity to decide hers.

…

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At first these two books seem worlds away, one a much-praised modern literary classic the other a backlist YA contemporary climbing its way up the NYT bestsellers list with a film release weeks away.  

I found myself reading both books at around the same time and the more I thought about writing the individual reviews, the more I realized these books have a lot in common. Both main characters, Kathy  H. in Never Let Me Go and Mia in If I Stay, are young women trying to figure out their future. While Kathy’s path has been laid out  since  birth Mia gets the opportunity to decide hers.

…

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This is How The World Ends: 2013 Book Series Enders

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In 2011 we were newbie book bloggers not sure where to start in the new world of  YA fiction.  Soon we got swept up into four debut YA series that have followed us on our blogging journey. As Books and Sensibility grew these series continued to keep us guessing at how it was going to end.

Reviewing third books is hard, so we are going to review these final books as they relate to the series as a whole and give a final verdict on if we think the series is worth getting the whole box set or stopping book 1. And of course, these will be SPOILER FREE REVIEWS.

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Book Review: Through to You by Emily Hainsworth

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  • Release Date: October 2, 2012
  • Pages: 272
  • Genre: Supernatural Realism
  • Publisher: Balzer + Bray (Harper Collins)

Through to You is one of those books that is an insta-pick up for me; a contemporary realistic story with a slight unexplainable element tossed in. The main story focuses on Cameron Pike as he mourns the sudden death of his girlfriend, Viv; and what happens  when a mysterious girl and  mysterious green light show him to an alternate version of his life.

This is one of those books that is hard to talk too much about without ruining too much of the plot. Nothing in the book is every really what it seems and there are some interesting twists and turns. However, I think this book would have made a great short story or novella, because as a novel it dragged on its feet in the middle and was grasping for plots.

Cameron as a protagonist didn’t pop off the page, while there are some great moments when we see him work through some of his depression and relationships his voice didn’t come through the page. The supporting character inhabiting both the real world and the alternate world were also kind of one note as well.

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Book Review: Marly’s Ghost by David Levithan

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Join Kat as she reads and reviews the works of David Levithan 

from his debut novel to his National Book Award longlisted novel, Two Boys Kissing

 

  • Pages: 176
  • Genre: Adaptation/ Paranormal
  • Publisher: Dial (Penguin)
  • Publication Date: December 1, 2006

In Marly’s Ghost, David Levithan collaborates with illustrator and author Brian Selznick who is best known for his book The Invention of Hugo Cabaret. Together the authors remix the story and illustrations of  Charles Dickens’ classic novella, A Christmas Carol into a modern day Valentine’s Day tale.

 

This novel is a little different from most Levithan novels because it is essentially a packaged novel.  In the back of the book Levithan discusses how this novel came about because he was approached by two Penguin editors to write a Valentine’s Day spin on A Christmas Carol. Once he had a theme down, he describes how he sat down with the text of the original and worked piece by piece to create Marly’s Ghost. Because this novel sticks so close to the source material and borrows much of the language from it  has a different feel than Levithan’s previous books. …

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