Books and Sensibility

Book Review : Innocent Darkness by Suzanne Lazear

August 10, 2012 1 Comment

Release Date : August 8th 2012

Genre : Fairytale/Historical

Pages : 408

Publisher : Flux Books

Synopsis:Be careful what you wish for…In an alternate version of 1901 Los Angeles sixteen-year-old Noli Braddock’s hoyden ways land her in an abusive reform school far from home. On mid-summer’s eve she wishes to be anyplace but that dreadful school. A mysterious man from the Realm of Faerie brings her to the Otherworld, only to reveal that she must be sacrificed to restore his dying world. Her best friend, V . . . appears to help Noli escape and return to the mortal realm . . . but if she does the entire Otherworld civilization will perish.

The Huntsman travels to the mortal world seeking out those special girls with the spark; wild, creative and unbound. The Huntsman whisks these sparky girl away to Otherworld where they are loved, celebrated and
every whim is indulged

Then they are sacrificed. Blood spilled to keep Otherworld alive.

And 6 years later the Huntsman hunts again.

Magnolia “Noli” Braddock is a girl filled with the spark. However, in her upper-middle class neighborhood her willful, rebellious behaviour along with her penchant for mechanical prowess is seen as troublesome and not suitable for young lady.

Noli is sent to Findlay School for Girls, a reform school notorious for producing mindless and proper marriageable girls. She has been taken away from her home, her mother and her best friend V Darrow. Deep in despair she learns the hard way why she should never talk to strange Faeries; when she meets Kevighn Silver-Tongue. The Huntsman.

I think alot of the mixed rating for this novel lie in the misleading cover and genre. This novel isn’t a historical and isn’t a zeppelin/gadget filled Steampunk. I think the best way to describe this novel is that it is tried and true Fairytale. It is what I expected and what I got.

We’ve got Faeries, a damsel in distress, princes, queens and true love. The novel has a clever plot with smooth pacing and quite a few plot twist. This novel is also a bit more steamy than most YAs, which I suppose is a reflection of the Victorian-era setting of the novel.

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Jess’ Bout of Books Goals

August 10, 2012 7 Comments

Jess’ Bout Of Books Read-A-Thon Goals !

Once again Books and Sensibility is joining Bout of Books 5.0. You can check out Kat’s goals post here !

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Audiobook Review: Tempest by Julie Cross

August 9, 2012 5 Comments

Release Date: January 17th 2012

Pages: 334

Audiobook: 10 hours 51 minutes

Genre: Science Fiction

Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin

Synopsis: The year is 2009. Nineteen-year-old Jackson Meyer is a normal guy… he’s in college, has a girlfriend… and he can travel back through time. But it’s not like the movies – nothing changes in the present after his jumps, there’s no space-time continuum issues or broken flux capacitors – it’s just harmless fun.That is… until the day strangers burst in on Jackson and his girlfriend, Holly, and during a struggle with Jackson, Holly is fatally shot. In his panic, Jackson jumps back two years to 2007, but this is not like his previous time jumps. Now he’s stuck in 2007 and can’t get back to the future.

Forget everything you know about time travel. It’s 2009 and 19-year-old Jackson Meyer can travel through time, but it’s nothing too exciting; until the day he gets stuck in the past.

This book is interesting because it falls more into the New Adult category than Young Adult. Our protagonist, Jackson is a student at NYU and falls into the older side of YA protagonists at 19. His girlfriend Holly, an NYU freshman, doesn’t know he can time travel and is the basic pretty, middle class girl with standards and modesty about her success.

I knew this book has lukewarm ratings so I was hoping the audiobook would help me like it more. I found the narrator to be spotty and at times his voice for a character would become inconsistent. Some of his voices were even kind of annoying. His voice for Holly’s friend Jana was just so ridiculous I couldn’t take it seriously.

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Summer of Sarah Dessen : Just Listen

August 8, 2012 8 Comments

“Silence is so freaking loud.”

– Sarah Dessen, Just Listen

Synopsis: Last year, Annabel was “the girl who has everything”—at least that’s the part she played in the television commercial for Kopf’s Department Store.This year, she’s the girl who has nothing: no best friend because mean-but-exciting Sophie dropped her, no peace at home since her older sister became anorexic, and no one to sit with at lunch. Until she meets Owen Armstrong. Tall, dark, and music-obsessed, Owen is a reformed bad boy with a commitment to truth-telling. With Owen’s help,maybe Annabel can face what happened the night she and Sophie stopped being friends.

Note: This week Kat is posting a re-post of Just Listen for Summer of Sarah Dessen

So, this is the first Sarah Dessen novel I’ve read in a few years and I was nervous. I’ve always raved about her writing and I wondered if her writing was nearly as good as I remember. Would I still enjoy it? The answer is yes.

Just Listen follows the story of Annabel Greene, a girl who is trying to keep up the facade of a perfect life when in reality her friendships and family relationships are crumbling around her. When she starts to sit next to Owen Armstrong at lunch, that all slowly changes.

Just Listen is a beautifully crafted novel and I adore it on so many levels. This is a book not only about a girl and her coming-of-age story, but also one about ideas. Powerful and brilliant ideas.

What Dessen does so well is she allows her characters to tell their own stories. They characters know (or at least think they know) themselves so well that the storytelling feels completely organic.

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