We're an Open Book
It’s time for another head to head book faceoff ! These two novels were ones I read months apart and just really didn’t have much to say about. I wasn’t even going to review them but, then I realized they dealt with the same issue; The After. What happens after a traumatic event that shakes not only our protagonist, but also a small town community.
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“When the ink stopped being ink and started being. . . well, something else.”
– Ink, Amanda Sun
- Release Date : June 25th 2013
- Genre : Urban Fanstasy
- Page Number : 377
- Publisher : Harlequin Teen
. . . And then the girl in the drawing turned her head, and her inky eyes glared straight into mine.
Stuck with her aunt in Shizuoka, Japan, Katie feels lost. Alone. She doesn’t know the language, she can barely hold a pair of chopsticks, and she can’t seem to get the hang of taking her shoes off whenever she enters a building.
Then there’s gorgeous but aloof Tomohiro, star of the school’s kendo team. How did he really get the scar on his arm? Katie isn’t prepared for the answer. But when she sees the things he draws start moving, there’s no denying the truth: Tomo has a connection to the ancient gods of Japan, and being near Katie is causing his abilities to spiral out of control. . .Katie never wanted to move to Japan—now she may not make it out of the country alive
At first glance Ink is your basic YA formula; teen girl in a new environment and a chance encounter finds her inexplicably drawn to the jerk whose personality changes could give you whiplash.
However, Sun freshens up the usual YA status quo by setting the story in Japan, giving the story a nice bout of culture and diversity. The setting gives readers a glimpse into how other people live without being “showcase-y” about it. There isn’t an attempt to spoon-feed the reader, meaning Sun doesn’t attempt to explain every nuance about Japanese life to the readers.
The first chapter of this novel will without a doubt pull you in. American Katie Green is an outsider living in Shizuoka, Japan with her aunt after the death of her mother. All she has to do is keep her head down until she can move in with her grandparents in Canada.
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Synopsis: Set over the course of one school year in 1986, ELEANOR AND PARK is the story of two star-crossed misfits – smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try. When Eleanor meets Park, you’ll remember your own first love – and just how hard it pulled you under
I was first made aware of this novel by the words of John Green’s glowing review in The New York Times; and now it seem this book is the talk of YA fans. Just Google the title and you will see pages of fanart and reviews.
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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: December 24th 2011
- Pages: 256 pages
- Genre: Contemporary Romance
- Price: $2.99 ebook; 8.99 paperback
Callum and Harper is my first real look into the world of self-published novels. Now, to be honest, I am writing this review 6 months after reading this book and I don’t have many notes, so this review will focus more on my experience with the novel.
The titular Callum Tate and Harper Bailey are a pair of teens who recently aged out of the foster care system. They meet at the Social Services office and told their only option for housing is in one of New York City’s homeless shelters. The story follows the couple as they work, study and struggle to make a better life for themselves together.
Being my first indie, the writing in this book was better than I expected. Fisher seems to really know ins and outs of New York City and the music scene the characters spend a lot of time in.
The story is told in alternating first person POVs and as I was reading them I would often forget which POV I was reading. Callum and Harper didn’t have the voice distinction. The characters were strong as a couple, but couldn’t hold their own as individuals.
One of the plots in this novel involves a boy from Harper’s past who is a a psychotic killer and starts hunting her down. This plot line felt a little melodramatic at times and took the focus away from the main story. I wish Amelie had stuck to keeping the story based on the growth of a relationship, the plot that worked great for the first half of the book.
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“Gravity was something you could beat; all it took was hydrogen, hot air or even a bit of rope. But being a girl was a miserable never-ending struggle.”
-Scott Westerfeld, Behemoth
Synopsis: The behemoth is the fiercest creature in the British navy. It can swallow enemy battleships with one bite. The Darwinists will need it, now that they are at war with the Clanker powers. Deryn is a girl posing as a boy in the British Air Service, and Alek is the heir to an empire posing as a commoner. Finally together aboard the airship Leviathan, they hope to bring the war to a halt. But when disaster strikes the Leviathan’s peacekeeping mission, they find themselves alone and hunted in enemy territory.
The second book in the Leviathan series picks up where Leviathan left off. Together our protagonists; the exiled Austrain Prince Alek and the Scottish midshipman Deryn Sharp masquerading as a boy, land in Istanbul. This melting pot city steeped in tradition is about to get rocked at its center.
Here the two get wrapped up in secret military missions, a revolution and a conspiracy. This novel focuses on the growth of the friendship between Alek and Dylan/Deryn. Deryn now has to deal with figuring out how much longer she can lie to Alek and how her lies are impacting their friendship.
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“Curiosity is a gateway drug to sympathy.”
― Victoria Schwab, The Archived
- Genre: Supernatural
- Pages: 328
- Publisher: Hyperion
- Release Date: January 22nd 2013
Imagine a place where the dead rest on shelves like books.
Each body has a story to tell, a life seen in pictures that only Librarians can read. The dead are called Histories, and the vast realm in which they rest is the Archive.
Da first brought Mackenzie Bishop here four years ago, when she was twelve years old, frightened but determined to prove herself. Now Da is dead, and Mac has grown into what he once was, a ruthless Keeper, tasked with stopping often—violent Histories from waking up and getting out. Because of her job, she lies to the people she loves, and she knows fear for what it is: a useful tool for staying alive.
Inspired by Dr. Who and a performance to “Gravity” by Sara Barielles on So You Think You Can Dance, I was peaked by this book’s inspirations before I even knew the plot. I was a bit concerned about how it would all come together but, The Archived is an amazing speculative fiction novel, with a story all its own.
The Archive itself is a hidden place where the Histories of the dead are stored in unconscious bodies. When a History wakes and tries to escape the Archive, it’s the job of 16-year-old Mackenzie Bishop to find and return them. It’s a job she excels at until her little brother dies and her family moves to The Coronado, an old hotel renovated into apartments. Suddenly, things are beginning to go wrong in the Archive and Mackenzie is sure it has something to do with The Coronado’s past.
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