(Read 5/26/14) I’m a big fan of Oliver’s other books and her writing, but this novel felt like the least thought out of her work—like an early novel versus the most recent. I’m sure parallels to the Hunger Games will be drawn here though the setting is current (not future) and the stakes not quite as high. The basic plot of the book is this. Carp, New York is a small town in upstate New York, the type of place the economy has hit hard and […]
Many Characters in Search of Magic
This second installment in the Maggie Stiefvater’s series, The Raven Cycle, feels more diffused between all the characters searching for magic and the Welsh king, Glendower. We get some of the story from Blue Sargent’s point of view (the main character from The Raven Boys) but the boys get more say here—starting with Ronan Lynch, the angry tattooed friend of Gansey, who just happens to be able to pull objects from his dreams. Really, this is mostly Ronan’s story—as we learn more about what happened […]
No Vampires or Dystopian Futures . . . just Characters You Care About
This is another solid YA novel by Rainbow Rowell. There are no vampires here or dystopian futures but there is a young woman named Cath, who is struggling to find her way. Cath is a huge fan of Simon Snow, a Harry Potter-esque hero featured in seven books (soon to be eight) that Cath and her twin sister Wren devoured from the time they were little. The series has helped them both deal with the realities of their life—that their mother has abandoned them […]
Shame Spirals and Taxidermy
This is one of those memoirs that makes you laugh out loud and then feel bad about laughing at some of the brutally honest things that Jenny Lawson reveals about her childhood, her relationship with her husband, and her battles with anxiety. I thought a lot about my friend, Fernanda, who was famous in college and after for writing extremely funny letters about her most embarrassing moments and how there’s a certain knack for revealing this information—walking the line […]
A Real Love Story (in all its 80’s glory)
This YA novel has been on my to-read list for a while and I loved it just as much as I thought I would. Rainbow Rowell’s novel, set in the 80’s, tells the unlikely love story of Eleanor and Park, two high school students who don’t quite fit in their Nebraska high school but for very different reasons. Park is the only Asian in his school—the son of a white father and a Korean mom, and has dealt with being “different” all his life. Though […]
Watch Out for Private School Boys
This first novel in a young adult series by Maggie Stiefvater creates one of my favorite main character names to date—Blue Sargent. Blue is the only non-psychic in a family of female clairvoyants, living in a small town. Though she seems to be “normal,” Blue amplifies the powers of those around her and so every year her mother takes her to an old church where they watch for the “soon to be dead” to walk by. Year after year, Blue never sees them until the […]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 38
- 39
- 40
- 41
- 42
- 43
- Next Page »