Nothing new ever happens in Gatlin, South Carolina, which is why Ethan Wate is counting the days until he can leave. His mother has died, leaving his dad bereft and housebound. Ethan is worried about what will happen when he leaves for college, which is why he hides his box of college brochures under his bed – but he knows he has to get out. Then something new blows into town – new girl Lena Duchannes, and suddenly Ethan is finding less to hate about Gatlin.

The attraction is instant, almost spooky. As Ethan begins to spend time with Lena, he realizes she’s not only new – there’s something strange and different about her, something that goes way beyond Lena simply coming from outside Gatlin. Who – or what – is her strange, reclusive Uncle Macon? Why is Ethan’s housekeeper Amma so intent on keeping Lena away from him? And what about the dreams Ethan’s been having since long before Lena showed up – dreams in which Lena has a starring role?

I’ve had Beautiful Creatures sitting on my shelf since February – I bought it because of all the rave reviews I read around the book blogosphere. But then I let it sit on that shelf. I don’t know why I do that – I think part of it is the hype and wondering if it can possibly live up to my expectations, and another part is a feeling that many YA fantasies are starting to be very similar. Well, rest assured, this book is worth all of the hype and then some.

When the authors decided to combine Stohl’s love of the paranormal with Garcia’s passion for the South, they came up with the perfect premise. This is a moody, atmospheric book that is dripping with the attitudes of the Deep South, a place where the Civil War is still called the War of Northern Aggression and the South’s defeat is viewed as a “polite concession.” I loved the way the town of Gatlin is in itself a character of the book. The pages simply drip with the humid, magnolia-scented air and a type of Southern charm that hides deep suspicion of outsiders behind a surface of steely politeness.

The characters are fantastic: Amma, the superstitious housekeeper; the ancient Sisters Mercy, Prudence, and Grace; the creepy Macon with his stealthy dog, Boo Radley; Link, Ethan’s rock-star-wanna-be best friend; and the Angels – those super-popular carbon teenage prom queens who make Ethan and Lena’s time at school a living hell.

The end had a couple of unique twists – one that I suspected and one that hit me out of the blue – that I’m sure will resonate through the pages of the sequel, Beautiful Darkness, due out in October, just in time for Halloween. I will be first in line to buy my copy, and this time I won’t let it sit.

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Post tags: fantasy, paranormal fiction, speculative fiction, YA fiction

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The Wingfeather Saga is quickly becoming one of my favorite children’s fantasy series. It ranks up there with The Chronicles of Narnia and the Harry Potter series in my mind. I know it’s only two titles in, but they are both amazing. North! or Be Eaten starts right where On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness leaves off.

Spoiler alert: This review will contain spoilers from the first book in the series.

The Igiby family is hiding out in Peet’s treehouse in Glipwood Forest, preparing for their trip north to the Ice Prairies. They now know that they are the true Jewels of Anneira: Tink is really King Kalmar, the heir to the throne; Janner is the Throne Warden, whose responsibility it is to protect the king; and Leeli is the Song Maiden. Gnag the Nameless and his Fangs of Dang are still looking for them, determined to keep them from returning to Anneira and taking their rightful place as leaders. It doesn’t take long before the Igibys are running for their lives, and the first battle will cost them dearly.

Like book one, I read North! or Be Eaten aloud to my four kids, and it has everything that we love about a fantasy series: action and adventure, fantastical creatures, difficult decisions regarding responsibility and loyalty, heroic quests, sacrificial love, and finding forgiveness. There is something amazing about reading a book like this to your kids – the themes they are taking in are ones I believe are so important. There isn’t any sense of “okay, kids, you’re going to learn a lesson now” – simply amazing story-telling, vivid world-building, tongue-in-cheek humor, and wonderful characters.

Whether you love children’s literature and fantasy, or simply long for good stories that are well-written, you must read this series.

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Post tags: children's fiction, fantasy, middle grade fiction

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Mina Murray has seen and heard strange things ever since she was a child. Her ability was enough to make her father think she was a changeling, a faerie child. Sent to a boarding school for girls, Mina rejects her gifts and becomes a mannered young lady, eventually teaching other young girls how to survive in cultured society. When the handsome young solicitor Jonathan Harker proposes, Mina’s dream of having a normal family seems about to come true. She is determined to ignore the seductive man she sees in her dreams, whose voice she hears calling to her.

When Jonathan leaves on extended business, Mina visits her friend Lucy, and discovers that Lucy has become enthralled by the charismatic Morris Quince, in spite of her mother’s desire that she become engaged to Lord Arthur Goldalming. As Mina becomes more and more concerned about her friend, she meets an old sailor who tells her some of the legends of the area, legends of the dead rising again, of spirit beings who drain the life-force of their victims.

Mina receives a telegram that her fiance has been committed to a hospital after being found wandering in the countryside, suffering from a brain fever. What Mina discovers when she hears the full details of Jonathan’s experiences will lead her even deeper into a world of dark desires, supernatural gifts, and an eternal love affair.

I really wanted to love this book. I have been a fan of Karen Essex’s historical fiction since I read Stealing Athena a couple of years ago, and then Leonardo’s Swans confirmed my opinion that she is a writer who values strong female characters and well-researched historical settings, and can write some gorgeously descriptive prose. The books also tend to be a bit racy, but nothing that made me quit reading – although my mom did put Leonardo’s Swans aside as too descriptive for her taste.

Reading these previous Essex novels in no way prepared me for the sensual and erotic book that is Dracula in Love. I know that I may be in the minority in this, but I prefer more left to the imagination when it comes to love scenes. I understand that this less-descriptive way of writing would not have fit the framework of Essex’s novel, in which she explores the way normal female sexual appetites were often attributed to mental illness, and treated as such with horrific methods. Her gift of research and describing historical details comes through most strongly in the scenes in a mental institution, scenes that vividly showed the inhumane and gruesome treatment methods employed by psychiatrists.

I definitely wanted to know how the story turned out, how Count Drakulya and Mina would eventually find each other, and what the result would be for her marriage to Jonathan. The story was enthralling – just as the Count is to Mina – but by the fourth or fifth graphic sex scene it all became a bit much for me. It seemed as if the book’s viewpoint is that denying one’s sexual nature in any way is a result of an old-fashioned, Victorian mentality. As a Christian, I am one who believes that the idea of purity before marriage and fidelity within marriage are good things, and that giving in to every single impulse of one’s sexual nature leads to negative consequences that are far-reaching. I know, however, that many of you will not share these viewpoints and therefore may not be bothered in the same way I was when reading this novel.

Ms. Essex does write beautifully, and while this novel was not one I loved, she remains one of my favorite authors of historical fiction, and I will continue to seek out her work, as I believe that the extremely erotic nature of this book was a result of the story she was telling, and not a writing style that she always employs.

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Post tags: fantasy, historical fiction, paranormal fiction

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Title: White Cat (Curse Workers, Book 1)
Author: Holly Black
Genre: YA paranormal fiction
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Source: ARC from Shelf Awareness, audiobook from the public library
Audiobook reader: Jesse Eisenberg
First line: I wake up barefoot, standing on cold slate tiles.

Cassel Sharpe is the only non-worker in a family of workers, people able to use specific magical gifts. Memory workers, death workers, luck workers, emotion workers – they have amazing power to control and manipulate, even kill. That’s why working is illegal – but that doesn’t stop the major crime families from employing workers in order to further their criminal empires.

Cassel’s two older brothers, Philliip and Barron, are both workers in the employ of the Zakarov family. Zakarov has left Cassel alone because he’s not a worker – and because he doesn’t know that when Cassel was 14, he killed Lila, Zakarov’s daughter – and Cassel’s best friend. He has no memory of the actual killing, but remembers standing over Lila’s bleeding body with a knife in his hand and a smile on his face.

In an attempt to have a normal life, Cassel is attending a boarding school, trying to ignore the guilt over Lila and to stay out of the entanglements of his worker family. But when he starts having strange dreams about a white cat – dreams that involve sleep-walking and almost throwing himself from the roof of the school – he knows he needs to find out what’s going on. As he starts to dig, he realizes that everything he’s believed about himself may not be true, and the people closest to him are the ones telling the lies.

I love it when my library acquires an audiobook version of a title I have committed to reviewing – it’s one way to get caught up on review obligations. When I received White Cat, I loved the cover and was excited to read it – but then I became a bit disillusioned by the YA paranormal titles that were all starting to blend together in a hodge-podge of sameness. I shouldn’t have hesitated – White Cat has its own unique premise, a fantastic cast of characters, and makes a perfect beginning to what could be a terrific series.

This YA novel takes the mafia, adds in a family of con artists, and then gives it one final twist with the idea of curse workers. Cassel has always felt like the family misfit – the one person in his family not gifted with the ability to work magic. He’s a wonderfully angsty teenage boy – complete with ordinary quandries about girls and homework and friendship – living in an extraordinary world. His family of con artist and workers have taught him not to trust anyone, but when he is faced with trying to undo some of the damage his older brothers have perpetrated, he has to decide to trust his non-worker school friends, Sam and Daneca.

Jesse Eisenberg does a great job narrating the book – varying his voice between characters, and doing a hint of a Russian accent for Zakarov. His voice is a typical teenage voice – which made him the perfect choice for Cassel.

I am very excited about this series – and wishing that I didn’t have to wait until next year to read the second installment.

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Post tags: audiobooks, fantasy, paranormal fiction, speculative fiction, YA fiction

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I put Let Me Go on my list of audiobooks to listen to after reading Sandy‘s review. This memoir is the story of Helga Schneider’s last meeting with her mother. After an estrangement of over twenty years, Helga has come to Vienna to visit her mother in a nursing home, hoping to find some answers for her childhood and her mother’s choices. Her mother abandoned her family when Helga was a child in order to devote her entire self to the Nazi Party. As a member of the SS, she worked as a guard at two of the worst concentration camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Ravensbruck. Helga struggles between a daughter’s desire to have a relationship with her mother and the extreme revulsion she feels for what her mother did for the SS and the hatred for the Jews that she still holds firmly.

Listening to this audiobook was an eerie, chilling experience. I thought about giving it a full review, but Sandy already did such a wonderful job, that I simply point you to hers.

Title: Firmin
Author: Sam Savage
Genre: Fantasy?
Publisher: Delta
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Source: Print copy borrowed from a friend
First line: I had always imagined that my life story, if and when I wrote it, would have a great first line: something lyric like Nabokov’s “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins”; or if I could not do lyric, then something sweeping like Tolstoy’s “All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Firmin is a rat who began life in a shredded copy of Finnegan’s Wake, and lives most of his life in a bookstore. His isn’t a very happy life, being a rat, but he has the ability to read and longs to be human. This is a book for book-lovers and also anyone who is sad at the loss of historic neighborhoods, as Firmin’s home was in Scollay Square, a vibrant section of Boston that became impoverished and was eventually doomed to destruction for the sake of development.

Title: French Milk
Author: Lucy Knisley
Genre: Graphic memoir
Publisher: Touchstone
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Source: Print copy from the public library
First line: During January of 2007, my mother and I lived in a small rental apartment in Paris in order to celebrate my mother’s turning fifty (and my turning twenty-two).

I loved the art in this memoir of Ms. Knisley’s trip to Paris with her mother, but I didn’t love the story as much as some other bloggers have. It’s probably my age and the fact that I’ve never been privileged to travel to Europe, but I kept wanting to tell Lucy to snap out of her self-focus and anxiety and enjoy the fact that she was in Paris! She is definitely a talented cartoonist, though, and I look forward to her next book.

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Post tags: audiobooks, books on books, fantasy, graphic memoirs, graphic novels, memoirs

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I loved The Forest of Hands and Teeth, but I only liked The Dead-Tossed Waves. I still appreciate the world Carrie Ryan has invented, and she is good at creating mood, but I really did not like the character of Gabry – she was very whiny. I didn’t find the love triangle believable, either, and her flip-flopping between two boys had me rolling my eyes several times. I’ll still be on board for book three, though.

Title: The Wordy Shipmates
Author: Sarah Vowell
Genre: History, non-fiction
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Source: Print copy from the public library
First line: The only thing more dangerous than an idea is a belief.

Sarah Vowell is as witty as everyone says she is, and I love the way she writes. I learned a lot about the Massachusetts Bay Company, a section of early American history that is often neglected in favor of the Pilgrims, Plymouth Rock, the First Thanksgiving, and Squanto. I experienced very similar feelings when reading Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower – the Puritans that started some of the first American colonies were made of stern and hardy stuff, and every once in a while, their hearts seem in the right place. But most often, they seem like legalistic, hateful, self-righteous haters of all things non-Puritan, and their behavior toward the Native-Americans makes me physically ill. Still, it is a part of our history we should know, and reading Vowell’s book makes for an entertaining way to do that. She lost me a bit about 2/3 of the way through in a long section about the Pequot war – I had a hard time keeping track of which tribes sided with whom, but that’s probably not Vowell’s fault.

Title: Rules of Survival
Author: Nancy Werlin
Genre: YA contemporary fiction
Publisher: Speak
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Source: Audiobook from the public library
First line: For me, the story begins with Murdoch McIlvane

This story of an abused teenage boy’s desire to protect his two little sisters from their sociopathic mother, Nicki, is very well-written and realistic. I loved the character of Matthew, who tells the story in first person. His attempts to get the few other adults in his life to understand how dangerous Nicki is were heart-breaking, and made me want to shake some sense into their heads. Werlin does a good job, though, of explaining how hard it is for these adults to want to step in, knowing that it will turn their lives upside down. The audiobook reader was especially good, too.

Title: Brisingr
Author: Christopher Paolini
Genre: YA fantasy
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Source: Audiobook from the public library
First line: Eragon stared at the dark tower of stone wherein hid the monsters who had murdered his uncle, Garrow.

I really like this series, and it is especially fun to watch Paolini’s writing skills improve with each successive book. I enjoyed watching Eragon begin to grow up, while still occasionally making the impulsive decisions that get him into trouble – one of which we are yet to know the consequences of. Definitely looking forward to book four – and will do that one on audio, too, because the reader is amazing.

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Post tags: audiobooks, contemporary fiction, dystopian fiction, fantasy, history, non-fiction, science fiction, speculative fiction, YA fiction

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Hunger is book two in Michael Grant’s YA dystopian series. In the first book, Gone, everyone fifteen and older disappears, while the children left behind are encased in some kind of force-field shaped like a sphere, and are forced to fend for themselves. Oh, and some of them are developing super powers – think X-men meets Lord of the Flies. Book two continues the series, with the kids dealing with the fact that they are now running out of food, “normals” are starting to turn against the “freaks” with powers, and there is a strange alien being outside town who is hungry in the dark. Lots of action, great characters, and no shying away from the fact that the issues that teens deal with in normal life – romance, sexual identity, racial issues, eating disorders – don’t disappear simply because the end of the world has come. I am very much looking forward to book three, Lies, which comes out next week.

Title: An Echo in the Bone
Author: Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Historical fiction, fantasy
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Source: Audiobook from the public library
First line: The pirate’s head had disappeared.

Oh, Ms. Gabaldon – how could you do this to me? I knew that when I finished listening to An Echo in the Bone, I would have a long wait – probably three years – for the next book in the series. What I didn’t realize until I started listening to the final disc (of 40!) and noticed that things weren’t really wrapping up, was that I would be left hanging in so many different ways! And I’m talking complete cliff-hangers – mid-conversation cliff-hangers! I am going through Jamie and Claire withdrawals. I need someone to speak to me in a Scottish accent every once in a while to tide me over. Gerard Butler will do.

Title: When Forgiveness Doesn’t Make Sense
Author: Robert Jeffress
Genre: Christian non-fiction
Publisher: Waterbrook Press
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Source: Print copy borrowed from a friend

I’ve been trying to deal with some emotional baggage from my past, and reading this book was one step in my journey. I highly recommend it for those who struggle with forgiving those who have hurt them. I posted some of my favorite quotes on my personal blog, if you’re interested.

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Post tags: audiobooks, christian non-fiction, diana gabaldon, dystopian fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, outlander, science fiction, YA fiction

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When I asked for help prioritizing my “I have to read this now” books, Garden Spells was one of the most frequently mentioned titles, and now I understand why. It is a magical book, one that is hard to categorize. It fits in “contemporary fiction,” because the characters live and breathe in today’s world – more specifically, in Bascom, North Carolina. It is also a book that has elements of magic in it – therefore I guess it qualifies as “speculative fiction” or “magical realism.” It doesn’t really matter, though – what you need to know is that it’s a wonderful read.

Claire Waverly lives in her home in Bascom, a house that used to belong to her grandmother. All of the Waverly women have magical gifts, and Claire is no exception. The plants in her garden have special powers, and she uses them to make unique recipes for her catering clients. She lives an isolated life; her only real friend is her cousin, Evanelle, also a Waverly.

Sydney Waverly left Bascom behind a long time ago. After many cities, jobs, and identities, she finds herself in Seattle with her daughter, Bay, looking for an escape from Bay’s abusive father. She heads back to the only home she’s ever known, and she and her daughter shake up her sister Claire’s safe little world.

I loved the characters in this book. Buttoned-up Claire – who is very closed and insular, in spite of her magic in the culinary arts. Sydney, who is looking for safety and a chance to start over. Evanelle, who is compelled to give people gifts that they don’t even know they need yet. Tyler, the artist who moves in next door to Claire and falls for her in a bad way. Henry, an old friend of Sydney’s who has been in love with her since they were children. And Bay, who has never understood the gift she has for always knowing where something – or someone – belongs.

The two sisters were never close; the reasons for their estrangement are deep and complicated, and it was touching to watch as they not only worked on their relationship with each other, but as each one helped the other stretch their wings and open their hearts. In spite of the fantastical elements to the story, the characters became so real to me that I missed them when the book ended. This will definitely not be the last Sarah Addison Allen book I read.

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Post tags: contemporary fiction, fantasy, magical realism

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Leviathan was my first experience with steampunk, and if all the books in this genre are as inventive and engaging, I have a lot of wonderful reading ahead of me! Westerfeld has written a brilliant beginning to a series that gives an alternate history of World War I.

Alek is the teenage son of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria. When his parents are assassinated, his fencing master, Count Volger, and his Master of Mechanics, Otto Klopp, steal him away in the middle of the night to neutral Switzerland, hoping to hide out there until things blow over or until the Emperor dies and Alek can take his rightful place on the throne.

Deryn is a teenager intent on becoming a midshipmen in the British Air Service. Deryn has airmanship and knowledge of the Darwinist ecosystems the British empire uses for its flying feet – but she’s a girl. With the help of her older brother, Deryn poses as Dylan, and manages to find her way onto the Leviathan, the British Air Fleet’s pride and joy.

The two teenagers are caught in the middle of the bubbling strife between the Darwinists – who have used Darwin’s experiments with DNA to create new creatures that form their military might – and the Clankers – who have used their knowledge of all things mechanical to build an army of walking war machines. These two powers are headed for war, and Alek and Deryn would normally be on opposite sides – but instead will be thrown together and use their combined mechanical and biological knowledge to set out on a mission that may have a profound effect on the outcome of the war.

I loved this book – everything about it. First of all, it’s a physically beautiful book, with a gorgeous cover, and artwork that gave life to the wondrous creatures that Westerfeld’s mind created. (You can see sample artwork from Leviathan on Westerfeld’s site.) It has humor, action and adventure, interesting characters, and the most unusual creatures. My boys will adore this book – I can’t wait for them to read it. I’m passing it on to Dad first, though, because I know he’ll devour it in a day or two like I did.

Leviathan counts for Bad Bloggers category of the TwentyTen Challenge – I picked this one up based on this review by Darren at Bart’s Bookshelf.

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Post tags: fantasy, steampunk, YA fiction

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I have had an ARC of Fallen languishing on my shelves for a long time now. I was excited when it came, but then I read Wicked Lovely – which I loved – and immediately after that read Hush, Hush, which paled in comparison. Recently I devoured the Mortal Instruments trilogy by Cassandra Clare, and was hesitant to pick up another YA fantasy because I just knew it couldn’t measure up.

While I didn’t love Fallen as much as I loved the Mortal Instruments, I did love it. One of the reasons I decided to go ahead and give it a try was that it showed up on the “new audiobooks” list on my library’s web site. I’m always happy to find a book I’m slated to review show up on audio, because I tend to have more time to listen than to read these days.

Lucinda (Luce) Price arrives at Sword and Cross Boarding School reeling from recent events in her life. Sword and Cross is a reform school, and Luce is stuck there because of a mysterious fire that took the life of a potential boyfriend. Luce doesn’t remember how Trevor died, but that story didn’t impress the judge who sentenced her to reform school.

It’s not the first time Luce has been labeled as “disturbed.” She’s seen the shadows ever since she was a child, and even anti-psychotic medication didn’t make them go away. As a teenager, however, she has learned to keep her dark visions to herself in an effort to fit in and to stop her parents from worrying.

At Sword and Cross, Luce meets Daniel Gregori, a young man who seems eerily familiar, in spite of the fact that Luce has never seen him before. She and her new friend, Pen, begin to look into Daniel’s past to find answers, all while the shadows begin to appear more frequently and in greater numbers.

I know that it will be impossible for people not to make comparisons between this book and Twilight, but it doesn’t feel like an imitation. Kate has created a world with a rich mythology of (teeny spoiler that you probably have already figured out) fallen angels (that’s not really a spoiler, is it?) that holds up throughout the book – and should hold up well under the subsequent books in the series. The book was well-written, and there was only one time when the dialogue was unbearably cheesy enough to make me roll my eyes.

Listening to the book definitely enhanced my experience, because hearing the book read by a teenage girl made it even easier to believe the thoughts and feelings she was having. So, if you didn’t care for Hush, Hush, which in my opinion was a much more obvious copy of Twilight, you should give this one a try. You just might be surprised. I was.

(Disclosure: An ARC of Fallen was provided to me by the publisher for the purpose of review. The above link is an Amazon affiliate link. If you click on the link and subsequently purchase anything, I will receive a small percentage in commission.)

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Post tags: audiobooks, fantasy, YA fiction

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