Review: Falling Under (and Contest)

Don't forget! March is my blogiversary month, which means lots of contests.

By Gwen Hayes
Available now from NAL (Penguin)
Review copy



First, I love the cover of this book. The photo and color scheme are somewhat typical, but the foil letters are fun and the material is soft. It's a nice book to hold in your hands and feel. (Yes, I'm shallow, that matters to me.)

FALLING UNDER has a lot in common with the TWILIGHT series. Girl meets guy who warns her that he's dangerous. Eventually, they get separated and the girl pines. It's a typical formula, but one that can be well done. FALLING UNDER is fun and romantic, and heroine Theia Alderson holds it all together.

Theia's rather sheltered and naïve, due to her father who is strict but rarely present. She starts having strange lucid dreams – and waking up with grass stains on her nightgown. Then the boy in her dreams shows up in school, drawn to her but refusing to touch her and trying to drive her away by hanging out with other girls. Pretty soon Theia decides that Haden Black's routine is kind of annoying and takes matters into her own hands. It's foolhardy but awesome. She keeps that kind of attitude throughout the book, most triumphantly when she decides to go after Haden instead of moping in his absence.

Short passages are in Haden's point of view. This is good because it rounds his character out some, but bad because I prefer Theia's diction. Luckily, as he spends more time around normal teenagers he becomes less flowery.

Theia has two good friends, Donny and Ame, who both have their own romantic plotlines. I liked that Theia remained involved with her friends and their lives. Gwen Hayes uses their beaus into the main plotline so that their story doesn't slow down the speed of the book. That’s good since FALLING UNDER is the kind of book you read in one rush before going to sleep.

If you're tired of teen romance paranormals, the FALLING UNDER probably won't be your thing. But if you enjoy that genre, FALLING UNDER is worth picking up.

You also have a chance to read FALLING UNDER for free, thanks to Penguin. One reader with a US or Canada address (no PO boxes) will receive a copy. Fill out the form below to enter. Contest ends 3/14.

Review: Please Ignore Vera Dietz

If you're wondering who won the preorder contest, I kept that secret since I kept track of it by e-mails. The SOLITARY winners were Mad Scientist of Steam Punkery and Book Reviews and Jessi E. of The Elliot Review.


By A. S. King
Available now from Alfred A. Knopf (Random House)
Printz Honor Book
Review copy
Read my review of DUST OF 100 DOGS and Amy's guest blog

I read quite a bit of this novel in the back of my car. Fitting, since Vera Dietz spends quite a bit of time in her car like a good pizza delivery person. (She also takes shots of vodka like a bad pizza delivery person.)

What to say? Here's what I didn't like about the book:

Jenny Flick is mean and cruel and evil and completely flat. It makes sense, since neither Vera nor co-narrating (from beyond the grave) Charlie Kahn have any reason to make an effort to see her good side. At the same time, she's one of the main external antagonists. Vera deserves a better enemy. A. S. King crafted a sharp, funny, and tragic heroine. It seems almost laughable that such a fully realized character is pitted against a deranged bully.

But it does fit, at the same time. Jenny Flick is not the main antagonist, though she would like to be. Vera's her own worst enemy. Her love is the best weapon she can turn against herself. And there are worse things in her life - and there were worse things in Charlie's - than Jenny Flick.

Here's what I liked about the book:

The structure. (It reminds me of THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS by Arundhati Roy.)



The flowcharts. Chart jokes are always funny.

The black humor. There's a running joke about a pickle that will break your heart.

The heart breaking. This isn't a maudlin, Lurlene McDaniel, saddest little cancer patient story. You know Charlie is dead, you know he was on a downhill slide when he died. You know that. King breaks you slowly by showing just how close he came to making it despite his few chances in life. She breaks you with the knowledge that Vera might not make it, that she might end up like Charlie despite having so much potential.

Smart people are excellent at doing dumb things because they think they know better.

(Perhaps, sometimes, they want to do dumb things.)

PLEASE IGNORE VERA DIETZ is one of the reasons YA is such an exciting genre.  It's an example of why writing for young adults shouldn't be underestimated.  It should already be on your shelf, nestled by gems like DANGEROUS NEIGHBORS and GOING BOVINE.

I Eat Words and Leah Cliffords Sponsor Books for Kids

Today, Kristi of The Story Siren posted about Britney and Farrah of I Eat Words and their Books for Kids campaign. Debut author Leah Clifford just sponsored them to help them extend their campaign. All you have to do to help? Like the video below. You can also donate directly through their PayPal or sponsor them for more "likes."

Kristi's post that started it all
Phoenix Children's Hospital Donation Guidelines (Child Wish List)
Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children Donation Guidelines (Toys, Books, and Games Needed)

If you have physical books you want to donate yourself, don't forget that you can donate books to hospitals and shelters in your area. Also, don't forget that Half Price Books's Half Pint Library Drive runs through March 31st this year. You can donate new and gently used children's books at your local Half Price Books.

In My Mailbox

From the library:
BEFORE I FALL by Lauren Oliver



BLISS by Lauren Myracle
SNAKEHEAD by Anthony Horowitz
CROCODILE TEARS by Anthony Horowitz



BAD APPLE by Laura Ruby
CLOCKWORK ANGEL by Cassandra Clare



Bought:
THE MOCKINGBIRDS by Daisy Whitney



Received for review:
SKIPPING A BEAT by Sarah Pekkanen

The Tragedy of Werewolves

Clare B. Dunkle's tour continues!  I reviewed BY THESE TEN BONES on Tuesday and now Clare is here to talk about why she's fascinated by werewolves. She has a unique way of approaching the folklore.  You can also find her at Mundie Mom's on Monday. You can also check out her interview with the Ravenous Reader.

--

Shapeshifting may have its dangers, but I’ve always thought of tragic werewolves as the “true” werewolves. These are the werewolves, remembered in folktales across Europe, who become killers through no fault of their own. Such werewolves have either been bitten or, in Italian tales, have been born on Christmas Day, and doomed by this accident of nature, they are a massacre waiting to happen. Sooner or later, changed into wolves, they kill the people they love best. According to some folktales, they kill their parents, but most often, the victim is a young bride.

My lifelong fascination with the werewolf has paralleled my lifelong dread of something disturbingly real: the deadly disease of rabies. In both cases, the fatal affliction strikes at random. In both cases, it may be transferred through a bite. In both cases, the victim changes from a loving human being into a menacing monster ready to injure or kill. (Even in our sanitized modern times, rabid humans must be tied down in restraints.) Rabies and lycanthropy are two sides of the same coin.

As a small child, I was afraid of rabies. The United States went through a spike in animal rabies cases when I was in grade school, so adults warned us children in the direst tones about the dangers of this illness. We heard about rabid skunks and bats and occasionally even saw them; I once spotted a skunk roaming about in the daytime, a sure sign it was rabid according to my mother. (This isn’t true, but it does point out that not all folklore is ancient.) And, once or twice a year, my classmates and I heard about some poor boy or girl who had made the mistake of picking up a bat or playing with a kitten and who had gone on to die in agony. Rabies stories produced in me the same morbid thrill that werewolf stories had produced in my distant ancestors.

Family history brought this disease uncomfortably close. Many times, my grandfather regaled us with the story about the day his favorite dog had turned rabid. Grandpapa was the seventh son of a seventh son, a poor sharecropper’s child. “As the youngest boy,” he would tell us, “I had to get up first to light the fire, and every day, our big shepherd cross would be so glad to see someone downstairs, he would be all over me. That morning, he jumped up and licked me all over my face. And that afternoon, he went mad.”

I can still feel now the shiver of horror I felt as a small child. In my mind, I could see it all: the beloved pet, now savage and drooling, ready to tear his family apart. The stern patriarch, my great-grandfather, with his rifle in his hands. And then: the questions. The realization. The worry and fear. Grandpapa has been directly exposed—his eyes, nose, and mouth so many gateways to the dog’s saliva. In that time and place, they are powerless to save him. All they can do is wait.

To this small child, already an avid reader of folklore, that story was mythic. It buried itself into my consciousness beside the stories of Cuchulain and Tam Lin. It held all the terror and passion of Beth Gelert. My own grandfather had almost become a werewolf.



Consequently, it was this family story that shaped my thinking most when I set out to write BY THESE TEN BONES. The werewolf in my story isn’t a monster, he’s a victim—a patient with a deadly disease. The unseen pathogen within him provokes violence wherever he goes. To be a werewolf is to be infected with madness and death.