Review: National Parks of the U.S.A. Activity Book

By Claire Grace

Illustrated by Chris Turnham

Available now from Wide Eyed Editions

Review copy

National Parks of the U.S.A. Activity Book is a companion to Kate Siber's National Parks of the U.S.A., but is perfectly enjoyable even without reading that informative book first. (Although some readers might be interested in seeking out more information after enjoying the activity book.)

I think this activity book is appropriate for elementary school children. Most of the activities are fairly simple, but some require strong reading skills. I do wish that the book hadn't been printed in cursive, since some schools don't even teach cursive any more and it is an upper-level skill for part of the age range. It might be best for siblings to share, especially since there is a game needing more than one player.

This is a shorter activity book (around 16 activities) and while a few will take longer - a game, designing your own park - most are fairly short. One is also a wildlife spotting activity, which can't really be done most places.

There are several facts included, especially in the true or false activity, but for there isn't much beyond a few tidbits per activity. Once the activities are done, National Parks of the U.S.A. Activity Book doesn't offer much further value.

However, I do still like this activity book because it is gorgeous. It is oversized compared to most, with a pearlized cover. Chris Turnham's art recalls classic travel posters for the national parks. It is showcased in borders, illustrations of animals, and a few human figures of multiple races. The best part of this activity book, to me, is the included fold-out poster and stickers. The poster is a map with little illustrations representing each park, and the stickers feature many plants and animals shown throughout the book. They're beautiful, and I think kids would have fun with both.

Review: The Fate of the Tearling

Book three of the Queen of the Tearling trilogy
By Erika Johansen
Available now from Harper (HarperCollins)
Review copy

I am happy I began this trilogy when all three books were out, since this is the sort of series best read at a breathless clip, eager to find out what happens next. I'm certainly happy that I didn't have to stop at THE INVASION OF THE TEARLING, with Kelsea a prisoner.

The first book set up a fascinating world filled with danger in every corner, and the odd reminder every once in awhile that it was not a fantasy world, but a far future version of our world. The second book delved deeper into this by having Kelsea relive memories of Lily, a woman living at the time of the Crossing, the end of a dystopic period that gave rise to the country of the Tearling. I wasn't a fan of this method of revealing secrets of the Tearling's past, because I prefer fantasy to dystopian fiction, and there was a strong theme of reincarnation, which I've also never been a fan of.

THE FATE OF THE TEARLING, unfortunately, takes this thread up and runs with it, introducing even more past characters to reveal the secrets of Kelsea's sapphires, the Fetch, and the man in the fire. I admire how thoroughly Erika Johansen seeded her surreal twist in the story. THE QUEEN OF THE TEARLING never hides that it is supposed to be our world, and the mystery of why it had to be set in our world when it didn't seem to fit was one I wanted answered. I simply preferred the more fantastical setting and the characters from the contemporary period of the novel, so I was sad to see the focus shift away from them.

In THE INVASION OF THE TEARLING, Kelsea was teetering on the brink of her worst instincts, her temper and the burgeoning war giving her a chance to indulge in cruelty instead of being the purely altruistic ruler she wanted to be. I found her corruption interesting, and felt that her arc was not entirely satisfying. For a series that focused much on the consequences of the characters' actions, Kelsea gets to sidestep the consequences of her own worst decision. I'm glad that things ended happily, against all hope, but the solution felt more like cheating than the hard-earned triumph Kelsea deserved.

While the ending didn't bring it home for me, I thought this trilogy was an incredibly fun read and it was full of characters I fell in love with. Lazarus, Kelsea's chosen regent and her most trusted man, was a personal favorite. He's a tough, hard-bitten man who couldn't be more obvious about how much he was searching for hope and someone to believe in. And I loved Father Tyler, an old priest who has a good heart and loves books and becomes the possessor of an important MacGuffin in THE FATE OF THE TEARLING.

I can see the populace of the Tearling having lives beyond where they intersect with Kelsea's journey, because Johansen wrote them with such nuance. Even the evil Red Queen, who has had her sympathetic moments from book one, gets to be more than evil even as she's moved into the position of the taunting captor.

I'm excited about whatever Johansen's next venture might be, especially if she decides to go for pure high fantasy. I can appreciate how she experimented with genre, even if the end effect wasn't for me.

Review: Arrows

By Melissa Gorzelanczyk
Narrated by Laura Knight Keating and Nick Cordero
Available now from Recorded Books
Print version available from Delacorte Books (Penguin Random House)
Review copy

At least once a year, I listen to an audiobook.  They'll never be my favorite way to experience books, but they've been growing on me.  ARROWS had the advantage of being a mere 6 and a half hours long.  It took me a week of driving to listen to the whole story - but far better than one of those 24 hour audiobooks that would take me a month.

ARROWS tells the story of Aaryn, son of Cupid and Psyche, and Karma, a human.  (Great thing about listening: I didn't have to look at that spelling of Aaron for the entire book.)  Aaryn was supposed to shoot a couple with arrows to become a cupid himself, but he accidentally misplaced one while busy with social media.  The result: Karma is hopelessly in love with Danny, who takes her for granted (and worse).  Aaryn has to get Danny to fall in love with her in return or be banished.  The problem: No one would wish Danny on their worst enemy, much less a perfectly nice girl.  Even worse, Karma got pregnant, and so him being a terrible father is also a factor.

I preferred Laura Knight Keating's narration to Nick Cordero's, but I enjoyed the sections of the story through Aaryn's point of view more.  (Cordero did grow on me.)  The result of the arrow is just horrific.  It's not like real love - Karma physically feels herself getting sick if she gets angry or upset with Danny.  She can't even think ill of him when he hurts her.  It was hard to hear her continually stuck in that rut.  Aaryn, meanwhile, gets to be more dynamic and realize how broken the system he dreamed of becoming a part of is.

Remember the 6 and a half hours running time?  ARROWS is a short novel.  That can be an advantage, and I don't think there was more story to explore.  (Except maybe any sort of explanation for why Karma, a serious dancer, never seems to have considered an abortion.  She clearly didn't keep Nell to make Danny happy.)  But I felt like what was there spent too much time spinning its wheels and that the climax played out too quickly.  In ten minutes, everything gets resolved.  I was also bothered that Karma seems to overcome her cursed love for Danny more for Aaryn than herself.

Listening to ARROWS livened up my commute, but I think I found it more disturbing than it was meant to be.  I might, however, look for more novels narrated by Laura Knight Keating.

Review: Material Girls

By Elaine Dimopoulos
Available now from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt BFYR
Review copy

In the future, creative industries like fashion and video game design are staffed by teenagers (hired at thirteen) because everyone knows that young people know what is cool.  Marla Klein and Ivy Wilde both rose to the top of their fields, but now their teens are almost over and their afraid of becoming obsolosers.  When Marla loses her prestigious position and Ivy gets threatened by a new pop starlet, the girls start seeing the downside to their world and getting the gumption to fight back.

I found that MATERIAL GIRLS took awhile to kick into gear.  I think it was a mix of two things.  Elaine Dimopoulos built a dystopian that took a lot of set up to explain and ground the setting, and both girls start out shallow and unquestioning in order to make their journey more satisfying.  I found that the plot didn't really move until Marla and Ivy met each other.

I thought MATERIAL GIRLS was full of good ideas.  The way it mocks trends and commercialism reminds me of Scott Westerfeld's slicker SO YESTERDAY.  I liked the way the girls' revolution came about, and that all the leaders had different ideas about what they wanted to achieve and how.  I liked the messy, slightly ambiguous ending, that doesn't provide the story with unearned resolution.  As the slow start showed, the execution could use some work.

MATERIAL GIRLS is the first novel by Dimopoulos, and I think it proves she has talent.  If I were on a court picking the next big thing, I don't think I'd pass this book on to the next level.  I would, however, encourage the artist to keep submitting ideas and honing her craft.  There's a good foundation here.

Review: Hollywood Witch Hunter

By Valerie Tejeda
Available now from Bloomsbury Spark
Review copy

In Hollywood, witches have to kill to stay alive.  Hunters are born to hunt them and to protect those they prey on, even though the witches get the most power and youth from the worst people.  They still don't deserve to die.  Iris is the first girl to be born with the hunter gene, and she's been fighting to be part of the group instead of left in the kitchen (literally).

That premise is seriously retrograde, so I appreciated newly found hunter Arlo pointing out just how stupid it is.  Arlo always wanted to be a pop star, so being pressed into being a hunter hasn't made him too happy.  He's one of two love interests.  The other is Silos, an older man from Scotland who Iris dreams about before meeting.  I thought either of them were decent romantic options, but I'm so over triangles.

HOLLYWOOD WITCH HUNTER is full of great characters playing out cliches.  Iris is smart and believes her own observations over what others tell her about the world.  Her brother Knox is the kind of brother everybody wants.  Belinda, the head witch, has her own intriguing agenda going on.  But I could guess every twist and turn the story took, including the surprise ending leading into the next book in the series.

The other thing that bothered me about HOLLYWOOD WITCH HUNTER is the way that Iris starts to bond with some of the witches.  I am all for realizing that you've been indoctrinated your whole life and those people you've trained to hunt are actually people, but even as she got closer they were still killing people and Iris knew it.  Being fun to hang out with doesn't turn a murderer into a good person.

HOLLYWOOD WITCH HUNTER is Valerie Tejeda's first novel, so I hope she'll work out some of those kinks.  She's got characterization down, but she needs to find a plot of her own.  I did like that she made Iris half-Colombian, which figured into the plot.  People tend to assume that Iris is with the help, and being able to speak Spanish makes her a better investigator since she can talk to more people.

If you're interested, HOLLYWOOD WITCH HUNTER is on sale for the first week of its release for $2.99.

Review: Don't Ever Change

By M. Beth Bloom
Available now from HarperTeen (HarperCollins)
Review copy

Eva wants to be a writer, but she's thrown for a loop right before the summer after her senior year when her teacher tells her that her story feels fake and that she needs to learn to write what she knows.  Eva makes a pact with herself to get out there and do things this summer, to experience things so that she can be a better writer.

It's honestly a good plan.  Eva makes some good inroads too, by taking a chance with cute stranger Elliot and taking a job as a camp counselor with her friend Foster.  But changing yourself is a tough road, especially when your default is to coast and let others be the movers and shakers.

Eva has the same problem as many of her main characters: she's a hard person to like.  She can be abrupt and overly critical.  She has a tendency to focus on her own problems (like most teenagers).  She's often overly convinced of her own right-ness.  This sometimes made reading her point of view in DON'T EVER CHANGE unpleasant, but it also made her a believable teen girl.

DON'T EVER CHANGE feels very realistic all around, despite Eva's obsession with shoving her life story into something literary and writeable.  There's a pettiness and mundanity to it.  This does mean that at times I long for more events.  Even a death is barely a blip in the story, someone Eva didn't really know.  Nothing really happens except for her personal journey.  If you don't get invested in that, there's no point in reading the book.

I did enjoy Eva's complicated love life.  She has a long-distance boyfriend and a guy she makes out with and another flirtation and it sort of just is.  The only issues with Eva having multiple relationships is when there's competitions for the same guys.  At the same time, as a counselor Eva is in charge of a thirteen-year-old in a relationship with another thirteen-year-old.  She's got to figure out what boundaries are appropriate for adults to set for children, because that's where she is now.

DON'T EVER CHANGE is not an easily approachable book.  It might even be a shock to fans of the author, since M. Beth Bloom's first book involved vampires.  But I do think it is a book that will resonate with pricklier girls, with those people who try but just have trouble expressing themselves to others.

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Review: Don't Stay Up Late

A Fear Street Novel
By R.L. Stine
Available now from St. Martin's Griffin
Review copy
Read my review of A Midsummer Night's Scream

I have fond memories of the Fear Street series. I don't remember how many of them I read in elementary and middle school, but it was a lot.  I liked them more than Goosebumps because people actually died (often in rather gruesome ways), and I enjoyed the mythology of the Fear family's curse.  They aren't high brow (or even particularly high quality fiction), but I do get a kick that the series is being restarted for a new generation.  I'm not sure how many I'll personally read, but I'm sure I'll be there for the book starring Brandon Fear.  (He's a senior at Shadyside High, apparently.)

When DON'T STAY UP LATE starts, its connection to the series seems tenuous.  Lisa Brooks does live in Shadyside.  Her family moved there recently, and she's made three good friends: Isaac, Saralynn, and her boyfriend Nate.  But her new life is derailed by a car accident that kills her father and leaves her with horrifying hallucinations.  Fear Street itself comes into the picture when Lisa takes a job babysitting for a family on the street, with a sweet boy named Harry Hart.  The only catch is that she can't let him stay up late.

The disparate plot lines (Lisa's hallucinations, the creepy kid, a serial killer killing teens) take a bit to come together, but in classic Fear Street fashion they do and lead to an ambiguous ending.  All of R.L. Stine's usual tics are on display, including the fake-out cliffhangers.

I do think the treatment of mental illness in DON'T STAY UP LATE could use some updating.  A mental hospital is a horrific place where patients are free to lick visitors before they even make it to the reception desk.  I do find it strange that no one is concerned with leaving a child alone with a teenager whose visual hallucinations are not under control. 

DON'T STAY UP LATE was fun for the nostalgia factor, but even back in the day this wouldn't have been one of the stronger entries in the series.  (Only two deaths?  By evisceration? Pfft.)

Review: Infandous

By Elana K. Arnold
Available now from Carolrhoda (Lerner)
Review copy

INFANDOUS is frustrating to me because it is almost a great book.  It has a terrific narrator, Sephora Golding, who is unaware of just how unreliable she is.  She's preoccupied with fairytales and myths, stories of women and sexuality and the terrible things that can happen.  She's preoccupied with her mother's sexuality.  She claims to be totally cool with her mom being gorgeous and desired and dating, but she's uncomfortable with her mom's newest beau, who is only twenty five and closer to Sephora's age.

Part of her preoccupation is something that happened not long ago.  This is revealed early in the book, but you may want to skip it if you hate knowing any details.  Sephora was picked up on the beach by a fortysomething man named Felix.  She told him she was nineteen and in college and she thought he was amazing in bed, better than anyone else she'd ever slept with.  But there's a reason for statutory rape laws.  Sephora isn't really sure how she feels about what happened.  She's only sixteen in reality, and Felix keeps calling even though she's never answered in months.  It's a complex, thorny situation that Sephora can only think about indirectly.  And then there is a ludicrous soap opera reveal that Sephora never really reacts to with any strong emotion.

But INFANDOUS isn't all sex.  There's also Sephora's art, mostly sculptures she makes out of found objects and then photographs with interesting shadows.  There's her relationship with Jeremy, her mom's boyfriend, who gets her a job and is pretty supportive, all things being said.  There's also a detour with her richer aunt and cousins.  (Sephora calls her and her mother broke and poor, but it's fairly obvious that they're just lower middle class.)

I liked the tales Elana K. Arnold retold between chapters of INFANDOUS.  I like how the different strands of the story wove together, all held together by the things Sephora doesn't say and how she's too young to know that she's got a big blindspot about her own insight.  But I felt like the story just got goofy and ended.  I think it needed to cook a little longer.

Review: The Vanishing Girl

First in a trilogy
By Laura Thalassa
Available now from Skyscape (Amazon)
Review copy

I'll admit that I wanted to read THE VANISHING GIRL entirely because I thought the cover was gorgeous.  I like the colors and the abstract strangeness, like a bit of classic sci-fi sneaking into a modern YA cover.

The eponymous girl is Ember Pierce, who teleports for ten minutes every night just after she falls asleep.  She thinks she used to it until she wakes up in a club and flirts with a man named Adrian, only to find a gun in her purse and a note telling her to kill him.  Rather sensibly, she panics more over someone knowing what she can do and trying to use her instead of attempting to assassinate a complete stranger.

Then she finds out that her parents could only have a child through an experimental program, and she now owes two years of service to the military.  It's very obviously illegal and preposterous, even in a world where people can teleport, so you just have to go with it.  At the school she's taken to she's paired with Caden Hawthorne, who is infuriatingly good at keeping her from escaping.  Ember falls for him in a rather rote manner, although I did appreciate that there wasn't a forced love triangle with Adrian.  The scenes between Ember and Caden are written with lots of tension, its just hard to believe she falls for him after how terribly he treats her at first.

Ember, unsurprisingly, starts to find more and more evidence that the school is sinister.  Because secret experiments on babies and being kidnapped weren't enough evidence that everything was bad new.  I sound cranky, I know.  I enjoyed reading THE VANISHING GIRL, and thought it was a a fun ride.  But after I finished, it was hard to seize on anything as a standout moment.  Also, it was one of those books without a real ending, which drives me nuts.

I am, however, eager to read the second book.  THE VANISHING GIRL ends with a cliffhanger, and I'm not sure how Ember will survive or how she'll react to what happened in the next book.  I also hope the next book has more Adrian, who is conducting his own investigation into the school and experiment outside its walls.

Review: Personal

Book nineteen of the Jack Reacher series
By Lee Child
Available now from Delacorte (Penguin Random House)
Review copy

My grandfather gave me a copy of PERSUADER, telling me that it was a good airplane novel and Jack Reacher was "a good man to know and a bad man to have for an enemy."  My family has always loved sharing their favorite novels with me, since they know I'll read anything and talk about it after.  PERSUADER was the last book my grandfather ever gave me.  As such, I have a special soft spot for the Jack Reacher series.

Now, this series isn't one you think of when you think of a soft spot.  It's almost hypermasculine, with a retired military police hero who has no home or real possessions, and who always happens to be in the wrong place at the right time.  In this case, he's lured there by an ad in a paper meant just for him.  An assassination attempt was made on the French president, and it appears to have been an audition for an assassination at the upcoming G8 or G20 summit.  One of the suspects is a man Reacher put in jail almost two decades ago.  (He kept up his sniper skills through yoga, as one does.)  And so he's on the case, his only companion a young CIA agent with anxiety issues.

Casey Nice is young, pretty, and reminds Reacher of Dominique Kohl, one of his proteges who was tortured and murdered when she went to arrest a suspect.  It's ground the series has covered before, although Lee Child thankfully doesn't make us witness any flirtation between the twenty-something Casey and the reaching-true-retirement-age Reacher.  However, their relationship is one of the highlights of the book.  The plot, such as it is, is a bit ridiculous even for a macho thriller.  Child's attention to research and detail just helps highlight how goofy elements like the yoga sniper and the giant man with fingers larger than sausages and a house 150% as big as a normal house are.

It didn't take me long at all to read PERSONAL, because Lee Child does know how to keep the pages turning.  But at nineteen books, the Jack Reacher series seems to be churning a bit of water.  There's a high level of silliness to the proceedings.  It doesn't, however, erase the memories of the tight earlier books or discussing them with my grandfather.  I like to think that if he was still alive, he'd have fun reading the newest book in his favorite series.

Review: Sea of Shadows

Book one of the Age of Legends series
By Kelley Armstrong
Available now from HarperCollins
Review copy

SEA OF SHADOWS throws the reader into the deep end of a world with complicated social rules and magic.  There's curses on scrolls, strict honor codes, a Kitsune clan, and it's all very Japanese except for the things that aren't Japanese at all -- like the characters' names.

This means, for me, that the horror elements of this horror-fantasy took awhile to gel.  Horror takes much of its force from perverting the normal.  When you're still getting a barometer of what normal is, then it's just sort of people disappearing left and right for some reason that maybe has something to do with a plague or a curse.  Meanwhile, the back of your head is pondering why the book is titled SEA OF SHADOWS when it appears to take place in a sinister forest.

But I though the novel picked up pace and I really started to get into it.

SEA OF SHADOWS is the story of twin sisters Moria and Ashyn, the Keeper and Seeker of Edgewood, respectively.  Moria is the warrior, but Ashyn is the one who must go into the woods to gather the dead and lay their spirits to rest.  But something goes horribly awry, and their town becomes infected with the strange, zombie-like sickness that has been lurking in the woods.  The spirits that usually guide Moria and Ashyn go silent.  They have only their skills, their respective guard pet, and the two convenient love interests.

I think that SEA OF SHADOWS is a very enjoyable read, but not one that hangs together when you think about it too much.  Kelley Armstrong threw so much at the wall when building this world, and I'm not sure how much she though about how the various pieces fit together.   The whole exiling people to the woods to become zombies thing never made much sense.  Hopefully, the future books in the series can smooth some of that out.  However, the first book of trilogy is usually handles the introductory material, and SEA OF SHADOWS had trouble with that.  And, well, the ending is a bit of a cliffhanger, which I always hate in a first book.

I think Armstrong fans will enjoy SEA OF SHADOWS, as will fans of fantastic and J-horror.  But this book felt like it could have used a few more rounds of editing to fill in the plot holes and help the world building cohere.  I also feel like a stronger sense of the world and how it works would help some of the pacing issues to.  I had fun reading SEA OF SHADOWS, and I'll probably be back for the second book, but it isn't Armstrong's best effort.

Review: Agostino

By Alberto Moravia
Translated by Michael F. Moore
Available now from NYRB Classics (New York Review of Books)
Review copy

Whenever a new NYRB Classic comes out, I pay attention.  I basically regard the imprint (and the Children's imprint) as lists of books I should be reading.  I rarely come across an NYRB classic that doesn't have something to offer me.

What drew me to AGOSTINO?  Perhaps it was the promise of a Tuscan seaside (even in Fascist-era Italian).  The eponymous Agostino travels there with his mother.  When they arrive, he loves her in an uncomplicated fashion.  But when she takes a lover (although Agostino is too young to realize that he is a lover at first), Agostino starts to feel like a third wheel, and starts to see his mother in a more complicated light, as her own person, as a woman.

Then he meets a group of boys, slightly older than him, who bully the naive young Agostino for not knowing about sex, for not knowing what his mother is doing, for not knowing to beware of predators.  There is also the resentment, for the boys are working class and Agostino is quite rich.  They lack the privilege of being sheltered.

AGOSTINO is short, and written in a fashion that approaches, but doesn't quite reach stream of consciousness.  The book's rhythm is quick, but the unusual style causes the eye and mind to linger a bit longer over the prose.  There are some odd quirks to the storytelling, such as Agostino's mother usually being referred to as "the mother" rather than his mother. The translator's note from Michael F. Moore mentions that this is deliberate, due to the Italian using an ambiguous construction.

Despite the fact that the narrator isn't even a teenager, AGOSTINO is not a children's story.  It is meant to be read by an adult, by a reader who has the perspective and knowledge Agostino is just starting to realize exists.  It is an interesting reading experience.

I found myself being left cold by AGOSTINO.  I can admire the construction of the novel, and that Agostino's growing Oedipal obsession with his mother is supposed to be troubling.  Agostino longs to be a man, but how can he when the most information he gets about being a man is scrambled and delivered by cruel boys?  It is an intriguing portrayal of sexual awakening, but one that stuck me as more as surreal than psychologically incisive.  At the same time, I kind of feel like I want to read it again.

Review: When Mr. Dog Bites

By Brian Conaghan
Available now from Bloomsbury
Review copy

Scottish author Brian Conaghan draws on his own experience with Tourette's Syndrome to tell the story of Dylan Mint, who has Tourette's and is convince he's going to die in March.  He's inspired to create a list of things to do before he dies, but it also makes it harder for him to keep a leash on "Mr. Dog" as well as his own behavior.

Dylan might be sixteen, and sex with Michelle Malloy might be the top thing on his list, but he's almost painfully naive.  His innocence makes it easier to sympathize with him when he's being difficult, for instance when he's biting back at his mother for disciplining him.  It's also sweet when he's defending his best friend Amir, despite not comprehending some of the racism leveled against him.

The language of WHEN MR. DOG BITES is involving, because it relies heavily on Scottish, rhyming, and other slangs.  Dylan loves playing with words, and it is interesting to fall into the rhythm of his thoughts.  Given that he has Tourette's, some of that language is strong, but it's less intrusive than I expected when I started reading.

I wasn't in love with WHEN MR. DOG BITES.  I enjoyed the diversity of the characters and the use of language.  But I felt the plot relied too strongly on Dylan being utterly guileless.  I never quite believed that he was sixteen.  Fourteen, maybe. 

48HBC Review: Cold Calls

By Charles Benoit
Available now from Clarion Books (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Review copy

I first heard of Charles Benoit when I saw him at the Austin Teen Book Festival.  I thought his book YOU sounded interesting, not the least because it was written in second person.  I never picked it up though, but I remembered his name.  His latest release is COLD CALLS, a high-tech thriller about three teens: Eric, Shelly, and Fatima.

Each of the teens has a secret that someone has found out.  And that someone is calling them, blackmailing them, and forcing them to bully someone at their school.  It gets them all put into an alternative program, where they meet and decide to track down their harasser.  It's an intriguing plot,  but COLD CALLS' biggest problem is having too much plot.

The story is driven by the fact that each of the teens is willing to bully someone else in order to have their secret kept.  Their motivation is key to the story working.  But each of the characters felt so shallow.  The weakest is Fatima, who doesn't get a point of view chapter until halfway through COLD CALLS.  It felt like Eric got the greatest focus in the novel, but he doesn't have much of a personal arc.  Shelly has the strongest emotional arc, but it felt like it cut away from her at a dramatic moment and then came back to her personal story once she was over it.

The super bully is chilling, but left me a bit cold.  COLD CALLS has some interesting things to say about the relationship between bullies and victims, but it felt like it went slightly over the top.  Again, it seemed like a bit more character development might've made it all work better.

I did think that the plot was interesting and moved along at a good clip.  There is quite a bit to discover, as the secrets unfold bit by bit and the three teens start getting closer to the antagonist.  COLD CALLS does engage with interesting ideas.  As I mentioned before, there is the nature of bullying.  There's also themes of personal responsibility, protecting private information in a digital world, and confession.  It's a decent choice for anyone looking for a quick, thrilling read.

Note: This review took me 20 minutes to write.

Review: Take Back the Skies

The first book in the Tellus World series
By Lucy Saxon
Available now from Bloomsbury
Review copy

Nineteen-year-old Lucy Saxon's debut novel TAKE BACK THE SKIES wears its influences on its sleeve, but that doesn't stop it from being a fast-paced adventure with a surprising ending.

Protagonist Cat disguises herself as a boy and runs away to escape an arranged marriage to a true boor.  She hides on an airship headed out of the country.  From there, it doesn't take her long to realize that her own country isn't actually fighting an overseas war.  So why, exactly, are ever more children being conscripted for the army?  It is up to Cat to rally the smugglers and use her knowledge of the country's upper class to find the answers and effect change.

TAKE BACK THE SKIES has some serious worldbuilding issues.  The world's technology is pretty inconsistent.  There are mecha and electronic locks, but there appear to be no cars and people carry around money purses that are snatched by orphan pickpockets like something out of a Victorian novel.  Every time a bit of technology was mentioned I would abruptly remember that the story wasn't set in a quasi-18th century world.  Then there's the fact that the ersatz war seems far too preposterous to have lasted seven years.  Why would anyone believe that thirteen year olds were needed for the army?  Especially when they seem to stop recruiting before eighteen.  What sort of war would make an eighteen year old too old?  There are no efforts to explain this.

At the same time, I really enjoyed the story.  TAKE BACK THE SKIES moves quickly enough that you can turn off your brain and go with the flow.  Cat is an appealing protagonist.  I liked her insistence that she could pull her own weight and take care of herself, even when I rolled my eyes at her saying that life with her neglectful father was as bad as Fox's life as a poor orphan.  Fox, the love interest, struck me as generic, but he didn't do anything to make me dislike him.  (The romance, sadly, takes a turn for the worse when the obligatory love triangle rears its head.)  The other four members of the crew were easy to remember, even if they didn't get much character depth.  (And I appreciated the inclusion of a gay couple.  Or I assume we were meant to assume that they're a gay couple.)

I'm not sure how I feel about the ending of TAKE BACK THE SKIES.  I felt like it undermined some of the themes of the story.  The blurb promises that there are five more books in Tellus world to come, but they are non-linear and explore other parts of the world.  I do hope they address some of the fallout of Cat's final decisions.  It's generally an unsatisfying ending for the character, even if it is a satisfying ending for the story.

I feel like TAKE BACK THE SKIES could've really been special with a bit more attention to how the world actually operated and a bit less attention on the bog-standard romance.  At the same time, I really liked Cat and was swept along by the plot.  It's a fine first novel.

Review: The Dirty Book Mystery

By Thomas Shawver
Available now from Alibi (Penguin Random House)
Review copy

THE DIRTY BOOK MURDER is an interesting blend of cozy mystery and something more hard hitting.  The murders are mercifully briefly described, but there is sex and drugs and sexualized torture. It's set in a close-knit part of Kansas City, with an unlikely detective: the local used and antiquarian bookstore owner.  Of course, he's also a former Marine and lawyer with past alcohol and drug problems who still likes going out to the pub and getting a bit rowdy.  It's an unusual mix that I suspect will greatly appeal to readers who have been looking for something like it.

The plot kicks off when Michael Bevan goes to an auction that advertised some rare erotica.  It soon turns into a heated battle between him, two known dealers, and a strange man clearly there on behalf of someone else.  While the lot goes for tens of thousands of dollars, one of the dealers steals two of the most valuable books.  He's dead by the next day, and Michael is the most likely suspect.  He sets off to clear his name and finds that there is much more at stake than two rare books.

This is a fairly short mystery, only a little over 200 pages, so things happen fast in THE DIRTY BOOK MURDER.  There is still a lot of character setup, putting people into place (such as former and future loves) for the inevitable sequels.  I think some of the character work went too quickly, leading to some of Michael's most important relationships coming off very shallowly and strange.  And, well, I found most of the characters unlikeable.  I really found the way that Michael intrudes on his daughter's personal life to be uncomfortable, even if she is dating a much older man.  It didn't help the other descriptions of women that make Michael come off as pretty sexist.

I don't, however, need the characters to be likeable in a murder mystery.  Most of the characters are people capable of murder, after all.  But it was definitely a point away from the "cozy" side of the equation.

THE DIRTY BOOK MURDER does draw quite a bit from debut author Thomas Shawver's life experience, and it shows.  I particularly liked the scenes about valuing books and running the shops.  It's an intriguing look into the ongoing life of books.  (And there's a mention of the Ransom Center at my alma mater, guaranteed to make me smile.)  Michael's career is more than just set dressing, and the book is better for it.

If you're looking for a fast-paced mystery that's darker than it seems at first, you might pick up THE DIRTY BOOK MURDER.  Thanks to TLC Book Tours and the publisher, there is a giveaway with multiple prizes.  Just fill out the Rafflecopter below.

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Review: Casebook

By Mona Simpson
Available now from Knopf (Penguin Random House)
Review copy

Miles Adler-Rich is a privileged child of divorce and a burgeoning snoop.  He likes to listen to his mother's conversations on the phone.  When she starts dating a man named Eli, Miles likes him at first.  But as the years pass by, little things don't add up and Miles gets serious about uncovering the truth.

The parts of CASEBOOK I liked, I really liked, but it was an uneven read.  The beginning and ending both go on for too long.  I would admire the dedication to unraveling the consequences to Miles' actions if they weren't mostly mundane and boring.  (Hint: It makes his mother sad.)  I never found Miles' voice quite convincing either.  He's privileged, yes, but he felt so naive to me for a fourteen-year-old boy.  And it was just a touch off how he was so much more into his mom's life than his own.

There are many things I liked.  I did enjoy Miles relationship with his mom, loving her and wanting the best for her.  I liked his relationship with his best friend Hector, which ebbs and flows throughout the novel, sometimes strong enough to be mistaken for dating.  It's a nice examination of the lengths friends will go to for each other and the underlying tensions that can exist in the best relationships.  I like Miles' younger twin sisters, who are slowly revealed to have their own personalities and interests as their brother opens up to them.  I liked the detective who helps the boys and chides their stupider impulses.

CASEBOOK, like many novels I've read lately, isn't well-served by it's blurb.  The blurb promises the boys confronting the existence of evil, which makes CASEBOOK sound much darker than it is.  It mostly deals with standard literary-fiction ennui, just through the eyes of a fourteen-year-old boy.  There is one revelation of stunning evil that stands out in the fact that it is buried and never mentioned again and I wish it was left out because it was jarringly nasty and really didn't add anything to the story.

I think CASEBOOK will appeal to fans of stories about dysfunctional families.   The characters are all wonderfully drawn, and there's some brilliant insights into the different ways people love each other and how they treat people they love.  Don't, however, go in expecting a juicy mystery.

Review: The Republic of Thieves

Book Three in the Gentleman Bastards sequence
By Scott Lynch
Available now from Del Rey (Penguin Random House)
Review copy
Read my review of Red Seas Under Red Skies

RED SEAS UNDER RED SKIES came out in 2007, a little over six years ago. The one-two punch of the hilarious, complicated, and inventive THE LIES OF LOCKE LAMORA and its sequel had fans eagerly awaiting the third book in the Gentleman Bastards series.  (Especially because it promised a reunion between Locke and his love Sabetha.)  Now, it's finally here and almost guaranteed to be disappointing because there has been so much time to anticipate it and wonder about what would happen.

I breezed through THE REPUBLIC OF THIEVES, happy to be reunited with Locke and Jean and see them get out of their last scrape and straight into a new one.  As always, the story alternates between an episode in their past and their present.  I quite enjoyed the past, which reveals how Locke fell in love with Sabetha and wooed her.  I found those sections funny and liked how the ending forced the Gentleman Bastards to rely on their developing skills.  I also liked the development of Locke and Sabetha's romance, which is complicated by Sabetha's resentment of Locke's place in the gang.  They're similar in skill, but Sabetha is the outsider and Locke is the leader because of their sexes.

The present plot, which involves Locke and Jean trying to rig an election and Sabetha working for the other side, was less satisfying.  Yes, I liked spending time with the characters, but . . . there is no heist here, no clever unfolding of tricky plans.  The trickiest thing that happens in THE REPUBLIC OF THIEVES is about on par with Locke not even trying in one of the first two books.  The biggest revelation occurs in a bit of awkward exposition.  There's barely any plot here.  My disappointment isn't so much from over anticipation as THE REPUBLIC OF THIEVES not much resembling the first two books.  Not to mention there's no danger.  Each side is forbidden from killing the other.  If Locke and Jean win, they get to leave with protection.  If they lose, they just get to leave.  Those are possibly the lamest stakes ever.

I'll be back for the fourth installment in the Gentleman Bastards series.  The ending of THE REPUBLIC OF THIEVES remembers that there is a series arc and that danger is tantalizing.  The past bits are good and there's plenty of fun banter.  It's just that the main plot of this entry is oddly airless.  On a whole, this book is a nice diversion for an afternoon, but not what I expected from a favorite series.

Review: The In-Between

By Barbara Stewart
Available now from St. Martin's Griffin (Macmillan)
Review copy

Sometimes I'm just not sure how I feel about a book.  Barbara Stewart's debut THE IN-BETWEEN is one of those rare books.  Elanor Moss, her mother, and father were in a car wreck on their way to their new home.  Ellie and one of her parents survived.  But ever since the accident, Ellie's been seeing this girl, Madeline, around - her other half, who has a plan for her.

I liked the unreliability of the narrator.  There's a question of whether the things happening are supernatural, all in Ellie's head, or some combination of both.  Ellie has a family history of depression and a recent tragic event, on top of a friendship that went horribly awry and led to a suicide attempt in her old hometown.  Ellie needs help, but it's hard to know what kind of help she needs.

The writing is wonderfully poetic and creates a terrific atmosphere.  THE IN-BETWEEN is well suited to more elaborate prose, reflecting the chaos in Ellie's head and the confusing atmosphere.  It's a nice atmosphere, one that portends bad things coming, but also offers hope for Ellie.

But did I enjoy THE IN-BETWEEN?  Not that much.  I read it quite quickly because I didn't feel an urge to linger over the words, no matter how pretty they are.  I had my ideas about what was real and what wasn't fairly early, and I cared more about what would happen next than deciphering the veracity of Ellie's journals.  At the same time, I felt there was a lot to enjoy about THE IN-BETWEEN.

This book didn't work for me.  But I'm glad I read it, because I always enjoy books that take chances.  THE IN-BETWEEN is a strange book.  I think that makes it less suited to wide audiences, but at the same time will make it more meaningful for the people it clicks with.  I'm not sure I've read another YA novel that approached (probable) mental illness quite like this.  And I just want to love books that are ambitious, even if they fall short.

If THE IN-BETWEEN sounds like your kind of thing, give it a read.  If not, it isn't essential.

Review: Tainted

Second in a trilogy
By A.E. Rought
Available now from Strange Chemistry (Angry Robot)
Review copy
Read my review of Broken

When I read BROKEN, I was curious about how it would become a series because it stood alone just fine.  First, A.E. Rought makes Alex Franks the narrator instead of his girlfriend, Emma Jane Gentry, and let's his secrets drive the novel.  Most important is his stalker ex-girlfriend, Hailey.

I really dislike the evil ex trope.  TAINTED did nothing to change that.  I still enjoyed other parts of the novel, but I wished there had been more characterization of Hailey.  She's after either Alex as her boyfriend or half of his company, which just doesn't sound like obsessive love.  Not to mention she's very smart and diabolical, rendering the plot a bit of cat versus mouse caught in a trap.

Now, what did work for me is that Rought takes TAINTED to very unexpected places.  There's a huge event in the middle that I did not forsee at all, and one at the end that is brutal despite being foreshadowed.  I also liked that TAINTED revealed more about Alex before he came to Shelley High after his father's experiments.  There's still a sense of the characters being people who actually go to classes.

Some of the emotions and relationships in TAINTED disturbed me.  Alex and Emma are into each other in an overwhelming manner, which I don't mind too much because it fits the Gothic romanticism of the story.  I did mind some of Alex's thoughts about Bree, Emma's best friend, and how she needed a protector.  The girls aren't delicate flowers, which Alex should know.

Overall, I preferred BROKEN to TAINTED.  I didn't like Alex as much when I was inside his head, and the more inventive moments weren't enough to erase the taste of one of my least favorite tropes.  TAINTED wasn't bad and I'm sure I'll finish the trilogy, but it just felt a little off to me.