Sorry for all the delay
I am currently looking for work, and as such have little to no time to post my book reviews.
Keep tuned for updates in the next month or so – I recently received my autographed copy of Namah’s Kiss, and I can’t wait to review it.
The Wolf Quest Saga
I am not sure what to say about this book. It was offered up for review, and sounded interesting, as I sometimes enjoy werewolf stories. I was even more excited to see that the author lived in the Houston area, which is where I am located.
The book has a wonderful cover and a very interesting plot summary describing a race of werewolf like beings called the Wolfernians. The story is set in a modern setting with a young male protagonist coming of age. It is targeted at a teen audience, and appears to be a promising read.
Then I opened the cover and read the author’s introduction. In very poorly edited text the author describes his love of werewolves and a desire for books that feature werewolves as “good guys”. I am somewhat turned off by the poor editing, but I figured it for a pre-published work, so read on. I turned it over and discover that no, it is the final released version of it and I was dumbfounded.
This is the first book to review that I just cannot recommend for anyone to read. The plotline sounds really interesting and engaging, but the way it is written it is impossible to finish. There are so many typos and grammatical errors that I kept wanting to take a red pen to the page, and the writing style reminds me of teenage anime fanfiction.
I must credit the author with some very interesting plot ideas, and I feel that this book needs several more stages of development and editing to be ready for publication. Should this happen, I will be delighted to read it again, I think the topic would be very appealing to teens.
Upcoming attractions
I have just posted several reviews – and over the next few weeks look for reviews of Blue Jasmine, Keeping Corner, The Sky Village, The Red Necklace, and more!
The Shiniest Jewel by Marian Henley
This small book is one of a kind. It combines the memoir with the form of a graphic novel. The artwork is black and white and simply drawn, and at first I was unimpressed. I have seen better artwork in a variety of webcomics.
Something about the starkness of the art though, mirrored the stark language in the memoir. It wasn’t that it was simply written, but that you had the feeling that Marian Henley put all of herself out there to see as a way of talking about what her adoption experience was like.
This memoir is more than just an adoption story though, it is about transitions and the place between things – the transition into motherhood, the transition from confirmed bachlorette to married woman, the transition of her father from life to death…and how she handles each change as it comes. The story through its wording exudes a sense of taking life as it comes, its ups and downs with dignity.
Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
This book was an amazing read. I found that I just could not put it down, I had to know how it ended. Sarah’s Key follows two timelines, alternating each chapter, and shows the developments in the life of Sarah, a 10 year old Jewish girl living in France, and that of Julia Jarmond; an American married to a brooding Frenchman, who is assigned to write about the history of an infamous roundup of Jews for the concentration camps.
Reading about Sarah, and what has happened to her throughout her life was heartbreaking. Even though “Sarah” is a character of fiction, somewhere there were many girls just like her who faced horrors beyond our possibility to imagine. Many passages found me curled on my couch, reading avidly, with tears in my eyes. Tatiana creates characters that are enduring and heartrending to follow.
Julia becomes so obsessed with finding out the truth behind not only this horrifying round up and the French people’s willingness to pretend it never happened, but the truth behind the secret her husband’s family has been carrying so long that she risks the loss of everything in the process but her self respect. Wrapped up in her own emotional journey, will she lose her husband’s love? Read it and find out…
Sorry for the long wait…
I have been falling behind in my reviews lately because I have been caught up in work and school. I work for a non-profit after school program full time while getting a masters degree in education. Our campus is really short staffed right now, so I have had a crazy amount of work to do. Over the next few weeks I will post several reviews, and then after January it might be a while again. I graduate in May, and I will be able to do a lot more in the way of reviews.
A new review is up, though the book has been out a while, I want to post some short reviews on some of the books I have read lately – some new, some not so new.
Schooled by Anisha Lakhani
This book was written with a delightful amount of snarky cynicism. Her viewpoint on the private education system and the interaction between educators and parents is something that any teacher can sympathize with. She skillfully conveys the emotional and moral dilemma she faces as she weighs a hefty paycheck, the life she has always wanted, and luxuries beyond what she ever expected against her professional ethics, personal belief system, and complete loss of time to herself.
There were times when I felt downright envious reading about the shopping sprees and parties – who wouldn’t want to live life like that? Then again, there were a lot of times where as an educator, I have run into a lot of the same problems as this teacher did, except in a completely different economic class. What teacher hasn’t struggled with getting students to engage in a lesson, do homework, or turn in original work?
There were passages, however, where the book seemed more like reading a bad soap opera or opening the pages of a lurid tabloid. The actions of some parties just seems over written and false, and I am not sure if I could suspend my belief enough for it to pass, even for fiction. This was a decent book, but not one of the best that I have seen published by Hyperion.
Savvy by Ingrid Law
Savvy by Ingrid Law
ISBN: 978-0-2037-3306-0
As if being a teenager and dealing with all the complications of adolescence and puberty weren’t bad enough, this family has another reason to anticipate and fear the onset of the teen years in their children. On the thirteenth birthday, something remarkable happens. Their “savvy” or special talent, wakes up and as the back cover says
“What if your grandpa moves mountains, one of your brothers causes hurricanes, another creates electricity, and now it’s your turn?”
Mibs Beaumont is waiting eagerly for her 13th birthday and the chance to find out what her savvy will be, however everything changed with the ringing of the phone. Her father is in trouble, and she has to face the onset of her savvy without the guidance of her parents. Determined to help her father, she sets out to find him by any means necessary, which results in a heap of trouble for her, her brothers, and some new friends they meet along the way.
I must say I really enjoyed reading Savvy. I think that this is just a great time for young adult fiction – so many great works coming out these days. This story of a young girl coming of age is so different from what is often found on the book shelves. Instead of concerns over the mall and television, you have a character with depth and determination. When I was middle school aged, there was so little out there for me to read or identify with that it was hard to get engaged in books meant for adolescent girls. I was reading my father’s science fiction and fantasy because it was far more interesting to me than what was offered in my age level, though often what I read was probably not age appropriate.
Though I wasn’t necessarily concerned about strange powers awakening, I think any teen can identify with the idea of being a bit different and standing out, and the process of coming to terms with it. Unlike so many other stories, Mibs doesn’t give in to other people’s expectations in order to find happiness, but becomes more comfortable in her own skin.
I am glad to have gotten the opportunity to read this book, and will be using it in my classroom. I work with middle school students and I really think they will enjoy this book as much as I did.
Thanks Ingrid, for making sure I got a copy of the book!
The Lace Reader
The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry is perhaps one of the most intriguing novels I have read this year. Her characters are richly detailed and easily come to life in your mind. The ending is surprising, and it leaves you stunned. I wanted to go back and re-read it immediately to try to catch more details. This story is so full of tiny details and hints that you could probably pick out something new every time you read it, no matter how many times you read it.
I wanted to read this novel when I heard about it because I used to work in Salem, MA. I worked at the Salem 1630 Pioneer Village, so was very familiar with the stocks that Cal displayed his young “confessed witch” in. I have a picture of my little sister in those same stocks. She captured aspects of life in Salem so well, it sent me on many a trip down memory lane as I read through the novel, yet it just added to the book instead of taking away from it. It made the characters more real to set them in so well to this familiar setting.
This story centers around Sofya Whitney or Towner as she prefers to be called. She comes from a family with a long history of women who could read the future through images they pick out in patterns of lace. I am not 100% sure that this describes an actual practice or not, but given the number of things that the human mind can distinguish patterns in, I would not be surprised if it is an actual tradition either. What matters for the story though, is that it is richly described and meticulously detailed and is the mechanic that moves the plot in new and interesting directions, and informs the reader that all is not as it appears.
Rafferty, a detective that befriends Eva, the matron of the family, tries to get close to Towner and is one of the people in the end who is most successful in helping her through her many ordeals. The high praises that Eva gave of Towner conflicts with the town’s opinion that she was plain crazy, and causes him to dig deeper to solve the mysteries of her past. Towner narrates chunks of her past as you read through the book, but as you read, you learn that her memory has holes, and after all, she is a self confessed liar.
This book contains mysteries within mysteries, what really happened to cause Eva’s disappearance? Who was behind it? What lays behind Towner’s aversion to reading the future hidden in lace, or to being read herself? Though Towner desperately wants to leave Salem and never return, all her hopes, fears and past history lay in these streets – what is she running from? Once I started reading it I was unable to put it down. To find out all of the answers to these questions, run to the nearest book store and pick up a copy!
Contest for Kushiel’s Scion
Check out http://www.bloodofthemuse.com/search/label/giveaways for a contest for a signed copy of Kushiel’s Scion. Or wish me luck winning it because I am a huge fan.
