Dreaming In Books

Title:  The Obsidian Man

Author:  Jon Wilson

Publisher:  JMS Books

Series:  Obsidian Man #1

Other Reviews for This Author:  None

There are a few LGBTQ books out there that I am completely baffled by.  Not baffled in the sense that "This sucks, why is this published?", but baffled in the sense that I don't know how to grade the book.   The Obsidian Man is a book that left a series of strong impressions on me.  At first there was a lot of interest in the novel - it starts off strong and suggests a massive and interesting world on the horizon.  Then, a giant dip in the middle of it caught me unawares and made the narrative frustrating.  The ending wrapped it all up and managed to make me feel better about the affair.  The Obsidian Man just isn't an easy book to judge, but it's certainly unique and an appealing indie fantasy for the YA and LGBTQ markets.

Holt has lived in a small town for as long as he's been alive - some thirteen odd years that have shaped him and confused him as to who he really is.  His family is tough to handle, as is his life as a whole.  Holt harbors a strong desire to leave his village and move someplace better.  A place where someone like him can live without feeling emotionally drained.  Holt's dream is to become a Danaan ranger.  The Danaan, a race of people living in VaSaad-Ka, are known for the guardianship of other races and their abilities with magic.  The Danaan are mysterious and accepting in a way that Holt's people aren't.

The possibility of becoming a ranger is small for Holt.  One first needs to be apprenticed, and one also needs to be able to get to VaSaad-Ka.  Holt latches onto a ranger taking residence in the village in order to achieve his goal.  The ranger reluctantly introduces himself as Kawika and gets to know the young Holt, but is put off by his eagerness and his age.  Holt is yet young, and to make such a decision is momentous for someone Holt's age.  An apprenticeship to Kawika would require Holt to leave behind the village of Darnouth, its residents, and his family.  The decision isn't one that Kawika wants to give to the boy just yet, but he underestimates Holt's persistence to the greatest degree.

Fate has different plans for the two, however.  Holt's village is under Kawika's care, but even a skilled ranger cannot prevent everything from getting beyond a village's defenses.  A hoard of trolls - known as jirran - and other monsters invade Holt's village and start a fiery decimation that changes Holt's life forever.  His choice to become a ranger seems more validated than ever when he witnesses people being killed and buildings being burned to the ground.  Death and destruction are only the beginning.  A creature veiled in shadow threatens Kawika and enacts a destructive chain of events that starts Holt on a journey far darker than he ever anticipated.

Readers may be surprised to discover that Holt is as young as he is.  The Obsidian Man is marketed as YA, and it does fit the marketing - but Holt reads like a character aimed at bridging the middle schooler/high schooler gap.  He's still a tad young for romance - and he doesn't have a romantic arc in this book that one can see -  and his actions are more about the self-discovery period of growing into one's young-adult stage.  Holt, however, is still a character that shows a great deal of trouble and emotional promise.  Holt starts out as a very single-minded boy bent on getting out of his village.  He's very vague as to why he has to do so, but his determination is incredible (and at times frustrating when he interacts with Kawika).  A large period of this book's middle deals with Holt going to a very dark place, and his initial personality gets lost as he deals with a tragedy that takes up a great portion of the rest of the book.  Holt's narration gets very skewed as a result.  The narrative becomes less focused and linear, and Holt doesn't have a truly sharp sense of the passage of time and of events going on.  It reads as something that is purposeful.  Yet, there are times in the narrative where it feels out of hand.  The reader gets to the stage where the narrative structure is confusing without a defined purpose or value in the confusion, and those portions make Holt's narrative hard to care about at times.  Eventually his character gets reigned in and we see enough of his emotional turmoil humanized, but the lasting effects of Holt's confusion leave a strange aftertaste to the reading experience.

The other characters have varying levels of interest.  There are some like Kawika and his partner that are really worth exploring - their relationship, its place in their society and race, and how this leads to an eventual distance between Holt and Kawika's partner because of extenuating circumstances in the plot.  I think Wilson hits those characters with high notes because of their sexuality and how there's a special care to the tenderness and relationship between Kawika and his partner, and how that translates into Holt becoming Kawika's apprentice and essential-ward, which effects how Kawika's partner views  Holt.  The other secondary characters are admittedly too confusing to garner a large level of interest.  Most of them are introduced after Holt becomes a very addled character, and the narration ultimately follows Holt's mindset more than one would like after a while.  The characters are introduced haphazardly, and none of them really stick out as being memorable - even in plot terms.  Part of this could be their names, which are fantasy names and less likely to be memorable to the casual reader, but their introduction and placement in the plot makes it harder to see them as being inherently memorable or useful as characters.  There is no grounding for these characters and their purpose in the plot, and it is reminiscent of watching a television show mid-season.  The type of television show with one season-long story arc.  You come along for the ride of the episode's singular story, but everything else screams that you have missed countless plot developments and character introductions.  People are just acting without a clear sense of motivation, and thus you really can't find yourself caring about them the way you would if you started watching it from the beginning.

This is where The Obsidian Man loses steam.  As Holt's character goes into a hazed mental state for a good portion of the book, the narrative follows it too closely.  There's no feeling of separation when it focuses on other characters and events.  Those characters and events are also rarely introduced, and sometimes one would have to read one page two or three times to try and determine why the character was even appearing in a scene or acting the way they were.  This lack of introduction is a major storytelling flop in this case, because fantasy itself already requires the reader to ease into a new world with entirely new people.  One does not have to start with two hundred pages of mindless filler, but a balance of explanation, general exposition, characterization, and plot movement is not too hard to find in a fantasy novel that starts off with a bang like The Obsidian Man.  The trouble was that, as the novel went on, less focus went into events and exposition that helped lead the reader to a general understanding of things.  It was also hard to determine what the terms meant in context of the text.  The Obsidian Man does come with a glossary of terms, but the real test is always if those terms stand on their own without needing an authorial explanation.  Most of them required going back to the glossary, which inhibited the reading experience because it took me out of the world in order to figure out what the heck was going on.

The Obsidian Man does have its strengths, though.  The world is unusual and has a suggested broad scope to it.  One can easily imagine taking several books in this world and seeing a very full place with a lot of well-defined characters and groups of people.  I enjoyed learning about the Danaan, their social status with other races, and the impending darkness of the jirran and other monstrous beings.  There's something so fascinating about those kinds of things in fantasy, and Wilson adds some unique touches to them.  The Obsidian Man also has a lot of darkness to it that most people would not consider a young-adult/middle-grade aimed fantasy novel to have.  In many ways The Obsidian Man is a story that expands far beyond Holt - though Wilson gets out of control with those stages at times and thus makes the plot hard to follow in the middle of the story.  The ending of the novel manages to wrap things up and remind the reader of the initial goal of the book, and it gives one hope that the future novel(s) in the series will be more focused.  This one just wasn't.  A fantasy that aims to look at so many characters without explanation, backstory, and a solid thread between them is bound to confuse the reader to some extent - and to further that, the length of this novel really makes it hard to tackle that the way a large, door-stop fantasy can (like eventually get to the point because of the sheer length of the thing).  Wilson's writing is solid and can be quite lovely in some passages, and I feel like the tone and voice of the novel are the strongest aspects because of Wilson's technique.  He occasionally uses some seemingly random things in order to expand the narrative view - and as a result making those things feel artificial - but for the most part his writing is refined and shows a welcome new style in young adult.  (Note that the protagonist, being thirteen, straddles the line between young adult and middle grade work).  I was also glad that Wilson waited to incorporate any type of romance with Holt's story.  In this case, it was a really good idea to keep a romantic thread out of the story arc for him.

The Obsidian Man is a hard book to pin down because of how varied my viewpoint of it was throughout the reading experience.  At some points it was fabulous.  At others, extremely confusing, and not because of complicated subject matter.  This book is such a balance scale of good and bad, but ultimately I enjoyed reading it because it was fresh and the pacing and length of the story managed to push me through the middle.  I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, but those looking for a unique start to a fantasy series with LGBTQ themes and a young-adult main character will find it worth a pick-up.  I think the second book will do much better with the world having some type of establishment to it, and the flaws of this book weren't nearly so bad as to turn me away from trying out Wilson again.

Cover:  Okay, this cover just sucks.  It's very blurry and the bat makes *no* sense.  It's supposed to represent a monster in the book (possibly), but the monster looks so far from a bat that I don't find it justifiable.

Rating:  3.0  Stars

Copy:  Received from author for review  (Thank you so much, Jon!)

Title:  Sweet Venom

Author:  Tera Lynn Childs

Publisher:  Katherine Teagen Books

Series:  Sweet Venom #1

Other Reviews for This Author:  None  (Although I read Forgive My Fins)

Tera Lynn Childs is one of those authors that always puts out a solid product that manages to be extremely fluffy on some levels, yet extremely satisfying at the same time.  It's hard to write a novel that is fun but also filling, so to speak, and Childs has that type of writing down to a science.  I read Forgive My Fins and was shocked - shocked - at just how adorable it was, but I was also shocked by just how perfect of a mermaid book it was for me.  Needless to say, Sweet Venom was a novel that I had high hopes for (being a work of Childs) but also some reservations about (mainly the juggling of three distinct first-person viewpoints).  Post-reading, it's safe to say that Childs really has the magic touch with these types of stories, and I can't wait to see what's coming next from her in both series of books.

Gretchen has worked as a descendant of Medusa for quite some time.  She may still just be in  high school, but spending her spare time (if one could call it that) sending baddies back to where they came from is second nature to her.  A minotaur on the loose?  Gretchen swoops in and saves the day, biting him and sending him back to where he came from with a special serum that comes from her retractable fangs.  Gretchen is fully in touch with her heritage as a daughter of Medusa because of her mentor, Ursula.  Gretchen has never known another daughter of Medusa, but she's handled things perfectly well on her own, anyway.

Grace has just moved to San Francisco and doesn't know a single person.  She's lived in a small town for so long.  The chance of going to a big school in the big city is priceless - especially when it's on scholarship.  Moving to such a new area gives Grace the chance to become a new person.  She can be more exciting, more daring, and actually seem attractive to the cute guys at school.  Moving to San Francisco just seems like the picture-perfect situation for Grace, but things start to go very wrong when she notices that a few of the city's residents are quite monstrous.

Greer, unlike the other two girls, is very much relaxed and content with her current stage of life.  She lives with a very well-to-do family and is able to enjoy the leisurely aspects of life.  Greer's life plans do not include humoring the crazed delusions of two girls that look exactly like her.  What do they think she is - stupid?  The resemblance between them is uncanny, but do they really believe that she'll buy the idea of monsters from Greek myth running around San Francisco?  Greer is not ready to change the life that is going so well for her, but Gretchen and Grace may just have to change it anyway.

What really grabs the reader right away is Childs' command for multiple points-of-view within her novels.  Having previously read Forgive My Fins, I knew that there was an expectation for Childs establishing a clear and fun tone of voice to the book - but there was also an expectation that said voice would probably be spread out between the three characters, blurring the lines.  That often happens with novels such as this because it's hard for authors to differentiate personality and writing styles between different first-person points-of-view.  Childs manages to create three distinct characters with Gretchen, Grace, and Greer, and there's a wonderful satisfaction as a reader to deal with such distinct points of view in the interwoven narrative.  Each sister has her own level of depth and narrative use, but Gretchen and Grace are by far the most focused on in Sweet Venom - mostly due to the fact that Greer is discovered later by the other two and is thus doesn't have her narrative shown until that occurs.  Gretchen is by far the most intense of the three girls.  She's very much focused on her duty as a descendent of Medusa.  Fighting baddies, kicking butt, and taking names tends to do that to a girl.  She wants room to do more with her life, but at the same time she doesn't like the idea of doing a bunch of squishy-emotional teenage things like having a guy show interest in her.  There's also the fact that Gretchen is plagued with responsibility.  Ursula saddles her with it by the bucket load, and as a result Gretchen never really has time to loosen up.  Meeting Greer and Grace allows her to start opening up more, and as a reader it's nice to see her weaken a bit at the idea of a male suitor and a sisterly-bond coming into the picture.

Grace, by contrast, is a different type of YA heroine.  She's the type that is in a new environment, attempts self-reinvention, and discovers a latent (and most likely supernatural) part of herself that literally does reinvent her life.  Oh, and she also gets a massive crush on a cute guy.  Yep.  Grace is pretty standard in today's YA world, but Childs manages to use her fluffy and humorous tone to make her stand out in some narrative ways.   She loses her way compared to Gretchen in terms of narrative strength in some points - her growth is easier to predict and see, and her narrative is more about learning the basics of the supernatural mythos, whereas Gretchen's narrative has more action and mystery that comes from the character already knowing what the heck is going on with the supernatural creatures.  Greer is the odd character out in that she doesn't get introduced until later in the book, but she manages to be a strong personality that is harder to like because of her extreme reluctance to believe Gretchen and Grace about the existence of Greek creatures (naturally, this is rather understandable, so one can't hate that part of her attitude so much).  She's initially very full of it, and it's a real pleasure to read about her becoming more of a  humbled character that looks forward to learning about her past and disrupting  her life in the name of saving the world and getting to know her siblings.

Characters such as these make the reading experience fun.  What Childs specializes in is creating a character with a basic and straight-forward line of growth and evolution that still manages to feel appealing and fleshed out.  Her characters have a strong personality established that manages to grow and become complex, even though she doesn't work with a lot of intricate themes and dynamics within their narratives.  This is why Childs is such a skilled author - she's able to take a basic idea and allows it to breath in a way that's amusing but also substantial, whereas other authors require more weighty subject matters and complicated plots in order to have the same effect with their characters.  Her side characters are also very much enjoyable characters, although they don't share the same growth due to the point-of-view constraints.  Ursula is pretty awesome, and the male love-interests are sexy but not over-the-top brooding.  Childs has a tendency to make her love interests feel real, and she doesn't go for the brooding/dark stereotype as much as other paranormal authors do.  It's a nice change of pace and makes her storyline feel less like a dramatic attempt at a paranormal concept and more like a fun read that just so happens to involve killing monsters from Greek mythology.

Writing-wise, Childs continues her tone of characterization and growth into the plot.  There are no extreme surprises here, and the plot twists are fairly easy to decipher if you pay attention to the clues.  Childs doesn't make plot twists the pivotal point of her books, however, and it becomes very obvious when there is no disappointment in figuring them out before they actually occur.  Instead, Sweet Venom is an example of a story where the plot is easily backed by its cast of characters.  Each of the events that happens is dramatic and exciting because of the narrative and how the characters react to it.  There's a humor sprinkled throughout everything that also adds to the pacing of the story.  For a book that is over 300 pages, this read is a fast one that will be hard to put down.  Childs really makes the reader invested in what's going on, and her twisting of Greek mythology to make an urban fantasy situation is pretty grand.  It's also one that we haven't seen as much of recently (I'm looking at you, retellings of the Persephone myth...).  Sweet Venom ultimately takes on the role of a light urban fantasy - as opposed to a paranormal romance - and it works in the book's favor.  The romances don't feel like they need a giant amount of development for the first book of the series, and the plot and mythology are thus more focused on.  Childs manages to keep everything exciting to the reader, and the reader, as a result, does not want to put the book down.

There's not much to complain about with Sweet Venom.  Tera Lynn Childs is an author that writes a consistent type of novel, considering that both works I've read by her have had strong tones of voice, characters, and plot developments.  The three girls are developed well and have their own distinct voices, and the minor characters are amusing but less developed.   Strong writing, tone, and world-building interest help keep the book from seeming slow, and it proves itself to be a read that isn't hard but yet still satisfies.  Forgive My Fins is still tops for me from Childs, but Sweet Venom is by no means a disappointment.

Cover:  Eh.  I like the subtlety with the way her braid moves, but I've seen this stock image on two or three young adult novels already.

Rating:  4.5  Stars

Copy:  Received from publisher/publicist for review  (Thanks so much, Heather and Harper Collins!!)

Title:  The Summer Garden

Author:  Sherryl Woods

Publisher:  MIRA Books

Series:  Chesapeake Shores #

Other Reviews for This Author:  None

When you come into the final novel of a romance series - particularly as a reader who has never read the previous books - you are inevitably coming into a thing of much chance.  Romance series have a particular penchant for ending on an overly-happy note.  The HEA easily reaches to many other characters.  This happens especially with novels like The Summer Garden, which explore a set amount of family members living very close to each other.  On some levels, The Summer Garden worked as a strong romance, but on others it dragged on and had too many obviously leftover elements from other novels in the romance series for it to stand alone for me as a reader.

A turbulent family reconciliation in Ireland brought Luke O'Brien together with a very unique girl - Moira O'Malley.  Moira was everything that Luke's lover, Kirsten, wasn't.  Kirsten was a simple physical fling that seemed to just be around because Luke was an O'Brien - having lost her chance at snagging one of the other O'Brien men earlier.  Moira, however, was something different.  Moira was a hothead and extremely stubborn, yet nothing attracted Luke more than a girl who made things anything but easy.  Moira captured his heart and managed to make him feel things that Kirsten never did.  With the Ireland excursion now over, Luke has to travel back to the United States and continue with his life and his plan to make an authentic Irish pub in Chesapeake Shores.  Moira may not be with him physically, but she never seems to leave his mind.

Moira O'Malley has been building a solid relationship with her grandfather, and in doing so has discovered Luke O'Brien, the grandson of her grandfather's newly-rekindled sweetie, Nell.  Luke has challenged Moira beyond belief.  Moira has just been bartending in a Dublin pub, never knowing quite what she wants to do.  The flash of romance and passion with Luke has set off a chain of events that leads her photography - once merely a hobby - to potentially becoming a big business outlet for her.  Moira has every chance in the world to be successful in Dublin.  It's when her grandfather Dillon suggests that she go with him to visit Chesapeake Shores in the US that Moira realizes that she wants something a little more immediately than her photography...Luke.

The visitation from Ireland isn't a surprise.  Well, Dillon's isn't.  Moira's arrival comes as a shock to Luke, however, and he cannot help but be thrown off-kilter with the arrival of his Irish love.  He already has time tables and schedules set up for the eventual opening of his pub, and none of his plans called for a return of a woman that means more to him than anyone else.  Moira's delight in visiting Luke quickly gets tinged with regret, as she soon discovers that Luke is conflicted with moving forward while he already has such a large business decision going on in his life.  How could he have time for a proper romance as well?  Moira feels that there's something special with Luke, but her stubborn heritage makes it clear that, if he isn't careful, she won't bother waiting around for him to be ready.

Heroine-wise, I think Moira does a good job of being a complicated character to deal with.  Her stubbornness is apparent but not unfounded or over-the-top (which apparently was the case when she was introduced as a secondary character, based on other characers' reactions to her).  There's also a lot of conflict with her in regards to what she wants to do in life, and her age range makes that conflict pretty relative.  (Both Moira and Luke are in their twenties, I believe).  Moira's ultimate struggles involve her inability to choose between a promising career in photography that could be a huge risk and the promising and much safer possibility of being a mother/housewife.  Moira knows both will give her satisfaction to some degree, but she can't help but feel that she can be wrong for wanting to give up a career that everyone else says she could become a star in.  Moira also struggles with her relationship with Luke.  Luke is a very driven man and returns her affections, but the ultimate feeling is that she should not be able to simply be sacrificed/set-aside in order for him to open his pub.  Moira's problems are  with executing the concept of juggling a career and a romantic/family life, as she wants Luke to be able to juggle a career and romance, but the idea of juggling career and an eventual family, to her, sounds daunting.  This ultimately works well for her, but the novel has portions where the arguments and issues seem to recycle themselves before they move forward, and sometimes Moira comes across her epiphanies too easily after a long period of cyclical thinking.  Still, it meshes some small-town romance tropes with more modern mindsets and tries to make a compromise with it, which makes for an interesting heroine.

The reader relationship with Luke, in my experience was more mixed.  Luke is certainly a great guy that one can imagine Moira falling in love with.  Both characters share a level of stubbornness with each other that seems to defy logic, yet both find it attractive and have a solid relationship dynamic that is very unique and feels like honest-to-god love.  Luke's problem is specifically with his inability to see past his obsession with organization.  He knows that he loves Moira and wants to be with her, but he has no idea the pain that he causes her by putting aside further relationship development - especially when she's not staying permanently - in order to put all of his time into making his pub, even when she spends time with him on said endeavor.  This seems absolutely ludicrous after a while.  Luke is supposedly a sensible man, yet he can't find the time to work on his relationship - even just in baby steps - while making this pub?  At the very least, it takes a lot to get over the fact that he doesn't think about the repercussions of Moira's limited stay and how she can't just wait around for him.  The conflict eventually gets resolved in a way that feels realistic, but at times I felt Luke's ignorance to Moira's situation was overpowering of the reasons behind it, making it hard to sympathize with where Luke was coming from as a hero.

These two manage to make a romance that works.  There's a lot of chemistry written between them.  They interact and have sweet (off-screen) sex, and the relationship has a lot of grounding to it from the get-go.  This book didn't stray from its romance incentive, which I liked.  I fully expected it to veer into women's fiction territory, so it was nice to see the romantic focus at full capacity.  There was an extremely high ratio of past-couples coming back in the novel.  All of the secondary characters are family members of Luke's or Moira's (by birth or by marriage).  I think maybe one or two at most was a non-family character, and they didn't have much impact on the storyline.  There's nothing wrong with a strong familial bond in a romance novel.  On the contrary, many of the best romance series are based on a tight-knit family finding true love throughout a series of novels.  The only problem is that Chesapeake Shores can supposedly support all of these businesses, but the only people that ever seem to come into them are members of the O'Brien family.  I wanted more non-O'Brien interaction to offset Luke's voice in the novel and give Moira's perspective more strength as an outsider.  She talks with the other O'Brien wives and gains insights, but it's not the same as having an outside and unbiased source being involved.  It also can stray into the, "Well, they're O'Briens," territory, which can get old as an excuse for characterization.  Mostly, I felt like it limited the community feeling of a romance that seemed big on establishing itself as taking place in a strong community.

Other parts of the novel were well-crafted.  I could see how Woods got her fanbase and published so many books.  Chesapeake Shores, though seemingly just an entire area of O'Briens, is pictured in a very beautiful way that reminds the reader of summers and gorgeous small-town scenery that seems almost ethereal.  A gorgeous natural setting is one of the big draws of the small-town romance, and Chesapeake Shores has that excellent setting down to a science.  There were also some really enjoyable sub-plots, such as the romance between Dillon and Nell.  Two old lovers reuniting after years and years?  It's very adorable, and Nell and Dillon are vivacious characters that easily warm your heart.  They are knowledgeable but also young at heart, and it makes them fun to read about.  The dialogue from some of the characters felt a tad too old in some places, especially when considering that many of the characters were in their twenties.  I could accept it to some degree based on how they were raised and how close they were as a family, yet I couldn't shake the feeling that something in the dialogue suggested more experience - and the only real reason I noticed it was because I noticed several of the characters using it despite the age they were at.

The real question with these books is - will I go back and read the previous books in the series, or read future books by the author?  In this case, I feel like I would do the latter but not the former.  Woods is a solid writer who writes some lovely things, but The Summer Garden is one of those cases where the book is more of a denouement rather than something that can stand on its own - which I believe series romances like this should be able to do.  It's ultimately about experiencing this final romantic push that symbolizes a community-type HEA with the couples from previous books constantly being in the backdrop.  The Summer Garden was cute and raised some good issues within the romance, but it was too weighted down by these other characters and the cyclical approach to the romantic issues.  I'm looking forward to starting one of Woods' series from the beginning, as I feel like the experience is much more satisfying than starting at the end.

Cover:  It's a very pretty cover that's classic to this romance sub-genre.  Gotta admit, the garden is gorgeous.  It makes me yearn for summer.

Rating:  3.5  Stars

Copy:  Received from publicist/publisher for review  (Thank you, Eric and Harlequin!)

Hi, all!  Today, I'm participating in a blog tour for M.J.Rose's The Book of Lost Fragrances.  I just started reading it, and it is a mystery with a paranormal twist that follows a centuries-old mystery involving an Egyptian perfume.  Not only is it a fun read, but it even inspired a scent of perfume!  I'm providing an excerpt, the next stop on the tour, and a giveaway for a sample of said inspired-perfume,

Glazed white, it was decorated with elaborate coral and turquoise designs and hieroglyphs that encircled its belly. The lost language of the ancients no one could read. But one L’Etoile could surely smell. He touched the waxy surface. So this, here in his hand, was the wellspring of the odor that had drawn L’Etoile toward the chamber.


He wasn’t prescient. Not a psychic. L’Etoile was sensitive to one thing only: scent. It was why at twenty he’d left Marie-Genevieve and Paris in 1789 for the dry air and heat of Egypt, to study this ancient culture’s magical, mesmerizing smells. But none of what he’d discovered in all that time compared to what he held in his hands.

This scene is really atmospheric, no?  Be sure to stop at the next blog on the blog tour to read the next excerpt. It can be found at:

http://sharonsgardenofbookreviews.blogspot.com/

And, as an added bonus....

Title:  Variant

Author:  Robison Wells

Publisher:  Harper Teen

Series:  Variant #1

Other Reviews for This Author:  None

There's always a novel or two that surprises me despite sounding like something not my thing.  Variant was a novel that set itself up to be entertaining but forgettable.  I'd heard it billed as a dystopian - which it is in some senses, but not to the post-apocalyptic part of the trend - and it sounded more like a novel aimed at male readers.  Which, as we all know, can turn out very badly.  Variant may just be one of the most enjoyable surprise reads I've read in a while, though.  Wells proves himself to be an author well-balanced action, intrigue, and (yes) romance.

Benson has moved around constantly because of the foster care system.  He inevitably moves around from school to school; home to home.   Attachment is minimal at best.  Benson has never really found his place in the world.  The opportunity arises for him to apply for a scholarship aimed at kids like him.  This scholarship leads Benson to a place at Maxfield Academy.  Maxfield promises to be a secluded school with opportunity, and Benson needs some opportunity in his life.  The ability to stay in one place is also enticing to Benson.  He arrives at Maxfield with hope, but quickly realizes that what seemed like a golden opportunity at the time isn't so perfect now.

Maxfield Academy is a high-security boarding school that seems to offer more in its setup than education.  As Benson first walks into Maxfield, he realizes that the school is divided into three core groups of students:  Society, Havoc, and Variants.  Maxfield's not run like a traditional boarding school, and the school's social structure relies on these three groups being at odds with one another.  With almost no understanding of what the social system really means, Benson is forced to choose one of the groups to belong to.  Society seems pleasant and follows the rules, yet still comes across as strong and intimidating in their methods.  Havoc is, by contrast, bent on the chaotic and unlawful side of Maxfield Academy.  Unlike Society, Havoc is also much more blunt about the amount of force used to get new recruits.

True to form, Benson has always been one of the outliers of society.  Havoc and Society both scuffle for his potential recruitment, and the Variants seem like the only sane choice to go with.  Benson soon comes to learn more about Maxfield Academy.  Or rather, what little is actually known about the mysterious school.  He discovers that the societies are fairly self-sufficient and divide up a list of assigned jobs that earn them credits used to purchase things like paintball equipment, snacks, and video games.  The school's actual educational schedule is erratic.  Despite the strange structure, no one truly knows what the school's purpose is.  Are they being tested like lab rats, or is it something much worse?  Benson isn't the first student to question it, but unlike the others, his determination leads him to revelations that could change Maxfield Academy forever.

Balancing a straight-male character in a young adult novel is hard.  Teen boys, in general, are quite complicated in a different way than the teen girls (and I say this coming from the perspective of a very gay teen boy who doesn't understand other teen boys the way he understands teen girls).  Wells gets it (and considering he was a straight-teenage-boy at one point in his life, that is probably a given) and writes it well in Variant.  What he does that makes it so worthy of noticing is that he makes this teen boy accessible to girl readers while still making the book one that will attract boy readers.  Boy readers are picky, and they'll come to really like Benson and his personality.  Benson is an outcast but not overly so, and he is defined by an incorrigible sense of curiosity and determination to escape Maxfield Academy.  What makes him an immediately appealing characters is this determination.  He never becomes content or at ease with the subtle social barbarism that Maxfield inflicts on its students.  One admires a character like that, and there's a reason the character trait is used so often in dystopian/post-apocalyptic books in particular.  Benson does grow throughout Variant as well.  He becomes a braver, stronger, and more cunning version of his initial self.  The ways he discovers some of Maxfield's secrets are rather genius, and he becomes more and more inclined to make smart decisions as he realizes that his impulsive need to escape requires a more calculated approach.

Variant, though a place of strong characters, isn't particularly focused on them.  The secondary characters are ones that serve the plot well and go beyond plot-devices in some respects, but ultimately aren't as memorable as one would hope them to be outside the confines of the book.  Benson has two main "love interests", although it's made fairly clear which one he grows to prefer throughout the novel.  Becky is a Society girl that he meets on the outset of coming to Maxfield, and she quickly becomes a versatile character - a girl who wants to play by the rules, but also befriends Benson to some extent and understands the undercurrents of rebellion that he feels.  Jane, by contrast, is a simpler girl in the Variants that catches his fancy and seems to be really into him.  The non-love-interests include Lily - a tiny girl who is fierce on the paintball field - and Mason, a guy that Benson befriends within the Variants early on.  Benson had a fair amount of non-love interest characters that were just as important as the love interests, so that was a huge plus for the secondary characters.  Wells also succeeded in making the various societal-faction dynamics work well.  The fighting and strategy behind the three factions was quite interesting, and the intensity that many of the kids had as a result of them was scary (though very cool).  This is the kind of thing that works for the boarding school aspect, and Wells used it to keep a lot of the simpler drama from ever appearing.  Most of the characters don't go too deep into their backstories because of how Maxfield requires them to be so focused on the present situations, so in some ways it's hard to really feel connected to some of them beyond the plot.

The other side of Variant is the engaging plot and setting.  Maxfield initially sounds like another boarding school trope, but Wells turns it into a very dangerous dystopian-type facility.  It's similar in its theme and purpose to the challenges in Veronica Roth's Divergent - meaning that the goal of the place is in many ways about survival and competition, all the while masking other purposes that most of the participants do not know about.  This keeps the plot interesting, as there is a level of mystery to everything that goes in Maxfield Academy.  Why is the education erratic?  Why do they use simulated paintball wars between the students as an activity?  Why is it that students will randomly be locked out or left without food for a day or more?  There is so much that no one understands, and even the students that work in clerical jobs for the Academy are oblivious to what everything truly means.  This intrigue is great for the reader, and Wells manages to make it seem realistic that no one had challenged Maxfield's purposes as deeply as Benson did.  The punishments at Maxfield can be nonexistent or brutal, depending on the severity, and the peer pressure of the factions also brought much to the table in terms of compliance with most of the students.  Wells also adds in a lot of mental playing within Variant.  Since there is so much unknown about Maxfield, one has no idea what the real purpose is.  This means that the students become focused on their own thoughts and theories, and they end up playing this insane game of factions that leads to mental craze in some cases.  They lose themselves in a game that they are simply pawns in.  It's all quite disturbing, but in a way that really keeps you reading.

Some of Variant's plot aspects also err more on the side of an attempt to be appealing.  Wells provides a fair explanation for the use of paintball as an activity for the students, but it still jolts the reader out of things for a bit until they become used to the idea.  Some plot points that come up later are quite shocking - and in a good way - but also don't get fully resolved.  The cliffhanger ending on the book is a bad one.  It's akin to A Beautiful Dark's.  This means that there really isn't resolution to the mystery or the destruction found in Maxfield, and I think that it would have helped to attempt to supply more of a resolution to some of those questions.  Enough of one that readers could close the book with the sense that the author had an assured path twisting through the insanity of everything.  Still, the information that Variant leaves the reader on is shocking and leaves room for the second book to do a lot of great things.  The attempt to be appealing in story is occasionally too much, but the overall effect is one that leaves a reader wanting more at the end - which is in some ways more important than an outright resolution, as Variant promises to be a series that readers will enjoy investing themselves in.  Wells has a writing style that is very solid and strong in pacing, but it doesn't lack in emotional connection or focus.  The romance isn't too simplified, but the intrigue and action scenes aren't lost in the process. 

Readers will see a lot to love in Variant based on the style and main character.  Teens will enjoy reading about Benson's escapades and attempts at uncovering Maxfield Academy's secrets, and they'll find the meatiness of what the story presents to be worth the reading time.  The well-done romance and action scenes will appeal to readers of both types, and the survival/intrigue aspects of the book manage to enhance the themes along the way.  The secondary characters and resolution were not as satisfactory, but there is enough promise within the next book to suggest that Variant only scratched the surface of these aspects.  It's truly an enjoyable and well-rounded debut novel for the YA set.

Cover:  I enjoy this cover a lot, actually.  The title font and author name are cool and simple, and the photo reminds one of a camera sneaking a picture.  It describes the feel of the book well.

Rating:  4.5  Stars

Copy:  Received from publisher/publicist for review  (Thanks, Heather and Harper Teen!)

Title:  Enthralled

Editors:  Melissa Marr and Kelley Armstrong

Publisher:  Harper

Series:  None

Other Reviews for These Authors:  The Awakening;  The Reckoning

As always, I'm going to try to review this anthology by the individual stories.  Some are great, some aren't, and some are in the middle.  Enthralled was a read that I was very excited for, and for the most part it really succeeds in providing a fun and fresh set of stories for readers.  Some of the authors hit it out of the park, and others don't.  There's an author for every YA paranormal reader, though, and at least one story will resonate with someone based on the mix of authorial types and styles within the anthology. 

Giovanni's Farewell by Claudia Gray

Claudia Gray, as always, starts off strong.  Her story involves a brother and sister who help a troubled spirit lay itself to rest, and also deals with the supernatural powers associated with seeing said spirit.  I love Gray's work, and her stories - short and novel-length - always have an easy style to them that feels vibrant and exciting.  This story could easily expand into an idea for a novel or lead into one, and Gray makes the characters amiable and easy to read about.  Really, if you like any of her work, this story is worth a read.  It's also a great introduction to her writing style.

Scenic Route by Carrie Ryan

Ryan's The Forest of Hands and Teeth is, to this day, one of my favorite zombie novels.  Ryan's style is morbid and fabulous.  She writes zombie novels the way Ally Carter writes heist novels.  The tone and mood are just pitch-perfect.  Much like Ryan's story in Zombies Vs. Unicorns, Scenic Route is written with a deft hand and a great sense of pacing.  Ryan's world is tough, gritty, and accessible to new readers as well as old ones.  This story scared the crap out of me and reminded me why I love Ryan's work.  Seriously, the anthology is worth buying just to read this story.


Red Run by Kami Garcia

This was my first introduction to Ms. Garcia's work, as I have not read Beautiful Creatures.  Red Run was a decent story about a haunted road and a fight with a ghost, but after reading it I didn't feel satiated as a reader.  It was a well-done story, but nothing about it really hit my short-story pleasure center.  I do enjoy reading about ghosts, but felt like Garcia's construction of the story and the actual plot didn't work well enough for me to recommend it.  Still, a solid read and better than some other stories in the anthology.


Things About Love by Jackson Pearce

This was also an intro to a new author - and I've since gone on to read a novel by Pearce, Sisters Red, which I didn't enjoy as much as this story.  This story follows a genie and her ward as he goes through college, both of them experiencing a type of affection for a guy.  It was sweet, cute, and I loved that the genie's ward was gay.  He apparently was a secondary character in Pearce's novel You Wish as well, although the story stands on its own.  It's on the lighter end of the stories in the anthology, and I loved seeing an LGBTQ character, humor, and cute romance.


Niederwald by Rachel Vincent

This is a story that works better if you've read the author's young adult work before.  In this story,  a few of Rachel Vincent's secondary characters from her Soul Screamers series - and I believe this story is somewhere around book four/book five in that series chronology wise.  I could be wrong, but either way it doesn't stand completely on its own.  Despite this, the story is still entertaining.  I've read the first three Soul Screamers books, but not being caught up did make some of the backstory/motivations more unknown to me.  Overall, it's a nice addition to Vincent's established world, but it won't work as well for readers who don't know much about it.

A Mortal Winter King by Melissa Marr

Though I've never read Marr's books (I know, it's practically treason) and did not know of the context in which this story formed (I assume it is based on her Wicked Lovely series somehow), it was a wonderful read.  Marr's writing is excellent, and her romance is exceedingly brilliant.  There's something about this story that captures so many heavy emotions.  It's a story that leaves a very strong emotional mark, and I loved how she tackled the Fae and the Fae royalty from what little of it I garnered from the story.  It really makes me want to read her novels, now.


Facing Facts by Kelley Armstrong 

This short really best appreciated when you have read Armstrong's Chloe Saunders trilogy (reviews for books two and three are above).  This story revolves around a major plot point of the third book that is explored and questioned but never really resolved.  Armstrong uses this short story to give it some resolution with the characters.  I would have liked the resolution in the actual novel, but it's a really nice story that provides an extra tying of loose ends - of which The Reckoning did very little.  The issue with it is that readers who have not read the books  at all or who have not read all of the original trilogy will either be confused and/or spoiled to this plot point, so be warned....

Let's Get This Undead Show on the Road by Sarah Rees Brennan

Though I've never read Brennan's work, Let's Get This Undead Show on the Road was very cute and funny.  Vampires.  Boy bands.  Some welcome emotional depth and a lot of snarky humor about how the pop music scene is fake and ridiculous.  Really, one can't enjoy this type of story enough.  It wasn't my favorite of the anthology, but it's quite good and memorable.  It makes me want to read Brennan's novels, and it's not connected to any of them (that I know of).  If it is, it is a really easy story to read on its own.

Bridge by Jeri-Smith Ready

Ms. Ready's work has been in my tbr pile for some time.  I have Shade and Shift but have yet to read them.  Bridge makes me regret not attempting to more, because it's arguably the best story in this entire collection.  It's written in free-verse and works very well.  Better than one would anticipate.  This story is emotional, dealing with unresolved relationships and ghosts.  Topics that work very well when done right.  Ready blows them out of the water, folks.  This story and Scenic Route are worth reading the entire thing for, and I can't praise it enough.  Truly an exceptional story.

Skin Contact by Kimberly Derting

This is an offshot to Derting's Body Finder series.  I had yet to read it when I read the short story, and as a result I didn't find the story very appealing.  Nothing about it stood out to me, and the emotional build-up of characters from the books was lost on me as a reader who had never read them before.  It might work better for people who read the series, but it's really not something that one can pick up and enjoy to the fullest extent without first reading the books that accompany it.

Leaving by Ally Condie

An emotional story involving a dystopian-esque world.  I loved the concept of this short, and Condie's writing is always a treat to read.  After all, I loved Matched.  This story isn't as excellent, but it's still a solid entry in the anthology.   Overall, it's not extremely memorable, but it's a short and sweet read that fans of Condie's will enjoy reading.


The Late Night, Double Feature, Picture Show by Jessica Verday

You guessed right - another YA short story that is a homage to Rocky Horror.  In this case, it also involves vampire slayers and some other fun supernatural creatures.  I liked that Verday had solid conflict throughout the story and a fun voice, but overall I felt like she tried to build up a really solid backstory that still left me with questions that I would have preferred to have been answered within the story.  It's fun and it's cute, but more for those who are in line with a story exploring pure plot over other things.

The I.V. League by Margaret Stohl

This story was just the worst for me.  The voice, the tone - nothing worked.  I'm not sure if it was how the vampires were tackled, the plot, or the execution, but something was off.  Everything vaguely frustrated me, and I was glad when the story was over.  Other readers will doubtlessly enjoy it more than I did, but this was one of those stories that I wish I skipped.

Gargouille by Mary E. Pearson

I've heard much praise for Pearson's book The Adoration of Jenna Fox, and found this short story to be an enticing reason to try out more of her work - although it is very different in idea from Jenna Fox.  Instead, it focuses on gargoyle-like creatures in a European/fairy-tale like setting that get captured because of supposed medicinal properties they have.  It's quite emotional and unusual, and I loved the originality behind the story.  Totally worth reading, though I feel like it lacked the impact that some of the better stories had.

The Third Kind by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

The Third Kind is a short story that tries to pack a lot of cool world-building ideas and characterization into one small space.  Barnes is a great author and succeeds to some extent, but in the grand scheme of things this story needed more room to truly be effective.  There was a lot to explore within a minimal frame of word count, and the idea seemed more like a great seed for a book/series than one that is easily wrapped into the package of a short story.  Still, Barnes is a solid writer, and this story is quite worth the time.

Automatic by Rachel Caine

Caine has a lot of fans.  Her Morganville vampires series is hugely popular, but I haven't read them yet.  This is a short story taking place in Morganville, and it just didn't work for me as a reader.  There wasn't much conflict there that I cared about, and I felt like I missed out on a lot of it because I had never read the series.  It's similar to Derting's story, although I felt Derting's story had a bit more of an appeal to readers who hadn't read the books before.  Solid, but not satisfying for a reader new to Caine's work.

Enthralled is an enjoyable anthology that will satisfy readers of paranormal YA.  Most of the stories are solid.  A few I really disliked, and a few were just okay because of how they felt  unappealing without knowing the context of the world they belonged to.  Still, there are some winners in it that make it worth a read.

Cover:  I love the concept of the cover, and the picture of the roadway used for it...

Rating:  4.0 Stars  (overall)

Copy:  Received from publisher/publicist for review  (Thank you, Heather and Harper Teen!!)

Title:  Intangible

Author:  J. Meyers

Publisher:  self-published

Series:  N/A

Other Reviews for This Author:  None

Self-published authors have a hard time getting me invested in their work as something to watch and follow through with.  I will admit this freely, as self-publishing today is an extremely bloated field that has a stigma attached to it pertaining to a lack-of-quality in the books being published.  I'm often content with the novel but never impressed, and it's the rare self-published book that makes me feel like the author had it worked on and polished to the same degree that traditional publishing would have required.  Intangible is one of those few novels - Feyland by Anthea Sharp being the other - that has proven to me that self-published YA work can contain the same base of quality and consistency as its traditionally published counterparts.

Luke and Sera Raine are twins, and they've been close for a long time as a result.  Some brothers and sisters drift away from each other, but the bond that Luke and Sera share is strong.  Stronger, perhaps, than anyone would expect.  Luke and Sera share the grief of their parents' divorce and joint-custody.  They share their day-to-day feelings and instinctively know feelings and emotions that will crop up because of how well they know each other.  This type of connection between two twins isn't abnormal, but Luke and Sera share more than parental drama and a type of sibling-friendship.

The twins each have a very special power that sets them a part from everyone else.  Sera can heal people completely, but takes on their pain as a result.  Luke has visions of the future that are never wrong.  Together, they work to try and prevent - or at least lessen - some things that Luke sees in the future.  Their powers are secretive, though, and cannot be revealed to their friends.  Luke and Sera have always felt alone in sharing the knowledge and weight of their powers.  Luke in particular feels the strain of seeing things before they happen, especially as he has never been able to prevent what he's seen in his visions.  The stress of this takes on an entirely new form when Luke has a vision of Sera - and she's dead.

Luke's vision isn't the only thing going wrong in his life.  Subtle changes are beginning to occur.  People are coming into his life - and Sera's - that are more than what they initially appear to be.  Marc, a mysterious boy who moves into town and is tormented by a group of Shadows, begins to date Sera.  His initial intentions don't involve romance, but instead getting close to the twins and potentially turning them over to the dark beings that have control over the extreme head pain he gets from his own unusual gift of mind-reading.  Fey, a friend of Luke and Sera's, suspects that something is off about Marc, but can't quite put her finger on it.  The twins' powers are attracting further attention from a group of vampires living in the area as well, and it isn't long before they realize that they aren't the only unusual beings on the block.  As their world becomes jumbled and confusing, Luke struggles to find a way to change his visions before it's too late.

Meyers introduces Intangible's main characters in a way that makes it very clear that Luke and Sera both have equal footing within the story - and rightly so.  Meyers also uses third person for the narration, so the focus on the siblings remains fairly equal between the two of them.  Both of the twins are easy to like as characters, and neither of them comes across as overtly annoying or frustrating.  They actually are written as fairly mature teens, with Luke and Sera having come to terms with a lot of what goes on in their home lives.  Their relationship with their parents is strained because of the post-divorce issues, but they understand why their parents act the way they do as a result of what happened.  The twins are best when they interact with each other, though, showing a lot of caring and humor in everything.  One doesn't often read about close siblings in YA, and Sera and Luke provide a nice break of sibling niceties to the mix.  Luke and Sera also have secrets, though, and occasionally get into surprisingly tense situations.  The worst thing I have to say about them is that they didn't grow as much as I would have liked them to throughout Intangible.  They stayed fairly consistent, and, though entertaining, they did not have a lot of clearly altered personality threads or ideas that signaled major character growth.

The minor characters have a surprising amount of focus in Intangible, and Meyers manages to do this without making the story seem ridiculously sporadic.  Meyers occasionally focuses on the other characters, but they are most often seen in interactions with the twins.  Marc is a troubled character with a surprising amount of uniqueness to him.  He is a fairly romantic guy towards Sera, but his troubles with accepting himself and dealing with the Shadows lead him into less-than-stellar territory.  It's also worth noting that Meyers doesn't attempt to make him seem perfect.  Even in Sera's eyes.  He isn't necessarily a romantic hero, but the romance he cultivates with Sera is deep and makes both of the characters seem more than placeholders for the plot.  Fey is also unique in that she is not only a friend to both twins, but a consistent friend that looks out for them.  She naturally has more to her than the twins initially realize, and the sad thing is that the reader doesn't see much of Fey as a fully-fleshed character because of how the plot movement of Intangible works out.  Needless to say, by the end of the book the reader full appreciates Fey, her friendship, and how she is a strong female character (much like Sera, actually - both are as strong as the boys of the novel).  Jonas is the final secondary character that is seen frequently in Intangible, and what's awesome about him is that A) he's a vampire, B) he's African American (and keeps the coloring as a vampire, thankfully), and C) his personality is very strong.  He's the type of character that is extremely strong, brooding, and sensible, but he doesn't come across as angsty.  He mainly gets involved to protect Sera - she seems special to him, but a lot of it is because she reminds him of his sister from  years past - but quickly becomes a vital piece of the plot in Intangible.  Other characters make appearances, too, and I would love to see them in future pieces by Meyers - especially since they all have something about them that strikes the reader as something memorable.

As with other self-published works, a lot of my enjoyment of Intangible came down to the writing.  For the first half of the book, I was not too impressed.  Meyers has a nice command of language and has edited the book cleanly, but the first half is slow and deals with a lot of character set-up.  The main focus is to spread the seeds of discord in the vampire-portions of the novel and to show Sera and Luke's friendship with Marc forming - as well as show their discovery of Jonas, other vampires, and how that pertains to their supernatural gifts.  Basically, there is a lot of characterization going on without a lot of forward movement in other things.  Meyers also jumps between characters more in this section, and it's hard to fully appreciate why that goes on.  It's not confusing, but it does make the reader wonder how everything ties together.  The second half of Intangible is much less slow, and instead focuses on how the plot fits together - and the dangers that the twins have to overcome.  Everything does end with a confrontation of the villain character, although it's not a cut-and-dry ending.  It basically allows the book to work as a standalone, but suggests that a sequel/spin-off/related work will have more to offer in the world.  Meyers does a fair amount of world building, too, and it works for the better.  Nothing in the book feels totally crazy or contrived - except maybe the villain, but even she has her moments of depth -  and what's best is that the world makes the reader want to read more.  I finished Intangible and wanted a continuation with new characters and new insights.  Meyers leaves the reader with the idea that a new type of series can be created, and the idea is enticing.  Aside from the problems with the pacing, Meyers' book feels as clean and polished as a well-edited traditionally published book.

There are a few self-published books that have really stood out to me as a new fan of digital books, and Intangible is definitely one of the better ones out there.  Yes, it has paranormal stuff out the wazoo, but the execution is far above average.  The main characters are fun, the secondary characters have a lot of great depth to them, and the writing, though at times slow, is clean and shows off the great world building.  Meyers also incorporates great character backstories and PoC characters like Jonas without making those qualities about them the center of their struggles.  Meyers creates an excellent world with Intangible, and I hope she writes more stories within it.

Cover:  The cover isn't very unique, but I could honestly see it on a traditionally published book.  That speaks for the quality.  I do enjoy the title font and purple tones.

Rating:  4.0  Stars

Copy:  Received from author for review  (Thank you, J. Meyers!)

Bonus:  A free prequel short story called Intuition is available for download for the Kindle and the like, and I have to say it's what got me to read the book.  It's quick, plot-based, and gives a decent introduction to the opening conflict of the book.

Library Liasons is a post that I want to start working on into making a meme ala Rainbow Thursday.  I realized that I read books that I buy and get from the library, but I don't often review them because I am inundated with books for review.  This isn't to say books that I buy or get from the library are less important - it just means that there is no review obligation, and that some of them don't really feel pressing enough to write a full review on before I return them or read another book for fun or for review.  Thus, Library Liasons is born.  I'm going to do mini-reviews on the books that I read from the library - local, school, or my personal library - and hopefully that will give them some attention without ruining my review book schedule.  :)  Note - the title of the book links to Goodreads, where you can read a summary of it and other (hopefully longer) reviews. 

Teeth: Vampire Tales edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling 

This was a surprisingly rich anthology with various short stories about vampires.  The stories do have their downs - at least one was a struggle to finish, and another felt particularly confusing with no good reason for the confusion - but some of them are insanely good.  This collection features many authors that write fantasy that could crossover to YA - as well as some traditionally YA authors.  A lot of them are bigger in the adult markets, though, and that's what makes this anthology so unique.  Though at times the stories lose themselves because of an attempt at either being too literary or too commercial, many of them glow and have a particular level of writing quality about them which makes them unique.




From E to You by Chris d'Lacey and Linda Newberry

This book was on the Cute-But-Forgettable side of things.  The pluses included epistolary formatting via emails (I am a sucker for books that use that format) and a nice romance at the center of everything.  Humor was also an upside - it reminded me vaguely of the Georgia Nicholson books in some spots, but the humor was far more sporadic than in Rennison's beloved series (of which I am a huge fan).  The downsides included just a general lack of staying-power as a read, and the characters also tended to skew towards behavior and assumptions that felt out-of-character for their ages at times.  The technology aspect also felt horribly out-of-date, as the book was written in 2000/2001.  The smallest things that email can do are amazing to the characters, and it's hard to read that as a modern reader without some level of issue.  Also, the UK slang is rarely explained, and at times can be hard to comprehend.





Ella Mental and the Good Sense Guide by Amber Deckers

Count this along the same lines as From E to You.  I give it more points for tackling more plotlines and difficult situations, but unlike From E to You it doesn't expand upon them that much (probably because it's about the same length but attempts to deal with twice as many issue situations while still making it a cute book).  The pluses include a strong character voice and some funny moments.  The book also reads very fast, and I think there's something about it that makes a compelling read.  I read it very quickly, like From E to You, and will probably pick up the sequel from the library.  However, it tries to tackle too much without very complex characters, and the situations shoot in and out so fast that it's hard to understand if the author wanted to include them because they were "real" or because she actually had a goal somewhere with all of the plot lines.  Also, the main character's romance is random.  This book is also a UK-based one, but it's more accessible with slang-terms.




If We Kiss by Rachel Vail

This was my most surprising library read as-of late.  I expected something cute and frothy, and though this book is cute, it's far from being frothy.  The general premise is a bit silly and can seem like a turn-off, but Vail surprised me with how she emotionally got into the mind of a teenager.  Her writing style felt very all over the place, but at the same time it resonated with a true-to-life teen voice.  Something about Vail's story just captured all of the confusing emotions that come with a first-kiss and a first-crush, and there were moments that were really touching and worth reading.  I still think some of the narrative problems bugged me, but this book really has me wanting to read more of her work.



Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

I had to read this for my English class.  I love some classic/literary fiction, but Steinbeck is an author I really tend to loathe.  I found this to be better than Of Mice and Men - which I did not even finish a few years back - but it still had its random moments.  Steinbeck writes with simple prose that's very statement-oriented and leaves little room for reader imagination.  This novel has a way with characters, though, and has me wondering if I'd enjoy Steinbeck's more character driven works.  However, I think his lack of emotional connection to the narrative leaves some things seeming less than impressive, like the random moments of symbolism that are supposed to also parallel life's varying ups and downs.



Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce

Honestly, I was not sure about reading this book.  It was either going to be good or bad based on previous reviews and thoughts from others.  I picked up the book hoping to be at least taken in by the entertainment factor, but came to realize that it was a meh read for me.  While the other books were light and enjoyable, this one attempted to be heavy but came across as dull with little plot movement.  On top of that, I hated the messages that came across, and the world building screamed of issues that further complicated those messages in a not-so-good way.  Namely - the entertainment factor didn't work, and neither did the literary factor for me, but it wasn't badly written.



A Wedding in December by Anita Shreve

This one was one that was on my shelf for a while.  The general plot was slow-going, as it is meant to be adult literary fiction (or adult contemporary fiction, if there's really a distinction between the two).  Mainly, I enjoyed it, though, as it presented itself to be a fine character study with a lot of emotional weight to it.  The characters came alive and were interesting, although I think some of Shreve's stylistic factors fell short.  I would have liked more expansion on Shreve's ideas on love, loss, and fidelity, and one character's story is told chiefly through a story that she is writing for herself.  While the method is interesting, it almost results in a barrier between the character and the reader, as opposed to being the magnifying glass that I feel it was intended to be.  Still, Shreve has some style to her, and I do love character-focused piece.

 So, these are the books I've read in the past couple of weeks that are my Library Liasons.  What about you guys?  Have any of you ever read any of these?  Do you have any Library Liasons worth talking about?  Feel free to comment, and I'll be more than happy to discuss them (as I would like to start interacting more with blog readers).  Also - what do you think?  Is this a worthy idea for a regular post on the blog?  Let me know!

Title:  A Beautiful Dark

Author:  Jocelyn Davies

Publisher:  Harper Teen

Series:  Beautiful Dark #1

Other Reviews for This Author:  None

Sometimes, you really aren't sure how to explain your enjoyment of a story that is fundamentally a patchwork of previous stories that you've read.  These types of stories are unique yet derivative.  They have similarities in plot and concept yet are clearly their own work.  A Beautiful Dark is very much one of those books.  It's a book that once again uses the very-popular love triangle idea with a highly popular paranormal concept - angels.  It also contains quite a bit of set-up for the future two books, and the boys are hot and beyond comparison.  Yes, this book is indeed like many other YA paranormal novels - yet I enjoyed it a lot as a fan of the genre.

Skye's friends have thrown her a massive birthday party in honor of her turning seventeen.  They all know how she is with surprise parties, but they can't help but attempt to make one happen every year.  Seventeen is an exciting age for Skye, and a party at her favorite coffee shop, Love the Bean, is a great way to celebrate it.  Skye spends the night with her best friends Cassie and Dan, as well as with many of her other classmates, including a guy named Ian who has a substantial crush on her.  It's a night that any teenage girl would be happy to have.  It's a night that is one more step into Skye's adulthood, and the scary but exciting future that it holds.

Everything may seem normal at first, but the entrance of two very different guys changes Skye's party - and her life - forever.  Asher is the kind of guy that turns on the charm with a wink and a flirtatious smile.  Skye finds him outside of Love the Bean when she needs to take a breather from her birthday bash, and something instantly seems interesting about him.  Devin, a boy whose blonde, All-American looks oppose Asher's dark features, also appears at Love the Bean without much cause.  Though Skye doesn't know either of the boys, they seem to pay quite a bit of attention to her.  After they get into a heated argument in the middle of Love the Bean, Skye realizes that they aren't normal boys.

Asher and Devin do more than disrupt Skye's party.  They disrupt her entire life.  Asher and Devin are soon going to Skye's school and spending time with her.  She sees good things in both boys - Asher with his flirtations and charms, and Devin with his quiet but assured personality.  The two boys both garner some type of affection with Skye, but she can't tell where the feelings differentiate between the two of them.  Which one could she really fall in love with?  And how are these boys related to the growing sense of unease about her - and the supernatural gifts that seem to be appearing haphazardly?  Could Asher and Devin be behind the random fluctuations of thermostats and heating items around her...or is it Skye herself causing these things?  And if so, how do Asher and Devin come into play?


A Beautiful Dark really attempts to start strong with its heroine, Skye, and it mostly succeeds in that regard.  The most negative thing I have to say about Skye is that I've read her type before - many times before.  What can I say?  A spunky heroine with a fair sense of self that suddenly gets confused because of a changing existence and one/two/three guys that addle her senses?  It's a pretty common character type.  What makes Skye work well is that she has a distinctive voice that fits the teenage personae.  One may not find her personality type anything new, but her actual dialogue is unique and suggests a new character that hasn't been seen before.  Her interactions with her friends and love interests alike feel more on the original side, and Davies injects a very modern teenage humor into the interactions that feels very in touch with how teens act today.  Skye's character arc in this first installment is thin, however, and a lot of that is due to the massive amounts of set-up that the novel uses in order to further the plot and relationships of the characters.  The reader learns a lot about Skye, her insecurities, and how she has lingering grief over losing her parents and living with a relative that is often out of the house.  Skye is bubbly and social, though, and she becomes quite an amusing character to watch with the boys.  Davies also includes much more romantic interaction than in most YA novels.  Some may say it's too much, but Skye's relationships with the love interests really become fleshed out, and in that regard A Beautiful Dark's protagonist felt fulfilling.  Skye's relationships are surprisingly complicated, and one can actually understand why she is torn between the two guys and unable to make an easy interpretation of which is the one she truly wants.

It's safe to say that the other characters in A Beautiful Dark - or rather, mainly the love interests - are expanded upon with a surprising amount of depth.  A lot of the interaction between Asher and Devin is hostile.  They compete for Skye but also for what she represents based on the book's plot and mythology.  It's interesting to see how the two are not just worried about her, but about what else is going on.  It made the book feel like it had a heavier connotation to the love triangle and why it was going on.  Asher and Devin also have two distinct personalities, and Davies does a fabulous job of showing how they can each capture a piece of Skye's heart.  Asher is more of a playboy and one you wouldn't necessarily want to be attracted to right away, but he shows soft spots to Skye that suggest more than what one would perceive.  Devin, by contrast, is very much a good boy that attempts to be honest and direct.  What's interesting is that both boys have an affinity related to the book's mythology that is actually played out.  The sides of good and evil aren't so cut and dry in this version of the angelic mythology, and what's nice is that Davies shows equal pro's and con's to both sides.  For instance, Devin may be a very kind person who does good things, but he also has to be completely obedient.  Things tend to work out that way, and Davies ends up making it a struggle between chaos and order instead of good and evil - blurring the lines and making the characters a lot more complicated in the process.  What's nice is that they both also care about Skye, but that it's confusing and true to life instead of an outright lust/love between them.

Where readers will find A Beautiful Dark a deviation from its predecessors is the writing.  Yes, it is still commercially appealing and based on the romantic aspects, but with A Beautiful Dark it feels more appealing than in other YA PNR reads.  I actively knew that I was reading large sections of set-up and emotional expansion without caring so much about the plot - although Davies manages to introduce a very simple but effective angelic mythology to the mix.  She steers clear of excess religion, and the basing of it on the chaos/order cycle allowed it to feel like a creative twist on the ideas of the fundamental moral forces that are at place in the world. This immediately struck me as awesome, as the same elemental opposition is used in a series of video games known as Shin Megami Tensei.  (They are extremely excellent, but that is not related to this novel).  The idea itself isn't totally original, but in YA I found it to be a breath of fresh air, as it allowed the characters to become more ambiguous.  It also allowed Davies to do one of the two things she does best in her writing: emotional complexity.  Yes, the actual conflict of a girl going between two guys isn't particularly special in today's YA market, but Davies takes things to a surprising level.  Both of the guys have their faults and their good parts, and she makes the distinction between the two and Skye's confused affections seem realistic.  The emotional parts of the book may border on excessive, but Davies clearly likes them and puts an effort into making them particularly important in understanding Skye and her romances.

Davies has her other strength in dialogue and general character interaction.  The romances sizzle.  The characters speak in a way that is unique, humorous, and modern.  This is a novel that thrives on the characters being interesting and an investment to the reading experience.  The problem is that the book never quite gets the right balance between the characters and the parallel of the actual plot.  Davies starts out strong, but the plot's first half is mainly a host of unexpected issues that steadily lead up to the acknowledgement of Skye's abilities and her formulation of who Devin and Asher really are.  This problem happens with a lot of YA series now, but Davies kept me from being bored because of the surprising emotional investment involved in learning who the characters were.  The main issue was that the plot really didn't pick up until the end of the novel, when problems started occurring and Skye realized that she was getting into a lot more than she planned for.  Davies wrote the mythos well enough - at times I felt like it was hard to truly grasp all of the more complicated interactions between the chaos/order sides, but Davies managed to make the philosophical and emotional differences between the two factions clear, sensible, and worthy of further thought from the reader.  The reader doesn't pick a love triangle side right away because of how hard Davies makes it to find a good guy and a bad guy, and in that regard Davies showed excellent construction in  her writing.

There wasn't a lot I didn't enjoy about A Beautiful Dark.  The pacing got slow, but the characters, their relationships, and the mythology were all more than interesting.  Davies wrote a great story that unfortunately ended in a massive cliffhanger (which admittedly annoyed me), and it became a story that stayed in my head as a good one - a test that some reads don't overcome.  My only real qualm is that it uses a lot of tropes in ways that aren't so much innovative as enhanced by Davies and her authorial voice.  This means that, unfortunately, the book won't appeal much to readers who don't enjoy the tropes.  However, if you do - try the book, as you may (like me) find it a book that has quality to its tropes.  I have to say that I'm really excited to see where things go in the second and third book, and that's more than I can say for some series that I've started.

Cover:  The girl/pose/ect. is awkward and looks extremely uncomfortable.  The more I look at it, the less elegant it seems.  I do find the way the title font is used to be interesting - if a little off-putting because of the lack of consistency.  However, it ties into the book's themes and the love triangle, and in that regard I find it to be pretty cool.

Rating:  4.0  Stars

Copy:  Received from publicist/publisher for review  (Thank you, Heather and Harper Collins!)

Title:  Swimming to Chicago

Author:  David Mathew Barnes

Publisher:  Bold Strokes Books

Series:  None

There are some books that we really want to love but can't.  Some books that just, for whatever reason, do not work for us as readers.  Swimming to Chicago was a book that I had high hopes for.  It sounded like a nice romance between two gay teenagers, and I'm always up for reading new LGBTQ fiction written for the young adult genre.  However, the novel was less than I expected, and I didn't have many expectations to begin with.  A convergence of many things I disliked made the reading experience less than pleasant after a while, and though it had some worthy moments with the LGBTQ characters, most of it fell short for me.

Alex's life has gone through the wringer.  His relationship with his mother and father has become strained, and his mother seems more and more depressed as of late.  Jillian, a girl that he has been best friends with for ages, is showing interest  in him.  To many guys, that would be a bright spot.  In Alex's life, it's not so.  Alex is gay - a discovery that he has kept under wraps for the most part, and he hasn't had the heart to tell Jillian.  Jillian may be his best friend, but something so emotional brings out the evasiveness in Alex.  It could also be how Alex truly came into it.

It came of an affair with Tommy, a guy that Alex works with.  Tommy is a known popular guy that has gotten a steady reputation for being cool and straight.  Neither of the boys seemed to fully comprehend what their relationship was when it first came into being, but Alex in particular started realizing more about himself as a result.  To think that he never realized that he was gay.  The secret is still too fresh; too confusing.  He can't tell Jillian about it, although she is most certainly his best friend in the world.  His relationship with Tommy is one that he sees as special, although Tommy doesn't treat it in the same way.  Alex feels lost in the world - just like his mother.

Throughout the summer and into the school year, the lives of Alex, Jillian, and those around them change completely.  Alex falls in love.  Jillian falls in love.  Alex loses someone dear to him.  Jillian feels like someone dear to her is lost forever.  The adults in Alex's life try to cope with his impending relationship - and a relationship that they are finding themselves becoming involved in as well.  Swimming to Chicago is a novel that tries to encompass the way that people change others' lives, and in particular tries to show the growth of a gay teenager and how he sees the world.

There's really not a lot here to talk about with the main character that I can recommend.  Alex is interesting and worthy of some praise, as he is a character that deals with a lot of difficult things throughout Swimming to Chicago.  He deals with a mother with severe depression, and he deals with discovering his sexuality and how love comes into play with it.  How he can be hurt and healed by his ability to love another man.  Something about Alex is very relative, and in that regard he's a strong main character.  The problem is that the other characters are focused on just as equally - yet no one ever feels fully developed.  Alex's emotions come across as paper-thin in many spots, as do other characters.  The time passage between events is so large, too, that one finds it difficult to see a character like Alex truly grow as a character.  Between one month and the next, things can change drastically.  Alex goes from just meeting a guy to being in love with him and dating him in the span of a few pages.  It feels over-the-top, and it makes getting to the heart of his story practically impossible.  Where is the reader supposed to go when they cannot even identify where Alex is going and why he is going there?

The other characters are much the same.  Jillian has unique conflicts that initially have the reader rooting for her, but her actions quickly become ludicrous and unidentifiable in motivation.  Jillian becomes a character that  is hard to like because her transformation is simply told to the reader.  The reader is just supposed to assume that a simple authorial statement makes up for a non-existent thread of character growth.  The same goes for Alex's boyfriend, Robby, and the two adult POVs.  Everything in this novel revolves around a writing style that doesn't lend itself well to characterization or multiple POVs.  The characters feel like they go in circles, and the reader doesn't spend enough time with any of them to get a sense of who everyone is and what they mean in terms of the novel as an artistic whole.

What, to me, remains the biggest barrier with this novel is the writing as a whole.  Barnes' style wasn't an initial turn-off for me.  I quite liked it when it first started out.  However, as Barnes continued to progress with adding in more character points-of-view and plot twists, I realized that nothing felt consistent or realistic.  There was no character investment.  People fell in love immediately.  People acted unusually.  Everything was being told to me.  Nothing was being shown.  I would get giant paragraphs stating exactly what I should have been able to see with the characters.  Multiple points of view are also just hard to pull off in general.  One needs strongly established characters that, when looked at through multiple points of view, come across as the same person - just in terms of how another character views them.  Swimming to Chicago had none of that, and everyone felt the same.  None of the characters makes the reader feel invested enough to continue on with the narrative.  So much happens but none of it feels worthy of caring about, as the reader never sees character growth and reaction in relation to what goes on.  Something happens from one or two perspectives, then another month passes.  The general time skips just didn't work on the whole, and on the whole made Swimming to Chicago feel even more distant as a novel.

As much as I disliked Swimming to Chicago, it had redeeming aspects to it.  Barnes does not have a bad style, but all of the technical choices he made with this book didn't fit.  I would read him again based on his style working in the beginning of the novel, but only with the knowledge that he didn't have the same technical follies.  Barnes also has written scripts before, and therein lies problems that I found within Swimming to Chicago.  It felt like a cross between script and novel writing, but the writing felt like it was trying to make everything so clear in the reader's head - like the actual visual of seeing a play or film - that the dialogue and showing that comes from good book writing was left on the wayside.  There was a good book in here.  Barnes dealt with many serious topics that could have made an excellent (though angsty) LGBTQ YA novel.  However, it read like a draft of many ideas that hadn't been fully written yet.  Everything was too simplistic, too hippy-hoppy.

Swimming to Chicago just wasn't the book for me.  I disliked the lack of full characterization, the way the novel moved around, the technical aspects of the POV switching, and the overt amount of angsty situations without probably build-up and purpose within the narrative.  There were some commendable attempts within it, but ultimately nothing about it worked for me.  I've read worse, but I've read many books that tackled this kind of LGBTQ angst in a much better manner, too.

Cover:  I actually like this cover.  It's very dynamic.

Rating:  2.0 Stars

Copy:  Received from publisher/publicist for review  (Thank you, Bold Strokes Books!)