Tag Archives: Young Adult

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Bloodspell by Amalie Howard

Like most Young Adult novels, I go in hoping for a diamond, be prepared for piles of dirt. Bloodspell is definitely a diamond and I am so thankful to JKSCommunications for giving me the opportunity to read this wonderful book.

The book starts off with a bang and it just keeps going from there. There is rarely a lag in the action and forward progression of the story, but it is paced just right. There’s never a flood of information, and everything that is reveled makes sense and isn’t confusing. Each time more magic and mystery was reveled, I was left wanting just a little more information, only to get more a few pages later. It was wonderful and kept me glued to the pages.

While I understood why it was necessary, the “I love you but we shouldn’t be together” subplot is starting to get old. However, it does make sense in this book and I was able to look past that aspect of the relationship between Victoria and Christian. Christian is another swoon-worth YA male character. Victoria is a strong girl coming into her own, who knows how to rely on herself, but also knows when she needs to ask for help. I enjoyed the other, more minor characters, but I was really hoping some of them would play a bigger role in more of the story, instead of just the climax.

Overall, this was a great read and I found it hard to put down. I can’t wait to see what Howard does next with this wonderful story.

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Hunted by Cheryl Rainfield

I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to read Hunted through JKSCommunications. I’m so happy I was able to read this book.

I was a little worried when I started this book. The first couple of chapters felt a little too much like a typical teen/high school story. The new girl shows up, almost everybody dislikes her right away, she crushes on the hot guy everyone wants and is befriended by the other outcasts. However, once the story really started to pick up, it was fantastic.

Caitlyn is a wonderful strong female lead character. She knows her own strength and uses it to not only help herself, but help others. She doesn’t look to others for her power; she looks to herself for strength. Rachel is the best friend everyone needs to have and Alex is completely swoon-worthy. I have to say, my favorite character was Mrs. Vespa. There was just something about her that made me love her.

The message for this book is an important one and I feel Rainfield was able to get it across without using flashing lights and neon signs. It’s in the way she reveals the characters, the school, and society. It’s a subtle placing of words that makes your skin crawl because you know what is happening is wrong.

This was a wonderful book and I can’t wait to read what happens next.

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Crossed by Ally Condie

I really liked parts of this book, and others were a little disappointed when compared to Matched.

The relationships between the characters are very well-written, in my opinion. And not only the relationship between Ky and Cassia, whose romance is sweet and not too much. Condie doesn’t let the romance element of the story completely override everything else in the story. The new characters (Eli, Hunter, Indie, and Vick) added a little something extra to the story. Indie is just what Cassie needs when she’s surviving in the wilderness and provides a bit of mystery concerning her character. Eli provides a touch of innocence, even though he has seen so much in his short life. Vick is someone Ky can talk with and someone he has respect for.

The descriptions of The Carving and all its colors and intricacies were wonderful and provided an interesting contrast to the world the Society built in Matched.

Unfortunately, Crossed seems to have fallen into a trap of being set-up for the third book instead of being its own. There was not much plot development and really no action. No big answers were revealed and while a few of the smaller questions were answered, they didn’t really help the reader figure much out.

So while I loved pieces of the writing and the characters, I was left wanting more story. I’m holding out hope that the last book will be back up to the Matched level and will close the series out in a fantastic way.

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The Everafter by Amy Huntley

This book was sad and yet somehow a little uplifting. It deals with the after of death. What happens to us after we die? It really made me think.

Madison only knows one thing and that is she’s dead. She doesn’t know how or why or where she is now. She starts finding things she lost and goes back to her life and sees the scenes connected with those objects. She doesn’t change much of her history, but lives through most of the events again.

The other minor characters in the book weren’t as completely developed, in my opinion, as Madison. However, I felt like it made the point of the story even more prevalent. We weren’t there to see Maddy’s entire life and her friends and boyfriends and family. We were learning about Maddy and her soul. We were learning about the events that shaped her and the other characters were there just enough to show how they helped shape her. I really enjoyed the effect it had.

The epilogue was one of my favorite parts of the book. It was perfect for the story and left the feeling of hope and life that the book needed.

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Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

This is a wonderfully fabulous book that I completely devoured. It was hard for me to put it down to sleep.

Juliette is a fantastically written character. She starts the book as somewhat weak, yet resilient. She thinks of herself as a monster, something that doesn’t really deserve to be around people. By the time the novel reaches its conclusion, you can see her strength growing, her acceptance of herself finally starting to come about. Throughout the entire novel, you can see that her heart is what makes her powerful, not whatever power she actually has. It’s her heart that gives her strength.

I love Adam. I want an Adam of my own. He is amazing and kind and wonderful. I’m sure I could come up with more adjectives to describe him, but I won’t. I just love him.

Kenji provides a bit of relief with his whole persona. His little comments, inserted exactly where they need to be, let me take a breath and prepare myself for more of the intensity sure to come.

Beyond the characters and the storyline, I adored Mafi’s writing style. You see inside Juliette’s head and are aware of just how broken she is in the beginning. You can feel her faith in herself grow through the writing. And the metaphors on every page really let you feel what she is feeling. As an example, there are many interpretations of how realization could feel for a person. But when you read, “Realization is ice-cold water and it’s dripping down my spine,” you know exactly what to feel. You feel that cold water dripping down your back. I can’t get over how stunning the writing is.

This may be the first book in a trilogy, but it is a complete book that I’ll definitely be telling people to read, as I anxiously await the second book.

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You Are My Only by Beth Kephart

I can’t get over the writing in this book. The plot itself is an interesting one, but the style of writing Kephart uses to tell the story makes this novel exceptional. The descriptions in this book are amazing and the imagery they create is incredibly unique. You can see the story unfolding as it happens; you are right there, feeling everything, seeing everything, experiencing it all.

I fell in love with Sophie and Emmy. Sophie is a girl who doesn’t know everything she is missing until she breaks the rules to find it and Emmy is the distraught young mother who wants to stop at nothing to find her missing baby. The aunts and Joey are Sophie’s neighbors and her introduction to the real world. Autumn was the girl who listened to Emmy and helped her keep from falling completely apart. These characters were so real, I couldn’t help but cry for them.

I loved this entire book, from start to end. The very last line of this book is one of the best I’ve read. It gets across the entire weight of Sophie and Emmy’s stories and was the perfect way to end this story.

Everyone needs to get this book and read it. It is one of the most extraordinary books I have read this year.

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Shine by Lauren Myracle

The cover of this book is what drew me in at first, but the amazing writing is what kept me reading from the first page to the very last.

This book deals with several hot-button issues, namely homophobia and what it can do at its worst. But even more than that, it deals with many other problems that exist in society. While the main focus is the horrible hate crime and its aftermath, you see abuse, alcoholism and how fear can turn into hatred and its ability to destroy.

I loved the slow build Myracle used to tell the story. You got enough information to make you turn the page, where you’d get just a tiny bit more before you hit the peak and it all came into focus. It made the ending much more powerful.

This is definitely a book people need to read. It’s powerful, and yet the message comes across in such a wonderful way, you can help but walk away feeling a little bit different.

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LIE by Caroline Bock

This was an intense book. Bock took on a hard subject and handled it in such an impressive way that this book will be sticking with me for a while. This is a book that will get people talking.

This book was extremely realistic and that makes it all the more shocking. To think that this book, while a work of fiction, is true in many ways was extremely powerful. I felt so much for Skylar, the shy girl who doesn’t want to lose another person in her life. She knows if she goes along with the lie, she will be able to keep the people around her. But if she tells the truth, she will be losing several people important to her.

I know some people might have a hard time with the multiple points of view, but I found them extremely helpful in understanding how this hate crime affected the town. You see the truth eating Skylar and Sean alive, and how Lisa Marie can delude herself. You see into the mind of the town and how this one event can disrupt the lives of so many not directly involved. I only with there had been Jimmy’s point of view, even if it was only a short little blurb.

I think this is a book that everyone needs to read because it opens your eyes and makes you think. It’s a powerful book that I will definitely be recommending to anyone that will listen to me.

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If I Tell by Janet Gurtler

I’m mixed on this book. I liked some parts of it and other parts I could do without. It just didn’t feel as developed as it could have been.

Gurtler wrote a book about issues that need to be addressed, but I feel like some of them were put in the book to make the characters flawed and dysfunctional, instead of actually serving a higher purpose. This book dealt with racism, prejudice and the ability to forgive others, and all these other issues just seemed a bit too much. I can understand not writing perfect characters, but to add so many heavy issues in a book already about a tough subject just seemed a little over the top. It made it hard for me to feel for the characters.

This wasn’t a bad read; there was just way too much happening in it. It made it difficult to connect with any of the characters and it’s hard for me to fully enjoy a book I can’t connect with. However, I do believe this is a book other people can find themselves in and don’t discourage anyone from reading it if the premise interests you.

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Becoming Marie Antoinette by Juliet Grey

While there wasn’t anything necessarily wrong with this novel, I just couldn’t get into it. As someone who greatly enjoys history, I usually know quite a bit about the people typically written about. What I find most enjoyable is when those facts are told through new and interesting ways, and there wasn’t much of that in this book.

It seemed very, “and then this happened, then this and then this followed,” without really building up the story. It felt more like a biography than a novel, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it just wasn’t what I was looking for.

This book was a very well-written, factually correct book about the earlier years of Marie Antoinette, but if you’re looking for something on Marie that reads more as a novel, I’d consider something else.