Claire Stevens's Blog, page 15

Waiting On Wednesday - Kids Like Us by Hilary Reyl

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme that gives us all a chance to highlight the upcoming releases that we’re eagerly anticipating.  This week my Waiting on Wednesday pick is Kids Like Us by Hilary Reyl.
 
Here’s the blurb:

Martin is an American teen on the autism spectrum living in France with his mom and sister for the summer. He falls for a French girl who he thinks is a real-life incarnation of a character in his favorite book. Over time Martin comes to realize she is a real person and not a character in a novel while at the same time learning that love is not out of his reach just because he is autistic.

Turtles All The Way Down by John Green

I'd like to start by saying I will never be able to use hand sanitiser again after reading this book.

Vomit-inducing hand sanitiser scenes aside though, i really enjoyed this book.  I listened to it on CD in my car and it got to the point where I was actually looking forward to going to work so I could listen to some more of my book.

I really felt for Aza.  i used to think (like a lot of people) that I was a 'bit OCD' because I like things to be neat and find quiet pleasure in having the bottom edge of my keyboard lined perfectly parallel with the edge of my desk.  However, after reading Turtles All The Way Down, I have discovered that I am nowhere near having 'real' OCD.  Aza suffers from anxiety and OCD and I really mean suffers.  She is fully aware that her obsessions are absolutely barking, but she is governed by them nonetheless.  She can't function in a normal relationship, she drives her friends mad and actually injures herself as a slave to her compulsions.  It sounded absolutely miserable.

Obviously there are going to be comparisons to The Fault In Our Stars, a book that I enjoyed immensely, and on the face of it I guess you could say that John Green is now doing for mental health what five years ago he did for cancer (Cynical Claire says: Make a shit ton of cash from it).  But when you look a bit deeper, this is actually a much more thoughtful book than TFIOS.

TFIOS was a romance; a navel-gazey, teen romance with an added sprinkling of cancer and death.  TATWD is not a romance.  Aza cannot function in a romatic relationship because she is terrified of the eighty million microbes that get transferred to your mouth when you tongue-kiss another person.  This is a book about a person trying desperately to navigate her way in the world when she is literally her own worst enemy.

And I know everyone's biggest gripe is going to be 'Oh, teenagers in real life don't talk like that!'  Well, I know they don't.  No one in real life talks like the characters in a John Green book.  In fact, scrub that.  No one in real life talks like a character in any book.  

Have you ever had to transcribe a real life conversation word- for-word?  When you look at it on paper it just looks bizarre.  It's all pauses and 'Um's and random words trailing off ......  When we're talking, only 7% of a conversation is made up of words.  The rest is body language, tone of voice.  Hell, I've conducted entire conversations with some of my best friends using only grunts.

And I don't understand why people get so bent out of shape about conversational realism anyway.  Who cares about realism?  We don't get out of our boxes about the lack of realism in other books.  Guess what?  In real life, teenagers don't become demon hunters either.  Or lead rebellions against corrupt dystopian governments.  Or travel halfway across the country in a post-apocalyptic landscape to find their baby brother.  Or meet their One True Love in high school.  Or have psychic powers.  I don't care.  I read books to be entertained.  I have enough realism in real life.

So, no.  People in real life don't talk like the people in a John Green book.  But I am thankful that people in real life write like John Green does, because this book was a joy.

5 stars

Just Listen by Sarah Dessen

No.  No no no no no.  This was not a great book.  

Basically it's a story about a girl, Annabel, who has two sisters, an emotionally unavailable mum and has suffered some kind of big trauma.  We don't know what the big trauma is until about 60% of the way through the book, except it's pretty obvious it's sexual abuse by the hands of her ex-best-friend's boyfriend.  

There were a few problems I had with this book.  I'll skip right past the bit where every single character is white and straight and gender-conforming, because from the books I've read this is pretty much par for the course with Sarah Dessen's work (BTW if anyone does know a Sarah Dessen book where she includes any kind of diversity at all then please let me know.  This is a genuine request.  I actually think the woman has writing skills and I'd be interested to see what she does with them).  

The book starts off where Annabel goes back to school in September and is a social pariah.  It's an intriguing premise and had a lot of potential.  The problem is that after the first couple of chapters not very much happens at all for about 150 pages.  Something bad has obviously happened to Annabel and there are heavy hints towards sexual abuse/rape, but she doesn't seem to be suffering the aftermath at all.  I get that she's the sort of person who bottles things up and that she hates confrontation, but there are literally no signs that she has been affected by what has happened to her.

Instead, in her new social-pariah state, she befriends another social outcast, a guy who has anger management issues and who is the biggest Music Nazi I've every read about.

Annabel's new friend, Owen, has very definite views on music and spends a lot of time mansplaining to Annabel how all the music she likes is rubbish and how she should be listening to Peruvian nose harp orchestras instead.  He just comes across as a total bell-end and the only reason I could see for Annabel hanging out with him was that she literally had no other options.  Unsurprisingly it turns into a romance, but I could not get behind it at all.  It just made Annabel look like such a weak girl and everything felt so ... tepid.

Eventually I started skimming which was a real shame.  The story picks up again towards the end when details of her abuse get revealed but by then it was too late to completely redeem this book.

A secondary storyline is about Annabel's sister's eating disorder.  I was interested to see this because I had hopes that it would pick the momentum up a bit, but Whitney recovered from her eating disorder in the most problem-free way ever.  Like, no relapses, no sneaking about, no struggle that I could see.  If only every victim of an eating disorder had this much luck in their recovery.

It's weird - Sarah Dessen has done a couple of books I've really liked, and a couple that I didn't like at all.  This has fallen squarely into the second camp.  I won't stop reading her books but I guess I'll just be a bit wary in future.

2 stars

Waiting On Wednesday - I Never by Laura Hopper

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme that gives us all a chance to highlight the upcoming releases that we’re eagerly anticipating.  This week my Waiting on Wednesday pick is I Never by Laura Hopper.
 
Here’s the blurb:

Janey King’s priorities used to be clear: track, school, friends, and family. But when seventeen-year-old Janey learns that her seemingly happy parents are getting divorced, her world starts to shift. Back at school, Luke Hallstrom, an adorable senior, pursues Janey, and she realizes that she has two new priorities to consider: love and sex.

Inspired by Judy Blume’s classic Forever, I Never features a perfect, delicious, almost-to-good-to-be-true high school relationship . . . and it doesn’t shy away from the details. Destined to be passed from teen to teen, this is a young adult debut that will get readers talking.

Fallen Heir by Erin Watts

​“I’m the design flaw in the Royal family, the one who isn’t quite like the others, the one who crashes and burns more often than not.” 

I wasn't sure how much I was going to enjoy this book - Easton wasn't my favourite character in the first trilogy of this series and at times he felt like more of a plot device than a character in his own right - but hey, it's Erin Watt, so I was never going to not read this book.

And actually I did enjoy it. Maybe not as much as I loved the first three books, but it was still a good read and I'm glad I picked it up. 

Easton does get developed a lot in this book and we start to see behind the party boy facade (OK, it's not much of a facade as he really is just a party boy) and I liked what I saw. His true character is more complex than you'd first think and you get to see more of his relationship with his brothers.

This episode is like the first three books in that it's a completely soap-opera plot filled with rich teenagers who are more like jaded thirty-year-olds and not a parent to be seen among the lot of them. It shouldn't work, but it totally, totally did. Like, this series is never going to win the Pulitzer Prize, but it doesn't have to. It's emotional and fun and escapist.

So after getting into a compromising position with a teacher (I know!) Easton meets a new girl in school, Hartley Wright. She rebuffs his advances initially, so after stalking her creepily in order to get into her knickers, he finally hits on the winning idea of being her friend (not because he wants to be her friend, or because he respects that she doesn't want to sleep with him. He becomes her friend to get her into bed). But Hartley is a girl with a nasty past and a tangled present and when you introduce ol' crash-and-burn Easton Royal into the mix, things go about as well as you can imagine. 

I liked the characters (we see a bit of Ella and Reed), the plot was bonkers but great and although I don't like alpha males and Easton came across as a perve-slash-stalker I really got behind the whole story.

So yeah,. Totally unbelievable stuff. Totally compelling.

4 stars

Side Effects May Vary by Julie Murphy

Hhrmmnh.  I thought I was going to like this a lot more than I actually did.  And in the hands of another author, this could have been a really good book.

The main thing I disliked was that the tone was entirely wrong.  The whole premise of the book was that this girl, Alice, develops leukaemia and puts together a bucket list of revenge on the people who have pissed her off. Then she goes into remission and has to go back to school and face the people she's  wreaked havoc on.

This book would have worked better with a snarky, sharp, sarcastic tone.  I mean, seriously.  You spend half a year being evil thinking there'll be no consequences and then BAM.  Joke's on you 'coz you're going to live after all.  Instead the narrative was kind of melancholy and had no injections of the humour it desperately needed.

I couldn't stand Alice.  Like, I detested her.  In contrast, Harvey was lovely but Alice was such a miserable cow I actually thought less of him for putting up with her.  If a guy had been treating a girl the way Alice treated Harvey,we'd have all been up in arms, because her treatment of him was emotional abuse.  And before anyone says, 'But she had CANCER!  Of course she was UPSET!' from what I could tell, Alice was a cow before her diagnosis (and I don't want to downplay in any way the horror of cancer - to watch yourself slowly disintegrating must be beyond horrific and I think the author actually did an okay job of portraying this, as well as the way it affected Alice's parents).

The structure of the book was also a bugbear for me.  It is told from a dual viewpoint and dots between the past and the present seemingly at random.  It made for confusing reading and didn't endear me to the story or engage me at all.  I really couldn't tell why the author had employed this structure.  Maybe there was a reason, but I couldn't see it.

The writing itself was fine, and the author is obviously trained and capable.  I just think this wasn't the right project for her.

2 stars

Waiting On Wednesday - This Mortal Coil by Emily Suvada

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme that gives us all a chance to highlight the upcoming releases that we’re eagerly anticipating.  This week my Waiting on Wednesday pick is This Mortal Coil by Emily Suvada.
 
Here’s the blurb:

3 billion lives at stake. 2 people who can save them. 1 secret hidden in their DNA. A breathtaking debut series about one girl's quest for answers in a genetically and technologically advanced future. There's no gene for RUN LIKE HELL.

When a lone soldier, Cole, arrives with news of Lachlan Agatta's death, all hope seems lost for Catarina. Her father was the world's leading geneticist, and humanity's best hope of beating a devastating virus.

Then, hidden beneath Cole's genehacked enhancements she finds a message of hope: Lachlan created a vaccine. Only she can find and decrypt it, if she can unravel the clues he left for her. The closer she gets, the more she finds herself at risk from Cartaxus, a shadowy organization with a stranglehold on the world's genetic tech. But it's too late to turn back.

As the pieces fit together it's clear there is one final secret that Cat must unlock. A secret that will change everything. With the pace and twists of a thriller, an emotional sucker-punch, the exquisite world-building of the best fantasy, and an imagined future that sci-fi fans will love.

Waiting on Wednesday - Meant To Be by Julie Halpern

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme that gives us all a chance to highlight the upcoming releases that we’re eagerly anticipating.  This week my Waiting on Wednesday pick is Meant To Be byJulie Halpern.
 
Here’s the blurb:

Wh at if your soul mate was decided for you?

It started happening a few years ago: the names of MTBs—“meant to be” mates—appeared emblazoned on the skin at age eighteen. Agatha’s best friend has embraced the phenomenon and is head over heels in love with her MTB. But Aggy isn’t so sure.
As she struggles with accepting her MTB fate, she finds herself falling for a coworker at the local amusement park. Is he a better match? What does Agatha really want in a mate, and moreover, what does she want for herself?

Ramona Blue by Julie Murphy

Ramona was only five years old when Hurricane Katrina changed her life forever.

Since then, it’s been Ramona and her family against the world. Standing over six feet tall with unmistakable blue hair, Ramona is sure of three things: she likes girls, she’s fiercely devoted to her family, and she knows she’s destined for something bigger than the trailer she calls home in Eulogy, Mississippi.

This was an okay book about a girl living in the deep south whose life was decimated by hurricane Katrina back in 2005.

I read Dumplin', also by Julie Murphy, a while back and really enjoyed it so I had high hopes for this book.  It was okay.  Well written, I guess, but it didn't thrill me or make me want to keep reading, so it took me about a week to plod through.  

I did like Ramona -she was quirky and flawed and interesting, but I did want to give her a good shake and tell her not to stay in her home town all her life sorting out her sister's life.  Freddie was a bit  blah and I didn't get why he and Ramona were so MFEO, other than they had spent some summers together when they were kids.

This book has come under fire for being homophobic by implying that lesbians 'just haven't found the right guy yet' but actually I found this to be a really positive representation of a girl who strongly identified as gay but then starts to question her sexuality when she becomes attracted  to a boy.  I get why people have been incensed about this book because it does have the air of 'lesbian-turning' about it, but surely it's important for people who are questioning to have representation too? 

The plot kind of centres around Ramona's discovery that she's bi/pansexual whilst at the same time trying to dig herself out of her dirt-poor roots and help her knocked-up sister who can't seem to do a damn thing for herself.  For me, the plot didn't really have enough going on and the story arcs didn't really 'arc' enough.  I don't know.  There were times when I found the whole thing kind of a slog.

All in all I think this book had the potential to be really good but although there was nothing really wrong with it,  it didn't really grab me.

3 stars

The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertelli

This was an okay book and it had some really awesome aspects to it, but as a whole it didn't thrill me as much as Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda and the ending especially fell a bit flat.

The Upside of Unrequited was a sweet story about Molly Peskin, who has had 26 crushes but who has never been kissed.  She's overweight and is convinced that because of her size no one would fancy her.  Then her love-cynic twin sister gets a girlfriend and suddenly Molly's all on her own.

I did like Molly as an MC - she was funny and complex and had a very amusing turn of phrase - but there were a few times when I just wanted to give her a good shake and tell her to grow up.  I got that she loved her twin sister, but she was pretty clingy.  

The plot is quite gently-paced and revolves around Molly coming to terms with her sister getting herself all loved up as well as letting go of her deep-seated fear of rejection.  Meanwhile, her mums are getting married and her racist grandmother has come to stay.  It's all totally readable stuff.  Nothing massively challenging, but not every book has to have the emotional impact of a cricket ball to the forehead, does it? 

There is also a love triangle.  I'm just saying.  One of the boys is so obviously meant to be for Molly and the other is a hipster.  He wasn't described this way, but I kept imagining him with a massive hipster beard and a lumberjack shirt, which was a bit off=putting.

I would recommend this book as it's a fun, light read and not too taxing if you just want something fun to pick up.

3.5 stars