Claire Stevens's Blog, page 16

Dreamland by Sarah Dessen

This was a lot darker than other Sarah Dessen books I've read and all the better for it.  I've read a couple of her other books and they're kind of sunny and light and they don't really deal with subjects deeper than 'Will the guy I like kiss me eventually?'

Dreamland, on the other hand, is about a girl who finds herself in a physically violent relationship after her older sister runs away from home and her parents withdraw from her emotionally.

This book was about domestic violence, which surprised me.  The topic was sensitively handled but still had a lot of emotional impact.  It was kind of terrifying because Dessen showed exactly how easily people can fall into abusive relationships and how hard it is to get out of them.  On the face of it, Caitlin didn't need to stay with Rogerson - she wasn't dependant on him financially, she had friends and a family - but she stayed with him anyway and it never felt unbelievable.  I have to admit, I didn't get why she was with him in the first place as he sounded like a dickwad even before he started smacking her about, but I could see why she stayed with him.

Dreamland isn't just about domestic violence, though - it's also about living in someone else's shadow, absent parenting, peer pressure - a whole raft of things that made Caitlin feel like she had to stay with Rogerson.

Not like Sarah Dessen's other work and definitely recommended.

4 stars

Waiting on Wednesday - The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater

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 The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater.
 
Here’s the blurb:

One teenager in a skirt.

One teenager with a lighter.

One moment that changes both of their lives forever.

If it weren’t for the 57 bus, Sasha and Richard never would have met. Both were high school students from Oakland, California, one of the most diverse cities in the country, but they inhabited different worlds. Sasha, a white teen, lived in the middle-class foothills and attended a small private school. Richard, a black teen, lived in the crime-plagued flatlands and attended a large public one.

Each day, their paths overlapped for a mere eight minutes. But one afternoon on the bus ride home from school, a single reckless act left Sasha severely burned, and Richard charged with two hate crimes and facing life imprisonment. The case garnered international attention, thrusting both teenagers into the spotlight.

The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee

Oh my word.  I loved this book.

How do I count the ways in which I love The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue?   It's nearly impossible.  It would be easier to list what I didn't like about it, because the answer would be nothing.

TGGTVAV was fun and romantic and I was hooked from the first page to the last sentence.  It's the story of Henry 'Monty' Montague, a young aristocrat living in the eighteenth century, who likes nothing better than drinking too much and fornicating.  He's also in love with his best friend, Percy.  When the two embark on their Grand Tour of Europe, Henry knows that when he returns to England he will be expected to marry a nice girl and run his father's estate for the rest of his life.  But the Tour doesn't exactly go to plan.

I wasn't joking when I said there was nothing I didn't like about this book.  The plot was equal parts exciting and hilarious, the mood changed from light-hearted to mournful to romantic and back again.  The characters were complex and fun and interesting and I liked them all immensely.

And there are pirates.

This book is a paradox in that it's a historical novel that isn't just about straight, white people.   It's cheeky and moves whip-fast.  The thing I liked most about the book, though, was the narrative.  Henry's voice is so hilarious and I just fell in love with him.  The author has a genuine way with words and descriptions.  Henry was witty and charming, simultaneously boastful and self-deprecating and  a delightful mixture of Bertie Wooster, Flashman and something that is just him alone.

And then I found out that the sequel, A Lady's Guide to Pirates and Petticoats, is out next year.  Well, sign me up right now.

5 stars

Waiting on Wednesday - The Nowhere Girls by Amy Reed

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 The Nowhere Girls by Amy Reed.
 
Here’s the blurb:

Three misfits come together to avenge the rape of a fellow classmate and in the process trigger a change in the misogynist culture at their high school transforming the lives of everyone around them in this searing and timely story.

Who are the Nowhere Girls?

They’re everygirl. But they start with just three:

Grace Salter is the new girl in town, whose family was run out of their former community after her southern Baptist preacher mom turned into a radical liberal after falling off a horse and bumping her head.

Rosina Suarez is the queer punk girl in a conservative Mexican immigrant family, who dreams of a life playing music instead of babysitting her gaggle of cousins and waitressing at her uncle’s restaurant.

Erin Delillo is obsessed with two things: marine biology and Star Trek: The Next Generation, but they aren’t enough to distract her from her suspicion that she may in fact be an android.

When Grace learns that Lucy Moynihan, the former occupant of her new home, was run out of town for having accused the popular guys at school of gang rape, she’s incensed that Lucy never had justice. For their own personal reasons, Rosina and Erin feel equally deeply about Lucy’s tragedy, so they form an anonymous group of girls at Prescott High to resist the sexist culture at their school, which includes boycotting sex of any kind with the male students.

Told in alternating perspectives, this groundbreaking novel is an indictment of rape culture and explores with bold honesty the deepest questions about teen girls and sexuality.

Queens of Geek by Jen Wilde

This book was a massive, massive disappointment.  I thought I was going to love it - it’s all about fandom and geeking out at cons - but I found the plot boring and the characters tiresome.

The cover was the first thing that drew me in, which is a mistake, I know, but look!  So pretty.

Also, it’s about going to a massive con.  Which is cool.  Surely.

Except that after the first few chapters I found myself getting less and less engaged and towards the end I was just skimming.

The best thing inside the book was Charlie.  I thought she was great - really interesting and energetic and kind.  I’m not into YouTube, but her channel sounded fun and I liked the build up to her romance sub-plot.  And good bisexual representation as  it stepped away from the Bisexual Equals Slutty/Evil trope, which I detest. Unfortunately, after the first kiss scene her plotline fizzled out and lost all tension whilst at the same time suffering from the worst case of instalove I’ve read about for quite some time.

So the story is told in alternating viewpoints and the second viewpoint was ... Taylor.

I literally do not have anything positive to say about Taylor.  I’ve really tried, but I’m coming up blank.

So Taylor is mooted as a fangirl of a book series that sounds a bit like Throne of Glass.  She also represents one half of the most tepid, tedious love story I've ever read and was supposed to have anxiety disorder and autistic spectrum disorder.  Unfortunately this was the worst representation of mental health issues I think I’ve ever read.   She sounded an awful lot like drama-llamas I’ve met in real life who have Google-diagnosed themselves with mental health problems and very much enjoy the attention they get when they literally go around telling every random stranger they meet about their ‘issues’.  There was no authenticity here.

I think I’ve been spoilt recently with some excellent books that depict mental health in a really real way.  Under Rose-Tainted Skies and Eliza and her Monsters had a much more authentic feel to them.

And the crying!  God almightly.  These characters couldn’t go a single scene without weeping over something or other.  FML.

There wasn’t enough in the book about the con.  After the descriptions in the first few chapters, the book mostly had a lot of navel-gazing by the two main characters, which was a shame.

If you want to read about introverts geeking the hell out about stuff they love, Fangirl or Eliza and her Monsters would be a much better bet.  If you want to read about cons, The Improbable Theory of Ana and Zak is a better read.  And if you want to read romance, literally any other book in the world would be better than this.

2 stars

Waiting on Wednesday - The Hanging Girl by Eileen Cook

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 The Hanging Girl by Eileen Cook.
 
Here’s the blurb:

Skye Thorn has given tarot card readings for years, and now her psychic visions are helping the police find the town’s missing golden girl. It’s no challenge—her readings have always been faked, but this time she has some insider knowledge.

The kidnapping was supposed to be easy—no one would get hurt and she’d get the money she needs to start a new life. But a seemingly harmless prank has turned dark, and Skye realizes the people she’s involved with are willing to kill to get what they want and she must discover their true identity before it’s too late.

You Know Me Well by David Levithan and Nina LaCour

This was an okay book, but it was only okay.

You Know Me Well is a book about two people who sit next to each other in maths for a year without really getting to know each other until a crazy night out in San Francisco.

The plot moves really quickly and manages to cram an awful lot into what is only a medium-sized book.  Which is good, because the book was never boring.  However, the friendship between Mark and Kate felt rushed.  Like they'd only known each other a day and they were already BFFs.  

I found their alternate viewpoints both good and bad.  Good because both the MCs were interesting people, but bad because in an already packed plot it just made things even more fast-paced and I didn't feel like I got to know Mark and Kate as much as I wanted to.

I liked that this wasn't a coming-out book (not for the MCs anyway), but was more about already being out and trying to find who you are and where you fit into the world.  And I liked the depiction of San Francisco Pride.  It sounded like a hoot and a half.

This actually had a lot in common with Nina Lacour's other book, Everything Leads To You, in that inboth books the MC is an amazingly talented teenager.  Like, seriously talented.  In Everything Leads To You, the MC is barely eighteen but she has already been employed by a film studio to be a set designer.  A set designer.  For a film studio.  In You Know Me Well, the MC is an amazingly talented artist, whose pictures raise thousands of dollars for charity when they are sold.  It's just  ...  It makes the MCs seem older than they're supposed to be.  Like they're thirty-something.  When I was eighteen, I could barely find my arse with both hands.  There's no effin' way I'd have had the talent or chutzpah to achieve the things Lacour's MCs do.  No effin' way.  And while this makes the MCs interesting, it doesn't make them real or relatable for the 99.9% of teenagers who don't achieve such greatness.

Not sure who I'd recommend this to because it didn't grab me as much as I'd hoped but it was still an okay read.

3 stars

Tease by Amanda Maciel

Emma was a boyfriend-stealing bitch right up until the day in March when she killed herself. I didn't do anything wrong, but she totally ruined my life.

Sara didn't want Emma to kill herself. She just wanted Emma to stay away from her boyfriend.  But when Emma comits suicide, the whole world wants to blame Sara and her friends.

The best thing about this book is the spotlight it shines on bullying and how thoughtless, spiteful actions can have such an impact on someone's life.  

This book had the unusual distinction of not containing a single likeable character.  It was really quite some feat, considering how many characters there are, and even the poor girl who is bullied to suicide comes across as a bit whiny and clingy.  That sounds terrible, but there it is.  

Admittedly, Sarah does develop towards the end into not-quite-such-a-horrible-person, but even so she's a long way from likeable.  And I'm a connoisseur of bastard MCs.  The development, though, is tempered by the fact that she's such a vacuous, spiteful, desperate person to begin with.  For the most part of the book, she refuses to even consider that her actions had anything to do with Emma's death.  Maybe I'm missing something and her denial was a reaction to her horror over what happened.

A book doesn't have to have likeable MCs to be a worthy read (look at literally any book by Courtney Summers), but the MCs in this book were just so casual and pointless and repetitive in their spite that it grew tiresome to read after a while and left me completely emotionally detatched from them.

A better book about bullying is Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver.  


3 stars

The Wrong Side of Right by Jenn Marie Thorne

Kate Quinn’s mom died last year, leaving Kate parentless and reeling. So when the unexpected shows up in her living room, Kate must confront another reality she never thought possible—or thought of at all. Kate does have a father. He’s a powerful politician. And he’s running for U.S. President. Suddenly, Kate’s moving in with a family she never knew she had, joining a campaign in support of a man she hardly knows, and falling for a rebellious boy who may not have the purest motives. This is Kate’s new life. But who is Kate? When what she truly believes flies in the face of the campaign’s talking points, she must decide.

This was a pretty good story about an orphaned girl who discovers that her biological dad is a super famous senator guy who's running for president.  

I liked this book but I didn't love it.  I liked Kate, and I liked that she was opinionated and had her own ideas, and I got that she was so desperate for things to work out with her biological dad after the death of her mum.

However, I did think it was a bit odd that despite being raised by a super liberal mum, she was a bit tepid about her dad's right wing politics.  It probably helped that her dad was like the least conservative Republican since forever.  I don't know a massive amount about American politics and I'm happy to be corrected on this, but I seriously cannot imagine there ever being a Republican presidential candidate who is pro-choice and pro-marriage-equallity.  

Speaking of which, Kate was literally the only seventeen year old girl I've ever heard of who had no opinion about abortion and this confused me.  It's such an emotive subject, it just felt odd how she skated over it.  It felt like the author was trying really hard not to offend anyone by actually expressing an opinion.

I liked Kate's new family and it was nice to see the stepmum being portrayed in a really positive light.  It was equally nice to see the politicians on both sides of the political spectrum being equally  slimy and machiavellian.  

The polt moved quickly and covered a lot of ground around the run-up to an election as well as Kate trying to adjust to her new life.

The romance was okay.  Not a whole lot happened, but it was okay.

All in all this was an alright book.  Worth a trip to the library for.

3.5 stars

Waiting on Wednesday - A Short History of the Girl Next Door by Jared Reck

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 A Short History of the Girl Next Door by Jared Reck.
 
Here’s the blurb:

Seriously, how can you see a person nearly every day of your life and never think a thing of it, then all of a sudden, one day, it’s different? You see that goofy grin a thousand times and just laugh. But goofy grin #1,001 nearly stops your heart?
 
Right. That sounds like a bad movie already.
 
Matt Wainwright is constantly sabotaged by the overdramatic movie director in his head. He can’t tell his best friend, Tabby, how he really feels about her, he implodes on the JV basketball team, and the only place he feels normal is in Mr. Ellis’s English class, discussing the greatest fart scenes in literature and writing poems about pissed-off candy-cane lumberjacks.
 
If this were a movie, everything would work out perfectly. Tabby would discover that Matt’s madly in love with her, be overcome with emotion, and would fall into his arms. Maybe in the rain.
 
But that’s not how it works. Matt watches Tabby get swept away by senior basketball star and all-around great guy Liam Branson. Losing Tabby to Branson is bad enough, but screwing up and losing her as a friend is even worse.
 
After a tragic accident, Matt finds himself left on the sidelines, on the verge of spiraling out of control and losing everything that matters to him. From debut author Jared Reck comes a fiercely funny and heart-wrenching novel about love, longing, and what happens when life as you know it changes in an instant.