Claire Stevens's Blog, page 18

Wing Jones by Katherine Webber

I thought this was oka-a-a-ay. It was an okay read and there were some uplifting bits to it but there were bits that annoyed me as well.

Wing Jones is the story of a girl of Ghanian-Chinese hertiage who has lived her whole life in the shadow of her superstar football-playing brother and discovers a talent for running when her brother is in a car accident and killstwo people whilst drink-driving.

There was lots to like about this book - Wing's talent and dedication to her running was inspiring and uplifting, especially as she persisted despite all odds.

Wing's heritage made for interesting reading and I absolutely loved her grandmothers. I think they were my favourite characters in the whole book and in fact the whole family dynamic was lovely. The thing about her dragon and her lioness confused me - were they real or the embodiment of her ancestry and her strengths?

I also liked the friendships Wing made when she started running (although the running thing confused me - she was a sophomore (?) so presumably she'd been through several years of PE prior to this book. How was it she'd never discovered her ultra-quick running before now??). Wing really develops as a character througout the book and these friendships are a major part of her transformation. Wing's narrative starts out as very childish, but by the end she sounds a lot more mature.

The main thing that annoyed me was how Wing's brother Marcus committed a horrific crime and that crime just seemed to get swept under the carpet at the end of the book:

His court appearance is in six weeks. We all know he's going to to jail. But we got through this; we can get through whatever comes next.'

That is literally all that's said about Marcus's crime. This seems to be an amazing volte face for someone who has just spent *riffles through pages* FIFTY EIGHT CHAPTERS stressing about what her brother has done.

Another thing that annoyed me was the romance. In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb and say the romance did nothing for this book. It didn't move the plot along, it didn't interest me. It was like someone had told the author that because she was writing a YA book so she really really needed to include a love interest and it felt totally shoe-horned in. Plus, I really didn't like Aaron. When he and Wing were kissing in the tent, he tries to go further and she tells him not to and then he sulks. This is not hot, it's creepy. Also, unless I'm reading it wrong, Aaron is eighteen and Wing is fifteen. This is also borderline creepy. Wing sounds very immature when she talks about Aaron- it's all about how gorgeous he is, rather than his personality or what he's like and she's quite possessive of him.

Would I recommend this book? If it's in the library, or if a friend offers it to you, maybe. Not sure I'd go out especially and buy it.

3 stars

Waiting One Wednesday - The Border by Steve Schafer

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme that lets us flag up the upcoming releases we’re eagerly anticipating.  This week, my Waiting on Wednesday pick is The Border by Steve Schafer.  Here's the blurb:
 
One moment changed their lives forever.

A band plays, glasses clink, and four teens sneak into the Mexican desert, the hum of celebration receding behind them.

Crack. Crack. Crack.

Not fireworks—gunshots. The music stops. And Pato, Arbo, Marcos, and Gladys are powerless as the lives they once knew are taken from them.

Then they are seen by the gunmen. They run. Except they have nowhere to go. The narcos responsible for their families' murders have put out a reward for the teens' capture. Staying in Mexico is certain death, but attempting to cross the border through an unforgiving desert may be as deadly as the secrets they are trying to escape...

The S Word by Chelsea Pitcher

Oh man. I had such high hopes for this book but it failed to deliver in almost every way.

The main problem I had with The S Word was that couldn't connect with the main character, and I find if I can't do that then the book is basically a bust. She was boring and two dimensional and a right old drama llama. I would have cheerfully punched her at times. Her internal monologue was awful - cliched and whiny and tedious. And you know how Show-don't-tell is a thing? Well this MC did both. She'd show us how terrified she was and then follow it up by saying 'Wow. I'm totally terrified right now.' I wanted to take a big red pen and scribble whole paragraphs out.

However instead of DNFing I carried on because with a situation as contentious as the one porrrayed here I thought the author might show some insight or character development or a bit of social critique. This didn't happen. Or if it did, it was buried in acres of dull, unrealistic dialogue.

It's such a shame because the idea behind this book is excellent. Slut shaming is a perennial topic both in fiction and real life and we need more books and people to be calling out this behaviour. The book also deals with ease and sexuality (although both are shoehorned in at the end and not given enough airtime).

This could have been a really important book, but the style of writing let it down. The MC dashes around for the first three quarters thinking she's Dick Tracy, trying to solve the mystery of her best friend's death but it just comes off all wrong. I never got the sense that the two girls were close, there wasn't enough back story to make me care.

This was a big disappointment for me. It read like a first draft and with some decent structural and line editing it could have been a solid book but as it stands it was pretty rubbish.

Leave Me by Gayle Foreman

I took a punt on this as an e-audiobook download (I'm decorating at the moment and painting walls and doors bores me to tears).  I really liked If I Stay and Where She Went and I Was Here, so I thought I'd take a look (listen) at Gayle Foreman's foray into adult literature.

The story involves a woman who is so busy juggling home and work that she has a heart attack without realising it.  She is told by her doctors to convalesce, but stepping down from her usual duties seems to make everyone impatient so she completely flips her lid and runs away.

Her protagonist, Maribeth, was quite an engaging, complex character, nicely flawed, and was in a situation a lot of working mothers would identify with.  After taking a career break to raise her small children, she has gone back to work ostensibly part time but has found, like a lot of part time workers, that all she is doing is cramming full time responsibilities into a shorter working week.  She's also still having to manage all the home chores that she was taking on before, juggling play dates and school events and all the household minutiae that get overlooked until you're the one who actually has to take responsibility for it.

I was really pleased at how much Maribeth grew as a character over the course of the book and how she affected the other people she met in her new life.  The plot itself is fairly meandering - this is more a characterthan a plot driven novel - but  it was still really listenable (and I  don't always get on well with audiobooks).

I don't know if it's because I've read Gayle Foreman's YA books and that's what I'm used to, or if it's just Foreman's style, but it felt quite reminiscent of YA.  The themes of finding yourself, new beginnings gave it quite a contemporary YA feel.  This isn't a bad thing and I think it still stands up well as adult literature.

The book also explores the fact that even in today's society where many mothers go back to work after having children instead of staying at home, we're still drawing the short straw.  There were some parts that made me want to shake Maribeth and tell her to sit her husband down and tell him to start pulling his bloody weight.

The only thing I would probably change about this book was the ending.  It was all so nicely wrapped up and Maribeth forgave everyone who had been so instrumental in her having a breakdown.  I think I'd have preferred it if she'd just told everyone to go fuck themselves and spentthe rest of her days living in a commune in California, smoking opium and writing bad poetry.

4 stars

Waiting On Wednesday - Mr 60% by Clete Barrett Smith

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme that lets us flag up the upcoming releases we’re eagerly anticipating.  This week, my Waiting on Wednesday pick is Mr 60% by Clete Barrett Smith.  Here's the blurb:
 
Matt Nolan is the high school drug dealer, deadbeat, and soon-to-be dropout according to everyone at his school. His vice principal is counting down the days until Mr. 60% (aka Matt) finally flunks out and is no longer his problem. What no one knows is the only reason Matt sells drugs is to take care of his uncle Jack, who is dying of cancer.
 
Meet Amanda. The overly cheerful social outcast whose optimism makes Matt want to hurl. Stuck as partners during an after-school club (mandatory for Matt), it’s only a matter of time until Amanda discovers Matt’s secret. But Amanda is used to dealing with heartbreak, and she’s determined to help Matt find a way to give life 100 percent.

The Female of the Species by Mindy McGinnis

Everyone thinks if you fix a male dog it will lower his aggression, but most of the biters are female. It’s basic instinct to protect their womb. You see it in all animals - the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

I am three for three with the five star books over the last week.  And I don't give five stars lightly, so I consider myself highly lucky to have found these three books, as different as all three of them have been.

The final book in my trio of excellence is Mindy McGinnis's The Female of the Species.  And my god, what a book it's been.  It had me completely glued the whole way through.  At one point I was stirring a saucepan of soup for lunch with one hand and reading this book with the other.

I went into The Female of the Species thinking that it was a revenge book.  I mean, the blurb talks about some girl called Alex knowing how to kill someone.  So I kind of thought okay, this character has probably been bullied or abused or whatever and she'll plot some big revenge spree, but she'll get derailed at the last minute, because characters in YA books aren't allowed to go around killing people.  Are they?

Well, apparently no one told Mindy McGinnis that.

What I actually got was a sharp, incisive look at the insidiousness of rape culture and what it takes to bring it down.  I got a love story.  I got flawed characters in spades.  I got a Mean Girl who was actually portrayed with a shred of humanity.  I got a thesis on internalised misogyny and the difference in reactions to violence perpetuated by men and violence perpetuated by women.

I got a killer I rooted for the whole way through the book.

This book is so relevant and so important.  There are going to be a lot of people who say it's too dark, the themes are too mature for a teen audience.  Well guess what?  Sexual violence is being committed against countless teenaged girls every single day and a book like this might go some tiny way to encouraging them to speak out against it, to show them that damn it, no, this is not acceptable.  Obviously McGiniss isn't advocating a vigilante justice system, but the book does ask why it's seen as so unacceptable for women to speak out loudly and aggressively about the injustices we face.

The book is told from three viewpoints - Alex, Peekay and Jack - and I think three viewpoints was just right.  We get Alex, who can't trust herself around normal people for fear of what she might do, Peekay, who is struggling with the Preacher's Kid label she has been saddled with since kindergarten, and Jack, the boy who thinks with his dick until the day he doesn't.

This book is amazing.  Every strand is relevant and everything weaves together perfectly until the final explosive conclusion.  Perfection.

5 stars

We Are Okay by Nina LaCour

You go through life thinking there’s so much you need…

Until you leave with only your phone, your wallet, and a picture of your mother.

I bought this book solely on the basis of the gorgeous cover.  Okay, maybe not solely because of the cover.  I mean, if I'd looked at the blurb and discovered it was about how awesome Nazism is, or that it was Jeremy Clarkson's autobiography then I'd have put it back on the shelf.  The cover was what made me pick it up.  The blurb and first few pages made me buy it.

I don't go for character-driven books at all.  Like at all.  I like casinos and car chases and high jinx and tense love affairs.  But this one had me completely hooked and totally in love.  I loved poor Marin and her story was absolutely heartbreaking.  I loved Mabel and the back story between her and Marin.  I was desperate for them to get back together.  Desperate.  I won't tell you if they do, but the story did have a satisfactory ending.

The plot isn't huge - Marin is staying inher dorm at college for the Christmas break because she has no one to go home to.  Mabel comes to visit her after them not being in touch for a few months and tries to convince her to come back to California with her for the break.  That's it.  But we also get flashbacks to the previous summer, of everything that happened between Marin and Mabel and between Marin and her granddad and we learn about Marin's tragic past.

I reallyloved the writingstyle too.  There's nothing flashy, but every word is carefully thought out and it's almost poetic.  I usually hate poetry, but the writing here was just beautiful - it was more like art than words and gave a real sense of texture to everything that happened.

I finished this book a few days ago now and I'm still really hungover on it.  Definitely worth a read.

5 stars

Waiting On Wednesday - Nothing by Annie Barrows

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme that lets us flag up the upcoming releases we’re eagerly anticipating.  This week, my Waiting on Wednesday pick is Nothing by Annie Barrows.  Here's the blurb:
 
From Annie Barrows, the acclaimed #1 New York Times–bestselling coauthor of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and the author of the award-winning and bestselling Ivy + Bean books, this teen debut tells the story of Charlotte and Frankie, two high school students and best friends who don’thave magical powers, fight aliens, crash their cars, get pierced, or discover they are royal. They just go to school. And live at home. With their parents. A great read for fans of Becky Albertalli, Louise Rennison, and Adi Alsaid.

Nothing ever happens to Charlotte and Frankie. Their lives are nothing like the lives of the girls they read about in their YA novels. They don’t have flowing red hair, and hot romantic encounters never happen—let alone meeting a true soul mate.
They just go to high school and live at home with their parents, who are pretty normal, all things considered. But when Charlotte decides to write down everything that happens during their sophomore year—to prove that nothing happens and there is no plot or character development in real life—she’s surprised to find that being fifteen isn’t as boring as she th
ought.

It’s weird, heartbreaking, silly, and complicated. And maybe, just perfect.

When It's Real by Erin Watt

Yes.  Yes.  Yes.  This was brilliant.

Erin Watt (in reality two authors using one pen name) has now achieved autobuy status.  First they knocked it out the park with the amazeballs Paper Princess trilogy (which shouldn't have worked, it just shouldn't, but it had me utterly hooked for three books) and now this.

Like Paper Princess, the premise of this book shouldn't work.  The whole schtick is a fauxmance between a mega-famous pop star and a commoner.  His public image needs a boost, so his record label hire someone (who is ardently not a fan and actively dislikes him) to pretend to be his girlfriend.  And what do you think happens?  Do you think they might fall in love against the odds?  My god, I can't believe you saw that one coming!

So far, so cliche.  Seriously, it's a plot description that I'd usually avoid like the plague.  It just sounds so naff.  But Erin Watts has taken a plot that sounds dumb and characters that sound stupid and woven them together into a book that had me utterly, utterly hooked.  I was deliberately reading slowly in order to not finish it too quickly.

I don't know how they do it.  I've studied this book and also the Paper Princess trilogy quite hard to try and work it out, because seriously it's like they put crack in the ink this book was printed with or something.  The best I can come up with is the following:

- The characters are well fleshed-out and have enough back story to make them interesting
- Sparky dialogue and plenty of it
- Plot points that are slightly soap-opera, but just this side of believable
- Strong female characters that aren't afraid to stick up for themselves
- Baddies that retain their humanity

Even then, there's still something in their writing that I can't put my finger on.  Something in the style of writingthat acts as magic fairy dust that lifts their books above the run-of-the-mill contemporaries out there.  There's sexual tension, but I read loads of books with sexual tension.  There's sex (and well-written sex), but again I read plenty of books with sex in them.
 
I don't know.  Maybe they really do put crack in the ink.

5 stars

It's Not Like It's A Secret by Misa Sugiura

Sixteen-year-old Sana Kiyohara has too many secrets. Some are small, like how it bothers her when her friends don’t invite her to parties. Some are big, like that fact that her father may be having an affair. And then there’s the one that she can barely even admit to herself—the one about how she might have a crush on her best friend.

When Sana and her family move to California she begins to wonder if it’s finally time for some honesty, especially after she meets Jamie Ramirez. Jamie is beautiful and smart and unlike anyone Sana’s ever known. There are just a few problems: Sana’s new friends don’t trust Jamie’s crowd; Jamie’s friends clearly don’t want her around anyway; and a sweet guy named Caleb seems to have more-than-friendly feelings for her. Meanwhile, her dad’s affair is becoming too obvious to ignore anymore.

This was a good book and there were aspects that I really liked but there were also things that annoyed me.

Firstly I liked the premise of the book - Sana is having to deal with figuring outher sexuality and  coming out (or not), as well as dealing with being the only Japanese-American girl (in her first school) and then being racially stereotyped when she moves to California.  

I really liked Sana and Jamie's relationship - it was very sweet.  I think the cultural expectations Sana faced (like enduring hardship and going out of your way to not make other people uncomfortable) andhow this affected her sexuality were sensitively portrayed.  Her mum could be a right old dragon, but that's coming from a white girl who was brought up by fairly liberal parents.  I liked that she and her mum resolved their differences in the end, although everything got wrapped up quite quickly in the last couple of chapters.

I had kind of mixed feelings about Sana.  In some respects she was really quiet and obedient and respectful, which I get was part of her upbringing - her mother never lost an opportunity to tell her where she was screwing up or to correct her or reprimand her.  And that's okay, some characters are quiet and it's not a dreadful thing, but this side of her character left her making really dumb decisions at times.

Then other times, Sana could be really confident and outgoing and made good decisions, like the way she pursued Jamie and made her intentions clear, and it just left me thinking, 'Why can't you be like that all the time??'

Overall I think this book was okay, but it left me vaguely unsatisfied.

3 stars