Claire Stevens's Blog, page 26

Paper Princess by Erin Watt

I shouldn’t have liked this book as much as I did.
 
To be honest, I shouldn’t have liked it at all.  It’s the trashiest of trashy romance novels.  It has a gorgeous protagonist, an alpha male (hate them) and filthy rich trash as a cast of characters.  The plot is sketchy at best, it explores no issues and there is not an ounce of diversity.
 
And I couldn’t put it down.
 
How the author (authors - Erin Watt is actually two people) had the gall to call this a YA book, I have no idea.  The characters in it may be sixteen, but in terms of attitude and life experiences, they’re more like jaded thirty-somethings.
 
And still I couldn’t put it down.
 
Seriously, it was like the damn book was superglued to my hands.  The pages might just as well have been made of crack.  I devoured the whole thing in less than a day and even though I’m skint, I cheerfully forked out £4.39 for the sequel immediately afterwards.  Because after THAT ENDING there was no way I’d be able to function without finding out what happened next.  Seriously, I have no idea how people who bought this book the day it came out managed until the second book was released.
 
So the premise of the book is that Ella, our protagonist, was raised by her single mum (a stripper - obvs).  When her mum got cancer, Ella started stripping too (at age fifteen!) to pay her medical bills and when her mum died and Ella carried on stripping to pay the bills and avoid going into foster care.  Then one day, she gets tracked down by the best friend of her bio dad (who died in a handgliding accident - obvs), who has decided he is her legal guardian.  Throw in some hot foster-brothers, a rotten-to-the-core prep school and some evil girlfriends, and you’ve got a high-octane book that reads like a whirlwind of lust and angst.
 
Sounds like a soap opera, doesn’t it?  It reads like one, too.  Kind of a cross between Jilly Cooper and Cruel Intentions - basically a load of jaded rich folk being mean to everyone, shagging anything that moves and taking a shit load of booze and drugs.
 
The whole thing doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny.  Like, when I really think about it, Ella nd Reed don’t have a whole bunch in common. They don’t have any great conversations and they have some pretty bad trust issues.  And really, would any parent be aware of the things the Royal brothers get up to and not intervene?  And is anyone really that good looking that people will literally fight to have sex with them??
 
The thing is, there’s just something about the characters, plot and writing that makes you stick your hands over your ears and go, ’LA LA LA LA!’ when your brain tries to point any of this out.  It’s uncanny.
 
I always rate books on how much I liked them, as opposed to how ‘good’ they are.  Which is lucky for Erin Watts, because she (they) haven’t written a ‘good’ book.  It will win no Pulitzer Prizes.  However, I’m still giving it five stars, because I literally couldn’t put the damn thing down.
 
5 stars

This Is Where It Ends by Marieke Nijkamp

10:00 a.m. The principal of Opportunity High School finishes her speech, welcoming the entire student body to a new semester and encouraging them to excel and achieve.

10:02 a.m. The students get up to leave the auditorium for their next class.

10:03 a.m. The auditorium doors won't open.

10:05 a.m. Someone starts shooting.

This had the potential to be a lot better than it actually was. 
 
What I was hoping for:  dark, reality-fiction that socked me to the stomach with flawed characters I could really root for.
 
What I got:  a kind of navel-gazey story about brothers and sisters.
 
I think I’m going to stop reading high-school-shooting books.  I guess I’m never going to be able to get behind a book that treats the ownership of guns as something, like, completely normal.  Because, for me, it’s not normal to have a gun in your house!  I would be freaked the fuck out if I ever ended up within a hundred metre radius of a gun.  It’s a gun!  A metal tube that shoots bullets and is designed to kill stuff!  They use them in wars! It’s like keeping an IED in your back garden!
 
I had the same thing with Hate List.  It weirds me out when books treat something like a high school shooting as ‘something that happens’.  I mean, I realise they DO happen in America, and they should absolutely be written about, in the same way that rape and abuse are written about, but I will never get my head around the tone this book (and others) use.  Characters weren’t shocked or freaked out that a guy had brought a gun into school and had started killing people.  They were terrified, yes.  But not shocked.
 
Because, well ... yes.  If you live in a society where you can literally go into a supermarket and buy A GUN, then you will also find yourself living in a society where crazy people use those guns to kill other people.
 
Christ knows, Britain is no Utopia - we’re finding plenty of ways to screw up our own country, thanks very much - but I don’t think Americans (particularly American authors and publishers) realise how weird it sounds.
 
Going into a supermarket.  And buying a gun.
 
So, no.  No more high-school-shooting books for me.
 
As for the rest of the book, I didn’t really feel it lived up to my hopes.  The characters were bland.  I didn’t really manage to get behind them and ultimately I didn’t really care if they got bumped off or not.  The lesbian couple, who I had great hopes for, were so tepid it just made me roll my eyes.  The track star and her friend/love interest were included for no good reason I could see.  There was an interesting delve into the dynamics of family relationships, specifically into the relationships between brothers and sisters, but it needed some interesting characters to bring it to life.
 
The plot was dull.  The kids in the auditorium just sat there while the mad guy picked them off, one by one.  There were no mad escape attempts, no tension (astonishingly, for a book about a mass-murder).
 
And that ending was cringingly cheesey.
 
I’ve read a couple of reviews that say this book is too scary for younger readers.  I wouldn’t necessarily agree.  High school shootings do happen and I do think it’s right that it gets written about.  But with this book, I’d have more concerns about younger teens slipping into a Boredom Coma than being kept up at night, sleepless and terrified.
 
2 stars

More Of Me by Kathryn Evans

I was really interested to read this because it’s a take on speculative fiction that I’ve never seen done before - what would you do if every year you automatically cloned a new copy of yourself who took over your life, leaving you stuck at the age you are now for the rest of your life? 

I love it when spec fic is set in a non-fantasy, non-future setting, and that’s what happens in More Of Me.  Everything is completely bizarre, but set against a completely normal backdrop.  Like, it’s awful when Katniss Everdeen has to fight loads of other kids to the death, but it doesn’t seem weird as such, because the rest of the world is screwed up too.  The normality of everything else made Teva’s situation seem all the more outrageous, but it never felt unbelievable.
 
Outwardly, Teva’s life seems normal - school,  best friend, boyfriend.  But she’s hiding a secret: at home life eleven other Tevas.  Every year, she separates into two, leaving the old Teva behind, stuck in the house with all the others.  But this year is different - Teva is determined that it’s not going to happen again.
 
One of the things I liked most about it was that it’s UKYA.  Nothing against US fiction at all, but I’m British, so I guess I’m always going to find it easier to connect with UKYA than with than USYA.  Walking to school in the drizzle.  School uniforms.  Hanging out at the park.  A Levels. 
 
I thought Teva was an okay character, but she was a bit self-absorbed and she needed to kick Ollie to the curb in about the first two chapters.  Spoiler alert - she didn’t.  I was not a fan of Ollie, but I could see why Fifteen still loved him so much.  I guess the point was that Teva had matured and left Ollie behind, whereas he and Fifteen were still on the same wavelength.
 
The other Tevas (all numbered for ease of reference!) were a really interesting cast of characters.  Fifteen needed a good slap, but I could see why she was permanently pissed off.  I think I probably would have been too, in her situation.  For the record, Teva’s mum needed a slap as well.  Imprisoning your children and pulling guilt-trip tears isn’t cool.
 
There are bits where the pace of the book slows down quite a lot - I could have handled hearing less about the fashion show - but I really enjoyed the writing style and that kept me reading.
 
This was a really interesting, original book and I’m really glad I picked it up.  Deffo recommended.
 
4 stars

Waiting On Wednesday - How To Break A Boy by Laurie DeVore

Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine and it’s a chance for us all to highlight the upcoming releases we’re eagerly anticipating.  This week, my Waiting on Wednesday pick is How To Break A Boy by Laurie DeVore.  Here's the blurb:
 
 What makes a mean girl mean? Find out in this compelling and compulsively readable debut novel filled with revenge and romance in a small southern town.

Since the death of her brother, mean girl Olivia's life is unravelling. When she catches her boyfriend sleeping with her BFF, Olivia realises she needs to work on an escape plan to get out of this town. She strikes a bargain with the school's "good guy," Whit DuRant: he will tutor her for the SAT and help her take down her former best friend, while they pretend to date as a cover.

But no matter how hard she tries to be good, Olivia just can't help being bad. Her choices unleash a tidal wave of drama that affects those closest to her, forcing her to question if she is any better than her sworn frenemy.
 
What about you? What’s your Waiting on Wednesday pick this week?
 

Orange Volume 1 by Ichigo Takano

This was quite a nice manga about a girl who finds a letter addressed to her from her future 25-year-old self.  She thinks it’s a prank, but the things in the letter start to come true, convincing her of its authenticity.  Her future self begs her to look after a transfer student, Kareku, so that she can save him from a terrible fate.
 
This was a really interesting story about the things we’d tell our younger selves if only we had the chance and how tiny things can really affect the future and the whole butterfly effect thing.  There’s a whole flashback/forward thing going on too, which was kind of confusing in parts because the older gang of friends looked virtually identical to the younger friends.
 
The art was pretty good - lots of shoujo doe eyes and boys with choppy hair, but it was done well.
 
Naho was an okay protagonist, but she was just so meek it was unreal.  I was like, ‘Just hold his damn hand already!’  I actually liked the other two girls better - they were much more of a laugh!  And Kakeru was an okay love interest but he did the whole thing there the male protagonist is all ‘I really want you, but we can’t be together FOR YOUR OWN GOOD’.  Again, I actually like Suwa better than Kakeru.  One thing I really liked though, was although the group of friends was really diverse in personalities, they were all really close and had each others’ backs.
 
I think Orange would be better for a slightly younger audience.  One other reviewer described it as cute, and I think that’s exactly the right word.  This is cute, like kittens coming out of McVites biscuit packets.  A lot of reviewers said Orange made them cry, so I guess I must just be made of ice because it didn’t make me cry at all!  The message from the future thing lifted it a bit above normal shoujo manga but it was still maybe a bit too twee for me.  Having said that, it’s right there on Mangafox, so I’ll definitely read the sequel to see how it ends.
 
 3.5 stars

The One Memory of Flora Banks by Emily Barr

The One Memory of Flora Banks is about a seventeen year old girl who has no short-term memory.  She lives in Penzance with her parents, who take *very* good care of her and drifts through life not remembering anything before she was ten.  That is until she kisses a boy on a beach and suddenly she has a memory.  An actually memory.  So when Drake moves to the other side of the world Flora decides to follow him to work out what this new memory means.
 
Remember the bit in Fifty First Dates with Ten Second Tom?  Well, that’s poor old Flora.  Okay. maybe she doesn’t lose her memory after ten seconds - it’s more like a few hours - but she still can’t have a normal life.  She relies on her parents for a lot, her best friend for more and her raft of post-it notes to remind herself who she is and where she’s going.
 
Despite Flora being pretty repetitive at times (as you would be if you had no short-term memory) I actually really liked her.  She was quite soft and drifty but with a steel core.  She really knew what she wanted and had evolved to live her life in spite of her condition.  Her story rattles along quite well, again despite Flora’s repetitive inner monologue.
 
So I have a confession to make.  I’ve actually read a few of Emily Barr’s other books - her adult contemporaries.  In fact, that’s what drew me to this one - I really enjoyed them.  I have, however, noticed a bit of a theme.  Girl going through Bad Life Stuff decides to go travelling and in doing so finds that her problems travel with her but that she also discovers more about herself. 
 
So yes, they’re a bit formulaic, but good fun nevertheless.  They also read really well as travelogues - Emily Barr was a travel writer for The Guardian and has a really keen eye for recreating the countries she’s visited.  In equal parts I now really want to visit north Norway and also feel like I don’t need to after reading Flora Banks.
 
However, the thing is with her adult contemporaries there’s usually quite a dark undercurrent which was sadly missing here.  Flora is more sad than dark and I really think this story would have been better with more creepiness in it.  Because there were so many ways the plot could have gone with a protagonist who can’t remember anything and whose parents are stiflingly protective. Flora could have found her memories gradually start to trickle back only to discover that she was  a murderer, an abuse survivor, an escapee from a government facility, a kidnapee ... Anything! 
 
I’m not saying this is a bad book - it’s really not.  I just feel that, having read Emily Barr’s previous books, it had the potential to be a lot more thrilling.
 
I’d still recommend this book.  It was a decent read and I’m glad I picked it up.
 
3.5 stars
 
 I was sent a copy of The One Memory of Flora Banks in exchange for an honest review.  Many thanks to Penguin and Netgalley

Waiting On Wednesday - History Is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera

Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine and it’s a chance for us all to highlight the upcoming releases we’re eagerly anticipating.  This week, my Waiting on Wednesday pick is History Is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera.
 
You’re still alive in alternate universes, Theo, but I live in the real world where this morning you’re having an open casket funeral. I know you’re out there, listening. And you should know I’m really pissed because you swore you would never die and yet here we are. It hurts even more because this isn’t the first promise you’ve broken.

OCD-afflicted seventeen-year-old, Griffin, has just lost his first love – his best friend, ex-boyfriend and the boy he believed to be his ultimate life partner – in a drowning accident. In a desperate attempt to hold onto every last piece of the past, a broken Griffin forges a friendship with Theo’s new college boyfriend, Jackson. And Griffin will stop at nothing to learn every detail of Theo’s new college life, and ultimate death. But as the grieving pair grows closer, readers will question Griffin's own version of the truth – both in terms of what he’s willing to hide, and what true love ultimately means...
 
What about you? What’s your Waiting on Wednesday pick this week?

The Last Beginning by Lauren James

Sixteen years ago, after a scandal that rocked the world, teenagers Katherine and Matthew vanished without a trace. Now Clove Sutcliffe is determined to find her long lost relatives. But where do you start looking for a couple who seem to have been reincarnated at every key moment in history? Who were Kate and Matt? Why were they born again and again? And who is the mysterious Ella, who keeps appearing at every turn in Clove's investigation?

For Clove, there is a mystery to solve in the past and a love to find in the future.

The Last Beginning is the follow up story to The Next Together and wraps up the duology nicely.
 
I have to admit that at the end of The Next Together I was a bit confused as to what had happened and why.  I got that there was some kind of time travel thing, or reincarnation and I lu-u-urved Kate and Matthew’s story and the history stuff and I thought the ‘Togethers’ were being controlled by a computer somewhere along the line ... but yeah.  I reached the end of the book not having a Scooby-doo WHY anything had happened.
 
Well, dear reader, I am delighted to report that The Last Beginning wrapped everything up very nicely and I now want to go back to The Next Together and re-read it knowing exactly why everything is happening like it is.
 
Seriously, if you are unsure about this book because The Next Together left you confused, then don’t worry.  You’ll totally get it.
 
So ... the plot of the book revolves around Clove, Matt and Kate’s daughter who we met at the end of the first book.  She’s now sixteen and in love with her best friend.  Her adoptive parents (Matt’s brother and his wife) are research scientists working on creating time travel wormholes.
 
And that’s where I’m going to leave it.  Seriously, the funnest thing about this book was discovering all the plot points at the same time as Clove did.  And the plot is a constant car-chase of wildly thrilling escapades. 
 
Damn.  This was So.  Much.  Fun.
 
Clove is vastly less irritating than her mum and her romance with Ella was just dreamy. 
 
While the series could probably have been expanded a bit more, the author was clever and quit while she was ahead, leaving us all wanting a bit more.  Well played, love.
 
4.5 stars

The Unexpected Everything by Morgan Matson

It took me quite a while to get going with The Unexpected Everything, but once I did it turned out to be quite a good book.  Unfortunately, the ‘quite a while’  lasted for about the first two thirds of the book. 
 
It starts off where Andie is standing at a press conference where her politician father is taking a leave of absence while some financial irregularities in his office are investigated.  Good, I thought.  This should be interesting. 
 
Then there’s a whole bunch of Character Soup, where we’re introduced to a bunch of Andie’s friends really quickly without much in the way of character development.
 
Then Andie gets kicked off the pre-med course she wanted to do because of the scandal surrounding her dad.  Okay, I thought.  This is better.
 
Then literally the next three hundred pages were light, fluffy filler with very little in the way of Stuff Actually Happening.
 
It was a shame because I know Morgan Matson is capable of great things.  I’m never going to hate a book of hers, but this needed a bit more bite to it to keep the pages turning.
 
Gradually (very gradually), the pace picked up until the last third of the book where it was all thriller, no filler.  I really enjoyed the last third and rattled through it in an afternoon, but by god it was hard work to get to that stage.
 
The romance between Andie and Clark was okay, in a kind of meet-cute, some-kind-of-misunderstanding way. Complete rom-com stuff, but nice enough.  I have a question, though: do none of Morgan Matson’s protagonists ever have sex?  I don’t think they do, and while I’m sure some authors have objections to sex before marriage and that’s fine if that’s their opinion, it’s not exactly representative of real life.
 
This was an okay book for a beach read or if you’ve got a long plane journey, but that’s about it.
 
2 stars for the first two-thirds of the book.
4 stars for the last third.
3 stars overall

Waiting On Wednesday - Life in a Fishbowl by Len Vlahos

Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine and it’s a chance for us all to highlight the upcoming releases we’re eagerly anticipating.  This week, my Waiting on Wednesday pick is Life in a Fish Bowl by Len Vlahos.  Here's the blurb:

When Jackie discovers that her father has been diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor, her whole world starts to crumble. She can't imagine how she'll live without him . . . Then, in a desperate act to secure his family's future, Jackie's father does the unthinkable--he puts his life up for auction on eBay. Jackie can do nothing but watch and wait as an odd assortment of bidders, some with nefarious intentions, drive the price up higher. The fate of her entire family hangs in the balance.
But no one can predict how the auction will finally end, or any of the very public fallout that ensues. Life as Jackie knows it is about to change forever . . .
In this brilliantly written tragicomedy told through multiple points of view--including Jackie's dad's tumor--acclaimed author Len Vlahos deftly explores what it really means to live.


What about you? What’s your Waiting on Wednesday pick this week?