Claire Stevens's Blog, page 29

Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

Aw.  This was such a sweet book. 
 
Simon is gay and not yet out.  He’s fine and everything, he just hasn’t come out yet.  Only one person knows Simon is gay - his email penfriend, Blue.  Blue and Simon go to school together, but neither knows the other’s true identity.
 
Imagine Simons horror, therefore, when an email from Blue falls into the hands of Martin, the class clown, who immediately starts blackmailing Simon into helping him win the affections of one of the girls in their class.
 
I’d been meaning to read this book for ages and I finally got around to taking it out of the library, and I’m so glad I did.  It’s heartwarming and sweet but avoids crossing the line into schmaltzy with some dry humour and laugh-out-loud one-liners.  Honestly, the humour was one of the things I loved most about it. 
 
And I’ll tell you what else was nice.  Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda was a coming-out story, but one where the protagonist is yeah, kind of nervous about telling everyone, but ultimately knows that everything will be okay.  And there’ll be some moderately awkward conversations when he says, ‘I’m gay’ and the person he says it to spends a few seconds cringing about the gay jokes they might have told, but long term it’s going to be fine.
 
And you know what?  When Simon comes out, it IS fine.  He gets a negative reaction from a couple of people (because what would the human race be without a few idiots?) but with the people who matter - his friends and family - everything’s dandy.  Kinda.
 
It’d be naive to say that everyone’s coming out story will be like Simon’s, and there’s obviously a place in the market for more complicated coming out stories, but stories like this are so important because they say to society, ‘People are going to be gay.  This is what you might call A Fact.  And they’re going to come out and they’ll date other gay people and if you have an issue with it, YOU ARE INCORRECT.  Yours is not the right attitude to have. That is all.’
 
So mixed in with the actually-quite-amusing blackmail, and the oh-GOD about coming out, is a kind of detective story.  Simon and Blue correspond nearly every day and gradually fall in love and naturally enough Simon is desperate to find out who Blue really is.
 
Obviously I won’t spoil it, but I genuinely didn’t see it coming.  The mystery is left wide open and the ending ...  The ending is just perfect.
 
That is all.
 
4.5 stars

The Next Together by Lauren James

How many times can you lose the person you love?

Katherine and Matthew are destined to be born again and again, century after century. Each time, their presence changes history for the better, and each time, they fall hopelessly in love, only to be tragically separated.

Maybe the next together will be different...
 
I really enjoyed this book!  It was such a bizarre (good bizarre) blend of historical novel, romance, sci-fi, fantasy and adventure that you think it couldn’t possibly work, but it did.
 
I raced through the whole book in about a day and a half and it really left me wanting more.  The sequel has just been released and even though it’s £6 on Amazon (and I’m incredibly tight-fisted with books) I’m actually seriously considering splashing out.
 
The plot is really something else.  There’s romance and mystery and suspense and war and more romance.  It’s not very introspective, but that’s absolutely fine.  Pile on the plot points, that’s what I say.
 
Katherine and Matthew are great characters, and in each lifetime I was gagging for them to get it together. Katherine is really strong and feisty and she knows exactly what she wants and goes right out to get it.  And Matthew’s such a sweetheart.  There’s something really hot about men who love strong women.
 
And the plot!  Did I mention the plot?  Honestly - there is so much plot, there were times I felt dizzy.  Despite the fact that the story dots backwards and forwards in time, as well as having a central timeline (which is the 2039 one) I never lost track of what was going on.
 
The only thing I would say is that sometimes the dialogue felt anachronistic.  I realise that, grand scheme, this is a small thing to pick up on bearing in mind all the crazy genre-bending that goes on, but it did jar a bit.  The way Katherine and Matthew spoke to each other in 1754 especially didn’t ring true.  Also, there were a couple of plot points that were left hanging.  I don’t always have to have everything spelled out to me, but I was left really confused about exactly why Katherine and Matthew kept being reborn.  It felt like it was a computer program, except you never actually find out.  As I said, the sequel to The Next Together has just been released, so hopefully it gets explained there.
 
Despite this, I would really recommend this book.  It was so full of action and romance that I seriously couldn’t put it down.
 
4.5 stars

Hate List by Jennifer Brown

Hate List is one of those books I had to be in the right frame of mind for before attempting to read it.  I knew I had to be in a jolly, upbeat mood because it’s about a high school shooting so I knew it would be pretty harrowing.
 
So - five months ago Valerie’s boyfriend Nick opened fire on the school cafeteria.  He shot her when she tried to stop him, and she inadvertently saved the life of a classmate.  Five months on and the investigation has revealed numerous incriminating emails between Valerie and Nick as well as the Hate List - a book containing all the names of the people Valerie and Nick wanted dead.
 
Or people they *said* they wanted dead.  Because while Valerie hated the people who taunted and bullied her and Nick, Valerie had nothing to do with Nick’s decision to massacre their classmates.
 
The story jumps between the day of the shooting and a few months later when the school and town are trying to come to terms with what’s happened.  As you can probably imagine, Valerie is not flavour of the month with ... well, with anyone.  They all see her as a co-conspirator who has somehow managed to evade death or arrest.
 
This was a really engaging read and I ploughed through it in just over a day.  Valerie was a very relatable MC and struck an amazing balance between hating what Nick did and still loving the boyfriend he used to be, between being a victim of bullying, but also being a survivor and not letting people walk all over her.
 
Nick, too, was a mixture of absolute knob and a victim.  Obviously taking a gun to school is not the way to solve your problems, but this book is as much of a warning about the effects of bullying as it is an argument for gun control.  Nick had been bullied for years.  He had also smoked pot and had got caught up with a really unsavoury character who, and it’s implied more than expressed, encouraged him to commit the shooting.
 
Plus, the students at their high school just sound like a bunch of evil hyenas.  Honestly, there were times I thought, ‘Bloody hell.  I’m surprised he left it this long before shooting them.’  Some of the things they did to Valerie and Nick were just evil.
 
The reason I didn’t give this book five stars is because it just didn’t feel - I’m kind of struggling for the right word here, and I think the word I’m going to go with is - powerful enough for me.  I didn’t feel like people were horrified enough that a school shooting had taken place.  They were sad and everything, sure, but it seemed like everyone treated the tragedy with a kind of resigned inevitability.  Like, ‘Oh God, another high school shooting has happened.  That’s terrible.’ 
 
I don’t think it’s the writing, or the author being afraid of piling on the tension - I think it’s actually a cultural thing.  Maybe it’s because I’m British and our gun culture is totally different to that in America.  The last school shooting in Britain was Dunblane, twenty years ago this year, and after Dunblane happened parliament passed a law banning all handguns.  If a school shooting happened again, it would top the news headlines for weeks.  It would just be ... massive.  The school shooting in Hate List didn’t feel as massive as I’d have expected it to be.
 
(By the way, this isn’t me trying to sell Britain as some kind of utopia.  God knows there are plenty of ways we’re managing to screw our country up, but guns thankfully isn’t one of them.) 
 
So yeah, I guess I was expecting a read that would totally tilt my world off its axis, and while Hate List is very powerful it didn’t leave me feeling like I’d gone through the emotional wringer.  Still a very good read, though, and an important one too.

4 stars

What Light by Jay Asher

This was quite a sweet book about a girl, Sierra, whose family farms Christmas trees.  She spends eleven months of the year at their farm in Oregon and the other month at a Christmas tree lot in California.  One year, the year it looks like as the last in California for Sierra and her family, she meets a boy with a bad reputation and a troubled past.
 
This book was quite a bit different to what I was expecting.  Jay Asher’s other solo book, Thirteen Reasons Why, was a bit of a stand-out novel for me, with its biting critique of slut-shaming culture and bullying.  I guess I expected What Light to tackle similarly weighty subjects, but instead it was a fairly light romance story.  This is fine and everything, but I guess I was just expecting something meatier. 
 
When it became evident that this was mostly feelgood romance, I got into the swing of it and quite enjoyed it.  Sierra was a nice enough character and I liked Caleb.  Their romance felt in some ways a bit drawn out (spoiler alert: they don’t kiss until nearly the end of the book!) and in other ways a bit insta-lovey.  They made a nice enough pair, though.
 
I also liked Sierra’s relationship with her parents.  They seemed like a really connected, loving family unit who were all totally invested in their family business and all loved Christmas!
 
I wasn’t hugely keen on Sierra’s friends - I thought the ones in Oregon were a bit demanding and the California friend was a bit of a dimwit and pretty nasty to her boyfriend.  Sierra felt pulled in both directions by her two lives, but for me the friends didn’t really seem worth it.
 
Sierra was going through some stuff in this book, which was fine, but I didn’t really feel that ‘I might not get to spend a month every year in California’ was enough of an issue for me to get behind and elicit my sympathy.  Any character where that is the worst thing that’s happening to them is going to lack tension.  Likewise, ‘I had a fight with my sister and ran after her with a knife once’ was enough of a reason for Caleb to be such a social pariah and to feel so tortured.  When I was sixteen I punched my (younger but much taller) brother so hard I broke my thumb.  True story.  Did I sob about it?  Not a chance.  Neither did he. 
 
All in all this was a cute book and good for an unchallenging read in the run-up to Christmas.

I received a copy of What Light in exchange for an honest review.  Many thanks to Macmillan and Netgalley.
 
3 stars

Waiting On Weednesday - Frostblood by Elly Blake

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 Frostblood by Elly Blake.
 
Here’s the blurb:

Seventeen-year-old Ruby is a fireblood who must hide her powers of heat and flame from the cruel frostblood ruling class that wants to destroy all that are left of her kind. So when her mother is killed for protecting her and rebel frostbloods demand her help to kill their rampaging king, she agrees. But Ruby's powers are unpredictable, and she's not sure she's willing to let the rebels and an infuriating (yet irresistible) young man called Arcus use her as their weapon. All she wants is revenge, but before they can take action, Ruby is captured and forced to take part in the king's tournaments that pit fireblood prisoners against frostblood champions. Now she has only one chance to destroy the maniacal ruler who has taken everything from her and from the icy young man she has come to love.

Fast-paced and compelling, Frostblood is the first in a page-turning new young adult three-book series about a world where flame and ice are mortal enemies—but together create a power that could change everything.

What about you?  What are you waiting for this week?

Caraval by Stephanie Garber

Her whole life, Scarlett has been looking for a way to get herself and her sister Tella off the tiny island they live on with their abusive father, so when her father arranges Scarlett’s marriage (to a count, no less), it could be the escape she’s been looking for.  What she doesn’t count on is being invited to take part in Caraval - a legendary, mysterious, once-a-year performance/live action role play/murder mystery.  Scarlett is desperate to take part, but going to Caraval could put her wedding in jeopardy.
 
I really enjoyed Caraval - it was different to what I thought it would be, but was really readable with great characters and worldbuilding and with a plot that just didn’t stop.
 
This was actually one of the things I liked most - that Caraval had so many twists and turns - it kept me guessing right to the end. Just when I thought I had it all figured out and the story couldn’t possibly change again, it did.  Even though Scarlett is told that everything that happens during Caraval is just an elaborate performance, everything gets a bit too real.  People start dying- surely that can’t be part of a performance, can it?  And then the ringmaster -the mysterious Legend - starts to show his true, creepy colours.  Or does he?  Everything changes so much that it left my head reeling a bit.  Even the epilogue had me guessing and it’s left the book wide open for a sequel.
 
There’s a really wide cast of characters and while sometimes it felt a bit like character soup they were all really individual and well-formed.  The author gave them all some interesting little quirks that made them stand out and lent to the worldbuilding.  Sometimes the quirks were only things like an eye patch or a unicycle, but it all contributed to the atmosphere.
 
The relationship between the two sisters was very well drawn and very real.  Both girls had their faults but despite their outward differences they were utterly devoted to each other.  Scarlett could be a bit too straight-laced sometimes and I wished she would just loosen up a bit, but she was a good foil to Tella’s self-centredness.
 
I think Caraval will draw inevitable comparisons with The Night Circus, but I enjoyed Caraval miles more.  I thought the plot was an awful lot stronger and had better characterisation.  Definitely recommended if you like twisty plots and fantastical goings-on.
 
4 stars

Waiting On Wednesday - Caraval by Stephanie Garber

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 Caraval by Stephanie Garber.
 
Here’s the blurb:
 
Before you enter the world of Caraval, you must remember that it’s all a game . . .

Scarlett has never left the tiny island where she and her beloved sister, Tella, live with their ruthless father. Now Scarlett’s father has arranged a marriage for her, and Scarlett thinks her dreams of seeing Caraval, the legendary, once-a-year performance where the audience participates in the show, are over.

Then, Scarlett’s long-dreamt of invitation to Caraval finally arrives. So, Tella enlists a mysterious sailor’s help to whisk Scarlett away to this year’s show. But as soon as the trio arrives, Tella is kidnapped by Caraval’s mastermind organizer, Legend.

Scarlett has been told that everything that happens during Caraval is only an elaborate performance. But she nonetheless soon becomes enmeshed in a game of love, heartbreak, and magic with her sister, with Legend, and with the other players in the game. And whether Caraval is real or not, she must find Tella before the five nights of the game are over, a dangerous domino effect of consequences is set off, and her sister disappears forever.
 
What about you?  What are you waiting for this week?

Something in Between by Melissa de la Cruz

So there’s this internet meme that was doing the rounds a little while ago, just after the Brexit vote.  It went something along the lines of, ‘Britain and America are currently locked in a battle to see who can screw their country up the most.  Britain is in the lead at the moment, but don’t worry: America has a Trump card’.
 
Yeah ... Neither country is doing great at the moment.  Hopefully it will just turn out to be a blip, but in case it isn’t books like Melissa de la Cruz’s Something In Between shine a very important light on some of the unsavoury arguments that are being thrown up about immigration .
 
This was a really sweet book about a type-A overachiever called Jasmine, the daughter of Filipino immigrants.  Jasmine’s star is in the ascendant. She’s a straight A student, National Scholar (had to Google what that was) and captain of the cheerleading squad.  She barely remembers the Philippines and America is her home.  Only when she goes to accept her hard-won scholarship, the truth comes out: she and her family are undocumented (illegal) - their visas ran out years ago and her parents have been trying to figure out a way to keep them all in America whilst trying to avoid getting themselves deported.

It feels like there’s no ground beneath me, like everything I’ve ever done has been a lie. Like I’m breaking apart, shattering. Who am I? Where do I belong?
 
There were lots of things I liked about this book, not least the fact it dealt with the Filipino community, a group of people that don’t crop up too often in literature.  I liked the fact that the book deals with a contentious subject like undocumented immigration with grace and compassion and the portrayal of Jasmine and her family and the different ways they try to deal with their predicament.
 
There’s also a romance storyline going on alongside the issue of Jasmine’s legal status - that between Jasmine and Royce, the son of a super conservative congressman.  Royce is pretty dreamy and I really liked that he wasn’t just posho rich kid - he had problems of his own.  Throughout the book, Jasmine and Royce try a number of different ways to get her and her family documented and I did read through quite a bit of the book thinking, ‘They’re totally going to get married’.  I won’t say whether they do or not, but suffice to say that the ending is a happy one.
 
At times I felt that the will-they-won’t-they aspect of the romance overshadowed what was, for me, the real point of the book, which was how Jasmine dealt with the legal and emotional ramifications around the change in her immigration status.  The romance was super cute, though, so I kind of forgave them.
 
All in all this was a sweet book and I’d definitely recommend it.  Especially for Americans.  Especially before November the 8th.

4 stars

Colorblind by Siera Maley

Huh.  This book completely blindsided me.  I didn't really know what to expect, and it turned out to be really good!

So the premise is that Harper can tell what age other people will be when they die.  Their death-age appears as a big old number on their forehead.  As superpowers go, it's kind of sucky and depressing and she spends an awful lot of time avoiding all friendships and human interaction.  Thatis until she meets Chloe and, after fighting it, soon falls in love.  The only problem is, the number on Chloe's head is 16.  And she'll be seventeen in a few short weeks.

It's kind of existential, which I suppose a book will be if it's dealing with philosophical questions like, is it better to be supremely happy just for a short time than just moderately okay for a really long time.  It doesn't go over the top and end up as some dullard, impenetrable diatribe.  It's kept light-ish and the lovely chemistry between Harper and Chloe is totally swoony.

I'll tell you what I really liked, and that was seeing an LGBT teen as the main character but with a storyline that doesn't revolve around their coming out.  Don't get me wrong, coming-out stories totally have their place, but it was good to see a gay teen as The One With The Superpowers, as opposed to being cast as The Token Gay Best Friend, or worse, The One Who Dies.

The only things that bugged me were the fact that we (and Harper) have no clue as to where her ability comes from and also that the fact that the lead-up to the first kiss was so-o-o-o drawn out.  I was like the pond creatures in The Little Mermaid - god, just hurry up and kiss the girl already.

Drawn-out sexual tension aside, however, this was still a really good book.

4 stars

Waiting On Wednesday - Speed of Life by J M Kelly

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 Speed of Life by J M Kelly.
 
Here’s the blurb:

Twins Crystal and Amber have the same goal: to be the first in their family to graduate high school and make something of their lives. When one gets pregnant during their junior year, they promise to raise the baby together. It’s not easy, but between their after-school jobs, they’re scraping by.

Crystal’s grades catch the attention of the new guidance counselor, who tells her about a college that offers a degree in automotive restoration, perfect for the car buff she is. When she secretly applies—and gets in—new opportunities threaten their once-certain plans, and Crystal must make a choice: follow her dreams or stay behind and honor the promise she made to her sister.

What about you?  What are you waiting for this week?