Review: The Here and Now

The Here and Now
By Ann Brashares
Published 2014 by Delacorte Press

Prenna is a time immigrant - she, along with many others, came to our present from a terrible future, hoping that they might figure out how to fix it. But Prenna has been forced to live according to a set of rules and they no longer seem worth following. Soon, her feelings for a time native - Ethan - will lead her on a path of rule-breaking that may just be the right path to follow after all.

Okay, I'm going to get my little bias out of the way right off the bat here: time travel. Quite frankly, it usually just bothers the hell out of me because I can't wrap my mind around how it works. I don't usually watch shows involving time travel or read books that include it either. To give a brief example, The Time Traveler's Wife made me angry most of the time and A Wrinkle in Time is one of my most reviled books from childhood.

So, maybe this book and I were not made for each other from the start. However, a little perusing of other reviews as well as the trusted opinion of a friend and colleague lead me to believe that, in this situation, it's not just me. It is this book.

This book is just all kinds of wrong. Thankfully, for me, Brashares doesn't spend time explaining how time travel works, instead relying on a fabricated set of rules that Prenna and the others must follow in order to keep history intact. What Brashares focuses on is Prenna and her intuition that she must be the one to do something, to alter the course of the future so that maybe it won't be as terrible as she knows it to be.

The entire premise of this book is really built upon some coincidences. For example, Prenna just happens to land in 2010 right in front of Ethan, the boy she'll fall in love with later on, despite the fact that none of the other 100 or so travellers were seen by anyone. Awfully convenient, no? Additionally, Ethan just happens to befriend a strange homeless man who ends up being someone Prenna should know. Yes, Brashares explains that he was staying close to Prenna to make sure she remained safe. But what high school kid befriends a weird homeless guy?

What really hurts my heart about this book is the dialogue. Brashares wrote the hugely successful Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, which I read and loved as a teenager. She clearly knows how to write teens well. You would never believe that from reading this book. The dialogue is stilted, forced, and completely unrealistic - no teenager talks this way. She tries to give a flimsy explanation - the people of the future have a completely different way of talking, so Prenna has taken her conversational cues from sitcoms and teen shows - but that really doesn't explain why her speech sounds the way it does. Additionally, Ethan, a "time native," sounds just as false as Prenna does. What happened here, Ms. Brashares?

Prenna and Ethan, of course, fall in love. I think we are supposed to believe that it's not an insta-love situation because they've been friends for sometime prior to the start of the novel. But since we don't see any of this friendship, it still feels like insta-love.

There are many more plot holes and gaps in explanation, both large and small, that make me question how someone thought this book was ready for publication. I can applaud Brashares for trying her hand at something different. It's unfortunate that she wasn't successful.

Thanks to the publisher for an advance reader's copy.

Release Day Review: Lost Children of the Far Islands

Lost Children of the Far Islands
By Emily Raabe
Expected publication April 8, 2014 by Knopf Books for Young Readers

Gus, Leo, and Ila live in Maine with their parents, mostly normal lives. But then, their mother becomes ill and soon, the children find themselves whisked away to a mysterious island inhabited by someone called the Morai. Who is she? And what is making their mother sick? Can the kids find a way to save her?

I think I've said before that I'm a sucker for any book set in Maine; it's where I grew up and where most of my family still lives and, even if I never live there again, there's something magical about it. So, the setting of this book and it being a middle-grade title led to my requesting the e-galley when I spotted it.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this book. I quite frequently see reviews which complain about authors who break the "show not tell" rule when conveying information in a book. I admit that I don't often notice this while reading. However, this book felt like it was telling me everything, and not in a particularly interesting way. I had a really hard time with the characters as well. None of the kids felt believable or sympathetic, which feels like a really weird thing to say about child characters. Ila was particularly troubling in the beginning.

This book also feels rather dark and hopeless a lot of the time. I don't have a problem with dark books for kids, but something about this one just felt off. The action moves along very predictably, which is disappointing. I enjoyed that Raabe chose to explore Celtic mythology, as one doesn't often see that in children's books, but even that felt pretty half-hearted. Overall, I feel like this book had potential, but didn't really capitalize on it.

Thanks to the publisher for a digital advance reader's copy, provided via Edelweiss.

Review: Plus One

Plus One
By Elizabeth Fama
Expected publication April 8, 2014 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Sol lives in the night. She has no choice: the world is divided into Night and Day and, by law, Sol can only be out of her house during the night. But her beloved grandfather is dying and Sol will do anything to give him one last perfect moment. Including stealing her infant niece from the hospital. What Sol doesn't know is that there is a Day boy determined to get in her way.

I was completely enamored with Fama's Monstrous Beauty, so when I heard about her newest book, I immediately put it on my radar. I was thrilled to score an ARC at ALA Midwinter and finally crammed it into my busy reading schedule.

Much like her earlier book, this new novel is exquisitely well-written. Fama seems to have quite the knack for perfectly capturing some of the most complicated emotions I've encountered in fiction. Parts of this book made me laugh and parts of it broke my heart in ways and places I couldn't have imagined.

Part of this is due to Sol. Oh, Sol. She is just full of it and I adore her for that. You know, just the other day I was participating in a Twitter chat about likable characters and my thoughts about Sol bring me back to that chat. I'd describe her as full of piss and vinegar and I think she works beautifully that way. My heart ached for her because, after all, what she wanted was really something quite simple - to create a final perfect memory for the grandfather who has raised her. Admittedly, she doesn't take the best route there, but her heart is clearly in the right place.

I thought the premise of this book was really fascinating - the lives of citizens equally divided between those who live in the daylight and those who live under cover of the night. A government-mandated divide. Really intriguing. Unfortunately, I wanted more. While Fama does cover the origins of this divide and briefly recaps the history, I wanted more. There is so much you can do with a premise like this and I would have liked Fama to explore it a bit more. I can understand why she wouldn't - surely not all of the exploration would be relevant to the main story here and could have dragged the book down - but maybe it just means I want to read more of Fama's lovely writing.

Additionally, I felt like the ending was a bit rushed. The book builds in action and develops its characters nicely, heading toward the conclusion. But I felt the last 50 pages or so were rushed in comparison to the slow build of the rest of the book. It felt a bit jarring.

A note on the cover: I like the idea of it a lot but I think it gives a somewhat false impression of the book. It would suggest a much more heavily romance focused book than what Fama has actually written. Yes, there is romance in here, but it's not the main focus, which I think this cover might lead you to believe.

Thanks to the publisher for an advance reader's copy.

Program: Day of the Dead

This was my second year trying a Day of the Dead program at the library and I don't think we'll be doing it again next year. We didn't have much success. Regardless, we had a lot of ideas for the program, but ended up just choosing a couple activities.

We ran the program just for an hour and had it open to ages nine and up. We chose just two activities and a snack station. Our first activity was very simple: sugar skull coloring pages. We had some intricate skull coloring sheets, as well as blank skull outlines for the kids to create their own designs. Not a very popular station, though I've re-discovered how much I enjoy coloring and how relaxing it can be.

The more popular craft of choice was decorating skull flowerpots. We bought small terracotta flowerpots from the craft store and spray painted them white. Then we provided the kids with Sharpies and let them decorate them as colorful Day of the Dead skulls. The kids definitely enjoyed this craft, and the pots came out really cool.

For snacks, we provided Mexican hot chocolate, which the kids hated, pan de muerto, and two kinds of cookies. They liked the idea of trying new snacks, but I don't think the kids actually enjoyed any of them.

Like I said, we had a pretty low turnout for this program, so I don't think we'll do it again next year. It's too bad, because there are a ton of cool crafts to go along with the holiday! Have any of you tried Day of the Dead programs?

Review: Dangerous

Dangerous
By Shannon Hale
Published 2014 by Bloomsbury

Yes, her middle name really is "Danger" - Maisie Danger Brown. Despite the awesome middle name, though, Maisie is not really in the habit of living dangerously. Until some bizarre events at astronaut boot camp. Now, Maisie is on the run - and possibly responsible for saving the world.

Okay, I was pretty sure that this was the first book by Shannon Hale that I'd read - until I looked at my Goodreads and remember the atrocity that was Austenland (one of her novels for adults). I really didn't enjoy that book, and it's probably a good thing I forgot it was written by her until after I finished this one. That being said, her teen books have always seemed well-received, so, when I spotted this new one as an e-galley, I figured I'd give it a shot.

To be fair to this book, I was completely on board with it in the beginning. When the book started, Maisie was just about the most bad-ass heroine I could think of. She's a homeschooled, multicultural girl with an interest in science who happens to have been born without one of her hands. And she's clever. I wanted to read about this character. I was fully prepared to root for her throughout this book's 400 pages. I wanted to learn more about all these aspects of her as a person, explore how they impacted her and how they would impact the events of the story.

And then...something went wrong. Maisie turns into a character almost unrecognizable from those first chapters. All those interesting bits about her character? They turn out to be exactly that - interesting bits about her character. They are almost all completely ignored once the "action" begins to take place. In fact, Maisie's disability is "cured" during her stay at boot camp, which just doesn't sit right with me. I don't think any of the interesting bits about her need to be the focus (i.e. you can write a character with a disability but the story doesn't have to be about that disability), but they also shouldn't be there just to add some sense of diversity to your book. A strange and, in my opinion, awful romance develops. And the plot goes absolutely haywire. It's my understanding that this was Hale's first foray into science fiction. I don't think it really panned out for her. The plot that develops in this book just gets more and more ridiculous as the book goes on. The character development completely stops - Maisie is the only character I feel like I have a real understanding of, but, like I said, she completely changes from the beginning, and not for the better. Maybe it doesn't help that this book goes into hard science fiction territory and that is definitely not my thing. But, mostly, it just all seems crazy. I just don't have good feelings about this book and am starting to rethink the three stars I gave it on Goodreads.

One last thing: this book also toes the line between upper middle-grade and young YA, but, ultimately, I don't think I'd put it in my middle-grade collection. The romance veers into really inappropriate territory (I don't want to give anything away, but there is a great deal of manipulation involved) and the way Maisie describes her romantic feelings made me forget she was supposed to be a young teen (I think she is 14? but someone correct me if I'm wrong!).

Thanks to the publisher for a digital advance reader's copy, provided via NetGalley.

March Check-In

It's that time again! Time to see if I am sticking to my resolution or not! Here's what I read this month:

Early chapter: 2

Middle-grade: 6

Teen: 11

Adult: 6

Picture books: 2

Library books: 11

Books owned: 16

Once again, I am just barely ahead in reading books I own versus library books. However, I listened to a lot of audiobooks this month (six, to be exact) and when you include the two picture books I also read, that's most of my library book reading. One book I had put on hold at the end of last year finally came in, so that's another library book. And, I will fully admit that I bent my rule a little with the other two: they were both books in series that I was checking out for my boyfriend, but which I wanted to read as well. Since I was already checking them out for someone else, I took advantage and breezed through them myself. I don't think it impacted my ability to read more books I own too much. All in all, I feel like I'm doing pretty well, though my TBR pile is shrinking much more slowly than I imagined. Hopefully I keep on track and read from my personal stacks more quickly!

Release Day Review: Dear Killer

Dear Killer
By Katherine Ewell
Expected publication April 1, 2014 by Katherine Tegen Books

Kit is the perfect killer - actually, she's the Perfect Killer, London's most notorious serial killer since Jack the Ripper. And she got to be that way by abiding by a very specific set of rules. Now, however, her identity has been thrown in question and she starts to bend the rules a bit. Will continue her perfect streak? Or is she about to lose it all?

One of the things I inherited from my lovely mom is an appreciation of thrillers and serial killers. That sounds awfully morbid, but it's true - my mother very rarely reads a book that doesn't feature a fictional serial killer (she's not so interested in real ones). Thankfully, she must not be the only reader out there who appreciates this kind of tale, so she's always been flush with reading material. I spotted this e-galley and thought of her, figuring I'd give it a shot.

What I didn't know before I started reading was that this manuscript apparently won a novel in progress award. I don't suppose that should impact my reading of the book, particularly since I didn't know that until after finishing it, but it's caused me some confusion.

You see, I just cannot with this book. I cannot even focus on things that might be good about it (though there probably aren't that many) because I find the entire premise of this so completely implausible. Yes, I get that it's fiction - it doesn't have to really be all that believable. But seriously - a teenager with over 50 kills under her belt and the detectives have literally no leads? A mother who starts training her 9-year-old in the art of killing without detection? A secret mailbox where apparently the entire city of London just knows they can drop off a letter naming someone they want killed and it might actually happen? A young detective taking lead on the investigation of such a prolific killer? A serial killer who lives by a strict set of rules but decides to break them just once and doesn't think this will cause any problems?

I mean, seriously. If I were the gif type of person, I'd put the "Nopetupus" right here because JUST NO. I'm no detective or law enforcement officer, but even I've watched enough flipping movies to know that the crap the law does in this book is not even close to accurate (and the movies don't even get everything right, so that should give you some idea how far off-base this stuff is). I just could not buy into the idea that there could be a teenage serial killer of this level. And, for being the "perfect" killer, she's awfully sloppy, inserting herself into the investigation, befriending a victim, etc. IT JUST DOES NOT WORK, BOOK.

I wanted to like this book, because, as I said, I appreciate a good serial killer novel. But there is so much NOPE about this that I can't even tell you if there's anything good (maybe the discussion of moral nihilism, but even that could have been expanded more).

Thanks to the publisher for a digital advance reader's copy, provided via Edelweiss.