So how would World War Two be different if women could have been drafted or enlist in the military? From what I can tell, not that much? Obviously I don’t know what it was like from personal experience but basing on other books and movies I have read, the experiences of Rio, Frangie, Jenou and Rainey didn’t seem all that different. To say, war is awful. Though maybe it was a little harder for the ladies, as they had to endure sexiest comments about how woman do not belong in the military. Even worse for Frangie, who had deal with the racist along with the sexist. I would think what our heroines deal with was pretty much the same things as women in the military still face. I’m thinking about the all the comments and criticism I read about the first women to train to be Army Rangers, recently. “Women can’t handle the pressure.” ” They are not physically strong enough”.”How will they handle combat?” “The Military is just not the place for women.” Front Lines may be a work of fiction that takes place 70 years ago but it could easily be written about today. I studied history in school and it’s what my B.A. is in. The one thing that I always found fascinating about history is that you can study something in the past and can make direct correlation with what is going on in today’s world. Basically, Human Being’s don’t learn from the mistakes. We do the same things over and over again. Just look at our election and how we are fighting over issues of Civil Rights.
But back to the book. It’s 1942, the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor and America is going to war. A few years earlier, the Supreme Court had ruled it was unconstitutional for only men be eligible for the draft, women had to as well. (This has also come up in the campaign about whether or not women should be eligible for the draft) Rio has just finished having breakfast with her family when news comes that her sister, who enlisted in the Navy has died when her boat was attacked by the Japanese. A few weeks later, her best friend Jenou says she is going to enlist so she ca get out of their small California town and meet some cut officers. Rio decides she wants to do something else with her life before she gets married and have kids. Elsewhere in Oklahoma, Frangie decides that the money from enlisting and being in the Army will be enough to keep her family from being destitute and in New York, Rainey has already gone through basic training and now going for special training for Army intelligence. We follow all their progress though boot camp to actual theater of war. Frangie is the only who really thinks she will be in the war since she plans on being a Medic but the rest see themselves as secretaries or drivers, away from the front lines. Women may enlist and can be drafted but they US Military isn’t really going to send them to war, right? Of course they all end up there eventually. They trained along with the men, though still separated by race. As one character puts it “only America would go to war against a white supremacist with a segregated army” (not exact quote, I paraphrased) Rio and Jenou have mixed results during basic training. Rio finds that she actually enjoyed it and is a good shooter. The girls all struggle with what it is to be a soldier and a woman. Now that they have been trained to be soldiers, how are they supposed to act as women. Will Men like that they have more muscle now? Should they act more demure? In battle, are they still supposed to act ladylike while the enemy is shooting at them? Once they get to the front lines, they still have to prove they belong even to the male soldiers that they trained with back in boot camp. For Frangie, who is now a medic has to deal with being called a Nigra as she’s patching up soldiers and attempting to save their lives. And Rainey is stuck being a secretary while male soldiers not as qualified as her get called into meetings and missions. It never ends. It was a fascinating read that got more interesting once our girls finally got to war. The second half of the book only covers one battle, their first battle. It proves that they had no idea what they were getting themselves into the . The romance of war quickly dissolved into the reality. They all have done something that they will remember for the rest of their life and you know it will haunt them. I’m curious how that will play out in the upcoming books. We saw glimpses of what is to come for them but it’s still only 1943 and their are two more years left and I think 2 more books to go.
All the feels! Re-reading this book just reaffirms how painful The Raven King is going to be.
This is my favorite book in The Raven Cycle (so far). Gansey in his Ganseyness. Adam in his Adamness and Blue in her Blueness but most importantly Ronan in his Ronaness. I love him.
So it turns out that I never did a review of The Raven Boys. I guess that makes sense since it did come out in 2012 and well, Stacks did launch in 2012 but it took us two years to really get things going here. Check out 
Not that long ago, Barnes and Noble was having a sale on teen books, buy 2 for $20, basically you get one for free. I kept seeing To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before pop up on my Tumblr dashboard that I decided to check it out. Contemporary Fiction and Romance are not my usual go to reads but I do dabble in it from time to time and since both it and it’s sequel, P.S. I love You were apart of the sale, I decided to just go on get them both. If they are as good as Tumblr insists then I should read them, right? Tumblr would never steer me wrong. Tumblr did introduce me to Rainbow Rowell after all. It was a wise decision because once I finished the first, I had to read the second. Actually, I read the sequel in one day, it was good. To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before and P.S. I Still I Love are both delightful. True they are not really groundbreaking, besides it centers on a Korean American teenage girl but it’s sweet, kind and lovely. Lara Jean is the middle Song sister. Her older sister, Margot is about to go to College in Scotland and her younger sister Kitty is well a firecracker. Their mother died unexpectedly when they were little so it’s just been the girls and their dad. Margot has been their surrogate mother the last couple of years but with her going it’s now Lara Jean turn. Lara Jean is a romantic in true sense of the word. She is sixteen and is about to start her junior year in high school. She’s never had a boyfriend but she’s been in love before. More accurately she’s had crushes, five of them and she wrote all five letters and hid them in her hat box. One day she finds out that her letters that were never meant to be seen were mailed out to the boys she loved before and well this is a problem. One of those goes to Josh, Margot’s boyfriend that she just broke up with and Lara Jean had a crush on before they had started dating and those feelings for him start to return. Another one went to Peter a former friend from Middle School that was her first kiss and her ex-best friend, Genevieve’s recent ex-boyfriend. Lara Jean and Peter decide to fake a relationship to save face with Josh and to make Genevieve jealous. Of course in true Rom-Com fashion they end up falling in love for real and things get messy.
In the sequel, Peter and Lara Jean decide to date for real and well it’s not as simple as it once was. Old insecurities come up and when another recipient of Lara Jean’s letters shows up it complicates things even more. John Ambrose McClaren was also apart of Lara Jean’s middle school group of friends until he moved away. Lara Jean goes from a reserved girl, who lived in her sister shadows to a more confident girl who knows what she wants but a lot happens for her to get there. First she has to get over this idea that she is not worthy. Peter is the golden boy. He’s the boy that every girl in high school wants to be with and Genevieve is the beautiful blonde girl that you would expect to be with the golden boy. Lara Jean is not popular or in the “in crowd”. She constantly compares herself and her relationship to Genevieve to the point her jealously and insecurities take over. It’s something that all of us have dealt with from time to time. This is Lara Jean’s first relationship and she is closer to her sisters then to anyone else, so it’s hard to open up and trust other people.
If you have read A Tale of Two Cities then you pretty much know the plot of Tell the Wind and Fire. The title itself is a quote from the Dicken’s classic. Instead of it taking place in London and Paris during the French Revolution, it takes place in New York City that has been split in two. Manhattan is home to the elite, light magicians while Brooklyn (and I assume the other boroughs but it’s not made clear) is home to the lowly Dark magicians. Lucie Manette is a light magician who as born and bred in the dark city but after her mother has gone missing and her father is falsely imprisoned, she stages a stunt that goes viral and gets her father released and them passes to live in the light city. She falls in love with Ethan Stryker (our Charles Darney stand-in) the nephew of the powerful Mark Stryker and head of the light council. One day after a short getaway, Ethan is accused of treason because he has been positively identified as passing information to the Sans Merci, the rebels in the Dark City. He is about to be executed when Carwyn steps out. Carwyn doesn’t just look like Ethan in the way that Sydney Carton does to Charles Darney but he is exact copy of Ethan. He is an doppelganger. In this world, Light magicians can hire a dark magician to make a doppelganger when they are sick and it will save their lives. There are many laws against doing it and even more against doppelgangers themselves. For instance they have to where a hood. Well, Ethan can’t be executed now because what if it was Carwyn who committed the crime? This sets in motion the rest of the story. As I said before, if you know A Tale of Two Cities, you can guess what’s going to happen and more importantly how it’s going to end but that’s not the point. Sarah Rees Brennan creates a world that is both familiar and not. Many landmark will bring up memories but presenting a darker light. On a personal level, Green-Wood Cemetery, which takes the place of the Bastille, is only a few blocks from where I live. I’m not sure I’ll be able to look at the same way again. Lucie, on the surface seems like a timid girl, who wants nothing more then to everything she can to save the people she loves. That in itself takes a bit of bravery. As the story progressives and things start to take shape, she starts to stand up more for herself. Ethan is your typical hero character, the golden boy and Carwyn, the misunderstood bad boy but of course nothing is at seems. I think for fans of Dicken’s will like it and fans of Brennan will like it too.
** Spoilers Ahead**
This is what I know about the Book of Revelations. At one point Jesus will come back to usher those of us worthy enough to get into heaven, leaving the rest of us behind to deal with the Apocalypse which I think will have the 666 Beast and the Four Horsemen. So basically I don’t know much but it is intriguing how the End of Time will play out? Riders is not about the world ending but it does bring together War, Famine, Death and Conquest together to fight against evil. Is that what the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse supposed to do? Gideon wants to be an Army Ranger when he dies in a training accident but instead of moving on he comes back as War. With the help of the Seeker, Daryn, Gideon must find the other three riders to stop the Kindred from finding the key that will open different realms and enslaving mankind in their new kingdom. If that isn’t hard enough, he has to convince the U.S. Government that he’s not crazy and the biggest threat to national security is a gang of demons.
2 Women, So Many Books 