Tag Archives: YA novels

Review: Black Widow Forever Red by Margaret Stohl

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Featured imageYou would think that this novel about the Black Widow would be about you know, the Black Widow. But it’s really not.  Natasha Romanoff has to share the lime light with two other characters.  I mean, the girl can’t ever catch a break.  First she gets shut out of all the promotional toys and now she can’t even be the main character in her own YA novel.  What does a super agent girl got to do to get some respect?  Ok, maybe I’m going a little overboard since she is still a major part of the story but she has to share the narrative with two new characters.  Ava, another prodigy of the Red Room that Natasha saves in one of her missions and Alex, who at first doesn’t seem at all connected to either lady but of course he is deeply connected to both of them.  We also get a little more insight into Natasha in between chapters, as we read transcripts from a hearing about how the mission we are reading about went bad.  Right away you know that one of them is not going to make it.  Continue reading →

Review: A Whole New World by Liz Braswell

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Featured imageDisney has been all about re-imagining their classics lately.  In the last few years they have told the story of Sleeping Beauty through the eyes of the villain, Maleficent.  Made a live action movie of Cinderella and has Beauty and the Beast coming out next year.  Not to mention, the show Once Upon a Time, which is nothing more but a chance for all Disney’s characters meet each and hang out.  Disney has now taken their new initiative to rewrite all of stories to books. The Twisted Tale series is a  new series who’s aim is to ask “What would happen if this or that didn’t happen?  Aladdin is the first of their classics to get a new literary spin.  What would happen if Aladdin didn’t end up with the lamp but Jafar did?  How does that change Aladdin, Jasmine or the Genie? Talk about a plot twist.   Continue reading →

Quick Review: The Scorpion Rules by Erin Bow

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Featured imageAll right I’m going to just get into it.  Talis is by far the sassiest AI in history.  I knew that I was going to love this book from the the get go. Talis starts things off with outlining how he took over the world.  It truly was love at first read.  So, here’s the deal, the world was in chaos, the icebergs in the Arctic have melted.  Humanity was killing each other with war after war after war so the UN decided to give Talis the task of finding solutions to stop the chaos.  So he blew up a couple of cities, just to get people’s attention and then went medieval on all of them and demanded royal hostages.  You declare war, well, then your beloved heir to your throne is going to die.  Talis’ number one rule.  Make it Personal.  Mission accomplished.  Fast forward 400 years and for the most part, Talis’ rule has worked.  The nations of the world have been almost peaceful.  Greta is the heir to the PanPol throne aka Canada and has been raised to be the perfect hostage and heir.  She knows that the likelihood of her living to rule her people is getting slim.  Her people have been at the brink of war for years and she has become sort of ok with it since it is her duty. That is until Elian shows up and challenges everything she thought was true.  Elian is everything she is not.  He wasn’t raised to rule or to be a hostage.  He knows that he is going to die and instead of accepting it, he fights for it.  He, with the help of Xie, Greta’s roommate and fellow royal, open Greta’s eyes to different possibilities.  Show her how to be strong and how to rule.  They show her what she has been missing by only doing her duty.  She makes real friends, falls in love and possibly changes the world.  All the while Talis is there being his sassy self, keeping the jokes coming and his no nonsense rule.  I highly recommend this book.  Come for the sass but stay for the heart.

Review: An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

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Featured imageI’ve been looking forward to reading this book for awhile now. I’ve read so many great things about it online but I’m always a little wary, too, when it gets too positive reviews online.  I don’t want to be disappointed, you know?  So I’m happy to say, I think this one lived up to the hype.  An Ember in the Ashes.  I think what has drawn so many people to it is that sort of unique.  It’s a dystopian novel that isn’t really dystopian.  It’s sort of historical fiction but not really. It’s based on Ancient Rome.  Yes, it does have a little bit of a Hunger Games feel to it with it’s fight to the death competition in the middle of the novel but I’m willing to forgive because I feel it serves the purpose of the novel.  The Martials have taken over the empire and enslave people as they go.  One of those newly enslaved peoples are the Scholars.  Laia and her family have tried to stay out of trouble but when her brother is arrested for treason she agrees to become a slave and spy on the evil Commandant (she’s seriously evil) for the resistance.  Elias is the top student and is poised on carrying on his family’s name but he’s looking for a way out.  Their paths collide as they discover they might be exactly who each other needs to get what they want and possibly more.

Laia is an interesting character.  She doesn’t see herself as brave. In fact, she spends a fair amount of the novel chastising herself for being a coward for not saving her brother and for running away.  Despite all her fears and doubts she pushes herself beyond anything in the attempt to save her brother.  She’s strong.  Elias is also interesting.  He has started to question his surroundings and started to realize that he is as much as a slave as Laia is.  He may be an elite soldier but he will always have to do what he is told and live how he is told.  He has no free will.  So he tried to run away but got sucked backed in.  It’s an interesting contrast between the two. One is clearly a slave and has no rights and is abused* and the other may not be called a slave but doesn’t have freedom as you would expect.  Add in some mystic priest, a sadistic school master and a little romance and you will be hooked.  I can’t wait to read what happens next.  Thank goodness there is going to be a sequel.

*Ok, time for a rant.  I’m getting tired of reading books that have the heroine live in constant fear of being raped.  I have read at least five books in which this was a thing.  Yes, for some of the books, it made some sense if you take in to account of setting and time period but it’s getting a little too much.  It reminds me of a post by Maggie Stievfater that is really relevant.   In the middle of Ember in the Ashes, every time Laia left the house she worked for, she had to be on guard or she would be raped by one of the students in the school.  I get it! It’s a threat that women in this time and place of the book, especially slaves (though the other female character also has to guard against her male students, too) have to worry about but do you have to remind us every other chapter?  So authors, can we try to think of other ways to bring tension and raise the stakes for female characters besides them being worried about being sexually assaulted?  Rant over.

Review: Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

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This is the story of Cath, a first year college student who is super awkward, in love with characters in a teen series, and a writer of fan fiction. She moves into her dorm room with her new roommate (after her twin sister tells her she doesn’t want to room with her) and then proceeds to try and make it as far as she can without interacting with anyone. Her roommate, Reagan, and her roommate’s friend (boyfriend? friend? boyfriend?) Levi force her to interact with them. Levi forces the issue by snooping through Cath’s stuff and eating most of her supply of protein bars (forcing her to ask where the cafeteria is) and Reagan forces the issue by making Cath eat with her in the cafeteria. They slowly become friends. Cath and Levi realize that they have feelings for each other and the story spirals from there. Additionally, there are story arcs that involve both of Cath’s parents. Cath’s father has raised her and her sister from when they were very young and now her mother would like to have some involvement. Cath’s father also has bipolar disorder. Cath’s interactions with her parents were beautiful and at times heartbreaking.

I love Cath. I love her so much.

This book has beginning of school drama. It has tension between sisters (ugh, her sister drove me crazy!). There is romance. There is friendship. There is at least one douche canoe of a bro tryna take advantage of a young woman. There’s some really satisfying comeuppance for said douche canoe of a bro. There’s an awesome professor who gets it…but also doesn’t get it. And, there’s the fan fiction. Oh, the fan fiction. I finished this book in two days and I read it on my phone because I couldn’t get enough of it. I read it in every spare minute that I had. This was by far my favorite of the books that Beth assigned me this summer. I cannot wait for Carry On!, Cath’s fan fiction, to be published this Fall!

Review: 13 Little Blue Envelopes and Last Little Blue Envelope

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13 The third book for my pop cultural assignment has brought me back to some much more familiar territory: The YA novel. As much as I love Maureen Johnson’s series Shades of London I haven’t actually read any of her other books so I was pretty excited to be assigned this.  

 One day, Ginny gets a letter from her recently deceased Aunt Peg, that she should buy a plane ticket to London and pack for a long trip.  So she does and starts on a trip of a lifetime. She is given 13 little blue envelopes that she can’t open until she is told.  She can’t call, email or journal while on the trip. She is supposed to live in the moment.  The letters have two purposes, 1. show Ginny what her Aunt has been doing for the last two years since she just left New York without a word and 2. explain why she did what she did. Aunt Peg sends Ginny all Europe, from London to Greece.  Now if this was my aunt, I would be a little pissed that I was sent all over without a clear idea of where I was going next but that’s me.  Ginny is a smart girl that is a little bit of an introvert.  So doing this is quite the undertaking.  It forces her to branch out of her comfort zone but also say good bye to her beloved Aunt.  On her adventure, she meets playwright and actor, Keith.  Keith is pretty much the opposite of Ginny.  He is out going and not afraid to meet new people.  Ginny is immediately attracted to him and asked him to come along for parts of her journey.  He helps her come out of her shell and supports her coming to terms with the death of her aunt but it’s her journey and ultimately she does it on her own.  In the end, Ginny leaves Europe more confident in herself but at peace with the death of her Aunt.  It was a satisfying ending.

And yet there is a sequel.  The Last Blue Envelope takes place few months later.  


*Spoiler Alert* 
Before Ginny could read the last letter, it was stolen along with her backpack in Greece.  Even though, she figures out part of what was in the letter when she finds her Aunt’s paintings I don’t think she was fully ready to let go of that summer, partly because she never got to read that last letter.  Well, miracles of miracles a boy in London emails her and says that he bought her backpack while in Greece and has her letters.  So she once again goes to London to retrieve it and since she is there, she tries to pick up with Keith even though their communication has slowed as of late.  As you can imagine, their reunion doesn’t go as planned when she discovers that Keith has a girlfriend and to make things worse, Oliver drops the bomb that there is another piece of art her Aunt has left for her to find.  She once again travels all over Europe without knowing where she is going and what she’ll have to do. The last time she did this she was mostly alone, this time she has Oliver,( who basically blackmails her into sharing in the profits of the sale of her Aunt’s work for the letters) Keith and Keith’s girlfriend Ellis and it’s  full awkwardness.  We didn’t get to know that much about Keith in the first book as he came and went in the narrative.  In this he is much more present and honestly, he would drive me crazy if he was my friend.  Ellis is sweet and it’s hard not to like her even if she is the girlfriend. It is Oliver who probably understands Ginny the most.  True, he had the benefit of reading her letters (ok that’s not so great) but he knows when to be quiet and when to talk.  He’s not a bad guy if you can get past the whole blackmail thing.  This book wasn’t as good as the first.  I was satisfied with how the other one ended.  Yes, there was some unfinished business.  The stolen letter and the are they dating are they not ending with Keith but life is full of unfinished business and I believe that Ginny ended a better person than where she began.  At times it felt like all of this was meant to have a sequel and other times it felt like it was put together to capitalize on a popular book.  Also the ending wasn’t as great.  Yes, once again Ginny is in a better place than she was when she began but once again there are relationships left up in the air.  It’s like Miss Johnson is leaving it open to write another book even though the letters are all gone.

I liked the first better then the second but I enjoyed them as a whole.  They, however, are not as good as her Shades of London series, which is definitely worth the read.

Review: Lair of Dreams by Libba Bray

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Featured imageWarning: Spoilers will happen

I’m not even sure where to begin!  There is always a risk that when you loved a book so much and waited so long for the sequel that when it finally comes out, it doesn’t live up to your expectations.  I’m happy to say that didn’t happen here.  Lair of Dreams is same mixture of humor, creepiness, suspenseful mystery and 20’s glamour.  The stakes are much higher since Evie announced to all of New York City and the world that she is a Diviner.  This of course brings up new opportunities for her and her friends but also new complications.  The mystery man in the stovepipe hat is gaining more ground and even though we still don’t know much about him, the fact he lingers in the background only makes everything else that much more of a mystery.  Why now are Evie, Sam, Theta, Memphis, Henry and others just discovering their powers or their powers getting stronger? And what is Project Buffalo? There is so much to talk about so let’s get to it. Continue reading →