Review: Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins

I held off on reading this for ages. I loved Anna and the French Kiss so much that I wanted to hold on to this one and make the sweetness and satisfaction last longer. I tend to do that. I’ll hold on to a gift card for ages, or I’ll keep my favorite chocolate hidden away. I don’t jump in feet first, but I’ll wait for just the right moment when I really need that wonderful thing I’ve been saving for the proverbial rainy day.

So it isn’t the happiest feeling in the world when the thing I’ve been waiting so long for falls flat.

Don’t get me wrong. Stephanie Perkins is a very good writer. And Lola and the Boy Next Door is a good book.

I just really, really, intensely dislike Lola herself.

She’s immature, selfish, unlikeable. And then there’s the boy next door himself, the completely loveable and adorable (if a bit frustrating in the “come on, man up!” sense) Cricket Bell himself. I felt, even to the very end, that Lola didn’t at all deserve Cricket.

Perkins has a knack for writing swoon-worthy male characters. Etienne St. Clair? Humina. He’s right up there with Poe from Diana Peterfreund’s secret society novels. Cricket Bell has joined them, making a triumvirate of don’t-you-wish-they-were-real boys. But her girls? Her girls aren’t so great. I wonder why that is.

Read on my Kindle

Review: Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick by Joe Schreiber

Title: Au Revoir, Cray European Chick
Author: Joe Schreiber
Category: young adult
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children
Page count: 192
Source: ARC from the publisher, via netGalley
Star rating: 5 out of 5

Life seems to be one bit of drudgery after another for Perry, who’s a high school senior with very different ideas than his parents about what should be important to him. He wants to dedicate as much time as he can to his band, and he wants to join the swim team at school before it’s too late, but his parents – especially his overbearing, high-powered New York City attorney father – care only about good grades and getting into the best college. Add to that the fact that the family has a quiet, geeky, weird Lithuanian exchange student, a completely out of touch girl named Gobi, and Perry is nearly at his wits’ end.

His band has a big show in New York City, but it unfortunately coincides with prom night. Perry doesn’t care, because he doesn’t have a girlfriend to take, anyway, but his parents insist he take Gobi. She’s requested him as her escort, and they think it’s the right thing to do, since it’s almost time for her to leave and head back to Lithuania. Perry is completely against the idea, since it’ll cost him his gig with his band and his reputation among his friends. But his parents won’t budge, and on prom night he finds himself in his father’s borrowed Jag, wearing an itchy rented tuxedo and escorting the girl who will barely say two words to him and has for some reason dressed herself in the most unattractive traditional Lithuanian dress possible.

But there’s a twist, and what starts as another high school dance turns into a wild adventure when Perry is drawn into Gobi’s mission against his will. Oh yeah, did I fail to mention Gobi’s a trained assassin and that the night ends up including henchmen, car chases, murder, explosions, unexpected twists, and even a bear fight? It’s like a sucker-punch of coming-of-age in the wildest way imaginable.

This is the first young adult novel written by a man that I’ve ever read, and it’s blissfully free of the angst (and, lately, paranormal elements) common in YA written by women. This is a wild story, impossible to put down. It’s completely implausible, and a total farce, but that’s what makes it so fun. Recommended for anyone looking for an adventure and the chance to escape reality for a little while. This is not your typical prom story.

Review: There You’ll Find Me by Jenny B. Jones

Title: There You’ll Find Me
Author: Jenny B. Jones
Category: Christian YA
Publisher: Thomas Nelson, September 2011
Page Count: 320
Source: ARC from the publisher, via netGalley
Star Rating: 5 out of 5

I know that I’m a ridiculous fangirl for Jenny B. Jones. I’m someone who hasn’t liked much Christian fiction in a long time, but she makes me love it. I gushed ridiculously over Save the Date and I feel just as strongly about this one.

Save the Date was told from the perspective of adults, Alex and Lucy. It chronicled their lives, feisty resistance of one another, and eventual falling in love. Alex’s brother Will’s death was a heavy shadow over the book, and Alex eventually found his own peace and resolution. There You’ll Find Me is the story of Finley Sinclair, Alex and Will’s teenaged sister. Her grief is experienced much differently. Maybe it’s because she’s so young. Maybe it’s because she’s a girl and shows her emotions more openly. Whatever it is, it seems to be rockier for Finley to overcome.

Finley’s in Ireland for a school exchange program. She’s got a big audition for the New York Conservatory coming up, and she’s in Ireland to re-trace Will’s steps and write a piece of music in tribute to him. But her troubles run deep and she’s in the midst of a major crisis of faith. She meets a mean girl at school, has her heart stolen by a Hollywood heartthrob, and encounters all sorts of Irish characters, not least of which is a crusty old woman in her waning days.

But don’t be fooled into thinking this is a bubble-headed story, typical in much contemporary YA romance. No, this is much more. Finley’s troubles seem all too real and are dealt with in an utterly realistic fashion. There are funny moments, because Jones is a funny woman, but this is a tear-jerker, too. A crisis of faith is no laughing matter, and Jones treats it with seriousness and respect.

I can’t say enough good things about Jenny B. Jones and her books. Anyone who’s been resisting Christian fiction, as I did for so long, should stop resisting and read this author.

Review: Ripple by Mandy Hubbard

Title: Ripple
Author: Mandy Hubbard
Category: YA
Publisher: Razorbill (July 21, 2011)
Page count: 260
Source: ARC from the author, via Around the World ARC Tours
Star rating: 4 out of 5

Summary from Goodreads:
Lexi is cursed with a dark secret. Each day she goes to school like a normal teenager, and each night she must swim, or the pain will be unbearable. She is a siren – a deadly mermaid destined to lure men to their watery deaths. After a terrible tragedy, Lexi shut herself off from the world, vowing to protect the ones she loves. But she soon finds herself caught between a new boy at school who may have the power to melt her icy exterior, and a handsome water spirit who says he can break Lexi’s curse if she gives up everything else. Lexi is faced with the hardest decision she’s ever had to make: the life she’s always longed for – or the love she can’t live without?

Mermaid/siren books are becoming the new paranormal “it book,” so I was a little cautious about this one. I tend to avoid books in whatever genre’s currently the most popular. But I was pleasantly surprised and ended up really loving this book.

Lexi is a likable character. The poor girl has been living inside her own personal hell for two years, friendless and alone, keeping her secret of having to swim every night instead of sleep. She’s shunned at school, and her only family is her elderly grandmother. But at the beginning of her senior year, Lexi’s old friend Cole starts talking to her again. Lexi, Cole, and Sienna, Lexi’s ex-best friend are thrown together for a class project, and Sienna’s iciness to Lexi begins to melt a bit.

A romance blossoms between Lexi and Cole just at the moment Lexi notices a new guy in school. Erik is wildly attractive, and Lexi is startled to see that he shares her same clear blue eyes. She finds him unsettling, but is still drawn to him.

Somehow Mandy Hubbard makes this paranormal romance feel like a contemporary one. The siren aspect of Lexi’s life is what defines her at this point in her story, but it almost seems secondary to the love triangle that emerges, and to the patched-up friendship between Lexi and Sienna. There’s also danger, intrigue, and mystery thrown in. Hubbard throws out little clues along the way that for an avid mystery reader like me make the twist a little too obvious, but the process of getting there is still fun and interesting. The book’s climactic ending is heart-pounding and satisfying.

I appreciate how Lexi is drawn to both Cole and Erik, but asks herself mature, important questions about love. She isn’t content to fall into the arms of either boy just because he’s attractive and paying her attention. For Lexi, what’s beneath the surface matters more. She’s a mature, poised heroine, which only adds to her likability.

I’ve read Hubbard’s other two YA books, Prada & Prejudice and You Wish, and I think Ripple takes Hubbard’s writing and storytelling to a new level. Perhaps her true calling is to this gritty, edgy, but still ultimately hopeful and happy, sub-genre of YA.

Review: Hourglass by Myra McEntire

Title: Hourglass
Author: Myra McEntire
Category: young adult
Publisher: EgmontUSA, June 2011
Page count: 400
Source: my library
Star rating: 3 out of 5

Emerson Cole is having a rough time of it. Her parents died in a terrible accident when she was 13, and now, at 17, she lives in Ivy Springs, TN, with her doting older brother, Thomas, and his wife, Dru. Emerson has a secret that only her closest family know: she sees things that aren’t there. Not quite ghosts, not quite phantoms, these apparitions are connected to old buildings. Emerson sees a Southern belle, a Confederate soldier, a jazz trio. She can make them disappear by touching them, but they come back. Emerson was nearly driven crazy by these visions, and after a particularly harrowing incident in her high school cafeteria, she was institutionalized, tested, and heavily medicated.

She’s back in Ivy Springs and the visions are happening again, because Emerson has stopped taking her medication, wanting to feel like her old self again. Her brother calls in one more expert, a mysterious young man named Michael Weaver. He’s just a couple years older than Emerson and is from a group called the Hourglass. He believes Emerson’s stories and even seems to share her visions. And it’s not just that kind of connection the two have. Emerson and Michael are drawn to each other and feel an electric current when they’re together or touch. Michael wants to help Emerson, but also needs her help. He enlists her to use her gifts to prevent a death that never should have happened.

Hourglass weaves science fiction with traces of the kind of paranormal stories that are so popular in young adult fiction today. The story is interesting, but uncomfortably close to the plot of  Twilight, and it’s quite complicated and wandering at times. A lot happens, and there’s an almost over-abundance of characters, and it’s hard to keep it all straight. The “science” seems a bit far-fetched, even for science fiction, and a willing suspension of disbelief is required. Lastly, I was a bit uncomfortable with the intensity of Emerson and Michael’s attraction to each other. Not only is there an almost crippling co-dependent need that Emerson feels for Michael, but the sexual undertones of their relationship are just shy of inappropriate. I’m no prude, but I do know what’s appropriate and not for teenagers, and this is a bit too much.

I look forward to the next book in the series and hope McEntire can tighten up the science and explain it all a little more clearly. She has an interesting thing going for her here, but it can get too big and run away from her if she’s not careful.

Review: So Not Happening by Jenny B. Jones

Title: So Not Happening
Author: Jenny B. Jones
Category: young adult
Publisher: Thomas Nelson, 2009
Page count: 326
Source: Paperback Swap
Star rating: 5 out of 5

I love the euphoric feeling I get when I read a book by a new-to-me author and love it completely and totally. I think I’ve found a new favorite and can’t wait to gobble up everything else that author has written. Sometimes the book I loved turns out to be a fluke, but other times, as in the case of Jenny B. Jones, my initial reaction was right and I’ve found a new bookish BFF. I loved Save the Date and was thrilled to learn that it was not Jenny’s first work!

So Not Happening is a different kind of story, but still just as engaging, funny, sweet, and thought-provoking, I was very happy to learn. I read it in a few days while sick on my couch with a terrible sinus infection and a wicked case of bronchitis, and it made me happy and kept my mind off how awful I was feeling! And isn’t that one of the best things about a good book?

Bella Kirkwood has it all. She lives in New York City and her father is a plastic surgeon to the rich and famous. She has a great best friend, a dreamy boyfriend, and an advice column for her ritzy all-girl school’s blog. But Bella’s world unravels after her parents divorce and her mother meets a man online. He lives in Oklahoma, which, to Bella, may as well be another planet. To Bella’s horror, her mother marries her online suitor and moves the two of them to Truman, Oklahoma.

Bella is a fish out of water. Her stepbrothers are weird, and it’s clear one of them hates her. The house is old and small and looks like it hasn’t been updated since the 70s. Add to that the fact that Bella’s new stepfather seems to have a dark secret, and the kids of Truman High wouldn’t know Prada from Payless, and Bella is downright miserable.

But there’s hope. Bella meets some kids who seem nice, and she starts to fit in at her school. And despite making a huge mistake that costs her a lot of her reputation, there are a few kids who stick by her. She ends up on the school’s newspaper staff and has a hard time ignoring the fact that her hard-working and demanding editor, Luke, is pretty hot.

I’ve whined and complained for ages that there’s not any contemporary romance in YA that has a twist of a mystery. So imagine my happy surprise when I realized that’s exactly the path this book took. Bella and Luke work together to solve a mystery surrounding the football team, growing closer in the process. It’s like a cozy mystery for teens, and it thrilled me to bits.

Jenny B. Jones is an excellent story-teller and writer. Now knowing she can do mystery, too, just makes me like her even more. I can’t wait to devour the next two books in this series, and get everything else she’s ever written!

Review: Demonglass by Rachel Hawkins

Title: Demonglass
Author: Rachel Hawkins
Category: young adult
Publisher: Hyperion, 2011
Page count: 359
Source: my library
Star rating: 5 out of 5

Oh, Rachel Hawkins, *fists of fury* at you! How could you leave us hanging again?!

SPOILERS ahead, so don’t read this unless you’ve read Hex Hall, which I highly recommend you do right now!

Sophie has discovered she’s a demon, even though she’s always thought she’s a witch. Demon is far worse in Prodigium world, and far more dangerous. Turns out she’s one of only two known demons in the world, her absentee father being the other one. Plus, she discovered at the end of Hex Hall that her mega crush, Archer Cross, is a member of The Eye, who are hell-bent on killing her. And then there’s the whole thing about watching her friends die at the hands of her grandmother, Alice, a demon who went very, very bad when raised by a coven of witches at Sophie’s school, Hecate Hall.

So, pretty much, you could say things aren’t going so well for ol’ Soph.

Her father shows up at Hecate Hall and insists on taking her to Thorne Abbey in England, the new site of the Council that oversees the witchy world, for her protection. Sophie will go as long as her best friend, the vampire Jenna, goes as well. The two set off for a summer in England, hoping things will be quiet and safe. Yeah, right. Rachel Hawkins does not write “quiet and safe,” friends.

The Eye find out where Sophie is, and Sophie finds out some terrible news about things happening at Hecate Hall, where the fall term of school is beginning soon. There’s also the little matter of Archer showing up again, too. Sophie never knows who to trust with her life or her secrets.

Sophie grows a lot in this story, coming into both her own powers and her confidence. Her friendship with Jenna is tested, for understandable reasons, and the two must figure out how to navigate Sophie’s emerging powers while still remaining friends. Cal, the Hecate handyman with astonishingly delicate and life-saving powers, is a revelation. Hawkins says that teenagers are Team Archer and grown women are Team Cal. So true. I hope Sophie and Cal end up together, though I know it’s not likely.

This is another excellent offering from Rachel Hawkins, and I can’t wait for more. I’m only mad that the series’ third and final installment doesn’t come out until March 2012. So unfair.

Review: Bumped by Megan McCafferty

Title: Bumped
Author: Megan McCafferty
Category: YA
Publisher: Balzer + Bray, 2011
Page count: 336
Source: ARC from the publisher, via netGalley
Star rating: 3 of 5

Note: This title publishes on April 26, 2011

What a strange book.

In the future, a virus has rendered everyone over the age of 18 infertile. Society has become baby-obsessed, putting the job of procreating squarely on the shoulders of boys and girls who are basically still children themselves. Finding the right kid to carry your child is a million-dollar business, and only the best, brightest, fittest, smartest, and most attractive are hired.

Melody is on her way to being a “Surrogette,” just waiting for the boy she’ll be matched to “pregg” with. She’s fighting her feelings for her best friend, Zen, but he’s too short and too Asian to be a professional. What Melody doesn’t know is that she has a twin sister, Harmony. The two were separated at birth and raised very differently. Melody is from the baby- and money-obsessed Otherside, and Harmony has been raised in Goodside, which appears very similar to modern Amish communities.

The girls meet, and, through a series of mistaken identities and admitting they’re not so different after all, they’re driven in two surprising (to them) directions and the book ends on a sequel-obvious cliffhanger.

I enjoyed the story quite a lot. It’s fresh and original, and I appreciate how neither the sex-obsessed teens nor the highly religious teens are treated as campy stereotypes. Both types are fallible, funny, naive, wise, and normal. I, as a Christian, kept waiting to be offended by either side of the story, but I never was. Kudos to the author for walking the fine line and telling a good story without resorting to cheap insults.

My only quibble, which is minor but continuous throughout the story, is a lot of the words and phrases. Things like “bump,” “pregg,” “facespace,” “dose down,” etc., are cutesy, but so foreign that they can slow down reading. It took me about half the book to get used to the language quirks to really sail through it and not stumble while reading. I imagine that won’t pose a problem in the next book, since I’m now used to the style.

Review: The Goddess Test by Aimee Carter

Title: The Goddess Test
Author: Aimee Carter
Category: YA
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Page count: 304
Source: ARC from the publisher, via netGalley
Star rating: 2 of 5

Kate Winters has moved to Eden, Michigan, with her mother. It’s her mother’s hometown, and she’s dying of cancer and wants to return there to live out her few remaining days. Kate and her mother are close, so Kate is willing to give up her senior year in her New York high school, eager to please her mother and make the end of her life as pleasant as possible. Very quickly we see Kate begin her senior year, make a friend named James, get treated like trash by a girl named Ava, and watch her mother slip into a coma.

And then the tension stops, for everything is revealed.

Let me back up a bit. Ava claims to be taking Kate to a party, but instead takes her to a river (it’s made clear that Kate is terrified of water), makes her cross the river, and then skips off to leave Kate alone and cold on the other side. But something happens, Ava slips and bashes her head on rocks, and dies right there in front of Kate. She’s stranded with a dead frenemy, too paralyzed with fear to cross back over the river and hightail it to civilization for help. But lo! Through the trees emerges a bona fide hottie, of course! He is Henry, and he’s creepy but beautiful, Edward Cullen without the sparkle, and he tells Kate that he can save Ava’s life (and somehow the life of her mother), but she has to agree to live with him for six months out of the year and be his bride.

And, after a couple days of teen-aged angst with her new BFF, the undead Ava, Kate inexplicably agrees to this and goes to live at Eden Manor. Because, you see, Henry is really Hades, ruler of the Underworld, and he needs a new wife to replace Persephone, his one true love.

Yes, that’s the premise here. And what follows is a confusing jumble: Kate must pass seven tests in order to be deemed worthy of immortality and Henry’s hand in marriage; she willingly spends six months in Eden Manor with a host of weirdos, apparently unconcerned about the people out there on the other side of the hedge, wondering what’s happened to a seventeen-year-old girl who’s just vanished out of thin air; there are shenanigans and a murder; and then there’s a big reveal at the end, part of which is enormously insulting to the reader (unless that reader happened to figure it all out in the first third of the book, which I admit I did). The ending is preposterous.

And there’s a sequel coming out, but there’s zero anticipation of what’s going to happen next, nothing that makes the reader write down the next book’s release date, circle it twenty times, highlight it, and put stars and hearts around it.

I admit that I know only the basics of Greek mythology. As a Christian, I figured out pretty quickly when I was younger that the Greek gods and their stories are the complete antithesis of my worldview. They’re not nice “people,” and their stories are not pleasant in any way. So I know enough to muddle through a conversation should I find myself at a party, glass of wine in hand and a desperate will to escape, trapped in a corner by someone having Deep Thoughts about Hera or Dionysus. I do know enough to know that Aimee Carter has twisted and re-created their stories and personalities so radically that they’re hardly noticeable. And she mixes that mythology with the seven deadly sins, which aren’t part of Christian theology but are always attributed to Christianity because there are Scriptures which point out these particular sins. Anybody with a basic working knowledge of either mythology or Christian theology should know that the two just don’t mix at all.

Finally, if I haven’t beat home my disappointment with this book enough, the writing just isn’t very good. There’s an enormous amount of telling – and I despise telling over showing – and very little action. Descriptions are entirely lacking. In addition to shoddy mythology research, Carter seems wholly uninterested in building a world for the reader to picture. This happened, and then this happened, and then this other thing happened, and here is some dialogue tacked on to make it move along. It reads like Greek mythology fan-fiction. I hate fan-fiction.

Review: The Lipstick Laws by Amy Holder

Title: The Lipstick Laws
Author: Amy Holder
Category: YA
Publisher: Graphia
Page count: 240
Source: ARC from the publisher, via netGalley
Star rating: 2 of 5

Note: This book has a publication date of April 4, 2011

It’s sophomore year at Penford High School in Rochester, NY, and April Bowers is lonely. Her best friend, Haley, has moved out of town, and April, who has never been popular in her large high school, now feels completely alone. The only person who seems to give her any attention is Delvin McGerk, who she thinks is “stalkeriffic” and the king of all losers. It’s not looking good for April.

Enter Britney Taylor, fellow sophomore, and self-ordained queen of the popular kids. Despite only being in 10th grade, she manages to thinks she has the level of popularity usually reserved for seniors. She has a small group of sycophantic girlfriends who follow her around like lap dogs, and she’s got boys drooling over her body. Britney seems to have it all, so April is confused and flattered when Britney and her friends welcome her to their lunch table.

What follows in the first half of the book is the common ugly duckling story. April, who’s cast in the role of the ugly duckling but isn’t actually ugly at all, gets made over by Britney the puppet master. Britney is the queen of back-handed compliments and never fails to let her feelings be known, no matter how hurtful the insult may be. April’s clothes and hair are changed, and she’s backed into the corner when it comes to signing the Lipstick Oath, a list of seven rules she must agree to follow in order to be friends with Britney and the girls.

There are expected insults, hi-jinks and hurt feelings, and at a ridiculous party in a field, it all changes when somebody calls the cops and April gets blamed. She’s immediately out of the group, and Britney sets out to destroy April’s reputation. (What reputation? April was unknown before Britney came around, and the girls have puffed-up senses of superiority, so how would anybody realize April had changed anyway?)

The first half of the story is interesting and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. The second half, however, tumbles out in a rush, all telling and no showing. It’s a breathless read of “this happened, and then this happened, and then OMG this happened!” It’s like a bad Disney Channel or ABC Family movie which spends the first half setting up the plot nicely, and the second half desperately trying to cram it all in with a nice little lesson in the last five minutes.

April takes revenge on Britney by gathering up other girls who broke the Lipstick Oath. They call themselves the Lipstick Lawbreakers, and they plot and scheme to ruin Britney’s life. One of their tricks, involving fake love letters and a showdown on the football field, is far beyond anything a high-schooler would ever do, and the other is not funny and could be deadly for Britney.

Some of the book’s major plot problems include:

• The character of Brandon is interesting, if not a little gross. He disappears. Why?
• Delvin is clueless but sweet and obviously a catch for a nice girl, and then turns into a “total hottie,” which is all the girls seem to care about. But April still treats him like trash. And we’re supposed to root for her? April and her friends are completely shallow and care nothing about a guy’s intelligence, manners, kindness, or how he treats his mama. If he’s a hottie, he’s in. Gross.
• Totally implausible things, like laughing hysterically or jumping around excitedly for “five minutes straight,” or three people saying exactly the same sentence at exactly the same time. There’s willing suspension of disbelief when you read a fluffy YA novel, and then there’s just bad writing and editing that make you roll your eyes.

Et cetera.

The overarching problem with this book is that it’s hard to like a book at all when the main character is so wholly awful and unlikable. There is nothing redeeming about April, and her new-found mean girl status is reversed and wrapped up nicely with a bow in the end. But it’s completely unbelievable. I didn’t root for her for a moment in the whole book. She is everything you wanted to avoid while growing up, and everything you don’t want your children to be now.

I’ve read several reviews saying this is great for young teenagers, but I don’t know how a parent, teacher, or librarian could recommend impressionable young girls (possibly dealing with their own mean girls) read about people who are so mean and awful that the reader is left feeling let-down and miserable by the end of the story. A feel-good ego boost this is not.