pyrajane’s review #34: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black

Whoops!  Wrote this one a while back and forgot to post it here.

I love love love Holly Black.  When I read Tithe for the first time, I found a kindred spirit.  I’ve read all of her YA and dug up a lot of her short stories in various anthologies.  I’ve been lucky to see her on a few different panels at different book events.  Even better, she lives a few towns over from me, so sometimes I’ll see her when I’m out.  And then I embarrass myself by trying to tell her how much I like her writing.  Seriously, it’s bad.  I once walked past her in a restaurant and didn’t want to interrupt her, so I planned on tossing out a quick “Thank you for writing” but instead I sang it.  I sang it.  “Thank yooooooooo… for wriiiiiiiiitinggggggg…..”  Think of the scene from Elf where they think Buddy is a sing-o-gram except make it horrific.  I don’t know what happened in my brain.  I then followed up with “I donnnnnn’t knowwwwww… why I am sinnnnnnngingggggg….”  She laughed and thanked me.  I went to the bathroom and realized I was going to have to walk by her table again on the way back to mine.  I’m in my thirties and I had just awkwardly and painfully serenaded a favorite author.  I think I managed to save it on the way back with a casual “I really love your books” as I passed by.  Smooth.

Coldtowns are where the vampires live.  And those who might become vampires. And those who are obsessed and enthralled with vampires and want to serve them in any way.  It’s also where people are sent who are infected and if you can prove you’ve made it through your quarantine without turning, you can leave.  But no one ever seems to leave.

When you’re bit by a vampire, you get cold.  And hungry.  If you go Cold and then drink human blood, you’re done.  You get sicker, then you die, and then you come back to life, or whatever the category is for vampires.  The guideline for quarantine is eight-eight days.  If you can make it that long without taking human blood, you’ll be OK.  The problem is that when you’re craving blood, you will do anything to get it, including trying to kill your own daughter.

Read more about seventeen year old Tana, her bitten ex-boyfriend and a vampire that she’s either helping, or is waiting to kill her.

Look, I know that Twilight has done a lot of damage, but please don’t judge this book by those.  It’s really good and it’s not a “Ooooo, I’m going to write bad vampire YA to cash in!” book.  Black is an incredibly talented writer and had this been published before all the Twilight crap, it would be getting the love and attention it deserves.

And hey!  If you like Twilight, then check out a different tale of what happens when a teenage girl gets involved with a vampire.

Caitlin’s #CBR5 #62: Not a Drop to Drink by Mindy McGinnis

This is a really good book, plus one of the few that aren’t part of a series. It’s a world where water is running out. Lynn and her mother live on a farm and protect their little pond. There’s lots of action and drama. I loved how Lynn’s character changes and grows from her isolated life with her mother to her less isolated life after she ends up on her own.

Seriously, this was a great book. You can read my full review here.

Caitlin’s #CBR5 #61: Bubble World by Carol Snow

This is an interesting book about a girl who lives on an island utopia…except it’s not what it seems. It ends up being some sort of junior matrix situation, where teenagers who have difficulty in the real world are hooked up to computers and live virtual lives. I wasn’t expecting that at all when I started the book, and it ended up being much more interesting than I thought it would be.

You can read my full review here.

Caitlin’s #CBR5 #60: OCD Love Story by Corey Ann Haydu

This was a really different YA novel, told from the point of view of a young lady afflicted with obsessive compulsive disorder. She joins a support group for OCD and starts a relationship with a boy from the group.

The book is told entirely from the girl’s point of view. Some parts are really cringe-inducing, more so than your normal YA drama. It’s a little heavier than some books, but I really enjoyed the story and characters, and the glimpse of a different point of view.

You can read my full review here.

Caitlin’s #CBR5 #58: Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by April Genevieve Tucholke

I really liked this book. It’s creepy and moody. It will seem like nothing is going on, then all of a sudden ALL OF THE STUFF HAPPENS.
It’s about a girl in a small southern town who meets a mysterious stranger with a secret. A dangerous secret, of course. It’s all very Twilight-y, but I liked it anyways.
You can read my review here.

Sophia’s #CBR5 Review #70: The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

This will be my last book and book review for 2013. I definitely don’t have time to read and review another one, and I’m already looking forward to Cannonball Read 6 and the books I’ll be reading next year.

“I just wish that God or my parents or Sam or my sister or someone would just tell me what’s wrong with me. Just tell me how to be different in a way that makes sense. To make this all go away. And disappear. I know that’s wrong because it’s my responsibility, and I know that things get worse before they get better because that’s what my psychiatrist says, but this is a worse that feels too big.” (139)

 The Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999) by Stephen Chbosky was a book I would not have read if it weren’t for my new book club. I saw the movie, which was all right, but I was distracted by Hermione and I didn’t love it. I also rarely read a book after having seen the movie. The visuals from the movie are too strong and interfere with my imagination. But it’s a short book, so I figured I could suck it up for my friends. And I liked it! Much more than the movie. Charlie’s insight and inner thoughts came across much more clearly for me in writing than on the screen. Not that the movie did a bad job, it just has its limits. I still wish I’d read the book before seeing the movie, but I’m glad I read it.

Continued…

Malin’s #CBR5 Review #146: These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner

Disclaimer! Disney Hyperion granted me an ARC of this through NetGalley in return for a fair review.

Much as I love the colours and the lush quality of the cover for this book (my husband disagrees with me, he thinks it’s dreadful), it doesn’t actually give a very realistic portrayal of what the book is about. It’s not really floating about in space in a ball gown (but the gown does exist, and Lilac does spend a substantial amount of the story wearing it), or even Titanic in space, as I saw it described elsewhere (although there are obvious nods to the film). So if you’re hoping for that, you may want to adjust your expectations before going in.

Boy meets girl on board the most expensive intergalactic cruise liner in the known universe. Boy and girl have a connection. The next time boy and girl meet, girl viciously rejects boy in front of her friends. Boy is deeply hurt, but this doesn’t stop him from helping her to an escape pod when something goes horribly wrong and the ship they’re on is wrenched out of hyperspace and needs to be evacuated. Boy and girl crash escape pod on nearby planet, and have to make their way across the deserted and sometimes dangerous planet with hardly any supplies, hoping to be rescued.

Our boy is Tarver Mendenson, an 18-year-old officer heavily decorated in the recent war and given special privileges aboard the Icarus because he’s become a poster boy for the army. He’s from a humble background, and not really comfortable in the opulent surroundings and among the wealthy passengers in the first class areas. Our girl is Lilac LaRoux, daughter of the richest man in the universe. Her father owns the Icarus (as well as much of the known universe), and Lilac has learned the hard way that young men who show any kind of interest in her have a nasty way of disappearing. She finds it charming and amazing that Tarver doesn’t know who she is when they first meet, but has to dissuade him from ever talking to her again, lest he find himself suddenly deployed to the front line of another war zone before he knows what hit him. She can’t tell him this, however, and by the time their escape pod crashes, he thinks she’s a spoiled and callous space princess (while mysteriously adept at mechanics) and just wants to be rid of her as quickly as possible.

More on my blog.

narfna’s #CBR5 Review #100: Allegiant by Veronica Roth

I’m going to say it right up front: the reason I did not like this book had nothing to do with the ending.

Well, almost nothing. The ending was what she was building up to, and since I had a problem with the build-up itself, I sort of do have a problem with the ending by extension, but that’s just semantics. Actually, I was so burned by this series after Insurgent that I wasn’t looking forward to reading this book at all, so when I accidentally spoiled myself over THAT THING before I had even cracked the spine on my brand new copy, it had the opposite effect on me it had on most readers. It actually made me more excited to see how she was going to pull it off. And I was still disappointed. Sigh.

I do have to give Veronica Roth credit. She may have fumbled the execution (a lot, in my opinion), but I do think she had her priorities straight. She was dedicated — perhaps too much so — to seeing out her themes and serving the narrative, as opposed to taking the easy way out in the way she ended her story, which is what her readers wanted her to do. The problem here is that the structure of this third act in the story is just a big old mess, and the way she crafts her words and her sentences and her dialogue, I think, actively worked against the goals she was shooting for.

From here on out, be warned, spoilers ahoy.

Let’s acknowledge the elephant in the room: Tris totally bites it. She croaks. She is annihilated. She goes belly up. She buys the farm. She’s checking out the grass from underneath. She goes the way of the dinosaurs. She’s popped off. She’s permanently out of print. She’s shuffled off the mortal coil.

She’s stone dead.

Popcultureboy’s #CBR5 Review #105: The Fault In Our Stars by John Green

 

Because reading one YA novel dealing with cancer this year simply wasn’t enough. I had to have more. And effing eff, am I glad I read this book. Of course, everyone else in the world already has read it, so you all know how bloody wonderful it is. But don’t let that stop you reading my full review. It’s on my blog here.

taralovesbooks’ #CBR5 Review #52: Before I Die by Jenny Downham

 

 

 

 

**Finished my third Cannonball!!! I actually finished the last book in early December, but I’ve been slacking on my last couple of reviews. It was a pleasure to read everyone’s reviews this year and be part of this community.

 

Cannonball Read V: Book #52/52
Published: 2007
Pages: 336

Genre: Young Adult
Tessa is dying from leukemia and decides to make a list of things she wants to do before she dies. She enlists of one of her friends to help her and eventually brings her neighbor into the fold as she grows closer to him. Some of the things on her list are what you’d expect from a teenager – sex, fall in love, etc. But most of the things on the list were kind of weird, such as shoplifting. Who wants to shoplift before they die?

I had a hard time with this book. Some parts of it were very good – such as her family dealing with her illness and now her rebellion just before she dies (she stays out all night, jumps into a freezing river, joyrides without a license in her dad’s car – just to name a few). The ending was also beautifully written. Even though you know what’s going to happen, it doesn’t make it any less emotional.

Read the rest in my blog.