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Pretty Crooked by Elisa Ludwig

2012-01-26T12:52:00.000-08:00

Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Release Date: March 13, 2012
Source: NetGalley
Age Range: Young Adult

Willa's struggling artist mother's paintings sell for a large sum of money, and Willa and her mother move to Paradise Valley, Arizona so that Willa can attend the posh Valley Prep School. Willa doesn’t have a hard time fitting in at Valley Prep, although she does thinks the school is a bit too posh for her, she becomes friends with three of the most popular and wealthy ‘Glitterati’’ girls who own the school; Kelly and Nikki and Cherise. They take her out on shopping trips where they really crash their creditcards and come back with the latest fashion.

But the same week Willa is introduced to three other girls in school Sierra, Mary and Alicia. The three immigrants and at school on a scholarship, and when Willa talks with the three, she starts to see a whole other side of Arizona and really wants to be friends with them. But her three Glitterati friends have a very other opinion about Mary, Alicia and Sierra. They call the three the “Busteds’ who are bussed to school everyday. For Kelly talking about the three in this mean way isn’t enough: she runs The Buzz, a very popular blog and decides to post mean rumors about the three.

When Willa finds out what Nikkie, Kelly and Cherise are posting on the Buzz and get the whole school against the Busteds, she is furious and decides it’s time for action. She comes up with a plan to steal money from Kelly and other rich girls with the intention to buy the most prettiest clothes and a personal tutor for Mary, Alicia and Sierra. With the help of Tre who is a bit of a shady guy who is a specialist in burgling and pickpocketing, she succeeds in her modern Robin Hood Plan. But then the Glitterati are starting to spread more mean rumors about the Busteds, and accuse them of stealing from them. Uh, oh! This wasn’t Willa’s plan? And certainly it wasn’t her plan that her actions are leaking out and she is very, very busted!

Pretty Crooked is the kind of book that makes you laugh out loud! I loved the plot and the main character, Willa: she is so smart and is a little naive in her plan to help out her less fortunate classmates. What was very good was the topic the author mentions in this book: online bullying and how far something like that goes and what the effects can be. And what was going on with Willa's mother? I really liked that side story, but I was a bit bummed that it wasn't revealed in this book, so I definately hope there will be a sequel. I really want to know what is going on with her and who the mistery man she secretly meets (great plan to follow her in a car Willa!). And then there was the love side story; Aiden. He was the main love interest of this book. He was the hot, rich but actually nice guy unlike the rest of the school.

Overall Pretty Crooked is a fresh, fun new and hilarious new YA novel. (release this march) wich I truly hope will be a series, as I just am craving for more!

The Jade Notebook by Laura Resau

2012-01-24T23:50:00.000-08:00

Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Release Date: Feb 14, 2012
Source: Author/Publisher
Age Range: Young Adult

After living in different countries all over the world, Zeeta and her mom Layla are settled now in at Mazunte, Mexico, where Layla is managing a cabana resort, and where Zeeta's true love, Wendell, has an internship photographing rare sea turtles. Everything goes well till Zeeta and Wendell discover some sea turtle poachers on the beach, and they find out that the owner of the land where the cabana’s are located wants the land back to give it to their son. Will they have to leave again and find a new place somewhere else on the world?

Zeeta is also determined to find her true father, who has to live somewhere around Mazunte after they have briefly met in France. They discover that the owners of the land now more about this. And who is that strange neighbour ladywith a tiger in her backyard?

As I have read the previous two books in the Notebook trilogy by Laura Resau (The Indigo and Ruby Notebooks) I was thrilled to read the Jade Notebook. I think it is a great and amazing conclusion to the books. All the characters from the previous books have grown and, as always whith Laura's books, the characters and settings where very realistic as Laura knows the places in different countries she writes about, which is just amazing! I loved how Zeeta’s search for Tortue continued and Layla became less flighty and seemed to finally settle down in a place where she belongs. Just another fabulous book by Laura Resau that you don’t want to miss!!

The Wife Who Ran Away by Tess Stimson

2012-01-23T23:44:00.000-08:00

Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK
Release Date:19 Jan 2012
Source: Publicist

For the outside world it seems like Kate Forrest has the perfect life. Her husband Ned, two grown up teens, and a good job. But the inside is different; Kate feels like she is invisible to her husband. He doesn’t pay attention to the things that are important to her, he only seems busy with his job and with gambling. One day Kate reads about a woman who suddenly leaves everything behind and runs away to somewhere just to escape it all. And then she realizes that it is enough for her too, she is sick of her husband, sick of her depending mother who constantly calls her and sick of her career. And that’s why she steps on a plane to a friend who lives in Italy. At home no one notices at firsthand she has left. Not even Ned, who thinks she is just caught up with work. But when Kate’s boss calls and tells Ned she hasn’t been at work the whole week, he starts to realize something is very wrong. Their kids Agness and Guy don’t know where mom is. But then comes out that Guy is horribly bullied at school and the bullies are posting dead threats to him on the internet. The situation gets so out of hand that Kate has to go back and has to choose between her past and her future.

I loved how this book was written, The chapters alternate in character, so you can see the story from the points of view of Kate, Ned, Guy, Agness and Kate’s mother. What I also liked was the whole plot, which got really thrilling at the end. It seems so easy to run away and leave your family and your whole life behind but this book shows it isn’t. I think Kate was an interesting main character and very well developed by the author. This was just a thrilling story about a family which suddenly finds the ground beneath them shaking. Highly entertaining page turner!

Author interview with Nicci French about their new book Blue Monday + Giveaway

2012-01-22T23:52:00.000-08:00

Nicci French is the husband and wife team of journalist Nicci Gerrard and writer Sean French. Their novels include The Memory Game, The Safe House, Killing Me Softly, Beneath the Skin, The Red Room and Losing You. Today I talk with them about their newest book Blue Monday.

BLUE MONDAY is your thirteenth book and the first book in a new series of psychological thrillers, introducing Frieda a psychotherapist. It’s also the first series you’ve ever written. What was the inspiration for this new series?
Frieda came along before the idea of writing a series did. We had always said we wrote stand-alone thrillers, but then we thought about a central character who is a therapist, someone who believes you can’t solve the mess in the world but you can try to address the mess in your own head, the pain and fear and anxiety inside of you. We thought of her as a different kind of detective, a detective of the mind, who is unwillingly dragged by the events that unfurl in the novel out into the real world.

Once we had imagined Frieda—solitary, insomniac, prickly, difficult, honorable, trustworthy, fiercely private—we knew she needed more than one book. She has to be discovered over time. And from that the octet gradually emerged. The books will cover a decade in Frieda’s life and the lives of the cast that she assembles around her; we want to see how time marks them, how they are changed by the experiences they live through together.

Also, we became excited by the idea of writing eight books that could stand as gripping thrillers in their own right, but which are also connected by one over-arching story. In BLUE MONDAY a fuse is lit that then will burn its way through the remaining seven books, coming to a climax in the final novel.

Where did the title BLUE MONDAY come from?
This is the first book of a planned series of dark thrillers that will be named after the days of the week. The title BLUE MONDAY seemed perfect to us because it is both about beginnings but also about the difficulty of beginning, its pains and regrets and fears. It also happens to be the title of not just one but two (very different) great songs – by Fats Domino and New Order.

Set against a backdrop of a dark, tangled London, BLUE MONDAY illustrates your power over a sense of place. As Frieda navigates its streets one can almost feel the damp chill of London’s foggy night air. What is your writing process? What are some things about the London you depict in your books that those of us in the US might not know?
As regards London, our writing process is to do what we have always done, which is to spend a lot of our time walking, cycling—and sometimes running—around the city, exploring its hidden alleys, squares, canals. We have both spent many years living in the city and every time we go out we see something completely new. Much of BLUE MONDAY came out of those walks.
A few things you need to know about London:
It’s big; really big. Greater London is about thirty-five miles across.

It’s really old. It’s been a continuously functioning (and dis-functioning) city since the Romans and it has been built on, burnt down, bombed, demolished, built on, over and over again.

London is really a collection of villages that used to be separated by fields and meadows and woodlands and orchards that gradually got filled up but they still hang on to their identity. In good ways and bad, London is a jangling mess. North Londoners don’t like South London, East Enders feel persecuted by everybody, West Kensington isn’t really in Kensington, and wherever you’re from anywhere in the world, you’ll find a community somewhere in London.
London is a landscape as much as a city, one of the oldest and most complicated landscapes in England.
And still, there’s so much that we don’t understand about London. For example, why do tourists always go to Madame Tussaud’s?

Frieda is a psychotherapist. What kind of research did you do to make her so real?
Sean: Frieda emerged from our fascination with the whole subject of doctors whose job it is to make sense of our lives just by the way we talk about them. We have friends who are therapists, we have a certain experience of therapy, we’ve talked to people who have undergone therapy and we’ve read an awful lot about it.

Nicci: And also, in a way, therapy is a bit like writing itself: you take chaos and put order onto it, a road out of the dark woods.

What are you working on now?
Sean: We’ve just finished the second Frieda Klein and we’re standing nervously by the edge plucking up the nerve to dive into the third one.

You are known as the internationally bestselling author Nicci French, yet really there are two of you: Nicci Gerrard and Sean French, writing partners and husband and wife and you live in England. Why did you decide to start writing fiction together?
Sean: In the first years we were married, we talked about the idea. We knew that people could collaborate in different ways but we were interested in whether two people could write a novel that had one voice, where you were really creating a new person.

Nicci: It was like an experiment. But looking back at it, all these years and fourteen books later, it seems so odd, such a strange thing to do when we were both working flat out anyway, with four tiny children racing around the house. We didn’t do it because we thought we would write a book, get it published, become Nicci French. We did it to see if we could do it, because it seemed like a shared adventure—and it has been a shared adventure, a way of exploring the world together.

How do you manage co-authorship? Do you sit down and write together or do you take it in shifts?
Nicci: When we talk about how we write together we tend to make it sound much neater and better managed than it actually is, it’s a rather chaotic and messy business. The one thing we never do is actually sit down and write together, and the thought of one of us dictating to the other is a kind of madness, it just wouldn’t work. We spend a long time talking about the shape of the novel, the story, the way the plot goes, the development of the characters and above all the voice of the narrator into whom we both have to write, and once we’re satisfied with that then we’ll start to write. The writing will quite often take us away from the plan, but that’s what we do. One of us will write, say, the first chapter and then hand it over to the other who is absolutely free to change it, edit it, erase it, add other words to it, and then they will write the next chapter and pass it back. It’s a question of moving between the two of us. We never decide in advance who’s going to write what chapter, there’s no division.

Sean: We felt that in order for it to work we both have to be responsible for everything, whether we (individually) have written it or not. If there’s any research that needs doing for a book then we both have to do it, we both have to have all of it in our heads.

Nicci: If Sean writes something and I change absolutely nothing about that whole section, but I read it and approve it, then it becomes mine as well. It becomes a kind of Nicci French thing so we both own each word of it.

MarjoleinBookBlog and Penguin USA are giving away a copy of Blue Monday Fill in the contest form to be entered. The contest is open to US and Canada and till February 25 You can only enter one time, but you can get one extra entry by spreading the word about this contest (blog, twitter) and when you become a follower of my blog.

GO TO THE CONTEST FORM

Fabulous books for the year of the dragon!

2012-01-22T06:28:00.000-08:00

Gung Hay Fat Choy! It's the Chinese Year of the dragon, and how better to celebrate this than with some fabulous books? Here some of recommendations to some of my favorite Chinese/Asian themed books:

A Tiger in the Kitchen by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan.
Chinese new year is spend by most Chinese families with food and family dinners. In A Tiger In The Kitchen, author Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan describes her own personal journey between her home country Singapore (the most food obsessed country in the world) and her life in New York. Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan left home and family at eighteen for America, proof of the rebelliousness of daughters born in the Year of the Tiger. But as a thirtysomething fashion writer in New York, she felt the Singaporean dishes that defined her childhood beginning to call her back. Was it too late to learn the secrets of her grandmothers' and aunties' kitchens, as well as the tumultuous family history that had kept them hidden before?

In her quest to recreate the dishes of her native Singapore by cooking with her family, Tan learned not only cherished recipes but long-buried stories of past generations. It's an amazing and fun written book about her journey and her family. Cheryl has a fun way of telling the story of her family and I just read it with a smile, and a craving for an Asian dish afterwards. But for this the book is also quite useful, as Cheryl end the book with ten authentic Singaporean recipes to try at home!

Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok
When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings. Disguising the more difficult truths of her life-like the staggering degree of her poverty, the weight of her family's future resting on her shoulders, or her secret love for a factory boy who shares none of her talent or ambition-Kimberly learns to constantly translate not just her language but also herself back and forth between the worlds she straddles.

Bitter Melon by Cara Chow
Frances, a Chinese-American student at an academically competitive school in San Francisco, has always had it drilled into her to be obedient to her mother and to be a straight-A student so that she can go to Med school. But is being a doctor what she wants? It has never even occurred to Frances to question her own feelings and desires until she accidentally winds up in speech class and finds herself with a hidden talent. Does she dare to challenge the mother who has sacrificed everything for her? Set in the 1980s.

Happy New Year, Julie!Julie knows Christmas will be difficult this year, but when her sister Tracy refuses to go to Dad's house for Christmas, Julie feels as if her family is falling apart. Over the holidays Julie finds comfort spending time with her best friend, Ivy Ling. The Lings are getting ready for Chinese New Year, and helping with their preparations distracts Julie from her sadness about her own family. Then she learns that her whole family is invited to the Lings' New Year banquet. Julie tries to share Ivy's excitement, but her heart sinks--with Mom, Dad, and Tracy there, how will they all get along?

Child of the Owl by Laurence Yep
Twelve-year-old Casey is waiting for the day that Barney, her father, hits it bi,'cause when that horse comes in, he tells her, it's the penthouse suite. But then hr ends up in the hospital, and Casey is sent to Chinatown to live with her grandmother, Paw-Paw. Now the waiting seems longer than ever.
Casey feels lost in Chinatown. She's not prepared for the Chinese school, the noisy crowds, missing her father. But Paw-Paw tells her about the mother Casey never knew, and about her family's owl charm and her true Chinese name. And Casey at last begins to understand that this ,Paw-Paw's Chinatown home, her parents' home, is her home,too.

April and the Dragon Lady by Lensey Namioka
April Chen is happily planning to go away to college, and she has a great new boyfriend, Steve. But as the only girl in her family, April is expected to take care of her grandmother. And Grandma, "the Dragon Lady," hates Steve and has other plans for April. Torn between her duty to her family and her desire for independence, April realizes she must find a way to define herself on her own terms

Currently reading: Dragons of Silk by Laurence Yep: The Weaving Maid wove robes of silk for Heaven, but when she met the Cowboy, she abandoned her loom to be with him. But Heaven would not allow this, and put the Milky Way in between them. Silk binds the lives of four girls from different generations with the fate of the Weaving Maid. Across a span of seventy-five years both in China and America, each girl shows the strength and courage of a dragon as she fights and sacrifices for the survival of her family and the pursuit of passion.

恭喜發財!

Unbreak My Heart by Melissa Walker

2012-01-19T06:03:00.000-08:00

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Release Date:May 22, 2012
Source: NetGalley
Age Range: Young Adult

It's summer and Clememtine (Clem) William's heart is broken. Everything went wrong during last sophomore year, when she fall for the boyfriend of her best friend. Bye bye social life..
This summer she is going out to sail with her parents and little sister on their sailboat.Normally the idea of being stuck on a tiny boat with her parents and little sister would make Clem break out in hives, but floating away sounds pretty good right now.

Its here that she meets James, and he acts like a real friend from the start and the perfect distraction from the drama with her best friend and boyfriend...

Unbreak My Heart is a book that fans of Sarah Dessen and Deb Caletti certainly will like. It really is written in the same style, which is really a winning thing for this fabulous new book by Melissa Walker. This is a book that transports you to a sailboat in mid summer. I also liked how the story went back to Clem's sophomore year, what I liked about it was that it was revealed that something happened between her best friend and boyfriend, but only at the end part it was revelead what it was. Really enjoyed reading it and recommend it for the coming spring and summer!

Author Interview: Meredith Zeitlin

2012-01-18T08:02:00.000-08:00

Meredith Zeitlin is the author of Freshman Year and Other Unnatural Disasters, which is her YA Debut and which will hit bookshelves in March 2012!

What inspired you to write Freshman Year and Other Unnatural Disasters?
When I set out to write Freshman Year... about five years ago, I mainly wanted to create characters and stories that were more relatable than those I'd seen in YA books at that time. Girls who weren't necessarily polished, or uber-fashionable, or the prettiest in school, or rich... girls who were, well, normal.

I felt like there was a major dearth of normal girls having normal experiences, and instead a whole lot of battles with supernatural creatures in suburban backyards and six-figure shopping sprees at Bergdorf Goodman's. Sometimes simultaneously. Which is fine, and even awesome... but certainly not normal fourteen-year-old behavior. I wanted to write something that would strike a chord with the reader the way the books I loved at that age did for me. Even if only ONE kid thinks, "My life is a mess just like Kelsey's, and it's okay and I'm not weird" after reading my book, I'll be happy. That's really why I wrote it in the first place.

What influences and experiences did you bring into the book?
Well, the plain truth is that almost every single thing that happens to Kelsey in the book actually happened to me when I was around the same age. There's a bit of embellishment here and there, and the names and places have been changed... but I have been disaster-prone all my life. Still am, I'm afraid.
As for influences, my friends and family influenced a lot of the characters. I'm pretty lucky to have an amazing group of people around me who keep things interesting.

What were the challenges (literary, research, psychological, and logistical) in bringing the book to life?To be honest, writing the book - the first draft, anyway - was the easiest part of the process. I wrote in my spare time, whatever came to me, and I enjoyed it. The only research I did was combing through my memories of embarrassing moments!

Could you tell us about your path to publication? Any sprints or stumbles along the way?
Getting to the release date of this book was very challenging - mostly because of forces out of my control. Without going into too much detail, once I finished the initial manuscript, I sent the book out to a few agents and one of them signed me. She started sending it to publishers and one of them - Putnam - decided to buy it. After that, the struggle began. My first editor gave me a lot of confusing notes and asked for totally pointless and time-consuming rewrites that never got used. He was eventually let go, so the publication date got pushed back and back... it was incredibly frustrating. But I got picked up by a new and fabulous editor who totally got me and the book, and it's been smooth sailing since then!

If you could have dinner with a book character, who would it be and why?
Oh boy. This is a tough one. Excluding all the very handsome male characters that everyone probably wants to dine with for aesthetic reasons, I think i'd have to pick... Precious Ramotswe from Alexander McCall Smith's "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" series. She and I are such very different people - I think it would be absolutely fascinating. Also, I love the cadence of the way she speaks - voices are super important to me. I bet I could listen to her talk about anything, all day long.

What did you read as a teen?, which authors inspired you the most? And which are your favorite books and authors now?
There was nothing off-limits when it came to books in my house. I read everything I could get my hands on. Mysteries, historical fiction, my mother's library books (she'd get so mad when I swiped them!), romances... but the YA authors I loved the most were the classics - Judy Blume, Lois Lowry, and Paula Danziger especially. As I said before, being able to read about characters that I could relate to was so essential at that time.

Authors I love now... so many to choose from! Dara Horn, Cassandra Clare, Nicole Krauss, George RR Martin, Michael Gruber, Rebecca Wells, Audrey Niffenegger, Tana French, Margaret Atwood, Gregory Maguire, Curtis Sittenfeld, Stephen King... I could go on all day. I love literary novels, but I also love deliciously trashy chick-lit - especially Fiona Walker! - and crime/horror thrillers. I read pretty much whatever I can get my hands on!

For more about Freshman Year And Other Unnatural Disasters, visit:
http://www.kelseyfinkelstein.com/

@zeitlingeist on Twitter

www.facebook.com/FRESHMANYEARBOOK

Freshman Year And Other Unnatural Disasters by Meredith Zeitlin

2012-01-16T05:55:00.000-08:00

Publisher: Putnam Juvenile
Release Date:March 1, 2012
Source: Publicist
Age Range: Young Adult

Its going to be an awesome year for Kelsey Finkelstein. She is fourteen years old and lives in Brooklyn, New York with her kind of impossible family and annoying little sister Travis. But already in the first week, a few some not so awesome things happen. First of all: her mom picked the most hideous outfit at Loehmann’s(crazy red blazer and checked pants…!!!) for her first day of school. She is picked for the school soccer team (because of her arch-enemy who moved across the country..yess! And..she does catch the eye of her long time crush!

But then the first schoolpaper of the year is released; what’s that picture of her (read: the kind of picture that is used against you!) doing in it? And why are hideous pics of her appearing in the next editions of it? Luckily, Kelsey has the best friends to rely on and she even gets a new best friend who is kind of popular but really nice. She discover’s that soccer isn’t her thing, and signs up fpr the spring musical, Fiddler on the Roof, where she is cast as Lazar Wolf. Uh oh…so now she has to wear a fat costume and a stick-on beard and play a butcher man? It seems like Kelsey’s freshman year fate is not on her side…is it summer yet??

This is just an amazing an laugh-out-loud debut novel by Meredith Zeitlin. I loved Kelsey's snarky voice of telling the whole story and all the awkward things ánd cool things that happened in her crazy freshman year. And no, this book wasn't predictable (what I expected a little bit) its is so full of the most fun twists and turns that as a reader, I raced through this fast paced book. Great characters, original plot, what's not to like about this book? Definately recommended, don't miss out this one if you are in for fun!

Blog Tour:Never Mind The Botox by Penny Avis and Joanna Berry, review and Q&A

2012-01-15T05:26:00.000-08:00

Publisher: Matador
Release Date:11 Jan 2012
Source: Publicist

Never Mind The Botox is a four book series about four woman who all work in the high-profile cosmetic surgery business the Beau Street Group. Each book reveals how the women cope with one of the most glamorous but challenging deals of their careers, and the dramatic impact it has on their personal lives. With a briefcase in one hand and a glass of wine in the other, can they navigate their way through a surreal world of boob jobs by day and intrigue by night and still keep their own love lives on track?

In this second book, the spotlight is on Rachel Altman, who works for a prestigious accounting firm and is working to discover the valuation of the business, and any skeletons in the closet that might affect that. When she discovers that some famous clients of the clinic come into the clinic under different names and different paychecks as well, and some things are not quite as clear in this case as it should be, and Rachel is on top of it to find out what is happening here. Rachel is constantly led astray by her party-loving boyfriend and heading into work hungover and/or late constantly.Director promotions are coming up soon and she needs to turn it around soon but with intrigue whirling around her from all directions her stress levels raise a little too much..

This was a fun read with an excellent plot, altough I had took a little while for me to get into the story.The book focuses on both sides of the woman potrayed in the book, both the professional hard working side and their free time when they go out and have a good time (sometimes a little too much..). I really think this series is Britain’s own Sex and the City. I think it’s a great concept with four books of four woman working on the same side, but each with their own story and point of view. I liked how there where a few side stories woven into it and how it ended. Original and a must read for every chick-lit fan!

Q&A with Penny Avis and Joanna Berry

Could you tell us a little about both of you?
Penny is an accountant, who was a corporate finance partner at Deloitte and Joanna is a lawyer, who was an intellectual property and media partner at Eversheds. We are what you might call ‘city slickers’ turned authors.

How did the idea of a novel around plastic surgery started, and how where the characters created?
We knew we wanted to write about young professional women working on a deal, as that is both our backgrounds. We wanted to make the business background really fascinating for our readers, so we went for cosmetic surgery as it seemed so ‘now’. The characters were created in several brain storming sessions, often in lovely hotel bars over a cup of coffee or the occasional glass of champagne!

What's it like to write a book together? What is the process like?
Really fun! Our process involved us meeting regularly to develop the characters and plot out the stories for the four books, before we started writing anything. We then drafted our ideas into a central story plan and a four book synopses, along with detailed character descriptions. This was our ‘drafting bible’ if you like. Only once we were totally happy with it, did we start writing.

What are your passions other than reading or writing?
Our families, spending time with our friends, holidaying together and buying lovely frocks for any event we can think of!

What are your favorite books, which authors have inspired you the most?
We were inspired by lots of people but Helen Fielding, Allison Pearson and Sophie Kinsella were all big influences for us. Penny loves books that inspire her daughter to be outgoing and confident like Pippi Longstocking and Jo is a big lover of the classics, such as the Bronte sisters and Jane Austen.

The Buddha's Diamonds by Carolyn Marsden and Thây Phâp Niêm

2012-01-13T04:53:00.000-08:00

Publisher: Candlewick Press
Release Date:February 12th 2008
Source: Bought
Age Range: 4-12

Tinh is a boy growing up in post-war Vietnam in a poor village. His father has a new boat made from bamboo. Every day, Tinh heads out to sea with Ba, his father, to catch fish for their family and the market. Tinh is also naturally spiritual. He has a deep love and respect for his ancestors, the Buddha and especially Phat Ba Quan Ahm (known in Chinese as Quan Yin) the Vietnamese Bodhisattva of Compassion. He knows that her many arms protect him and others at sea and that her name will comfort him when he's scared. He enjoys going out to sea with his father every day, but he is starting to miss flying kite with his sister Lan

But then, one day when they are out fishing with the whole family, a huge cyclone strikes, driving the fishermen from the water and ravaging much of the poor village. All the men and boys struggle to secure the fishing boats on the beach. Tinh is surrounded by chaos, and there's no one to help him. He's alone and terrified, but he's also scared of disappointing his father and losing the family boat. And then a giant wave pushes the boat into a nearby tree…

Tinh now must gather his strength and act like the young man his family expects him to be by helping to fix the boat and finding food for them. His uncle gives him a small carved Buddha; this, plus his faith in Phat Ba Quan Ahm, gives him the courage and inspiration to do what he has to in order to help his loved ones.

The Buddha's Diamonds is inspired of childhood memories by one of the authors, Thây Phâp Niêm. I loved Carolyn Marsden's other Vietnam themed book for children (When Heaven Fell) so I had to check out this one too. I think it's great book to introduce young readers into the Vietnamese culture Gives a good portrayal of the life of a poor fishing village in Vietnam. The storyline was good and the characters where very realistic. Recommended short read.

I've Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella

2012-01-12T04:51:00.000-08:00

Publisher: The Dial Press
Release Date: February 14, 2012)
Source: NetGalley

Physiotherapist Poppy has a tremendous problem: she lost her engagement ring at her engagement party. The antique ring that her fiancé Magnus gave her and which is in his family for decades. None of her friends who attended the party has seen it, as they suddenly had to move out of the hotel ballroom due to a fire alarm. The day after, Poppy goes in search for the ring, without success, and to make matters worse her phone is stolen that day. Totally in panic, not knowing what to do, she looks in a garbage bin outside the hotel for her ring, when she finds a mobile phone. It seems that the mobile phone belongs to a certain Violet, a PA of a company that is staying in the same hotel for a congress: White Globe Consulting. She decides that finders are keepers and the phone is now hers. How else can the hotel call her when they will find her ring? But then messages, emails and calls come in on the phone, mostly from a grumpy sounding businessman called Sam, who needs to know where that important Japanese businessman is located in or outside the hotel, and who is she, Poppy, to pick up the phone instead of his PA Violet?

Poppy promises Sam to send all the texts and emails directly to him, but she has to keep the phone to find her ring back. She tries everything in her power to hide the ring loss to Magnus . Magnus and his family are all professors , and Poppy kind of feels inferior to them, what will they say or do when they discover the ring is lost, cancel the wedding because she isn’t the right one for Magnus? She starts to get more involved in Sam’s life, due to the texts and emails she has to forward to him? Who is this Sam and why is he so grumpy and short to everyone except her? And due to the story she discovers that her fiancé and her wedding planner are hiding a few secrets for her….

I’ve Got Your Number is a must read book for every Sophie Kinsella fan, or just if you want to read a hilarious, fast paced book. The character of Poppy was fabulously created and although she comes across like another bit naïve and klutzy character like we are used to in Sophie Kinsella’s books, she really has some funny other sides and discovers through the story that she doesn’t have to trying to be friends and be nice to everybody. Magnus seems like the perfect fiancé: a professor from a wealthy family of professors, but due to the story he gets a real other profile all of a sudden. However, the plot is full of unexpected turns and twists, and as it seems not in Poppy’s favor, or does all this drama that overcomes her lead to an even more happy end for her? Go read and find out in this fantastic new book by Sophie Kinsella, which I am sure will be just another hit book!

Blog Tour: Inseparable by Dora Heldt

2012-01-10T23:42:00.000-08:00

Publisher: AmazonCrossing
Release Date:December 6, 2011
Source: Publicist

Christine is not looking forward to become 44, the last things she needs is her birthday now she has recently divorced. Christine has lots of girlfriends who have supported her during this difficult time. The big day is nearing and Christine is becoming more and more afraid that she has relied too much on her girlfriend. To prove that she is wrong, Christine’s best friend and sister are secretly organizing a birthday surprise party: they have invited all of Christine’s old friends from different stages of her life. But finding all of her old friends is easier said than done..

I didn't got the actual point of the story. Where was it heading and what was the conclusion? The story was mostly about what the characters where doing. All together the story was somehow a charming, especially that her Christine's sister and best friend where organising the party and looking up all the old friends, and it was nice to read that Christine had so many friends, but somehow I didn’t care that much about the thin developed characters, and there were so many characters, I found it difficult to keep who was who straight. Maybe you have to read the first book in this series first to understand the characters in Inseparable. The only good message I got from this book was the importance of friendship.

A Tale Of Two Proms by Cara Lockwood

2012-01-09T00:06:00.000-08:00

Publisher: TKA Distribution
Release Date:December 11, 2011
Source: Netgalley
Age Range: Young Adult

Miranda Tate returns for her senior year at Bard Academy and she is counting on two things: Prom with her boyfriend, Heathcliff, and then graduation from the haunted boarding school where fictional characters come to life. Fate, however, has other plans.

When Catherine Earnshaw, Heathcliff's long-lost love, appears on campus, suddenly everything she thought she knew about Heathcliff is changed forever. Catherine seems determined to win Heathcliff back, even if that means destroying Bard Academy and banishing its ghostly teachers - for good.

Miranda and her friends face their most daunting challenge, yet, which will take them for the first time inside the classics that have powered their mysterious boarding school. It's up to them to save Bard Academy - and prom. Can Miranda change her destiny and Heathcliff's? Or is this one story that was written in the stars?

I was always curious for the Bard Academy books, but somehow I never picked one up, until I found this fourth installment in the series on Netgalley. Altough I didn't rid the previous three books, I was immediately into the story of Miranda and Heathcliff and all the dark, mysterious things going on at Bard. What I loved about it was how the author has given classic stories like Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and A Tale of Two Cities a very new meaning in this book, it is full of links to the classics, and it is just fun to read how the author mixes classic with modern and makes it all to a gothic and edgy YA story. The characters all are well created and believable. You have to know your classics a littlebit to get the story. I certainly am going to read the previous books in this amazing series!

My favorite reads of 2011 and YA Historical Fiction Challenge

2012-01-08T11:16:00.000-08:00

2011 was one of my favorite years in books, and now you can read which ones where my absolute favorite on the blog of American Book Center, click here to go to the actual post, my favorite reads are the 9th one the list.

I am also very excited to announce that I will be participating again in the YA Historical Fiction Challenge 2012! I also participated in the 2011 challenge, where I have read 5 Historical YA novels, read more about it by clicking on the challenge button below.

I wish all of my readers a fabulous and healthy 2012!

Blog Tour: Hidden Summit by Robyn Carr. Review and Q&A

2012-01-05T00:22:00.000-08:00

Publisher: Mira
Release Date:December 27, 2011
Pages: 352
Source: Publicist
Genre: Romance

Connor Danson is living with his wife Katie and his two children a normal life in Sacramento when he accidentally witnesses a brutal murder. He is forced to leave his family in Sacramento and move to the rural mountain village Virgin River, where he has to keep a low profile and is under security until the trial is over.

He meets Leslie Petruso in Virgin River. They meet at their job, where they both work at the Virgin River branch of Haggerty Construction. Leslie is just divorced from Greg, who keeps bothering her in her new home with telling her how fantastic his new life is and that he is going to be the father of his new wife’s child. So she has something in common with Connor; they both want to stay anonymous in Virgin River. But there immediately is a click between them when they start dating at the local café Jack’s and meet the nice residents of Virgin River who are very helpful to eachother. But are Connor and Leslie ready yet for new love or do they first have to make peace with their past? But everyone in Virgin River can see that things are heating up at Haggerty Construction

Altough it looks like just another romance novel, Hidden Summit is a fast paced and entertaining novel by Robyn Carr. I never new this exciting series excisted and that this book is part 17 already! Once I started this book, I couldn’t stop reading. As a reader you just start to love and feel for the characters because they are very realistic. with all the problems and issues normal couples have to address and I love how hot and passionate they are! I found Connor to be a very brave and moral man who was doing all he could to take care of all his loved ones and himself!

There is a side story going with Connor’s sister and her children and you can see that it is the set up for the next book. The pages fly by in this quick-paced, tense, emotional, and passionate story that will thrill every reader who loves romance fiction.

Q&A with author Robyn Carr:

Have there been any books, romance or other genres, that have greatly influenced you as a writer? What are they?

Too many to count, really. The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy was an amazing adventure; The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher was like falling in love with a family; The Chicago Stars series by Susan Elizabeth Phillips was the most fun I’ve had in a romance series in forever.

What would you tell someone who wants to start writing romance or women’s fiction? I’m sure you get a lot of questions like this. Is there one piece of advice that you always share with aspiring writers?
This is a difficult job that more often than not doesn’t pay well. Embarking on it to become rich and famous would be a mistake. Taking on the writing profession because of a deep love of the craft is the only reason that makes sense. To me, anyway. I wrote for over 30 years before getting a bestseller – that takes either profound stubbornness or a overpowering love of the craft.

Which character from HIDDEN SUMMIT do you find yourself relating to the most and why? Is there one character, from any of the Virgin River books, that you are particularly drawn to?
First, in Hidden Summit, I relate to Leslie – when her husband divorced her, she suffered an enormous confidence problem. I understand that too well – I can get 100 compliments but that single negative jab haunts me!

The single character from ALL the Virgin River novels I am most drawn to, feel I know the best and relate to most is Jack Sheridan – he’s a piece of work. Sometimes he seems like a perfect man, sometimes he’s emotionally clumsy, sometimes wise, sometimes foolish; he’s sometimes so kind and supportive, other times he can be angered and has a bit of a short fuse. Most of all – he’s terribly funny and his wry humor saves his ass more often than not. Yes, even though I don’t know him in reality, I really get him.

The Red Umbrella by Cristina Diaz Gonzalez

2011-12-31T00:23:00.000-08:00

Publisher: Yearling
Release Date:May 11, 2010
Pages: 288
Source: Bought
Age Range: Young Adult

It is two years after Fidel Castro’s revolution in 1961. Fourteen year-old Lucia Álvarez lives a life without a single care. This changes in an instant at the day when she is at the beach with her brother, and they see a colonne of military trucks crossing by. From then on her parents are starting to get very strict. Lucia and her brother Frankie aren’t allowed anymore to go outside by themselves, and Lucia’s best friend Ivette starts to act different to; Ivette is joining Jóvenes Rebeldes, the communist youth movement. Because Lucia’s family is not on the side of the revolutionists, people, even family, starts to act different. The situation in Cuba becomes so dangerous that Lucia’s parents have to make a heart-wrenching decision: they have to put Lucia and Frankie on a plane to the United States, alone. In the United States they are being helped by a church program, and eventually they are placed in a foster home with the Baxter family, who are very nice and take good care of them. But will they ever go back home and be reunited with their parents who are still in an increasing more dangerous Cuba?

This is just the kind of book I love. The author just created a gripping picture of life in Cuba during that time. Lucia was a realistic fourteen year old, she has to grow up fast, but she doesn't realize that right away. She doesn't understand all the changes going on in Cuba and she doesn't really want to. All Lucia wants is to have life go back to normal (although she's perfectly happy with school being shut down), not be forced to stay inside. You really see Lucia and her little brother Frankie grow up fast in a gruel world. It was just heartbreaking to read the part where they had to leave Cuba and their parents and stept onto the plane to the US, uncertain of what is waiting there for them.I'm not sure if teenagers today would be able to do what they did. They land in a very loving foster family, but are only able to make a few calls now and then to Cuba for just a few minutes at the time. Really had to hold back some sniffles here and there while reading. Fans of Before We Were Free by Julia Alvarez will love this book. Recommended read!

Ugly To Start WIth by John Michael Cummings

2011-12-29T13:26:00.000-08:00

Publisher: West Virginia University Press
Release Date: 10/1/2011
Pages: 168
Source: Author
Age Range: Young Adult

Jason Stevens is growing up in picturesque, historic Harpers Ferry, West Virginia in the 1970s. Back when the roads are smaller, the cars slower, the people more colorful, and Washington, D.C. is way across the mountains—a winding sixty-five miles away.
Jason dreams of going to art school in the city, but he must first survive his teenage years. He witnesses a street artist from Italy charm his mother from the backseat of the family car. He stands up to an abusive husband—and then feels sorry for the jerk. He puts up with his father’s hard-skulled backwoods ways, his grandfather’s showy younger wife, and the fist-throwing schoolmates and eccentric mountain characters that make up Harpers Ferry—all topped off by a basement art project with a girl from the poor side of town.

Ugly To Start With is a book I had trouble coming into, and to finish reading it as well. I still wonder what the point of the whole story was, as it was hopping from chapter to chapter, from a sudden point to a sudden other point with no specific connection between it. And then I found out the book is build up with short stories, which I couldn't make out as a reader from the book cover.There were a couple chapters that I did find interesting, but the transition from one chapter to the next didn't really seem to flow together for me.

Welcome Caller, This Is Chloe by Shelley Coriell

2011-12-27T00:45:00.000-08:00

Publisher: Amulet Books (Abrams)
Release Date: May 1, 2012
Pages: 320
Source: NetGalley
Age Range: Young Adult

Chloe Camden is happy with her life: popular at school and her best friends Brie and Mercedes are never leaving her side, she has a cool after school job at Mexican restaurant Los Hermanas (ok, when she has to wear a burrito outfit to promote the store and get new customers and cheerfully hands out coupons on the side of the road.. not so much..)and guess what, she is just crowed Prom Queen! But then her life starts to crumble apart: suddenly Brie and Mercedes start to ignore her completely, and worse, they start some very bad rumors about her that are totally lies.

And then her her new guidance counselor throws her proposal for her junior independent study project out the window. So now she’s understandably depressed . Chloe is forced to take on a meaningful project in order to pass, and so she joins her school’s struggling radio station, where the other students don’t actually are liking her that much. And then her personal life at home is in trouble too: Grams', Chloe's beloved grandmother who lives in her trailer called The Tuna Can)mental state grows worse due to Parkinson, and her mom is forcing Grams to leave the Tuna Can and go live in a home for the elderly. Chloe get's more and more lonely, but she ends up hosting a call-in show that gets the station much-needed publicity and, in the end, trouble. She also befriends radio techie and loner Duncan Moore, a quiet soul with a romantic heart. On and off the air, Chloe faces her loneliness and helps others find the fun and joy in everyday life. But will her own life will get back on track?

The cover alone attracted me already to this outstanding and oh, so fun book! From the first page to the last, I was hooked to Chloe's story. I though the story was very original, and I loved how the author woved together so many different parts in Chloe's life in to one fast paced fun story and added so many layers. Chloe is just a very kind and big hearted girl, but with two toxic best friends who destroy her life in a whim. And her new mandatory school ''job'' at the radio station seems like one big failure at the start, especially with a crew like the one at this high school radio station, with the grumpy Clementine who really starts to show how much she dislikes Chloe and every idea she comes up with. But Chloe saves the station and becomes popular with the high school listeners, but then the station is coming to an abrubt end because of a fire. Chloe just really win's the readers heart because of her quirky and spunky character and her openmindedness. I really recommend this book if you just want a real smile on your face while reading, this is a perfect book to cheer you up! Just plain FUN!!!!

Getting Over Garrett Delaney by Abby McDonald

2011-12-26T03:52:00.000-08:00

Publisher: Candlewick
Release Date: January 24, 2012
Pages: 336
Source: NetGalley
Age Range: Young Adult

Seventeen year-old Sadie and Garret have always been best friends.Sadie has been Garrett's constant companion, sharing his taste in everything from tragic Russian literature to art films to '80s indie rockBut then she starts falling in love with him. But what does she have to do now he is away to lit camp for the summer and she didn't get in? Sadie is sure that the absence will make his heart grow fonder - until he calls to say he's fallen in love. With some other girl!

A heartbroken Sadie realizes that she's finally had enough. It's time for total Garrett detox! Aided by a barista job, an eclectic crew of new friends (including the hunky chef, Josh), and a customized selfhelp guide, Sadie embarks on a summer of personal reinvention full of laughter, mortifying meltdowns, and a double shot of love. But Can a twelve-step program help Sadie kick her unrequited crush for good?

Years ago I have read Abby McDonald's Sophomore Switch, so I was excited to find her new upcoming title on Netgalley! Getting Over Garret Delaney is a nice and cute read, but not the most original.About the characters: Sadie is just an average teenage girl who suddenly falls in love with her best friend, she really starts to obsessing about Garret during the summer while he really lets her down with choosing another girl. I really disliked some of Garrets actions, and he wasn't a very believalble character as he choose for Sadie again when his camp girlfriend broke up with him. Really, Sadie had to stop whining about this guy who obviously wasn't worth her energy and move on!
I finished it till the end because it was light and entertaining, but I could totally predict what was coming and through the whole book I had the feeling that I have read this plot already a thousand times in similar books. But if you are looking for just a book to escape with for a lost few hours, it is fun.

Blog Tour: It's A Waverly Life By Maria Murnane

2011-12-22T23:53:00.000-08:00

Publisher: Amazon Publishing
Release Date: November 8, 2011
Pages: 276
Source: Publicist

When we begin with It's A Waverly Life, Waverly is dating Jake McIntyre long distance and dealing with trying to open up to another man again. Andie and McKenna are Waverly’s best friend and together they discuss their dating live in the café’s of San Francisco. Waverly fears diving too deep into the relationship pool having failed to move on passed the doubts caused by the end of her engagement.

Adding to her trauma of being left behind by herself is McKenna is pregnant and heading to the burbs and Andie has met the one. On the other hand her new upstairs neighbor elderly Red Springfield encourages her to swing the bat if she wants a chance to hit a home run.And then there are the problems with her at firsthand perfect looking job: she works as an advice columnist for a newspaper, but due to some financial problems the paper is firing most of his staff, and Waverly sees her beloved co-workers go one by one.Will her job will be the next one to lose, and what if it is?

At the beginning it took some time to get into the story, as I haven’t read the first book Perfect on Paper, I had to find out who was who. But when you are into the story, its hard to get out. The story is funny and very romantic. At sometimes a little predictable, but overall it is highly entertaining and would be a great book to take away on holiday for those times when you just want something light and amusing without the need to concentrate very hard.

The Night She Disappeared by April Henry

2011-12-14T13:30:00.000-08:00

Publisher: Henry Holt Books
Release Date: April 10th 2012
Pages: 240
Source: NetGalley
Age Range: Young Adult

Kayla, Gabie and Drew work together after school at Pete’s Pizza. But at one night everything changes. Gabie has changed a shift with Kayla so she can go out on a date. Kayla get’s a call for a pizza delivery, but never returns back to Pete’s pizza. Her car is found at the house where she had to deliver the pizza, with the pizza boxes still in it and the key in the ignition, and Gabie and Drew find out that the person who called for this pizza gave a false address. To her horror, Gabie learns that the supposed kidnapper had asked if the girl in the Mini Cooper, her precious car, was working that night. Gabie can’t move beyond the fact that Kayla’s fate was really meant for her, and she becomes obsessed with finding Kayla. She teams up with Drew, who also works at Pete’s. Together, they set out to prove that Kayla isn’t dead—and to find her before she is.

This book is a stunning pageturner. The chapters alternate in narrator, the reader gets to see the perspective of Gabie, Drew, Kayla and Kayla's kidnapper. In between the author added some other things:police reports, a note found in Kayla's room that might lead to more information about her kidnapping, a fortune cookie text from Kayla, 911 emergency call reports and newspaper items about her disappearing.As a reader you keep page turning because you only want to know this: What happened to Kayla, who is this freak psychopath who kidnapped her and why? The two main characters though are Gabie and Drew. Gabie just knows that Kayla isn't dead, she just feels she is alive and they have to search for her. Meanwhile there grows a little romance between Gabie and Drew, altough Gabie's parents have a bit trouble with this because of Drew's background (his mother is a criminal addict)
Anyhow, without posting to many spoilers, go read this young adult mysterie!

An Autumn Crush by Milly Johnson

2011-12-13T12:40:00.000-08:00

Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Release Date: September 29th 2011
Pages: 417
Source: Publisher

Juliet Miller is just divorced when she moves to her own place. Not wanting to be totally alone there she starts to advertide for a flatmate, but will she find a suitable one now she's in her mid-thirties. When she has seen a lot of candidates but without the right one, self-employed copywriter Floz comes along. Juliet and Floz have a click and Floz moves in the house.

When Juliet's twin brother Guy meets Floz, he is overcome with a massive crush. But being a shy, gentle giant, he communicates so clumsily with her as to give her the opposite impression. Guy's best friend Steve has always had a secret, unrequited crush on Juliet. After a night of too much wine, Steve and Juliet end up in bed, after moaning about the lack of sex in their lives. Convinced that Juliet doesn't feel the same way, Steve agrees to a 'just-sex' relationship, until they can both hook their dream partners. Just when Guy has finally plucked up the courage to tell Floz how he feels, he finds she has rekindled an old romance. Floz has never had much love in her life and is obviously thirsty for affection. She loves the whole Miller family, from Juliet and Guy's warm, loving parents, to their ancient one-eyed black cat. But can Guy turn Floz's affection for his family into something more - into love for him? Then Juliet makes a series of discoveries which will turn the lives of all four friends upside-down and turns that Autumn into a season where love can be harvested.

This book is light book that will qualify as chick-lit. It wasn't the best book I have read. I found the speed of the book was very low, and the story get caught in too many details to stay interested as a reader.There was nothing substantial to the book other than Steve, Juliet, Floz and Guy possibly acknowledging they like each other and possibly doing something about it. And it was the “possibly”s and the “not-going-to-happen-ever”s that was bothering me, because it just felt as if the book wasn’t going anywhere at all. Lighthearted book, but don't pick it up when you are looking for a strong plot.

New paperback edition A Discovery of Witches & Giveaway

2011-12-10T09:50:00.000-08:00

On December 27th, Penguin Books will be publishing the debut fantasy hit A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES by Deborah Harkness in paperback for the first time. This mesmerizing novel debuted at # 2 on the New York Times bestseller list and became an international phenomenon with major publications following in 34 countries. This summer, Warner Brothers acquired screen rights to A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES and its sequels. With over 300,000 copies sold, this was truly the “it” book of early 2011, and fans are now eagerly awaiting the second installment in the All Souls Trilogy, Shadow of Night, due out in summer 2012.

Deep in the stacks of Oxford's Bodleian Library, young scholar Diana Bishop unwittingly calls up a bewitched alchemical manuscript in the course of her research. Descended from an old and distinguished line of witches, Diana wants nothing to do with sorcery; so after a furtive glance and a few notes, she banishes the book to the stacks. But her discovery sets a fantastical underworld stirring, and a horde of daemons, witches, and vampires soon descends upon the library. Diana has stumbled upon a coveted treasure lost for centuries-and she is the only creature who can break its spell.

MarjoleinBookBlog and Penguin USA are giving away a copy of A Discovery of Witches. Fill in the contest form to be entered. The contest is open to US and Canada and till Januari 30. You can only enter one time, but you can get one extra entry by spreading the word about this contest (blog, twitter) and when you become a follower of my blog.

GO TO THE CONTEST FORM

The Lifeguard by Deborah Blumenthal

2011-12-09T07:17:00.000-08:00

Publisher: Albert Whitman & Company
Release Date: February 1, 2012
Pages: 268
Source: NetGalley
Age Range: Young Adult

It's an unsettled summer for Sirena. Back in Texas, her family's splitting apart, but here in Rhode Island, at the cottage of her free-spirited aunt, it's a different world. There are long days at the beach and intriguing encounters with him. Pilot. He's the lifeguard with shamanic skills. He both saves her and makes her feel lost at sea. Sirena explores her obsession with Pilot and discovers his mysterious--almost magical--gifts. She also starts volunteering at the local hospital, and meets a very inspiring painter named Antonio. But then she almost drowns in sea at a silent spot where no one sees her, will she be saved?

I though this book was an unexpected pleasant surprise. I really was stunned how good it was, as I though the cover is a bit cheesy. This book really transports you (in this cold autumn) to a sunny summer at Rhode Island. Sirena was a bit whiny in the start, but she started to change her attitude at the house of her fabulous aunt Ellie. I didn't get a real clue about Pilot, he really is portrayed as just a mysterious beach boy. I would have liked to have known more about his past and his abilities. I don’t feel their relationship was explored or developed enough to form any kind of attachment or encouragement for them being together. But overall I really enjoyed the story and characters and it made me curious for reading more books by the author.

Tashi and the Tibetan Flower Cure by Naomi C. Rose

2011-12-07T23:55:00.000-08:00

Publisher: Lee &Low
Release Date: 10/1/2011
Pages: 40
Source: NetGalley
Age Range: All ages

In this colorful book, Tashi is very worried about her grandfather Popola, who is very ill. Popola is from Tibet, and from his sickbed he tells Tashi about the Flower Cure which is a usual way in Tibet to heal sick people. Sick people sit among flowers with their friends in the hope that the pollen will heal them. With the help of a friendly nurseryman and Tashi’s energetic encouragement, Popola pays a weekly visit to a nursery, becomes a minor celebrity among the nursery’s customers, but will he recover?

Tashi and the Tibetan Flower Cure is a picture book that stand out, not in the least for the beautiful cover and illustrations. You almost smell the incense and the flowers that are all around in the book. This is not just a picture book for children only, it will appeal to every age and everyone interested in Tibet and Asia or who wants to learn more about it. One of the most beautiful picture books I have ever seen!

Inner Pilgrimage: Ten Days to a Mindful Me, by Raji Lukkoor

2011-12-07T06:33:00.000-08:00

Publisher:Pentagon Press
Release Date: April 2011
Pages: 176
Source: Author

In Inner Pilgrimage: Ten Days to a Mindful Me, author Raji Lukkoor describes her ten-day stay in a buddhistic retreat where the vipassana meditation is thought.
The book starts with her arrival in the retreat, when she is looking for a calmer, more centered existence. The people who participate in the retreat are withhold all luxuries: no reading, writing, praying, listening to music, watching TV, and talking, the author spends ten hours everyday, meditating.

The book is an impressing and detailed description of the author’s time in the retreat, and how she personally experienced it. For outsiders a retreat looks like an easy thing to undergo, but in this book its explained that it is somewhat different than that and what comes around with a meditation technique like Vipassana. I enjoyed reading it as it was totally different from what I normally read, and I didn’t expect that meditation was like this and it just was very interesting to read about mindfulness. Truly an eye opening book!

Catching Jordan by Miranda Kenneally

2011-12-04T11:25:00.000-08:00

Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Release Date: December 1st 2011
Pages: 288
Source: NetGalley
Age Range: Young Adult

What girl doesn't want to be surrounded by gorgeous jocks day in and day out? Jordan Woods isn't just surrounded by hot guys, though - she leads them as the captain and quarterback on her high school football team. They all see her as one of the guys, and that's just fine. As long as she gets her athletic scholarship to a powerhouse university.

But now there's a new guy in town who threatens her starring position on the team... and has her suddenly wishing to be seen as more than just a teammate..

Catching Jordan is a fun and fast paced sporty YA novel. If you love the Pretty Though series by Liz Tigelaar and Keri Mikulski, you will definately have to pick up Catching Jordan. Jordan is a great character, strong and determined on the outside, but soft as a marshmallow on the inside, but with a great and spunky sense of humor. I also really liked how the author portrayed Jordan's family.I found myself wanting to be at a table with the four-some, downing some of their legendary food fests!The plot was just fun and entertaining and as a reader you really want to know if Jordan will get in her college and team of her choice. The romance part was fun as Jordan was a little clueless with Ty and her best friend Henry. I did see what was coming, but that was totally okay. You don't want to miss this book this december!

Fracture by Megan Miranda

2011-12-01T00:47:00.000-08:00

Publisher: Walker Childrens
Release Date: January 17, 2012
Pages: 272
Source: NetGalley
Age Range: Young Adult

Eleven minutes passed before Delaney Maxwell was pulled from the icy waters of a Maine lake by her best friend Decker Phillips. By then her heart had stopped beating. Her brain had stopped working. She was dead. And yet she somehow defied medical precedent to come back seemingly fine, despite the scans that showed significant brain damage. Everyone wants Delaney to be all right, but she knows she's far from normal. Pulled by strange sensations she can't control or explain, Delaney finds herself drawn to the dying. Is her altered brain now predicting death, or causing it?

Then Delaney meets Troy Varga, who recently emerged from a coma with similar abilities. At first she's reassured to find someone who understands the strangeness of her new existence, but Delaney soon discovers that Troy's motives aren't quite what she thought. Is their gift a miracle, a freak of nature-or something much more frightening?

The book started well and kept me interested, but through the second half and the end part, it got a little confusing what was going on. Delaney was a well created main character, but she got a little drowned in the story itself. The character of Troy; I still don't even have a clue what to think of him. But I liked the romance between her and her best friend Decker that was building up. I was disappointed with the ending, which didn’t leave much sense of accomplishment or conclusion. The book had much premise, but doesn't live up to it.

The Doctor and the Diva by Andrienne McDonnell

2011-11-29T05:16:00.000-08:00

Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
Release Date: October 25 2011
Pages: 432
Source: Publisher

Boston, 1903. Opera singer Erika von Kessler is struggling for years to get pregnant, without success. Every doctor since then has though the fysical problem was on her side. But now she and her husband Peter, an important businessman have found a new obstetrician: Doctor Ravell. When Ravell secretly discovers the husbands sterility, he takes drastic measures to insure the couple conceives, only to see the baby be stillborn but he has to keep his way of helping secret from them, and with this he is taking a huge risk that could ruin his career and the lives of Erika and Peter. This is the start for Erika en Peter’s marriage to fall apart, especially when their son Quentin is born. He is sent to boarding school while Erika is going after her opera career in Italy, while Peter is traveling for business . Doctor Ravell has moved to the island of Trinidad after a few scandals, and he is secretly still in love with Erika, although he has a few secret children from his staff walking around his estate. When Erika discovers that Quentin is not in fact Peter’s son, she decided to take him from boarding school and to travel with him to Trinidad…

The Doctor and the Diva takes the reader to the beginning of the 20th Century in Boston, Trinidad and Florence, Italy. The author really did a great job recreating the time period and the sometimes exotic settings in which the story takes place. The story was from start to end tragic and full of entertaining drama. It lacked some speed here and there and sometimes the plot fell a little flat and I did have a few question marks about the characters, as for example Erika’s husband Peter who I didn’t get a clue off and striked me as really odd. And yes, was it right of Doctor Ravell to take this extreme risk to get one of his patients pregnant? The Doctor and the Diva is quite unlike any novel I have read before. We not only learn the history of modern fertility research and treatments but are introduced to wholly original characters that make decidedly human choices with often unseen consequences. The story is based and inspired by the author’s family history.

MarjoleinBookBlog and Penguin USA are giving away two copies of The Doctor and the Diva. Click here to go to the giveaway

Geek Girl by Cindy C. Bennett

2011-11-27T07:58:00.000-08:00

Publisher: Cedar Fort
Release Date: 12/28/2011
Pages: 280
Source: NetGalley
Age Range: Young Adult

Seventeen year old Jen is a rebellious foster kid, as noted by her Goth appearance and party girl lifestyle. Never one to back away from a challenge, Jen bets her friends that she can turn 'geek boy' Trevor Hoffman into a bad boy. She doesn't really like Trevor and laughs at his upstanding morals and ethics; but especially at his appreciation of bowling and sci-fi movies. The prize for winning? A piercing that is sure to drive her foster parents over the top.
However, after spending some time with Trevor and his friends, Jen realizes that being nerdy is not as horrible as she thought it was. But something is terribly wrong; instead of Trevor turning to the dark side- Jen finds herself in a transformation for the better. Is the freak becoming a geek? , The goth girl finds herself sucked into his world of sci-fi movies, charity work, and even-ugh!-bowling. To truly belong with him-and with her new foster family-she must first come to terms with her violent past..

Geek Girl is a cute read, but not the most original. During the book I kept the feeling that I have read it before in a dozen other teen girl books and could totally predict what was coming. Some things where likeable: I likedthe adult characters in the book, the Clarkes, Jens foster parents who do genuinely love her and trust her and accept her as her "goth" type appearance and never draw attention or comment when she changes her look. I also loved the way Brian's mum totally accepted her into her home too and finally Trevor's mum accepts her eventually. It's a quick and easy read, great for the beach or a rainy day, but not if you are looking for something original and entirely new in the YA genre.

Spin by Catherine McKenzie

2011-11-24T04:45:00.000-08:00

Publisher: HarperCollins
Release Date: February 7, 2012)
Pages: 448
Source: NetGalley

Katie Sandford’s dream has come true; she has an interview at The Line, her favorite Music magazine. But…she had a wild night with a bit too much alcoholic drinks with her friends to celebrate it the night before the interview, so she shows up at the interview when she is still drunk. So now everything has gone wrong..right? folks at The Line think she might be perfect for another assignment for their sister gossip rag. All Katie has to do is follow It Girl Amber Sheppard into rehab. If she can get the inside scoop (and complete the 30-day program without getting kicked out), they'll reconsider her for the job at The Line.

Katie goes undercover into the Oasis rehab clinic. But then some real friendships, also between her and Amber and a cute celebrity named Henry starts, and Katie discovers that her drinking problem which she thought she didn’t have is bigger than she thought. And this makes the reason why she is in rehab, writing a big scoop gossip article about Amber very difficult. Is writing and getting her dream job at The Line worth her friendship with Amber?

You will laugh with this book. You'll grin and you'll cheer because Katie Sanford is a wonderful new character and Mckenzie has made her very believable and realistic. Giving me a book like this is like giving cotton candy to a 9-year-old: it's delicious, and it's gone in thirty seconds. The story and plot where just fabulous, fun and very entertaining, and I found myself unable to put it down. The drama is captivating, surprising, and never dull. It only ended with a little cliffhanger which made me curious how its going to continue between Katie and Henry. Well, I'll leave it up to you to read the book and find out for yourself.

The Summer of Hammers and Angels by Shannon Wiersbitzky

2011-11-23T11:29:00.000-08:00

Publisher: Namelos
Release Date: July 1, 2011
Pages: 156
Source: NetGalley
Age Range: Middle Grade/Young Adult

Delia's summer is getting off to a terrible start. First, an inspector shows up at the house and threatens to condemn it. Then lightning strikes, literally, and Mama ends up in the hospital. To make matters even worse, with no other family to speak of, Delia is forced to move in with her nemesis, Tommy "as-dense-as-a-stump" Parker.

Not one to sit around doing nothing, Delia huddles with her best friend, Mae, and reluctantly recruits Tommy, to help. The three of them resolve to tackle the long list of repairs, one by one. But Delia quickly discovers that it takes more than energy and willingness to handle some problems. When things go from bad to worse, Delia has to take another tack, one that starts with admitting she just can't do what needs to be done without a lot more help.

And so she wins the heart of the local church community to help her to get the house back in shape before the inspector will knock on the door again. But will her mother wake up from the coma again to live there with Delia?

The summer of Hammers & Angels is a short but heartbreaking story about a young girl who finds her life suddenly upside down because of bad luck, and has to live without her mom but with her neighbors. I loved the way how it was written as it had a funny undertone in it.From the beginning readers will sense its underlying optimism expressed by Delia’s old friend, Miss Martha from the post office. She tells Delia that she believes things will turn out right even though she can’t know for sure. And she’s going to go on believing as long as it takes.This book is great for Middle Grade (which is the target audience), but even for adults I think it is a compelling read. It serves as a reminder to adults that kids need our attention and how much they love the small moments.

Darker Still: A Novel of Magic Most Foul by Leanna Renee Hieber

2011-11-21T02:31:00.000-08:00

Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Release Date:November 8, 2011
Pages: 336
Source: NetGalley
Age Range: Young Adult

New York City, 1882. Seventeen-year-old Natalie Stewart's latest obsession is a painting of the handsome British Lord Denbury. Something in his striking blue eyes calls to her. As his incredibly life-like gaze seems to follow her, Natalie gets the uneasy feeling that details of the painting keep changing...

Jonathan Denbury's soul is trapped in the gilded painting by dark magic while his possessed body commits unspeakable crimes in the city slums. He must lure Natalie into the painting, for only together can they reverse the curse and free his damaged soul.

The book is written as diary entries made by Natalie (who became mute after she saw her mother die when she was four)which did wasa bit frustrating after a while because it takes the suspense out of the story. The story started of well and made me curious for what was coming, but during the middle and last part I lost interest in the story and characters, as all the magical stuff that was happening became a bit confusing. But it had a nice romance between Natalie and Jonathan.I liked how the historical Victorian era element was mixed with the supernatural. There were a few other little things that irked me, but overall the story was good. I really wanted to like it much more than I did. The end was a bit open so I think there is going to be a next book coming..

A Q&A with author Andrienne McDonnel about The Doctor and the Diva & Book Giveaway

2011-11-18T05:29:00.000-08:00

The Doctor and the Diva by Andrienne McDonnel is now out in paperback with a brand new cover! And today I talk with Andrienne about the book.

What is THE DOCTOR AND THE DIVA about? The story begins in 1903, in Boston. A young, Harvard-educated obstetrician who is a rising star in his profession becomes dangerously attracted to a patient—a lovely opera singer. She turns to the doctor for help in conceiving a child. The doctor becomes so drawn to her that he takes a great moral risk—a secret he can share with no one.The novel is based on ancestors, and hundreds of pages of family letters. Who were those ancestors? The married couple in the novel, Erika von Kessler and her husband Peter, were inspired by my son’s paternal ancestors—his great-great grandparents. They lived in Boston at the beginning of the twentieth century, and they were an extraordinary pair. Even by modern standards, theythey dared to live in bold, highly adventurous ways.

What moved you to write about them? I can remember the moment I first heard about the great-great grandmother, the woman whom I call “Erika” in the novel. I was nineteen years old, living in Santa Barbara. A friend had gone away for the weekend, and she’d loaned me her beachfront apartment. It was around midnight, and I was lying there in the arms of a young man I barely knew. He later became my husband, but at that moment we were just beginning to know one another. He talked about his grandfather, who had recently died. Suddenly he said, “When my grandfather was a little boy, his mother deserted him and her husband and moved to Italy to develop her career as an opera singer.” The idea of a privileged woman in early twentieth century Boston who abandoned her husband and small child for the sake of her art … the thought of it amazed me. Then I couldn’t decide: did I admire her and want to applaud her courage? Or was it heartbreaking that she’d deserted her little boy? The tension of all those conflicting feelings drew my imagination to her.

How did you manage to learn more about her life? Early in our marriage, my husband and I moved to Boston. Every day on my way to work, I walked through the Back Bay neighborhood where these ancestors had once lived. Erika’s childhood home stood on Commonwealth Avenue. Her father was a famous physician, and they lived in a rather grand house with two archways. When I went up to the front entrance and cupped my hands against the glass pane to peer inside, I saw that much remained the same as it had been in the late nineteenth century. The wide staircase was still paneled in black walnut, and I imagined her fiancé Peter mounting the steps, and her voice echoing down to him while she sang from the parlor upstairs.

Why did their story seem so haunting to you? When I stood across the street from “Erika’s” house, I could almost see a young girl’s face—her face—staring back at me from an oval window on the third story. I had a strange sense of god-like omniscience, because I knew things about her life that she couldn’t foresee—how her husband would one day be forced to divorce her and take custody of their small son; how she would sing in I Puritani from Montepulciano, Italy; how her little boy would write her letters that were never delivered to her.

What about her husband? How was he unusual? Her husband was a fascinating person as well. He was British, a highly successful
international businessman – an importer of Egyptian cotton, among other things. “Peter” was a man of voracious curiosity, a naturalist, a lover of flora and fauna. He imported the first chimpanzees to the London Zoo, where he later became a Director. He traveled across four continents, and ventured into remote places, keen on seeing and experiencing everything. And he wrote prolific, richly detailed letters. He was the sort of man who’d ride a camel through the Egyptian desert to visit a tribe of Bishareen nomads, where he’d move from tent to tent, tasting their dried bread and goat’s milk. Or he’d head to a friend’s lush Caribbean coconut plantation, where they’d ride at midnight in a buggy along a beach, with vampire bats flying overhead…. He’d slash a path through a rainforest with his machete, or he’d travel upriver in South America toward a waterfall that few Europeans had ever seen.

What did you enjoy most about writing THE DOCTOR AND THE DIVA? Apart from the joy of composing the fictionalized story, I loved doing the research. It was deeply pleasurable to steep myself in another era, and revel in all those exotic lands described in century-old family letters. Learning about the history of medicine and the working life of a 1903 obstetrician like Dr. Ravell—that was also fascinating. And the music! I cannot tell you how it nourished my soul and my senses, to listen to the gorgeous arias that Erika sang. Had it not been for my son’s ancestor, I might have missed out on a whole domain of thrilling and lovely music.

How long did it take you to write THE DOCTOR AND THE DIVA? About six years. I wrote a first draft of the novel in the mid-1980s, but the result was lifeless and stale. I packed up those pages and stored them in a box for twenty years. Then, after a couple of decades passed, I envisioned an entirely new way to frame the novel. This time I would begin Erika’s story not through her own perspective, but instead through the eyes of the young doctor who was becoming obsessed with her, a man who would take a terrible risk and jeopardize his career because of her.

How did you research the novel, and balance factual information with storytelling? First, I read the family letters with great scrutiny, always on the lookout for material that might be transformed into a scene. I imagined the exotic locales as stage sets where dramas might unfold. Like any good student, I brought home musty books and old recordings from University and public libraries, and while I pulled out my pen and took careful notes, my conscious and unconscious mind were both at work. I was constantly on the hunt for just the right, historically apt detail. For example, when Erika is confined to her bed during childbirth, Doctor Ravell puts a ball of cotton soaked in chloroform into a tumbler, and he tells Erika to place the glass over her nose. After she breathes its vapors, the tumbler slides from her hand and rolls along the carpeted floor. That’s all you need to evoke pain relief during childbirth in 1904—one detail like that, just a whiff.

What was the creative process like? I researched for a couple of years before the formal, serious writing of the novel began. While I was gathering the historical facts, an entire scene would often come to me. Whenever I “overheard” conversations between the characters and I’d grab scrap paper and capture their dialogue quickly. I jotted down whatever the characters were saying, even when I had no idea where in the novel that exchange might occur. I tossed the wildly scribbled scenes into a box and saved them. As I researched, the dramatic scenes accumulated, and the story line began to take shape. (Later I found that the dialogue I’d “overheard” barely needed revision. It came out clean, and sounded natural.) For many months I refrained from doing any “real” writing. Instead, I kept listening to ravishing arias and consuming a feast of fascinating information—about the history of medicine and opera, about the training of vocal artists, or about apartment hunting in Florence a century ago. When I finally sat down to begin the newly envisioned novel in earnest, I pulled out that box of spontaneously scribbled, random scenes and saw very quickly how they ought to be sequenced. Even before I began to compose the first page, my unconscious had already done much of the work. A new draft erupted from me with great speed and excitement

MarjoleinBookBlog and Penguin USA are giving away two copies of The Doctor and the Diva. Fill in the contest form to be entered. The contest is open to US and Canada and till December 15. You can only enter one time, but you can get one extra entry by spreading the word about this contest and when you become a follower of my blog.
THE CONTEST IS CLOSED

Blog Tour: The Iron Queen by Julie Kagawa

2011-11-17T08:01:00.000-08:00

Publisher: Mira Ink
Release Date:November 2011
Pages: 358
Source: review copy from publicist
Age Range: Young Adult

In The Iron Queen, the fourth book in the Iron Fey series, Meghan and her boyfriend Ash are banished from the Nevernever, though Meghan doesn't find that she's torn up over it. She and Ash are heading back to her home town when they are attacked by iron fey who are intent on delivering Meghan to the false king, who has his own designs for her future. After the encounter, Meghan and Ash become dragged back into the politics of the Nevernever to battle the forces of the iron fey and defeat the false king. The Iron Queen continues the tale of Meghan, Puck, Ash and Grim as they follow the path that destiny has chosen for them. As the battle draws ever nearer, will their efforts be enough to save Faery from being destroyed by the false Iron King? Will they all make it through or will one of them fall along the way?

It took a little while before I got into the story, maybe because I have only read the first book, The Iron King, and not the second and third book, The Iron Daughter and Winter's Passage.The story was mostly about the journey to and in the Nevernever and the battle to destoy the Iron King. In between was the romance between Meghan and Ash. I think you have to read the first three books before you pick up this one, otherwise you are really lost in the story because you missed what happened before. But overall I liked how it was written and how the author make the journey (which I thought was quite long) interesting, and how in the end Meghan could return to her real family in the real world. I think I will read up the second and third book after this one because this book made me curious what I have missed...

Young Adult Novel Discovery Competition

2011-11-15T12:37:00.000-08:00

We just got some great news for everyone who is writing or is thinking about writing a YA novel: Serendipity Literary Agency, in collaboration with Sourcebooks and Gotham Writers' Workshop, is hosting its third Young Adult Novel Discovery Competition for a chance to win a one-on-one consultation with one of New York's leading YA literary agents! No query? No pitch? No problem! If you've written a novel for young adults—or have an idea for one that you would like to write, you are invited you to enter our contest. Simply submit only an enticing title along with the first 250 words from the opening of your original YA novel. invited you to enter our contest. Simply submit only an enticing title along with the first 250 words from the opening of your original YA novel. invited you to enter our contest. Simply submit only an enticing title along with the first 250 words from the opening of your original YA novel. invited you to enter our contest. Simply submit only an enticing title along with the first 250 words from the opening of your original YA novel.

YA literary agent Regina Brooks and a select group of readers will read all of the entries and determine the top 20 submissions. These submissions will then be read by Rachel Griffiths, Editor at Scholastic; Nancy Mercado, Executive Editor at Roaring Brook Press; Leah Hultenschmidt, Executive Editor at Sourcebooks; Viola Krista, Editor at Dial (Random House); Evette Porter, Editor at Kimani Tru; Natashya Wilson, Senior Editor at Harlequin Teen; Abby Ranger, Editor at Disney (Hyperion); and Kendra Levin, Editor at Viking (Penguin). These judges will whittle the top 20 down to five, and each of the five winners will be provided commentary on their submissions.

Find all the information how to participate and how to enter the contest here

Interactive teen fiction at The Guardian Teen Books

2011-11-14T00:28:00.000-08:00

Guardian Teen Books has partnered with Random House for a new interactive, serialised story called Root - a fast-paced thriller set in the shadowy world of computer hacking and espionage. Every weekday for six weeks a new chapter will be released on guardian.co.uk/teen-books. The content will be directly influenced by readers’ contributions, such as their ideas for characters' personalities and skills.The heroine Molly Root is a 15 year old computer genius whose friend Danny is killed after being caught stealing priceless data from a ruthless global corporation. Now she's in over her head. So far Molly Root's mission to get to the bottom of her best friend's murder has taken her on a perilous trail across London. Her key lead is a dodgy police detective - and her attempts to expose his shady contacts are testing her ingenuity to the limits.As well as incorporating suggestions from readers, the story will also be brought to life via several social media platforms. For example, Guardian Teen Books' Twitter and Facebook accounts will be providing behind the scenes updates of how Molly is progressing, along with clips on Audiobook featuring the voicemails that Molly has discovered. This will be accompanied by onsite quizzes and photo puzzles on Flickr
Visit The Guardian Teen Books website and read all the chapters of Root here

Cross my Heart by Sasha Gould

2011-11-11T06:35:00.000-08:00

Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Release Date:March 13, 2012
Pages: 272
Source: NetGalley
Age Range: Young Adult

Venice, 1585: When 16-year-old Laura della Scala learns that her older sister, Beatrice, has drowned, she is given no time to grieve. Instead, Laura's father removes her from the convent where he forcibly sent her years earlier and orders her to marry Beatrice's fiancé, a repulsive old merchant named Vincenzo. Panicked, Laura betrays a powerful man to earn her way into the Segreta, a shadowy society of women who deal in only one currency—secrets. The Segreta seems like the answer to Laura's prayers. The day after she joins their ranks, Vincenzo is publicly humiliated and conveniently exiled. Soon, however, Laura begins to suspect that her sister's death was not a tragic accident but a cold-blooded murder—one that might involve the Segreta and the women she has come to trust.

Cross my Heart is an impressing historial young adult novel with a very original scene: Venice. I was hooked to it from the first page because all the characters and locations where very mysterious.
This story was good, different with a depth of history. The setting is described well and the characters have personality. There are lots of twists that will keep you hanging on, wanting more.The writing was elegant, the story was full of drama; think masked balls, cloaked figures, daggers and spies and the love story was endearing. Curious for the next book by Sasha Gould!

Waiting To Forget by Sheila Kelly Welch

2011-11-09T05:06:00.000-08:00

Publisher: Namelos
Release Date:October 1, 2011
Pages: 170
Source: NetGalley
Age Range: Young Adult

T.J. has always looked out for his little sister, Angela. But now he is sitting in a hospital waiting room where he is waiting. Waiting for his adoptive parents Marlene and Dan to come out of the emergency room, with news about his little sister: will she be alive after this terrible accident that happened?

The reader quickly learns more about why T.J. and Angela are adopted by Marlene and Dan: their mother(in the book called Momma) couldn't take care of them, and often left them alone for weeks, till social services where showing up again. T.J. has always looked out for his little sister, Angela. When Momma used to go out and leave them home alone, he'd lock the door so they'd be safe, keep Angela entertained, and get out the cereal and milk for her. When Momma's boyfriend got angry at them, he'd try to protect Angela. Later, at their foster homes, T.J. was the only one who knew how to coax his little sister out of her bad moods. The only one who understood why she made origami paper cranes and threw them out the window.

While waiting in the hospital, T.J. takes the reader to his past, and back to the now, where its uncertain if his little sister will make it. He tries to cope with his tragic past and with his future with Marlene and Dan, who really seem to great adoptive parents. And the reader gets to know how Angela got this accident..

Waiting to Forget is a gripping story with child abuse as the main topic. I was shocked to read how Momma could let her kids alone and was even more gruelly shocked by her even more abusive boyfriend. T.J. is an amazing main character because all he has to go through, and I loved how the author make him narrate the story through his photobook. Angela is a sweet little sister, who has her episodes, but who is totally lost by her abusive and absent mother and her cruel boyfriend who can't keep his hands at home and even makes her a little burglar. I was really moved by this book, original and dark but very original.

The Knife and The Butterfly by Ashley Hope Pérez

2011-11-07T12:04:00.000-08:00

Publisher: Carolrhoda Books
Release: February 2012
Pages: 264
Source: NetGalley
Age Range: Young Adult

16-year-old Azael wakes up in a strange surrounding: prison He doesn’t know what has happened that he is in here. And even more strange is that no one is telling him too, what he has done for a crime. But he does know his life fell into trouble when his mom died, his father was send back to El Salvador and he and his brother became part of a notorious street gang that is notorious in Los Angeles: MS13. And he does remember that before this jail crap, there was marijuana-addled brawl with a rival gang: Crazy Crew. There were bats, bricks, chains. A knife. But he can't remember anything between that moment and when he woke behind bars.

But something is very odd in this prison, as no one explains anything to him, he doesn’t have a lawyer and he isn’t allowed to make even one phone call. The only person he sees daily is the old Gabe, who is the man who brings around the meals. The only thing they make him do is watch some white girl named Lexi in some cell. Watch her and try to remember. Somehow she is connected to the reason why he is locked up, but how can he find out? He finds a way to read in her diary, and then finds out some grueling facts about what happened to him..

I was excited to find Ashley Hope Peréz’s newest YA novel, as I loved her previous book What Can’t Wait. The Knife and the Butterfly is another amazing book by her as it really makes you think (especially at the end!) about what Azeal is: alive, dead, or something in between. I really felt for him, and I felt his frustration of being locked up without the reason why or how long it will be. I also loved how the author made him look back to his past and how that alternated by chapter, and how Lexi’s part of the story was told. It was just very original, mysterious and very edgy, and that's why I really recommend it!

Little Women and Me by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

2011-11-06T06:17:00.000-08:00

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Release Date: November 8, 2011
Pages: 320
Source: NetGalley
Age Range: Young Adult

What happens when POOF! ..you read a book and suddenly your are transported to the time period and find yourself in the midst of the characters and location of the story? It happens to Emily, who has to write an English assignment for school about what she would change about a classic story. She picks Little Women. At her real home she is tired of being the middle sister of Anne and Charlotte..and now suddenly she finds herself back in the middle of the March sisters: Jo, Meg, Beth and Amy, right in New England in 1860.

Emily discovers that righting fictional wrongs won't be easy. all of a sudden, she's helping Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy figure out what to buy Marmee for Christmas. And then the pretty neighbor boy Laurie walks into the story, and Emily gets a secret crush on him, but hey, she knows he is going to end up with Jo. Or is there a chance she can change this thing in the story? Emily mysteriously is suffering from a little ‘’plot amnesia’’ at certain points in the story, so its very difficult for her to change what she doesn’t know. But somehow she is enjoying her time as the middle March sister, even though she keeps wondering if she gets ever back to the real world..

I absolutely adored this book. Even when you haven’t read Little Women (which I still didn’t..the book is still waiting on my bookshelf to be read) it is no problem to pick up Little Women and Me. I found the main character Emily fun, and I loved how she told the story from the present time and suddenly from the point of view of the middle March sister. The story itself is so imaginatively written, which was fabulous. Just like Emily, I was sucked into the story and I couldn’t come out of it (as in put it down) till the end. Recommend this truly fun read!

Blog Tour: Until There Was You by Kristan Higgins: Review, Q&A & Giveaway

2011-11-04T00:52:00.000-07:00

Publisher: HQN Books
Release Date:October 25th 2011
Pages: 384
Source: Publicist
Genre: Romance

In Bellsford, New Hampshire, Posey Osterhagen fell in love with town bad boy Liam Declan Murphy when they attended high school together. However she was way too thin, as Posey with her boyish figure attracted no male let alone the king of the school. Still too skinny though she works at her parents' German restaurant; overall Posey is contented though would not mind a hunk in her life.

A widower, his wife Emma was a hometown girl who died from leukemia; Liam is home accompanied by his fifteen year old daughter Nicole, who is forbidden to date and who he is protecting at all costs and way too much.What he doesn't expect is Poesy Osterhagen filling a certain void in his lonely, unfulfilled life. The last thing on Liam's agenda is dating; he's more interested in scaring away any teenage boys hoping to date his daughter! But, when his path keeps crossing with Posey's, he finds that he only has so much will power...

I really liked this entertaining and sweet romance novel. What I really liked was that the author let both main characters narrate the story. Posey and Liam's past and present where both told and this gave the story depth. I also liked that Posey and Liam didn't give in immediately that they still liked each other: I took a few embarrassing moments, confusion and even anger for them to give in to their attraction. All the characters are fun to get to know, even the secondary characters. This was the first book by Kristan Higgins I have read so far, but I will certainly will read more of her work!

Q&A with Kristan Higgins

What inspired you to write Until There Was You?

I loved the idea of a bad-boy hero and a very unconventional heroine. Liam is the epitome of alpha male, all smoldering looks and leather jacket. Posey, on the other hand, is definitely not your standard romance heroine. She’s a tomboy, has an unusual job, and has a very keen eye for reading people. I wanted the two of them to have a past, but not maybe not what you might expect; they were linked, sort of, but they didn’t have a relationship back in the day. Nevertheless, Liam has a huge effect on Posey’s life, even though he’s not aware of it.

What influences and experiences did you bring into the book?
I think I was probably that geeky girl (minus the flea-like metabolism), for sure. Definitely one of the invisible kids, but I was pretty happy being that way. I watched a lot, rather than participated. And like Liam, I’m the mother of fifteen-year-old girl, though my daughter isn’t anything like Nicole. But still, I could definitely relate to Liam’s neurosis over his daughter’s safety.

How did the characters of Posey and Liam originate?
Since this book is about second chances and being chosen, I wanted Posey to be adopted, and very different from her parents and brother. I loved the idea of her working in architectural salvage, giving new life to things that no longer had a purpose.

As for Liam, I really wanted to play with the Bad-Boy-Meets-Perfect-Girl idea with him. He falls for Emma in high school, eventually marrying her. So romantic, right? But things didn’t work out quite the way Liam imagined, and while he was very happy with their life, it was clear to him that Emma wouldn’t have chosen that path, had she not gotten pregnant. Having him return to Bellsford and face up to his reputation and the many women he knew back in high school…that was just fun, as was making him a little OCD about his child.

What would say has been the most rewarding aspect of writing Until There Was You?
I was just so happy with the way Posey puts it all on the line, and the way Liam finally realizes his own worth. I love the ending of the book so much! Hope my readers do, too (so far, so good!).

Who are your favourite authors, and which authors have inspired you the most?
I love so many authors: Sherry Thomas and Eloisa James are always willing to take a chance and break the rules of their genre; Cindy Gerard is just so consistently excellent; Susan Andersen, Robyn Carr, Jill Shalvis, Susan Mallery and Rachel Gibson set the bar so high for contemporary romance; Laura Wright has completely enraptured me with her vampire series. I could go on for hours on this subject, so I’d better stop here.

What’s next for you?
My next book is called SOMEBODY TO LOVE and is the story of Parker, the children’s author from THE NEXT BEST THING. She learns rather abruptly that she’s broke and has only one asset to her name: a house on the coast of Maine…Gideon’s Cove, Maine, specifically, the setting of CATCH OF THE DAY. The book will feature Maggie and Malone from CATCH, so readers will get to see what happened with those two as well. That comes out in May 2012.
Then I’ll be working on a series set in the beautiful Finger Lakes region of New York. Wine country, mountains, lakes, beautiful little towns…can’t wait!

Win a copy of Until There Was You Fill in the form to enter. the giveaway is open to entrants from the United States only and closes Januari 10.
How it works: become a follower of my blog and fill in the contest form Spread the word about this giveaway and get 1 extra entry for every post on twitter/facebook or blog link.

GO TO THE CONTEST FORM

Rumors from the Boys' Room: A Blogtastic Novel by Rose Cooper

2011-11-01T13:03:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Release Date: October 11th 2011
Pages: 288
Source: NetGalley
Age Range: 10 and up

Sofia Becker, Middlebrooke Middle School blogger extraordinaire, is back! And this time her gossip isn't only from the girls' room. The rumor mill is out of control at Sofia's school, so it's a good thing Sofia and her super-secret notebook can set everyone straight. The first scoop is in as Sofia discovers from a whisper that an exchange student is coming to the school, and is she hearing it right he is from England? Sophia's notebook contains all the gossip she finds to post on her blog (not all of which ends up being accurate). From her teacher mother's pregnancy to the new foreign exchange student at school Rose keeps us up with all the gossip. And also the popular queen of her school Mia St.Clair (with her fruit scented wavy hair) is tackled good in it. Poor Sofia and her friend Nona have the misfortune of not being in the 'popular' crowd

This was a cute read, with fun artsy illustrations to go with the story. It was entertaining, altough the story was a bit thin and not leading to a certain point, and I totally saw what was coming from the start.
have not read Ms. Cooper's first book, Rumors from the Girls' Room, but this sequel to it can perfectly be read as a standalone book.The trials and tribulations of a middle schooler are perfectly explained in this book.This is a great book for Wimpy Kid and Big Nate fans! Both boys and girls will love this one.

My Very UnFairy Tale Life by Anna Staniszewski

2011-10-29T09:06:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Release Date: November 1, 2011
Pages: 208
Source: NetGalley
Age Range: 9 and up

Twelve-year-old Jenny has spent the last two years as an adventurer helping magical kingdoms around the universe. But it's a thankless job, leaving her no time for school or friends. She'd almost rather take a math test than rescue yet another magical creature! When Jenny is sent on yet another mission, she has a tough choice to make: quit and have her normal life back, or fulfill her promise and go into a battle she doesn't think she can win. She has to battle her enemy, an evil clown named Klar who tortures prisoners by making them appear in his circus, with er best friend and sidekick, gnome Anthony and with the help of the myterious Dr.Bradley.

Wow, what a fun middle grade novel with fantastic characters, an amazing and witty main character and a magical plot.. Jenny's voice is pitched perfectly for the book's intended audience and her magical problems reflect the real world problems that 9-12 year olds face every day. A very different but original and recommended read!

My Soul To Steal: extra blog tour update: Animated book cover and two giveaways!!

2011-10-27T08:50:00.000-07:00

As if the Soul Screamers series by author Rachel Vincent isn't fabulous already, publisher Mira Ink has added some more fabulousness to it in the form of an animated book cover. Yes, you read that right, and Mira Ink is the first publisher of Young Adult books with this! The books with the animated covers are available in the UK only. On the left the animated cover of my Soul To Steal. Fabulous!

Don't forget to enter my giveaway of My Soul To Steal (open worldwide), which you can enter below my review here

And...MIRA Ink is offering my readers a chance to win a copy of My Soul to Steal! There are ten copies available, and all your readers have to do is go on to the MIRA Ink Facebook site- http://www.facebook.com/#!/miraink -click on either the animated or normal jacket image of My Soul to Steal and post a comment in the comment box below the picture. Then MIRA Ink will select the winners.

Flesh and Blood So Cheap: The Triangle Fire and its Legacy by Albert Marrin

2011-10-24T12:40:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
Release Date: February 8, 2011
Pages: 192
Source: NetGalley
Age Range: Young Adult

On March 25th 2011, it was exactly hundred years ago that the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory burst into flames.The factory was crowded. The doors were locked to ensure workers stay inside. One hundred forty-six people,mostly women, perished; it was one of the most lethal workplace fires in American history until September 11, 2001.

But the story of the fire is not the story of one accidental moment in time. It is a story of immigration and hard work to make it in a new country, as Italians and Jews and others traveled to America to find a better life. It is the story of poor working conditions and greedy bosses, as garment workers discovered the endless sacrifices required to make ends meet. It is the story of unimaginable, but avoidable, disaster. And it the story of the unquenchable pride and activism of fearless immigrants and women who stood up to business, got America on their side, and finally changed working conditions for our entire nation, initiating radical new laws we take for granted today. The book gives a lively and amazing real picture of that time. It goes from the reason people immigrated to American from Italy, Ireland, Russia and describes in detail where immigrants where going through once they stepped of Ellis Island and into the Lower East Side of New York City.

To establish the context for the fire, he also describes the growth of the ready-to-wear industry in New York and the improvements in garment-making technology and changing women's fashions that led to the decline in sweatshops and the rise of the factory. With jobs moving to factories, suddenly it was easier to form unions, and the same year the Triangle Waist Company opened, so did the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. In 1909, the "uprising of the 20,000" united garment workers in the largest strike by women ever seen until then, finally forcing the public to take notice. The women's reform movement, led by the wealthy women of the Mink Coat Brigade, provided important support for the strikers.

No one knows exactly how the fire in the Asch Building, where the Triangle Fire was located, started. Rumors say it was a cigarette tossed in a trash bin, filled with rags of fabric, and the flames rapidly licked everything around it.Within seconds the fire was out of control. The details are well-known; those who were able to take the stairs from the 8th floor got out alive, yet the 9th floor stairway was locked, trapping those inside. Workers on the 10th floor, or those who reached it from below, were able to survive by getting to the roof and then over to the next building, but in the meantime those trapped leaped to their deaths, many of them ablaze. Of 500 employees who report that day, 146 perished, mostly young girls and woman who where mostly breadwinners for their immigrant families.

In his final chapter, Marrin discusses the "new" sweatshops of New York, where the workers are largely Asian immigrants and Hispanics, and the abysmal conditions of garment factories in the developing world, where conditions much like those at the Triangle Factory continue to exist, leading to disasters such as the 2010 fire at the Garib and Garib Sweater Factory in Bangladesh, which killed 21 workers.

I recommend this book to everyone as it is just fabulous and gives a gripping view in the lives of those who came to America in hope of a better life for themselves and their families and children, and of one of the most gruel factory accidents in history and what the effects where on how we now have emergency exits, automatic sprinklers fire extinguishers, fire drills, proper sanitary conditions, and more, as well as full-time inspectors to make sure that these laws are enforced.

A Full Moon Is Rising by Marilyn Singer (author) and Julia Cairns (illustrator)

2011-10-23T05:15:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Lee and Low Books
Release Date: May 1st 2011
Pages: 48
Source:Publisher
Age Range: Children 4-8

In a Full Moon Is Rising, the reader is traveling to learn how the full moon is celebrated in different countries all over the world. The book is written in poems, for every country it describes how children look at the full moon and celebrate it.

Mysterious and evocative, the full moon is the most celebrated phase of the earth s only natural satellite. Around the world, people and other living things interact with and are affected by the full moon in fascinating ways. Sailors set out to sea on the high tides the full moon causes. Insects and migrating birds are guided by its brilliant light. Families dance, sing, and feast at full moon festivals, while traders buy and sell camels. Corals reproduce, wolves howl, and children dream of being astronauts.

The book takes of on Broadway/Times Square in New York City, where the moon is waiting behind the big skyscrapers to appear on stage as an actor behind the curtains waiting for the show the begin! Then the reader is taken to Canada in a sailboat at night, then to the Temple of Artemis in Turkey, A Jewish Sukkot Celebration in Israel, the desert moon in the Sahara of Morocco, a Lunar Eclipse in a village in Mali, Cape Town in South Africa, Australia, The Moon Festival in Hong Kong, A camel fair in Pushkar, India, a farm in Iowa, USA where its harvest time, Bogotá', Colombia where it is a cloudy night and the moon is hiding, the Caribbean Sea near Curacao, where someone is diving and looking at the most beautiful coral riffs, two kids watching flamingo's fly past the moon in a field in Yucatá'n, Mexico, Algonquin Park in Canada, where campers hear a wolf hawling in the moonlight, and back to New York City where the moon has appeared.

The poems are accompanied by the most beautiful, detailed and very colourful illustrations by Julia Cairns, which really takes the reader to every corner of the world and makes it a fantastic multicultural picture book for children! Recommended!

Blog Tour:My Soul To Steal by Rachel Vincent + Giveaway

2011-10-21T01:06:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Mira Ink
Release Date: 21 Oct 2011
Pages: 304
Source:Publicist
Age Range:Young Adult
Series: Soul Screamers book 4

As if her life isn’t difficult enough being a banshee, Kaylee is facing a very rough time in this fourth book in the Soul Screamers series. Her relationship with Nash is not going well , and then Nash’s ex-girlfriend Sabine is moving into Eastlake and going to their high school. From the first moment on, Sabine makes clear to Kaylee that she is the one and only real girlfriend of Nash, and that Kaylee is just a pathetic girl who Nash doesn’t need her and she should just give up trying to be his girlfriend.

Kaylee discover’s more about Sabine; she is a mara, a real-life walking nightmare. A mara drains out energy out of people (the way of feeding herself) through their darkest nightmares. And then suddenly teachers start to drop dead in school, and students are starting to act aggressive and gruel to each other all of a sudden. Who is behind this, is it Sabine with her energy draining and dark and evil behavior? Or is it something else? A grim duel between Kaylee and Sabine with Nash caught in between has started and Kayle doesn’t seem to be strong enough to conquer Sabine. And then a very evil force which is haunting Kaylee for a longer time returns and bodysnatches one of her best friends and co-workers Alec. And then she learns who is responsible for all the dark things that happen around her..

My Soul To Seal is definitely another thrilling novel in the Soul Screamers series. It really was one of my favorites. I loved how the story was build op, the plot was just fabulous and keeps you page turning to find out more about the evil Sabine and if she is behind all the cruell stuff happening in the high school. And to find out what Nash is going to do, as he really isn’t acting like the real cool and true boyfriend of Kaylee. Truly enjoyed this fantastic fast paced new book!

Win a copy of My Soul To Steal! Fill in the form to enter. the giveaway is open worldwide and closes december 1. Spread the word about this giveaway and get 1 extra entry for every post on twitter/facebook or blog link. (oh..by the way: I would really like it if you become a follower of my blog, thanks!)

THE CONTEST IS CLOSED!

The Way We Fall by Megan Crewe

2011-10-20T12:50:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Release Date:January 24th 2012
Pages: 304
Source:NetGalley
Age Range: Young Adult

When a deadly virus begins to sweep through sixteen-year-old Kaelyn’s community, the government quarantines her island:no one can leave, and no one can come back.The symptoms are strange and unlike those of anything doctors have really seen before, with uncontrollable itching, sneezing, and coughing; a breakdown of social inhibitions; and paranoid hallucinationsThose still healthy must fight for dwindling supplies, or lose all chance of survival. As everything familiar comes crashing down, Kaelyn joins forces with a former rival and discovers a new love in the midst of heartbreak. When the virus starts to rob her of friends and family, she clings to the belief that there must be a way to save the people she holds dearest.

The Way We Fall is written from the perspective of Kaelyn, and consists of a series of letters in a diary-like format. Kaelyn begins writing in her diary to her former best friend Leo, who is away at school, when she moves back to their hometown on an island. Kaelyn and Leo have not spoken in a couple years due to a so-called fight, however Kaelyn believes that she can change into a better person, and by documenting the process through her letters/diary entries she hopes to remedy her torn friendship. Her father is the only doctor who knows what to do with the virus, so he is almost 24/7 at the hospital. Kaelyn also has to take care of her cousin Meredith, whose father got the virus and died. With her best friend Gav, she tries to survive this gruel time.

The Way We Fall is a gripping story of a teen girl who's live is turned upside down. Altough the story is entertaining, it is a bit slow at a few times.And I have a few critical points about the main character: there was no emotional ramble about how she feared for the safety of her family and friends and, even after some of her classmates perish, there is still no emotional response from her. But you still keep page turning, because you want to know if Kaelyn and her family members will survive the virus. Interesting YA about human survival, love and loss in the face of crisis.

Under the Mesquite by Guadalupe Garcia McCall

2011-10-15T08:18:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Lee and Low
Release Date: October 31st 2011
Pages: 224
Source:NetGalley
Age Range: Middle Grade/Young Adult

When Lupita sees Mami crying over a pesky mesquite growing in her rose garden, she knows something is wrong. Through the kitchen window, she overhears that Mami has cancer. After an operation, things seem to return to normal for Lupita and her family, and they go on with their lives, going back and forth between attending school, working, and living in the United States and visiting family and friends in Mexico

However, when Mami’s cancer returns, Papi doesn’t know whether he should accompany Mami during her long convalescence at an out of town cancer clinic or stay home to care for Lupita and her seven brothers and sisters. Suddenly, being a high school student, dealing with difficult friends, starring in the school play, even writing, become less important to Lupita than doing whatever it takes to save Mami’s life

This is a book you don't want to miss, its beautiful but in a very tragic way. Lupita has a hard time dealing with her mom's ilness, and with the care for her seven brothers and sisters.The author has written the book inspired on hew own life, she knows how it is to live in a border town and living between two cultures and knows the loss she writes about. Its an empowering story about testing family bonds and the strength of a young woman navigating pain and hardship with surprising resilience. Really a book for everyone, younger and older readers..just go and pick up this fabulous new read!

Same Sun Here by Silas House and Neela Vaswani

2011-10-14T07:39:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Candlewick Press
Release Date: February 14, 2012
Pages: 288
Source:NetGalley
Age Range: Middle Grade

Meena and River have a lot in common: fathers forced to work away from home to make ends meet, grandmothers who mean the world to them, and faithful dogs. But Meena is an Indian immigrant girl living in New York City’s Chinatown, while River is a Kentucky coal miner’s son. As Meena’s family studies for citizenship exams and River's town faces devastating mountaintop removal, this unlikely pair become pen pals, sharing thoughts and, as their camaraderie deepens, discovering common ground in their disparate experiences. With honesty and humor, Meena and River bridge the miles between them, creating a friendship that inspires bravery and defeats cultural misconceptions. Narrated in two voices, each voice distinctly articulated by a separate gifted author, this chronicle oftwo lives powerfully conveys the great value of being and having a friend and the joys of opening our lives to others who live beneath the same sun.

Wow..this book unexpectedly blow me off my feet! I found this book on Netgalley and didn't know what to expect, but the synopsis really made me curious. The letters between Meena and River are fabulous, fun and also tragic: Meena's family aren't US citizens(yet) and they live illegally in an apartment building in Chinatown, where their Cantonese neighbour, Mrs. Lau is of great help and support to them. River's school is attacked by big rocks that fall of the mountain after the removal by some big company, and the gym and some of the school's best basketball players who are training are wounded, and one of the players and River's best friend Mark loses his leg. His grandmother, in the book called Mamaw, is one of the most fierce people who protest against the mountaintop removal, and this leads to a nonviolent protest wich brings River unexpectedly in the spotlight..

Fabulously written and the reader isn't bored any single minute. But why the abrubt and sudden end to the book? I was hoping Meena and River finally would meet when River gets the chance to go to New York, and the authors also keep the reader in question about Meena: Will she and her family pass for the US citizenship exam, and will they have a roof above their heads again after the sudden eviction of the building?? This books (and I as a reader) scream for a sequel!

The Kitchen Counter Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn

2011-10-13T10:45:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Viking Adult (Penguin USA)
Release Date: September 29th 2011
Pages: 304
Source:Review copy from publisher

Author and chef Kathleen Flinn was inspired to write this book when she saw a woman and her daughter in a supermarket, loading their cart full of processed foods. She decided to visit and help nine woman change their(mostly unhealthy) cooking.These students invited Kathleen into their kitchens where she took inventory of each person's refrigerator, cabinets and eating habits.

The book is divided into parts and each describes a food product or group and how best to prepare it. The volunteers were given the tools and instructions and were encouraged to experiment. Their delight in discovering that they could produce healthy and attractive dishes was evident. I like how the self-esteem of a person can be raised just by learning a method of cooking they previously thought had been impossible to master. At the end of the book, I enjoyed seeing how each volunteer benefited from what they'd learned during the lessons.Each chapter ends with the recipes that are taught in the class.

I really liked how the book was set up and I learned a lot of things about food and cooking. Fun to read how the author changed the lives of her students. It was very informative and provided some nice recipes to try. It was written in a lighthearted sense of humor and is written for the cooking novice. . Really want to try out some of the recipes in it, like the Yellow cake with chocolate frosting

Beautiful Days by Anna Godbersen

2011-10-12T12:53:00.000-07:00

Publisher: HarperTeen
Release Date: September 20th 2011
Pages: 358
Source: Bought
Age Range: Young Adult
Series: Bright Young Things
Challenge: YA Historical Fiction

For the bright young things of 1929, the beautiful days seem endless, filled with romance and heartbreak, adventure and intrigue, friendship and rivalry. After a month in New York, Cordelia Grey and Letty Larkspur are small-town girls no longer. They spend their afternoons with Astrid Donal at the Greys’ lush Long Island estate and their nights in Manhattan’s bustling metropolis. But Letty’s not content to be a mere socialite. She is ready at last to chase her Broadway dreams,no matter the cost.

Cordelia is still reeling from the death of her father at the hands of Thom Hale, the man she thought she loved. Now she is set to honor Darius Grey’s legacy . . . and take her revenge.
Promised to Cordelia’s half brother, Astrid is caught up in a world of dazzling jewels and glittering nights—and the sparkle is blinding. Charlie Grey is a gangster playing a dangerous game; and for Astrid, Cordelia, and Letty, the stakes could be deadly.

As I am a big fan of the books by Anna Godbersen, I was excited for Beautiful Things to come out. Bright Young Things was the kick-off of a spectacular new series after the Luxe Books. But somehow Beautiful Things dissapointed me a bit as it lacked the excitement of the previous book, and beside that, a more interesting plot. The book brings alive the Roaring Twenties in upstate New York and New York City which is the best part of the whole book all together. None of the girls are very deep, and I still don't feel like I know them any better than before, but I still read this in a day. But I hope the next book in this series will pick up some more action!

The Girl In The Park by Mariah Fredericks

2011-10-12T12:15:00.001-07:00

Publisher: Schwartz & Wade (Random House)
Release Date: April 24, 2012
Pages: 224
Source: Publisher (NetGalley)
Age Range: Young Adult

When Wendy Geller's body is found in Central Park after the night of a rager, newspaper headlines scream,"Death in the Park: Party Girl Found Strangled." But shy Rain, once Wendy's best friend, knows there was more to Wendy than just "party girl." As she struggles to separate the friend she knew from the tangle of gossip and headlines, Rain becomes determined to discover the truth about the murder. This exciting story takes Rain through the lifes of some of her private school classmates, who all seem to have a secret in their relationship to Wendy. Her classmate Nico is the first suspect:as it seems he was the last one to be seen with Wendy, and DNA material of him is found on Wendy. Or is it Sasha who wasn't that close to Wendy?

Mr.Farrel, Rain's homeroom teacher, tries to support Rain in this process, but in the end Rain learns that even Mr.Farrel is hiding a dark secret..

I really liked the mysterious tone it was written in, and the way the author had build op the story and the relationships between the characters. I totally didn't know what was coming, but slightly I got a certain clue about who murdered Wendy..and it turned out I was right. Loved this new teen mystery, definetely worth reading!

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

2011-10-11T12:35:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam
Release Date: February 10, 2009
Pages: 464
Source: Bought

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

Wow, while I was in hospital I had to find something to keep me entertained. My copy of The Help really did that! I loved the plot and all the fabulous characters in it, especially Miss Skeeter and tMinny and Aibileen, and the weird Miss Celia. Great plot twists and so funny! There is never a dull moment in this long book. I could not put this book down. It was so real and the slang, I felt as if I was right there as she was telling it. Great book.

Pilgrims Don't Wear Pink by Stephanie Kate Strohm

2011-10-11T12:04:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Graphia (Houghton Mifflin)
Release Date: May 8th 2012
Pages: 204
Source: NetGalley
Age Range: Young Adult

Libby Kelting had always felt herself born out of time. No wonder the historical romance-reading, Jane Austen-adaptation-watching, all-around history nerd jumped at the chance to intern at Camden Harbor, Maine’s Oldest Living History Museum. But at Camden Harbor Libby’s just plain out of place, no matter how cute she looks in a corset. Her cat-loving coworker wants her dead, the too-smart-for-his-own-good local reporter keeps pushing her buttons, her gorgeous sailor may be more shipwreck than dreamboat — plus Camden Harbor’s haunted. Over the course of one unforgettable summer, Libby learns that boys, like ghosts, aren’t always what they seem.

Pilgrims don't wear Pink is a cute novel about a teen girl who is going to work in an historical camp for children, and her adventures there and who has to choose between two guys she has a crush on: Garret and Cam. time. Along the way she has to learn how to deal with the scorn of experienced interpreters who don't think she fits the mold, how to be an effective teacher and role model, and she has to learn what's important to value in herself and in others.

I liked the story, altough it was a bit too fluffy sometimes and the story lacked progression in some parts.
Laugh-out-loud funny at times. It's got some pretty meaningful messages about judging people, looking beneath the surface, and doing the right thing. It was a bit similar to Past Perfect by Leila Sales which I read and reviewed recently (also about a girl who works in a historical theme park) but it was enjoyable and funny.

The Darlings in Love by Melissa Kantor

2011-10-10T00:31:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Release Date: January 2012
Pages: 320
Source: NetGalley
Age Range: Young Adult

The Darlings have just begun their second semester of ninth grade, and love is in the air. Victoria can hardly believe how perfect life is now that Jack is her boyfriend. Every moment they spend together seems to be better than the last. Meanwhile, Natalya is thrilled and a little nervous when her old crush, Colin, challenges her to a rematch of an unfinished chess game. Could he still like her too? Jane can't help but feel a tad jealous of her two best friends’ exciting romantic prospects, even if she has sworn off love. Performing in a production of famous love scenes is just about the last thing she wants to do. But when Jane meets her acting partner,sweet, gorgeous Simon,she may just have to give love another chance.

Still, nothing about love is as simple as it seems. Victoria’s plan to surprise Jack with a romantic night out on Valentine’s Day goes disastrously wrong, and just when things start heating up between Natalya and Colin, Natalya discovers that Colin has been hiding something important from her. Even as Jane falls hard for Simon, she has to wonder: what if he’s too good to be true?

In the face of both joy and heartbreak, the Darlings know that they'll always have each other. Boys come and go, but the Darlings are still forever.

This book was different and aimed to a younger audience then most other books by Melissa Kantor. But I enjoyed reading it and I liked the romantic vibe of the story. Altough it lacks a real plot, the author knows how to keep you entertained and give the characters real depth. The Darlings are three real friends who share everything and are there for each other when needed, and the four girls just have real class! Even if you haven't read the first book The Darlings Are Forever, it's no problem at all to start with this book to get into the life of the three friends and their crushes. Lovely!

Blog Tour: The Goddess Test by Aimee Carter

2011-10-07T03:53:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Mira Ink
Release Date: 16 Sep 2011
Pages: 304
Source: Publisher
Age Range: Young Adult

Kate enters the town of Eden with a mother who is on the brink of death and a hope for a better future that is fading bit by bit with the passage of time. As she drags herself through the motions of daily life, weird things egin to occur around her. Her new frenemy is raised from the dead after an accident that definitely involved a large quantity of blood, and the only explanation Kate gets from the incident involves a certain dark-haired boy. Henry, who later claims to be Hades, the infamous god of the Underworld. Kate soon finds herself participating in seven unknown tests to save her mother and help determine the future of the Underworld.

The Goddess Test brings greek mythology into the 21st century. Carter's underworld is fascinating as are the 7 tests Kate must pass in order to become who she is meant to be. Kate is self sacrificing and selfess. Her love for Henry and her mother overrules all.

I really liked the relationship between Kate and her mom. My heart broke for Kate because she knew that she wouldn't get much more time with her mom (who is suffering from cancer). I think Kate and Henry made a good couple, but I think both characters needed some more development. The story was a bit slow at some points, but it was original and I really enjoyed reading it!

Interview with the author of The Goddess Test, Aimee Carter:

What inspired you to write The Goddess Test?

The Goddess Test was many, many years in the making, which isn’t my normal writing style at all. I grew curious about the myth of Hades and Persephone from a very young age, and when I began to write original fiction when I was a teenager, I decided I wanted to write a story revolving around them somehow. It wasn’t until many years later that all the pieces clicked into place, and The Goddess Test showed up as the story you read.

What influences and experiences did you bring into the book? – I’ve been a huge fan of Greek and Roman mythology for as long as I could read, and all of the conflicting myths made me ask myself what the ‘real’ story was, if these characters had actually existed in our world. A lot of those thoughts turned up in The Goddess Test. Also, strangely enough, after my publisher bought the book, my father – who is my only living parent – got very ill, and I went through a lot of what Kate went through. I wound up rewriting a large chunk of Kate’s experience with her mother, based on what I went through with my father.

Could you tell us about your path to publication? Any sprints or stumbles along the way?
Oh, yes, loads. I wrote my first manuscript when I was fifteen, and between that and The Goddess Test, I wrote another twenty or so. I sacrificed a social life in high school and a good chunk of university to write, and while it paid off – I landed an agent before I graduated – there were a lot of ‘almost but not quites’ with agents between those times as well.

What are your favourite authors, and which authors have inspired you the most? – JK Rowling is far and away my favorite author, both as a writer and a person. She gives so much back, both to her fans and those less fortunate, and she’s a huge inspiration. I’m a big fan of Suzanne Collins, Orson Scott Card, David and Leigh Eddings, and Anne Bishop as well.

Can we expect more books by you in the future? – Most definitely! The sequel to The Goddess Test, called Goddess Interrupted, will be released in 2012.

Ditched: A love story by Robin Mellom

2011-10-06T00:24:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Release Date: January 10, 2012
Pages: 288
Source: Netgalley
Age Range: Young Adult

High school senior Justina Griffith was never the girl who dreamed of going to prom. Designer dresses and strappy heels? Not her thing. So she never expected her best friend, Ian Clark, to ask her.

Ian, who always passed her the baseball bat handle first.Ian, who knew exactly when she needed red licorice.Ian, who promised her the most amazing night at prom. And then ditched her.
Now, as the sun rises over her small town, and with only the help of some opinionated ladies at the 7-Eleven, Justina must piece together, stain by stain on her thrift-store dress, exactly how she ended up dateless. A three-legged Chihuahua was involved. Along with a demolition derby-ready Cadillac. And there was that incident at the tattoo parlor. Plus the flying leap from Brian Sontag's moving car...

But to get the whole story, Justina will have to face the boy who ditched her. And discover if losing out at prom can ultimately lead to true love.

Ditched is a romantic and overall very funny new novel for teen girls by Robin Mellom. Altough the story and plot are quite thin, I find it very entertaining. I liked how the author let Justina tell the story to the 7-Eleven ladies, and how the story switched from the 7-eleven to time time leading to prom and how Justina ended up with a torn prom dress at the side of the road..and ditched by Ian.I expeced to know what was coming, and it was at certain points, but the author has written it in a way that makes you forget that! Cute!

I'm back from the hospital, yay!

2011-10-05T06:00:00.000-07:00

The last two weeks I haven't blogged, because I had to stay in the hospital, and the reason is quite serious: a year ago I was diagnosed with Gitelman Syndrome. Never heard of this? Quite possible as this is a rare disease.

Gitelman’s syndrome is a rare inherited defect in the renal tubule of the kidneys. This defect causes the kidney to waste magnesium, sodium, potassium and chloride in the urine, instead of reabsorbing it back into the bloodstream. Urine calcium levels are lower than normal, despite normal serum values. This syndrome does not cause kidney failure nor does it cause the kidneys to function abnormally. The kidneys are normal. The problem is the reabsorption of important electrolytes and minerals.

Autosomal Recessive means that one gene came from the father and one gene came from the mother. Gitelman’s is an autosomal recessive disorder. There is a 25% change that parents with this defect genes get a child with Gitelman Syndrome. Brothers and sisters have a 25% chance of also having Gitelman’s syndrome and 50% chance of being a carrier.
The defect is in the Thiazide Co-Transporter which is where Sodium, Potassium and Magnesium are absorbed into the body. Because of the defect these minerals are lost in the urine instead of being absorbed in the body.

The Thiazide co- transporter is also where thiazide diuretics take their action. This is why many doctors will test their patients for the use of diuretics first before coming to the conclusion that this patient has Gitelman’s. It is not that your doctor does not believe you but these type of medications can mock Gitelman’s.

Gitelman’s syndrome is characterized by a milder and later clinical presentation. Often, this disorder is diagnosed in asymptomatic ( No symptoms) adults who present with unexplained hypokalemia( Low serum potassium levels) . In many cases the patient will go to the doctor for something else and when routine labwork is done it is found that this patient has low potassium levels.

The low levels cause an overall feeling of sickness, muscle cramps and spasms, extreme tiredness and fatique, excessive thirst and salt cravings.( I have this weird tomato cravings ,especially tomato juice and soup, as long as I remember so I now know where this is coming from!)It also causes an increased need to pass urine because the urine is diluted, numbness of hands and feet, heart palpitations, dizziness and blurred vision.

So now me and my nephrologist are trying to keep my potassium levels in above the line of 3.1 -3.2, and my magnesium as high as possible (for normal people this is 1,5, mine where 0,03 the last weeks..!!) this means twenty pills(potassium holders, potassium and magnesium) a day! Had a potassium IV for two weeks, and I hope the numbers stay up instead of going down again...

The blog will be updated soon with new book reviews and more fun stuff!

Past Perfect by Leila Sales

2011-09-18T11:20:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Simon Pulse
Release Date: October 4, 2011
Pages: 320
Source: Simon & Schuster Galley Grab
Age Range: Young Adult

All Chelsea wants to do this summer is hang out with her best friend, hone her talents as an ice cream connoisseur, and finally get over Ezra, the boy who broke her heart. But when Chelsea shows up for her summer job at Essex Historical Colonial Village (yes, really), it turns out Ezra’s working there too. Which makes moving on and forgetting Ezra a lot more complicated…even when Chelsea starts falling for someone new.
Maybe Chelsea should have known better than to think that a historical reenactment village could help her escape her past. But with Ezra all too present, and her new crush seeming all too off limits, all Chelsea knows is that she’s got a lot to figure out about love. Because those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it….

Altough the story and plot where a little lacking point and depth, I enjoyed reading this cute novel. I liked the original setting: the reenactment village. The dialogues and characters where fun, but somehow the story did go to nowhere in particular. But altogether a nice in-between read with some little historical fun facts between the lines!

Radiate by Marley Gibson

2011-09-17T09:20:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Graphia
Release Date: April 3, 2012
Pages: 416
Source: NetGalley
Age Range: Young Adult

High School senor Hayley Mathews’ dream has come true: she made it to her high school’s varsity cheerleader team! Her hard work to get into the team is rewarded: now she is in the popular crowd, she is invited to the coolest parties, and is dating one of the football players. She works hard to stay in the team, as the team captain, the popular Chloe, is not making it easy.

Hayley has a sore leg for a while now, and when she takes a better look at her left leg she discovers it has a lumb. The pain in her leg is getting worse and worse and makes she can hardly walk. She goes with her mom to her doctor to have it checked out, and after her physician has made some x-rays, there is an unexpected harsh diagnose: Hayley has a tumor in her leg, cancer. The doctor can't say how bad it is or what the prognosis will be. At the minimum, she'll have to have surgery. At the most it could mean loss of her leg or even her life.

Once again Hayley's life changes in an instant. Now she must face the odds again and show everyone, including herself, just how strong she is. And through it all--three surgeries, chemo, radiation, rehab, and just getting back to a normal life--it's cheerleading that keeps Hayley focused and positive.
All she wants to do is cheer, and nothing, including cancer, is going to stop her..

I was very impressed by this amazing book. As I was diagnosed with a chronic kidney disease a year ago, I recognized a lot in this fabulous book by Marley Gibson. Your life changes in an instant when you get seriously ill: people around you are treating you differently at once, and some people just don't realise how big this is an impact on your life. The author just portrayed a very realistic view of what happens when you get ill, how doctors can act weird sometimes and the uncertainty that comes with this all. But..this isn't a heavy depressing kind of story of a teen girl who get's cancer. This book is about a tough and fun and cool cheerleader, who still keeps cheering after her diagnose and tries to maintain a normal life as possible, the only right way to do in this situation, and I can only cheer, cheer, cheer for Hayley's positive attitude and the positivity that radiates through this amazing book! I loved the way it was written, thumbs up to Marley Gibson! Impressive and highly recommended!!

Vixen (Flappers book 1) by Jillian Larkin

2011-09-14T02:55:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Release Date: December 14, 2010
Pages: 432
Source: Bought
Challenge: YA Historical Fiction

Every girl wants what she can’t have. Seventeen-year-old Gloria Carmody wants the flapper lifestyle—and the bobbed hair, cigarettes, and music-filled nights that go with it. Now that she’s engaged to Sebastian Grey, scion of one of Chicago’s most powerful families, Gloria’s party days are over before they’ve even begun . . . or are they?

Clara Knowles, Gloria’s goody-two-shoes cousin, has arrived to make sure the high-society wedding comes off without a hitch—but Clara isn’t as lily-white as she appears. Seems she has some dirty little secrets of her own that she’ll do anything to keep hidden. . . .

Lorraine Dyer, Gloria’s social-climbing best friend, is tired of living in Gloria’s shadow. When Lorraine’s envy spills over into desperate spite, no one is safe. And someone’s going to be very sorry. . .

As I love historical fiction and heard good things about Vixen, I decided to give it a try. Somehow I was dissapointed by it: This book did NOT bring me into the time period at all, as did Anna Godbersen's Bright Young Things, also about flappers. I just missed the real glamour and great plot twists that Bright Young Things has, but maybe I am comparing apples with pears. Many things that the characters said or did felt out of place for the time period. And the plot wasn't it for me, as it was build around..yeah..about what? Gloria's singing career? Didn't come off the ground in the story and certainly not for me as a reader too. Lots of gossip and drama..and cheating..and then you have the plot of the book. The characters just wheren't strong enough or lacked anything to care about. Just let out all the too-many details and play some more with our imagination! Didn't make me curious for the follow-up.

The Woman Who Heard Color by Kelly Jones + Book Giveaway!

2011-09-11T13:00:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Berkley, Penguin USA
Release Date: October 4 2011
Pages: 400
Source: Publisher

Lauren O’Farrel is an art detective. Its her job to retrieve invaluable paintings stolen by the Nazi’s during World War II. She has an appointment with the eighty-two year old Isabella Fletcher, who can tell her more of the Fleischmann art gallery who owned some important paintings during that period. She visits Isabella in her apartment in Manhattan, where Isabella starts telling her the story of her mother Hanna.

Hanna was living in the German countryside, but followed her sister Kathe to Munich. Kathe was a maid in the household of the Fleischmann family, who existed of Moses Fleischmann and his wife Helene. They where the owners of an art gallery. It’s here that Hanna is introduced into the world of art. Just like Helene, Hanna has the talent to hear color in music and art. But Helene’s health is very fragile and she dies. It is not long after that Hanna and Moses fall in love and get a son who is mentally disabled.Not long after, things change in Germany because of Hitler gaining more and more power and life becomes more difficult, especially for the Jewish Fleischmann family. Moses get’s ill suddenly and passes away, leaving Hanna behind alone, more alone than ever now her children are living with Kathe in America: beside Willy Hanna got a daughter, but she is keeping a heavy secret about Isabella.It’s impossible for Hanna to leave Germany, and she becomes an art advisor for the Nazi’s, which leaves her in a very difficult position.

As Isabella reveals the events of her mother's life, Lauren finds herself immersed in an amazing story of courage and secrecy as she discovers the extraordinary truth about a priceless piece of art that may have survived the war and the enduring relationship between a mother and a daughter.

The story of Hanna was sad, but so amazing vividly written by Kelly Jones. I was really surprised by how beautiful this story was. The chapters alternate in time period, from Lauren and Isabelle in New York in 2009 to Hanna’s time period during1900-1946. It is written in the third person, which really works great for this story. If you love art, this is a novel not to miss, but if you don’t know that much about it, don’t worry: the author has let the artist and artworks really speak for themselves and stand out in the novel, which is just another winning point for this already fabulous and very rich and detailed novel.

WIN A COPY OF THE WOMAN WHO HEARD COLOR!!

Go to the contest form and enter by telling me what your favorite work of art is: it can be a paining, something you have seen in a museum, anything as long its art! Let's start off with my favorite painting which is in fact hanging on the wall above this desk I'm working at: Nighthawks by Edward Hopper!

The giveaway is open to US/Canada, and closes at october 20. Good luck!

GO TO THE CONTEST FORM

(with special thanks to Penguin USA)

My Soul To Keep by Rachel Vincent (Soul Screamers book 3)

2011-09-06T12:28:00.001-07:00

Publisher: Mira Books
Release Date: April 15 2011
Pages: 368
Source: Publisher
Age Range: Young Adult

In this third book in the Soul Screamers series, and starts off about a month after the events of My Soul to Save. Kaylee is still in love with her boyfriend Nash, and when they go to one of their high school classmates parties, they find out something very shocking; A fellow classmate has somehow gotten ahold of Demon's Breath, the deadly substance from the Netherworld.Kaylee is determined to find out how Demon's Breath is ending up in the hands of students, and who could possibly be behind the whole thing. And then she finds out some more schocking facts when she discovers Nash is one of the addicts too...Is it in Kaylee's powers to stop this?

I enjoyed this third book in the series, altough I thought that many thinks where a bit repetitive and similar to the previous two. The characters make no real new progressions, it was only the fight against Demon's Breath and again the trips of Kaylee to the Neitherworld. I missed the soul scream thing a bit which she was doing in the first books, there where not so many soon to be dying people in this book.There were simply a few scenes that I felt could be tightened up just a bit, but overall, I sincerely enjoyed this book, and I am still looking forward for book number four.

How To Eat A CupCake by Meg Donohue

2011-09-02T13:37:00.000-07:00

Publisher: HarperCollins
Release: March 13th 2012
Pages: 304
Source: NetGalley

Julia St. Clair is a young woman who is from a wealthy family who lives in a mansion in San Francisco's Pacific Heights. She just returned to her parents house from New York, because she is going to marry her boyfriend Wes. Annie Quintana is the daughter of one of the former staff members of the St. Clairs. Her mother Lucia Quintana, immigrated from Ecuador and started working for the St.Clairs and got a place to live in their carriage house, Where Annie grew up and where she became best friends with Julia. Lucia was a great cook but tragically died years ago, as she suddenly collapsed on the St.Clair's kitchen floor. Annie now works in a bakery, where she is well known for the delicious cupcakes she makes and designs.

Now Annie is back at the St.Clair mansion to deliver cupcakes for one of the parties the St.Clairs are hosting. She hasn't seen Julia anymore after Lucia passed away.Now the two meet again, and the cupcakes are linking the two old friends together again; Julia has had a difficult time she wants to leave behind, and Annie's cupcakes give her an idea: she wants to start a cupcakery together with Annie.The two start to work in this idea, and soon the store is opened in the heart of San Francisco's Mission District. The cupcakery which is named Treat is an hugessucces it seems, but
hearthe women struggle to repair their friendship as the shop becomes the target of an increasingly hostile series of incidents; the story is hit by some graffity with the words: YOU DON'T BELONG HERE!'', stones are thrown into the store window, and even a fire is setting the store and Annie in serious danger. But who is behind the threats? And who is the shady man who is around the store so much and waiting up Annie and Julia? And why is Jake, Annie's boyfriend, kissing Julia who is going to be married to Wes soon??

WOW! That's the word that first pops into my mind after reading this book. This book has everything in it to be a huge succes! What a pageturner!! The chapters alternate in narrator from Annie to Julia, and the author created so many fun plot twists and turns that you can't put the book down. Annie and Julia where so different from each other, and altough they had their struggles in the past and also in the present, they are friends for live. I loved that it was build around cupcakes, but the main part in this book is truly the importance of family and friendship. And there is the mistery part which was just amazing and in the end comes to a surprising conclusion of who did it. This is a debut novel that makes you crave, crave, crave for more!!

The Sweetest Thing by Christina Mandelski

2011-08-31T02:28:00.000-07:00

Publisher: EgmontUSA
Release: May 10, 2011
Pages: 336
Source: NetGalley
Age Range: Young Adult

Fifteen year-old Sheridan Wells is happy with her life as she is a very talented cake designer. Her mom run off years ago, so now she is alone with her father, a celebrity chef cook, and her grandmother, Nanny, who owns the cake shop where Sheridan helps after school and in the weekends.
But Sheridan is also lonely as her father is very busy with his restaurant and doesn't have much time to pay attention to her. And she starts to wonder where her mother is now, especially now her father is asked to move to New York City with her to be the star in his own cooking show on a big food network. Just at the moment when Ethan, the most popular boy in school, decides it is time to hit on her and she founds out her best friend Jack has a crush on her too. Jack also starts helping her to find her mother who owns a bakery in Canada. But will Sheridan's problem really get solved when she finds her mom?

From the first page..this amazing fun and sweet story got me! Altough it may look like a very sweet book at the cover, don't let this scare you off, cause this story got spunk and depth, fabulous characters and a fun plot! The story is build around cakes, and not so much around high school and peer pressure and certainly not around fantasy or dystopian characters which I really have my fill of right now. Sheridan's nickname is Cake Girl, but during the book you learn she is more than that, altough she doesn't see it that way: she was very independent and she got spunk and a big heart!This book is one of a kind and I though it was just a new and very unique YA novel. Loved every minute of it and I truly recommend this outstanding book!

You Are My Only by Beth Kephart

2011-08-30T12:37:00.000-07:00

Publisher: EgmontUSA
Release: October 25, 2011
Pages: 256
Source: NetGalley
Age Range: Young Adult

Emmy Rane is married at nineteen, a mother by twenty. Trapped in a life with a husband she no longer loves, Baby is her only joy. Then one sunny day in September, Emmy takes a few fateful steps away from her baby and returns to find her missing. All that is left behind is a yellow sock.

Fourteen years later, Sophie, a homeschooled, reclusive teenage girl is forced to move frequently and abruptly from place to place, perpetually running from what her mother calls the "No Good." One afternoon, Sophie breaks the rules, ventures out, and meets Joey and his two aunts. It is this loving family that gives Sophie the courage to look into her past. What she discovers changes her world forever..

I took a while before I got into the story of this book. The author gives only small hints of the characters, and it wasn't clear for me in the start what the time period was: it wasn't really clear that Sophie's time period is fourteen years later then that of Emmy, which was confusing. The story plot was nice, but not my most favorite of all time. If you are looking for light read, this isn't your pick. Looking for some serious drama with a main character that is hiding while the other has her baby stolen and is locked up..give it a try.

Chain Reaction by Simone Elkeles

2011-08-28T11:23:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Walker Books for Young Readers
Release: August 16 2011
Pages: 308
Source: Bought
Age Range: Young Adult

In this third book in the Perfect Chemistry series, Luis Fuentes, the youngest brother of Alex and Carlos is causing a little turmoil: he has always been sheltered from the gang violence that nearly destroyed his brothers’ lives. But that didn’t stop him from taking risks: whether he’s scaling a mountain in the Rockies or dreaming of a future as an astronaut, Luis can’t stop looking for the next thrill..

Nikki Cruz just found out that she is pregnant from her ex-boyfriend Marco, who broke up with her because she is not Mexican enough for him, as he is a Latino Blood gang member.
Alex is going to marry his girlfriend Brittany, and thats where Luis and Nikki meet for the first time. At firsthand Nikki acts like she hates Luis, as he reminds her too much of Marco. But Luis is hooked immediately. But slowly Nikki drops more and more clues that she really likes Luis..
But theN Luis gets in some serious danger: het gets himself targeted by Chuy Soto, the new head of the Latino Blood. When Chuy reveals a disturbing secret about Luis’s family, the youngest Fuentes finds himself questioning everything he’s ever believed to be true. Will his feelings for Nikki be enough to stop Luis from entering a dark and violent world and permanently living on the edge?

Altough I had the feeling that it was similar at many points to the previous book, I thought this was an
excellent and exciting new addition to the series. Luis is trying to keep out of trouble, but somehow his Fuentes fate decides different and he gets into it anyway. Nikki was a spunky character who didn't want to give up her pride and give in to her love for Luis. I liked how the author builded up their romance very slowly and let it explode in the end! Recommended read!!

Reel Life Starring Us by Lisa Greenwald

2011-08-27T06:01:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Amulet Books
Release:September 1st 2011
Pages: 256
Source: NetGalley
Age Range: Middle Grade

The artsy Dina is new at Rockwood Hills Junior High, known for the close-knit cliques that rule the school. Chelsea is one of the most popular girls of the school, but somehow this is slowly changing this year: her father has lost his job, and now Chelsea doesn't have the newest fashion and expensive stuff anymore. Dina and Chelsea land in a project together: they have to have a video about te life at school made for an important school event. Dina is happy with this new artistic chance, but Chelsea has other things on her mind: how to stay popular and how to keep her popular friends at her side. And then Dina gets a fantastic idea when she is browsing the school's old yearbooks: she and Chelsea have to charter a former student who is now a celebrity to help them with the project, and slowly the two girls bond and become friends..

I thought this was a very entertaining, refreshing and fun middle grade novel! Altough I did see what was coming, it was written in a very entertaining way and I couldn't put it down.I think the author gave this book good detail and there where many unexpected twists and turns in Dina and Chelsea's relationship. Their conversations were identifiable and not reaching for slang or trying to be overly hip. Reel Life Starring Us is treasure of a middle-grade novel, and I highly recommend it!

Outside The Ordinary World by Dori Ostermiller

2011-08-26T04:56:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Mira
Release: 19 Aug 2011
Pages: 384
Source: Publicist

Its 2005, and Sylvia Sandon is married with two daughters. For the last 7 years, Sylvia and her husband Nathan and the girls have spent their weekends working on their "dream home", an old farmhouse, which that they bought at auction and hoped to have totally renovated within a year. The excitement of their marriage is gone, the renovations are not going well, the money is running out and to make matters worse, Sylvia's carreer as an artist is at a standstill.

And then she meets a man named Tai, and a secret romance slowly enfolds. But..didn't Sylvia make a promise to herself never, ever to make the same mistakes as her mother, who had an affair when Sylvia and her sister where kids, and eventually ended up marrying the man she loved beside her husband?

The chapters in the story alternate from Sylvia's childhood years in 1974-1975, where she openly tells in flashbacks about her mother's secret affair with Robert and the consequences of this, to the present time in 2005, where she fells in love with Tai and has trouble with Nathan.

The books starts and makes you very curious what's going to happen with all the secret affairs going on. Sylvia's childhood is full of secrets, and she somehow copied her mother's behavior. IT is an emotionally charged novel that at times has you cringing at Sylvia's childhood and then frustrated with her decisions as an adult. Altough the story starts with a good and quick pace, it loses some from the second half of the book, where the author seems to get caught in too much details and not creating a more exciting atmosphere which really could have added more in this secret affairs story. But overall it is a very enjoyable and imagery and think it would be a great pick for a book club as novels such as these always spark a lot of conversation. This is Dori Ostermiller's debut novel and I'm quite curious for her next book.

Alison Wonderland Blog Tour: Author Interview Helen Smith

2011-08-25T11:07:00.000-07:00

For the second part in the Alison Wonderland Blog Tour, I'm interviewing author Helen Smith about the book;

For the readers who haven't heard about you yet, can you tell a little about yourself and your book?
Thanks, Marjolein. I’m a novelist and a playwright and I live in London. I have one daughter and I volunteer as a mentor and workshop leader with a group of exiled writers through an organization called Freedom From Torture. When my daughter was young I traveled all over the world before settling in London where I wrote ALISON WONDERLAND and five other books. ALISON WONDERLAND is about a woman who joins an all-female detective agency in Brixton, south London, where I live. Though the main character is a private detective, it’s not detective genre; it’s an off-beat look at London life through the eyes of a wryly witty, would-be cynic called Alison who claims to have turned her back on love. When she meets a woman called Taron,who is to become her best friend, it’s the catalyst for a series of crazy adventures to begin.

What inspired you to write Alison Wonderland?
I wanted to write a book with strong, interesting female characters and I wanted to set it in Brixton, an impoverished but interesting area of London with a jumble of alleyways of eccentric shops, which is where I have located the office of Fitzgerald’s Bureau of Investigation. The idea was to explore themes of friendship, parenthood, loyalty and love, but to do it within a comic framework.

What’s your favorite and least favorite part of being a writer?
I like everything about being a writer, though the hardest part is starting a new project, when you wonder if you’ll be able to bring it off. I love it when the ideas are flowing and I seem to have come up with a particularly inventive away of saying something, and of course it’s wonderful when I meet people or read reviews by people who have enjoyed one of my books, and they tell me how much they enjoyed it – when that happens, it all seems worthwhile.

I think writers are harder on themselves about their work than anyone else could ever be, but they can never be kind enough to themselves – they need someone else to say a book or a play is good before they’ll believe it. I’m very lucky that the first review I ever had for anything I had written was in The Times. It was for ALISON WONDERLAND and it was a knockout.

A neatly-written sentence that makes you feel proud of your work as you look back over it at the end of the day; a publisher who takes a chance on a manuscript; a reviewer who appreciates a book or a play; a reader who buys a copy of a book, or an audience member who buys a ticket to a play; anyone who recommends something you have written to a friend – these are the rewards for being a writer. Every time I hear “yes” in one of these ways, I feel fortunate to have this job.

Alison Wonderland by Helen Smith

2011-08-22T04:49:00.000-07:00

Publisher: AmazonEncore
Release: 16 Aug 2011
Pages: 190
Source: Publicist

Alison Temple is fairly happy working at the all-female Fitzgerald's Bureau of Investigation in London. Her husband has left her for another woman, and she hopes her work will give her a chance to trap her ex in some way or another. Her work exists of days tracking lost objects and her nights shadowing unfaithful husbands. Alison is assigned a on Operation Brown Dog, involving Emphglott, a company using buildings in the West Country that were supposed to be abandoned; inhumane treatment of animals; Majors Flower and Bird, two thugs with God-like control who had been hired by said company to defend against knowledge of said inhumane treatment of animals; and Miss Lester, the director of services. Also, there's a sheep/pig hybrid animal And then she has her personal life which include some very unusual people: Taron, Alison’s eccentric best friend, who claims her mother is a witch and is looking for ''lost babies'' Jeff, her lovestruck, poetry-writing neighbor, and a psychic postman.

When I heard about this book, I expected it to be a fun mix of mysterie and maybe a little chicklit ingredients. But it was not, and I truly have some question marks about the whole story. First of all: what was the point of the whole story? The plot leaded to no conclusion anywhere, and the chapters changed in some very odd and very sudden point of view and narrator, as a reader I sometimes didn't know who the narrator was anymore. And then there where some other strange things coming up, like the weird man who does something even more weirder to the sheep kind of animal that comes around a few times during the story (this was something that I thought was just ugly)
The review blurbs inside the book makes you think this book is some kind of literary wonder, I think this book stands or falls with the personal taste of the reader: you love it or you absolutely don't. It clearly wasn't my cup of tea.

Wanderlove by Kirsten Hubbard

2011-08-20T13:58:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Release Date: March 13th 2012
Pages: 352
Source: NetGalley
Age Range: Young Adult

When her plans of getting into an art college with her boyfriend turn out different than she hoped for, Bria Sandoval decides to go with an organized guided tour to Guatemala. But when the tour starts, she discovers that the pricky unadventurous middle aged people who are in the tour are not what she counted on when she signed up: what Bria expected was the path to self-discovery. So when she meets Starling and her brother Rowan, two die-hard backpackers, her travel takes a turn in a very different and hopefully in a for her more right direction.

Starling turns out to be a perfect guide into everything Bria has to know about being a real backpacker and shows she is a trustworthy friend too. Rowan's a bad boy trying to stay good. As they travel across a panorama of Mayan villages, remote Belizean islands, and hostels plagued with jungle beasties, they discover what they've got in common: both seek to leave behind the old versions of themselves. And the secret to escaping the past, Rowan’s found, is to keep moving forward. But Bria comes to realize she can't run forever, no matter what Rowan says. If she ever wants the courage to fall for someone worthwhile, she has to start looking back.

I LOVED Wanderlove!! If you like books about traveling, or even if you don't..this books is just a perfect pick. I loved Bria's journey to and through Central-America, and she really makes a huge self-discovery during the story. I also loved how she looked back into her time with her boyfriend Toby and that the author let Bria show her art in the book. The two other main character of Wanderlove, the backpacker siblings Rowan and Starling where just fabulous too. They where all very very real and believable. I think I could go on and on about how fabulous and fun this book is, but I think I will post too much spoilers then, so go and get yourself a copy of Wanderlove and step into Bria's Central-American travel adventure!

Tris & Izzie by Mette Ivie Harrison

2011-08-18T11:44:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Egmont USA
Release Date: October 11th 2011
Pages: 272
Source: NetGalley
Age Range: Young Adult

A modern retelling of the German fairytale "Tristan and Isolde", Tris and Izzie is about a young witch named Izzie who is dating Mark King, the captain of the basketball team and thinks her life is going swimmingly well. Until -- she makes a love potion for her best friend Brangane and then ends up taking it herself accidentally, and falling in love with Tristan, the new guy at school

Even if you are not familiar with the Tristan and Isolde fairytale,(I'm one of those..) you can read this book without a problem. I didn't even realize before I started reading it that it was a modern retelling, I looked just like a romantic new YA novel when I saw the cover.

I liked the idea of the story, it was somehow lightly entertaining. But..I can't put my finger on it yet what it is, but it just wasn't my cup of tea. There were parts that I absolutely loved about this book and parts that I didn’t care for. And I really had some trouble here and there to stay interested in the story. I liked that there was a lot of magic in it..but it was predictable what was going to happen, especially when the monstrous serpent came into the story.It just was written in a way that as a reader you don't care about what happens to the character. I truly expected more of this book...

The Whole Story of Half a Girl by Veera Hiranandani

2011-08-17T10:33:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Release Date: January 2012
Pages: 224
Source: NetGalley
Age Range: Middle Grade

Sonia Nadhamuni is a half Indian, half Jewish girl who attends a private middle school. But when her father loses his job, her mother announces that she and her younger sister have to leave their nice school where they feel at home, to attend a cheaper public school. For the first time, Sonia's mixed heritage makes her classmates ask questios that Sonia doesn't always know how to answer,as she navigates between a group of popular girls who want her to try out for the cheerleading squad and other students who aren't part of the "in" crowd.

At the same time that Sonia is trying to make new friends, she's dealing with what it means to have an out-of-work parent—it's hard for her family to adjust to their changed circumstances. And then, one day, Sonia's father goes missing. Now Sonia wonders if she ever really knew him. As she begins to look for answers, she has to decide what's really important in her life.

The Whole Story of Half a Girl is a fantastic debut novel by Veera Hiranandani. At firsthand I didn't know it was a middle grade novel instead of young adult, but it didn't matter to me at all. The story of Sonia was fun and highly entertaining, with a little sad side because of her depressed father who lost his job and suddenly goes missing. This book is also a great book about growing up between two cultures and defining what it means to you, and its about family and friends and making a new start at a very new and different school. With all this ingredients the author has created an impressing new novel that I highly recommend!

The Beginning of After by Jennifer Castle

2011-08-16T12:40:00.000-07:00

Publisher: HarperTeen
Release Date: September 6th 2011
Pages: 432
Source: NetGalley
Age Range: Young Adult

Laurel is a sixteen year old girl, who goes with her parents and her younger brother Toby to the house of friends for a Passover seder. Laurel goes home earlier because she has lots of stuff to do for school. A few hours later a policeman is standing on her doorstep, with the message that her parents and brother are killed in a car accident. Behind the wheel is the father of her bad-boy neighbor, David Kaufman, whose mother is also killed. Her grandmother comes over to live with her. In the aftermath of the tragedy, Laurel navigates a new reality in which she and her best friend grow apart, boys may or may not be approaching her out of pity, overpowering memories lurk everywhere, and Mr. Kaufman is comatose but still very much alive. Through it all there is David, who swoops in and out of Laurel’s life and to whom she finds herself attracted against her better judgment. She will forever be connected to him by their mutual losS: a connection that will change them both in unexpected ways.

This book was a pleasant surprise, altough the topic of the book is very sad. It was written very gripping and realistic, and I thought it was just an impressing new YA novel. The author really did a great job with illustrating the emotions of Laurel and what she had to go through. She is just a fantastic and real narrator, I hope there will be more fabulous YA novels like this, this is just real YA in a sea of fantasy and far-far away dystopian stuff. An amazing book that will make you appreciate some of the most important things in life.

Tunnel Vision by Susan Shaw

2011-08-14T06:07:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Release Date:August 16th 2011

Pages: 272

Source: Simon & Schuster Galleygrab

Age Range: Young Adult

On her way home one evening, Liza has to force her way through a group of men in a train underpass. She doesn’t think anything of it, but when her mom is shot dead moments later, Liza’s world turns upside down. Even worse, Liza was really the target. Only hours after her mother’s death, Liza is nearly killed again and she and her dad are placed in the witness protection program. Leaving everything she's ever known behind, Liza and her dad pick up and move, never staying in one place for long. It's too big of a risk--and Liza's worst fear is realized when she gets recognized. The would-be killer is still on their trail, so all Liza ad her dad can do is keep running. Unsure whom to trust and where to go, they're just trying to stay alive.

When the book starts, I expected a stunning page turner, you want to know why this happens to Liza and her mom, why are they shot and by who? But after the first two parts, and after she and her dad are moving all the way to get rid of the Core gang who shot Liza and her mom, the book becomes a bit boring, just because its all about the journey Liza and her dad are making and to stay oout of the picture and anonymous, which failure because a national newspaper makes a huge story of the missing Brodway play writer and his daughter. That's why this book dissapointed me a bit. It was okay to read it, but it failed in a more page turning plot, which I'm sure it could have been.

Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick by Joe Schreiber

2011-08-12T06:57:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children
Release Date:October 25, 2011
Pages:192
Source:NetGalley
Age Range: Young Adult

Perry Stormaire is just a normal teenager, until this Lithuanian exchange student, Gobi Zaksauskas comes to live in his house. In his house, she act like a mousy student with a nerdy look. But when Perry’s mother forces them to go to the prom together, something changes forever: Gobi is not the mousy teenager that she seems but rather an attractive, confident trained assassin.

Instead of going to the prom, Perry finds himself on a wild ride through the streets of New York City as Gobi commandeers the Jaguar his father lent him for the prom in order to take out her targets. Perry learns a lot about himself – and ends up with some amazing material for his college application..

Wow! The title of the book already gives a glimp of what this book is..a little crazy! It was a short, fast-paced YA story with a boy as the protagonist, and a crazy murderous assassin exchange student. Each chapter starts with a writing prompt from one of the college Perry is applying for. And in the end.. I just wondered if Perry made everything up for his college essay or did this really happened to him. Over the top, totally crazy but original..

Forgive My Fins by Tera Lynn Childs

2011-08-08T13:42:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Templar Publishing(UK)
Release: July 1st 2011
Pages: 333
Source: Publisher
Age Range: Young Adult

Lily Sanderson is a girl with a big secret: she is half human, half mermaid. She is from Thalassinia, a kingdom in the sea, and actually..she is the princess of it as her father rules the kingdom, And she has a huge crush on gorgeous swimming god Brody Bennett, but he hardly notices her, forget about it that he will everask her to the prom!

When Lily found out three years ago that her mother was actually a human, she finally realized why she didn’t feel quite at home in Thalassinia, and she’s been living on land and going to Seaview high school ever since, hoping to find where she truly belongs. Sure, land has its problems – like her obnoxious, biker boy neighbor Quince Fletcher – but it has that one major perk – Brody. The problem is, mermaids aren’t really the casual dating type – when they “bond,” it’s for life.
When Lily’s attempt to win Brody’s love leads to a tsunami-sized case of mistaken identity, she is in for a tidal wave of relationship drama..

This is just the perfect book for every teen girl. I loved the half human/half mermaid idea and Tera Lynn Child has worked out the whole kingdom of Thalassinia perfect with funny references to the world above. And it was different from other mermaid stories: mermaids can be bonded just by kissing someone, and that kiss will eventually turn the Boy/girl that they kissed into a mermaid/merman too and you get to live under the sea with all the fishes and with your fellow mermaids too. so the concept is really something new.

This book is perfect for every teen girl, and I am sure it will appeal to a middle grade audience too, original and highly entertaining! Already looking forward to the sequel: Fins are Forever!

Black, White, Other: In Search of Nina Armstrong by Joan Steinau Lester

2011-08-07T13:24:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Zondervan
Release: August 16, 2011
Pages: 224
Source: Netgalley
Age Range: Young Adult

As a biracial teen, Nina is accustomed to a life of varied hues, mocha-colored skin, ringed brown hair streaked with red, a darker brother, a black father, a white mother. When her parents decide to divorce, the rainbow of Nina's existence is reduced to a much starker reality. Shifting definitions and relationships are playing out all around her, and new boxes and lines seem to be getting drawn every day

Between the fractures within her family and the racial tensions splintering her hometown, Nina feels caught in perpetual battle. Feeling stranded in the nowhere land between racial boundaries, and struggling for personal independence and identity, Nina turns to the story of her great-great-grandmother's escape from slavery. Is there direction in the tale of her ancestor? Can Nina build her own compass when landmarks from her childhood stop guiding the way

This book is set in the present in Nina's live, but the parts where Nina reads the book her dad is writing about the live of Sara, her great-great-grandmother who was a runaway slave. Firsthand I had trouble to get into the story, but while reading I got into it, especially into the historical part. Nina's own failing runaway to her friend Fran (because she was in a fight with both her mom and her dad) failures, and she gets stuck with no place to go in San Francisco because of a bus strike. At some points the story was a bit repetitive, but overal it was ver enjoyable with a cast of fun friends and family in Nina's live. Original!

The Art of Forgetting by Camille Noe Pagan

2011-08-06T05:18:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Dutton Adult
Release: June 9, 2011
Pages: 291
Source: Netgalley

Marissa Rogers is an editor at the health and diet magazine Svelte. She lives in New York, has a lovely fiance, Dave, who wants to move in with her, and she has the best friend you can imagine Julia.

And then Julia gets hit by a cab as she crosses the street to meet up with Marissa. She survives with minor obvious injuries, but brain damage steals her memory and alters her personality, possibly forever. Suddenly, Julia isn't who she was anymore. She doesn't like the things she used to like, and she acts different and strange and sometimes even agressive. Marissa tries to help her get her life back as best as she can, but has to give this up on some points as there just isn't much she can do about this. When Julia goes back to Ann Arbor to live with her parents and to recover, she tries to set up Marissa with her ex boyfriend Nathan. This leads to some embarassing situations for Marissa and Dave.With the help of a dozen girls, she reluctantly agrees to coach in an after-school running program. There, Marissa uncovers her inner confidence and finds the courage to reexamine her past and take control of her future. This is just a captivating and realistic story about the power of friendship.

I was blown away by The Art of Forgetting, as it had a serious topic, but was written in such a fabulous light an highly entertaining way. It is a fabulous literature/chicklit cross-over. It was sad to read about how a brain injury like Julia's can have an impact on their lives and their friends and families' lives.
And it also makes you realise how in one second everything can change forever. From the moment I started reading, it had me. I highly recommend this beautiful book filled with intelligence, great humor and new perspectives.

In Malice, Quite Close by Brandi Lynn Ryder

2011-08-03T11:34:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Viking Adult (Penguin USA)
Release: August 4, 2011
Pages: 400
Source: Received from publisher

French ex-pat Tristan Mourault is a wealthy man and heir to an art collection. When he is visiting San Francisco, he sees a girl walking around Fisherman's wharf: Karen Miller, a fifteen-year-old girl from a working-class family in San Francisco. Deciding he must "rescue" Karen from her unhappy circumstances, Tristan kidnaps her and stages her death to mask his true crime.

Years later, Karen is now "Gisele" and the pair lead an opulent life in idyllic and rarefied Devon, Washington. Gisele is married to her husband Luke, to cover her real relationship with her ''father'' Tristan. They also have a daughter, Nicola. During the book it is quite a secret who her father is. Nicola discovers painting's(all nudes) of Gisele. And that is when Tristan's carefully constructed world begins to crumble. As Nicola grapples with the tragedy that follows, she crosses paths with Amanda Miller, who comes to Devon to investigate the portraits' uncanny resemblance to her long-lost sister..

I really was stunned by this book. Tristan was really the creepy kind of man that tries to leech women around his finger with charming them (even his French creeped me out a bit..) In alternating chapters from Nicola, Lukes and Tristan point of view (in retrospective) whe learn what happens to Karen/Gisele as the third person. The book is filled to the end with dark secrets and dangerous manipulations. Especially in the final part of the book, where Gisele suddenly is found drowned in her pool. Was it Tristan who was behind this, or was it Luke? Find out in this impressing debut novel from Brandi Lynn Ryder.

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

2011-07-31T05:36:00.001-07:00

Publisher: Viking Adult (Penguin USA)
Release: July 26, 2011
Pages: 352
Source: Received from publisher

Katey Kontent is a twenty-five year old woman living in New York City, 1938, just before the depression ends. She is out in town with her best friend Eve on New Years eve, when they meet Tinker Grey in a jazz club in Greenwich Village, and they strike up an unlikely friendship. He's obviously from money, and the two twenty-something women are working in secretarial pools, living in a boarding house and trying to get by as cheaply in life as possible. But who is this mysterious Tinker Grey, and who is exactly in love with who?? And is Tinker who he says he is, or is his whole old money appearance just a fake façade?

Rules of Civility is an elegant love letter to New York City, and the glitz and glam of the 30’s. I love historical fiction, the 30’s, and New York, so this book was a perfect blend of this all. I was impressed how the author wrote the book from a woman’s point of view. It reminded me a bit of Breakfast at Tiffany’s but ofcourse with entirely different characters story. The book doesn’t have a plot, it is just the story of what happens in the live of Katey as we follow her friendships, loves, tragedies, and life over a period of a year. I was very impressed with how vividly the city is recreated, it really catches the atmosphere of 1938. Recommended if you are interested in New York and/or historical fiction.

Baby Be Mine by Paige Toon

2011-07-29T02:37:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Simon & Schuster (UK)
Release: July 21 2011
Pages: 464
Source: Publisher

Meg has a secret for her boyfriend Christian: their baby isn't Christian's son, but of his famousrockstar friend Johnny.Meg Stiles is now settled and living in the south of France with her doting boyfriend Christian and their son Barney. But they're living a lie - a lie that will turn their lives upside down and inside out - because as Barney reaches his first birthday, Meg can no longer deny that her son is growing to look more and more like his rock star father every day, and less and less like Christian, and sooner or later, the world is going to realise ... And so Meg is trying everything tho keep this a secret to the outside world. When Christian and Meg's relationship is at pause because of Barney, Meg travels to Los Angeles to be with Johnny, and unfortunately his snobby girlfriend Dana. She has to decide what is best for her(Christian or Johnny?) and for Barney..

The idea for the plot of Baby Be Mine is good, but at some points the story was just a bit slow at some parts. Though I loved how Meg was dealing with her two ''boyfriends'' and her secret. I totally did see what was coming at most points, but overall it was a very entertaining new chicklit.

The New Kids by Brooke Hauser

2011-07-27T09:27:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Free Press (Simon & Schuster)
Release: September 20, 2011
Pages: 320
Source: Simon & Schuster Galleygrab

The New Kids is a realistic view into the daily life at the International High School of Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. The students come from every corner of the world, and the author describes the hardships some of the students had to face to come to the United States, some are now legal residents, while others are still undocumented and are unsure oif they ever are able to go to college after high school. Three students are followed more deeply: Jessica is a student from China. Her father was the first to come to the US, and the plan was that his family would join him soon. But after 9/11, Jessica and her mother where declined to emigrate to the United States several times, and when the time was there and Jessica could go, her new stepmother didn’t want her to live with her dad’s new family. And so Jessica is now on her own in a little rental apartment in the Hong Ning house for the elderly, in a country where she has to learn the language and her way around the city.

Yasmeen is a student from Yemen, who has a though life now both her parents have passed away and she has to take care of her little brother and sister. Her dream is to go to college to become a nephrologist, but will she ever get the chance to realise her dreams now she is married of to her cousin?

Mohammed is an undocumented student from Sierra Leona, who came to the United Stated in a church program lead by American missionaries. But due to some circumstances he ran away and is now staying in a rundown apartment in Brooklyn with other refugees from Sierra Leone where he has to cell illegally burned DVD’s and CD’s to earn his stay.

All the students in the school are guided by a fantastic team of teachers, they help the students to learn everything of how to live in America and in New York. Many students don’t speak English when they arrive, and get lost on the way to school or in the subway system. The school helps them find their way, and help them on special and specific American events like prom, a new event for most of the teens.

As I have worked in an International School myself, I loved every minute of this book. It really gives a good view into the life of teens who are new to everything around them: the city, the food, the language and have to learn a completely different life than that they where used to in their home country. One student story I remember that totally made me speechless was about Ngawang, a student from Tibet. To cross the border with China, he had to hide in a suitcase in a truck driven by the man that was smuggling him over.
It is a book you really have to take time for, but its really worth it, so far this is my favorite nonfiction book of this year!!

Mice by Gordon Reece, review & author interview

2011-07-20T05:42:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Viking (Penguin USA)
Release: August 22, 2011
Pages: 330
Source: Received from publisher
Genre: Fiction, Psychological thriller

Shelley is a teen girl who is bullied at school. Three girls make her life a living hell. They beat her up and destroy her homework. But the most gruel thing is when they set Shelley’s hair on fire in the girls room. Shelley survives and has to go to the hospital for her third grade burns. And the bullies get away with it because of lack of evidence..

As if Shelley hasn’t enough dificulties being a mice (a shy person who doesn’t say much and can’t stand up for herself and always is in a sort of hiding state) her parents are having a divorce and she has to relocatie with her mom to Honeysuckle Cottage, a house somewhere in the remote English countryside. There her mother live sheltered and hiding from the gruel outside world, and Shelley is homeschooled so she doesn’t have to face a bullying person and her old school again.

But their lives take a weird turn when a burglar sneaks into the house one night, and threatens to kill them both if they don’t give him money. Shelley and her mom have to see, bound on their chairs, how he takes their money and even takes away the new laptop that Shelley was getting for her birthday the day after. And that’s when Shelley decides that this is enough. After the bullies at school she know wants to get back at this burglar..and that’s why she grabs his knife and stabs him.. The burglar dies and this is the point where Shelley and her mom turn from shy mice into something completely different..and now they really have to hide..for the police..will someone find out that they buried the burglar in the garden of Honeysuckle Cottage??

Mice is a gripping thriller, where you really don't have any clue what's going to happen on the next page. The part where Shelley was bullied was gruel but very realistic ,as I had three of those girls at my school too who did the same kind of stuff as the girls in the book, like pulling the clips out of your hair..
The author really makes you think about what Shelley and her mom are after they killed the burglar.Are they now the criminals or just the victims? Was it right what they did, or do they deserve it to be found out by the police? Find out this impressing thriller!!

A CONVERSATION WITH GORDON REECE, AUTHOR OF MICE

Bullying is a significant and growing problem in the United States. What is the situation like in the other countries where you’ve lived?
I think bullying is a growing and significant problem in many, many countries. When I researched girl-on-girl bullying, all the cases I looked at were from the UK, but when I moved to Spain I saw the same thing there. I remember seeing harrowing mobile phone footage on the news of some teenage girls beating up another girl while their friends egged them on with shouts of Mátala! Mátala! (kill her!). And here in Australia we’ve just had a case, also captured on a mobile phone, where an overweight schoolboy being goaded and punched by another boy suddenly snaps, picks him up, and slams him down hard onto the concrete—you could say it’s the story of Mice played out in a ten-second video clip. I haven’t yet visited a reading group here without meeting someone who’s been bullied themselves or someone whose child has been bullied. So the United States is definitely not alone in this.

What drew you to write about this subject?
Some experiences I had when I was a trainee lawyer got me thinking about bullying in the workplace and the potential for explosive violence in individuals subjected to regular humiliation. Mice was originally to be about a young married couple who are both victims of bullying in the workplace—the husband in his law firm, the wife in the dental clinic where she’s a nurse. Girl-on-girl bullying was much in the news at that time, however, and I eventually decided to substitute the couple for a mother and daughter. I also felt the dynamics of the mother/daughter relationship might be more interesting to explore. I know Shelley’s bullying has aroused a lot of comment because bullying is such a worrying and pressing problem today, but my main motive in writing the bullying scenes was to create the necessary psychological trauma in Shelley so that her extreme reaction when the burglar breaks into the house would be believable.

Shelley thinks to herself: “After everything I’ve lived through, surely I’ll be able to write something truly great? After all, how many writers actually know what it’s like to kill somebody?” [p. 231]. You describe the act of murder pretty vividly. How did you come by that knowledge? Could you talk about the relationship between real experience and imaginative writing more generally?
It wasn’t firsthand experience, I promise! I’ve got an oval rose bed in my garden but there are no bodies buried in it. I’m actually pretty squeamish and go faint at the sight of blood, so I don’t think I’d make much of a murderer. I know they say “write what you know,” but that philosophy has never really appealed to me very much. I’m bored by what I know, there’s no imaginative challenge in what I know. I like to imagine what I don’t know. From childhood I always wrote stories that were far removed from my own everyday experience (I remember a long saga when I was eight about the survivor of a plane crash struggling to survive in the South Pole) and still today it’s that imaginative leap into other people’s lives, other historical times, other realities that makes writing such an exciting and liberating occupation. If I do make use of real experience, then it’s so distorted in the writing process’s hall of mirrors that it’s completely unrecognizable.And that’s how I think it should be.

Mice is full of surprises. How did you go about plotting the major turns in the novel? Did any of these turns surprise you when writing?
I had a general plan—I’m not the kind of writer who can sit down and start writing without having a fairly clear idea of where I want the story to go—but I left myself enough freedom so that the precise details of the unfolding story would be fresh to me as I wrote them. Sometimes these details—like a certain mobile phone going off at an inconvenient moment—would come as a pleasant surprise. Those are the best moments in writing, when a little twist presents itself out of the blue and you’re confident that it’s going to work. Even though there was a rough plan, I still took wrong turns. I can remember writing a long scene in which Shelley and Elizabeth visit a local farm shop—I have no idea now why I would have included that scene!

Shelley and her mother are revitalized by the murders they commit, which feels emotionally right but morally wrong. How do you feel about this issue?
I think that description says it all—emotionally right but morally wrong. My sympathies were strongly with Shelley and Elizabeth when I was writing Mice and for me there couldn’t have been any other ending than the one we have. At the same time, however, we know that lines are being crossed, rules broken, values we hold dear twisted out of shape, so that we can’t feel entirely comfortable with what’s happened. I think after finishing the book many will feel a lingering sense of unease about what they’ve condoned in its pages. While I was writing the novel I sent each finished third or so to my agent, and I remember her saying to me when she’d read the ending, ‘I’m not sure I know these people anymore. And that’s precisely the point. The problem with violence—even when it’s justified—is that it inevitably corrupts those who use it and erodes the moral high ground they once had.

You’ve written and illustrated fourteen children’s books. What are the challenges moving from this genre to adult fiction? Did your previous books help prepare you for Mice?
It was a challenge changing genres, I must say. I couldn’t listen to the radio or audio books when I was writing (as I can when I’m illustrating), so the working day felt harder and seemed much longer. I thought I’d be able to write a thousand words a day and discovered that I was doing well if I could manage a hundred! And of course in a work with illustrations I can draw things which are difficult to describe, but with a novel you have to do everything with words. Strange as it may sound, I think the children’s picture books I’ve written were a preparation for writing Mice in many ways. My first children’s books were very influenced by Aesop’s fables and often dealt with moral dilemmas. Ironically, stories like that can involve some complex moral philosophy and are much harder to write than they look—one wrong sentence, one wrong word even, can change the message and a story which was supposed to encourage independence, for example, might end up seeming to promote selfishness. One book I wrote was called The Little Donkey, and it was about a family of Corsican peasants who are unspeakably cruel to their donkey—they beat it and overwork it and starve it so that it’s just skin and bones. When nothing is heard from this family for several days the police chief goes to their mountain cabin to investigate, but they’ve disappeared. All he finds are some suspicious bloodstains, and the little donkey—which has, inexplicably, grown very fat. The story was never published—it probably would have sent the kids to bed completely traumatized!—but maybe it was an exaggerated first sketch of some of the issues that interested me in Mice. Its epigraph was “fear the weak” which would have worked well for Mice in some ways too.

You’ve mentioned Ian McEwan’s The Comfort of Strangers as one of your favorite novels. In what ways has McEwan been an influence on your work?
McEwan was the first writer I actually discovered for myself. I saw his collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, in a local bookshop and bought it, and was hooked immediately. There was a startling honesty about his writing, a lack of squeamishness, an unpretentiousness, and a sense of danger that was a revelation to me as a teenager—he wasn’t afraid to explore the darkest corners of the human psyche and confront taboos. His first two novels—The Cement Garden and The Comfort of Strangers—will always be in my top ten books. I never have a copy of them in the house because I’m always lending them out as must reads! I was already writing dark stories at school, but discovering McEwan helped validate those early efforts and convinced me that, ironically, it’s the dark corners that can shed the most light on the human condition.

What other writers have been particularly important for you?
Thomas Hardy was important in my teens and twenties; I think Tess of the d’Urbervilles is the most powerful feminist novel written to date. I was obsessed by W. H. Auden at university and for many years afterward, and the sharp-eyed will see several quotes or paraphrases of Auden in the text of Mice. I think Auden really showed the philosophical potential of poetry—no other writer I know makes you think so much about so many things. Zola’s Thérèse Raquin was another early favorite—it’s a wonderfully macabre melodrama, dark, compelling, and extraordinarily vivid—the mortuary scenes will stay with you forever!
I want to write my own love triangle novel one day, but Thérèse Raquin will take some beating. And Graham Greene has been an important influence too, not so much in terms of his style or subject matter but in his conviction that an author can write well, i.e., deal with profound and complex material, but still be entertaining, still take the reader on a thrilling ride.

The novel feels in many ways cinematic. What would you like to see if this was adapted for the screen?
I think we all write for cinema to a certain extent these days—I might easily stop and change something I’ve written if I think it would be difficult to film. As for the movie version of Mice, I’d love to see what two great actresses could do with the roles of Shelley and Elizabeth. People often say there aren’t enough challenging roles for women in cinema—especially for women over forty; well, Mice is a movie about two women, one in her teens and one in her late forties, and one or the other would be on the screen the whole time. More than that, the roles are truly demanding—there’s hardly a human emotion they wouldn’t have to portray between the two of them. I’d also love to see the extra touches, the extrapolations, that a good director could bring to the material. You see this in the best adaptations of novels—Deliverance, Straw Dogs, The Shining, Revolutionary Road, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest—the director understands the story and the characters so well that they can actually bring something new to it, take what the writer has done and develop aspects of it further. It’s these additions I’d be most interested to see, rather than just a slavish adaptation of the book.

What’s next for you?
I’m contracted to write another novel for Allen and Unwin and I’m about halfway through the first draft. It’s another thriller with a female protagonist and the working title is The Slide. After that, I’d like to take a break from novels and write some shorter fiction—novellas and short stories. My problem is that I’ve got about twenty-five story ideas in my notebook that I want to explore, but there’s not enough time to write them all as novels. I did a scriptwriting course a few years ago and enjoyed that a lot, so I might try to write some of them as movie scripts. Others could make good graphic novels, but I’d have to let go of the illustration side of things and try to find an illustrator I could collaborate with. On a more personal note, I’m moving back to live in the UK after twelve years away—so that’s an exciting prospect, but also a little daunting. After living in a sleepy valley in the Australian bush for the last six years it’s going to be a bit of a culture shock!

Missing: A memoir by Lindsay Harrison

2011-07-19T11:49:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Release: August 2, 2011
Pages: 240
Source: Simon & Schuster Galleygrab

In this memoir, author Lindsay Harrison describes how she was a sophomore college student when her mother suddenly went missing. A horrible search starts, and in weeks Lindsay and her two brothers and father finally know what happened to her: she commited suicide by driving her car into the ocean.

In the second half of her memoir, Lindsay attempts to understand why her mother—a selfless woman deeply entwined with her children, has left, and tries to deal with this horrible sudden loss and the grief that follows.Missing is an impressing memoir about loss and picking up life again. I thought it was very brave of the author to publish her personal story with this book. Altough sometimes it was written in a repeating way and wasn't leading to a certain point, it was impressing and moving to read.