Category: Fiction

In this first book of the Chemical Garden trilogy, Lauren DeStefano introduces readers to a world in which scientists [whose intention was to cure all disease] have accidentally shortened the human life span.  Males only live to be 25, and females only live to be 20.  Some people have hope that the older generation [who still have a normal life span] will be able to fix the problem, though many have given up hope, and it seems as though the entire world is falling apart.  Young girls are routinely kidnapped and forced to work in brothels or to enter polygamous marriages so they can bear as many children as possible in an attempt to forestall the collapse of the human race.  This is how we meet Rhine.

Rhine’s parents were scientists, and they died in an explosion created by protesters.  She and her twin brother did their best to look out for one another, but she was still snatched off the street, transported several states away, and forced to marry a rich man named Linden.  Rhine is determined to escape from her new life, despite the riches and extravagance now at her disposal, because she would rather live the remainder of her short life in freedom and with her only remaining family.  She isn’t exactly sure how she might escape, let alone get back to her home and her brother, but Rhine knows she would rather die trying than give up and potentially become the subject of Linden’s father’s nefarious experiments.

I never really thought of myself as being old enough to have  historical fiction about my generation, but this book has changed my mind.  Computers with high speed internet have become so ingrained in my life that I sometimes forget how painfully slow dial-up used to be.  Kids today might not remember those AOL trial offer CD-ROMS that used to come in the mail and litter customer service counters, but I distinctly remember wondering what the internet would be like — then fighting with my parents about tying up the phone line when I started to use it!  And although I was introduced to chat rooms, IMs, and e-mail in much the same way as Emma and Josh, I was not able to peer into my future via a mystical connection with my [15-years-in-the-future] Facebook account.

Josh and Emma weren’t sure what to make of it at first.  Sure, the picture looked a lot like an older version of Emma… but it had to be a prank.  Right?  Once they started to believe that this could possibly be a glimpse into the future, it became increasingly tempting for Emma to try and change the future.  If Emma saw something indicating that she would become unhappy in the future, she tried to think of what she could change now.  And while Josh thought his future self seemed pretty happy, he wasn’t so sure about how to handle some of the things he learned about other people.  It reminded me a bit of Back to the Future 2 with ever-changing Facebook status updates instead of actual time travel.  A fun read that makes you think?  Awesome!

Forget what you think you know about mermaids.  They aren’t beautiful creatures with beautiful voices who long for nothing more than to be human… They are ruthless creatures who happen to be beautiful and have beautiful voices so they can better lure humans into the water in order to kill them and absorb their emotions!  Calder White is a merman whose family lives in Lake Superior.  He leaves his sisters and migrates to the tropics  during the winter, but his instincts and family bond force him to return to Lake Superior every summer.  Returning is especially important this year, though, because his sisters believe that they have finally found Jason Hancock.  ”Who’s that?,” you ask.  Oh, only the man responsible for their mother’s death.

When Jason Hancock was a baby, his father fell into the lake and was rescued by a mermaid [Calder’s mom].  In exchange for his life, he promised to give her his infant son [Jason] — but he left and took his family with him.  Calder’s mother was furious and, in her anger, was caught and killed in a fisherman’s net.  Not only do mermaids refuse to accept broken promises, but this family of mer-people wants revenge for their mother’s death as well.  Calder’s job is fairly simple.  He needs to find a way to get close to the family so that he can lure Jason into the water, where his sister’s will exact their mother’s revenge.  The only problem?  Calder starts to have feelings for Jason’s eldest daughter, Lily.  My favorite part of this book?  The end page that said a sequel would be out in 2013!

Mandy Kalinowski is pregnant and scared.  She isn’t sure about much in her life, but she is sure that she wants her baby to have a better life than she can provide — so she plans to give her baby up for adoption.

Jill MacSweeny has been lonely and depressed since her father’s sudden, unexpected death about a year before.  She has driven away most of her former friends but has a mom and a boyfriend who are ready and willing to support her.  The problem is that she doesn’t want to learn how to move on… She just wants things back the way they were.

How do their lives intersect?  Jill’s mom, Robin, is planning to adopt Mandy’s baby — without lawyers or an adoption agency.  Jill is extremely cynical, to say the least.  She is not happy that her mom is trying to adopt a baby, but she is more afraid that Mandy is going to decide to keep the baby and break her mom’s heart.  Mandy knows that the Robin is better prepared to raise this baby, but she also fantasizes about running away and keeping/raising the baby herself.  It’s hard to imagine anything but a heart-breaking ending to this story, but I promise you will cry HAPPY tears for this one!  An amazing story about life, love, and finding your place in the world.

What’s even better than a companion book for  The Wednesday Wars?  A companion book that works just fine as a stand alone book!  (Some people call this book a sequel, but I am calling it a “companion” book because it has a different main character and doesn’t require you to read the first book in order to understand what’s going on.)  There IS a bit of a shout-out to Holling Hoodhood, which is nice, but this book focuses on Doug Swieteck — one of Holling’s friends whose family has to move upstate, to a small town called Marysville, when his dad’s bad attitude causes him his job.

We learn early on that Doug’s father is a jerk; he treats his family like trash and doesn’t grasp the simple notion that the world doesn’t owe him  anything that he didn’t work to earn.  Doug’s mom is really passive and pretty much ignores her husband’s faults while trying her best not to anger him.  And then there are Doug’s brothers — one who is serving in Vietnam, and one who moves with the family and then falls in with the local herd of jerks.  Luckily, Doug meets Lil Spicer and gets a job delivering groceries for her dad’s deli.  Through this job, he gets out of the house, forms relationships with some of the townspeople, and makes a little bit of money to boot.  There are several points where things get really rough for Doug, but he always manages to find solace in the local library where he is intrigued by, and learns to draw, the birds found in the John James Audubon book kept on display.  With its complex characters, rich setting, and the message of hope and perseverance, I think this book would appeal to nearly anyone who likes a good story.

After trying to read Going Bovine and feeling like I was too dumb to understand what the heck was going on, I wasn’t sure I wanted to read Beauty Queens.  Luckily, I talked to a coworker who thought this book would be perfect for me, and I decided to give the audiobook a chance.   Shortly after finishing this book, I discovered a blog post entitled “Ten Things I Want to Tell Teenage Girls” and it was as if this entire book was condensed into number 10 . . . in a much less sarcastic way.   I think that might be a big part of what I loved about this book — the sarcasm, that is.  I am an *extremely* sarcastic person, and I just love some tongue-in-cheek satire.

Have you ever asked yourself, “What would happen if a plane full of beauty queens crash-landed on a deserted island?”  Then, this is the book for you! Beauty Queens examines consumer culture, reality TV, politics, rom-coms, the beauty industry, and religion while exploring issues of gender, race, sexuality, beauty, and identity.  While it’s hard to believe that a unified storyline can emerge from a story that tackles so many issues, it really came together nicely.  Although the issues covered in this book are totally serious, Bray manages to be anything but serious and still makes her point.  (She also manages to sound like a full cast of readers in the audiobook!)  I wish I could assign this book as required reading to every insecure girl/woman I know so they could start to see how ridiculous it is that we allow society to put so much pressure on us to be “perfect.”  One of my favorite lines was from an advertizement for Lady ‘Stache Off — “Because there’s nothing wrong with you . . . that can’t be fixed.”  I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of our culture telling me that I need to “fix” myself.  I hope to teach my daughter (and every teen girl I work with) that we’re all beautiful just the way we are thankyouverymuch!

Happy Reading!

Some books were just meant to be audiobooks.  I never actually read physical books of Feed or Thirteen Reasons Why, so I cannot say for sure, but I can’t imagine that reading them would have been anywhere close to the experience I had listening to them.  I don’t think I would have done “the feed” justice on my own, and I firmly believe that listening to Hannah’s tapes along with Clay helped me to experience his emotional reactions much better than reading the text would have.  I decided to listen to this book because my current audiobook was almost over and this one was sitting on the NEW shelf.  I recalled that it got a good review, but I didn’t remember anything about it.  Well . . .  I am really glad I “accidentally” took out the audiobook instead of reading the book because it definitely reminded me a lot of Feed!

Todd Hewitt lives in Prentisstown, a small settlement on New World.  His people came to New World to escape religious persecution, but they found plenty of new problems upon arrival.  The two main problems were the Spackle (lifeforms indigenous to the planet) and a germ that causes “Noise” (the projection of one’s thoughts so that other people can hear and/or see them).  In this first book of the Chaos Walking trilogy, we learn two very important details:  all of the women of Prentisstown are dead, and the boys “become men” at 13.  Todd, the last remaining boy, is feeling anxious and confused about his impending 13th birthday because of all the secrets that are kept from the boys — including details about the actual ritual that will complete his transformation from boy to man.  When, all of the sudden, Prentisstown becomes unsafe for Todd, his adoptive parents (Ben and Cillian — pronounced Killian) send him out into the wilderness with his dog (Manchee), a hunting knife, his mother’s diary, and a map that should lead him to another settlement.

There was a lot to set up in this first book, but it was not overly difficult to follow.  Plus, the action and adventure work well to keep readers hooked while bits and pieces of the history of Prentisstown are revealed.  Definitely a book/audiobook I would recommend to fans of dystopian science fiction.

Because Perry wants to get into Columbia, he has pretty much always played by the rules.  He understands that he needs to get good grades and that obtaining a recommendation by doing an internship at his father’s law firm is very important.  He works his butt off most of the time, but he’s still a teenager and, therefore, wants to do fun things once in a while.  That’s why he belongs to a band.  And even though many teenagers look forward to their senior prom, Perry and his friends have other plans for that night — they’ve finally lined up a gig at a club in New York City!  Unfortunately for Perry, his dad doesn’t care.  His dad wants him to bring Gobija [the foreign exchange student who has been staying with their family] to prom.

If Gobija had been the teen movie stereotype — hot and anxious to date a geeky American boy — Perry might have been happy about this arrangement.  Since she was dorky and standoffish, though, Perry was looking forward to the end of her stay and tried his best to weasel his way out of this date.  It was rather obvious that things went a bit differently than expected since the book opened with Perry saying, “You shot me!”  The bad news is that, after the initial teaser, I had to go back to the beginning of the story to find out how the heck he got shot.  The good news is that the story moved so quickly that I got back to the wild ride before too long.