The Diviners by Libba Bray was one of those stay-up-all-night reads. It has fleshed-out characters, fascinating plot, and melds supernatural and real history together fantastically. Watch for more of my thoughts, and hopefully I’ll have a review to the sequel in a few weeks.
YA
Review: Ready Player One
I have kind of an unpopular opinion: I didn’t like this book. (Spoilers ahead)
The premise of this book was great. It’s kind of post-apocalyptic. Humans have polluted the earth so much that huge regions are wastelands. Everyone moves to cities and live in sort of futuristic shantytowns. They all go into the OASIS, a virtual reality, all day. The creator put in easter eggs, granting the person who found them his fortune and ownership of the OASIS. Wade is chasing the easter eggs, along with some friends he made along the way.
The book is full of 80s pop culture references,which is a lot of fun and part of why it is so popular. There are video games and movies and books and I’m sure a million things I didn’t even pick up on. The premise of hunting for easter eggs throughout is cool.
Unfortunately, I just can’t get on board with this one. The references were cool at first. Then came a chapter where Wade has to recreate Ferris Beuller’s Day Off to get an easter egg. The book then goes on to describe the movie in excruciating detail. There were some references that were just for the sake of references. Wade has a replica of the Delorean described in painstaking detail only to never be seen again.
The other problem I have with this book is Wade’s infallibility. Wade is living in a world where everyone and is a hacker and we’re supposed to believe that he is this amazing, ridiculous genius. There’s absolutely no backstory that explains his genius. At first I thought his arrogance was going to result in a comeuppance, but no. Instead, he spends a large chunk of this book hiding from corporate henchmen while selling wares on the black market and becoming world famous. He accomplishes all this without a single misstep. In fact, throughout the entire book, Wade never fails at anything. The one time we do think he fails, when he becomes an indentured servant, it turns out that he orchestrated the whole thing. Everything just works out so nice and neat. It defies belief.
I didn’t hate this book. It was fun, it was witty, it had a good premise. The beginning of the book sucked me in, and was what convinced me not to abandon it. Overall, though, I can’t recommend this book. It was just too neat and tidy.
The Clockwork Scarab (Stoker and Holmes #1) by Colleen Gleason
This was included in my Fall Reading list and I just finished it over the weekend. The premise is that Mina Holmes, niece of Sherlock, and Evaline Stoker, sister of Bram, have been asked by Irene Adler to investigate the mysterious deaths of several young socialites. There is time travel, Egyptian mythology, steampunk, and literary allusions aplenty.
The Clockwork Scarab was a fast-paced, plot driven read. It was perfect for destressing from exams and just escaping for a couple hours into this fun world. Although the plots are not very similar, I kept finding myself comparing this to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Both are steampunk and feature characters from Sherlock Holmes, though that is where the comparison stops. In many ways, this is what I wanted The League to be. The heroines are smart and witty, they get themselves into trouble and work together to get out, and the mystery at the heart of the story is intriguing.
This isn’t to say that I have nothing but praise for this book. While I enjoyed the steampunk world, it didn’t really have an effect on the plot. The book would have been exactly the same without the steampunk elements. There were also some subplots that seemed shoehorned. The time travel and Dylan character made little sense – I actually kept forgetting that he existed. There’s a chance that his character was just an introduction to a plotline that will become more important in the rest of the series, but in this novel I just didn’t get it. There’s also some angst for Mina about her mom which just never quite fit. It also drove me crazy that Mina and Evaline were so antagonistic – they’re both smart and kickass ladies and there’s really no reason for each to assume the other is a jerk (shine theory, people).
Despite my qualms, I really enjoyed this and look forward to picking up the sequel The Spiritglass Charade, which just came out. SInce the first book ended on a bit of a cliffhanger, I’m looking forward to continuing the series!
We Were Liars
I’ve been seeing We Were Liars all over Booktube and Twitter for months. I was hesitant to buy the hardcover, since I am cheap and $18 for 200 pages seemed steep. So I waited on the library waiting list, dropping from patron 345/345 to having it downloaded on my Kindle.
This book was addicting. I’m a fast reader, so I knew it wasn’t going to take me long, but I wasn’t fully prepared to read it in one sitting. I loved the writing style, and I always love an unreliable narrator.
It’s difficult to give a synopsis without giving anything away. The bare-bones of the story is that the book centers around an extremely wealthy WASP family who owns an island in New England. They are typical WASPs – never show weakness, don’t discuss feelings, wear pastels and cardigans, etc.Cady, the narrator, had a brain injury two summers ago and can’t remember anything that happened. This summer, she’s back with her cousins and aunts trying to piece together what happened that summer.
This story is about primarily about privilege. You see throughout the book how the immense privilege the Sinclair’s have has essentially crippled them. As Cady says about her mother and aunts “They had the best educations, a thousand chances, a thousand connections, and still they’d ended up unable to support themselves.” They fight over their father’s trust fund, pitting the cousins against each other in efforts to secure their futures. They are unable to relate to each other, or to any one else. The story isn’t “poor little rich girls,” though. It is critiquing the very existence of this privilege – though sometimes trying to hit you over the head with it.
There were a lot of things I loved about this book, but subtlety was not one of them. The theme was made clear, both in Cady’s criticism of her mother and Gat’s criticism of the whole family. It was made clear to a point that I wanted to say “We get it – privilege is bad, can we find out more about the story please?” The characters were also not that well developed. I had a hard time distinguishing between the aunt’s, becuase there weren’t really any distinguishing characteristics. This may have been intentional – to showcase Cady’s inner-focus or to showcase how ridiculous they are – but it didn’t really work for me. Similarly with the cousins, they’re supposed to be Cady’s partner’s in crime, but they don’t really do that much in the story.
The twist was something I saw coming, but that didn’t make it any less horrible when I got to it. In the end, it’s like Cady has put on glasses. The whole time, she’s been seeing the fuzzy outline of what happened that summer, and now it is all clear.
An Abundance of Katherines – John Green
An Abundance of Katherine’s was the last John Green I had to read. Like Paper Towns and Looking for Alaska, I found it to be pleasant, standard YA fare.
Colin can be best described as desperate and clingy. He has a habit of dating girls named Katherine, was a child prodigy, and has a best friend named Hasan. He and Hasan go on a road trip in Colin’s old car after his most recent girlfriend, where they end up in Tennessee and living with a girl named Lindsay and her mom Hollis.
At times, this book was a little too cute for me. He is a former child prodigy, he only dates girls named Katherine, and he has a charming old car with a name. It’s one too many cutesy things for me. I thought especially the Katherine’s thing. It did serve to emphasize how he wasn’t interested in the girls as people but as vessels for him to obsess over and cling to. However, the sheer number of them and the fact that none of them were spelled differently was just a little much.
Stylistically, I think Green played around in some interesting ways. I really liked the footnotes. They let him give more background information and resulted in more than one chuckle. I actually wish that he had continued playing around and evolving in his following two books. Those are both well-written, but stylistically very similar. It’s always interesting to see authors experiment.
I really liked Hassan, Colin’s best friend. He has an interesting arc and character development. I also love his obsession with Judge Judy. One thing I realized while reading this was that I know a fair number of Arab people, but I don’t think I have actually read a book with a character of Arab descent.
Overall, I enjoyed this book. It was a bit of departure from Alaska and Paper Towns, but in a good way. I still don’t understand the whole Teen Whisperer/YA Savior thing. His books are solid but nothing fantastically amazing, but that’s the subject of another post.
In Which the Media Completely Misunderstands YA
I have been, along with everyone else between 10-40, following the media storm around The Fault in Our Stars movie. I enjoy John Green’s books, I love his and Hank Green’s YouTube projects, and I thought the TFiOS was a wonderful book.
However.
I grew up with modern YA. While I have a lot of love for Judy Blume, I devoured Sarah Dessen. I loved Scott Westerfeld and Maureen Johnson (and still do). Young adult literature has such a wide variety of female and male protagonists. There are kids who have mental health issues, who have crappy home situations, just have growing pains, or are trying to fight off a dystopian regime. YA is home to so many successful female authors, including one JK Rowling for whom the NYTimes created a whole new best seller list.
Because of my background with YA, I can’t help but cringe at every article that has been written by some 40-something white guy who hasn’t read a YA book besides Twilight and TFiOS. These articles denigrate YA fiction by holding up TFiOS as the exception, not the rule. Look at this book about REAL teenagers, not sparkly vampires! And more importantly, look at this novel written by a man, we all knew there were too many ladies in YA for it to be Serious Literature, amirite?
The people writing these articles are so horribly out of touch with the scope of YA lit and the teens (and adults) who read it. They overlook thousands of books that tackle serious issues with humor and grace, and help teenagers feel like they’re a little less alone, during a time that can be so overwhelming and confusing. They span genres, with YA being all-encompassing of dystopia, vampires, fantasy, or romance.
What’s horrible about the coverage of TFiOS is that an opportunity to introduce all YA has to offer to a wider audience, is instead being made it about Twilight vs. TFiOS and poking fun at teenage girls. In doing so, the writers demonstrate that they completely misunderstand YA and, more dangerously, introduce their twisted notion of YA to a larger audience.
News media needs more people who actually understand YA to write about it. People who grew up with modern YA or discovered it as adults, who understand the dynamics of the genres and its fan base. What is doesn’t need is a single more article denigrating the readers and writers of YA.
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children – Ransom Riggs
I’ve been seeing this book around book blogs, booktube, and bestsellers lists for a couple years. I could never actually figure out what it was about because it’s one of those annoying books with quotes on the back instead of a synopsis. I was really captivated by the creepy, old-timey pictures. I have a fascination with creepy old photos and this book is built around them.
The plot was so inventive. A teenager in Florida has been growing up hearing fairytales from his grandfather. His grandfather was a refugee in Wales during World War II, who went on to fight in the war, and eventually make his way to America. Obviously, as a teenager, Jacob does not believe the stories anymore. Of course, they are true.
This book is mournful and exciting and fascinating. The world Ransom Riggs creates is just so different, with time loops and alternate universes and kids with weird powers. It’s like Addams Family meets WWII meets contemporary YA. The background story is fascinating, and the creepy pictures add a special element.
One element in this book I could have done without was Jacob’s parents. They don’t really get much characterization, they’re just the bitchy rich mom and clueless dad. I understand that this is from the perspective of the teenager, but the characters don’t add anything to the story and I found myself eye rolling at their predictable behavior. Further, the way Jacob talks about them makes him seem like a spoiled rich brat, which is not how he is presented the rest of the novel.
There’s a twist to this book that I totally did not see coming and served to significantly raise the stakes for Jacob and his friends. This book definitely picks up pace at the end – it goes from pleasant read to can’t put down.
I really enjoyed Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children and can’t wait to read the follow-up, Hollow City.
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
I know I am basically the last person on the planet to read this book, let alone book blogger, but I read TFIOS in one afternoon and, unsurprisingly, the feels. Also, spoilers. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
I have been avoiding reading this book ever since it came out, for a couple reasons. I had read Looking for Alaska and Paper Towns a couple years ago. They were pretty good, standard YA fare, but I didn’t see what the huge fuss was about John Green. I like his YouTube videos but I just didn’t see why he was supposed to be the messiah of YA. I still don’t. However, after reading this book I definitely see why he is so popular. It was head and shoulders above his previous work and just really good YA fiction.
I was also avoiding reading it because I knew it was heartbreaking and there were cancer kids, so I pretty much knew someone was going to die and I just didn’t want to deal with that.
Now, I have finally read it in the span of three hours. There isn’t much I could say about this book that hasn’t already been said. Green humanizes teenagers with cancer in ways many authors haven’t. He makes a concerted effort to go against inspiration porn and the saintly, asexual view we have of illness, and I think he is successful.
I loved Hazel because she was at the end of the day just a teenager. She loves trashy TV, has crushes, likes the mall, and she doesn’t want you to burden her with expectations of her behavior. She knows when she is being condescended to and is pissed off about it. Though her illness and dealing with that illness is obviously a large part of her character, it doesn’t define her.
I also loved her parents. That’s a problem I had with My Sister’s Keeper, that the parents were demonized, given one dimension, or saintly at different points in the book. Hazel’s parents were dealing with difficult circumstances, but like Hazel, were regular people.
I did have a few qualms. As sweet as the romance is and as refreshing as it was to have a real cancer kid romance, Augustus was just really pretentious and douchey. Even his name, what 16 year old is named Augustus? In some ways, I think his pretentiousness stems a lot from just being a teenager, but he is still just really pretentious. I think it would have been funnier if Hazel or Isaac called him out on it and it was used for comedic effect instead of everyone gazing adoringly upon his fears of oblivion.
And maybe I just don’t know that much about cancer, but it seems really unbelievable that he would just be covered in mets out of the blue. I’m guessing if you’re a teenage cancer survivor and have only been out of treatment for a few years, they keep you under a close watch and would notice some forming. Or maybe I just know nothing about how cancer works.
Overall, this book was a great way to spend the afternoon, followed by several episodes of Bob’s Burgers to pull me out of my sadness.
A Series of Unfortunate Events: Second Three
Continuing in my Series of Unfortunate Events re-read, I read The Miserable Mill, The Austere Academy, and The Ersatz Elevator. These three start to move away from the more formulaic first three books, where they get a new guardian at the beginning and leave at the end after Olaf has killed him or her.
The Miserable Mill is one of my favorite books in the series because it’s so unexpected. There have been a long list of guardians, and then to suddenly see the Baudelaires in a new setting is refreshing. Sir is fantastic as the evil guardian, with his smoke covered face, gum lunches, and coupon paychecks. In some ways, this book is more sinister than the previous three, with a guardian whose face is never seen, Klaus being hypnotized, and not seeing Olaf until late in the book.
The Austere Academy sees the introduction of the Quagmire triplets, in whom the Baudelaires finally find some friends. This book also contains my personal favorite insult ever: “cake sniffer.” This book is a bit less tense than the previous books, the Baudelaire’s circumstances don’t seem so dire in this installment with the introduction of friends and the school being boring but not deadly. The ending is also refreshing, with new stakes and the first real cliffhanger.
In the third installment of this chunk, The Ersatz Elevator has more world building, with the “In” crowd, Cafe Salmonella, and other details about the city. This series is really interesting because it doesn’t explicitly say where it takes place or when, and it has many similarities to our world but also vast differences. I love the little details giving us more clues to this world the Baudelaire’s live in. Jerome’s ending is heartbreaking, but not at all surprising in the context of the adults in this series.
I’m excited to see the books becoming more complex and rapidly moving toward plot points I have only vague memories of. I’m looking forward to the next seven, which I’ll be posting later this month or next.
Madness Underneath by Maureen Johnson
Madness Underneath is the sequel to The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson. Since this is a sequel, there will be spoilers for the first book. Really just spoilers in general.
I want to start by saying that I loved The Name of the Star. I read it in about two sittings. I loved the whole concept – an American girl in British boarding school, the way that Johnson conceived of ghosts, Jack the Ripper, secret police groups, it was great. The characters were engaging, the world was real, and the plot kept me in a constant state of anxiety.
That being said, I was pretty disappointed with the sequel. Most of the book is really just wrapping up loose ends from the first and setting the tone for the second. There’s a lot of Rory dealing with her trauma, which is interesting and character building, except that you get 75% of the way through the book and realize nothing has really happened. There was a thread, a crack in the road where ghosts seem to be leaking out, that was kind of dropped halfway through, maybe it’s connected with the events later but we don’t know yet if it will come back or if it’s just been dropped.
Rory’s actions later in the book don’t make a ton of sense. Jane’s arguments for why she should run away are pretty lightweight, and Rory doesn’t even seem that convinced until suddenly she’s throwing her phone away and totally on board. Her stupid decision (because at that point that’s what it was – they hadn’t threatened her or forced her yet) is what lands Stephen in the hospital. Also, I know there are a lot of Stephen/Rory shippers but I’m not into it. He’s older and in a position of authority over her, whether he’s only a few years older or a lot it’s still stepping into icky territory.
Overall, I’m still excited to read the end of this trilogy but I was pretty disappointed in Madness Underneath. In the next book, I’m hoping to see more friends from school again, and a good resolution to this Jane insanity as well as the crack in the road.
ErinKwed 