Reason to Breathe by Rebecca Donovan

Posted on by
Reply

Synopsis:
Emma has everything going for her–success in the classroom and on the soccer field–but her home life is a nightmare of epic proportions, and she’s just trying to get by until she meets Evan and decides she deserves more out of life.

Review:
The love story in Reason to Breathe just blew me away. I really felt like I was falling in love myself–and I never get that feeling when I’m reading books. Romance just doesn’t do it for me in general–I’m not inclined to let myself get swept up in it. The last time I was this taken in by the power of the dynamic between two people was when I read Outlander by Diana Gabaldon–and if you’ve read that book and are shaking your head in disbelief, yes, I am comparing Emma and Evan to Claire and Jamie.

What kills me the most about the book is that Rebecca Donovan didn’t publish her book through traditional means. She e-published. I chose the book because it’s part of Amazon Prime’s Kindle library program, where you can get 1 free book a month (but can’t keep it). It’s really incredible to me how far e-publishing has come.

Bitter End by Jennifer Brown

Posted on by
Reply

Synopsis:
A teen girl’s new boyfriend isn’t the gentleman he seems to be, but she alienates her two best friends when they try to intervene, with violent results.

Review:
Bitter End is an insightful look at the psychology of a teen girl in love with an abusive boy. I thought that Jennifer Brown‘s execution was perceptive, risky, and emotionally honest. It was hard to watch Alex push her friends away, hard to see her put up with excuses and apologies, but I understood every choice she made from the inside out.

Hate List by Jennifer Brown

Posted on by
1

Synopsis:
Her boyfriend shot up the school then shot himself, and now Val has to make it through senior year.

Review:
Wow. I am so impressed with the execution in Hate List, a book that could’ve gone wrong in so many ways, but ended up getting everything right. Val’s predicament as the girlfriend of a school shooter tore me to pieces. I could see her point of view and wished I could send her in a better direction, even though I knew she had to learn her lessons the hard way. And I cried at the end!

Leftovers by Laura Wiess

Posted on by
Reply

Synopsis:
The daughter of an aspiring judge and her best friend, a loner whose parents and brother party all the time, find themselves contemplating a devastating and dangerous course of action when confronted with a very personal injustice.

Review:
The friendship between Ardith and Blair in Leftovers is somewhat reminiscent of the movie Heavenly Creatures, one of my all-time favorites. Alienated from their parents and desperate for a connection, the relationship between the girls blurs boundaries and takes on life-saving properties for both of them. And when rupture occurs, violence follows.

I loved these girls even as they scared me to death. I really impressed with the layered, complicated story that Laura Wiess created for them. I think this book is heads and shoulders above most issue-driven YA and I think it’s a must-read for any fan of the genre.

Spoiler Edition: A Dance with Dragons by George RR Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5)

Posted on by
Reply

Synopsis:
Tyrion becomes a slave, Dany pines for Daario while marrying someone else, her dragons eat children and incinerate a prince, Jon Snow upends 8000 years of tradition, a couple of no-goodniks get baked into a pie, Stannis can haz teh dumb, Theon Greyjoy lives the worst version of a Lifetime movie thanks to the Bastard of Bolton, Arya kills time, Ser Barristan the Bold displays mad skillz, Davos is not dead, Victarion rows his boat, Asha picks the wrong fort to defend, Cersei and Jaime don’t get back together, everyone eats something called “neeps” and Bran turns into a tree.

Review:
My second read of A Dance with Dragons was the audio version, narrated by the no-longer-incomparable Roy Dotrice. Unfortunately, he turned Daenerys into a ninety-year-old Irish crone and gave Cersei almost the same voice as Tyrion. But I forgive him because he still brings incredible thespianship to his reading and I was definitely excited to take any chance I could get to listen.

Many have complained that Dance is just A Feast for Crows part two, complete with aimless wandering and annoyingly resurrected characters. However, I forgive Martin, too. I am too invested in this world to give up now. When we get to the end is when I’ll decide if it was worth it. For now, I’ll just assume that it is.

Oh, and I am in love with A Podcast of Ice and Fire.

All Her Father’s Guns by James Warner

Posted on by
Reply

Synopsis:
A right-wing gun lover falls for a Lacanian psychoanalyst/Romanian emigré while trying to bring down his pharmaceutical-abusing ex-wife’s run for office, even as their daughter makes a decision that could destroy all of them.

Review:
“He had five sons by about nine different women” was the phrase that made me fall in love with the satire and humor of All Her Father’s Guns. James Warner’s ability to spin a sentence in an unexpected direction would make this book a crazy wild ride even if he’d chosen more sedate characters and subject matter.

But Warner has no interest in taking the easy way out. He tells the story from the point of view of two characters: Reid, a failure of an intellectual who has no idea how to live in the real world, and Cal, the father of Reid’s depressed girlfriend Lyllyan, an extreme right winger who loves his guns with the same ferocity with which he hates his ex-wife Tabytha, herself a train wreck of a political candidate with more skeletons in her closet than Rush Limbaugh and Ted Haggard combined.

Even though every single character in this book commits at least one act that should make me hate them, I ended up falling for all of them and wishing them happiness in the crazy world they made for themselves. And it’s always refreshing to discover an author with such a hedonistic appreciation for the glorious insanity that life has to offer.

Mudbound by Hillary Jordan

Posted on by
Reply

Synopsis:
When a reluctant farmer’s wife moves to a tin-roof shack in postwar rural Mississippi, her passion for her husband’s war hero brother becomes part of a web of tension that engulfs the town in hatred and violence.

Review:
Mudbound took me by surprise. Told from multiple points of view, the story manages to be inevitable without being predictable, with characters who all have very distinct voices. The casual, every day racism of even the most sympathetic characters is shocking to this 21st century Yankee girl. Hillary Jordan reminds readers of our hideous past without being preachy, and has written a book that adds to the discourse on the darkest part of American history. Best part–the last sentence made me cry.

11/22/63 by Stephen King

Posted on by
Reply

Synopsis:
A schoolteacher travels through a wormhole to stop Lee Harvey Oswald from assassinating JFK.

Review:
11/22/63 started out really strong. I loved the premise and knew that Stephen King would do a lot more than just tell the A-story of Jake Epping, time traveler and would-be history changer. The historical aspects were really well done, particularly through the life Jake builds in small town Jodie, Texas, and the love story is poignant.

However, I felt like the ending was a foregone conclusion, and I didn’t feel like King delivered on the promise he made by setting the opening horror sequence in Derry right at the same time as It. I was expecting a lot more than I got.

Taliesin by Stephen R. Lawhead (The Pendragon Cycle, Book 1)

Posted on by
1

Synopsis:
A princess of Atlantis flees to ancient England where her paths cross with a mage-in-training whose parentage is unknown.

Review:
I was drawn to Taliesin (which I desperately want to be an anagram of Atlantis, but it’s not) because it’s a retelling of the King Arthur legend with historically accurate place names and details, and with the Christianity an important, unoppressive element. Several major characters are converted to Christianity in episodes that are emotionally and spiritually powerful, but Lawhead doesn’t make that the happy ending. He understands that the Christian life is filled with drama and conflict, both inner and outer, and Lawhead doesn’t let his Christian characters have all the answers.

Where I disengaged from the book was with the character of Charis. Charis was proud, fierce, headstrong–all character qualities I normally love–but I think Lawhead romanticized her too much and made her inaccessible. All the men worshipped her but he didn’t give her any qualities that let me identify with her as a woman.

I really liked the character of Lile, the pagan wife to the king of Atlantis. She was a very nuanced character, set up to be the “evil stepmother” but proving to be both friend and enemy to Charis. I really appreciated that aspect. I’m hoping that her daughter Morgiane doesn’t end up being one-dimensional.

As for Taliesin, the bard/mage discovered in a river as a baby, I’m not sure how I feel about him. He’s certainly heroic, but like with Charis I experienced some distance from him. I think he was put on a pedestal by Lawhead and I couldn’t totally connect with his struggles.

I will definitely give the next book a try because these criticisms could just be first book issues. I’ve never read a memorable King Arthur telling so I’m keen to see this one through.