Category Archives: Young Adult/Teen 12-18

Review: Angelfall by Susan Ee

Book Review and Content, Fantasy, Paranormal, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , ,

Angelfall by Susan EeAngelfall (Penryn and the End of Days #1)
Susan Ee
Hodder & Stoughton
Published May 23, 2013 (Originally published 2011)

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Since angels of the apocalypse swarmed the skies, humanity has been on the run. With their supplies running low, Penryn and her small family risk their lives to scavenge for food and find themselves in the middle of an angel battle. When angels carry Penryn’s sister away, she’ll do anything to get her back, even form an alliance with one of the enemy.

Angelfall is dark and twisty. Penryn not only battles outside evil, but also struggles to cope with her mother’s mental illness and the voices she hears which tell her to do things that sometimes put Penryn and her sister in danger. I liked Penryn’s fierceness and her intelligence. Her determination keeps her going even when the odds stack steeply against her. I liked Raffe, the angel with whom she forms an alliance, too. He definitely has that quiet, wounded-warrior thing going on, but as he and Penryn get to know each other, he also consistently acts honorably toward her, and uses his strength to compliment hers.

There were a couple of moments in the story that required a heavy dose of willing-suspension-of-disbelief. Though Raffe’s other injuries heal super-quickly, the place where his wings have been severed remains raw and open. There’s some plot armor happening there, and we sort of accept it as, hey, angels clearly have different bodies than we do. Later, when Penryn and Raffe conceal themselves among humans, Raffe hides his wounds and the fact that he weighs far less than a man his size would with little trouble. I was pretty willing to buy into the necessary setup of the story, so those things didn’t trip me up too much. Another hurdle for Christian readers may be the secularized story of angels. Angelfall does reference verses about angels in the Bible, but in this story, angels are cut off from God, with only one leader claiming to be His mouthpiece.

For readers interested in urban fantasy and fans of Melissa de la Cruz’s Blue Bloods series, Angelfall is a sure win. (It’s also quite a bit cleaner in terms of content.) The angels vs. humans element might also appeal to readers of Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone, but the style of Angelfall is much more urban, if that makes sense. Less artsy, more adventure-ish.

Recommended for Ages 13 up.

Cultural Elements
Penryn’s sister Paige is in a wheelchair due to an accident. Penryn and her family are Asian-Americans.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Mild profanity used fairly frequently (maybe once per chapter or so?)

Romance/Sexual Content
Raffe and Penryn crash a party of sorts in which girls seem to be serving as escorts or prostitutes. The girls wear provocative dresses. Some kissing between boy and girl.

Spiritual Content
Raffe and the other angels have a story that begins in the Bible (Raffe references this in a conversation with Penryn), but it diverges. Angels seem to be cut off from God. Raffe himself makes a comment about not having spoken with God in a very long time. One angel seems to serve at God’s mouthpiece, but there’s some doubt about whether or not he’s speaking truth. There’s a sense of hopelessness or abandonment. A demon forms an alliance with some of the angels. A swarm of demon-like creatures sweep through a forest attacking anyone in reach.

Raffe speaks to Penryn about the history of angels who took humans as lovers and the judgment they faced. He made a commitment to prevent his kind from ever experiencing that again, though it seems not all of his angel brethren feel the same.

Violent Content
Battles between humans and angels and angels vs. angels. Gangs control the streets and murder people. Penryn’s mother stabs a dead man. Starvation has led some to cannibalism. A scorpion-like monster feeds on energy from humans in a really creepy scene. Later it attacks a girl.

Drug Content
None.

 

April AVA Readathon Challenge Update

Lists, News and Fun, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, ,

This month I’m participating in the AVA Readathon Challenge with Bookshelves and Paperbacks. I listed the ARCs (advance release copies) of books I’m planning to read this month. Some have been lingering in my to-be-read stack for far too long. Others were a bit of a cheat because they come out this month, so I wanted to read them anyway.

Here’s the list I posted at the beginning of the month:

Note: I don’t know why Between the Lies ended up on this list, since it doesn’t come out until September. Probably I got it mixed up with something else, though now I can’t remember what. So that one is last on my list for now.

What I’ve Read So Far

Racial Profiling: Everyday Inequality
This is a basic breakdown of what racial profiling is and the areas in our society in which it’s still having a profound impact on our lives. While it’s a pretty charged and political topic, I felt like the author worked very hard to make this a really informative look with a lot of statistics and historical context. I think it was a great read for me, though I want to go back and look at a few passages again because sometimes the statistics were a bit overwhelming to me.

Letters to the Lost
I met Brigid Kemmerer at ApollyCon in March and recognized the cover of her book. I thought I’d requested the ARC already via NetGalley, but apparently I did not! So I sent off my pretty-please-can-I-review-this request and sure enough, Bloomsbury sent me a copy. Yay! Gotta say– this is one of the best angsty (but clean, apart from a bit of language) romances I’ve read in a LONG time. I loved it.

Defy the Stars
I’d been meaning to read some Claudia Gray since hearing buzz about A Thousand Pieces of You. The characters were fantastic and the plot took me some interesting directions. I was a bit disappointed in the ending, but overall, the characters and story world still make this one a win for me.

Next on my list?
Up next is Kami Garcia’s The Lovely Reckless. I’m still hoping to work through my list by the end of the month, even though I’m running a little bit behind. I hope to have a bit more time this weekend and next for some catch-up reading.

What are you reading?

How about you? What book have you been meaning to read, but haven’t gotten around to cracking open just yet? What book has you cranking through pages right now? Leave a comment to let me know. I would love to commiserate over impossibly long TBR lists and celebrate finding a great read with you.

Review and Giveaway: Spindle Fire by Lexa Hillyer

Book Review and Content, Fantasy, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , ,

Spindle Fire
Lexa Hillyer
HarperCollins
Published April 11, 2017

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

About Spindle Fire
Half sisters Isabelle and Aurora are polar opposites: Isabelle is the king’s headstrong illegitimate daughter, whose sight was tithed by faeries; Aurora, beautiful and sheltered, was tithed her sense of touch and her voice on the same day. Despite their differences, the sisters have always been extremely close.

And then everything changes, with a single drop of Aurora’s blood–and a sleep so deep it cannot be broken.

As the faerie queen and her army of Vultures prepare to march, Isabelle must race to find a prince who can awaken her sister with the kiss of true love and seal their two kingdoms in an alliance against the queen.

Isabelle crosses land and sea; unearthly, thorny vines rise up the palace walls; and whispers of revolt travel in the ashes on the wind. The kingdom falls to ruin under layers of snow. Meanwhile, Aurora wakes up in a strange and enchanted world, where a mysterious hunter may be the secret to her escape . . . or the reason for her to stay.

Spindle Fire is the first book in a lush fantasy duology set in the dwindling, deliciously corrupt world of the fae and featuring two truly unforgettable heroines.

My Review
Strangely, this is the second book I’ve read lately that’s written in third person point-of-view with present-tense action. I liked the storytelling but the verb tense didn’t seem to fit as well as in Defy the Stars.

The characters were a huge win. I can’t think of a single character I didn’t like—even including the villains. I will keep on rooting for Gil because he’s awesome. I loved the scenes from his perspective, and his descriptions of how Isabella interacted with him were so deep and emotive.

As far as plot, I wasn’t sure what to expect before I started reading. I knew it had elements from Alice in Wonderland and Sleeping Beauty but was having a hard time seeing exactly how those two stories would stack together well. I thought the mash-up was a success. The villain(s) reminded me of both stories, and Aurora’s journey definitely reminded me of the 2010 film version of Alice in Wonderland in the way she had to find her true self through the adventure in the Borderlands.

This has a bit of a darker edge to it than some other fairytale-inspired stories, but I liked it a lot. I think fans of Forbidden Wish or The School for Good and Evil will find Spindle Fire to be a worthy addition to the genre. I’m so glad I had a chance to read it and can’t wait to read the sequel and find out how the rest of the story ends.

Recommended for Ages 13 up.

Cultural Elements
Both princesses have fair skin. One reference says the Aubin prince has darker skin.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Mild profanity used infrequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
A few kisses between a boy and girl. In one scene it’s unclear what happens, if anything, beyond kissing.

One of the faeries tithes (collects) sense of touch. She is rumored to have many lovers, both men and women. Another of the fae remembers playing a card game involving stripping with this faerie who happily gave up most of her clothing. It’s kind of a brief in-passing sort of comment.

Spiritual Content
A prince and princess take refuge in a convent. They make a disparaging comment about the god the nuns serve. The nuns rebuke them. At one point Isabella wishes to pray and realizes she doesn’t know how. She admires the nuns for their courage and care for young orphaned girls, who are not especially valued in her culture.

The fae (fairies) tithe an ability from someone in exchange for what the person wants. For instance one might take luck from someone in exchange for information.

The princesses learn of a rumor about two sister fae who fought until one killed the other.

In the Borderlands, a magical place, illusions which might look like innocent children lead naïve travelers to their deaths.

Violent Content
A few brief battles with soldiers and fae opponents. The crew of a whaling ship attempt to kill a narwhal.

Drug Content
None.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

About Lexa Hillyer

Website | Twitter | Instagram

Lexa Hillyer is the co-founder of Paper Lantern Lit, former YA editor, and author of Proof of Forever. Lexa is also an award-winning poet: Her first collection, Acquainted with the Cold, won the Melissa Lanitis Gregory Poetry Prize as well as the 2012 Book of the Year Award from ForeWord Reviews. Her poetry has been anthologized in Best New Poets 2012, and has appeared in several journals. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their daughter.

Visit the other stops on the Spindle Fire tour!

Week 1:

4/3: Lost In Lit – Bookish Inspirations
4/4: Ex Libris – Review
4/5: The Irish Banana Review – Makeup Inspirations
4/6: Reads All the Books – Review
4/7: In Wonderland – Guest Post

Week 2:

4/10: Book Scents – Review
4/11: The Fake Steph – Q&A
4/12: Swoony Boys Podcast – Review
4/13: The Bookkeeper’s Secret – Mood Board
4/14: The Story Sanctuary – Review – you are here!

Enter the Giveaway for a Chance to Win One of Three Copies of Spindle Fire (US only)

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Review: Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray

Blogger's Favorites, Book Review and Content, Sci-Fi, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , , ,

Defy the Stars
Claudia Gray
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published April 4, 2017

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

About Defy the Stars
She’s a soldier.

Noemi Vidal is a seventeen years old and sworn to protect her planet, Genesis. She’s willing to risk anything—including her own life. To their enemies on Earth, she’s a rebel.

He’s a machine.

Abandoned in space for years, utterly alone, Abel has advanced programming that’s begun to evolve. He wants only to protect his creator, and to be free. To the people of Genesis, he’s an abomination.

Noemi and Abel are enemies in an interstellar war, forced by chance to work together as they embark on a daring journey through the stars. Their efforts would end the fighting for good, but they’re not without sacrifice. The stakes are even higher than either of them first realized, and the more time they spend together, the more they’re forced to question everything they’d been taught was true.

My Review
I started this book with pretty high hopes. Right away, I liked the third person present tense writing. It kept the story feeling immediate, and especially made sense to me in Abel’s scenes. I loved both Noemi and Abel straight from the start. Like Abel, I respected Noemi’s willingness to sacrifice herself to save others and her love for her best friend Esther. I felt a bit skeptical of whether Abel’s scenes would really seem like AI or whether they would feel too human. Actually, I really liked him a lot, and I think the internal experiences—rational breakdowns and examinations of emotions worked really well. I liked that over time he experienced character development, too.

The plot took me to some places I didn’t expect. I liked that unexpectedness. On the other hand, I really struggled with the ending. I don’t want to give anything away. But. The whole story had a certain goal and then by the end it felt like that goal sort of got dropped. I didn’t really understand a couple of the details that led up to the goal being abandoned. I mean, I feel like I understood some of the reasons, but I don’t know. It was weird. It felt like a really solid story that took a detour at the end to allow for setting up the rest of the series. Normally that doesn’t bother me—I liked the characters so I’m not sad at all that there may be other adventures, but it felt a little bit like a bait and switch or something.

Still, I’m not at all sorry that I read it. I loved getting to explore so much of the intricate story world Gray created and her masterful characters had me hooked from the first page to the last.

If you liked the recent movie adaptation of Ender’s Game or Ex Machina, you want to add this book to your list. I think fans of Hayley Stone’s Machinations would also find this book appealing.

Recommended for Ages 12 up.

Cultural Elements
Noemi is Latina. Abel has the appearance of a white male.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Strong profanity used infrequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between male and female. When it becomes clear Noemi and Abel will need money to carry out their plan, he offers to sell himself into prostitution, since he has been programmed with the ability to perform those activities. Noemi feels horrified by that idea and refuses to ask him to do such a thing, even though she still considers him a machine. At one point he offers to have sex with her, reasoning that since they are alone and have time to kill, and it would provide her with a form of release, it might be helpful. Noemi tells him her faith mandates that she not have casual sex.

Spiritual Content
On Noemi’s planet, Genesis, faith is of high value. People of all different faiths live together in harmony. Noemi herself is Catholic but has always struggled with her faith. Sometimes she knows she should pray and instead, she feels doubt. She keeps her faith through the story.

Violent Content
Noemi helps a fellow soldier with grave injuries. Abel and Noemi witness a terrorist attack at a celebration.

Drug Content
None.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

 

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Review: Letters to the Lost by Brigid Kemmerer

Blogger's Favorites, Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Romance, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , ,

Letters to the Lost
Brigid Kemmerer
Bloomsbury USA Children’s
Published April 4, 2017

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

About Letters to the Lost
Juliet Young always writes letters to her mother, a world-traveling photojournalist. Even after her mother’s death, she leaves letters at her grave. It’s the only way Juliet can cope.

Declan Murphy isn’t the sort of guy you want to cross. In the midst of his court-ordered community service at the local cemetery, he’s trying to escape the demons of his past.

When Declan reads a haunting letter left beside a grave, he can’t resist writing back. Soon, he’s opening up to a perfect stranger, and their connection is immediate. But neither Declan nor Juliet knows that they’re not actually strangers. When life at school interferes with their secret life of letters, sparks will fly as Juliet and Declan discover truths that might tear them apart.

My Review
Letters to the Lost totally blew me away. I loved it. It was all the things I loved about You’ve Got Mail but with all of these deep emotions, unresolved grief, family issues, and loneliness. I felt immediately hooked by the idea of this blind exchange between two people who both feel completely isolated from everyone around them which gives them a sense of connection. I loved the way the relationship plays out as they meet each other in real life (without knowing it’s the person they’ve been writing to.) Also, I absolutely adored Rev. He may have been my favorite. It’s hard to say because I loved so much about the story, but if I had a book boyfriend list, Rev would probably be at the top.

At its surface, I’d say this is a romance. It’s about a girl and a boy who meet through letters and fall in love, but they have to figure out who that other person is and face the idea that it may be someone they’ve judged harshly or even don’t like in real life. Beneath that, though, Letters to the Lost deals with some pretty intense grief. Juliet’s mom died in a hit and run car accident. Declan’s dad is responsible for his sister’s death. Both Juliet and Declan have difficult relationships with their parents. Declan’s mom remarried a guy who Declan can’t stand. Juliet’s dad has been distant since her mom’s death.

I loved the way the story began to unravel the truth about Juliet and Declan’s pasts. Some things took me by surprise—in a good way. Each of them have a steadfast friend who sticks with them through their grief, and I loved those friendships, too, and the way Juliet and Declan began to realize how their grief affected others through those relationships. It all felt very organic.

If you’re looking for a romance packed with emotion, you want to read this one. It’s heavy, yes, but has so much hope and love in it. This is one of my favorite books I’ve read this year.

Recommended for Ages 12 up.

Cultural Elements
Major characters are white. Juliet competes with and later befriends an Asian boy in her photography class. Black parents adopt Declan’s best friend Rev.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Mild profanity used with moderate frequency. One instance of stronger profanity.

Romance/Sexual Content
Brief kissing. At one point one girl jokes with her friend about whether or not her boyfriend has sent a picture of his “manhood” to her.

Someone finds nude pictures of a man and woman together.

Spiritual Content
Rev is a Christian and sometimes shares Bible verses with Declan. It’s clear his faith means a great deal to him.

Violent Content
References to physical abuse in one character’s past. One character talks about a fear he has that he will become violent and be unable to stop.

Drug Content
A girl accuses a boy of trying to spike the punch at a school dance. (He’s not.)

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

 

Review: Perfect by Cecelia Ahern

Book Review and Content, Dystopian or Post-Apocalyptic, Romance, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , ,

Perfect
Cecelia Ahern
Feiwel & Friends
Available April 4, 2017

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Summary from Goodreads
Celestine North lives in a society that demands perfection. After she was branded Flawed by a morality court, Celestine’s life has completely fractured–all her freedoms gone.

Since Judge Crevan has declared her the number one threat to the public, she has been a ghost, on the run with Carrick–the only person she can trust.

But Celestine has a secret–one that could bring the entire Flawed system crumbling to the ground. A secret that has already caused countless people to go missing.

Judge Crevan is gaining the upper hand, and time is running out for Celestine. With tensions building, Celestine must make a choice: save just herself or to risk her life to save all Flawed people.

And, most important of all, can she prove that to be human in itself is to be Flawed?

My Review
Perfect was the first book by Cecelia Ahern that I’ve read. Even though I haven’t read the first book in the series, I found it fairly easy to follow the story. I think reading the first book would have helped me understand her relationship with Carrick better and made their reunion more meaningful.

The premise was the most interesting part to me. Celestine lives in a society in which good behavior is vital to survival. One mistake can leave a person literally branded as imperfect and make them outcasts. When Celestine ignores her society’s rules about shunning those outcasts marked Flawed, she earns her own branding.

The story made me think a lot of the beginning of I Corinthians chapter 13. It starts with this list of really impressive abilities—being able to perform miracles, helping the poor, speaking in the tongues of angels, etc—but warns, “if I have not love, I am nothing.”

In Perfect, Celestine’s society has become obsessed with living this outwardly perfect life. What Celestine discovers, though, is the price to live such a “perfect” life demands giving up compassion, mercy, and empathy. She rallies others around her to stop living these cold, rule-bound lives and instead forgive each other, show mercy. She wants everyone to realize that no one is without flaw, and therefore the system is based on a lie anyway.

I liked that message a lot. Readers who enjoyed Lauren Oliver’s Delirium or Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies will probably enjoy this book.

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Strong profanity used infrequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between a boy and girl. They have sex. The scene describes some lead-in, but not the actual event. Guard corral a group of women into a barn and force them to change into skimpy outfits to shame them.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
Celestine remembers a terrible incident in which Judge Crevan brands her without anesthesia. Soldiers believe Celestine hides underneath a pile of kindling and demand that her family light it.

Drug Content
None.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

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