Category Archives: Blogger’s Favorites

Review: Paper and Fire by Rachel Caine

Blogger's Favorites, Book Review and Content, Dystopian or Post-Apocalyptic, Fantasy, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , ,

Paper and Fire by Rachel CainePaper and Fire
Rachel Caine
New American Library/Random House
Available July 5, 2016

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Jess survived induction into the Library, but life as one of their soldiers is far more grueling than he expected. The girl he loves is locked away forever, and his best friend is lost. When rumors bring Jess’s old classmates together again, they face a terrible choice: a rescue mission that would mean living the rest of their lives on the run from the Library, if they manage to escape. Jess promises refuge with his family, but even he isn’t sure he can count on his father to hide them without having something valuable to offer in return.

After devouring the series opener, INK AND BONE, (and then pestering everyone I know to also go read it) I was anxious to start reading PAPER AND FIRE. I love Jess. Something about the combination of his cleverness and vulnerability makes it essential for me to root for him.

I felt like the story in INK AND BONE was a tiny bit more organized, but I still really enjoyed PAPER AND FIRE. In the first book, I was nervous about liking each new character as they were introduced. In PAPER AND FIRE, I was biting my nails down to the quick because again and again, all the characters I love find themselves in mortal peril. I kept having to stop and take a breath.

One of the really difficult things for a series like this where the story world is so unbelievably inventive is that the second book doesn’t have that wow factor with regard to that story world. We already know about the Great Library and the sinister automata. Though they’re still as unique and interesting, I didn’t feel the same awe, because I had kind of already acclimated to the wonder. If that makes sense. I felt the same way about THE HUNGER GAMES. But by the second book, I was like, oh yeah, the Arena. I remember that. Not quite the same.

So yeah. That’s my take. Still a great read, and possibly cleaner than the first book. I’m super excited to see what happens in the next book, ASH AND QUILL.

Content Notes

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Mild profanity used infrequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Some passionate kissing. At one point, it seems like two characters are winding up to have sex, but they argue instead, and that kills the mood.

Two men kiss.

Jess and his friends learn that in the Iron Tower, Obscurists are matched based on ability and forced to have sex in order to produce children. The process isn’t described, but during Morgan’s imprisonment, Jess worries for her and hates the idea of her being forced into anything.

Spiritual Content
Khalila is a practicing Muslim.

Violent Content
Burners use Greek fire to set books and themselves ablaze. They also use it against soldiers and members of the Great Library. Jess serves as a soldier and faces battle. The battle descriptions are more about the strategy than about warfare. Guns are used.

Jess and the others learn that Wolfe and other prisoners were tortured. While there aren’t scenes actively depicting the torture, characters who’ve experienced it react strongly to any triggers, and there are some references to the fact that it happened. At one point, Jess and the team find the room where others have been tortured.

Drug Content
None.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. This post contains affiliate links which don’t cost you anything but help support this blog.

Save

Save

Save

Save

Review: To Get to You by Joanne Bischof

Blogger's Favorites, Book Review and Content, Christian World-View, Clean Fiction, Contemporary, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , ,

To Get to You
Joanne Bischof
Mason Jar Books

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

When Becca’s dad is involved in a serious accident, Riley vows to do whatever he can to help her. As her family packs up their motor home and takes off to be with her dad, he watches helplessly as she leaves him behind. A call asking for help is all it takes to send Riley on a journey after her. But then his car breaks down and Riley finds himself stranded with only one option: to call the father who abandoned him for fortune and fame as a pro surfer. Determined not to let his dad back into his life, Riley plans on keeping his head down and focusing on what matters: making it to Becca’s side. But the long journey isn’t without its own ups and downs, and Riley has to admit that there’s more to his dad than he wanted to credit him with. The two hammer out their differences as they cross state lines, making their way toward Becca’s family and the girl Riley hopes to make his future with.

At first, I wasn’t sure I’d like this book. The pro surfer thing didn’t really resonate with me, and I worried that it would be kind of too feel-good or obnoxiously clean or something. While the writing is very clean, I found the story to be largely authentic. I liked that Riley finds value in Becca and wants to protect her, even from things he thought were okay in his own past. Honestly, I liked Riley, period. I liked his dad and Saul, too. I thought Saul made a great third wheel and really brought some humor and warmth to the story in some of its harder moments.

I loved that Riley connected with not only Becca but her larger family, too. In my own life, my parents were kind of those sort of people, where our home was a place our friends liked to be, and their connections went beyond my sister and me to include my parents as well. That model definitely resonates with me as an authentic expression of Christianity, so I enjoyed that part of To Get to You, even though it was a smaller, less central element.

Overall I found this book to be a great clean read with a strong spiritual center. It’s the first time I’ve read anything by Joanne Bischof, but I’d definitely read other novels she’s written. To Get to You is a 2016 Christy Award finalist, an honor I think is well-deserved.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
Riley makes some oblique references to his past dating experience, stating that he probably owes some girls an apology. We never get specific details about what happened, but we definitely sense his shame and how foreign Becca’s family’s strict rules are.

Spiritual Content
Riley has a mentoring relationship with a local pastor who holds him accountable. Riley thinks a lot about wanting to treat Becca right according to the guidelines her conservative Christian parents set for her.

Violent Content
None.

Drug Content
Brief references to the fact that Riley used to smoke.

Save

Save

Review: The Only Thing Worse Than Me Is You by Lily Anderson

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

The Only Thing Worse Than Me Is You
Lily Anderson
St. Martin’s Griffin

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Trixie’s rivalry with Ben goes all the way back to first grade. Now in senior year, there’s no undoing those long-standing battle lines. Until Trixie’s best friend starts dating Ben’s and the group forces them to call a truce. But letting go of her dislike is easier said than done, even when it turns out Ben might possibly be hiding surprisingly pleasant qualities beneath his ridiculous mustache. But when a cheating scandal leaves Trixie’s BFF expelled, Trixie’s determined to rally the troops and prove her bestie innocent. The investigation may shatter her newfound alliance with Ben.

Trixie and her friends attend a school for geniuses, so their classes are far more advanced than the usual high school fare, and each month the entire class list is posted according to GPA ranking, fueling some pretty competitive tension. The social world within the school is really well-developed. I wanted to take some of the courses mentioned. I felt like I could picture the hallways and cafeteria and understand the complex relationships between the characters. B. Calistero = super awesome. I loved the way he turned out to be a pretty crucial part of the story and a link between Trixie and Ben.

Trixie and Ben definitely had great chemistry. Even when they hated each other, it was absolutely electric. Even when the hate shifted, the tension never slipped. I loved their geeky banter. Some of the references I followed pretty easily (Firefly Forever!!!) and others were not hard to decipher (Marvel vs. DC… I’ve been on the periphery of enough of those battle lines.) The enthusiasm and rivalry really sucked me into the story.

Trixie’s two best girl friends were a little harder for me to grasp. I liked Harper, but I felt like I never really got Meg. I loved enough of the other characters that it didn’t matter. I worried about the cast size as I’m often overwhelmed and confused by stories with tons of named characters, but I think I was able to keep everyone straight because they each had pretty specific roles or identities.

Other than the use of strong language, the story is pretty clean. The quick banter and geek chat made it a really fun read. The romance is definitely swoon-worthy.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used with moderate frequency.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing. Meg references some social experimenting with boys, but no details on what precisely her experiments entail.

Spiritual Content
Trixie and her friends celebrate Halloween by attending a Harvest party and Haunted House.

Violent Content
None.

Drug Content
None.

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

Save

Save

Review: Traitor’s Masque by Kenley Davidson

Blogger's Favorites, Book Review and Content, Clean Fiction, Fantasy, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , ,

Traitor’s Masque
Kenley Davidson
Page Nine Press

Amazon | Goodreads | Author’s Web Site

When Trystan’s secret horse rides are interrupted by a handsome, intelligent stranger, she has no idea she’s just met the crown prince of Andari. To her, he’s just a lonely nobleman, seeking the same healing solitude as she is. So when her stepmother’s tyranny reaches new heights, Trystan leaps at an offer from a friend of her late father’s. The lady offers Trystan the freedom she desperately craves for one tiny favor: deliver a message. Not until she’s agreed does Trystan realize she’s just committed to betray the friend she met in the woods, the man she may be falling in love with. The Prince of Andari.

This is not a simple retelling of Cinderella. Don’t get me wrong – it’s got all the right fairytale moments. This is like Cinderella plus political intrigue. The story is told from alternating point-of-view with some sections from Trystan’s viewpoint and others from Prince Ramsey’s (as well as a few from various other characters.) I loved that this gave a lot of insight into the characters and really showed their strengths and weaknesses. Both characters were well-balanced and developed, and immediately I cared about what happened to them and wanted them to get together and fall in love.

In this story, there’s not one but two handsome princes. This was another great unexpected element to the plot. The tension between the princes over the crown kept me guessing what was going to happen next.

While I’m always up for a good fairytale retelling, not all those are created equal. Traitor’s Masque will definitely stay in my top favorites. Fans of Melanie Dickerson’s Hagenheim books or fairytale-type stories in general definitely need to add this one to their summer reading lists!

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Mild profanity used infrequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
A couple of kisses.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
Two girls are kidnapped and bound. No description of further violence happening to them.

Drug Content
References to drinking alcoholic beverages.

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

Save

Save

Save

Review: Life Animated: A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes and Autism by Ron Suskind

Blogger's Favorites, Book Review and Content, Memoir, Parenting, , , , ,

A Life Animated: A story of heroes, sidekicks and autism
Ron Suskind
Kingswell

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

When the Suskind family moves to a new home, they begin to see startling changes in their youngest son, Owen. He loses the ability to communicate with them and seems to retreat inside himself. The family embarks on a journey to find ways to reconnect with Owen via one of his favorite things: Disney movies.

This is an amazing, truly inspiring story. I’m awed by the courage it must have taken for both Owen and his family to continue pressing forward without giving up, even in moments when field experts were at a loss as to how to help, when specialized programs proved disappointing. Throughout the book, Owen’s father describes his son with love and affection, clearly impressing on readers his value, not just to his family, but as a human being.

For people who don’t personally know someone with an autism diagnosis, I imagine it could be easy to overlook the autistic community. Suskind makes this impossible. Though the book focuses on the family’s experience with their son, there are a lot of references to larger issues faced by families with autistic children or injustices within our system that limit the ability of families to provide much-needed care and assistance. I thought that was a great value, too. Many of those things I simply wasn’t familiar with. For a short time after I graduated, I worked for a behavior analyst extremely well-respected in the field, but that was more than ten years ago now, and I’m grossly under-informed these days.

The Disney references were really fun, and you’ll definitely get a lot more out of the story if you’re familiar with those classic movies, but they’re not the point of the book. The point is that those tales became a vehicle by which a remarkable boy rebuilt a way of communicating with the world around him.

I recommend this book because it’s such a great, triumphant story, and we all need that message, and also because this reminds us that we are all human, all valuable, no matter how we process information.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used infrequently. There’s one chapter in which most of the profanity occurs as part of an exposure therapy to help Owen deal with aftermath of a bullying incident.

Romance/Sexual Content
Brief references to kissing.

Spiritual Content
The family prepares for and celebrates Owen’s Bar Mitzvah.

Violent Content
None.

Drug Content
Owen’s older brother hosts a high school party which gets a bit out of hand. Lots of alcohol stored in the Suskind’s basement disappears during the party.

Save

Review: It Ain’t So Awful, Falafel by Firoozeh Dumas

Blogger's Favorites, Book Review and Content, Clean Fiction, Contemporary, Middle Grade 8-12, , , , , ,

It Ain’t So Awful, Falafel
Firoozeh Dumas
Clarion Books

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

When Zomorod Yousefzadeh and her family move (again), she decides to take the opportunity to start fresh and try to fit in with her new California schoolmates. The first thing to go? Her name. She adopts the classic Brady Bunch Cindy as her identity. After a rough start, she begins to find true friends. But when unrest in Iran turns into an American hostage crisis, Cindy begins to catch glimpses of an uglier side of the Land of the Free. Cruel bumper stickers and slogans send chilling messages to Cindy and her family. Cindy tries to protect her parents from some of the cruelty, and her friends try to encourage her that not everyone feels so negatively about Iranians. Ultimately, Cindy has to navigate her own way through the crisis and find the balance between devotion to her family, pride in her heritage, and the freedom to pursue her own individual identity.

This is the story of a young Iranian girl in the United States during a time when anti-Iranian sentiments run high. Even though we’re talking about the late 1970s, much of the conflict and hate Cindy and her family faced made me think about the way Muslim families in the US are sometimes treated in the US today. The hate and fear-based unkindness were wrong then and are just as wrong now.

While the exploration of American feeling toward Middle Easterners or Muslims is a heavy topic,  it does not dominate the story. In fact, Cindy is a spitfire girl who’s determined to stay positive and help her family as much as she can. She’s funny and kind—one of my favorite parts of the story was her voice and way of describing things. It absolutely captured, for me, what it was like to be in middle school and the kinds of friendships I had. It made me want to call my own Carolyn and Howie (Cindy’s friends) and retell our own stories from those times.

I loved this story for its own sake. I will always enjoy tales about an awkward middle school girl finding her people, discovering who she is and what really matters. At its core, that’s what Cindy’s story is, and her sense of humor and her compassionate heart make her an incredible heroine.

Beyond that, though, I think we need narratives like this one. A young Middle Eastern girl is a girl like any other girl. This story reminds us to be angry that a girl and her family face prejudice for their nationality. It reminds us of the common bonds we share as human beings, of the value of the freedoms we have as Americans and the responsibility we have to use those freedoms to promote life, liberty and happiness in the lives of those around us.

I definitely recommend this book. My daughter is ten and I really want us to read this book together this summer. The author has some great classroom resources listed on her web site, and information about the Falafel Kindness Project, a project that promotes creating a safe, bully-free environment for kids.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
None.

Spiritual Content
Cindy and her family are non-practicing Muslims. At school, she’s friends with a Christian and a Jewish girl and there’s a brief conversation about how they worship the same God.

Violent Content
While Americans are held hostage in Iran, Cindy’s family encounters hostility from neighbors and strangers. Someone leaves a dead hamster on the family’s doorstep. One man enters their house wearing a shirt that says “Wanted: Iranians for Target Practice.” Cindy briefly discusses the differences between American freedom and life in Iran, where the shah had protestors killed and free speech was a right guaranteed to the people.

Drug Content
None.

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

Save

Save