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Review: Tell the Wind and Fire by Sarah Rees Brennan

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

tellwindandfireTell the Wind and Fire
Sarah Rees Brennan
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children’s

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

In this future New York, the city is divided in two: Light vs Dark. Only Light Magicians can live in and access the wealthy, upper-class life. The Dark Magicians are banished to the Dark, to carve out lives in poverty under harsh rule imposed by the Light leadership.

Lucie and her father escaped the dark at a high price. Now Lucie survives at the mercy of friends and by burying her past as deeply as she can. Only, the people in the Dark don’t want her to forget. They’ve made her name a rallying cry to a revolution that could destroy the new life Lucie has fought so hard to create and the boy she loves more than anything.

This is the first time I’d ever read anything by Sarah Rees Brennan, so I was really excited to give this one a go. The first page totally hooked me. I was like oh boy. Must know more.

Then… somewhere in the rest of the first chapter, I got really lost. There was some explanation of the Light vs Dark storyworld and I don’t know if it was just me, but I really had a hard time following it. I reread it once and ended up kind of just moving on. Something about a magical caste system. Okay.

Once I got past that, I was still pretty intrigued. I worried about Ethan being boring, as other reviewers have claimed. (What is it with modern novels about strong women featuring these eye-candy-only men? Didn’t we argue that this was a bad idea when the gender roles of these characters were reversed?) Honestly, my first impression of him was that he was kind of a doofus with money. A cute doofus with money, but yeah, not much else really going on upstairs behind the dreamboat eyes, you know?

However. Without giving anything away, I just want to say there were some unanticipated hidden depths. And I found myself a little disappointed because I kind of wanted Carwyn to have this reformation going on that flew in the face of what everyone thought about his kind. I thought he and Lucie made a great team, so I started rooting for him, and then Ethan manned up and I was like, wait… now I like them both!

I read this book not knowing it was a retelling of a classic, (though I found myself thinking hey, this is kind of like that one book, as I was reading) so I don’t want to give that away for anyone who wants the same experience. I liked reading it not knowing where it was going.

I’d definitely read more of this series because I loved the characters and have a lot of faith in Brennan’s ability to get me to invest in them. The storyworld was confusing to me and I kind of just decided to overlook it. The Light vs Dark stuff really didn’t play a huge role in the story other than establishing two opposing sides in which one has huge advantages and oppresses the other side.

If you liked Across the Star-swept Sea by Diana Peterfreund, give this one a read. See below for any content information.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
While there’s no explicit description of sex, it’s implied that Ethan and Lucie are intimate with each other. Lucie mentions that she only sleeps well when she sleeps with Ethan, that sort of thing. Another character makes a brief comment about his preference for “deviant sex acts” (he doesn’t specify anything further than that.) There are a few kisses.

Spiritual Content
The city is divided into sectors of Light and Dark magic. Not everyone has magical ability. Dark Magicians have been threatening to revolt and overthrow the Light Magicians in power. Lucie knows a powerful way Light and Dark magic can be used together.

Violent Content
Lawbreakers endure harsh punishments and torture (only described very briefly.) Revolutionaries attack without mercy in a battle scene, killing even innocent bystanders.

Drug Content
Lucie takes Carwyn to a club and offers to buy him a drink. A friend offers to get them some dust, a kind of illegal drug, but Lucie wanted no part of that.

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

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Review: Away We Go by Emil Ostrovski

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

Away We Go
Emil Ostrovski
Greenwillow Books
Published April 5, 2016

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

About Away We Go

Westing accepts only the brightest and best of students, so long as they also have one problem: a diagnosis of the terminal Peter Pan Virus (PPV.) Noah is one such case. As he wrestles to deal with the drastically shortened timeline of his life and the mandatory separation from his family and former friends, Noah finds something unexpected: love. The problem? He’s supposed to be in love with his girlfriend, Alice. Instead, he’s head-over-heels for the erratic boy who runs a secret club. The more time they spend together, the less certain Noah is about Zach’s feelings. As his friends become sicker, and the end of his own life draws near, Noah becomes frantic for answers. To his questions about love, the outside world, and what gives life meaning and value.

First – in reading some of the reviews about this book on other sites, it looks like some people expected this to be a dystopian story about the mass spread of an incurable virus, etc etc, oodles of suspenseful stuff racing toward a cure or something and were therefore disappointed when they uncovered one huge issue: that’s not what this story is. If you don’t like books about emotions (I do!), this probably isn’t one you want to pick up. Because there are LOTS.

My Review

This is more an emotional journey framed by a pandemic involving massive amounts of teens infected with a deadly, highly contagious, incurable disease. Also, a meteor that might hit earth. But those are kind of just the story’s frame. What we’re really watching unfold is this boy who’s trying desperately to figure out who he is and what that means. To himself. To the boy he loves. To the girl who loves him. And it’s a difficult, messy, heartbreaking, amazing journey.

I read Ostrovski’s debut a couple of months ago and was simply blown away by the unique perspective of the story, the fantastically witty banter between characters—even in the midst of these heartbreaking scenes, these characters were cracking me up—and the way these grand philosophical ideas were naturally woven into the story. But that’s another review, which you can read here.

Point being, as I started to read Away We Go, I was so nervous. I was afraid I wouldn’t like the story. And to be honest, after the first couple chapters, I was still nervous. I’m not sure when I really fell for Noah. Probably about the time he started snarking about sandwiches. Possibly not until he met Zach. But then I was hooked.

There were several things about the story that really stood out to me as awesome. One being the incorporation of the play Marty writes about Peter Pan and Wendy. I loved how that became this thread running through the story and that final scene captured the central conflict felt by so many of the characters in the story.

When I was a teenager, I knew a girl who was terminally ill. We weren’t very close, largely because I didn’t understand a lot of the things she did. Now, looking back, I feel like I really misjudged her. I wanted her to behave like I did. I honestly never considered (not in a mean way, just ignorant, sadly…) what it would be like to be seventeen and know that you probably wouldn’t live past thirty and how that might change what felt reasonable, necessary. Urgent.

I thought about her a lot as I read this book. I thought about how there’s a real question, in the story, about whether or not the students should be educated. I mean, they’re all going to die. Is there a point? Is education a human right? I thought that was a really cool element to explore. It’s not deeply followed, but I liked even just the drive-by moment. I thought about her as Noah rockets down this somewhat destructive path toward trying to capture love.

In terms of the writing, I have to say that the way some of the characters had really distinct voices definitely made them seem real. Ostrovski’s writing absolutely shines in dialogue between characters. Amazing stuff. Moving on before I get star-struck and gushy…

So if you’re looking for a really heart-wrenching read with a lot of complex characters and witty banter, some exploration of moral issues and love, add this book to your list. See below for content information from the story.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity and some crude language used with moderate frequency. One girl condemns this behavior.

Romance/Sexual Content
Boy/girl and boy/boy romance and sex described in some detail.

Spiritual Content
Westing has a group of students who’ve formed a religious organization for support and faith community. The details of the faith system stay pretty murky, and Noah does not get involved.

Violent Content
A boy falls to his death. Noah learns two students have been shot. Brief descriptions of rumors about what happens to kids who read end stage PPV and are transferred to other facilities. (Are they experimented on, that sort of thing.)

Drug Content
Noah (and his friends) drink quite a bit of alcohol, behavior condemned by another friend.

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

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Review: Knife by R J Anderson

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

Knife
R J Anderson
Enclave

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Knife, a young faerie confined within her kingdom inside a large oak tree, is determined to escape to the outside world. As a girl, she came face to face with a human, and survived. Since that day, her curiosity about the house and the strange creatures who live inside it only grows. When Knife finds an opportunity to get a closer look, she takes it. But with every new discovery she makes about the outside world, the strict rules and strange customs of her people only feel stranger and well, wrong. Maybe Knife can save them. If she can find out why her people lost their magic to begin with, perhaps she can reverse the spell. But doing so will risk her place among her people, and it may force her to accept truths about herself, her queen, and her human friend that she’s not ready to face.

I’ll admit that when I picked up this book I was a little iffy. I’ve read a few other novels about faeries recently that really didn’t draw me in. This one, though, really surprised me.

I liked that the faerie realm was not another dimension or whatever, but was this hidden world within an oak tree in the back yard of a house in a rural neighborhood. I loved the way the friendship between Knife and Paul happens. The faeries have cut themselves off from all other creatures and their culture, while perfectly preserved from any outside influences, is dying just as surely as the faeries are. As Knife explores more and more of the outside world, her view of her people changes, and she begins to see how important community is—not just the homogenous community of her own people, but the interaction with others outside the community. This is a great theme, and so true to life. We absolutely need others in our lives above and beyond those who are exactly like us. So I thought the faerie landscape was a really clever way to pull that message into the story without at all sounding preachy. As Knife spent time with others, her creative instincts were stirred and she begins to create new things, something no faerie has done in her lifetime. I loved that.

I liked how Anderson brought the faerie culture to life with just a few really crisp details. The fact that all faeries are female. The idea that one has to bargain or trade one thing for another constantly. No favors among faeries, because owing a debt to someone is a big deal. Things like that made the culture seem really alive to me.

I definitely want to continue reading this series. The second book, Rebel features different central characters, but I enjoyed the faerie world so much I’m definitely interested in reading more. If you liked The Last Faerie Queen or the Goldstone Wood books, you might want to give this series a try.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
A couple of kisses.

Spiritual Content
References to the Great Gardener, with whom the faeries seem to credit creation, etc. At one time all faeries had magic. Now only their queen has it.

Violent Content
Vague references to an accident which leaves a man paralyzed from the waist down. A crow attacks and tries to kill faeries until one fights back, injuring it and hoping to kill it. There are a couple of short descriptions of battles between crow and faeries.

Drug Content
None.

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Review: The Girl in the Blue Coat by Monica Hesse

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

The Girl in the Blue Coat
Monica Hesse
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

In 1943 Amsterdam, Hanneke is the girl who can help you find things like coffee, meat, kerosene. But when a lonely widow asks Hanneke to find a missing Jewish girl, Hanneke at first refuses to get involved. Locating a Jewish girl and trying to rescue her is far too dangerous.

On the other hand, maybe danger is exactly what Hanneke needs to distract her from the aching grief of her boyfriend’s recent death. Reluctantly, Hanneke agrees to investigate the girl’s disappearance. Her search throws her in the path of a well-organized group of resistance workers who beg Hanneke to help them. Soon Hanneke is up to her neck in activities that could get her shot at any time. As the days pass and the chance of finding the missing girl alive dwindle, Hanneke becomes desperate. She must find this girl before the Nazis do. She must repay her debt, saving this girl to atone for the life Hanneke’s responsible for ending.

I don’t read much historical fiction, but every time I do, I enjoy it and vow to include more in my reading lists. I grew up reading and listening to Corrie ten Boom’s memoir, The Hiding Place, so the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands holds a special interest for me. It always calls to mind the courage and perseverance of those involved in resistance and rescue efforts.

I loved that Hesse included sides of the resistance movement that I wasn’t at all familiar with, including the Underground Camera movement and the rescue of infants and small children from the major deportment site in Amsterdam.

The story has a lot of layers. On the surface, it’s about finding a girl with the help of various resistance efforts. But the story goes much deeper into how the Nazi occupation affected relationships between friends and lovers. The kinds of small betrayals that, due to the severe restrictions placed on the people by the German occupation, ultimately led to death. All those layers weave together to form an intricate story that kept me turning pages all the way to the end. I read this entire book in one sitting, and I’d probably read it again tomorrow.

The Girl in the Blue Coat will appeal to fans of Code Name Verity, though on the whole, it’s much cleaner in terms of language and violence. This is a great representation of an important moment in history, and because Hesse highlighted some of the lesser known efforts happening behind enemy lines, the tale felt fresh and new. I definitely recommend this one.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Mild swearing.

Romance/Sexual Content
A couple of brief kisses. One boy confesses to being in love with another boy.

Spiritual Content
There’s a brief discussion about the fact that at first non-practicing Jews thought they might be safer from Nazis than practicing Jews.

Violent Content
A teenage girl is shot in the head.

Drug Content
None.

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

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Top Ten Tuesday: Best Blogs to Follow

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s theme is a fantastic one: the best blogs to follow. I tend to follow several different kinds of blogs. I like finding other blogs that review clean books or which list content information. I think in part it makes me feel validated, and it’s always interesting to see the ways other sites break down the content information. I also like to follow what I’ll call a specialty blog, one that steers readers toward specific types of books– books about characters with disabilities, books by minority authors, etc. Then there are the good old trusty review sites where I find myself reading the reviews of books I’ve read and saying, “I know, right?!” and reading reviews of books I haven’t read and immediately adding the titles to my reading list. I should add lots of others to this list, but these are the ones far and above all others that I find myself returning to for inspiration, recommendations and ideas:

Reading Teen

I’ve probably been following this blog the longest out of all the others on this list. I’m not sure how I found Reading Teen, but I really love this site. I guest-posted a review of Panic by Lauren Oliver which you can find here. One of my FAVORITE posts by Andye is this one about sex in teen fiction.

Compass Book Ratings

When I first discovered this site, it was called Clean Teen Reads. I don’t visit as often as I’d like, but I’ve recommended it several times to readers who are looking for more specific content than I tend to give. For instance, regarding profanity, this site will tell you which words and how many times they’re used whereas I tend to give a more general overview.

Brown Books and Green Tea

This is a recent favorite of mine. I love the focus on multicultural books, but also the way the blogger breaks down her reviews and thoughts on books. She makes me think, promotes really interesting books for deep reasons, and when she recommends something, it’s top notch.

Disability in Kidlit

If I’m going to be honest, I have a real love/hate relationship with this blog. I LOVE the idea: books featuring characters with disabilities reviewed by someone diagnosed with the disability. This gives a really insightful look at what a story looks like from a very specific angle. And a lot of the time, I find myself thinking, oh, wow. I never considered that. However, sometimes I get frustrated because it feels like so many of the reviews are very negative and really expect authors to capture these disabled characters with absolute perfection, and the hammer falls hard on those who fail. I think it’s truly important that we have stories that feature disabled characters, but as an aspiring writer, sometimes I wonder if blogs like this might scare writers out of trying to include them in their stories? I don’t know. Honestly, I love having the perspective the bloggers bring to the table. I think it’s a really important perspective, and I think authors should strive to accurately represent their characters, disabled or not.

Author Laura L. Smith’s Blog

I often find myself encouraged and inspired by these posts. Like her writing, Laura’s posts are very authentic, but they still manage to pull us toward beauty and wonder. I love that. I need that in my life. She’s awesome. Go read her books, too!

Review: The Girl in the Well is Me by Karen Rivers

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

The Girl in the Well is Me
Karen Rivers
Algonquin Young Readers

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

When tough circumstances force Kammie’s family to relocate, she’s determined to make the most of the change. She approaches the prettiest, most popular girls and attempts to join their group. Only what results is Kammie standing on a board that splits and sends her tumbling into a well. Trapped and slowly sinking further, Kammie begs her new “friends” to help her get out. As she waits for them to bring help (and wonders if they’ve simply abandoned her) she begins to think about the good times lost and the struggles her family currently faces. Then she begins to run out of air. Joined by hallucinations, some less than friendly, Kammie wonders if she’ll be rescued, or if her last view of the world will be the dark interior of the well and the small circle of sky above her.

At first I worried that a story about a girl trapped in a well would be sort of boring. I imagine it’s kind of the way people felt before seeing Rear Window when they learned that the whole movie was filmed on a tiny set about a man in a wheelchair. (Other than the scene in which he breaks his leg, we see the whole movie from his apartment. Crazy.) Anyway – this book was not as suspenseful as the classic Hitchcock film, but it never tried to be. Still, it was far from boring.

I liked Kammie pretty immediately. She’s a spunky narrator. You can feel how hard she’s trying to fit in and have a posse around her and how lonely and isolated she is since all the drama with her family has happened. You know she’s worth ten of each of the silly girls she wanted to be friends with, and she’s smart enough to realize it, too.

I thought her relationship with her brother was especially moving. I can’t think of a lot of stories with good examples of brother/sister relationships during that time of life when sibs sometimes grow apart, each seeking their own identity. I liked that this story captured that process so well, even if it was bittersweet.

Kammie’s memories of her life before falling in the well are definitely what keeps the story moving between rescue-related events. Rivers unwinds bits and pieces of this nameless tragedy that shattered Kammie’s life, and it was easy to chase those hints and flashes down looking for what really happened to this remarkable girl.

I thought the tone and the brief use of profanity made it a heavier read than most other middle grade books. Don’t get me wrong – I thought the story was great. See below for more specifics on content.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
One swear word is repeated several times in a sentence as Kammie realizes the dire situation she’s in. There are a few crude references to bodily functions.

Romance/Sexual Content
None.

Spiritual Content
Kammie thinks about her grandma, who has died, and wonders briefly if she’s in Heaven.

Violence
Girls play a prank on Kammie which leads to her falling into a well. Kammie sustains serious injuries due to her fall.

Drug Content
Her father drinks alcohol.

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

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