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Review: Cinder by Marissa Meyer

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

Cinder
Marissa Meyer
Feiwel & Friends/MacMillan
Published January 3, 2012

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

When her reputation as one of the best mechanics in New Beijing draws a covert visit from the prince, Cinder can’t help but be charmed by his easygoing, friendly nature. She hides her cyborg leg and foot, desperate to hold on to the moment where he sees her as human, rather than as property, as the law dictates. An outbreak of a terrible plague interrupts Cinder’s work and nearly her life when she is sent to the labs as a research subject, a sure death sentence.

Prince Kai watches helplessly as the ruthless plague destroys his father and the responsibility of leadership falls to him. In this dark hour, the Lunar queen, a powerful woman rumored to possess an ability to control the minds of her subjects and anyone in her presence, makes an unscheduled journey to earth to speak of an alliance with Kai and the people of earth. Kai must tread carefully, for the queen will ask the greatest sacrifice of him and pose the greatest threat to his people.

At the lab, Cinder’s test results stun the medical staff and make it clear that she is much more than an orphaned nobody from Europe. She may, in fact, be the key to undoing the Lunar queen’s destructive plan.

In an android-saturated futuristic world, Meyer retells the story of the little Cinder girl, her handsome prince, and the magical ball that brought them together. Her version of the story again brings to life familiar roles – the wicked stepmother, stepsisters, a carriage fastened from an unlikely source – and throws new twists into the mix. Cinder’s world is crafted from a complicated social structure in which humans have the technology to save lives of the gravely injured by implanting machinery. Instead of returning to life as normal post-surgery, the victims become cyborgs, second-class citizens no better than slaves. While thoroughly imaginative, it seems an expensive way to acquire a workforce. Despite that, the amazing characters made it easy to suspend that small bit of disbelief. I loved Iko, the android with the malfunctioning personality chip, which made her super interested in fashion and celebrity gossip. She definitely makes me laugh. Cinder and Kai’s relationship always pulls my heartstrings, too.

Another fascinating addition to the story is the powerful Lunar queen, ruler of a people who live on the moon, who possess a gift allowing them to control the thoughts and emotions of others. While the queen claims to seek peace with the people of earth, the military preparations on the moon seem to indicate otherwise, creating an intricate political dilemma which only adds richness and tension to an already worthy story.

Cinder is only the first book in Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles. The series will contain four books. The second, Scarlet features a girl in a red hoodie looking for her missing grandmother, followed by Cress, a retelling of the story of Rapunzel in space. With Meyer’s brilliant imagination and keen sense of story, fans will surely fall in love with each book in the series.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Sexual Content
None.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violence
A terrible plague is spreading rapidly through New Beijing. Some of the descriptions are a little intense but brief.

Drug Content
None.

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Review: The Unlikely Debut of Ellie Sweet by Stephanie Morrill

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

The Unlikely Debut of Ellie Sweet
Stephanie Morrill
Playlist Fiction
Published October 13, 2013

Amazon | Goodreads

The day of Ellie’s book debut draws near, and the pressure is on. On top of school and family commitments, Ellie’s editor presses for detailed revisions. Instead of support and cheerleading, Ellie’s best writing buddy has gone AWOL, and her boyfriend Chase doesn’t seem to understand how much work writing can be or how important it is to Ellie.

Tension between Ellie and Chase only rises as he pushes her to spend more time with his friends and their short-term girlfriends. While Ellie believes in the goodness of Chase’s heart and his ability to succeed, he only sees his tarnished reputation. He expects Ellie to bail on the relationship at every turn. Ellie tries to reassure him, but maybe her love isn’t enough to get through to him.

Her relationship with Chase isn’t the only complicated cross-gender issue, either. Now that she and Chase have made things official, Palmer (the guy who was previously too cool to date Ellie publicly) follows her with longing in his eyes. Ellie tries to be friends, but even that spirals into emotions too confusing to sort.

Like her other novels, Stephanie Morrill captures the fresh, perky world of YA, bringing wit and emotional depth to this fantastic story. Ellie’s conflicted relationship with boys really reflects moments on the journey each of us make in learning what makes a successful (or unsuccessful) relationship. She also learns about pride and how one’s choices can injure others. She discovers the pain of humbling oneself to offer apology and the sweet release that comes with such humility.

This sequel to The Revised Life of Ellie Sweet will not disappoint fans and has a lot to offer both teens and aspiring writers alike.

Language Content
None.

Sexual Content
Ellie overhears her boyfriend tell his pals that they’ve been having sex. While the boyfriend has been a little “handsier” than usual lately, sex is a line Ellie sure hasn’t crossed.

Spiritual Content
Ellie and her family are a wholesome, church-going family. Ellie clearly believes the values and spiritual precepts she has been taught in church and tries to walk them out in her life, but the story doesn’t focus on a lot of spiritual content as much as display the principles through the plot and each character’s response to situations the story places them in.

Violence
None.

Drug Content
Despite his claims to Ellie that he’ll behave, Chase seems easily drawn into his friends’ habits of smoking pot and drinking. Ellie does not condone or participate.

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

About Stephanie Morrill

website | facebook | twitter

Stephanie Morrill lives in Overland Park, Kansas with her husband and two kids. Her only talents are reading, writing, and drinking coffee, so career options were somewhat limited. Fortunately she discovered a passion for young adult novels and has been writing them ever since.

Stephanie is the author of The Reinvention of Skylar Hoyt series, The Revised Life of Ellie Sweet, and the award-winning Go Teen Writers: How to Turn Your First Draft into a Published Book. She enjoys encouraging and teaching teen writers on her blog, www.GoTeenWriters.com.

Review: Running Lean by Diana L Sharples

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

Running Lean
Diana L. Sharples
HarperCollins/Blink
Published August 6, 2013

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Haunted by a cruel playground song, Stacey is determined never to be fat again. With her best friend Zoe, she embarks on a rigid diet, rejecting the high-calorie, deep-fried southern dishes her family seems to thrive on. But just when Stacey has it all under control, a fainting spell alerts her boyfriend Calvin that things aren’t as well-ordered as they seem. Stacey brushes off the event as “female problems” and hopes Calvin will just forget it.

Calvin just wants Stacey to be okay, and he’s willing to pay just about any price to make that so. He endeavors to support her, but his own emotions become increasingly strained as his bike – and through it his way of coping with life – begins to fall apart. Though Calvin wants to believe he can love and encourage Stacey through her insecurities, it becomes impossible to ignore the downward spiral her life is taking. Calvin isn’t sure he can push her into recovery without breaking her.

In her brave debut, Sharples captures the raw driving intensity of emotional insecurity and the terrible tension it places on a relationship, boldly describing a tragic teen issue. The reactions of Stacey’s friends and family, the helplessness Calvin wrestles with all felt very real and true to character and life. Though a message of hope is woven through its pages, the story Running Lean isn’t dominated by its spiritual messages. Rather, each character wrestles with thoughts about and feelings toward God in his or her own timing and way.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Sexual Content
Stacey and Calvin share kisses and hold hands, but both have made a commitment to abstinence until marriage. Things get a little hot and heavy between them as Stacey’s emotions spiral further out of control and Calvin tries to reassure her of his love by pressing her physical boundaries further than she’s comfortable with. Clothes stay on, and nothing much ultimately happens before Stacey stops Calvin. There are brief references to a past sexual abuse situation. While the scars of the experience, both physically and emotionally still manifest in the victim, not a lot of detail is given about the events.

Spiritual Content
Since his brother’s death, Calvin has had difficulty thinking about spiritual things. He’s grieving and angry and offers of prayer from his friends and family only frustrate him further. As his relationship with Stacey becomes more and more strained, Calvin begins to rethink his “okay on my own” religious stance and consider asking for God’s help with the situation, since he’s way past knowing what to do on his own.

Violence
None.

Drug Content
Stacey visits a party at which alcohol is present. She doesn’t drink anything, but others around her do.

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Review: Divergent by Veronica Roth

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

Divergent
Veronica Roth
HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen Books
Published February 28, 2012

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Sixteen-year-old Beatrice Prior lives in a world in which faction comes before family. Upon turning sixteen, each society member must choose to commit life to one of five factions. No turning back. Though Beatrice loves her family, she can’t imagine living out the rest of her life wholly committed to serving others selflessly as the Abegnation faction members do. But if she chooses to leave her faction, she will lose her family for good.

Beatrice discovers making her choice puts more at risk than her connection to family. Her mind carries within it a deadly secret, one she must keep at all costs. As she prepares to join the faction of her choice, she renames herself Tris and braces herself for the battle of her life.

Roth’s debut novel packs quite a punch, drawing readers into a world in which survival depends on securing one’s place within a group and virtue is everything. But while the virtues chosen by each faction may have started in purity, time has warped some so that instead of coming together to form a society that is a balanced whole, some factions have become twisted and parasitic.

Though the early chapters spend a lot of time setting up the story, the pace picks up quite a bit once Beatrice/Tris chooses her faction and the initiation rites begin. From that point on, the reader scarcely has a chance to pause for breath, and may need intervention from friends and family in order to put the book down for things like dinner and sleep.

Series fans are already eagerly anticipating the March 2014 release of the movie starring Shailene Woodley based on this first book in the Divergent Series. The series will conclude with the release of Allegiant on October 22, 2013.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Sexual Content
While romantic tensions run high between Tris and her boy, both seem committed to taking the relationship slowly. Lots of kissing scenes and one pretty intense make-out scene in a train, but nothing goes beyond that.

Spiritual Content
The Abegnation faction believe in God and serving others. Though she has always struggled to live up to the pure virtues of her faction, Tris returns to those beliefs in a moment when things go horribly wrong.

Violence
Some initiation rituals are a bit violent. Other initiates, motivated by jealousy, attack their rivals and even attempt to kill them. Divergent climaxes with an intense sequence of battles, but graphic details are limited.

Drug Content
To celebrate or mourn, Tris’s new faction members drink alcohol. Tris herself doesn’t participate. Faction leaders use a serum to create simulations in the minds of the initiates as part of the process of admittance into the faction.

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Review: The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

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

The Raven Boys
Maggie Stiefvater
Scholastic, Inc
Published September 8, 2012

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Premonitions and warnings about the future have always been a part of Blue Sargent’s life in her small home shared by several psychic women. It’s why she stays away from boys: the first boy she kisses will die, according to the predictions of the clairvoyant group.

Staying away from them has never been difficult for Blue. Especially staying away from the over-privileged boys of the Aglionby school. That is, until an unexpected vision on St. Mark’s Eve and a forgotten journal pull Blue into a dangerous and mesmerizing quest led by one of Aglionby’s finest students.

Though she is at first repelled by Gansey’s flippant attitude about money, something deeper flashes beneath the carelessness and bravado, and Blue can’t help but be captivated by that Gansey.

If only she can find a way to keep him from dying.

Filled with memorable characters and fresh wit, The Raven Boys is a wild ride from start to finish. Readers familiar with Stiefvater’s Shiver will find this a much more highly developed work. When I read Shiver, the repetitive use of the phrase, “for a long moment,” bothered me. I hadn’t read anything by Maggie Stiefvater between reading Shiver and The Raven Boys, so I was sort of braced for those words to appear everywhere. (Which now seems pretty ridiculous, when I think about it.) Despite this, it’s difficult to imagine readers beginning this series and not eagerly anticipating the second book, Dream Thieves, which came out in September 2013.

I’ve read this novel more than once, which in itself is a testament to how great the writing is. I don’t get to reread books much anymore, because my list of new books to read is always so long!

I always feel torn about falling in love with this series because of the prominent presence of the psychic characters. Usually it’s a subject that I’d probably avoid in literature, largely due to disinterest, but also for spiritual reasons.

Despite that, I can’t help really getting lost in the beautiful Virginia landscape Stiefvater creates. I love the way the boys relate to each other. Their deep friendship and the complicated history that simultaneously drives them apart and binds them together is absolutely captivating. The fact that Blue has this huge, ominous prediction hanging over her head really kept the tension high throughout the whole story. It’s not the only instance of foreshadowing, either. I love that each character has not only a complex history that creates powerful drive but also some kind of dangerous ability or prediction that haunts their steps. It’s the kind of stuff that keeps you turning pages long after bed time.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Sparse but severe profanity.

Sexual Content
None.

Spiritual Content
Blue’s mother and her friends use psychic ability to make their living and to predict what will happen in Blue’s life and the lives of her friends. Much of the story centers around belief in these abilities and in magic, spirits and rituals. Blue and her friends befriend a ghost and help him maintain a presence. Blue is gifted with the ability to strengthen psychic energy.

Violence
Two brothers engage in a brief fist-fight. One boy suffers physical abuse at the hands of his father, and another boy defends him. The scene is brief. A man is trampled to death, but no details are given of the event. A woman plans to murder a man as part of a ritual. Characters fight over possession of a gun in two different scenes.

Drug Content
One of the boys has a tendency to drink alcohol and get into trouble. It’s not featured much (one night he gets drunk because he’s having trouble sleeping), but not condemned as a behavior, either.

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Review: The Fault In Our Stars by John Green

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

The Fault in Our Stars
John Green
Dutton Books
Published January 10, 2012

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Sixteen-year-old Hazel has lived the roller coaster ride of a terminal cancer diagnosis for the last three years. Now, each breath comes with a price, and she cannot go anywhere without a small portable oxygen tank in tow. Meds prevent the tumors from growing, for now.

At a weekly support group, she listens to tales of other teens fiercely battling cancer. Listens but remains apart, until the unexpected entrance of Augustus Waters.

Augustus draws Hazel out of her self-imposed seclusion with his unflappable visionary nature. He is in many ways the opposite of the quiet, brooding Hazel, and her perfect foil. As the two begin to know each other, they swap favorite novels, and Augustus falls headfirst in love with Hazel’s pick, a novel about cancer called An Imperial Affliction. As the two discuss the book, its philosophical brilliance and painfully tantalizing unanswered questions, their bond deepens.

Terrified of causing the destructive grief that must result from falling in love with someone with a terminal diagnosis, Hazel pulls away from Augustus. He pursues her relentlessly, even spending his wish from a cancer organization to take Hazel to Amsterdam to meet the author of her favorite novel (seriously, what literary lover can resist this kind of wooing? Talk about big guns.)

Amsterdam is everything and nothing Hazel could have hoped for: her dreams dashed and come true at the same time. In response, she must decide how to live her life and what she believes about herself, others, and eternity in the face of faithlessness on the part of humanity and the universe.

John Green has proved his valor as a writer worthy of tackling the deep emotional and cosmic issues with earlier novels, but this novel may yet be his most incredible work. This novel tackles the big human questions about life, love, and loss, exploring at once what they mean and how one responds to them. All this and yet the story remains poignant and breathtaking and sometimes quite hilarious. And tragic. This is another one to read with tissues handy.

Also worthy of note: The Fault in Our Stars the movie will hit the big screen in 2014.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Infrequent but extreme.

Sexual Content
Main characters watch a young couple kiss and briefly fondle over clothing. One scene (without graphic detail) implies that the characters have sex.

Spiritual Content
As the characters face the reality of their diagnoses, they wonder about and discuss what happens after death. Hazel does not believe in God or heaven. Augustus believes in a more nebulous Something beyond.

Violence
While this isn’t violent content, it is only fair to mention that there are some heavy descriptions of different medical treatments and their side effects as well as the dying process. These are critical elements to the story, but some sensitive readers may find them too intense.

Drug Content
Augustus has an unusual habit of hanging a cigarette from his mouth which he never lights, but instead revels in the metaphoric significance of this action. Gus and Hazel sip champagne over a fancy dinner. Hazel and Augustus undergo various cancer treatments involving different types of medications.

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