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Review: White Rabbit by Caleb Roehrig

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

White Rabbit by Caleb RoehrigWhite Rabbit
Caleb Roehrig
Feiwel & Friends
Published on April 24, 2018

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About White Rabbit

Rufus Holt is having the worst night of his life. It begins with the reappearance of his ex-boyfriend, Sebastian—the guy who stomped his heart out like a spent cigarette. Just as Rufus is getting ready to move on, Sebastian turns up out of the blue, saying they need to “talk.” Things couldn’t get much worse, right?

But then Rufus gets a call from his sister April, begging for help. And then he and Sebastian find her, drenched in blood and holding a knife, beside the dead body of her boyfriend, Fox Whitney.

April swears she didn’t kill Fox—but Rufus knows her too well to believe she’s telling him the whole truth. April has something he needs, though, and her price is his help. Now, with no one to trust but the boy he wants to hate yet can’t stop loving, Rufus has one night to prove his sister’s innocence…or die trying.

My Review

It’s been a while since I read a book purely for the fun of it, but I think I needed this book. It was so much fun to read. I got carried away by mystery elements and the complex relationships between characters.

As the story progressed and Rufus drew closer and closer to the murderer, things got more and more dangerous. I was totally biting my nails and practically jumping at every noise while I read. Add to that the fact that Rufus has this really fabulous voice, which again made it great fun to read. I loved the side comments and the way the dialogue gave these light moments away from the tension without disrupting the storytelling.

I loved that Rufus (okay, first, I loved that he’s called Rufus. There aren’t enough Rufus characters in literature. Love it!) battles this deep anger, part of which seems perhaps hereditary and part of which might be environmental. But he doesn’t just make excuses about Hulking out. He recognizes how damaging it can be and really wrestles with his angry impulses. That made him so easy to understand and so admirable to me.

Also, I loved his relationship with his mom. It felt very real, and I felt like there was this great balance in the story where she was there, and obviously a big force in Rufus’s life, but the relationship with her didn’t dominate the story. I also loved the moment where one character has to confront a family member about a secret he’s been keeping. He’s worried the family member will reject him over it to the point that he’s expecting to lose the relationship. And instead, the family member talks about how they love him no matter what. We need those kinds of stories and moments, and the reminders that there are good parents out there, and that sometimes we expect to be rejected but are instead surprised by love and acceptance.

Anyway, I read this book in less than a day, I think. I had so much fun reading it, and I absolutely want to read Roehrig’s other book, LAST SEEN LEAVING.

Recommended for Ages 12 up.

Cultural Elements
Rufus and Sebastian are both gay. Sebastian is black.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Regular use of extreme profanity.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between two boys. References to sex. Some details leading up to the event. Some sexual comments.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
Rufus has some pretty serious anger management issues which he speaks pretty candidly about. He’s trying his best to manage via medication and other healthy strategies, but he’s still bearing some consequences from fights in his past. In several scenes he’s very tempted to fight again. At one point a man threatens him and handles him pretty roughly. A couple characters are downright physically threatening. Someone fires a gun at another person in two scenes. A character threatens others with a gun in another scene. More than one character gets drugged.

Drug Content
Teen alcohol use is pretty normalized. Some references to smoking pot. References to a dangerous psychedelic drug that causes some violent outbursts.


Review: Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor

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

Strange the Dreamer
Laini Taylor
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published on March 28, 2017

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About Strange the Dreamer
The dream chooses the dreamer, not the other way around—and Lazlo Strange, war orphan and junior librarian, has always feared that his dream chose poorly. Since he was five years old he’s been obsessed with the mythic lost city of Weep, but it would take someone bolder than he to cross half the world in search of it. Then a stunning opportunity presents itself, in the person of a hero called the Godslayer and a band of legendary warriors, and he has to seize his chance or lose his dream forever.

What happened in Weep two hundred years ago to cut it off from the rest of the world? What exactly did the Godslayer slay that went by the name of god? And what is the mysterious problem he now seeks help in solving?

The answers await in Weep, but so do more mysteries—including the blue-skinned goddess who appears in Lazlo’s dreams. How did he dream her before he knew she existed? And if all the gods are dead, why does she seem so real?

My Review
It took me a long time to read Strange the Dreamer because I loved Daughter of Smoke and Bone so much that I worried Strange wouldn’t measure up or would make me miss the other series too much. I know. I always do this to myself! And then usually, it’s all good, and I enjoy the new book or series anyway. And, surprise! I enjoyed this book, too.

I love the way Taylor creates broad, deep story worlds and draws readers into cultural conflicts and explores values where they come from. Both Lazlo and Sarai pretty much had me at hello. I loved them both, but especially Lazlo for his enthusiasm and his desire to help others. Of course the tragic Godslayer had me at his first appearance, too.
The only thing that really made me stumble is the omniscient point-of-view in which the story is told. It’s consistent and adds a lot to the novel, so I totally get why Strange the Dreamer is written this way, but omniscient isn’t my favorite. So whenever there would be those zoom-out moments where we get a god’s-eye view of what’s happening in all the heads of all the people, I kind of had to blink a few times and re-settle into the story. Totally worth it, though.

Strange the Dreamer is a bit more of an adult story than I remember Daughter of Smoke and Bone being. It feels heavier and definitely more adult in the way the characters romantic relationships progress. I guess I felt like Karou in Daughter of Smoke and Bone really feels young, and that anchored the story in the young adult genre for me. Again, not sorry I read the book, but thought that needed brief noting.

So that’s it! Check the content below and happy reading!

Recommended for Ages 16 up.

Cultural Elements
Since this is a fantasy, there are made up races and ethnicities. The story begins in a more temperate climate with a brown-skinned people and progresses to a desert climate of brown-skinned people. A separate race of gods have blue skin.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
Some very sensual scenes showing kissing between girl and boy. Two female characters also have a relationship and share sleeping space. There are some references to sex but no descriptions of it directly.
The gods took human slaves and used them to bear their children. No descriptions of this, but obviously the survivors bear some trauma from the experience.

Spiritual Content
A blue race of humans have magical abilities (one specific ability each) and call themselves gods.

Violent Content
The story begins and ends with a young woman’s death. She falls and is impaled on a gate. Before the story begins, a man brutally kills the gods, even their small children and babies. No descriptions other than that they babies screamed and suddenly went silent.
See romance content about the gods and their treatment of human slaves.
In one scene, ghosts attack a group of humans.

Drug Content
Some references to drinking alcohol.


Review: Umberland by Wendy Spinale

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

Umberland
Wendy Spinale
Scholastic Press
Published on May 9, 2017

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About Umberland
They’re dreadfully fond of beheading people here…

Gwen, Pete, and the others have escaped from Everland. Except the safe haven they hoped to find at Alnwick Castle doesn’t exist. With the Queen of England on her deathbed, Duchess Alyssa has stepped in, but things have gotten worse as the cure Doc created for the Horologia virus has mutated into something even more deadly. The only possible solution he can think of is to go back to the virus’s origin: an extinct poisonous apple.

Legend has it, though, that a tree bearing the apple might be found at the center of an impossible labyrinth hidden deep within Germany. A place no one in their right mind enters. With no other options, Alyssa sets out with only her sword, her wits, and the help of Maddox Hadder, a wild boy who oversees the castle gardens. To get to the center of the maze, she’ll be forced to battle monsters more terrifying than her darkest nightmares.

But can anyone truly survive the madness of the maze? And what if there’s no apple to be found there?

My Review
I’m loving this series so far. I think I was pretty primed to like Maddox Hadder – something about that whole dark and misunderstood boy with a terribly tragic past tends to be irresistible to me – and I really did like him a lot. I think I expected there to be more of a sort of madness about him though? I think that was the only thing I felt was missing about Umberland. The Labrynth was a scary place for sure, but apart from a specific scene, there really wasn’t much of a madness element to it. I think I wanted more of that Wonderland flavor.

Even without that, though, I liked the new characters introduced in the story. And I liked that it carries forward the stories of Jack and Hook as well as Gwen and the Lost Boys. Cat, the heir to the English throne and sort of Cheshire Cat type of character, added a lot of depth to the story with her own plot to save Umberland through a very dangerous alliance.

I think Everland is still my favorite of these two books, but I enjoyed this one a lot, too. The story in Umberland didn’t feel like quite as much of a retelling of Alice in Wonderland as Everland did of Peter Pan. Lots of things were different. And there were also some Snow White-like elements mixed in with the poison apple and wicked queen. All in all, though, I’m glad I read it, and this seems like a fun series for readers looking for dystopian or fairytale mashups.

Recommended for Ages 12 up.

Cultural Elements
Major characters are white. Lily is Indian.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
Brief kissing between boy and girl.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
Some situations of peril. Lizard -like people attack the castle where Pete and the others have taken shelter. A gunshot kills one boy. Alyssa and Maddox fight a huge machine.

Drug Content
Maddox and Cat host huge, indulgent parties each night in their garden. Guests with advanced-stage disease consume drugs and alcohol and end their lives at the close of the party. Maddox makes some vague references to sampling opium tea in the past.

Review: To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han

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

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before
Jenny Han
Simon & Schuster
Published on April 15, 2014

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

About To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is the story of Lara Jean, who has never openly admitted her crushes, but instead wrote each boy a letter about how she felt, sealed it, and hid it in a box under her bed. But one day Lara Jean discovers that somehow her secret box of letters has been mailed, causing all her crushes from her past to confront her about the letters: her first kiss, the boy from summer camp, even her sister’s ex-boyfriend, Josh. As she learns to deal with her past loves face to face, Lara Jean discovers that something good may come out of these letters after all.

My Review

I can’t believe how long it took me to finally read this book! I really wanted to read the book before I watched the Netflix adaptation of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, and I’m glad I did. More on the book to movie adaptation in a minute.

Reading the book was so much fun. I love stories about sisters. I have two sisters, too, so it reminded me a lot of my relationships with both my sisters (though I’m the oldest in my family.).

At first I thought I had the romance plot pegged, and I worried that would make the story boring. But actually, a lot of things happened that I didn’t predict, and so much of it was either sweet or funny or packed with emotion that I found myself super invested in what would happen to Lara Jean as she confronted her real reasons for writing the letters and the unresolved issues between her and her older sister.

Also, can I just say that Lara Jean’s youngest sister Kitty is my favorite. I love her quirkiness and the comic relief she provides. Her commitment to a grudge also kept her from being one of those too-perfect little kid characters.
If I’m totally honest, I wasn’t planning on reading this whole series, because I don’t often read contemporary romance. But after reading To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, I really want to know where the story goes next. So I will probably try to read Lara Jean’s other adventures, too.

Thoughts on the Book to Movie Transformation
After reading the book, I sat down and watched the Netflix movie version of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. There were a lot of differences between the book and movie. Some things I totally understood because they simplified the plot (like skipping Lara Jean’s car accident) and other things seemed like they changed the story (like Kitty’s relationship with Lara Jean). I missed Kitty’s capriciousness, I think.

Also, am I the only one who found it super weird that the groom from My Big Fat Greek Wedding was the dad in To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before? I don’t know why that threw me for a loop, but I kept doing a double-take for every scene he was in. He did a great job. I just had to adjust to it being him. All in all, I liked the movie. If my daughter was into contemporary romance, it’s the kind of movie I’d want to watch together.

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Cultural Elements
Lara Jean’s mom was Korean and her dad is white. (Her mom died years before the story begins.)

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used infrequently. Lara Jean herself doesn’t like cursing (though she does briefly swear at one point).

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between boy and girl. Rumors about and references to characters having sex but no details, and nothing more than kissing happens on scene.

Spiritual Content
None.
Violent Content
None.

Drug Content
Lara Jean goes to a party where some other kids are drinking alcohol. She doesn’t drink.