Tag Archives: Henry Holt & Co

Review: Girl Stolen by April Henry

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

Girl Stolen by April HenryGirl, Stolen
April Henry
Henry Holt & Co

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Nothing was supposed to happen. Her step-mom left her in the car for a few minutes while she ran inside to pay for antibiotics. But when Cheyenne woke, instead of her step-mom behind the wheel of the car, it’s a boy with a gun. She’d been kidnapped.

Taking the car was supposed to be easy. It was running. Griffin hopped in and took it. He just didn’t realize there was a girl sleeping in the back seat. Once Roy starts calling the shots, things get complicated. The girl’s dad owns a big company. The boys want to collect a ransom. But Cheyenne’s pneumonia’s getting worse, and without antibiotics, she won’t last long. Her blindness keeps her from being able to recognize her captors, but it also makes it that much harder for her to escape.

This book really caught my attention because it’s a story about a kidnapping in which the protagonist is also blind. I liked that it was about a blind character but not about her blindness. I thought Henry portrayed Cheyenne as crafty, smart and independent. I liked Griffin, despite his flaws. He’s not the sharpest pencil in the box, but ultimately he wants to do the right thing and keep Cheyenne safe, and I definitely respected that. I liked that their relationship didn’t go wild and unrealistic places and stayed in this more ‘tentative allies’ frame.

Suspense isn’t really my thing, so I feel like it’s hard for me to evaluate the book in terms of the genre. I thought it could have been more suspenseful and intense. Because Cheyenne reasoned things out carefully, I think it tended to read with a gentler pace than some of the (few) suspense novels I’ve read. I didn’t enjoy it less for the pace, though.

Language Content
Mild language used infrequently.

Sexual Content
While the group holds Cheyenne captive, one man threatens to rape her. It’s creepy, but he doesn’t succeed.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violence
Griffin’s dad is a violent man. There are references to things he’s done, but we don’t see him really become violent in terms of directly harming anyone in the story itself. He breaks windows on a truck and threatens to shoot Cheyenne. A man is shot in the chest with a shotgun at close range.

Drug Content
When Cheyenne is sick, Griffin describes her fevered state as reminding him of really drunk people at parties he’s been to. Cheyenne thinks the men who’ve captured her may be drunk.

Review: Forever For a Year by B T Gottfred

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

Forever For a Year
B. T. Gottfred
Henry Holt and Company

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Carolina and Trevor begin their freshman year at a new high school. Carolina is determined to make the right friends and impress her bestie’s older, more sophisticated sister. Trevor, new in town and resentful of the issues causing his family to relocate, has no expectation to enjoy his new school. Then he meets Carolina. The two fall head over heels and soar into the glory of first love.

As their feelings deepen, they spend more and more time alone, and kissing leads to touching leads to more. But their professed love and belief that they are each other’s soul mates may not be enough to bind the two together when Trevor keeps a secret and Carolina makes a mistake.

Gottfred captures the roller coaster ride of hormones and emotions. Carolina and Trevor’s relationship has its own gravity which pulls even their personalities into orbit around it. Though Carolina was almost obnoxiously perky at times, Trevor’s brooding temper and deep family issues kept the story from becoming trite. He experienced many of the story’s powerful moments, from the lesson on falling in love vs. being in love to the realization that long term relationships create their own baggage and become difficult. We watch the two believe wholeheartedly in the infallibility of their love and the power of being soul mates to cement their relationship for all time. And then life happens. Lies. Mistakes. Suddenly love isn’t so easy or so permanent. Gottfred really captured those moments and ideas well.

What fell flat for me was the ending. There’s this moment where I felt like the thread unraveled. I agreed with the plot of the ending. It needed to be that way. But after this long, powerful buildup, there was this moment where I felt like the characters kind of just dropped all the emotion and said, “The End,” and that was it. I also struggled with the story when the parents were being unfaithful. I felt like that revelation didn’t carry enough gravity and enough emotional fallout. I felt like it should have affected Carolina and Trevor more individually and as a couple.

Language Content
Extreme profanity used with moderate frequency.

Sexual Content
Explicit sexual content. The language used to describe the encounters is mild as opposed to erotic language, but the experiences are described in detail. Carolina and Trevor have little experience with the opposite sex when they begin dating. They spend a LOT of time behind a locked basement door exploring each other’s bodies and developing a sexual relationship. It’s steamy stuff, but it’s also fraught with the kind of awkwardness that one expects from inexperienced lovers.

Reading the book, I felt like it may be that the author wrote it with this level of specificity as a way to encourage teens who were active or experimenting with sex that many of the uncertainties and insecurities are common. I’m not a fan of explicit sex in teen fiction. I want to say a lot more about my thoughts on this as an approach to teen fiction, but I really think I need to save it for another post.

Trevor and Carolina also deal with feelings about their parents being unfaithful spouses.

I liked that Gottfred showed a spectrum of response to teen relationships. While Carolina and Trevor are pretty serious and heavy with each other, one of Carolina’s friends doesn’t date at all because her parents have set rules against it. One of Carolina’s other friends seems to be hooking up with random boys at parties. There are boys like Trevor, who wants to treat Carolina well in terms of not pressuring her and trying to reciprocate pleasure to her. Another boy pressures Carolina and really only cares about receiving satisfaction himself. Despite the explicitness, I did respect that this wasn’t a tale that painted everyone as getting into everyone else’s pants.

What was really weird, too, was that reading the explicit parts, I actually felt a bit like a creeper. Carolina and Trevor are so young, and they SOUND SO YOUNG. Eep. It was like walking in on a younger sibling and feeling like okay, now I need to forget I ever saw that! I don’t know if it’s because I’m not in the target age range or too old to read this stuff or what. I normally don’t weird myself out reading romantic YA, but this really felt weird to me.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violence
Trevor and another boy get into a fist fight.

Drug Content
Several scenes show teens drinking alcohol.

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

Review: Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

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

Six of Crows
Leigh Bardugo
Henry Holt & Co./MacMillan
Published September 29, 2015

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About Six of Crows

Ketterdam: a bustling hub of international trade where anything can be had for the right price—and no one knows that better than criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker. Kaz is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But he can’t pull it off alone. . . .

A convict with a thirst for revenge

A sharpshooter who can’t walk away from a wager

A runaway with a privileged past

A spy known as the Wraith

A Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums

A thief with a gift for unlikely escapes

Kaz’s crew is the only thing that might stand between the world and destruction—if they don’t kill each other first.

My Review

This book is a bit longer than my usual read, I’d heard so much buzz about it that I couldn’t resist giving it a shot. It’s also the first book by Leigh Bardugo that I’ve read.

Now, after I’ve recovered from sleepless nights huddled in my bed reading far too late, I can say it was absolutely worth it. Not since reading THE BOOK THIEF by Markus Zusak have I read a novel that has affected me so.

The characters immediately hooked me. Each one of the heist members is unique and has so much to lose if the job goes wrong. I loved the way Bardugo set up the romantic tension. I was absolutely dying for the couples to find their way through the conflict to at last reveal their true feelings for one another. Totally swoon-worthy. Wow.

At its heart, SIX OF CROWS is a pretty simple story about a team who get hired to steal something valuable. What makes it so truly spectacular is the complex story world in which the characters exist and the relationships and experiences that bind the characters together or drive them apart. The narrative is also fantastic. Fantasy lovers absolutely need to give this a read. Even if you didn’t enjoy Leigh Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone Trilogy, trust me and give this one a go. This was my first experience with her writing, and afterward I went back to read the first in the Grisha series. The style and the story are so different. It took me a lot longer to get into SHADOW AND BONE. Not that it isn’t good, I just feel like it’s a mistake to compare them.

Now I’m off to scratch another mark on my wall counting down to the release of CROOKED KINGDOM next year. Must. Have. More.

Content Notes

Language Content
Infrequent use of profanity.

Sexual Content
While there’s no explicit sex, there are some intense moments. Nina and Inej both have a history working in a brothel, though very few details are given about that, and Nina uses her Heartrender gift to soothe and calm the minds of her patrons. Inej was trafficked as a sex worker. Nina and Matthias have a history and she makes a couple of crude comments about his arousal, but there is no description of sex.

Spiritual Content
SIX OF CROWS includes some fantasy story world lore, especially Fjerdan traditions.

Violence
Fight scenes, references to torture, some moderately gory battles. Also, one character has a bit of a gruesome backstory in which he was trapped among dead bodies.

Drug Content
Grisha are vulnerable to a highly addictive drug which grossly amplifies their power. Exposure to even one dose can turn them into desperate, terrorized addicts.

What’s the last book you read that left you totally breathless?

When I finished this book, I just sat speechless for a few moments. Then I honestly had to stop myself from turning the book over and starting again! I loved loved loved it and cannot wait for the sequel.

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Review: Stay Where You Are and Then Leave by John Boyne

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

Stay Where You Are and Then Leave
John Boyne
Henry Holt & Co/MacMillan
Published September 26, 2013

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

When Alfie’s dad left for war, everyone said he’d be home by Christmas. That was four years ago. Now his father doesn’t write or contact the family at all. Alfie’s mother says it’s because he’s on a secret mission for the government, but Alfie knows she’s lying. His father is dead, and no one wants to tell him the truth.

To help support his mother and without her knowledge, Alfie begins a secret mission of his own. Three days a week, he skips school and shines shoes at a nearby train station. Through a series of chance incidents, Alfie discovers that his father is not dead. He’s a patient at a nearby hospital and suffers from something called “shell shock.” Alfie resolves to find his father and bring him safely home where he belongs.

Boyne has an uncanny ability to engross readers in this very grown-up story told through the eyes of a nine year-old boy. Alfie struggles to understand disagreements about foreign backgrounds and commitments to nonviolence between his formerly friendly neighbors. Though he grasps the seriousness of his family’s financial distress, he doesn’t understand why his father can’t come home with him or what’s wrong with his mind.

Where the novel The Boy in the Striped Pajamas leaves readers gasping at its shocking (and powerful) end, Stay Where You Are and Then Leave is a more subtle story. It leaves readers to simmer over the flames of issues like human rights and the reality and validity of mental illness.

Using the viewpoint of a child allows the story to explore how the war affected those on the home front without focusing on the violence of the battle front. No one humanizes characters the way that an admiring young boy does. He grieves for his neighbors who’ve been removed to internment camp and for his father’s friend, a conscientious objector who is severely beaten for his convictions. Alfie’s voice fills the pages of the story with compassion. The reader will grasp things beyond the young boy’s ken through conversations overheard around him. This would be a great literary companion to a first historical look at World War I.

Profanity and Crude Language Content
Mild profanity.

Sexual Content
None.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violence
Brief references to war violence and soldiers who’ve died.

Drug Content
Hospital patients are given various drugs to combat physical and mental illness.

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