Contemps Challenge #1 - Freefall by Mindi Scott

From the back cover:
Seth McCoy was the last person to see his best friend, Issac, alive, and the first to find him dead.  It was just another night, just another party, just another time when Issac drank too much and passed out on the lawn.  Only this time, Issac didn't wake up.

Convinced that his own actions led to his friend's death, Seth is torn between turning his life around...or losing himself completely.

Then he meets Rosetta: so beautiful and so different from everything and everyone he's ever known.  But Rosetta has secrets of her own, and Seth will soon realize he isn't the only one who needs saving...

From Me:
Although this book could be pretty dark, I enjoyed it a lot.  Watching Seth go through his emotional recovery after losing his best friend was very interesting - agreeing and disagreeing with the choices he made, rooting for his relationship with Rosetta, and genuinely liking Seth as a person/character made reading this book very easy.  This is not to say that the subject matter was always easy to digest. 

At the time this story opens, Seth's best friend, Issac, has died from suffocation - he drank too much and choked on his own vomit.  Seth blames himself for Issac's death, which is what he struggles with throughout the whole story.  I think that this book should be offered to all high schoolers, but especially those with a love of partying.  It shows us how uncontrolled drinking and underage drinking can devastate many lives - Issac died and everyone who didn't was left picking up the pieces and coming to terms with his death.  At the same time, Seth and Rosetta are trying to begin a relationship, which seems to be very sweet.  Throughout reading, I felt like Seth - on an emotional rollercoaster.  One chapter I would be up and excited for Seth and Rosetta, and the next I would be cursing Issac for bringing Seth down.  But that's what makes this novel so great - I felt like I could understand Seth and the emotions he was going through. 

I would highly recommend this book, but just know that it can be a heavy story to read.

In My Mailbox 2

Hi All,

Summer book list update: 10/71 books read.... I'm thinking I might be a little behind in my quest for reading greatness...

I've decided that I'm going to participate in The Story Siren's meme "In My Mailbox" for at least this week.  Instead of these books being delivered to my door because I'm a really popular YA book blogger, I picked these books up at the library.  These are all part of the Contemps Challenge, which I am about halfway through (yay!).

So, the books that are "in my mailbox" are:

Losing Faith by Denise Jaden
Girl, Stolen by April Henry
Sean Griswold's Head by Lindsey Leavitt
Small Town Sinners by Melissa Walker
Trapped by Michael Northrop
Pearl by Jo Knowles
Back When You Were Easier to Love by Emily Wing Smith
Family by Micol Ostow
Rival  by Sara Bennett Wealer
The Day Before by Lisa Schroeder
Between Here and Forever by Elizabeth Scott
Like Mandarin by Kirsten Hubbard

Have you read any of these books?  Which one should I choose first?

Wolves, Boys, and Other Things That Might Kill Me by Kristen Chandler

From the back cover:

"What did you feel?" says Virgil.
"I don't know," I say, wondering myself.  "I felt, I feel, different."
Virgil stands next to me in the dark, close but far away.  He laughs softly, "So, what, you're Wolf Girl now?"
I laugh, too.  "Shut up, Virgil."
But I do feel different.
My mind hums.  The spell of the day is wrapped around and inside of me.  Eloise says wolves aren't people, but I wonder if people can be like wolves.

From me:
Ok, the most important thing to know about this book is this. is. not. a. werewolf. book.

Good, now that that's out of the way - this was a really great read.  I actually did think it was about werewolves when I began reading, and honestly, I was not looking forward to yet another werewolf book. (Not that I'm not counting down the days until The Savage Grace is released!!!)

KJ, the main character, is an accidentally strong, crusading, determined, hysterical teenage girl who turns a town upside down in order to save the wolves that have made her town their home.  She's not alone in her quest - super hot new kid, Virgil  and his mother, Eloise are wolf-lovers too and they help KJ understand and appreciate the wolves.  They also stand by her when her plans go awry...which is a lot of the time.

I thought that the characters, including the wolves, were great, interesting and easy to like (or not, in some cases).  Many of the "supporting roles" added tons of humor, mystery, and action.

There was something for everyone - romance, action (gunshots!!), and animals.  I know "animals" isn't exactly a genre, but some people are drawn to books about nature/animals, so there.

I would highly recommend this book and hope to read more from Kristen Chandler! 

How to Say Goodbye in Robot by Natalie Standiford

From the back cover:
New to town, Bea is expecting her new best friend to be one of the girls she meets on the first day: very cheery, very friendly, very average.  But instead, the alphabet seats her next to Jonah, aka Ghost Boy, a quiet observer who hasn't made a new friend since third grade.  He's not a big fan of people in general... but he's willing to make an exception for her.  Maybe.

Bea and Jonah are not going to have a friendship based on gossip and parties and what everybody else thinks.  Instead, their friendship comes from truth-bound conversations, shared secrets, and late-night calls to the same old-timer radio show.  They help each other and hurt each other, push away and hold close.  It's not exactly romance - but it's definitely love.  And it means more to them than either one can ever really know.


From me:
I will start by admitting that I am a little biased in my opinion of this book because it's set in BALTIMORE!!  The setting was huge for me because I recognized streets, neighborhoods, and the various places that Bea and Jonah visit.  So, so fun! 

If you are not from Baltimore, or you are not as easily excited as I am, maybe this will not be so super cool to you.  That's ok - there is plenty more to love about this book.  One of the best ways to describe the story comes right from the back cover - it's not a romance, but it's definitely the story of Bea and Jonah's love for one another.

Although I found Jonah to be a hard character to like during parts of the book, but I almost found him hard not to like... if that makes any sense.  Since the story is told from Bea's perspective, I think that I couldn't really get into his head until the end of the book, yet I still felt drawn to him and his own story.  Bea seemed to be caught in the middle of a lot of different conflicts for most of the story (ok, maybe two big ones) - having to choose between Jonah and the "normal" kids from school, having to deal with her mom's brand of crazy, while her dad works very long hours as a professor (at Hopkins!).

While the story was kind of strange in some parts, it was mostly a cute and awkward (in a fun to read) story of two people in love.  

Where She Went by Gayle Forman

Hi All,

Have you seen this?

It's gorgeous, right?  And it sounds like a crazy good book - just look at the summary from Goodreads:

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Last spring, Nikki Beckett vanished, sucked into an underworld known as the Everneath, where immortals Feed on the emotions of despairing humans. Now she's returned- to her old life, her family, her friends- before being banished back to the underworld... this time forever.

She has six months before the Everneath comes to claim her, six months for good-byes she...moLast spring, Nikki Beckett vanished, sucked into an underworld known as the Everneath, where immortals Feed on the emotions of despairing humans. Now she's returned- to her old life, her family, her friends- before being banished back to the underworld... this time forever.

She has six months before the Everneath comes to claim her, six months for good-byes she can't find the words for, six months to find redemption, if it exists.

Nikki longs to spend these months reconnecting with her boyfriend, Jack, the one person she loves more than anything. But there's a problem: Cole, the smoldering immortal who first enticed her to the Everneath, has followed Nikki to the mortal world. And he'll do whatever it takes to bring her back- this time as his queen. 

Totally looking forward to reading this in January.  If you haven't checked out Brodi's blog, you must!  She's hysterical! www.brodiashton.com

On to today's review:

 From the flap:
My first impulse is not the grab her or kiss her or yell at her.  I simply want to touch her cheek, still flushed from the night's performance.  I want to cut through the space that separates us, measured in feet - not miles, not continents, not years - and to take a callused finger to her face...

It's been three years since Adam's lave saved Mia after the accident that annihilated life as she knew it...
...and three years since Mia walked out of Adam's life forever.

Now living on opposite coasts, Mia is Julliard's rising star and Adam is L.A. tabloid fodder, thanks to his new rock star status and celebrity girlfriend.  When Adam gets stuck in New York by himself, chance brings the couple together again, for one last night.  As they explore the city that has become Mia's home, Adam and Mia revisit the past and open their hearts to the future - and each other.

From Me:
I went into this book questioning its ability to measure up to If I Stay.  And the truth is, it really did. 

It was definitely different.  It wasn't as "big" emotionally - there is no tragic accident in this one - but seeing the rest of the story from Adam's heartbroken point of view was quite interesting.  His story is tragic in its own right and you still feel that pull in your heart as he's telling it.  He's certainly much gruffer in his language and, presumably, his lifestyle than Mia was, but you still get to see his sensitivity and definitely his vulnerability, which really makes you root for him. 

I didn't feel as emotionally traumatized by the story as a whole (If I Stay left me stunned and sobbing... in a good way), but that could be because I devoured it in a matter of hours...  It could also be because the choices the characters make in this book are much less... I can't even come up with a word to describe the choice Mia made in If I Stay.  The choices in Where She Went are more universal; everybody has to go through something similar (don't they?).  But that's not a bad thing - it just brings the book down to a level where we can imagine having to decide.

Overall, I did really enjoy the book.  It definitely satisfied my need to know what happened after Mia's choice.  Forman has a very simple, understated, yet totally powerful and beautiful way of telling Mia and Adam's story.  And I truly hope to read many more books by her.

Everneath cover art:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9413044-everneath

Forman, Gayle.  Where She Went. Dutton: NewYork, 2011.

My Crazy Summer Reading

Hello Friends of the Blog,

I have come up with a pretty good plan to stay on track with the blogging, so I feel confident in my ability to keep up with it throughout the summer and next school year and beyond.  I have already begun my summer reading, which is a pretty daunting task.  I took a picture of the books staring at me from my end table.

                                        See the crazy for yourself.  Notice the already overfilled bookcase in the background...

Yeah, I know.  I'm crazy.  There are 51.  51!  And I don't even have the Contemps Challenge books yet!  That's another 20!  (For you English majors, like me - that's 71 books total) 

Can I do it?  Probably.  Will other tasks, like productivity at the summer job and cleaning the laundry before it can walk out of the hamper, be accomplished?  Absolutely not.

I've already finished a few books in my first week of summer vacation, but not sure when I'll be blogging about them - as part of my master plan, I'll be saving some reads to blog about throughout the year.

I'll be posting at least once a week, but who knows which day that will be.  Check in often :)

So, what is your master plan for the summer?  Got a book list?  Like the new look for the blog? 

Still a loser.

Hello Reader Friends,
Yes, it's painfully obvious that I am totally a loser at this blogging thing.  Working on making this better, but it may take a while for me to figure it out.  In the meantime, tell me what you're reading!  I need to start my summer list o' good books.

Back when I've got it all figured out... :)