The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky ★★★★★ Charlie is a freshman. And while he’s not the biggest geek in the school, he is by no means popular. Shy, introspective, intelligent beyond his years yet socially awkward, he is a wallflower, caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it. Charlie is attempting to navigate his way through uncharted territory: the world of first dates and mix tapes, family dramas and new friends; the world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is that perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite. But he can’t stay on the sideline forever. Standing on the fringes of life offers a unique perspective. But there comes a time to see what it looks like from the dance floor. I almost feel like I can’t do this book justice in a review. This is the sort of book you get a hangover from, and you can’t pick up a new book just yet because you’re still thinking about it. While I was reading this, it sort of hit me how real it was. There are thousands of people like Charlie, but sometimes we need reminders like this book so we won't forget. Charlie isn’t the only one with skeletons in his closet. And everyone else’s skeletons keep leaping out at other people. We don’t know where Charlie lives or if that’s even his real name (due to his need to stay anonymous), but while reading this book, I felt really connected to him. Like the letters were for me. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a special sort of book that can make you feel like it was meant for you..
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Sirens by Janet Fox ★★★★☆ When Jo Winter’s parents send her off to live with her rich cousin on the glittering island of Manhattan, it’s to find a husband and forget about her brother Teddy’s death. But all that glitters is not gold… Caught up in the swirl of her cousin’s bobbed-hair set—and the men that court them— Jo soon realizes that the talk of marriage never stops, and behind the seemingly boundless gains are illicit business endeavors, gangsters, and their molls. Jo would much rather spend time with the handsome but quiet Charles, a waiter at the Algonquin Hotel, than drape herself over a bootlegger. But when she befriends a moll to one of the most powerful men in town, Jo begins to uncover secrets—secrets that threaten an empire and could secure Jo’s freedom from her family. I love that Sirens addresses the darker side of the twenties - the gangsters and their gun molls, the shady business in the back of every speakeasy. Danny Connor’s character scared me a little - how cold he was, what he was capable of. I was scared of what he would do to Jo. Lou was realistic in her jealousy, but at times I thought it was overdone. It was very obvious that Jo wasn’t interested in securing Danny for her own, and increasingly obvious that Danny was just using her. She didn’t even seem that bothered by the way Danny treated her. Jo herself was a little disappointing at times. She took too long to pick up on the last hint; there was no dramatic irony involved, she just didn’t get it, when it seemed plainly obvious. But maybe that’s just me. Other times I couldn’t feel enough of her; things didn’t seem to affect her as deeply as it seemed like they should. In all fairness, though, Sirens was a very good read. The plot line was a little convoluted at some points, but overall it held my attention and was full of suspense. I’d recommend it to anyone interested in the 1920s or the gangsters of Prohibition. Insurgent by Veronica Roth (Divergent #2) ★★★★★ One choice can transform you, or destroy you. Every choice has consequences, and as unrest surges in the factions all around her, Tris Prior must continue trying to save those she loves, and herself, while grappling with haunting questions of grief and forgiveness, identity and loyalty, politics and love. I love this series. Roth’s worldbuilding is incredibly detailed and thought through. Her characters are intoxicating and vibrant. The premise of the story is unique, and well done. I hate saying this - but I love who Roth decides to kill. Not because I wanted them to die, or they were minor characters. God knows I nearly dropped the book every time a character bit it. But in real life, war is messy, and the people you want to survive it don’t always make it. I like that Roth keeps it realistic that way, and she lets Tris deal with their deaths realistically. The ending of the book was a little confusing, but then again there’s a third book set to be released, so I hold out hope that my questions will be answered. I can’t wait to read the third book in the trilogy. The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom ★★★★☆ Eddie is a wounded war veteran, an old man who has lived, in his mind, an uninspired life. His job is fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. On his 83rd birthday, a tragic accident kills him as he tries to save a little girl from a falling cart. He awakes in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a destination, but an answer. In heaven, five people explain your life to you. Some you knew, others may have been strangers. One by one, from childhood to soldier to old age, Eddie’s five people revisit their connections to him on earth, illuminating the mysteries of his “meaningless” life, and revealing the haunting secret behind the eternal question: “Why was I here?” I was surprised at how much I liked this book. Because of the title, I figured it would be a book about God or something, but it wasn’t. Albom manages to talk about heaven and dying (and yes, a few mentions of God) without making his story into a Religion Book. I loved how intricate and interwoven Eddie’s story was with the others’. The last person he met in heaven nearly had me crying. This book was very well done and a fascinating story about an “unimportant” man, one that will make you question the impact you've had on others. Paper Towns by John Green ★★★★★ Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs back into his life—dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge—he follows. After their all-nighter ends and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues—and they’re for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees of the girl he thought he knew… This book is the closest thing I have to a Bible. The first time I read it, I liked it well enough. I thought it was a good story. The second time I read, it I fell in love with it. I understood it better, and the ambiguous ending felt right. Some parts of the book are highly metaphorical, and at times I just wished the story would get on with it - but at the same time, the philosophy in it is one of the things I love. Even though I will never be able to correctly imagine Margo or Q, they feel real. And they have a lot to say. John Green's characters are relatable and lovable for all their imperfections. Paper Towns made me giggle like an idiot, and it always cheers me up. The Probability of Miracles by Wendy Wunder ★☆☆☆☆ Campbell Cooper has never been in love. And if the doctors are right, she’ll never have the chance. So when she’s told she needs a miracle, her family moves 1,500 miles north to Promise, Maine—a place where amazing, unexplainable events are said to occur—like it or not. And when a mysterious envelope arrives, containing a list of things for Cam to do before she dies, she finally learns to believe—in love, in herself, and maybe even in miracles, as improbable as they may seem. I wasn’t crazy about this book. In fact, I probably wouldn’t have liked it at all if it weren’t for the ending, which was kind of redeeming. I feel like Wunder didn’t let us get very close to Campbell, and Asher was a little too perfect, while Perry was the embodiment of the tween stereotype. I didn’t even find it that funny. Plus, there were a few quotes I absolutely hated:
She also bashes on Disney throughout the book. I understand that it wouldn’t hold the same magical glow for Cam as it does for most kids, since she grew up there. But there are a lot of ways to make it obvious a character doesn’t like something without making it sound like anyone who does like said thing is idiotic.
Then there’s Cam’s whole Flamingo List thing. She plans on losing her virginity to an asshole and getting her heart broken, and then when she makes it happen she gets all pissed about it. To be fair, Alec was an asshole, but still. Throughout the book, things seem to work out just a little too perfectly. Cam instantly makes friends. They miraculously find a town that’s supposed to be impossible to find. They go skinny dipping and dolphins just happen to show up. The puppy survives against all odds. Buddy the flamingo is taken care of in Maine. Asher finds his way out of a storm that should have killed him just in time to see Campbell one more time. And yes, I know Promise is a town of miracles, supposedly, but there is such a thing as overdoing it. As I said before, though, the ending was kind of redeeming. I felt like the rest of the book was “too good to be true,” but the ending at least was somewhat realistic. UnWholly by Neil Shusterman (Unwind #2) ★★★★★ Thanks to Connor, Lev, and Risa—and their high-profile revolt at Happy Jack Harvest Camp—people can no longer turn a blind eye to unwinding. Ridding society of troublesome teens while simultaneously providing much-needed tissues for transplant might be convenient, but its morality has finally been brought into question. However, unwinding has become big business, and there are powerful political and corporate interests that want to see it not only continue, but also expand to the unwinding of prisoners and the impoverished. Cam is a product of unwinding; made entirely out of the parts of other unwinds, he is a teen who does not technically exist. A futuristic Frankenstein, Cam struggles with a search for identity and meaning and wonders if a rewound being can have a soul. And when the actions of a sadistic bounty hunter cause Cam’s fate to become inextricably bound with the fates of Connor, Risa, and Lev, he’ll have to question humanity itself. Most sequels to great books contract Second Book Syndrome. They lack the depth and character of the first books, aren’t plotted as well, or aren’t really needed. Needless to say, I was a little worried that UnWholly wouldn’t live up to its predecessor. But my doubt was squashed as soon as I started reading. If anything, UnWholly is even more thought-provoking and developed than Unwind. Whereas Unwindtackled the idea of death, UnWholly tackles the idea of life. While Conor, Lev, and Risa are running for their lives from the Juvey cops and harvest camps, you have to ask if unwinding is really death or just a ‘divided state’ and if unwinding is ethical or not. In the continuation of their story, those questions are still relevant, but you also have to ask if Cam is even alive, if he has a soul, if he’s a new person or not. Just as rife with philosophy, plot twists, and incredible writing as ever, UnWholly makes a fantastic addition to the Unwind trilogy. The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa (Blood of Eden #1) ★★★★☆ Allison Sekemoto survives in the Fringe, the outermost circle of a walled-in city. By day, she and her crew scavenge for food. By night, any one of them could be eaten. Some days, all that drives Allie is her hatred of them—the vampires who keep humans as blood cattle. Until the night Allie herself dies and becomes one of the monsters. Forced to flee her city, Allie must pass for human as she joins a ragged group of pilgrims seeking a legend—a place that might have a cure for the disease that killed off most of civilization and created the rabids, the bloodthirsty creatures who threaten human and vampire alike. And soon Allie will have to decide what and who is worth dying for - again. Ever since Twilight came out and sparked a whole new interest in vampire books, I’ve been a little wary of the genre. But The Immortal Rules is wonderfully not Twilight. I love Kagawa’s vamps. They’re a cool new spin on traditional Dracula-types, and the fact that she added in the vampire cities and Rabids makes her world that much more complete. The vampire cities are eerie and scarily real-feeling. The Rabids, post-human monsters with no thoughts other than to destroy, just scare the shit out of me. For all I like about Kagawa’s beautifully combined paranormal dystopia, I wish I knew a little more about Allison. She seems to adjust to vampirism pretty quickly; I want to know if she’s conflicted about being ‘alive’ as a vamp, or if she simply accepts it as how life is now. Still, Kagawa managed to stay remarkably real in her story - from the way Stick reacts to Allie to the pilgrims looking for Eden to the humans’ reactions to being put under vampire rule. I will definitely be continuing this series. Unwind by Neil Shusterman (Unwind #1) ★★★★★ The Second Civil War was fought over reproductive rights. The chilling resolution: Life is inviolable from the moment of conception until age thirteen. Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, however, parents can have their child “unwound,” whereby all of the child’s organs are transplanted into different donors, so life doesn’t technically end. Connor is too difficult for his parents to control. Risa, a ward of the state is not important enough to be kept alive. And Lev is a tithe, a child conceived and raised to be unwound. Together, they may have a chance to escape and to survive. On the surface, Unwind is a fast-paced adventure story, kids running for their lives. And when you stop to think about why they’re running for their lives, it throws you for a loop. When I first read Unwind, I didn’t want to believe that such a world could exist, but either because Shusterman thought of every detail in creating this world, or because it was so believable, I felt like I was living in that world. The ideas behind the book are also big issues in society today. Shusterman’s characters live and breathe right next to you, pulling you into their wild escape. You will bite your nails in suspense and your breath will catch at every turn with Unwind. I highly recommend it; this is probably my favorite dystopian series. Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion ★★★★★ R is a young man with an existential crisis—he is a zombie. He shuffles through an America destroyed by war, social collapse, and the mindless hunger of his undead comrades, but he craves something more than blood and brains. He can speak just a few grunted syllables, but his inner life is deep, full of wonder and longing. He has no memories, no identity, and no pulse, but he has dreams.After experiencing a teenage boy’s memories while consuming his brain, R makes an unexpected choice that begins a tense, awkward, and strangely sweet relationship with the victim’s human girlfriend. Julie is a blast of color in the otherwise dreary and gray landscape that surrounds R. His decision to protect her will transform not only R, but his fellow Dead, and perhaps their whole lifeless world. I loved this book. It was practically glued to my hands; I barely paused to eat while I was reading it. There are a thousand reasons I love Warm Bodies, but one of the biggest is that it’s so different. I’ve read a few zombie stories in my day, and this one took the cake. R isn’t a thoughtless killing machine. There’s no sense of hopelessness and defeatism in him or Julie - they acknowledge that their world’s gone to shit, but they hope it will get better. I was skeptical at first; sure that R’s “recovery” would be some miraculous, cliched cure from love. But R starts to become human and live again because he wants to. And it’s infectious. The amount of character development in this book is staggering. The amount of thought Marion put into his world-building and the plague itself is wonderful. I do wish that the battle against the Boneys had gone slightly different, at least at the end, when they all just walked away. But overall,Warm Bodies completely transported me into R and Julie’s world, had me sitting on the edge of my seat, and made me fall totally in love with it. I never thought I would care so much about a zombie. |
Once Upon a Time...As a longtime lover of stories and a believer in the power and magic of books, I've spent my life seeking out the best reads. This blog is dedicated to reviewing the books I read - good, bad, or magnificent - to help other readers find their next favorite books. Currently ReadingKing Zeno
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