Book Review: This is What Happy Looks Like

If fate sent you an email, would you answer?

When teenage movie star Graham Larkin accidentally sends small town girl Ellie O'Neill an email about his pet pig, the two seventeen-year-olds strike up a witty and unforgettable correspondence, discussing everything under the sun, except for their names or backgrounds. 
Then Graham finds out that Ellie's Maine hometown is the perfect location for his latest film, and he decides to take their relationship from online to in-person. But can a star as famous as Graham really start a relationship with an ordinary girl like Ellie? And why does Ellie want to avoid the media's spotlight at all costs? Quoted from Goodreads

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This novel is just cute. It's the dream every girl's had at least once.  It's the perfect read for you summer vacation.  It's light, and as the title suggests, what happy looks like.

First, I absolutely love this cover.  I love the smiling, yellow happy, the sunrise cover silhouetting the two people on the boat.  I love the color scheme, simple and striking.  It's one of those covers that practically screams read me.  Any book that gets this cover must be absolutely amazing.

Okay, now on to the real story.  It starts off with e-mails, but rapidly turns into the story, alternating POV between Graham and Ellie.  Maybe I don't read enough straight up contemporary YA romances, but that was  refreshing for me.  We get both sides of the story.  Not just your Cinderella type, small town girl falling in love with big time actor, but we see why he falls for Ellie.  We get both of their issues, what makes each of them fall for the other, and their insecurities.  Plus, with Graham's POV, we get to experience both the ups and downs of what it's like to be famous.  It's reminds you that no matter how fairytale the setup of the story, it's not all fun and games.  It changes him, but not in the way you would immediately think, which is why he is drawn to Ellie in the first place. Then there's Ellie. She's so likable in the way she handles everything with Graham.  She has her own issues, which cause a good portion of the conflict in this book, but not in a ridiculous, drama filled way.  Despite the fantastical setup, the whole story comes across as grounded in reality.

I also enjoy how both characters families and friends play a pivotal role in their lives.  It isn't just a story about two people who fall in love in a bubble where the rest of the world fades away.  Ellie's mother is a very real character, as (to a lesser extent) are Graham's parents.   Then there's Ellie's friends, Graham's agent, director, costars, etc.  It adds depth to the book, making it seem like this fairytale could really happen.

Finally, Jennifer E. Smith is just a plain good writer.  You can't help but get sucked into the world she creates, immerse yourself in the small town, and love the characters. I especially liked the e-mails at the beginning of the each chapter, which help move the story along, somewhat, and remind you of how Ellie and Graham first met.  Plus, they're just cute.

All in all, this is a fun, 4 stars for me. It's simple, yet beautifully done, fantastical setup, yet grounded in reality.  If you're looking for a fun, light, happy romance, this is it. 

Amanda Monday: While I've been sick

Hello readers.  I am sorry for the lack of Amanda Monday posts I have contributed to this blog lately.  I have not been feeling very good this past month, and with a long list of "must do's" that have to come first, I have let some of the "want to do's" slip . . . like this blog.
But while the rest of you are (hopefully) enjoying the ever-warming weather and the events of spring, I have been reading a lot of books.  Here is a list of books that have kept me company in bed, on the couch, and resting.

A PC school principal turns West Side Story into a comedy of errors.
Sixteen year-old Jessica dreams of Hollywood fame, and when Jordan moves into her small town, she dreams of him too. He’s a movie star’s son, and hey, he’s gorgeous to boot. Jordan has always wanted to get out from the shadow cast by his superstar father, but now that he and his mother have moved so far away from LA, how can he get his divorced parents back together? Jessica convinces Jordan the way to get his father to come for a long visit is to be a part of the school play. And if she’s “discovered” in the process, all the better. Things go wrong when she lets Jordan’s secret identity slip, and grow even more disastrous when the principal tries to change West Side Story into a gangfree, violence-free, politically correct production.
In the same romantic and sharply witty spirit of Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Free Throws, Janette Rallison delivers another comic gem that teen readers are sure to love.

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But she is also the younger of two princesses, the one who has never done anything remarkable. She can't see how she ever will.

Now, on her sixteenth birthday, she has become the secret wife of a handsome and worldly king—a king whose country is in turmoil. A king who needs the chosen one, not a failure of a princess.

And he's not the only one who seeks her. Savage enemies seething with dark magic are hunting her. A daring, determined revolutionary thinks she could be his people's savior. And he looks at her in a way that no man has ever looked at her before. Soon it is not just her life, but her very heart that is at stake.

Elisa could be everything to those who need her most. If the prophecy is fulfilled. If she finds the power deep within herself. If she doesn’t die young.

Most of the chosen do.

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Both are fabulous in their own special ways, and may even entice you from the warm out-doors to curl up with a good book.

Book Review: Stung

There is no cure for being stung.

Fiona doesn’t remember going to sleep. But when she opens her eyes, she discovers her entire world has been altered—her house is abandoned and broken, and the entire neighborhood is barren and dead. Even stranger is the tattoo on her right hand—a black oval with five marks on either side—that she doesn’t remember getting but somehow knows she must cover at any cost. She’s right.

Those bearing the tattoo have turned into mindless, violent beasts that roam the streets and sewers, preying upon the unbranded while a select few live protected inside a fortress-like wall, their lives devoted to rebuilding society and killing all who bear the mark.Now Fiona has awakened branded, alone—and on the wrong side of the wall. Quoted from Goodreads

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I have so many mixed feelings about this book.  If you don't think too hard about it, it's an absolutely fantastic, action filled adventure. But then there are a couple of things that kind of bugged me when I think about them. Still, it's a quick read that sucks you in right from the beginning and never lets up. 

Lets start with what I loved:  the world building.  I found the whole concept to be really intriguing, especially with the diminishing bee population.  Basically the bees were dying, so they genetically engineered a way for them to survive, but the modification resulted in a horrible flue (think 1918's Spanish Flu times ten).  To counter the flu, they developed a vaccine  that eventually resulted in madness and violence, destroying those it thought to protect.  That was four years ago. Governments are broken, resulting in sort of city states, and the only safe place is behind the wall. Most of all, Fiona doesn't really remember any of this.

 As the book progresses, some of her memories come back to fill in the gaps, but when Fiona wakes up, she doesn't know why her house has been abandoned, why she is immediately attacked by her much older looking twin brother, or what happened to the world she knew. I love this concept. It's half Sleeping Beauty (minus the prince) and half Maze Runner. It's bleak and horrible, but there's enough hope to keep it from ever spilling over into depressing.  The best part (besides the mystery of her 4 year coma) is Fiona is thrust into this world with the reader, forced to survive a society she doesn't understand.

After several adventures, she meets up with (read: captured by) Bowen.  Here's where I started running into problems.  First, Fiona, despite her 17 year old body, is mentally 13.  She's been asleep for 4 years and at times really acts like a 13 year old.  That part of the characterization is actually great, but it does make Bowen, who complains about the new marriage age (15), because it makes all the available girls (there's 1 girl to 7 guys here) 13 or 14, basically Fiona's age mentally.  Yet he never has a problem falling for her.

Plus this is one of the worst cases of insta-love ever.  Yes, they knew each other as children, but they were never really friends.  Plus, the book itself takes place over 3 or 4 days, so not a lot of time to establish a new relationship.  Here's the thing, I actually get why they would fall in "love."  He hasn't even seen a girl in over a year, then one from his past appears all helpless and needing him.  On her end, she's thrust into this horrible world, when someone she used to know appears and suddenly starts helping her, even if it's only so he had turn her over to the lab for money.  I get their instant connection, but it's not build on a foundation that I'm sure will last.  Maybe it will, but it went from "Oh, I remember you," to "I love you and will never leave you," way too fast.  It left me feeling a bit unsatisfied.

So, all in all, I think Bethany Wiggins created a great world and wrote a story it's really hard to put down.  There's always some new peril, betrayal, etc. that keeps you turning pages.  She really is a good writer, and Fiona sort of reflects that.  She is very much a girl with little combat skills (she can shoot a gun, but that's about it) thrust into a harsh, brutal world, and she acted just like that.  My problem is, I really wish she would have stepped up just a bit. While her reactions may have been realistic, part of me wanted her to not be quite so helpless (and then there's one really stupid mistake I wanted to slap her upside the head for).

This was a good 3.5 stars for me.  It was a quick read I couldn't put down.  Plus, and I'm absolutely not sure here, but it looks like there could be a sequel  which may fix some of the problems I had with the first book.  Give Fiona a few months to grow up, adjust to the world, and get used to her new, older body, develop a real relationship with Bowen.  Anyway, if there is a sequel, I'll absolutely have to check it out.  If not, it's actually quite a satisfying end.

Saturday Shorts: Die for Her

Set in the romantic and death-defying world of the international bestselling Die for Me trilogy, this digital original novella follows Jules, a brooding, immortal French artist who has fallen in love with his best friend’s girlfriend.Jules Marchenoir is a revenant-an undead being whose fate forces him to sacrifice himself over and over again to save human lives. He’s spent the better part of the last century flirting his way through Paris, but when he met Kate Mercier, the heroine from Amy Plum’s Die for Me trilogy, he knew his afterlife had changed forever and he had found the love of his life. Until Kate fell for his best friend, Vincent. Now Jules is faced with an impossible decision: choosing between his loyal friend and a love truly worth dying for. Quoted from Goodreads

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Okay, I hate to be the one bad note among all the love and goodness, but I didn't actually love this novella.  It wasn't that it was badly written or that I don't love Jules as a character.  I do.  I think he's a great, swoon-worthy character, and I understand why so many people have literary crushes on him.  But.  Yes, here it comes.  This novella didn't have anything really new in it, and that's what really bugs me.  

Okay, yes, we learn that Jules is truly, madly in love with Kate.  We may have suspected it before, but here we have 60-some-odd pages of proof.  That's all fine and good.  But that's the only new thing we learn in this novel.  It's basically the first two books from his POV with very few extra details.  Sure, maybe we get a random kissing scene with a  girl who means absolutely nothing.  Maybe we get a few more paintings in his gallery and a lot of cool art references, but that's about it.  I don't really feel like I know Jules any better than I did before reading this.

To be honest, I was hoping for more.  Maybe we'd get a scene or two that didn't appear in the first two books in the series. After all, the books were from Kate's POV, and her main love focus was on Vincent.  Books skip over weeks at a time.  Why couldn't Kate and Jules have a moment that would be very significant to him but nothing special to her?  Why couldn't he have a bit of a side adventure we know nothing about?  There are so many possibilities, and I feel this book just wasted the chance.  Unfortunately it reminded me of one of those bad Pride and Prejudice retellings from Mr. Darcy's POV where you discover nothing important you didn't already know.

My other problem with this book is that we don't really get why Jules is in love with Kate.  Yes, she's pretty, she lights up/shakes up their slightly monotonous existence, but we never really get that moment of connection.  They don't bond over art or dancing or books or anything else.  Granted, Kate and Vincent also have a bit of an insta-love thing, so I shouldn't have expected Jules to have more concrete reasons or moments for his feelings.

Okay, enough on what I wished it would be.  It was fun to see things from Jules POV.  I liked seeing what he thought of Kate especially, because we only get Kate from the inside in the other books.  I enjoyed seeing how other people saw her.  I also enjoyed his relationship with Vincent, how absolutely loyal his is to his best friend. It's also a great way to prepare for book three.

All in all, this was only a 2.5 star book for me. If you're a rabid fan of the series, you should absolutely pick this up.  It's a fun, different take on the first two books.  If you simply like the first two books and haven't read them five times each, you could skip this.  It's a nice recap of what happened, so I'll be prepared for book three, but no much more.

Flashback Friday: Darkest Powers Trilogy

 With the release of Kelly Armstrong's The Rising (the conclusion to her Darkness Rising trilogy) this week, I thought I'd do a quick review of her prequel/companion trilogy, Darkest Powers, which I loved.

Saying that, I guess you know the end from the beginning.  I mean, I loved this trilogy, but I was also really lucky.  For me, Kelly Armstrong's books go better when you read them all at once.  While I didn't do that with the Darkness Rising, (I read the first two at once, then had to wait a year for the third one), I did get to do it with Darkest Powers, and it totally paid off.  Here's the thing about her books, they really read as one.  Sure the end of the first and second books have a climax, but they aren't built up to that climax in particular.  They're all about being chased, kidnapped, shot at, dealing with mysterious powers, (and relationships), coming of age, etc., which makes for a really exciting read, but you need that third book to wrap up the ending and give you some kind of satisfying closure.   The good news is, all three books are out, so you can read them 1, 2, 3, without having to suffer any kind of wait.

Okay, so I should probably add a quick recap of the story. Chloe sees dead people . . . well dead everything. She gets locked up in the Lyle House, where she meets other paranormal teens and discovers she's a necromancer (aka, she raises the dead and can talk to ghosts). Okay, I'm going to spoil the first book here, but it's pretty obvious from the beginning, the Lyle house is bad.  She, along with a few of her friends (and enemies) break out and go on the run.  Chases, betrayals, animated corpses, werewolves, witches, sorcerers, and other craziness ensues, all while they try and figure out who they can trust and how to use their emerging powers.

Yes, these books are exciting, and the tension grows from book to book, but what I love most about these series are the way the characters grow.  Take Chloe, the protagonist of our story.  She starts out as a cute, fluffy blond whose biggest rebellion is dying a stripe of her hair pink.  By the end she's taking on seriously bad people and making life and death decisions. Basically she grows up, and despite all the paranormal stuff happening around her (and a little bit because of it) her growth is genuine.  Same with Derek.  He goes from no social skills, to . . . limited social skills. And then there's Tori.  I hated her in the beginning, and at the end, well she's still not my favorite character, but I love who she's becoming, and that she gets her own character arc.

Then there's Chloe and Derek's relationship.  That is probably my favorite.  It's very much a beauty and the beast sort of thing, and I'm always a sucker for those sort of stories.  Plus it's refreshing that the boy isn't drop dead gorgeous at first sight.  He's anything but, and while he does improve throughout the books, he's looks aren't his main selling point. It's how he and Chloe interact, the way they make each other better people and the way that is consistently shown throughout the books that make me love this relationship. Plus, he's a strong, memorable character.  You never wonder what he would do in a given situation or that he's the one speaking. He is utterly distinctive and stands out well against too many bland prince charmings.

So should you read these books?  Absolutely. It also helps that these characters make an appearance in The Rising, so while you don't need to read this trilogy before The Darkness Rising one, it helps. As for me, I would give the first book 3 stars, the second 3.5, and the third 4.5. I thought they just got better and better.

Book Review: Poison

Sixteen-year-old Kyra, a highly-skilled potions master, is the only one who knows her kingdom is on the verge of destruction—which means she’s the only one who can save it. Faced with no other choice, Kyra decides to do what she does best: poison the kingdom’s future ruler, who also happens to be her former best friend.

But, for the first time ever, her poisoned dart . . . misses.

Now a fugitive instead of a hero, Kyra is caught in a game of hide-and-seek with the king’s army and her potioner ex-boyfriend, Hal. At least she’s not alone. She’s armed with her vital potions, a too-cute pig, and Fred, the charming adventurer she can’t stop thinking about. Kyra is determined to get herself a second chance (at murder), but will she be able to find and defeat the princess before Hal and the army find her?Kyra is not your typical murderer, and she’s certainly no damsel-in-distress—she’s the lovable and quick-witted hero of this romantic novel that has all the right ingredients to make teen girls swoon. Quoted from Goodreads

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This is such a fun, delightful book.  Really, it's got just about everything you want in a story: mystery, adventure, romance, plot twists, strong main character, and a great ending.  To be perfectly honest, it reminded me of two things: Lloyd Alexander's Prydane series and a disney movie. That may not mean much to you, but it's high praise from me.  This is the kind of novel you read that just enchants you and takes you back to the adventures that sold you on reading in the first place.

First, let's talk about Kyra.  She is absolutely delightful.  She's strong, focused, and amazing at what she does.  She's the kind of character I love reading about.  She faces some really hard choices (like killing her best friend to save the kingdom), but she doesn't wallow in self pity.  She knows what she has to do, and she gets it done, no matter how much it might destroy her personally.  

Then we have Kyra's adorable companions.  First there's Fred, who's as likable a love interest as was ever created.  He's the perfect foil for Kyra, and helps her when she needs it the most, though maybe not quite in the way she wants. Plus they have a delightful banter/rapport. Then there's Rosie . . . the pig.  Honestly, I don't think I've seen such a fun pig since Hen Wen (and yes, it's probably the pig that first inspired my Book of Three comparison). She's fun, quirky, and is one of the more stand-out/un-annoying animal companions out there.

The adventure itself is just fun.  Yes, there's a lot of serious issues, they encounter a witch who wants to eat them, Kyra's being hunted down as the princess killer (or at least attempted murderer), she's forced to bargain with criminals, and even Fred may not be as innocent as he seems.  Despite all the danger and excitement, there's a light element about the whole thing.  It's not ridiculous, like so many fun, light high fantasy's are.  It's just that perfect blend of peril and humor, whimsy and excitement.

Unfortunately the author, Bridget Zinn, died before this book was actually printed, which is sad.  She's one of those people whose blog I would probably stalk to find out what she's writing next.  Still I'm really happy this still got published and we get the opportunity to read it.  

All in all this book is a delightful (yes, I know I keep using that word) 4.5 stars for me.  You absolutely need to pick this up, whether you're young and discovering books for the first time or older and want to capture the magic you felt when you first started reading.  

Anticipating April

Well, here we have another month of great books. It starts off with a bang, then kind of fizzles and dies for about two weeks before picking up with a gusto, so it's interesting. I mean, movies spread out their release dates, so I'm surprised April isn't a bit more well distributed.  Oh well.  It's still shaping up to be a great month, and I can't wait.

            2^nd: Stung – Bethany Wiggins

                   DarkTriumph – Robin LaFevers

                   Die forHer (novella) – Amy Plumb

                   This iswhat Happy Looks Like – Jennifer E. Smith

                   Rise –Anna Carey

        The Rising – Kelly Armstrong

        One Day More(novella) - Aprilynne Pike

        Saved at Sunrise(novella) - C.C. Hunter

        The Sweetest Dark –Shana Abe

            9^th:  Apollyon – Jennifer L. Armentrout

                   Rump: TheTrue Story of Rumpelstiltskin – Liesl Shurtleff

            16^th: Taken – Erin Bowman

            23^rd: Natural Born Angel – Scott Speer

                    The Elite – Kiera Cass

                    Unbreakable – Elizabeth Norris

                    TheRules – Stacey Kade

                     The Obsidian Mirror – Catherine Fisher

                     Chosen at Nightfall – C.C. Hunter

            30^th: Sweet Peril – Wendy Higgins

                     Life After Theft – Aprilynne Pike

                     The Program – Suzanne Young

         The Eternity Cure– Julia Kagawa