[Review: Don't Even Think About It by Sarah Mlynowski]

"Don't Even Think About It"
Author: Sarah Mlynowski
Series: None
Pages: 320
Genre: YA, Contemporary, Sci Fi,
Date Published: March 11th, 2014
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Format Read: eARC provided by publisher (via NetGalley) for honest review

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Summary:

Contemporary teen fiction with romance, secrets, scandals, and ESP from the author of Ten Things We Did (And Probably Shouldn't Have).

We weren't always like this. We used to be average New York City high school sophomores. Until our homeroom went for flu shots. We were prepared for some side effects. Maybe a headache. Maybe a sore arm. We definitely didn't expect to get telepathic powers. But suddenly we could hear what everyone was thinking. Our friends. Our parents. Our crushes. Now we all know that Tess is in love with her best friend, Teddy. That Mackenzie cheated on Cooper. That, um, Nurse Carmichael used to be a stripper.

Since we've kept our freakish skill a secret, we can sit next to the class brainiac and ace our tests. We can dump our boyfriends right before they dump us. We know what our friends really think of our jeans, our breath, our new bangs. We always know what's coming. Some of us will thrive. Some of us will crack. None of us will ever be the same.
So stop obsessing about your ex. We're always listening.

-Goodreads

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My Thoughts:

An Open Letter To Don't Even Think About It,

The fact is, I think that a lot of people are going to think about you book.  I think a lot of people are going to want to pick you up and read you.  And I hope that most of them like you better than I did.  The thing is, I just didn't connect with you.  Maybe I'm too old for you?  Because, I didn't think you were terrible and you got pretty cute near the end, but we didn't click, did we?  No, we didn't connect at all.  Sorry about that... or am I?

-The White Unicorn 

I'm a huge fan of satire, a huge fan.  So I was excited to read this book.  It sounded like the perfect book for me.  Kids get a flu shot and then they can hear everyone around them.  Sounds perfect.  I'm not gonna say that this book didn't have a lot going for it, because it did, but I also have to tell you that most of the book irritated me.  Satire is hit or miss and for some reason I didn't click with the brand that Mlynowski came up with.  I think that it has to do with the confusing narration and really young elements of the plot.  Which makes me think that this book is going to be a hit with younger readers.

There are so many lead characters in this book and then a collective "we" who seems to be telling the story.  I want to tell you that this worked for me, cause I love when people throw a different form of narration at me, but it just felt confusing and jumbled.  We were in so many people's heads, seeing so many different things all at the same time that it got too chaotic.  I just couldn't connect with any of them on a personal level.  Sure, they were entertaining and they added to the plot, but there was wall there for me, that I couldn't break through it, no matter how hard I tried.  

Also, all these girls were attracted to jerks.  Okay, they weren't all jerks and not all the girls had clean slates either, but I wish that there would have been some version of a healthy relationship.  I mean, one showed up near the end that made me swoony for a total of 3 seconds, but over all I found all the relationship toxicity to be more than a little overkill.

I did like the idea that there wasn't a main villain.  The kids were each others villains and that actually really worked for me.  It created some pretty funny, yet juvenile moments.  They just couldn't hide from each other, ever.  This was probably the strongest element of the plot and I've got to hand it to Mlynowski for thinking outside of the box.

So, in the end I didn't connect with this one for all the reasons I mentioned above and the parts that did work were smothered in all the other things that didn't work for me.  Does that mean you shouldn't give this one a try?  No, you should, if you want to.  I believe this one has it's place.  It's place just isn't with me.

Rating:

  2 Unicorns = It was okay, but something just didn't work for me!

[Stacking The Shelves: Episode Twenty Nine]

Stacking The Shelves is hosted by Tynga's Reviews!

Guys tons of books happened this week!  I picked up a few for nothing for my Kindle and also a few hard copies.  I got one of the ARCS I've been wanting forever in the mail, oh and I had a field day with HarperTeen titles on Edelweiss.  It's a good thing that I have awhile to get them all read!  I can't wait to dig into all of these!  It was a glorious haul this week!

The Books:

Books I Bought:

• "Austenland" by Shannon Hale
• "Captive" by Sarah Fine
• "Nobody's Princess" by Esther Friesner
• "Cipher" by Cindi Madsen

Library Snags:

• "Doll Bones" by Holly Black
• "The Archived" by Victoria Schwab

Review Books:

• "Unhinged" by A.G. Haward (Thanks to Amulet! Tour Date Oct. 23rd right here)
• "Sea of Shadows" by Kelley Armstrong (Thanks HarperTeen!)
• "Salvage" by Alexandra Duncan (Thanks HarperTeen/Greenwillow Press!)
• "Cruel Beauty" by Rosamund Hodge (Thanks HarperTeen/Balzer & Bray!)
• "House of Ivy and Sorrow" by Natalie Whipple (Thanks HarperTeen!)
• "Dear Killer" by Katherine Ewell (Thanks HarperTeen/Kathrine Tegen Books!)
• "No One Else Can Have You" by Kathleen Hale (Thanks HarperTeen!)
• "Avalon" by Mindee Arnett (Thanks HarperTeen/Balzer & Bray!)
• "Elusion" by Cludia Gabel and Cheryl Klam (Thanks HarperTeen/Katherine Tegen Books!)
• "All That Glows" by Ryan Graudin (Thanks HarperTeen!)
• "Ask Again Later" by Liz Czukas (Thanks HarperTeen!)

This Week On The Blog:

• Reviews: "The Clockwork Scarab" by Colleen Gleason and "Eat, Brains, Love" by Jeff Hart
• Top Ten Tuesday: The Best Sequels Ever
• Promos: "Revlenion and the Guardian Manifesto" by Kalvin Klaus

Once again a bog thanks goes out to Amulet and HarperTeen!

[Review: Life After Theft by Aprilynne Pike]

"Life After Theft"
Author: Aprilynne Pike
Pages: 352
Genre: YA Paranormal
Date Published: April 30th, 2013
Publisher: HerperTeen
Format Read: eARC provided by publisher (via Edelweiss) for honest review

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Summary:

 Moving to a new high school sucks. Especially a rich-kid private school. With uniforms. But nothing is worse than finding out the first girl you meet is dead. And a klepto.

No one can see or hear Kimberlee except Jeff, so--in hopes of bringing an end to the snarkiest haunting in history--he agrees to help her complete her "unfinished business." But when the enmity between Kimberlee and Jeff's new crush, Sera, manages to continue posthumously, Jeff wonders if he's made the right choice.

Clash meets sass in this uproarious modern-day retelling of Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel.

-Goodreads

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My Thoughts:

This is one of those books that I totally judged by it's cover.  For some reason I thought that this book was about something entirely different than what it ended up being about.  And in most ways that ended up being a great thing.  This book was funny and full of attitude.  It's about a dead girl and the only guy who can see her.  It's about their journey to return all of the junk that her kleptomaniac hands had been stealing for years and all of the drama of high school on top of that. 

I loved that it was told from a male POV (something that I wasn't expecting).  Jeff was an honest high school guy just trying to get his ducks in a row and he had a great personality that made you almost believe that the odd things that were happening to him could possibly, actually happen.  I mean how many guys to you know who are being haunted by one of the bitchiest dead cheerleaders you've ever met.  Honestly, I just adored Jeff to pieces.  He seemed like such an awesome guy.

I also have to applaud Pike for writing a really snarky and bitchy character in our resident ghost Kimberlee.  In a way I liked that she never really changed.  This could have been a story about learning to grow and become a better person, but Pike chooses to keep Kimberlee's character extremely consistent.  Did it make Kimberlee likeable?  Nope, it didn't.  I didn't like her very much, even though I did enjoy reading her antics.  But in a way I think that Pike's choice to make Kimberlee stuck in her ways made her character more real.  I didn't feel like I was reading something that would necessarily have a happy ending and I liked that.

I'm not quite sure how I felt about Jeff and Sera's relationship, but I do like how Pike used her secondary characters, including Sera's brother Mikhail.  I actually liked their brother/sister relationship more than Jeff and Sera's love.  I guess the love story was very high school, so that's a good thing.  

When it comes down to it, I wanted some really cool explanations about where Kimberlee was going to go in the end.  I wanted to be told something concrete.  Anything concrete, but what we got was Jeff telling us he was agnostic and than not really committing to telling Kimberlee where he thought she would go.  In the end it seemed like he didn't care, even though his actions would suggest otherwise and that was a huge let down for me.  Though I did like the very end (as in the last couple of sentences) of the novel.  

So, if you want to read a book with a bitchy ghost who never changes, a guy with a great POV and a really interesting plot then this one will work for you. 

Rating:

    3 Unicorns = I liked it a lot, but it had it's issues!   

[Review: The Ward by Jordana Frankel]

"The Ward"
Author: Jordana Frankel
Series: The Ward #1
Pages: 480
Genre: YA Dystopian
Date Published: April 30th, 2013
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Format Read: eARC provided by publisher (via Edelweiss) for honest reviw

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Summary:

Sixteen-year-old Ren is a daredevil mobile racer who will risk everything to survive in the Ward, what remains of a water-logged Manhattan. To save her sister, who is suffering from a deadly illness thought to be caused by years of pollution, Ren accepts a secret mission from the government: to search for a freshwater source in the Ward, with the hope of it leading to a cure.

However, she never expects that her search will lead to dangerous encounters with a passionate young scientist; a web of deceit and lies; and an earth-shattering mystery that’s lurking deep beneath the water’s rippling surface.

Jordana Frankel’s ambitious debut novel and the first in a two-book series, The Ward is arresting, cinematic, and thrilling—perfect for fans of Scott Westerfeld or Ann Aguirre.

-Goodreads 

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My Thoughts:

I have so many feelings about this book.  I honestly didn't know what it was about going into it.  I had heard a few good things floating around about it and the cover grabbed my attention, but I still had almost no clue when I opened the book about what I was going to read.  But I loved what I got.

Jordana Frankel has created a new and interesting world for her dystopian novel.  Taking a place that many people know (New York) and flooding it so that the Chrysler Building is no more than 7 stories tall.  The people of Manhattan now occupy the non flooded levels of it's streets an have built on top of some of the now small sky scrappers.  In most ways it's an underwater city.  I thought that Frankel's bare boned descriptions of The Ward (formerly New York) were awesome.  She gave you just enough to let your mind run as wild as you wanted with it, but still managed to create what she wanted to.  I think that selfishly I was also glad because I have a fear of aquariums and if she would have over described things it would have made me feel more claustrophobic than I already did.  The scenes in The Tank kinda freaked me out guys.

I felt like Ren was an extremely strong heroine and I loved getting to know her.  She seemed hard at first and even though it was definitely one of her stand out personality traits, there was more to her than first meets the eyes.  I could totally get behind her wanting to be one of the guys and even more behind her relationship with her sister.  Both of those things showed us different sides of Ren.  And then on top of it all she was a racer with mad skills and a ton of guts and a secret identity.  She had a lot going on and yet somehow still managed to stay grounded.  I also loved that she had a strong attachment to her footwear and those darn pennies!

The men in the novel were all written really well.  Frankel wrote them realistically.  Showing us their different personalities through their interactions with Ren.  Sometimes the differences were slight, but they impacted the story and the forward movement of the plot.  For instance when Ren hugs Ter and Callum there is a large difference.  With Ter it is strictly a brother sister type thing, but there is sexual tension when she hugs Callum.  Only a very gifted writer can create that feeling so seamlessly.  Benny, Ter, Kent and the rest of the guys were awesome to get to know, even if I didn't like all of them.

Now for the other spotlight characters.  I have to admit that I didn't really Derek after I was done reading the book.  While I was reading I totally got why Ren would dig him, but after stepping back from it all, I saw that he managed to pull a fast one on me as well.  In the end he's just a guy with million excuses as to why he "has" to do what he "has" to do.  So, I like him for the fact that he made me like him even when I truly don't.  He's a snake in the grass and if he doesn't get his stuff together in book two, I don't see myself falling into his charm again.

I don't know if there is actually something between Callum and Ren, but I really hope that there will be!  I adore Callum to pieces and I think he's a great addition to the main plot.  The guy has guts and smarts and fully trust Ren and everything that she is able to pull off.  He never doubts her.  I don't know if there will be a need for teams, but if so Callum gets my vote 100%.

And behind all the baddassery  lies the main fact that this story is about what one sister will do for the other.  It's got heart on top of all the epicness.

I have to give it to Jordana for also adding an element to the story that made if feel more like an Indiana Jones adventure than a dystopian novel at times!  The magical things that start to transpire were a brilliant touch that I wasn't expecting!

All in all I have to say that I am a fan of Jordana Frankel's debut novel.  It's full of mystery, adventure, romance, great family dynamics and real relationships all buried underwater.  I can't wait to see what happens in book two.  Grab this one on the 30th if this sounds like the book for you!

Rating:

    5 Unicorns = Get your hands on this one now! (or in this case on the 30th)