All posts tagged young adult

A Sky Beyond the Storm

By Brookelorren on Leave a Comment

The long wait for Sabaa Tahir’s A Sky Beyond the Storm has ended! If you enjoyed the other books in her An Ember in the Ashes series, then you don’t want to miss this finale. This is definitely one of my favorite books this year. Expect to see it on my top 10 list coming January 1st.

Because this review is of the fourth book in a tetralogy, it may contain spoilers from previous books.

At the beginning of this book, it seems like almost all is lost. Cities have been decimated, plus the Nightbringer received all the pieces of the star. Keris Veturius has outplayed the Blood Shrike at almost every turn. Laia found and then lost her mother again. And Elias has taken on the role of the Soul Catcher and seems to have discarded his humanity. Is all lost?

Laia is convinced she needs to take down the Nightbringer. The Blood Shrike feels she needs to protect her nephew, the new Emperor, at all costs. Much of this book covers their journeys. Since this is a book, it’s going to get worse before anything gets better. We also see the Soul Catcher and The Nightbringer as they go through their journeys. And one chapter from Keris’s point of view.

This book was so good. It wraps up the past with a beautiful red bow. All the prophecies we’ve seen will make sense. I did cry–for maybe the last 50 pages? But in the end, I was satisfying. It brought joy instead of the desire to throw my book across the room or write fix-it fanfiction. Yes, Ms. Tahir has taken us on a long journey and destroyed our favorite characters–but there is a Sky Beyond the Storm.

A Sky Beyond the Storm is full of lifelike characters. The villains aren’t just cookie-cutter evil people who give monologues–they have a past, hurts, and people that loved them. There are so many memorable quotes in here, I’m looking for the next Top Ten Tuesday where the topic is book quotes. I started writing in my book journal again, where I write down quotes, and I’m so glad I did this for this book.

This was one of the highlights in my reading year. In a year where I’ve been struggling to complete my Goodreads Reading Challenge, I finished this 500-page book in three days. If you’ve read the first three books in this series and loved them, I recommend finishing the series. If you haven’t started, now’s a good time to start.

If you’re interested in my other reviews in this series, they are here:

Reasons Why I Love YA

By Brookelorren on 36 Comments
Top Ten Tuesday

Hello! Welcome to another edition of Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl). Every week, we get to talk about a different book topic. Today’s topic is “Reasons Why I Love _____.” There will be much love shared this week, I’m sure. Rather than gush over one of my auto-buy authors (which I do all the time anyway), I’m going to talk about why I love YA in the first place.

1. It’s full of adventure. Sometimes I hear (usually 20-something) people say how they want more protagonists their age. I don’t particularly want to read about protagonists my age. Sorry. Not that older protagonists might do something interesting, but I really can’t imagine waking up one day and leaving my kids to go save the kingdom.

2. First loves. My life in high school was pretty pathetic. All the boys liked other girls and wouldn’t be interested in me if I paid them. It was pretty depressing. In YA, I get to walk in the shoes of someone else who (probably) had a better time than I did.

3. Books I can share with my kids. My kids have read many of the same books I have. Although my boy likes to read middle grade books sometimes, he’s also read most of Marie Lu’s books. After listening to most of Astrid Scholte’s The Vanishing Deep together in the car (we still haven’t finished it because that was our car book and we don’t go places together right now because of coronavirus), he found Four Dead Queens on his Kindle and started reading it. After things get back to normal and we finish The Vanishing Deep, I’m going to make him listen to City of Bones with me in the car, because he started it, but I don’t think he actually gave it a chance.

4. Book experiences I can share with my kids. About a year ago, my boy had finished Legend and I asked him if he’d go meet Marie Lu with me at the Tattered Cover if she ever went there. He said he would, and asked if we could go to the Lego Store while we’re there. I agreed. In March, she came to The Tattered Cover with Astrid Scholte and Melissa de la Cruz, and we had an amazing day together. We got cupcakes, went to the Lego Store, had dinner, and then got front row seats at the bookstore. It was an all-day event and was great.

5. It’s a family tradition. My grandma shared the Anne of Green Gables books with me when I was in middle or high school. I ended up inheriting those books from her.

6. Why grow up? Along the same lines, my grandma played with dolls in her 80s. You can like whatever you like, no matter what your age. I read other books too, but there’s no expiration date on liking things.

7. The category is quite diverse. I know YA is often considered a genre, but it’s actually more of a category, and it’s fairly diverse. There’s fantasy books with dragons, contemporaries with people graduating from high school, and futuristic dystopians with teens fighting tyrannical governments. It covers every kind of topic under the sun, from bullying to evil tyrants trying to take over the world. There’s always something to grab my interest.

8. The book community. YA is a book category that people of (almost) all ages can enjoy. I can go to a book signing with my boy or buy the Legend trilogy for my niece and then have her tell me she loved the books I bought. The age ranges of people on Twitter vary also. And many people over here at Top Ten Tuesday also like YA.

9. Hopeful stories. A lot of YA stories are hopeful. The good guys usually win. People usually look for a brighter tomorrow. This isn’t always the case, but a lot of the time it is.

10. I’m not old enough for adult books (sometimes). I’ve often said I’m not old enough to watch Game of Thrones. While technically, yes, I am old enough to read any book in the bookstore, there are some books I don’t want to read. I believe books influence your mind, and most YA books are positive, family friendly influences.

Those are some reasons why I love YA. What did you write about today? Next week we’re going to talk about opening lines. I’ll write about some that I really love. See you then!

Every Other Weekend

By Brookelorren on 1 Comment
Every Other Weekend cover

Teens have a lot of problems to deal with. Every Other Weekend by Abigail Johnson deals with topics that far too many of them face. I recently had the opportunity to read an Advanced Reader Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review (thank you Netgalley and Harlequin TEEN/Inkyard Press for the opportunity!). I enjoyed this book, which deals with a lot of these topics.

Adam’s parents are separated. He insists that they’re not getting a divorce. Jolene’s parents are divorced. One weekend, they find themselves moving into the same apartment building. Their parents have the same custody arrangement: every other weekend. Over the course of the year, they develop a friendship (which slowly grows into more), learn about life, and deal with problems that many teens face.

Good Things

If you were to break down this book into topics teens face, you’d run into quite a few. Some of the topics covered in this book include parental divorce, forgiveness, and dealing with adults that try to take advantage of their perceived authority. This book also covers being honest with yourself. But this book isn’t preachy.

The characters are great. The male MC, Adam, has anger issues with his parents. The female MC, Jolene, comes with a whole family full of baggage. They work well together, and their fears about the future are valid. I especially wanted to hug Jolene sometimes. She’s so excited about film, yet who knows whether she’ll be able to get into the film program she wants to get into? Her parents are trash.

Adam’s story unfolds slowly, leaving us to wonder for most of the book what happened to cause his parents to separate. I won’t spoil anything here, but I will say I had an aunt and uncle who went through something similar, and it really can be difficult on the family.

I also enjoyed the voices of the characters. We get to read this story from both Adam’s and Jolene’s points of view. I did sometimes get them mixed up? But it wasn’t too big of a deal.

Trigger Warnings

There is an attempted sexual assault in Every Other Weekend, which could be a trigger for some people. You can probably figure out what’s going to happen from a mile away, and it is stopped before it goes too far. However, if that sort of thing bothers you, you might want to skip the chapter it occurs in (which you can probably guess?).

Conclusion

If you’re looking for a feel-good book with teens dealing with separated parents, I highly recommend Every Other Weekend. There were points in this book where I didn’t want to put it down, and I wanted to read just one more chapter. It has great characters, deals with important topics, and is written in a style that made me not want to put it down. The book also has a satisfying and realistic ending. I’d also like to read other books by this author someday.

Every Other Weekend comes out on January 7th.

The Wicked King was Diabolically Good

By Brookelorren on Leave a Comment
The Wicked King cover

The Wicked King, by Holly Black, was sitting in my mailbox yesterday, and after reading The Cruel Prince, I had to read it right away. It was an un-putdownable book. After finishing it, my first question was “How long until the next Folk of the Air book again?” The next book, The Queen of Nothing, can’t come soon enough, if you ask me.

Because The Wicked King is the second book in a trilogy, there may be spoilers for The Cruel Prince in this review.

When we last left Jude and Cardan, Jude had managed to place Cardan on the throne as High King of Faerie. It was a scheme to eventually put her brother Oak on the throne while keeping her foster father, Madoc, from having control of the realm. Instead, she was actually the one in control, with Cardan as her puppet king. When we join them at the beginning of this book, Jude is acting as Cardan’s seneschal, and he has to do anything that she commands.

The two are no longer enemies in school. They spend their days running a kingdom where its inhabitants have to be truthful, even if they are scheming and deceptive. They still see themselves as enemies, but they have to work together nonetheless.

And they still just happen to have this weird attraction to each other. Which I love from a reader’s perspective.

It’s been five months since Cardan pledged to be obedient to Jude, and she can feel the months trickling away. Sooner than she’d like, he will be released from his promise, and he can do what he’d like again. Oak still won’t be old enough to rule. What then? Jude is concerned about all of this, when threats come to her, Cardan, and Oak from the Queen of the Undersea. She wants him to marry her daughter, Nicasia. And that’s all I’m going to say, because you’ll want to find out what happens for yourself.

The book was well-written. The prose slides through your mind like you’re watching a movie, and you forget it’s even there. Ms. Black brings the characters and the setting to life, and even though it was getting late as I read this, I just could not put it down. It’s almost as if I was in Faerie dancing: once you start, you can’t stop until it’s over.

At the same time, the ending! It was a little unexpected, but I absolutely loved it. It didn’t exactly end in a cliffhanger, but I wanted more. Immediately. I must have the next book!

Needless to say, I highly recommend The Wicked King. It’s the best book that I’ve finished all year (so far). Never mind that it’s January 9th and I’ve only finished three books. I have a good feeling that The Wicked King will end up on the list of my favorite books of 2019 anyway.

So when does The Queen of Nothing come out?  Because we needs it!  I will definitely try to get an ARC of the next book, because I need to find out what happens as soon as I can!

I Was Into the Hollow

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Into the Hollow coverLast week, I read Into the Hollow by Lynn Vroman.  I have to thank Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read it.  This is a really sweet story and I enjoyed it a lot.

Freedom (she goes by Free) hasn’t had the easiest life.  After her mother died, her dad took her to Needles, California, where he met another lady and had another child, Little.  Little’s mom had postpartum depression, and they left to go back to Appalachia, where they were originally from.  When our story begins, Free is a doting sister who adores her half-brother.  She works at a grocery store to try to make ends meet.  Her daddy digs up ginseng to try to bring in some extra cash.  It’s a hard life.  They live in a small house without electricity or water, and sometimes there isn’t enough to eat.

Cole is her next door neighbor, but they’ve never spoken.  His life isn’t much to brag about either.  He has a father and brother in prison for dealing drugs.  His sister is a teenage mom and is a former drug addict; her mother still is addicted to drugs.  Cole’s sole goal in life is to graduate from high school and save enough to rent a crappy apartment someday.

Sometimes they see each other when Free drives by in her beat up Buick, but they’ve never spoken.  Still, they seem to be drawn to each other (although Free would never admit that).

When Cole starts working at the grocery store with her, she tries to keep her distance.  He wants to get to know her, but she doesn’t want him to find out her secrets.  Then something happens, and her world is turned upside down.  She turns to Cole for help.  In turn, she seems to help him in a way.

I absolutely loved this story.  Both Cole and Free are responsible teens just trying to survive in a world where the adults in their lives haven’t made it easy for them.  You want them to make it.  And you want them to be together.

The setting of Into the Hollow is fairly unique.  I haven’t read a lot of books set in Appalachia.  As I read the book, I can visualize the forest, and the run-down houses, and the things that make this area what it is.

Into the Hollow was a book that I didn’t want to put down.  I’m not sure how much publicity it’s going to get, but it probably won’t be enough.  It’s one of those books that might end up in a “hidden gems” type of Top Ten Tuesday post, because I enjoyed it so much, but I’m afraid not many people are going to hear about it.  It won’t be released until November 6th, but you can pre-order it now.

Everless was Endearing

By Brookelorren on 6 Comments

Everless coverI recently read Everless by Sara Holland.  Driving my daughter to school takes quite a lot of time, which I can use to listen to audiobooks.  This one came available at my library recently.

Jules lives in a humble village with her papa.  They barely are able to make ends meet — then again, that’s true of most people in the village.  Once again, the rent is due, and they don’t have the money to pay for it.

Everyone in Sempera uses time as a currency.  If you can’t pay the rent, then you can take it out of the time you have remaining in your life.  Most of the poorer people have shortened lives as a result.  In a place like Everless, where the wealthy people live, some people can live for hundreds of years.

Jules used to live in Everless, as a child.  A tragedy forced them to flee years ago, however.  Now that Jules is 17, she can help Papa pay the rent by using her own time.  Papa forbids it, but if he uses some of his time, he might die.  In an attempt to save Papa’s life, Jules decides to go back to Everless, where well-paid jobs as servants await, preparing for the wedding of Roan Gerling and the queen’s adopted daughter.

Roan and Jules used to be friends as children.  Going back to Everless means that she will see Roan again, although he will be marrying someone else.  It also means that she will see his nasty brother, Liam.  Everless is not a very safe place to be, and Jules believes that part of that reason is Liam.

As the story progresses, we find out why Everless is such a dangerous place, and we find that there are long-buried secrets held there.  We find out that things aren’t exactly as they seem, and the past may come back to haunt everybody.

I enjoyed this book.  The imagery was wonderful.  I started getting my suspicions about some of the plot points partway through the story, although there were still some surprises, even at the very end.  When I was getting towards the end of the story, I would want to sit in my car a little longer, just to find out what was going to happen next.

I’m looking forward to finding out what happens in Evermore, which should be coming out on December 31st.  Which is weird, because most book releases come out on Tuesdays and December 31st is a Monday, but who knows?  More than likely I’ll read it sometime next year.

The Glass Sword Gleams

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Glass Sword coverI recently was able to read Glass Sword by Victoria Aveyard.  There was a really long wait at the library, and it was finally my turn (since I was waiting for King’s Cage at the same time, I get to read that next.  I thought it was a great book.  Since this a continuation of the Red Queen tetralogy, there may be spoilers for Red Queen in this review.

When this book begins, Mare and Cal have just escaped from the Bowl of Bones.  They are with the Scarlet Guard, but there is still a distance between them and everybody else because of their different abilities, and because of what they did in the first book.

Mare becomes more of a leader in this book, and she sets out to go find all of the other people like her: reds that have the genetic mutation that gives them abilities (called newbloods).  This is a dangerous mission, and some people end up getting hurt.  Mare takes some of this burden upon herself in the form of guilt.  At times, it separates herself emotionally from some of her friends, like Kilorn.

Mare and Cal grow together as a couple in this book, although things aren’t always rosy.  They both seem to have some growing to do.  I really like them together, but sometimes I had to say “Mare, you’re so stupid!”  Not only with regards to Cal, but with regards to some of her other relationships as well.  But she does admit that she’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and she does have to make some very difficult leadership decisions.  She never wanted to be a leader, but leadership was thrust upon her anyway.  I also think that other people unfairly placed blame on her for things that weren’t entirely her fault.

Throughout the book, the characters go through several different trials, and the struggle between silvers, newbloods, and reds widens.  The world is complex and the plot twists are interesting.  In addition, Aveyard is not afraid to kill off some of her babies (sorry).

Towards the end of Glass Sword, I was a little frustrated at Mare because of how she kept thinking of herself as selfish and how she alienated the people that were close to her.  We are left with a cliffhanger at the end of the book (fortunately, King’s Cage is available for me to read now), and Mare makes a decision that shows that she is at least trying to do the right thing, even though she doesn’t always know what that is.

The Red Queen Should Be Read!

By Brookelorren on 2 Comments

Red Queen CoverA few months ago, I was trying to figure out what book to read next.  I had read all of my favorite authors’ books, as well as mammoth series like The Song of Ice and Fire, and needed to find something.  Then I ran across Goodreads’ YA Novels of 2018 List… where have you been all my life?  It was like this neverending supply of book ideas.  War Storm, by Victoria Aveyard, was #1 on the list for this year.  I can’t read the last book in the series, of course (I made that mistake with Joel C. Rosenberg’s Dead Heat years ago), but in just a few clicks, I found the first book in the series, Red Queen, and put it on hold at my local library.  Several months later, I was able to read it.

Red Queen is based in a land where there are two types of people: Silvers, who have silver blood and magical powers, and Reds, who have red blood and no power.  Our heroine, Mare Barrow, is a Red who has no prospects in life except to get drafted into the neverending war and die.  In the meantime, she steals for a living.  A few random events change her life.  She discovers that, despite her red blood, she also has powers.  These powers push her into a posh prison, faking that she’s a silver in the royal court.

Mare has to figure out how to survive in her new life.  In addition, she’s not the kind of person to lie still and let the corruption around her corrupt her.  She wants to fight for a better life for her people.  But how will she do that?  She begins to play a dangerous game where you’re never really quite certain who to trust… and you’re not quite certain who to love either.

The Red Queen series is popular for a reason: it’s good.  Although I think that Mare is foolish sometimes, I still like her, and think that she was portrayed well.  I enjoy reading about her love interest (or not) with Cal and Maven.  I enjoyed this unique world with electricity and cars and motorcycles… but not too much of it, if you’re not rich.  It’s not a medieval world, but it’s also nothing like ours.  All of these elements add up to an interesting universe.

The book has twists and turns, and you’re not exactly sure who to trust.  There are the “I didn’t see that one coming” moments.  Even though I read the blurb about what the book was about before I read the book, I didn’t know exactly how this book was going to play out, and was kept excited until the end.

Fortunately, even though I had to wait a couple of months to read Red Queen (I read this book and am writing this review at the end of July), the next two books will be available at the library soon, as I signed up to read them at the same time.  I might not get to read War Storm until 2019, but that’s okay.  Although I am excited to read the next installment of this series, I have a stack of books waiting to be read, and I’ll just have to have patience to read the rest of this series.

Frequency Resonated with Me

By Brookelorren on 2 Comments

Frequency CoverI recently read Frequency by Christopher Krovatin.  I absolutely loved it.  It kept me interested from the very first chapter until the very end.  I was fortunate enough to receive a free copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Fiona is an 18 year old girl who lives in a small town and has a secret.  When she was nine years old, she saw her father and a few of the town council members beat a boy half to death.  It changed the way that she felt about her father — and her small town — forever.

When the boy comes back into the town, everybody seems enamored by his music — except Fiona.  It turns out, this boy is enamored with her.  Fiona ends up distancing herself from her friends; in the process, she discovers that her friends — and herself — are in danger.  Can she save her friends?

Frequency is infused with music.  This may be one of the reasons why it struck such a chord with me.  Fiona is always listening to one band or another; I used to be almost a walking encyclopedia of music (if I hadn’t been going into the military after college, my music recording professor would have offered me a job in his recording studio).  We both play instruments.  This book mentions a lot of bands and uses a lot of musical jargon.

While Frequency is primarily a contemporary novel, there is a bit of magic involved in this story.  Music has an ancient magical power here (in reality, doesn’t it actually have some sort of power?).  I love watching those shows where they discuss ancient mysteries like figurines that look like airplanes from ancient Peru or computers from ancient Greece; the ancient power of music in this story reminds me a bit of that.  The magic added to the allure of this story for me.

This story is geared towards young adults, but I would recommend it for the older range of the YA spectrum, probably 15/16+.  Several of Fiona’s friends are into drugs, and there are frequent mentions of sex in this story (although nothing is actually explicitly described on the page).  Most of the characters are 18 or older.  Frequency could also be categorized as NA instead of YA.  It was probably a marketing decision since YA tends to be more popular at the moment.

If you enjoy YA contemporaries and you love music, I highly recommend this book.  I absolutely loved it.