Practical Amy Goodnight,
together with her absent-minded scientist sister Phin Goodnight, has a
new summer job taking care of her aunt Hyacinth's ranch. However, this
isn't an ordinary farm as all the Goodnights have some sort of psychic
or magical power, and when a malicious ghost starts haunting the ranch,
as well as the ranch belonging to the cute but infuriating cowboy next
door, everyone turns to Amy to vanquish the ghost and save them from his
wrath.
I had this same complaint about The Splendor Falls, and
I'll say it again here. This book had a very slow beginning. Different
details pertaining to the plot were introduced but they didn't inspire
any excitement until the very very end. It wasn't horrible in the
slightest, as Clement-Moore's writing style is extremely entertaining,
but I did have to trudge through to get to the good part. I am not a fan
of ghost stories, but since Clement-Moore takes some of the somberness
out of them and takes them to a place of perfect balance between dreary
and hilarious, I am always willing to read one of hers.
This book
was a semi-predictable whodunit, but I don't have any problems with the
semi-predictable part because I think that was on purpose (or even if
it wasn't, the action was good enough that the story was interesting
anyway).
One thing I loved about the characters in this novel
was how from the beginning, Amy portrayed herself as the normal one, and
despite all her adorable quirks, she still seemed to be the sanest
person around even when she clearly wasn't. It made the first-person
point of view a lot more tangible and at times I almost felt as if I
were Amy.
4.3 stars.
Amy Goodnight knows
that the world isn't as simple as it seems—she grew up surrounded by
household spells and benevolent ghosts. But she also understands that
"normal" doesn't mix with magic, and she's worked hard to build a wall
between the two worlds. Not only to protect any hope of ever having a
normal life.
Ranch-sitting for her aunt in Texas should be
exactly that. Good old ordinary, uneventful hard work. Only, Amy and her
sister, Phin, aren't alone. There's someone in the house with them—and
it's not the living, breathing, amazingly hot cowboy from the ranch next
door.
It's a ghost, and it's more powerful than the Goodnights
and all their protective spells combined. It wants something from Amy,
and none of her carefully built defenses can hold it back.
This is the summer when the wall between Amy's worlds is going to come crashing down.
In
this Jane Austen-like tale written in the 21st century, our heroine,
Althea, is on a mission to (pardon me) keep her castle. Althea, her
mother, her brother, and her two wicked stepsisters live in a
dilapidated castle in the English countryside, and if Althea doesn't
marry rich soon, they will all be homeless. Luckily, Althea is very
pretty, very smart, and very determined to find a rich husband. When the
young handsome rich and title Lord Boring arrives, Althea decides he
would be the perfect man for her to marry. However, there is one big
obstacle in her way in the form of Mr. Fredericks, Boring's friend,
cousin, and business manager who sees right through Althea's plan.
As
a Jane Austen fan, I absolutely adored this book. It was a whimsical
take on Jane Austen, including imitations of many of her characters, yet
it somehow had a modern feel to it. Instead of the hints and innuendos
in Austen's novels, Kindl said everything she wanted to say directly, to
the point where she actually named a character Boring. Boring was a
Bingley-type character, good-looking and well-intentioned, but he had an
edge to him that made him less clean-cut than the Bingley of Pride and
Prejudice. Althea greatly reminded me of Emma (from Emma) who tries to
manipulate and control the lives of everyone else around her while
digging herself a bigger and bigger hole, while Mr. Fredericks was
obviously Kindl's take on Mr. Darcy. The stepsisters were utterly
hysterical and added a Cinderella twist to the whole story.
5 stars
Seventeen-year-old
Althea is the sole support of her entire family, and she must marry
well. But there are few wealthy suitors--or suitors of any kind--in
their small Yorkshire town of Lesser Hoo. Then, the young and attractive
(and very rich) Lord Boring arrives, and Althea sets her plans in
motion. There's only one problem; his friend and business manager Mr.
Fredericks keeps getting in the way. And, as it turns out, Fredericks
has his own set of plans . . . This witty take on the classic
Regency--Patrice Kindl's first novel in a decade--is like literary
champagne!
I dislike writing reviews on
books I didn't like almost as much as actually reading the books. This
book was one that I thought I'd enjoy, and I had every
intention of finishing it until I realized that I had to drag myself to
pick it up and that I had plenty of other books waiting in my bedroom
that I was a lot more interested in.
Lena always knew she was
different, and not only from a gut feeling but from actual physical
proof: she has abnormally large hands and feet. Her father disappeared
years before and there were rumors that he was a goblin from the
mysterious land of Scree. When Lena turns 18 and receives money her
father left for her, she decides to journey to Scree to discover the
truth (or something like that). She ends up in a small town on the coast
and meets a bunch of not so interesting people and stays there for as
long as I had the book open.
I was excited when I started the
book because unlike many others with similar plots, this one actually
moved at the beginning. The problem wasn't the beginning though. Because
the momentum started so early in the novel, I expected the entire book
to run at a high pace but was dismayed to discover that most of the rest
of the book was dreadfully dull. At some point I flipped to the end to
see if that interested me at all but even though the ending did look
interesting, I realized that the author's writing style didn't appeal to
me and despite the intriguing ending, I did not get the extra push from
it that I needed in order to finish the book.
One major
contributor to the intense boringness (is that a word?) of this book was
the author's attention to detail. As an extremely curious person, I
sometimes get annoyed by lack of detail and explanation but McQuerry
explained way more than necessary and provided enough details that not
only could I imagine Lena's world, I was also bored by it.
2.0 stars
On her 18th birthday, Lena Mattacascar decides to search for her
father, who disappeared into the northern wilderness of Scree when Lena
was young. Scree is inhabited by Peculiars, people whose unusual
characteristics make them unacceptable to modern society. Lena wonders
if her father is the source of her own extraordinary characteristics and
if she, too, is Peculiar. On the train she meets a young librarian,
Jimson Quiggley, who is traveling to a town on the edge of Scree to work
in the home and library of the inventor Mr. Beasley. The train is
stopped by men being chased by the handsome young marshal Thomas Saltre.
When Saltre learns who Lena’s father is, he convinces her to spy on Mr.
Beasley and the strange folk who disappear into his home, Zephyr House.
A daring escape in an aerocopter leads Lena into the wilds of Scree to
confront her deepest fears.
Almost
as far back as she can remember, Rachel has been locked in a tower for
her protection. Her Mama tells her that she must stay hidden from the
bad man who killed her mother and wants to kill her as well. However,
lately Rachel has been having dreams of a mysterious man and as her hair
grows longer, Rachel sings out her window and longs for someone to hear
her and release her from her prison. Wyatt has been shipped to a tiny
town in upstate New York for the rest of the school year and is living
with a little old lady whose daughter used to be his mom's best friend.
As he settles in, Wyatt starts hearing a haunting voice singing that no
one else can hear, and when he investigates he finds a beautiful girl
who has been locked in a tower for almost her entire life. The two of
them team up and hope to free Rachel from her tower once and for all.
I
absolutely love Alex Flinn's other fairy tale retellings. Beastly and A
Kiss in Time are two of my favorite books ever, and I was very excited
to read Towering. However, Towering had a very different feel to it than
the others. Perhaps it was the the plot involving drug lords rather
than princesses, but the overall tone of this novel was a lot darker
than the others. This is only a negative point because I expected a
colorful adventure like the ones in all the other books, but instead
found this one a dull gray. The story was also told a bit too slowly,
and I had to push myself to get through at least half the book before I
actually wanted to open it up and devour it.
***SPOILERS AHEAD***
One
problem I always had with the story of Rapunzel, especially the Disney
version, is the Rapunzel has no problem killing the woman who raised
her. Yes, she was evil and kept her locked up for all those years, but
she never did her any physical harm and Rapunzel was taken away young
enough to not remember anything better. Therefore, without taking into
account the moral compass of the witch, Rapunzel killing the witch is
not an act of a hero conquering a villain, but of someone turning her
back on the woman who rose her. Rapunzel killing the witch may have
turned out okay because the witch was evil, but imagining Rapunzel as
pure and good is projecting the third-person perspective of the story
onto Rapunzel, who doesn't know that the witch is evil until she falls
for a stranger who climbs through her window and he tells her so. This
monologue brings me to my point, which is that finally the captor is not
the evil one. It was a relief to have the villain be someone else
entirely with Mama being entirely innocent, and it let Rachel be a true
heroine.
3.6 stars
At first, I merely
saw his face, his hands on the window ledge. Then, his whole body as he
swung himself through the window. Only I could not see what he swung on.
Until,
one day, I told my dream self to look down. And it was then that I saw.
He had climbed on a rope. I knew without asking that the rope had been
one of my own tying.
Rachel is trapped in a tower, held
hostage by a woman she’s always called Mama. Her golden hair is growing
rapidly, and to pass the time, she watches the snow fall and sings songs
from her childhood, hoping someone, anyone, will hear her.
Wyatt
needs time to reflect or, better yet, forget about what happened to his
best friend, Tyler. That’s why he’s been shipped off to the Adirondacks
in the dead of winter to live with the oldest lady in town. Either
that, or no one he knows ever wants to see him again.
Dani
disappeared seventeen years ago without a trace, but she left behind a
journal that’s never been read, not even by her overbearing mother…until
now.
On
the worst night of her life, after her boyfriend finds out that she
cheated on him and leaves her on the side of the road in the pouring
rain, Katie wishes she had never kissed her best friend Mitch. When she
opens her eyes, the locket she borrowed from her grandmother has
transported her to an alternate universe, one where she has the chance
to redo that fateful moment of betrayal. However, the magical world of
redo isn't exactly like the world that Katie came from. There are some
subtle and some not-so-subtle differences in this redone world, as well
as consequences that Katie never counted on. At some point Katie has to
ask herself, is it really worth turning back the clock?
The
concept of turning back the clock and going to an alternate universe is
not a new one for Stacey Jay, and kind of seemed like a book-long
version of the end of Juliet Immortal. However, I did think that unlike
Juliet Immortal, it was done incredibly well here, with all the tiny
details lining up (or rather, not lining up) and the complicated topic
not being squished into ten pages. I especially liked how she made the
plot develop, with the events of the alternate universes getting
progressively worse and worse. It kept the story moving, and was
sufficient background for Katie to determine which boy she loved, as she
was put into odder and odder situations with them.
I have only
one complaint about this book. Katie got the locket from her
grandmother, and based on the pictures in the locket it is assumed that
Katie's grandmother used the locket to make everything turn out as they
did in the universe Katie originated in. I just want to know what
happened. I think that would make an amazing prequel, and it would
provide a lot more insight into the mysterious titular villain of The
Locket.
4.5 stars.
On her seventeenth
birthday, Katie discovers a locket and decides to wear it for good luck.
But when her boyfriend Isaac finds out she cheated on him - with their
mutual best friend Mitch, no less - he dumps her, leaving her
devastated.
And then a miracle happens. The locket burns on
Katie's chest and she feels herself going back two weeks in time, to the
night she cheated with Mitch. At first, Kate is delighted to be a
better girlfriend to Isaac this time around. But as other aspects of her
life become inexplicably altered, she realizes that changing the past
may have had a dangerous effect on her present.
Can she make things right before the locket destroys everything - and everyone - she loves?
Since she was little, Violet
has been able to detect the corpses of murdered people and animals and
connect them to their killers. This strange and disturbing talent goes
much ignored for many years, until Violet finds a dead girl's body
swimming with the fishes while Violet is at a beach party. Soon after,
other girls start going missing, and while Violet is on the hunt for the
serial killer with her police chief uncle, she knows that she herself
can become a target as well. And of course, there's some romance going
on between Violet and her best friend, Jay, but it's very corny and I'll
get to that soon.
Even though I don't like mysteries, I did like
the supernatural twist and I thought the plot was interesting. However,
I also felt that the prose was a little too juvenile for me. I wasn't
too impressed by the prose in The Pledge, but that book had so much plot
that I wasn't disappointed by the immature prose. The sense of
immaturity was only furthered by the simplicity of the romance. Violet
suddenly has a crush on her best friend when he turns all hot, and when
they get together (not a spoiler because totally inevitable) it happens
in a snap with only a few pages of discomfort. Life doesn't happen that
way, and the assumption that it does did not mesh well with the maturity
of the serial killer plot.
I have no plans of reading the
sequels to this book, but I will say that it is not a horrible book and I
would recommend it to any young teenagers who love mysteries.
3.3 stars.
Violet Ambrose is
grappling with two major issues: Jay Heaton and her morbid secret
ability. While the sixteen-year-old is confused by her new feelings for
her best friend since childhood, she is more disturbed by her "power" to
sense dead bodies—or at least those that have been murdered. Since she
was a little girl, she has felt the echoes that the dead leave behind in
the world... and the imprints that attach to their killers.
Violet
has never considered her strange talent to be a gift; it mostly just
led her to find the dead birds her cat had tired of playing with. But
now that a serial killer has begun terrorizing her small town, and the
echoes of the local girls he's claimed haunt her daily, she realizes she
might be the only person who can stop him.
Despite his fierce
protectiveness over her, Jay reluctantly agrees to help Violet on her
quest to find the murderer—and Violet is unnerved to find herself hoping
that Jay's intentions are much more than friendly. But even as she's
falling intensely in love, Violet is getting closer and closer to
discovering a killer... and becoming his prey herself.
When
Meghan's little brother is kidnapped and replaced with an evil fairy
child thingy, Meghan sets off to fairyland, called NeverNever, to rescue
him. Upon arrival Meghan discovers that she is the long lost child of
one of the rulers, and that finding her brother will be a lot more
complicated than she expected. With the help of the mischievous Puck and
the handsome prince Ash, Meghan faces an enemy unlike one that anyone
in NeverNever had ever heard of before.
For some reason, I don't
find YA fantasy about fairies nearly as satisfying as any about other
sorts of fantastical creatures. This book didn't defy that expectation,
but it was one of the better fairy books that I've read. It did have all
the same annoying markings-a half mortal/half fairy main character,
dark brooding handsome prince love interest, her long-lost father is
king, rescuing a mortal loved one-but it didn't feel as overdone as most
other fairy novels. Perhaps because in this book the fairy world had
rules that made sense and were easy to follow, as opposed to the ones
where random things happen and are explained afterwards.
Was it
just me, or did the Ash romance happen too fast? One second they're
mortal enemies, and the next they're true love. It happened so quickly
that my initial thought was that he was pranking her or part of some
elaborate scheme on his mother's part. He may very well might be though,
because there are still more books left to the series.
4.0 stars
Meghan Chase has a secret destiny; one she could never have imagined.
Something
has always felt slightly off in Meghan's life, ever since her father
disappeared before her eyes when she was six. She has never quite fit in
at school or at home.
When a dark stranger begins watching her
from afar, and her prankster best friend becomes strangely protective of
her, Meghan senses that everything she's known is about to change.
But
she could never have guessed the truth - that she is the daughter of a
mythical faery king and is a pawn in a deadly war. Now Meghan will learn
just how far she'll go to save someone she cares about, to stop a
mysterious evil no faery creature dare face; and to find love with a
young prince who might rather see her dead than let her touch his icy
heart.
