Reviews- Vacation reads

So I was on vacation for the last few weeks and instead of bombarding everyone with multiple posts and reviews, I figured I would just do one big post with short reviews on all the books I read!
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The Unwritten Rule
By Elizabeth Scott
http://www.elizabethwrites.com/

Everyone knows the unwritten rule: You don't like your best friend's boyfriend.

Sarah has had a crush on Ryan for years. He's easy to talk to, supersmart, and totally gets her. Lately it even seems like he's paying extra attention to her. Everything would be perfect except for two things: Ryan is Brianna's boyfriend, and Brianna is Sarah's best friend.

Sarah forces herself to avoid Ryan and tries to convince herself not to like him. She feels so guilty for wanting him, and the last thing she wants is to hurt her best friend. But when she's thrown together with Ryan one night, something happens. It's wonderful...and awful.

Sarah is torn apart by guilt, but what she feels is nothing short of addiction, and she can't stop herself from wanting more...
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This was a great book. I definitly took you right back to being in high school, when every emotion is confusing and there are all sorts of silly social rules that you are expected to follow- even when they make no sense at all. I loved how Sarah explained everything she was feeeling for Ryan and how she really tried to stay away from him for the sake of her friendship, which was really kind of a crappy friendship. Brianna was a pretty crappy friend for Sarah, but I liked that you really got to see why the became friends and why Sarah felt so loyal to her.

One thing I really appreciated was Sarah's parents. So often we see really bad parenting going on in YA books, but here her parents, especially her mother, see what's going on and give her unpressured advice. They express that they wish Brianna was a better friend without asking Sarah to ditch her, and mention the growing relationship with Ryan and the possible fall out while still letting her make her own mistakes.

Overall it was a great summer read, and I look forward to reading more Elizabeth Scott books.

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Rules of Attraction
By: Simone Elkeles
http://www.simoneelkeles.net/

The sequel to Perfect Chemistry!

When Carlos Fuentes returns to America after living in Mexico for a year, he doesn’t want any part of the life his older brother, Alex, has laid out for him at a high school in Colorado . Carlos likes living his life on the edge and wants to carve his own path—just like Alex did. Then he meets Kiara Westford. She doesn’t talk much and is completely intimidated by Carlos’ wild ways. As they get to know one another, Carlos assumes Kiara thinks she’s too good for him, and refuses to admit that she might be getting to him. But he soon realizes that being himself is exactly what Kiara needs right now.

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I love Simone Elkeles, so of course I love this book. Once again Elkeles takes a pretty standard plot and theme and makes you read it like it's the first you've seen it. This book follows Alex's brother Carlos as he moves to Colorado to try and straighten out under his Alex's watchful eye. Carlos is full of attitude and bravado and he quickly runs into trouble, despite trying to be good. Soon he is living with a professor and his family, including his classmate Kiara. Much like in Perfect Chemistry, Carlos and Kiara find themselves in a love/hate relationship, that blossoms into the real thing.

This is another books with great parents. Kiara's parents not only step up for their own children, but go to bat for Alex and Carlos as well. I was so amused with Kiara's dad and how he had this whole secret life (which I' not going to give away) that he had tucked away but was willing to put it on the line for Carlos, both because Carlos was a good kid and because Kiara really cared about him.

In my opinion Elkeles is the queen of summer reads. Any of her books are great beach reads and this is no exception.

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Beastly
By: Alex Flinn
http://www.alexflinn.com/

I am a beast. A beast. Not quite wolf or bear, gorilla or dog, but a horrible new creature who walks upright – a creature with fangs and claws and hair springing from every pore. I am a monster.

You think I’m talking fairy tales? No way. The place is New York City. The time is now. It’s no deformity, no disease. And I’ll stay this way forever – ruined – unless I can break the spell.

Yes, the spell, the one the witch in my English class cast on me. Why did she turn me into a beast who hides by day and prowls by night? I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you how I used to be Kyle Kingsbury, the guy you wished you were, with money, perfect looks, and a perfect life. And then, I’ll tell you how I became perfectly beastly.

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This was such a fun book, which I'm glad to say will be coming to theaters sometime this winter. At the heart of it is a traditional fairy tale, with the handsome but cruel "prince" being cursed to learn a lesson about true beauty. This modern retelling weaves in the use of the internet and chat rooms to give beast an outlet, where he meats the Little Mermaid, The Frog Prince and several other familar charecters.

Set in NYC, we see the prince, Kyle Kingsbury, run across a real live witch and when he plays a cruel trick on her, she curses him and he becomes beast. His father, once it can't be fixed, quickly ships him off to live in a brownstone with the maid and a blind tutor. When Kyle catches a thief in his rose garden, he trades the mans life for his daughters. When she arrives, she obviously is ticked (kidnapping will do that to you), but over time she see's Kyle as the person he has become, more then just a beast and a far cry for the obnoxious teenager he was.

The story follows a predictable path, but it stays current and entertaining throughout, with just enough new plot points to keep it interesting.

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Elvenbane
By: Andre Norton and Mercedes Lackey
http://www.andre-norton.org/

http://www.mercedeslackey.com/

When Serina Daeth, favorite concubine of the Elf-Lord Dyran, conceives a half-blood child by him, she flees his wrath into the desert, where she quickly succumbs. But the child, born in Serina's dying moments, is rescued by a friendly dragon and raised with her own draconic brood. As the child Shana grows, she develops prodigious sorcerous powers--so strong that it seems she might be the fabled Elvenbane, powerful enough to free the enslaved humans from their elven oppressors. The dragons come to fear her unplumbed power, though, and cast her out. With a renegade elf-lord and his half-blood servant, and the aid of her remaining dragon friends, Shana prepares to challenge the elfish supremacy. Though battle is joined, a sequel is plainly on the way. Thoroughly rooted in genre traditions--with elves, dragons, unicorns, and sorcerers--but some variations make it more enjoyable than the average example: theses elves and unicorns, for instance, are cruel and dangerous, where in most fantasies they are shining examples of superhuman purity. Overall, then, despite shallow characters and a lack of real tension (we never doubt that Shana and friends will succeed), an entertaining adventure.

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I recieved this book as a Goodreads First Reads book.

this ended up being a great book, and I'm really excited to go read the sequels. At the start I had trouble getting into it though. The first couple chapters, which were mostly about Sarina Daeth and consisted of her recapping how she became head concubine seemed a bit choppy to me and I struggled to follow who everyone was and to get into the story. However, once we got into the meat of the story, with Shana taking the lead, the story really exploded and I flew through the rest of the book.

I loved that she was raised by the Dragons and we got to see this world that was created around them. It was fun to see these giagantic animals trying to raise a child and cope with the idea that humans are more then just stupid animals.

Once Shana is forced into the world of elves and humans, it became a great hero journey, as we followed Shana as she claimed her birthright and really came into her own as a powerful wizard.

This was a fun book once you got into it and like I said, I'm excited to see how Shana's story finishes.

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Ball Don't Lie
By: Matt de la Pena
http://www.mattdelapena.com/

Sticky is a beat-around-the-head foster kid with nowhere to call home but the street, and an outer shell so tough that no one will take him in. He started out life so far behind the pack that the finish line seems nearly unreachable. He’s a white boy living and playing in a world where he doesn’t seem to belong.

But Sticky can ball. And basketball might just be his ticket out . . . if he can only realize that he doesn’t have to be the person everyone else expects him to be.

A breakout urban masterpiece by newcomer Matt de la Peña, Ball Don’t Lie takes place where the street and the court meet and where a boy can be anything if he puts his mind to it.
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This is another great book by Matt de la Pena. Sticky is a great charecter who we see trying to rise above his situation by playing basketball. The plot jumps around in terms of time and we see how Sticky became a foster kid, we see the different foster homes he lived in, we see how his relationship with Ahn-thou progresses and mostly we see how basketball gave Sticky an outlet and hope.

I especially enjoyed all the parts of the story that took part on the court. We saw a group of guys from all different backgrounds come together because they love to play ball. It became a family of sorts for Sticky, who really needed that kind of supposrt system. I really loved how in the end we see Sticky get the chance to make it big, without really finding out if he makes it or not. I like that it leaves it up in the air, but you get the sense that Sticky has really made it, and taken the chance to rise above.

In the end, great book.

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The Forest of Hands and Teeth
By: Carrie Ryan
http://www.carrieryan.com/

In Mary's world there are simple truths.

The Sisterhood always knows best.
The Guardians will protect and serve.
The Unconsecrated will never relent.
And you must always mind the fence that surrounds the village; the fence that protects the village from the Forest of Hands and Teeth.

But, slowly, Mary's truths are failing her. She's learning things she never wanted to know about the Sisterhood and its secrets, and the Guardians and their power, and about the Unconsecrated and their relentlessness. When the fence is breached and her world is thrown into chaos, she must choose between her village and her future-between the one she loves and the one who loves her.

And she must face the truth about the Forest of Hands and Teeth. Could there be life outside a world surrounded in so much death?

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This was an excellent book. I'm a sucker for a good dystopian, and this was a great one. It's hard to say alot without giving the story away, but the long and the short of it is that Mary lives in a town that in essentially under seige by the Unconsecrated, who they keep at bay with a large fence. When Mary's mother becomes Unconsecrated, Mary is given an inside look at the way the Sisterhood operates and begins to mistrust the power-structure she lives under. At the point that the walls are breached and the town is destroyed, Mary and her friends and family exit the compound via a fenced in path and find themselves adrift within the Forest of Hands and Teeth.

I loved Mary- she is a strong charecter who holds out hope to find something that she knows is out there (the ocean) without being able to prove it. When others become disillusioned and are unable to take risks for fear of what is out there, Mary steps forward and follows her heart. The were certainly sad moments in this book, and charecters that you grow to really care about don't survive, but I like the fact that there isn't always a happy ending.

This book does end with Mary discovering something about the world she lives in and she gets her chance to carry forward. I'm excited to get my hands on the sequel Dead Tossed Waves, and see what else happens in the town that are surrounded by the forest.

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So that was my two weeks worth of reading. I still have a whole pile to go, but for right now I'm concentrating on doing homework for Graduate School, which has jsut begun for me. I'll be finished with my summer residency at the end of July and then I'm off for another road trip, which means more reading time! Coming up next I have The Emerald Talisman by Brenda Pandos and Faithful by Janet Fox, plus Mockingjay is coming out soon and as we all know (or should know) Hunger Games trumps all!

Review: Ten Things I Hate About Me

by: Randa Abdel-Fattah
www.randaabdelfattah.com

Ten Things is about Jamie, a teenage girl from Sydney’s south west who lives two lives: at school and in the outside world she is ‘Jamie’, a bottle-blonde with an apparently Anglo Aussie background; at home she is ‘Jamilah’ a Lebanese-Muslim who is proud of her cultural identity. Jamie struggles to maintain her two personas as the rules of her over-protective father collide with the normal adolescence she perceives other teenagers to have and which she so desires.

Life appears to be looking up for Jamie when the most popular boy in school begins to show an interest in her. Added to that she gets an after-school job and makes an email friend, John, the only person with whom she can be completely honest. However her fate as a social outcast appears sealed when her father’s Stone Age Charter of Curfew Rights threatens to prevent her attending the much-anticipated Year 10 formal and her Arabic band is hired to play at the formal.

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This was a pretty good book. It was definitly a pretty sereotypical story about a girl trying to figure out who she is, but it had some really nice twists that kept it interesting. Set in Australia, the story follow Jamilah, a Lebanese-Muslim who tried to hide her identity while at school in order to avoid the racial slurs that are hurled around her classrooms. Like most teenage girls, Jamilah, or Jamie as she goes by at school, just wants to fit in, but her family and heritage are tugging her in the opposite direction.

I really liked Jamilah's family, I especially enjoyed the fact that at first they seemed like sterotypes: The Strict, Uncompromising Father; Hippie Sister and Rebel Brother, but as the story went on and layers began to be peeled back, you got to see exactly what kind of family they were. The friends too fit this pattern- while at first we see them as sterotypes, they slowly become so much more then that, until at the end we see them for their true selves. How we see them evolve mirrors the path Jamilah takes from being afraid of being a stereotype, to acknowledging all that she is, to eventually embracing it.

I also really liked the way the author revealed information about Jamilah. Instead of using a diary or letter (which has been done before), here we see Jamilah exchanging personal emails with an anonymous online friend. My only complaint is that Jamilah wasn't able to put two and two together as to who this anonymous friend is, because it was pretty obvious to me fairly early on. Even with that, I liked that the emails allowed Jamilah to open up completely, something she was afraid to do at school and really couldn't do at home.

Overall I thought this was a good read and defintily fits the bill for fun summer reading!

Review- The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner

The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: an Eclipse Novella
By: Stephenie Meyer
www.stepheniemeyer.com

Fans of The Twilight Saga will be enthralled by this riveting story of Bree Tanner, a character first introduced in Eclipse, and the darker side of the newborn vampire world she inhabits. In another irresistible combination of danger, mystery, and romance, Stephenie Meyer tells the devastating story of Bree and the newborn army as they prepare to close in on Bella Swan and the Cullens, following their encounter to its unforgettable conclusion.

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**This Review Contains Some Spoilers**

I really liked this book. I think as a TwilightMom it is kind of a requirement. Personally, I love all the excerpts that Meyer has given us on her website, so I really enjoyed getting to see part of the story from a point of view that is totally in contrast to what we are used to. I especially loved seeing exactly what was going on with the newborns as they prepared to attack the Cullens.

Part of what was great about this book was that what Meyer envisioned and what I envisioned were to totally different things. I disliked the newborns because Bella disliked them, I saw Bree as a blood thirsty, crazed, uncontrollable kid because that it how she looked through Bella's eyes. I fully expected the newborns to be throughly evil, bad before being bitten and worse after. For the most part they were. Victoria and Riley picked the dregs to turn into their army, but amid those newborns there were those who retained their common sense and some humanity. I was happy to see that Bree was not all bad. I appreciated seeing all that was going on in Seattle, from their hunting trips to how Riley tried to keep them all in line, to how Bree, along with Freaky Fred and Diego were looking to find the truth and maybe a way out.

Some things that really surprised me were the Volturi's level of awareness as to what was going on- they knew much more then I thought. I also was happy to see that in the end Bree tried to stand up to the Volturi and Victoria in the best way she could, by giving Edward as much information as possible before her inevitable death. I haven't had a chance yet, but I want to go back and re-read that scene in Eclipse and see if I see it all differently now that I have another perspective besides Bella's to work with.

In her introduction Meyer says: "The closer I got to the inevitable end, the more I wished I'd concluded Eclipse just slightly differently." Many people took that to mean that the Cullens would have been given permission by the Volturi to take Bree in. It could be that is what Meyer meant. I can't see anyway that it could have gone that way though, the Volturi were already worried about the size of the Cullen's family, and this is before they added Bella to their ranks. In my opinion, it would have been nice to see Bree survive, striking out to find Fred, who had promised to wait for her in Vancouver. It would have also been nice to see Fred and Bree make an appearance in Breaking Dawn, standing witness with the Cullen family against the Volturi. Of course that's just my take on it. Unless Meyer continues to give us the gift of more Novellas or books, which I for one hope she does, we can be content in loving the books we have, and imagining what might lay ahead for our favorite characters.