Month: April 2016

Reviews, ya contemporary, ya romance

ARC Review: Undecided by Julianna Keyes

Liz Brooks

Undecided

GoodReads Summary:

Nora Kincaid has one goal for her second year of college: be invisible. Last year’s all-party-no-study strategy resulted in three failed classes and two criminal charges, and if she messes up again she’ll lose her scholarship. But there’s one problem with her plan for invisibility, and his name is Crosbie Lucas: infamous party king, general hellraiser…and her new roommate’s best friend.

Crosbie’s reckless reputation and well-known sexcapades aren’t part of Nora’s studious new strategy, but as she’s quickly learning, her new plan is also really boring. When Crosbie’s unexpected gestures of friendship pull her head out of her books long enough to see past his cocky veneer, she’s surprised to find a flawed and funny guy beneath it all. The muscles don’t hurt, either.

But as Nora starts to fall for Crosbie, the weight of one of last year’s bad decisions grows even heavier. Because three failing grades and two misdemeanors are nothing compared to the one big secret she’s hiding…

My Review:

Undecided was an entertaining novel about life, overcoming past transgressions, and learning who you are and what you want.

Nora Kincaid spends most of the book reflecting on her previous year of college and trying to move past her failings. To help her move forward, she moves into a new apartment, with one of the hottest guys on campus, and then proceeds to fall for his best friend, the second hottest guy on campus. The interactions between Nora and Kellan, her roommate, are cute. While they don’t start out as friends, their relationship grows. I thoroughly enjoyed their witty banter.

Nora’s relationship with Crosbie is the usual- hot guy on-campus with a bad boy reputation meets uptight, bookish nerd. There is sexual tension right from the get go. She spends a lot of time worrying people will think she is a “crosbabe” and gain a reputation that won’t sit well with the dean… thanks to the arrests of the previous year. But what she learns is “Crosbie Lucas is not quite the cocky, smug ass that he pretends to be.” Same goes for her roommate Kellan.

The plot was very predictable, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the relationships, witty banter, and overall story. There are secrets that cause relationship problems, but as usual contemporary romances go, all parties get the endings they deserve.

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Reviews, YA Historical, YA Sci Fi

Book Review: The Girl from Everywhere by Heidi Heilig

Liz Brooks

The Girl from Everywhere (The Girl from Everywhere, #1)

GoodReads Summary:

Nix has spent her entire life aboard her father’s ship, sailing across the centuries, across the world, across myth and imagination.

As long as her father has a map for it, he can sail to any time, any place, real or imagined: nineteenth-century China, the land from One Thousand and One Nights, a mythic version of Africa. Along the way they have found crewmates and friends, and even a disarming thief who could come to mean much more to Nix.

But the end to it all looms closer every day.

Her father is obsessed with obtaining the one map, 1868 Honolulu, that could take him back to his lost love, Nix’s mother. Even though getting it—and going there—could erase Nix’s very existence.

For the first time, Nix is entering unknown waters.

She could find herself, find her family, find her own fantastical ability, her own epic love.

Or she could disappear.

My Review:

When I first started The Girl From Everywhere, I was really worried it was going to be so similar to other time-travel novels I have read.  Specifically, Passenger by Alexandra Bracken. So I went into this novel with low expectations, not really sure I would like what I found. And I have to say I was extremely wrong! Which, in this case, feels amazing.

Heidi Heilig tells a very original, profound story.She grew up in Hawaii and took the tales and folk lore she learned and wrapped them into an adventure full of beauty and paradise. Also, Heilig’s idea of time travel, using maps of different places and times is quite imaginative. I haven’t read a story where that is how time is traveled by.

Nix, the main character, was born in Hawaii, but after her mother dies, her father takes her aboard his ship. This is where she lives for 16 years. Nix, her dad, and their crew travel to different continents through time. All the while, her father is in search of a particular map, to take him back to the time before Nix’s mother died. And this is how the story twists and turns, in search of a map.

The relationship Heilig presents between Nix and Slate (her father) is one that is truthful, distant, and full of regret. She regards him with distance. She is resentful of his dependence on her because she is the “expert” with maps. And she is fearful that when he finds the map, her life will change for the worse. He wants to go back to before her mother passed away, therefore changing her current life. Will she become a different person? Or will she disappear all together? And it is very clear that Slate doesn’t think about the consequences of his actions. He is very narrow minded.

The events that take place over the course of The Girl From Everywhere really show character growth. Not only from Nix, but from her father as well as crewmate Kashmir. Kashmir is an interesting character, with a very unique background. The relationship between him and Nix is full of tension. There were moments when, had Nix said something, their friendship could have moved to be more. But because she is fretful of her father’s plan, and her own longing to escape Slate, she keeps Kashmir as a distance as well. She is mostly worried about losing him, and becoming her father. She is witness to what happens when you lose the love of your life.

The Girl From Everywhere is refreshing and envisioning. I thoroughly enjoyed the intertwining relationships between all the characters.

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Reviews

Book Review: Blackhearts by Nicole Castroman

Liz Brooks

Blackhearts (Blackhearts, #1)

GoodReads Summary:

Blackbeard the pirate was known for striking fear in the hearts of the bravest of sailors. But once he was just a young man who dreamed of leaving his rigid life behind to chase adventure in faraway lands. Nothing could stop him—until he met the one girl who would change everything.

Edward “Teach” Drummond, son of one of Bristol’s richest merchants, has just returned from a year-long journey on the high seas to find his life in shambles. Betrothed to a girl he doesn’t love and sick of the high society he was born into, Teach dreams only of returning to the vast ocean he’d begun to call home. There’s just one problem: convincing his father to let him leave and never come back.

Following her parents’ deaths, Anne Barrett is left penniless and soon to be homeless. Though she’s barely worked a day in her life, Anne is forced to take a job as a maid in the home of Master Drummond. Lonely days stretch into weeks, and Anne longs for escape. How will she ever realize her dream of sailing to Curaçao—where her mother was born—when she’s stuck in England?

From the moment Teach and Anne meet, they set the world ablaze. Drawn to each other, they’re trapped by society and their own circumstances. Faced with an impossible choice, they must decide to chase their dreams and go, or follow their hearts and stay.

My Review:

Blackhearts is an unstoppable story full of history, romance, and intrigue. This is Nicole Castroman’s debut novel and her writing style is genius.

The story is told from the 3rd person limited POV. You go through the story seeing through both Teach’s and Anne’s perspectives. The 3rd person limited narration allows the reader to fully understand the context of the situation through the character’s eyes. When Anne is speaking, we only know how she is feeling and how she is interpreting Teach’s actions. The reader comes to understand how high society functions as well as the behind the curtain of the household staff. Anne is considered beneath the regular household staff due to her mother’s background (being from the West Indies).

Castroman did an excellent job at conveying the misogynistic, sexist,  and racist standards present during the time period Blackhearts is written. I didn’t have any preconceived notions about this book, but I will say reading others reviews of it helped me set my mind. When you hear “Blackbeard retelling”, you think pirates and ships. While Castroman didn’t give us those things in Blackhearts, she gave us a starting place, which I am grateful for. To understand Blackbeard you have to know where he comes from, and specifically, what made him into a pirate.

The romance itself is a slow burn, building to greatness. You can feel the attraction between Teach and  Anne from the first page. It also helps that there are other characters who get in their way. Miss Patience, the little priss teach is betrothed to (I wished she’d fall off a cliff. I am sure there are plenty in Bristol). Master Drummond, Anne’s employer and Teach’s father. I hope, if there is a second book (there better be), we come to understand why Master Drummond was so controlling, thinking he knew what was best for his son. I can’t believe that his character is just that controlling.

And finally, THAT CLIFFHANGER ENDING! I stayed up super late to finish reading Blackhearts and it was totally worth it (I also had a terrible nights sleep, dreams filled with rats, cockroaches, ships, and seas). The slow burning love Teach and Anne have for each other reaches it’s climax and then everything explodes. My only thought at the end of the book was, if Anne hadn’t lied to Teach originally then none of this would be happening!

Black Sails tv season 3 starz pirate

If you like historical fiction, retellings, and romance, Blackhearts is the perfect combination.

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Reviews, Special Review

ARC Review: Tell the Wind and Fire by Sarah Rees Brennan

Liz Brooks

Tell the Wind and Fire

GoodReads Summary:

Tell the Wind & Fire is about a young girl called Lucie who lives in a New York very different from the New York we know: the city is torn between two very different kinds of magic, and Lucie’s own family was torn apart years ago by that conflict. Lucie wears magic rings and carries a burden of guilt she can’t share with anyone.

The light in her life is her sweetheart boyfriend Ethan, but it turns out Ethan has a secret too: a soulless doppelganger created by dark magic, who has to conceal the face identical to Ethan’s with a hood fastened by a collar nobody but a Light magician with magical rings can take off… and who introduces himself to both of them by, for reasons nobody can understand, saving Ethan’s life…

My Review:

Gotta be honest… I didn’t finish reading this book. I managed to get through 50 percent before calling it quits. I just wasn’t able to get into the plot and I didn’t connect with the characters.

Lucie is a girl who did whatever it took to help free her father at the beginning of the book. And throughout the rest, she just stuck quietly by her boyfriend’s side, afraid he might find out about who she was… and who she wasn’t. For a character who could’ve been so strong and resilient, she felt quite 2 dimensional.

The world itself was colorless. I didn’t understand the true different been Light New York and Dark New York. Where were they in respect to each other? Side by side? Dark underneath? And it didn’t make sense that one day someone discovered light magic and that was it, the world changed. The world building needed to be more substantial and thought out.

I had a difficult time with the doppelganger idea. What is the plot point of bringing in a doppelganger at the start, having Lucie treat him as an equal, helping him, and then not seeing him again for half the book. I thought, maybe Lucie was meant to be with him. By meeting him, interacting with him, showing him her true self, she would finally allow herself to tell Ethan the truth about her past. The doppelganger would give her a chance to return to Dark City and she would help with the revolution. It is made quite  clear Lucie doesn’t agree with the counsel- those in charge of the laws in Light City. From what I scanned of the last 50%, this doesn’t happen.

The counsel itself was a confusing group. Did they make the laws for the nation? Or just for Light New York and Dark New York? How was the rest of the nation handling the magic? What were the far reaching implications of the doppelgangers and light/dark magic.

Lots of plot structuring didn’t make sense. And now looking at the description, it doesn’t make sense either. I think if there was more editing/re-reading the plot holes could’ve been filled and some of the run-on thoughts of the characters could’ve been deleted.

Rating: DNF (DID NOT FINISH)

Thank you to NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children’s Book Group, Clarion Books for giving me the chance to read this ARC. Receiving this ARC for free does not sway my review.

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