Spells

Spells, Aprilynne Pike

The sequal to Wings starts 6 months after we left Laurel and David and Tam.  Laurel has been summoned to Avalon for faerie training for the summer, and she goes.  She sees Tam a lot during this time, and David not at all.

Insert appropriate love triangle conversations / events here.

After her summer in Avalon, Laurel goes home and starts her normal school year with David.  She has been given new warnings about staying away from trolls, who are out for revenge after they were out manuevered for the property in the last book.  She ignores this, of course, gets in trouble, has to be saved, and then gets in trouble again, and is saved again.

All leaving room for the final installment that's due out in the fall.

This was as good as Wings.  The relationships are better than in some other YA.  But again, I grow tired of love triangles and young girl characters that everyone just seems to fall all over because they are oh so beautiful.  The foundation, I think, has been laid for Laurel to end up with Tam and David to end up with their friend who's name escapes me.  But, who knows.

If the third one is at the library I'll read it.  There is more sexuality in this book.  So not for tweens, in my mind.

Wings

Wings, Aprilynne Pike

Laurel has moved to Crescent City with her parents and has started her first year of main stream school.  She has been homeschooled the first fifteen years of her life.  At school she meets David, a very nice young boy who is very nice to her.  Midway through the fall, Laurel has some strange stuff happen and ends up discovering she's a faerie, and not human at all, but a plant.  And that there are trolls out there that want to own the land her old house is on, and trolls are bad and kill faeries.  She meets Tamani, a faerie sentry that protects her old house, and who is also very attractive and who is also in love with her.

This was a quick read.  Took no time at all, and it was pleasant.  Laurel is cute and David and Tam are fun.  Faerie background bores the living daylights out of me.  Faeries hold very little interest to me.  But, this was easy to get through so it must not have been that bad.  I also picked up the second one (like I've said before - all YA is a triology now) from the library so ... if you're looking for a quick fun, YA ... Wings is a good bet.

I'm always up to looking at what the kids are reading.

The Scent of Rain and Lightning

The Scent of Rain and Lightning, by Nancy Pickard

Jody Linder is famous in small town Rose, KS because when she was three years old, during a bad Kansas storm, her father was murdered, and her mother mysteriously disappeared.  But then 23 years after the incident, the main arrested and sent to prison is released, raising a whole bunch of new questions about what really happened that night.

There was a lot I liked about this.  Thunderstorms in Kansas kind of have their own special magic.  Maybe it's that way in all of the Midwest?  I don't know.  I am familiar with Kansas storms, so I liked that part of this book.

The ranch parts were interesting, which I know a little bit about (very, very little) just because of a friend of mine who's father does that sort of thing.

The original story was great.  After we got through the back story into the "present" it sort of got hard.  Jody was not likeable.  The entire Linder families single minded obsession with Billy being the murderer just made them all appear stupid and ... not racist (cause race isn't a factor) but elitest?  The author wanted us to think they were good people because "oh look they hired troubled youth out at their ranch but poor Billy couldn't be saved," but I just didn't buy it.  The author also took it a bit far.  Billy was such a bad seed he was almost a cartoon character.

It did not help that the reader knew Billy hadn't done it from very early on.

I think my public defender (in Kansas courts no less) friends should read this book.  They'd be appalled. Actually maybe they shouldn't read it, as it is sort of appalling how the rich family in the small town railroaded the poor, lower class guy with no family and he spent 23 years in jail because they were CERTAIN he was guilty.

The ending wasn't satisfactory.  I wanted some sort of vindication for Billy, but again, the cartoon character comes into play and he was just really guilty, just not of the particular crime he was accused of.

I gave this three stars on good reads, because it was interesting.  But not four because there were problems.

Fallen

Fallen, by Lauren Kate

Lucinda Price is sent to a reformatory school after a suspicious fire kills a boy in her class.  Here she meets a bunch of crazy people, including two boys, Cam and Daniel.  Cam is instantly nice to her and Daniel is a jerk.  Of course she likes Daniel best.

But the school kids are all dysfunctional and have wierd secrets.  And Luce has dreams about wings and flying and bright lights and sees scary shadows during the day, coming to get her.  Come to find out the secrets involve fallen angels, a 100 years battle between good and evil, and an old rule that angels can't fall in love with humans; ever.  Lest the powers that be get mad and the human dies.

So, as with all things YA lately, this is a triology (mayhap a series?  I think there are four?).  And that always makes the first book feel like a preface chapter, versuses a stand alone book.  Word to publishers: please quit taking books that only need one and turning them into three.  You artificially lengthen them and we, the readers, know it.

That being said, Fallen was good.  Not Harry Potter good, or even Twilight good, but good.  I didn't care for the way the author spelled the peoples names (how would you pronounce Arriane? Or even Luce?  Is that Luc-y?  Or Luce as in Loose?).  But the plot was inventive.  The common criticism I've read is that nothing happens until the final two chapters.  Sort of true.  Nothing is resolved.  In fact, I have more questions at the end of the book than I did in the middle.  Is Cam a good guy?  Or a bad guy?

But, like I said, it's a triology.  Torment is already out, and Passion comes out in June.  If I can get them from the library (how I read Fallen) I'll continue.  If not ...

The Help

The Help, Kathryn Stockett

It's 1962 in Jackson, MS.  Skeeter Phelan came home from Ole Miss trying to  be a writer, and a woman in NYC advises her to find a good idea.  Skeeter decides to write a novel about the black maids that raise white children in Jackson, and what happens to those children and those women after that caregiver relationship ends.  And how the maids are treated by the white women who pay them.

This book was really good.  I enjoyed reading about Aibileen and how she cares for the babies and Minny was hillarious and heartbreaking.

This time period is always hard for me to read about, as it just seems so foreign.  Like another planet.  Not the same country that I live in just 50 years earlier.  The segregation, the racism, the crazy Junior League women who think they run the world.  Oh wait those women still exist.

I tease but it was hard to read.  Worth reading, but hard to read.  I've recommended it to the bookclub I'm in.

My only complaint would be the ending, though I'm not sure why.  I found myself turning another page, looking for the rest.  I don't know what would have made me happy.  But it was so sad and heartbreaking.  I really felt for the characters.

Something Blue

Something Blue, by Emily Giffin

Darcy Rhone thought she had it all figured out: the more beautiful the girl, the more charmed her life. Never mind substance. Never mind playing by the rules. Never mind karma. But Darcy's neat, perfect world turns upside down when her best friend, Rachel, the plain-Jane good girl, steals her fiance, while Darcy finds herself completely alone for the first time in her life with a baby on the way.

Darcy tries to recover, fleeing to her childhood friend living in London and resorting to her tried-and-true methods for getting what she wants. But as she attempts to recreate her glamorous life on a new continent, Darcy finds that her rules no longer apply.


It is only then that Darcy can begin her journey toward self-awareness, forgiveness, and motherhood. Something Blue is a novel about one womans surprising discoveries about the true meaning of friendship, love, and happily-ever-after. It's a novel for anyone who has ever, even secretly, wondered if the last thing you want is really the one thing you need.  FROM GOODREADS.
 
I read Something Borrowed for a book club in December and just finished this second one yesterday.  I enjoyed this one much more than I did the first.  And I think that's because I could root for the characters in this story, and in the first one I kind of thought they all stunk.
 
Darcy's transformation was believable, and her romance was too.  I liked it bunches.  The pregnancy stuff was interesting to me too, but I think that's just because I can relate to that stage of life.
 
Definitely a good beachy read or if you want something fun and feel-goody.  You have to read the first one though, because this does not stand alone.

ReReads: The Host and Breaking Dawn

So my book club choose The Host for the book to read for the February meeting.  I had read it two years ago (see linked review) but I wanted to reread it so I could talk intelligently about it, and with details.  I just finished it again today.

But before I read that one, I reread Breaking Dawn, because it was available for download to my iphone from the public library, and I've needed an Edward fix.

I have to say, I enjoyed Breaking Dawn a lot more the second time.  I could still do without just about everything after she turns into a vampire.  Actually, I can pinpoint it better than that.  Everything after Irina sees the baby in the forest.  Everything after that is crap.

But the 500 pages before that were enjoyable.

The Host, I enjoyed less the second time around.  I remembered LOOOVING it so I think I had no where to go but down.  I still liked it.  But the simplicity of it really bothered me.  Meyer took such the lazy way out with the science of the medicine, specifically.  It really bothered me.  "Smooth?"  Really?  "No Pain?"  Really?  And even when decribing other planets, she kept saying over and over again, "the word for it in this language is, chases bears by river, but it has a much prettier name in their language."  Being able to say that is sort of a cop out, isn't it?

Still ... I enjoyed it again.  Would recommend it again.  The wierd love quaderangle is fun.