Review: Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

Title: Me Before You
Author: Jojo Moyes
Series: Me Before You #1
Format: Paperback ARC
Pub. Date: July 30th 2013
Source: Half Price Books


Book Description:

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Giver of Stars, discover the love story that captured over 20 million hearts in Me Before You, After You, and Still Me.

They had nothing in common until love gave them everything to lose . . .

Louisa Clark is an ordinary girl living an exceedingly ordinary life—steady boyfriend, close family—who has barely been farther afield than their tiny village. She takes a badly needed job working for ex–Master of the Universe Will Traynor, who is wheelchair bound after an accident. Will has always lived a huge life—big deals, extreme sports, worldwide travel—and now he’s pretty sure he cannot live the way he is.

Will is acerbic, moody, bossy—but Lou refuses to treat him with kid gloves, and soon his happiness means more to her than she expected. When she learns that Will has shocking plans of his own, she sets out to show him that life is still worth living.

A Love Story for this generation and perfect for fans of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, Me Before You brings to life two people who couldn’t have less in common—a heartbreakingly romantic novel that asks, What do you do when making the person you love happy also means breaking your own heart?

Review:

★★★★★

It's rare that I whole-heartedly and so positively adore a book. Me Before You was absolutely fantastic. It was beautifully written and raw and honest and optimistic and heartbreaking in the most perfect of ways. This was my first time reading anything by Jojo Moyes, but it certainly won't be my last.

The characters were wonderfully well written. Even if you didn't like a character (and believe me, there are a few), you still got a sense of who they were and the roots and complications of why you disliked them. Louisa is quirky, but never in the annoyingly common YA way of "omg I'm not like other girls". She's just unapologetically herself, and I admire that. I wish I had the confidence to wear, I dunno, pink zebra leggings with a festive hat and sparkly shoes and to say things without thinking too much about them. She's realistically awkward and charming, and I get what Will and her employers see in her.

And then there's Will. Poor, complicated, devastatingly handsome Will. Despite his demeanor and how he speaks to people, he's oddly endearing and you root for him to be better, to let down his walls. As he grows fond of Louisa, you can't help but to fall in love with him as she does. Even knowing damn well he's going to break all of our hearts.

The setting is also really well done. I feel like I could walk around their town with no map and feel at ease, and when they're traveling, I was swept away to be with them too.

Moyes does a brilliant job bringing up a topical and complicated topic and making it relatable, personable, and understandable. She gave me a lot to think about.

And I cried. Of course I did. I always do. I knew what was coming, and still, I cried. This is the most emotionally connected to a book and characters that I have felt in a long time. I know this book is a few years old, but this is the best book I have read this year. It was beautiful, touching, and haunting, and I absolutely recommend it. It's funny, charming, absolutely devastating, and strangely peaceful, and if you don't mind a little heartbreak and young love, this book is for you.

Review: This Is Where It Ends by Marieke Nijkamp

Title: This Is Where It Ends
Author: Marieke Nijkamp
Format: eARC
Pub. Date: January 5th 2016
Source: Sourcebooks Fire


Book Description:

10:00 a.m.
The principal of Opportunity, Alabama's high school finishes her speech, welcoming the entire student body to a new semester and encouraging them to excel and achieve.

10:02 a.m.
The students get up to leave the auditorium for their next class.

10:03
The auditorium doors won't open.

10:05
Someone starts shooting.

Told over the span of 54 harrowing minutes from four different perspectives, terror reigns as one student's calculated revenge turns into the ultimate game of survival.

Review:

★★★

This book gave me a case of the feelings.

I finished this book awhile ago now, but I had to let it stew around in my brain for awhile before I could properly and professionally write out my thoughts about it. There are some things that this book does very well, and other things that it does rather poorly, and so in the end I ended up giving it a neutral three out of five stars.

This is a tough book to read, not in its grammar or lexicon, but because of the overall plot. School shootings are tough stuff, scary stuff. Stuff that we unfortunately see every day on the news, and that some of us have personally been affected by, in some form or another. In my case, fortunately, no one was injured despite shots being fired. But even that is something that has stayed with me. It's a rough call to reality that it could happen at any school, to anybody, and that's terrifying. And yet, in its terror, this book is mesmerizing. I read it in one go, because I couldn't put it down. Thankfully I was on a train for 8 hours, so I had time to spare.

It took awhile to get used to the format of this book. It's comprised of four distinct, separated points of view. I'm not overtly fond of switching POVs, especially when it's four of them. That said, I think Nijkamp handled it fairly well. After a while it became easy to switch gears and decipher whose chapter was whose. I was disappointed that in these four points of view, the shooter wasn't given a voice. That's the voice I most wanted to read about, and I was left a bit sad that I didn't get that opportunity.

I appreciated that in addition to the separate points of view, the author also had mixed media strewn throughout the book. There is prose, as is standard in a novel, but also snippets of text messages, tweets, and blog posts. It brings the story into this decade and makes it feel more realistic. I think teens will relate to it more because of this incorporation of technology.

I do think that this book pulls out every single card in its literary deck, though, and it seemed like it was just for the purpose of saying the book included them. Different races? Check. Gay characters? Yup. Deaths of students, deaths of parents, rape, abuse, mental illness? Yup, all present. That's not a bad thing. I'm all for diverse characters and plots. I also know that everyone has their own story. But when it feels like it's all just plopped into the book for the sake of being plopped, it turns me off a bit. It also left me a bit confused. Part of one of the subplots of this story is that the town is a rather small and judgmental one, which is why so many people have so many secrets. This makes it hard to come out of the closet as being LGBT, because it is not a welcoming place. I was confused then why the quarterback who is so esteemed was a black character? Again, nothing wrong with having a black character. YA needs more of them. But when it's being drummed into the plot how small-minded the town is, this part doesn't seem to fit well. Maybe I'm just reading too much into things. It wouldn't be the first time.

I also wasn't happy with the ending, for a few reasons. I'll refrain from spoilers. Plot wise, I feel that it was kind of a cop out. The end chapters felt super rushed and I knew where it was going, and I didn't want it to go there. And when it ended it just felt like you had been running at an okay pace, sped up, and then hit a wall. It was just over. I'm not a fan of that at all. I also feel like the writing was a bit insensitive. I've lost friends to suicides and murders, and I promise you, I would never describe the loss of a beautiful human life as being able to see "brain" everywhere. It's crude, it's crass, and it's ultimately juvenile. It turned me off for sure, especially when mixed with this anger-inducing ending.

Unrelated to the content of the book, I absolutely love the cover. I think it sums up the plot well, and really makes a rather stunning point. I honestly forgot the title of this book at one point, but I remembered "the one with the broken chalk". It's a cover to be remembered.

I'm not sorry I read this, and I'll likely even read it again in the future. Like I said, there's high points and low points. It sucks you in and makes you confront life in a way that can be hard to swallow. There's some issues in it, but I would still recommend giving it a read. If you are a young adult reader who likes intense, emotionally driven books then this book might be for you.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinions. Thank you.

Review: This Star Won't Go Out by Esther Earl

Title: This Star Won't Go Out: The Life and Words of Esther Grace Earl

Author: Esther Earl, Lori Earl, Wayne Earl, John Green

Format: Hardcover, 431 pages

Pub. Date: January 28th 2014

Source: Purchased from Half Price Books



Book Description via Goodreads:

A collection of the journals, fiction, letters, and sketches of the late Esther Grace Earl, who passed away in 2010 at the age of 16. Photographs and essays by family and friends will help to tell Esther’s story along with an introduction by award-winning author John Green who dedicated his #1 bestselling novel The Fault in Our Stars to her.

Review:

★★★

I'm left not really knowing what to say about this book, if I'm being completely honest. I am going to keep this review as simple as I can, while still giving my opinion on the book itself not the topic of the book.

Like a lot of other readers, I picked this up after reading The Fault in Our Stars. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. I'm not a part of the Nerdfighter community, so I had little to no information about Esther prior to this book's release. When I realized what the story was about, and saw that it was prefaced by John Green, I knew I wanted to read it.

This hardcover is really, really long. However it's not that much text. There's a lot of pictures and transcripts taken in letter or email format, making it an easier read than it appears to be. I do think it was very poorly organized as a book. This book includes a lot of Esther's writings from her journals, letters, and internet happenings. But there's no real chapters or distinctions, so one minute you're on a diary page, and the next you're reading insight from one of her doctors. I also feel like this book dragged on longer than it needed to. I feel horrible saying that, but it was just kind of boring after awhile. I know how that sounds, and I'm so sorry, but it's true. Esther was also a very religious/spiritual person, and there's heavy doses of God in this book. That's nowhere near a bad thing, but it's not something I anticipated going into the book.

Honestly, Esther seems like she was a great person. She comes off as very kind and optimistic, and everyone certainly seemed to love her right until the end. And I think that's great that, as the title suggests, their star won't go out. I hope she inspires sick kids everywhere to be positive and to keep fighting and keep smiling.

I've read quite a few cancer memoirs, and because of that I can't say this book really taught me anything. That said, it was interesting to see cancer through a kid's perspective. Sad, of course. But interesting nonetheless.

I think that this book (already does) will gain lots of fans who will find inspiration and solace in the words and life of Esther Earl. I think it is worth reading once. However, I don't think I will be rereading it in the future, and I don't know that I will remember this book further down the road.

It's not you, book. It's me.

Review: All the Rage by Courtney Summers

Title: All the Rage
Author: Courtney Summers
Format: egalley
Pub. Date: April 14th 2015
Source: St. Martin's Griffin


Book Description via Goodreads:

The sheriff’s son, Kellan Turner, is not the golden boy everyone thinks he is, and Romy Grey knows that for a fact. Because no one wants to believe a girl from the wrong side of town, the truth about him has cost her everything—friends, family, and her community. Branded a liar and bullied relentlessly by a group of kids she used to hang out with, Romy’s only refuge is the diner where she works outside of town. No one knows her name or her past there; she can finally be anonymous. But when a girl with ties to both Romy and Kellan goes missing after a party, and news of him assaulting another girl in a town close by gets out, Romy must decide whether she wants to fight or carry the burden of knowing more girls could get hurt if she doesn’t speak up. Nobody believed her the first time—and they certainly won’t now — but the cost of her silence might be more than she can bear.　

With a shocking conclusion and writing that will absolutely knock you out, All the Rage examines the shame and silence inflicted upon young women after an act of sexual violence, forcing us to ask ourselves: In a culture that refuses to protect its young girls, how can they survive?

Review:

★★★

I waited a long while to write this review. All the Rage is a very intense book to read, and I needed some time (a few weeks, actually) to decompress everything long enough to write a coherent opinion on it.

First, I'd like to say that this book's message is so damn important. I think it's crazy that every day when I get on Facebook, there's a new trending story of some teen rape/bullying/sexting case. It's horrifying. Books with themes as deep as the ones found in this book are often close to my heart, because I have experienced them first hand. These are books that need writing, because it is still happening across the country and the world. It's worth reading. End of.

The writing itself is beautiful. Though I can name other books Summers has written, and I've come across her name often on the internet, this is the first time I've ever read anything written by her. She has a great ability to describe human emotion in ways that I'm not sure that I could give a voice. It's beautiful and haunting at the same, almost hollow. It was an almost soothing sense of dread and darkness, which was an odd sensation but a lovely one as a reader (that might make no sense to some of you- sorry about that).

That said, the timing in this book left me puzzled. I wasn't always entirely sure where in the timeline I was, and that made it a bit hard to focus on what was happening. I had all of the puzzle pieces, but struggled at times to put them together into a bigger picture.

The characters left me divided. I felt for Romy, truly, and I wanted her to get all the things that she needed and wanted to calm her mind and restore her life. Because she was so turbulent of a character, my own feelings for her matched. Sometimes she left me confused, and sometimes I really couldn't connect to her. Other times I felt like she was sharing thoughts I've had personally, verbatim. The adults, don't get me started. They're accurate enough- the not listening, the lying, the small town politics. That is where I felt all the rage. I wanted to punch some of them (not unlike the adults in other books on similar topics I've read lately). The romance aspect didn't really add anything to me, but I'm sure there are others who will disagree with me.

In short, this book left me torn. And honestly, I think it was meant to. It's a book that's hard to swallow and slow to read, because some pretty bad themes and actions are within its pages. It is a book that demands more thought and reflection after it's been read. As I mentioned before, I think it's definitely a book that is worth reading, even though I didn't always follow or connect to it in the best way. Be warned, rape and bullying are main themes in this book, so tread with caution if you are sensitive to them. If you benefited from reading books such as Some Boys or The S-Word, you might want to give this one a go.

I received a copy in exchange for my honest review.

Review: The Cowboy's Valentine by Donna Alward & Happy Valentine's Day!

Title: The Cowboy's Valentine
Series: Crooked Valley Ranch #2
Author: Donna Alward
Format: egalley
Pub. Date: February 1st 2015
Source: Netgalley & Harlequin American Romance


Book Description via Goodreads:

HEART OF A COWBOY

Coming home is hard enough without ranch manager Quinn Solomon making Lacey Duggan feel like an unwanted guest. She's only here until she figures out what to do with her one-third ownership of Crooked Valley. But Quinn's irresistible daughter is giving Lacey ideas about being part of a family. And though they don't even like each other, Lacey's having crazier notions about the widowed single dad.

Does Lacey think she can waltz in and turn Quinn's life upside down…only to leave again? The pretty accountant knows nothing about running a ranch, yet she's making the Montana homestead feel like a home. Quinn isn't looking for love again. Until a woman who's all heart and a determined little girl help one lovestruck cowboy see the light.

Review:

★★★★

I have still not kicked this addiction to cowboys. I have tried, but I keep going back to the books on my kindle that have "cowboy" in the title. It seemed only fitting that I got to this one before Valentine's Day passed me by!

I really liked the plot of this book. As if I don't find broody cowboys endearing enough, making him a single dad is a sure fire way to get my emotional attention. Quinn was my favorite character- he's loyal, strong, determined, and always puts the need of his little girl first. Which leads me to his daughter, Amber, who is possibly the most adorable child that I've ever read about in my life. I really appreciated the way Alward wrote her, because it seemed genuine. It didn't seem like an adult trying to find a child's voice, which is something I notice more than one would think. And then there's Lacey. I liked her well enough, and I ached for her and her back story. An illness that prevents kids, a messy divorce, no job. It's rough. But towards the end I was really frustrated with her stubbornness to a point where I no longer found it endearing.

I enjoyed watching the relationship between Quinn and Lacey progress from two people who pretty much hate each other to something more than that. There was a nice flow to the story, so it was well-timed and easy to lose yourself in the story for a few chapters at a time. There was drama and humor and sweet romance, and really what more does a girl need from her cowboy Harlequin, hm?

And if I haven't persuaded you yet: this book features a cowboy holding a puppy.

This was a sweet romance that helped to scratch my cowboy itch, and I think fans of contemporary westerns, romance, cowboys, and Harlequin books will enjoy this one. Thanks to Harlequin for my copy in exchange for my honest review.

And I hope all of you have a lovely Valentine's Day. Whether you're going somewhere fancy or chilling out at home with cats and cheese pizza, enjoy yourself!

Jillyn

Review: All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

Title: All the Bright Places
Author: Jennifer Niven
Format: egalley
Pub. Date: January 6th 2015
Source: Netgalley & Knopf


Book Description via Goodreads:

The Fault in Our Stars meets Eleanor and Park in this exhilarating and heart-wrenching love story about a girl who learns to live from a boy who intends to die.

Soon to be a major motion picture starring Elle Fanning!

Theodore Finch is fascinated by death, and he constantly thinks of ways he might kill himself. But each time, something good, no matter how small, stops him.

Violet Markey lives for the future, counting the days until graduation, when she can escape her Indiana town and her aching grief in the wake of her sister’s recent death.

When Finch and Violet meet on the ledge of the bell tower at school, it’s unclear who saves whom. And when they pair up on a project to discover the “natural wonders” of their state, both Finch and Violet make more important discoveries: It’s only with Violet that Finch can be himself—a weird, funny, live-out-loud guy who’s not such a freak after all. And it’s only with Finch that Violet can forget to count away the days and start living them. But as Violet’s world grows, Finch’s begins to shrink.

This is an intense, gripping novel perfect for fans of Jay Asher, Rainbow Rowell, John Green, Gayle Forman, and Jenny Downham from a talented new voice in YA, Jennifer Niven.

Includes a PDF Help Line Resource Guide and a Note Read by the Author.

Review:

★★★★★

Sooooo nobody warned me about the feelings that I'd have when I read this book. I was flipping through the files on my Kindle, saw this one, and remembered really wanting to read it. A few hours later I was an inconsolable heap because I grow far too attached to fictional characters. This book is really well done, and I read it in one sitting.

I really liked the characters. This book is told from alternating perspectives of both Violet and Finch, two characters brought together under strange and oddly sweet circumstances. I found Finch to be more relatable, oddly enough, than Violet despite the fact that he's the type of person who is all over the place. Maybe it's because he reminded me of a previous boyfriend who is still a friend of mine? Regardless, I loved him. Violet was a strongly written character whom I also appreciated, just to a less intense degree.

They're placed together to do a project in geography class that encourages them to "wander" outside of their small town and explore the new, strange, and interesting sights that the state of Indiana has to offer. I really liked this idea and how it brought these two previous strangers together, ever the closer as they continued their travels. The setting is another big reason why this book just clicked for me. I'm from Illinois, this book is set in Indiana, and I have heard of and been to a few of the places. At first I wasn't sure if the sites were real, until the shoe trees and the world's biggest ball of paint were referenced- I know about those places, though I have never been. But what took me by surprise is that the Carmelite Shrines in Munster, IN were mentioned. I can literally walk there from my house. I have visited its shrines, but not the particular grotto mentioned in All the Bright Places, entitled "The Ultraviolet Apocalypse". I promise you and myself that once I'm home from school for the summer, I will be paying it a visit. Their wanderings worked, and made me want to explore more places and wonder what Illinois has to offer too.

I don't want to talk too much about the plot though others have, because I'd like to refrain from spoilers. I will say that this book broke my heart, and that I probably should have seen the major event coming, but I was so engrossed in the book that I did not. I had to reread passages because like Violet, I was in disbelief and denial. The narration, especially from Finch's perspective, takes some getting used to, but soon enough I stopped noticing any differences. Both Violet and Finch are distinctive voices, so it's easy to make the transition from their POVs as the book progresses.

I also love the cover. I was't a fan until I read the book, and I have to say that the cover is a great representation of all that Niven's story has to offer.

This book is beautifully written in great detail. It's a bit quirky but it gels together well. I think it's an accurate comparison to say that fans of The Fault in Our Stars will probably like it, but I think that it stands well enough on its own two feet. This book deals with heavy themes like suicide, death, and mental illness, so be warned and do not pick this up if you're in the mood for a light read. Fans of contemporary romance, road trip plots, and midwestern settings ought to give this book a try.

Thank you to Netgalley and Knopf for my copy in exchange for my honest review.

Review: Upside Down by Lia Riley

Title: Upside Down (Off the Map #1)
Author: Lia Riley
Format: egalley
Pub. Date: August 5th 2014
Source: Netgalley & Forever



★★★★★

Five stars.

---

I will be the first one to admit to you that this review may continue onward to be a fangirling mess, but I will try my best to remain professional. I have only just finished this book, I need to write this review before all my gushing praise goes away.

I'll start with the beginning thoughts. First thing is first, I loved this cover. The coloring is striking and bright, and got my attention. And then I heard "Australia" and "biceps" mentioned in a Twitter conversation about Upside Down. I then had to usher this book to the front of my queue because I needed it. I am so glad I did.

I love the characters in this book. All of them are flawed, but it makes them more relatable and less predictable, in my opinion. The main character, Talia, has some skeletons in her closet. She travels to Australia in order to get away and start over for a little while, to make a Talia 2.0. One that doesn't have OCD freak outs and who graduates on time. Slight interruption here, this is the first time that I've read about an OCD character, and it made Talia stick out to me (in a good way) as a character. She's trying to figure out herself and her life. And then she meets Bran, an intense looking, gorgeous Australian with beautiful eyes and a look that's hard to figure out. He turns her world completely upside down (see what I did there?). But he's no prince charming either, and his closet has more skeletons than a haunted house in October. He doesn't want to love again... But how can he resist a girl like Talia? I love them apart. I love them together. I just love them. The heat that builds between them is incredibly steamy and well written, and I was cheering them on throughout the entire novel.

That said, I don't just love the main characters. In an incredibly rare literary moment (the equivalent of finding a unicorn), I liked the way the side characters were written as well. That's not to say I liked THEM per se, but they fulfilled their purpose in the plot, and had depth. From Marti, Talia's French-speaking lesbian roomie to Jazza, the dumb, hunky surf jockey, each character brought a unique touch to the story.

Another thing that I loved that I wasn't expecting was the amount of humor in this book. More than once, I laughed out loud. I've never read Lia Riley's work before, but she has a quirky, hilarious, pop-culture filled way of writing that I am positively adoring. She's definitely made a fan out of me. There were so many serious parts too, but the happy and the sad seemed to blend and ease into one another, making it seem emotionally flawless to this reader. It felt real.

Similarly, I love the attention to details that made this book so... Well, Australian. The setting was beautifully described in such detail that I feel like I have actually visited there. And the slang/dialect of the characters was a very helpful reminder as to where the book was set, and how I should be reading their voices (which just makes Bran hotter, let's be honest).

The book covers both POVs, though Talia does have far more chapters to her view than Bran does. It never gets muddled or confusing, and I was always very aware of whose POV I was currently reading.

All in all, I loved this book. It is the one that has successfully pulled me out of my reading slump. I will 100% be continuing onward with this series, and pretty much anything else that Lia Riley publishes. Fans of New Adult and romance, Australia, or good humor will be as smitten as I am. Be warned that this book contains sex, alcohol, and death themes.

Thank you to Netgalley and Forever for my copy in exchange for my honest review.

Review: The 9 Lives of Alexander Baddenfield

Title: The 9 Lives of Alexander Baddenfield
Author: John Bemelmans Marciano, Sophie Blackall
Format: ARC
Pub. Date: October 3rd 2013
Source: Goodreads First reads.



★★★★

Three and a half stars.

---

The Baddenfield family has always been filled with scoundrels, living up to the bad in Baddenfield. And for centuries, they've been cursed to die young, despite the Winterbottoms, a family who has always served (and tried) to protect their horrible bosses. Alexander is twelve years old, and as bad as the rest of them. He hatches a brilliant plan- to take the surplus lives away from his pet cat, and transplant them into his body. He starts to live like never before, having been overprotected by Winterbottom, but eventually his lives start to dwindle, and he has to try and change his reckless ways before he lives up to the Baddenfield curse.

I have to say, that as an adult, I really liked this book. It's dark and a bit macabre in the same vein as writers like Roald Dahl, Lemony Snicket, and Tim Burton. The illustrations that accompany the text go with that theme as well, giving it a spooky, bad-guy type feel.

I also really liked the smartness with which this book was written. It integrates a few Spanish words, some references to mythology, and his cat's name is even Shaddenfrood. There was also a fair bit of humor and snark, that made be chuckle aloud. It was easy to read and understand, and was well detailed. Among other things that I enjoyed about this read was the actual printing itself. The pictures that separate paragraphs actually count down his deaths, something I didn't notice until he only had two remaining. Plus, stuff like print fading to illustrate his blacking out happens within the book, which I think was a nice touch.

Perhaps the best part of this children's book is the overall message that can be taken away from it. Alexander learns too late that while it is dangerous to be reckless and to act without thinking, it is also dangerous to stay inside, afraid of living life cooped up inside. It takes a fine balance of both to be happy and healthy.

That all being said, I have to look at this from the perspective of a parent or a child (of which I am neither) since this book is intended for a younger audience. This book deals with things like death. A lot. And not all of Alexander's deaths are pleasant. Some are quite gory or violent. I recommend that this is for a more mature child's reading age, for those who can understand death fully and still find humor in it. If you're a parent or adult who walks a bit on the darker side (guilty as charged) this may be right up your alley. Just be warned that this book doesn't spare many details. And the ending, while it made me chuckle, was definitely continuing the trend of dark implications.

All in all, I think this book has good illustrations and good writing, as well as a good message. I do however warn that this book deals heavily with death and injury, though it is spun in a humorous if dark way.

Thanks to Goodreads First Reads program for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Review: The Truth About Alice

Title: The Truth About Alice
Author: Jennifer Mathieu
Format: egalley
Pub. Date: June 3rd 2014
Source: Netgalley & Roaring Brook Press

★★

Two stars.

---

Alice Franklin is a slut, and everyone knows it. The whole town has heard about how she slept with two guys at the same party. The rumors only get worse when quarterback and king of the school Brandon dies in a car accident, and Alice's dirty text messages are to blame. Everyone knows a snippet of truth, but each character has a reason to keep Alice as the school's laughing stock.

This is one of those times where I feel like I didn't read the same book as everyone else did. This book does address some very serious issues, but I personally don't feel this book did them justice in how they were dealt with.

First, I'm not really sure who this book's target audience is. It's set in high school, but the cattiness and maturity of some of the characters seems more like junior high school, even though "adult" topics like abortion are discussed and the language leans towards mature.

I also didn't feel the different POVs worked here. I understand why the author broke it up that way, but for me, three out of the five POVs blended together. The popular boy, the popular girl, and the newly popular girl all sound the same. Kurt (the nerd) was the only one who seemed to be written differently. He was also my favorite character. And Alice only has one chapter, so there's not much to go on one way or the other there. I found the language a bit odd too. No one in my high school said "freaky deaky" or so many "like so totally"s. Not to mention the text speak.

Kelsie was my least favorite, and is horrible & knows it. My biggest issues with her were not even her cutthroat approaches to becoming popular. Her reasoning for why she's mad at Alice is SO trivial, and Kelsie's revenge is soooo not equal. I'm glad that Alice calls her on it, but it still irritated me. I also found her big, dramatic secret rather anticlimactic, and thought it was cleaned up a bit too easily.

I also found issues with the rumors themselves. Rumors are often, of course, ridiculous. But let's say Alice really was texting Brandon and is a big slut- why would she still be blamed for his accident? He was the one drinking. He was driving. He texted while drunkenly driving. How does that equate to Alice's fault? Even if she was the biggest whore in Texas (and who cares?) it still wouldn't cause his crash unless she was actively trying to mount him. Elaine, the popular, addresses this silently, but it's never addressed out loud. I also didn't like that the janitor gave up cleaning the graffiti. What the hell? I'm also a bit surprised that in a small town like this one, no rumor came and knocked this one from attention within a school year.

I'm not really sure what the point of this book was, other than rumors are usually untrue (which is in the word's definition) and that people are assholes. I went to high school. I am aware of that fact without having read this book. Oh, and be careful who you trust.

This book got two stars from me because while I didn't care for most of the characters, or their various dramas, I did enjoy the Alice/Kurt plot line, and it helped me to get through the rest. I also DID want to finish the book because of these ranting feelings, which I suppose means it's not all bad. It wasn't badly written, I just didn't seem to "get" it. It's also a fairly quick read, so there's no harm in reading it to form an opinion for yourself; I'm not mad that I bothered to take the time to read it. Thanks to Netgalley and Roaring Brook Press for my copy in exchange for my honest review.

Mini Review: Designated Mourner

Title: Designated Mourner
Author: Catherine Owen
Format: egalley
Pub. Date: April 15th 2014
Source: Netgalley & ECW Press

★★★★

Four stars.

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This is going to be an incredibly hard book for me to try to review. Typically, I don't read poetry. Well, that's not entirely true. I don't read contemporary, new poetry. However, I was drawn into this collection first by the macabre cover, and then by the dark themes that it holds within it. It is definitely an emotionally charged book of poetry that will linger even when you are done reading it.

Designated Mourner is a collection of poems written to a spouse who was killed far too early by an addiction to drugs. The poems are dark and contemplative, reflective and sometimes even celebratory of their life. I don't want to say that I enjoyed reading them, because I feel that in a book of mourning, that is a bit too light of a word choice. I will say that I connected to them, having lost friends to addiction myself. My poetry of grief was never as powerful or gripping as these ones are.

If you are one who enjoys poetry or one who has recently lost a loved one, I think that Designated Mourner is a collection of poems that you should take your time mentally ingesting the words that Catherine Owen has so carefully penned. Allow yourself to take breaks when you need them and prepare to be stirred by them. Thank you to ECW Press and Netgalley for the chance to read this poetry collection.