Category Archives: Young Adult

Review: Keren David – This is NOT a Love Story

Posted on by
Reply

This is NOT a Love Story
Kerin David

The world never seemed to revolve around Kitty. But when she finds herself in an entirely new environment with two hot boys to chase (not that she would ever admit to liking them), she creates a new persona for herself.

22838328This novel started out with so much promise, but failed to deliver. What you think is a horrifying lovers spat gone wrong is nothing more than a joke – on both the reader and the characters. Kitty! You stupid, selfish character. You’re so busy being ‘cool’ that you missed everything. And being cruel to the other characters is just ugh. Did not endear me to you despite you being the main character.

And this Instagram thing, which I assumed was included to ‘keep up with the times’? It just dated the novel for me, and didn’t actually do anything to further the story. Maybe if images were included, then it would have been more useful. As it was, I could have done without it, and more character development.

Considering that more than one point of view is shown in the story, you would expect to get a good grasp of the characters. But I didn’t feel like I knew any of them. Ethan was ‘moody’, Theo was ‘clever’, but apart from Ethan being constantly rude and Theo focussing on London Jewish politics, that was it. It had promise, it really did. Ah, but it was all lost.

Oh! And did I mention some of the characters were gay? Just goes to show that you need some solid story as well as some queer references to get my vote. 2 stars from me, with a sympathetic 3 if I must.

2star

Review: Jenny Downham – Unbecoming

Posted on by
Reply

unbecoming
Jenny Downham

Katie’s grandmother has unexpectedly come to stay. Katie’s life has been fragmenting since her parents split up, and this new addition to an already dysfunctional family could be the end of it. In coming to care for her eccentric grandmother, Katie comes to realise that family is complicated – but that doesn’t mean it is inherently bad.

9780545907170_xlgThis novel touches on a number of important topics – sexuality, family history and degenerating health conditions. The family history here is convoluted and lovely, and exposed sneakily by Katie’s perspective, and also from Mary’s memory. Mary’s memory loss is extreme, and is getting worse, but she is still trying to work out what has gotten lost, and why it is important.

Dementia can be a tricky subject to portray in a manner that is convincing, but it is done so brilliantly here. The mentions of Jack being present for Mary could have been jarring, but instead they were comfortingly woven into the text, where they could be either past memories or imaginings from Mary.

What I liked about Katie and Jamie/Simona’s relationship was that it was less ‘typical’ or predictable than relationships in other novels, where being in love doesn’t solve all problems. Something I always struggle with, both in novels and in real life, is that any gay characters are automatically expected to like each other! I mean, the saying is that ‘there are plenty more fish in the ocean’ for straight people, and I think that needs to be different for gay or alternative relationships – it’s more like an overcrowded pond with plenty of random fish that are forced to be friendly because they share the same space. Is that too much of an analogy?

The ending was a little neat for my now-refined taste, but there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that. This is the second novel I have read recently that doesn’t offer easy answers, or a linear, unimaginative plot. Not being able to predict characters based on past novels you have read (and I have read a lot) is beginning to be a sign of brilliance of authors I read.

This is a valuable contribution to YA literature. Highly recommended reading.

4star

Thanks to Scholastic for providing me with a complimentary copy.

 

Review: Alice Pung – Laurinda

Posted on by
Reply

Laurinda
Alice Pung

Linh Lucy Lam has never seen herself as a bright scholar, but she persists in trying to please her parents. After ‘beating’ the local Asian genius to get a place at a private high school, Lucy finds herself being torn apart by who she think she is, and who she might become.

22603951I listened to this as a talking book, and I have to say the reader was pretty amazing! Even my partner enjoyed listening to it. That being said though, that was what kept me listening, not the story itself. What was the point of this novel? Why would I care about Lucy? I cared about her little brother Lamb-ey more than anything else.

What I didn’t understand for the majority of the novel was who ‘Linh’ that Lucy was writing to was. I think, and I may be wrong, is that Linh is Lucy, but her true Asian (somewhat bogan) self. I couldn’t understand why Linh would leave if she was a real person. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.

Lucy is super self-aware, and she’s aware of how stupid adults are. We see through her eyes what rich people are like – the question is whether this really how they are? I don’t know enough private schools to tell you. Bullying at high schools is normal, there’s even bullying of teachers, although perhaps not as dramatic as a tampon to the forehead… I certainly remember our public high school class evicting one poor teacher who we viewed as incompetent.

I don’t think I was satisfied by the ending. Yes Lucy managed to overcome things and become more of herself, but I wasn’t enthralled with her ‘amazing’ speech at the end. It all seemed too neat. Neat. Yes. That’s what this novel was in a nut shell. For all that it was exposing and trying to highlight the interesting nuances of multicultural Australia, it sometimes seemed to dig itself too deep a hole – then just fill it in with one well-placed sentence.

I’ll be giving this 3 stars. There are better novels out there, but if you want something easy to listen to that doesn’t require any thinking (or a light teenage novel), this one could fit the bill.

3star

Review: Gayle Forman – I was Here

Posted on by
Reply

I was Here
Gayle Forman

When Meg committed suicide, her best friend Cody cursed herself for not seeing it coming and not being there for Meg. As Cody digs deeper, wanting to expose why Meg did it, she finds herself chasing down the rabbit hole at someone else’s expense.

18879761I picked this up as a talking book, expecting it to be a wonderful novel about exposing why someone would want to commit suicide. Instead I found a messed up, self-centred teenage girl who was more filled with regrets than anything else.

This novel just felt too… convenient. Girl meets boy, girl blames boy, girl gets together with boy, boy screws things up with girl, girl and boy both grump, girl and boy get together happily ever after. I was disgusted with her. Ugh! Didn’t Cody learn anything?

No no, Cody hadn’t learnt anything. Anywhere. She chases things single-mindedly, at the cost to other people, and then bails! And for her, lies and promises might as well be the same thing. I was disgusted at her. She was so bloody clueless. Depression might have a stigma about it, but seriously, get a grip!

I listened to what felt like hours of this without making any progress. The ‘action’ only really happened in the 2nd last hour, and by that stage I was only still listening because I was hoping for a redemptive ending. Failure! No redemptive ending.

The author says that this was based on some interviews she did with some suicide survivor families. There was so much more she could have done with this novel that she didn’t. Creating a happy ending didn’t make me satisfied about the amount of time I had invested in Cody doing the right things.

2 stars. I finished it begrudgingly. Don’t read it. Read Hold Still, Suicide Notes or my personal favourite, The Last Time We Say Goodbye. That last one left me wanting more, and I wanted to listen to it all the time.

2star

Review: Rosanne Hawke – The Truth About Peacock Blue

Posted on by
Reply

The Truth about Peacock Blue
Rosanne Hawke

Aster’s brother dies from asthma, and suddenly she is to become the scholar in the family. As a Christian family in a Muslim-majority Pakistan, going to school holds more perils than she expects. Cast into prison for a crime she didn’t commit, this is a novel told through her perspective and the blog of her Australian cousin.

26510513This novel is an expose of what can go wrong in a country mad about laws, and belittling women. It doesn’t matter what religion you are, you just need to be a woman. Women might be the majority, but they certainly have the quietest voices.

Something I liked about this novel was the way that it didn’t cringe from the realities in prison life. Just because people are thrown into jail together doesn’t mean that they are all equal or able to care for themselves. I don’t know about the legitimacy of this part of the novel, but I can hope it was well-researched.

I was not satisfied by the end of the story. I know this is based on a true story, but for something to make an impact as a novel for me, then I want a bit more of an ending. I found myself wondering after I’d finished reading it, whether I had actually finished it.

I found the letter/blog parts and the comments to be relatively boring, and the least attractive part of the novel. Blogging is certainly a good way of getting messages across, but as its noted in the novel, it doesn’t mean that you are going to be listened to, or safe from idiots.

I think this book covers a good range of topics that would be important in middle-eastern society, regardless of whether the players are Muslim, Christian or Hindi. It shows the mindlessness of the masses, and the ingrained way of doing things for years and years. For that reason, I think this novel could overtake The Rugmaker of Mazar-e-Sharif as a potent VCE teaching tool.

3star

Thanks to the folks at Allen and Unwin for providing me with this review copy.

Review: Kathryn Barker – In the Skin of a Monster

Posted on by
Reply

In The Skin of a Monster
Kathryn Barker

Alice’s twin sister killed people in their local school. Since she was identical to Alice, people can’t see Alice for who she is, they can only see her deadly sister. When Alice is swept up into a dream world, things get even more complicated, and it’s no longer clear what is going on.

25380845DON’T READ THE BLURB. It will trick you into thinking that this novel is straightforward. Instead, you need to go into it with a mind blasted wide open, with the ability to let it stretch further. This is one very strange novel.

I would have liked a more concrete approach to dealing with things. Swapping between the different perspectives was more confusing that I would have liked. I just couldn’t grasp anything that was going on. Nevertheless, the dream-scape set up is amazing and well described. The author appeared to think of everything that could possibly exist in it – bubbles of people, monsters, everything else!

It was quite compulsive reading, despite its faults. Did I actually like Alice? No, most of the time I thought she was an idiot. Did I really understand what happened? Goodness no. Did I keep reading anyway? Yes. I ended the novel feeling completely disorientated and annoyed. Even after running over the plot with my partner, I couldn’t work out what the point of the whole novel was.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that this novel is going to expose great secrets of a person who looks like a murderer. Yes, killing people causes a great lasting impact, but people do recover. I don’t think this shows enough recovery. Mainly it shows people being stupid.

I can only think negatives about how Alice punishes herself for being like her sister. She’s committed to a mental institution for 3 years. I can understand the guilt she feels, but at the same time it should have been obvious to her that it’s not her fault and that she isn’t the same person. This got even more confusing for me as time went on, because it wasn’t clear whether Alice had demented thinking caused by the incident, or it was from the beginning. Just because you are identical to someone doesn’t mean you have to live like them.

I don’t know whether to suspend my disbelief for the story or not. In fact, unlike other novels I have read in this genre, this novel is not fiction that would fit into the everyday run of things. The attempts at making this fit into the Australian landscape fail miserably.

I mainly just came away from this very confused. There are other novels that are more awesome than this one. If you want to give this one a go, go right ahead. But if you’re looking for something with a convincing dreamscape, I’d be going for something like Dreamfire – I gave it 5 stars, go and try it out.

2star

Review: Rachel Caine – Ink and Bone

Posted on by
3

Ink and Bone
Rachel Caine

Jess has been brought up as a book smuggler. In a world where the Great Library of Alexandria still exists, books are powerful things. With the library dictating all knowledge, librarians have absolute power – unless they are trainees, in which case death is a threat against changing the status quo. Jess isn’t very good at being passive, which tends to get him into a little bit of strife.

25090918Love, love, love this novel! What reader couldn’t like a novel about a library? Sorry, but libraries make me excited normally, and learning about librarian training? Yep, call me a convert. I’ve always dreamed of being a librarian.

My one sadness is that the next novel in this series won’t come out for ages. And I NEED the sequel. If I do not get my hands on the sequel, I will be very very sad. This is a novel I would gladly pay my own hard-earned money to buy. And naturally, I think you should too. The last novel I read that compares to this one would be The Iron Trial – not quite as awesome, but also good.

The characterisation in this novel was flawless. Jess was consistent and grew as the novel progressed. The secondary characters also won my love, even the ‘antagonist’, and I actually cared when they died. This is what Crystal Kingdom just didn’t capture for me. I kept thinking about those characters and their plights after I’d finished reading.

The world building was also powerful, and I could literally see each of the events as they happened. I buried myself in the novel and refused to come out, even for promises of dinner.One thing though, I left the novel having a really clear idea of the world, but having no idea what the characters looked like. I guess that’s because in my head, Jess has mousy brown hair, Morgan has flowing tresses of dark brown, and Wolfe sports a salt-and-pepper short cut.

A final touch that put the sugar flowers on the imaginary cake? There’s gay characters in the book, and they aren’t treated any differently from anyone else. I know it sounds like I’m biased towards novels that have gay characters (and I admit, I am a little biased), but really I just want a more realistic selection of characters to like.

An unequivocal 5 stars from me. I can see myself adopting this novel as an old familiar read when I want something I know is good to pull me out of a reading slump. Get out there, buy this novel, you won’t regret it.

5star

Review: Cassandra Clare & Holly Black – The Copper Gauntlet

Posted on by
Reply

The Copper Gauntlet
Cassandra Clare & Holly Black

Call never seems to find any rest – unless he’s at school. When he has to return home for the holidays, he finds his father more set against school than ever, and a set of chains in the basement. Trust is something that seems to be fluid and bought and sold to the highest bidder. Call thinks he knows what he’s doing – everyone else thinks he is mad!

25613630Call and the other characters still didn’t seem to progress much. Aaron does grow a little, in that he wants to protect others not just have them protect him. But he doesn’t seem as smart as he does in the first novel. Not to mention poor Tamara gets sidelined.

There’s some underhand backbiting, and some potential treachery, but for me, these didn’t ring true. Surely they are old enough not to fight like 5-year-olds over a broken toy?

The ending was a little bit of a surprise, I really didn’t expect what happened! The Magisterium seemed a bit like a dumb hulking beast though, with more secrets than anyone could ever have. Hoping for a happy ending seems impossible.

This sort of feels like a ‘questing’ novel. All Call ever seems to do is head to the Magisterium, then immediately go back out again! There wasn’t any of the learning/teaching that went on in the first book to make me super interested and happy.

I’m not saying give this novel a miss by any means. In fact, I think you should get out there and read it for yourself. Once again though, I found myself waiting desperately for the next novel – I don’t want to wait a whole year!

Did this novel take me as strongly as the first one, The Iron Trial? No, sadly it didn’t. It simply didn’t have the same personality when I read it myself, rather than being read to by a talented voice-over. But I kept reading it. I don’t know why, but I did. That’s what makes it 4 stars not 3.

UPDATE: August 2020. I listened to The Iron Trial again, and then The Copper Gauntlet. I had pretty much completely forgotten everything about this second book, but the reader/voice actor kept me far more entertained with his narration. I’m now onto reading The Bronze Key, and I’m feeling pretty excited about it.

4star

Review: K.A. Tucker – Chasing River

Posted on by
Reply

Chasing River
K.A. Tucker

River is the bad boy in town, and Amber the single-wanderer idiot. After an explosive first meeting, Amber finds herself wanting more of River, even as he tried to chase her away. Amber goes against her usual self and decides to grasp him anyway, finding herself getting more deeply involved every day.

23522253First things first – I didn’t read this as part of the series. I picked it up, hid it from my girlfriend, and promptly sat down to read it. Once she caught me, she tried to ruin it for me by telling me it’s the third book in a series! But it was too late, I was already hooked in. I did spend some time away from it thinking about going back to reading it, but no real in-depth wondering about what was happening to the characters while I was away.

I found myself frustrated by Amber and her naivety, but this was something I believe the author crafted. As the novel progressed, Amber became a bit less stupid – a bit more world-wise as her teacher would have wanted her to be. Still though, how could she be so stupid in the first place? Sure she was travelling Europe. But still, that she hadn’t been taken up and raped yet? When she’s happily wandering around where no-one else is?

The novelty of this book to me was that I never got many history lessons about Ireland, and this had a briefing on the Irish potato famine, which I had only ever heard of as a ‘joke’ by less politically-correct-minded friends. There were some really good discussions about the IRA (google it – or just be taught about it by the novel in a relatively unbiased manner) and references to Ireland’s oral culture. I could have done with more of this!

There seemed to be a lot of focus on how different Ireland was to Oregon. I’ve never been to Oregon, and I wouldn’t be able to tell you the difference between that town, and any other one. Amber constantly thinking about what it is like in her old home town isn’t useful, and doesn’t actually add to the storyline. More solid comparisons would have done the trick for me.

I’m putting this under the category of Young Adult, but only because of the sex scenes in it. Granted, they are brief, but they are slightly graphic. Otherwise I’d be putting it down as teenage fiction because its storyline isn’t that gripping, and I simply didn’t feel any depth – typical romance blah blah. At least Amber was smart enough to take some of her father’s advice….

I’ll be giving this a solid 3 stars, just because it wasn’t as ‘grabby’ and believable as I could have hoped. I remain willing to read more of this author, and see if this is a typical example of her work.

Find it on:
goodreads_icon copyAmazon-Icon-e1335803835577-300x294 copybookdepository_icon copy3star

Review: Jerry Kaczmarowski – Sapient

Posted on by
Reply

 Sapient
Jerry Kaczmarowski

Jane Dixon is on the hunt for a cure for autism – a subject close to her heart because of her son, Robbie. Robbie is a high functioning autistic pre-teen, who nevertheless needs complete order and routine to survive. After Jane successfully transforms a rat, Einstein, into a brilliant typing rat she finds Robbie on the run and herself imprisoned.

25334953Although the blurb makes a big deal out of Jane being single thanks to an abusive husband, this wasn’t something that really concerned me. I was more interested in her current relationships, which I felt weren’t particularly influenced by her past.

I loved seeing things from the different perspectives. Each character had a very distinctive mind-voice, and I knew what was going on at all times, even if I felt pleasantly frustrated that the other characters were so clueless. All the characters were real people to me by chapter 2.

You can absolutely feel the tension radiating through Jane and the entire novel. Robbie and the animals add some humour at least, but I found myself wanting more and sitting on the edge of my seat. The plot is gripping and well thought out.

Even the end is innovative. I wanted to know what happened next! And I wouldn’t have objected if there was a sequel in the making. At the same time, I was satisfied by the ending, and didn’t feel cheated.

All I can think to myself after reading this novel is “Wow, let me get my hands on Jerry’s other novels!” I read this novel in pretty much one sitting while on vacation. I was completely absorbed and didn’t feel like doing anything else. I had forgotten what compulsive reading felt like – this is it. Get your hands on it ASAP.

Find it on:
goodreads_icon copyAmazon-Icon-e1335803835577-300x294 copybookdepository_icon copy5star