I received an ARC of INGENUE from AROUND THE WORLD ARC TOURS

WHAT WORKED
INGENUE continues the story set out in VIXEN of three young women living, loving and partying during The Roaring Twenties. The setting has changed from Chicago to New York City and Vera, Jerome’s sister, who was briefly introduced in VIXEN, becomes a more developed character.

What I liked the best about INGENUE (and VIXEN as well) was the different characters and perspectives the author presents. Readers are able to experience historical New York City from the eyes of four very different girls. We get to see how Gloria and Jerome’s relationship has progressed now that they are dependent on each other for everything. We see the difficulties Clara has with fully renouncing her past ways and how this affects her relationship with Marcus. We see Vera finding friendship and possible love while looking desperately for her brother, Jerome. And finally Loraine, working for the very man Jerome and Gloria are running from, hoping to get revenge against Gloria. All these wonderfully developed characters and interwoven relationships made for a great story amid the backdrop of the Roaring Twenties.

WHAT DIDN’T WORKED
I would have liked to see the girls reunited earlier into the story. Each chapter, I kept thinking, this must be when Vera finds Jerome, or when Gloria sees Loraine, or even that one of the girls sees Clara’s picture in the paper, but no such luck. The girls’ reunion is kept until the very end of the book and while I understood the impact Larkin was going for with the scene, it just seemed a little too unrealistic that one of the girls wouldn’t run into another. I’ve traveled halfway across the country and run into someone who lives minutes away from me.

OVERALL
Author Jillian Larkin has written a good followup to VIXEN. She expands on her characters’ relationships, their ambitions, their feelings. Although fictional, Larkin has created an engaging and intriguing story about the era of Prohibition, the Roaring Twenties, and historical New York City.

MEMORABLE PASSAGES / QUOTES / SCENES:
When life gives you lemons, sometimes you need to stash them in the icebox and make a martini with olives instead. p. 286

“Well, between you and me, I’m not sure the cheese is still firmly on Spark’s cracker.” p. 308

“Come on Lorraine. I already told you – this is work for me. Besides, look at yourself. You’ve got no moral center, babe. You’re just a dizzy opportunist.” p. 322

MY RATING IS:

Find INGENUE at your local indie bookstore.

Copyright by Jenna Hill (JL: An Avid Reader’s Musings). All original content is the sole property of the blog administrator.

I received an ARC of WANT TO GO PRIVATE? from AROUND THE WORLD ARC TOURS

WHAT WORKED/DIDN’T WORK
I had a really hard time writing this review because I had mixed feelings about WANT TO GO PRIVATE? On the one hand, this book is an excellently crafted cautionary tale about internet predators. On the other hand, I could not connect to or sympathize much with the main character Abby.

The one thing I liked the most was how the first part of the story, where Abby meets Luke online and establishes a disturbing relationship with him, is told from Abby’s point of view. Which is natural and really allowed me as a reader to get inside Abby’s head. But the second part of the story, after Abby gets into Luke’s car and disappears, is told from the of view of Abby’s sister, Lily, her friend, Faith and Billy, the boy who likes her. I loved how this allowed readers to see Abby’s actions (and how they affected so many people) from a different vantage point.

As a 14 year old high school freshman, Abby starts off the school year with her best friend, Faith, by her side. However, before long Faith has made a new friend and Abby is left feeling left out. Not to mention the pressure her mother and (younger) sister put on her to wear makeup and more feminine clothing. With this is mind, I could well understand why Abby turns to internet chatting and ultimately finds Luke.

What I couldn’t understand was the amount of personal and completely inappropriate information Abby shares with Luke, under the guise that he is an online friend only and she will never actually meet him. Even with this in mind, I just couldn’t imagine being in her place. And to me, that’s what makes a good book, being able to imagine yourself in the story, experiencing what the characters do and feel.

Granted, when I was 14, the internet was not such a pervasive part of my everyday life as it seems it is for teens today (I’m not that old, but still…), but I can’t see my teen self being taken in by a “Luke” as easily as Abby was. And I’m not ashamed to admit that even though I had good friends in high school, I had low self esteem and suffered from depression. And I definitely could not understand Abby’s motivation behind running away with Luke. It’s just unfathomable to me that she would meet and get into a car with someone who she met online and knew was significantly older than her. On the face of it, it seems extremely sketchy that a 20 something year old would be interested in a 14 year old. No matter how much older she may seem, look or act, that would ring GIANT alarm bells for me, especially if I was a smart girl like Abby (seemed) to be.

OVERALL
In the end though, when I really think about it objectively, there is a big difference between the academic and emotional intelligence that Abby possessed. And this is what made it easy for Luke to dupe her into thinking they had a real relationship and not that he was preying on her. Abby’s insecurities, feelings of being left out and that people didn’t like her for who she really was, made her the perfect target for Luke.

All personal feelings aside, WANT TO GO PRIVATE? is a well written story of the dangers of internet predators and how even those girls who are smart and have been warned can be susceptible. My rating for WANT TO GO PRIVATE? takes this into account and is based more on the story and content of the book itself, than my personal feelings about the character of Abby.

MEMORABLE QUOTE(S)
“I want to know how you could go off with some creep from the internet that you never met before in your life. How someone as smart as you could do something that stupid.” (p. 265*)

“The thing is, you really don’t know them at all. And the reason they’re listening to you, and being so understanding isn’t because they’re real friends. It’s because they’re getting you to rely on them and trust them so they can take advantage of that trust and…hurt you.” (p.326*)

*Quotes are taken from the ARC of WANT TO GO PRIVATE? and are subject to change at publication.

MY RATING IS

Copyright by Jenna Hill (JL: An Avid Reader’s Musings). All original content is the sole property of the blog administrator.

I received an ARC of RIPPLE from AROUND THE WORLD ARC TOURS

WHAT WORKED
Author Hubbard did a great job of making Lexi a character that readers could connect to and empathize with, even as we learn she has committed a big, albeit accidental, crime. I could imagine the self imposed isolation and loneliness that Lexi put herself through in order to protect others from getting hurt by her.

RIPPLE begins after the death of Steven, therefore Hubbard tells the story of Lexi and Steven through flashbacks. I liked how this drew out the mystery of how his death occurred. I kept reading because I wanted to find out what had happened during the night of his death. Of course, RIPPLE is told through the eyes of Lexi, even the flashbacks, but I think that readers are able to see more through the flashbacks than through the present feelings of Lexi expressed throughout the rest of the novel.

Normally, I don’t like the use of romantic triangles in novels, but I did like the introduction of Erik in RIPPLE. I never saw him as competition for Cole (Lexi’s love interest), but as a possible means to end Lexi’s curse. It was interesting to see how Lexi was so focused on protecting others and had so much guilt over accidentally causing the death of another, that she was willing to sacrifice her happiness and future to make sure it didn’t happen again. In retrospect, I felt Lexi put too much trust in Erik and what he told her, but I can see how she willingly believed him because she had no one else to turn to.

OVERALL
RIPPLE is a welcome addition to the teen paranormal genre. It is a well written story that incorporates mystery, romance and legend.

MEMORABLE QUOTE(S)
I sit in my car in the driveway, gripping the wheel so hard my knuckles turn white. It only takes a second for the car to cool. Two years since I’ve been in that house. The last time was the night I killed Steven.
p. 96-97*

He turns to look at me, and with how close we’re sitting, our noses are just inches apart. His voice lowers. “But I guess you’re worth the risk.” He leans in slowly, and I close my eyes.
p.126*

Relief floods through me as I rest my cheek against his shoulder, breathing in the fresh scent of his bar soap, the same scent that still lingers on my skin. His body is warm, soft, secure, and I could stand like this all day, ignoring the pain on my skin and in my heart.
p. 253*

*All quotes taken from ARC and are subject to change at publication.

MY RATING IS

Find RIPPLE at your local indie bookstore

Copyright by Jenna Hill (JL: An Avid Reader’s Musings). All original content is the sole property of the blog administrator.

i mean look at the cover, doesn’t that say enough for you? Don’t you want to read it based only on that? It’s awesome. And even though the amount i wear makeup is severely limited i really want my very own lipstick bandolier.

Okay, here’s the thing. For those of you who know me in real life you’ve probably heard this before if you only know me through the interwebz here is a little fact about me: i have NEVER in my entire life wanted to have children. i love kids but i haven’t ever wanted my own.

Until now.

i want to have Libba Bray’s babies after reading this book. i want to go up to her when i’m at the Decatur Book Festival in September (!!!) and throw my arms around her and tell her how much i love her and how amazing she is and how if she would like to inject me with the spawn of a komodo dragon i would probably just nod my head and point to my tummy possibly muttering something about dinosaurs and dragons and how much i still love her.

Yeah, that’s right this book has turned me into a slobbering inarticulate fangirl. i wish i could just open this page and write:

READ THIS BOOK. DO IT.

and be done with it all because that’s basically what i have to say. But i will try to craft a little something better for you, my dear moose-lets, because i love you too. Just not as much as Libba Bray right now.

First of all, i’m going to compare this book to two of my most favorite authors: Wally Lamb and Sherman Alexie. One of the reasons i love the two of them is because they use pop culture references out the wazoo but they don’t do it in a way that makes it feel like you’re reading an advertisement. i love pop culture more than i have words for so those little references score big points with me. Commercial jingles, passing billboards, names, whatever i ADORE finding them. Now Beauty Queens feels more like an advertisement but it’s intentional so it works and even though the things being advertised aren’t real there are very real pop culture references throughout the book and i’m sure i missed some of them but the ones i picked up on made me so happy. And the fake ones are so hilarious that i want them to be real- not really, but yes.

The premise of the book is so absurd- sort of like Going Bovine that you almost wonder if it will work. If it will veer into some sort of fantasy world that you feel a disconnect from. And while it does, in a way, veer into that un-reality there wasn’t any disconnect for me. The absurdness was so on point with the message of the book that it worked to its own advantage. It helped carry the message of the book throughout the story without making it feel like she was trying to club you over the head and say, “Yo, i’m trying to say something important here!”

The idea of pageants in general causes such an array of gut reactions for everyone and beauty pageants even more so. i am a feminist who went to a women’s college with a group of amazing friends and classes with porofessors who are very much aware of the white hetero-patriarchy and the long road women have traveled to get where we are and the distance we still have to go. i’ve been lucky in being surrounded by queer and queer friendly people who love engaging in discussions about the state of things for the LGBTQI community. i’ve been amazingly blessed in being surrounded by people from so many different everythings. BUT i know a lot, maybe even most people aren’t as lucky as i have been. That’s why books like Beauty Queens are so important. When i think of beauty pageants i get sort of a queasy feeling and a bit of a sneer on my face. i try to remind myself that some of the girls in those pageants need that scholarship money. Try to remember the volunteer work they do. But there is still something that just feels icky and in many cases racist and classist and a whole lot of other -isms. Libba Bray covers it all. And does so in a way that doesn’t leave you feeling like you’ve been subjected to either a mellow-dramatic After School Special or what many people think of as some sort of stereotypical man-hating feminist manifesto.

Oh, and the whole book is hilarious. i do fear that some of the people who read it won’t get all the humor but i have high hopes. It was laugh out loud in a i probably shouldn’t read this book around other people who i don’t know very well type way. i’m super-picky when it comes to comedy. Laughing out loud is a BIG deal for me. And when i really really laugh it’s almost completely silent (this is true, there is an embarrassing video of this somewhere) so the fact that this book had me both laughing out loud and convulsing silently should tell you something. (In fact if i were to read this book while listening to the cast recording of The Book of Mormon, i think we could prove beyond Roger Rabbit that one could actually die laughing.)

i love how Bray takes something like beauty pageants that get such a gut reaction and judgement from people and turns it all around and then does the same thing with her characters. We’ve all been to high school or out in the real world or in our workplace and judged someone based on something little. We don’t mean to but we all do it. It could be the way they dress or something they constantly do or don’t do. And many times those judgements get in the way of us getting to know that person any further. We stand in our own way because we’ve seen some tiny thing we don’t like and refuse to step around it. Bray creates characters that might make you grind your teeth or feel like you’re hearing nails on a chalkboard but also sort of forces you to keep reading and thus step around those things you judged them on and see what else those characters can bring to the table. And it was surprising, to me anyway, how much i grew to like certain characters (Tiara and Sosie.) And i loved watching Adina change throughout the book. i feel like Adina is so much me and people i know and sometimes i/we forget how much more we have to learn. i loved Petra throughout the whole book even though i knew what her story was right away. i have a love hate relationship with Taylor and i can’t decide what i think of what happens in the end.

Bad things about this book: there isn’t a real Girl Con. i want, no i NEED one.

Oh and of course some of you know or remember me talking about Mortimer. He is my favorite boy in the world- he is my moose and he goes everywhere with me. He does, indeed have a passport and id card. He also has many sets of pajamas, a bathrobe, a snuggie, and his out set of Mickey ears among other things. Most of the time when i read in bed he is with me reading along (he’s very smart) and there was one character that stuck out to him. . . General Good Times. And he would like to let everyone know that whoever can find/make him a pair of “. . . special ninja pajamas with the words Silent Killah stitched over the breast pocket.” (pg110) will be greatly rewarded.

So yeah, like i was saying. . .

READ THIS BOOK.  DO IT.

Alex attends prestigious boarding school Themis Academy where the students are dedicated and studious and where the administration happily pretends that they don’t even misbehave. When Alex is date raped when she is a junior (year 11), there’s no question of taking the crime to the police, lest it reflect badly on the school, or even to the principal. Instead one of Alex’s friends suggests she takes the issue to The Mockingbirds, a group of students who deal out punishment to other students who are deemed to have broken the rules. The Mockingbirds are made up of a network and pyramid of students who perform different tasks and who act as judge and jury for students who have a crime brought against them and agree to the punishment The Mockingbirds deliver if found guilty.

Alex takes some convincing. She knows little about The Mockingbirds, who masquerade as an a capella group on campus, despite the fact that ultimately, her older sister, now in college, started The Mockingbirds. Soon she is convinced though, and takes her story of how she was out with friends, had a few too many drinks, ended up back in a boys room unwillingly, passed out and woke up to find out he’d had sex with her, twice. She lost her virginity while unconscious and The Mockingbirds, who have never trialled a sexual assault case, first put the vote to the school in ballot form to see if it should be part of the code. The answer is yes and The Mockingbirds officially serve the accused. And now Alex must prepare for the ‘trial’ where she will give evidence for herself and also be ‘cross-examined’ by a ‘defence lawyer’, a student acting for the other side. She will have a student lawyer herself who will also cross examine the accused. It’s all very To Kill a Mockingbird meets Law & Order meets Degrassi High but without it being 1985. Then, based on what The Mockingbirds decide, if the accused is found guilty, his name will go (permanently) ‘in the book’ along with his crime and he will have the thing he loves the most taken away from him. I don’t think the book is ever made clear on what will happen if he isn’t found guilty, presumably nothing and his pencil entry in the book gets erased and people forget it ever happened.

This is a tough book to review. I didn’t particularly like it but I did feel that it addressed an extremely important point, and one that about which many teens, boys and girls, can be ignorant. If you don’t say YES then you are, in effect, saying NO. When I enrolled at university, during O-Week we were given what we fondly referred to as the ‘sexual harassment cube’ which was basically a cube made out of little squares glued together that you could roll around in your hands and change into different shapes, that contained all the things that meant NO. Such as I’m drunk, I’m asleep, I’m unconscious, etc. They all mean NO. If someone is not in a position to give full consent to sexual activity then they are saying no. And if someone is performing a sexual activity on another person who is not in the position to give their consent, then that is rape or sexual harassment.

I don’t believe that going out and getting drunk and having a good time leads to bad situations so I’m not going to be all preachy ‘she was getting smashed, that’s what happens’ etc. But I do think that Alex didn’t make some wise decisions in this novel, including at the time she was drinking and that wasn’t emphasised enough. And she actually continues making some really ill-advised choices throughout the rest of the book, some of which are just bizarre and some of which just make her (for me) an extremely unlikable protagonist. I couldn’t really get on her side and I don’t know if that’s because of just her, or also the whole process of The Mockingbirds, which I found slightly distasteful.

If you’re going to write a story set in a boarding school, well then you’d better do something to make it stand out. Daisy Whitney gives us The Mockingbirds, an all-student discipline and judgement group who ‘right wrongs’ when the teachers and administration won’t do it themselves. Apparently it’s based loosely on a real life sort of situation that occurred at a University in America but I have to say, the idea of implementing it for teenagers is faintly ridiculous. For starters, all the accused just seem to pliantly agree to be judged by The Mockingbirds and agree to  have their favourite thing (which generally seems to be some sort of school-based activity such as sports or drama/theatre) taken away from them. Um, what? So for bullying, hate-crimes and in this instance, rape, the ability to no longer play water polo is a punishment? What happens if the accused doesn’t want to agree to The Mockingbirds decision? How are they really stopped? What happens if the accused is found guilty but is really innocent and vice versa? And is there a school administration that would consistently ignore behaviour such as occurs in this novel? Plot holes, plot holes, I fell into many of them.

I also didn’t like that the accused are treated as guilty basically, before the trial. They are named, written in pencil in the book (a record where other students can go and see who has been tried and found guilty by The Mockingbirds and for what) and it’s public knowledge when they are ‘served’. In this book yes we know he is guilty, or assume such, from Alex’s narrative. But no one else does. And what if he isn’t? What if it’s a mistaken accusation, either vindictively or genuinely and that person’s reputation is sullied. The Mockingbirds apparently ‘investigate’ all cases before agreeing to take them on but a lot of damage could be done from a mistake.

Also, The Mockingbirds have their own rules. Which Alex and someone else willingly and knowingly break. That infuriated me, because Alex was placing her trust in this system to do her justice – which should indicate a desire to abide by their rules. The fact that she broke a rule, while her trial was taking place, was a really disappointing part of the novel. Actually, most of the characters themselves were disappointing – Alex herself, her robot-like friends, the accused who was basically just a cardboard cut-out jock villain, all very smirky and ‘you were gagging for it, let’s go again!’ Had he not been so arrogant and ridiculous and been genuinely confused and remorseful because he wasn’t aware she wasn’t consenting, then this might’ve been a book that could educate brilliantly. Instead he was just a typical jerk who didn’t care and thought that he was so good she’d come back begging for more. Yawn – been there, read that a hundred times. Nothing new to see.

The core story of this book had some wonderful potential. It is an important subject and it does need to be part of an education program and I thought that this book might be very helpful towards that. But huge aspects of the novel didn’t work for me and given that they’re a huge part of it (The Mockingbirds themselves, the whole boarding school aspect, the lazy/blind/over-indulgent administration) I found it very difficult to truly enjoy reading. The characters were frustrating at the best of times, lacking depth and individuality. Alex in particular was extremely unexciting and quite often I wondered at her sheer stupidity. Her sister started The Mockingbirds yet Alex had to be the most ignorant student on the whole school campus about the group, the process and the members. She had no idea about anything. She never once said to her sister ‘Oh, hey so The Mockingbirds at school – what’s up with them?’ and her sister never once said to her ‘You know that Mockingbirds group on campus? I started that. They can help you if you never need it’. They never got mentioned to her by her friends before? Not until they tell her to take her case to them? Yet everyone else on campus knows about them (so it seems) and what they do and even who quite a few of the higher members are. Only Alex is blithely unaware, rolling along in her little bubble.

Excellent premise, execution was just not to my liking.

4/10

Book #34 of 2011

I read Stay first. I’ve never read anything by Deb Caletti but I think this is a book that will appeal to a wide range of readers – we’ve been there, or know someone that has.

Clara meets Christian at a high school basketball game and they lock eyes. Their exchange is brief – Christian is from a different high school and he’s there with another girl. But it’s enough for Clara to be really interested, even though she’s recently just had a bad relationship experience. When her high school basketball team plays the team from Christian’s high school again later in the season, she makes sure she goes to the game, primarily with the aim of seeing Christian again. From the time they see each other again, they are inseparable, diving headlong into an intense relationship.

Very intense. Christian soon proves to have a dangerous side, flying into rages at Clara when he perceives her to be flirting or talking to other boys, paranoid that she’s going to leave him. He uses emotional manipulation and blackmail to bend her to his will until Clara’s whole life revolves around Christian and making sure that he is kept happy. That proves to be an impossible task however and eventually Clara knows that she has to end it. Things get even messier, and Clara and her author-father are forced to leave their town for a summer vacation in a remote area, trying to put some space between Clara and Christian while he gets some professional help, hoping that time, if nothing else, will be a great help in stopping the phone calls, the letters, the emails. Nothing else has made Christian stop so far so Clara changes her number and tells no one where she is going, not even her best friend at first.

In the tiny town they spend their summer, both Clara and her dad will find people that help them heal from the experiences that have shaped them. Clara finds a job, makes some friends and learns to live a little, relaxing and enjoying herself. Her dad reconnects with an old University lecturer and meets a woman who he just might be able to spend the rest of his life with. Their quiet summer is shattered when Clara starts receiving phone calls and feeling as though someone is watching her…

While ultimately I really enjoyed this story and the way it was told, there were a few things that niggled at me. I don’t really believe in the whole ‘locking eyes across a crowded room’ type thing and although I know that teenage relationships can develop at the rate of lightning, this one was extremely fast. They went from never actually having met to being utterly consumed by each other and yet we weren’t exactly shown why. Christian is portrayed almost from the get go as intense, paranoid, possessive, jealous and manipulative and you do have to wonder why Clara even got in as deep as she did. I know there are guys like this out there, but the majority tend to hide their insecurities behind a wealth of charm until the girl is well and truly hooked and then the manipulation and judgement and emotional blackmail starts. I’ve seen it, I’ve been on the receiving end of it (or an attempt) but this one was just a little too much, too soon! I’m not sure I was ever satisfied that Christian was a person that anyone would ever want to be with – he came off as a psycho way too soon.

But apart from that – the rest was thoroughly well written – Clara’s fear, her withdrawal into herself after breaking up with Christian, her anger at having to flee when she has done nothing wrong. She’s a frustrated teenager who fell in love with the wrong person (and although I didn’t really see why she did fall in love with him, it’s obvious she was) who is also grieving for the loss of that. It’s very hard when someone turns out to be an entirely different person than what you thought they were and Christian really does turn out to be the very opposite of what she thought he was.

Clara is also being raised by a single father, her mother having died when Clara was around 4. Her and her father have a rather unconventional relationship with some clear underlying tensions but it’s very obvious that he’s very supportive of Clara and is willing to do anything to help get her out of this situation. He’s pretty easy going and very non-judgmental, never once is he anything but one hundred percent understanding even though he clearly had doubts about Christian almost right from the very beginning. Upon thinking about it, I’m not sure if we’re supposed to believe that as a dad he was just naturally suspicious of any boy sniffing around his daughter, especially one who had already had a bad relationship, or if Christian’s instability and facade was obvious to everyone except Clara.

Not without its flaws, this book was still a very engrossing read and I think, a pretty good portrayal of quite a serious topic. This book would’ve probably helped me quite considerably had I read it at 15 or so years of age and I think it’d be a good modern text for either a teen book group or class discussion because it deals with an issue that a lot of teenagers need to be aware of, or have already experienced. It’s been quite a while since I was in school, but the texts we had to read were always pretty ancient and not exactly relevant to teen life. I think that YA novels really have an important role to play in schools these days. I hope they’re being used!

7/10

Book #30 of 2011

Stay will be published on April 5th, 2011

Thanks to the publisher for the ARC and Holly for organising the tour

Description from goodreads: 

Fans of contemporary YA will definitely want to check out All You Get Is Me. 

Thanks to Good Golly Miss Holly ARC Tours for lending me a copy of this book!

Description from goodreads:
“Congratulations! You have been admitted to the most prestigious university in the world. Now what are you going to do? Callie Andrews may not have money or connections or the right clothes, and she may have way too many complications in her love life, what with Gregory, the guy she loves to hate…Evan , the guy she’d love to forget…Clint, the guy she’d love to love…and Matt, the guy she really should love…all vying for her attention.But she has three fantastic roommates (best friends or her worst nightmare?) and a wholesome California-girl reputation (oops) and brains and beauty and big, big dreams.Will it be enough to help her survive freshman year at Harvard?”


This novel reminded me a lot of Gossip Girl with all  its drama. I was surprised at how much the characters in The Ivy focus on their social life versus their studies, but I suppose it would be boring to read about people studying. 


I didn’t really connect with the main character, but I did have fun reading about her complicated love life and her attempts to fit with the elite crowd at Harvard. There is enough scandal and drama to keep readers interested, and the cliffhanger ending will ensure that people keep reading as the series continues. The Ivy is an entertaining read that is more appropriate for older teens due to some of the content. 


Thanks to Good Golly Miss Holly ARC Tours for lending me this book. 

Description from Goodreads: 


“The Sullivan sisters have a big problem. On Christmas Day their rich and imperious grandmother gathers the family and announces that she will soon die . . .and has cut the entire family out of her will. Since she is the source of almost all their income, this means they will soon be penniless. 

Someone in the family has offended her deeply. If that person comes forward with a confession of her (or his) crime, submitted in writing to her lawyer by New Year’s Day, she will reinstate the family in her will. Or at least consider it. 

And so the confessions begin….”


Sisters Norrie, Jane, and Sassy tell all in this quirky tale of family secrets. Each of the sisters has a chance to spill the juicy details in a letter to their grandmother (who they refer to as “Almighty Lou” or just “Almighty”). Each of the sisters had a unique voice, and it was interesting to hear about the same events from three different perspectives. However, at the same time, it made the story drag a little bit for me because I had to keep reliving the same events with the characters. I thought the idea of Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters was really interesting, and I liked the kooky cast of characters, but I was disappointed in the ending – it felt rushed to me. 


If you like character driven stories full of family drama, check out Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters!

Thanks to Good Golly Miss Holly ARC Tours for lending me a copy of this book.

Julia, the high school valedictorian, has a full scholarship to a university where she plans to study pre-law. She’s also lined up a great internship for the summer to get some practical experience. Everything is going according to plan until her older sister Sophie comes to town. Sophie has always had a troubled relationship with her parents, and Julia is about to find out why. When Julia learns a shocking family secret, she decides to go stay with her sister for the summer, giving up her internship, in order to learn all the details of what happened before she was born. As Julia helps Sophie prepare to open her own bakery, the sisters grow closer and Julia ponders what she really wants to do with her life. 

I always wanted a sister (I have two older brothers), so stories about sisters have always fascinated me. This one didn’t disappoint. The complicated family relationships were portrayed realistically, and my heart broke along with Julia as the family secrets were revealed. There was a little bit of romance involved in the story, too, but it wasn’t the main focus. I have to say, though, that I loved that Julia’s love interest, Milo, read poetry. Hot boys who love poetry make me happy.* 

I enjoyed this coming of age story and would recommend The Sweetness of Salt to anyone who enjoys contemporary YA. 

Rating: 4/5

Thanks to Good Golly Miss Holly ARC Tours for lending me a copy of this book! It releases in November. 


 
*In fact, I had a big crush on one of my English professors in college. I would swoon every time he recited poetry. (And I went to a small university, so I had several classes with him.) Guess what? He married a woman named Poem. True story!

Claire is psyched when her crush, J.D., starts following her on Twitter. He even seems to be flirting with her! However, he acts differently at school, and Claire can’t figure out why. Meanwhile, Claire is just starting to see one of her guy friends in a new light, but she won’t admit that she has any feelings for him just yet. To complicate matters, Claire has recently been chosen to write a love advice column for the school newspaper, even though she considers herself clueless in that department. How can she give advice to people when she’s confused about her own love life? 

I have heard of books being written entirely in the form of IMs, but this is the first novel I’m aware of that is written in Tweets, blogs, and e-mails. I think the format worked really well. Claire is the main character, but we also get to know her best friend Lottie (short for Charlotte) and two of their closest guy friends, Bennett and Will. It was interesting to be able to read both the public conversations between Claire and her friends along with the private one-on-one conversations. 

The characters were realistic and entertaining. I especially loved Lottie – she reminded me a lot of a friend of mine (and Claire reminded me of myself in high school). Lottie is always encouraging Claire to be more assertive and to follow her heart. Plus she’s hilarious and boy-crazed! 

Tweet Heart is such a cute romantic comedy. It takes me back to the days when I used to chat with my high school crush on ICQ (circa 1999). I think that this novel will appeal to teens because most of them are plugged into social networks and communicate with one another online! I did find the plot a bit predictable, but it was still a fun read. Pick up Tweet Heart if you’re looking for a quick, entertaining read!


Rating: 4/5


Thanks to Good Golly Miss Holly ARC Tours for lending me a copy of this book!
 

Stop by Forever Young to read a guest blog written by Yours Truly.

Jessica was kind enough to launch an across-the-USA-tour of an Advance Reader Copy she snagged of “Will Grayson, Will Grayson” by John Green and David Levithan. I was stop No. 7 as the book makes its way from west to east. The book doesn’t hit the store shelves until next month, and I failed miserably at my attempts to win my own ARC, so I am truly thankful to have been able to participate in Jessica’s ARC tour.

Go now! Read my blog entry! Get excited for when you can get your own hands on WG, WG!

The main purpose of the tour is to send out ARCs of US/UK books to Australian YA bloggers. Not many publishers ship outside USA so I thought this would be a good idea. Let me know! If you are living in USA but have blogger friends from AU? Please refer them here! Much thanks.