From What I Remember...

Author: Stacy Kramer, Valerie Thomas

Series: Stand Alone

Genres: Realistic Fiction, Young Adult

Publisher: Hyperion

Released: 15 May 2012

Summary: courtesy of goodreads.com KYLIE: MEXICO WHAT? I should be putting the finishing touches on my valedictorian speech. Graduation is TODAY, and is this a wedding band on my finger.

MAX: It all started with Kylie's laptop and a truck full of stolen electronics. Okay, it was kind of hot, the way she broke us out like some chick in an action movie. But now we're stranded in Tijuana. With less than twenty-four hours before graduation. Awesome.

WILL: Saving Kylie Flores from herself is kind of a full-time occupation. Luckily, I, Will Bixby, was born for the job. And when I found out she was stuck in Mexico with dreamy Max Langston, sure, I agreed to bring their passports across the border -- but there's no reason to rush back home right away. This party is just getting started.

LILY: I just walked in on my boyfriend, Max Langston, canoodling with Kylie Flores, freak of the century. Still, I can't completely hold it against him. He NEEDS me. It's even clearer now. And I'm not giving him up without a fight.

My Review:  I’m ashamed to admit this, because I usually don’t review books I can’t finish, but full disclosure:  I skimmed about 85% of the book.  Which translates to: I didn’t read it with the same intensity that I normally read books.  The reason: this book drove me so completely crazy, I couldn’t focus.  There are a lot of reasons why I should have steered clear of this in the first place, but I wanted a fun teen read, which I honestly thought that this would deliver.  It did not.

Not only did I feel like there were waaay too many points of view; the characters are so one dimensional that I couldn’t identify with a single one.  Not only are they all self-centered, arrogant, rude, incredibly stupid and reckless.  These kids have no sense of integrity.  Reading this book basically felt like the high school version of The Only Way is Essex combined with Jersey Shore.  It was incredibly unclassy.

There is a way to make a book like this fun, and in order to do so you would have to drop about 90% of the crass dialogue.  I get that high school kids are foul-mouthed, but this honestly took it a little bit too far for me.  I’ll reiterate: this is my personal opinion, you may like all of the sexual innuendos, you may find them hilarious, but I didn’t.  There is a right way to do flirty writing, and this wasn’t it.   This was completely over the top, I didn't feel like there was any sort of affection between the characters they were so shallow.  Not to mention that Kylie’s inner-voice drove me completely irrevocably insane.  This novel felt like ...just bad.  I felt like my brain was turning to goop, and then spent the afternoon hoping not all kids are like these kids.  By the time I was finished I was reaching for Jane Eyre, or any basically novel on my bookshelf, just to remind myself that there are good authors and good books that know how to construct a good story.

To be quite honest, I haven’t been this disappointed in a YA read since I read Scott Speer’s Immortal City.  I wish I could say that I would continue reading YA books by Hollywood’s bystanders, but I won’t.  I will definitely be reading author biographies before I start reading from now on.  This felt so contrived it left me wondering if this television screen-writer was just looking to cash in on a genre that has blown up in the past few years.  I didn’t feel like this was a story that the authors felt needed to be told, it was a story that was written to sell so that people could pad their already well-padded checkbooks.

Immortal City

Author: Scott Speer

Series: Immortal City # 1

Genres: Paranormal, Romance, Adventure, Young Adult

Publisher: Razor Bill

Released: 3 April 2012

Summary: Jackson Godspeed is the hottest young Angel in a city filled with them.

He's days away from becoming a full Guardian, and people around the world are already competing for the chance to be watched over by him. Everyone's obsessed with the Angels and the lucky people they protect - everyone except for Madison Montgomery.

Maddy's the one girl in Angel City who doesn't breathlessly follow the Angels on TV and gossip blogs. When she meets Jackson, she doesn't recognize him. But Jackson is instantly captivated by her, and against all odds the two fall in love.

Maddy is swiftly caught up in Jackson's scene, a world of glamour, paparazzi - and murder. A serial killer is on the loose, leaving dead Angels' wings for the police to find on the Walk of Fame. Even the Guardians are powerless to protect themselves in the face of this threat & and this time it's up to Maddy to save Jackson

My Review: I don’t know why, but as I was reading this I got the distinct impression that it was written to that Foster the People song “Pumped Up Kicks” No joke. Every time Jacks was headed to an event I had the first few chords of that song begin to run through my brain. Anyways, that’s not really the point. Immortal City is a good idea. I like the idea, I had high hopes for the idea. Hot super star angel falling for a mortal? I’ll take that for a light read! Sure had been done before, but Speer almost seems to try a little bit too hard to change everything.

Angel City is Los Angeles (which literally means in Spanish ‘The Angels’) And it is truly the main problem with Immortal City. Speer spends so much time detailing a city that the world already knows. An editor could have axed a fifth of the novel by simply stating, “in a city that was once Los Angeles…” Instead I stumbled through detailed glimpses of one of the worlds most famous cities, and still left not really knowing what I was looking at. Speer has a talent for writing a lot of words, but not really saying much. This is something that Adult novels and movie scripts get away with on a regular basis. They paint you a nice picture without telling you what you’re really looking at. In my opinion it makes for a tedious read. There were a lot of little things I liked about Immortal City, the build up of Maddy and Jacks’ relationship (though it seemed to go from mere ‘hey maybe I like you’ to ‘hey I want to jump you’ in about ten seconds) I liked that she was the anti-celebrity (or, in this case, ‘angels’) but too much of Speers book seemed to be contrived. Like he fancied himself to be introducing everyone to how Hollywood works. Where people who read a lot, which are the people that are probably drawn to reviews like this, usually find themselves reading magazine covers in grocery stores, or hanging out at bookstores all day skimming cover jackets, and with everything that television does shove down our throats, people I think have a pretty good idea of how Hollywood works. I don’t need Speers to ‘fill me in’ I want him to tell me the story of how a Guardian Angel fell in love with a girl, I don’t want him to explain the intricacies of fame and fortune. I have the L.A. Candy series to do that. Guys, I don’t know. Maybe if Jacks had been a little bit more bad A, instead of a pretty boy who wore ‘YSL’ shoes. Maybe if Maddy hadn’t been so atypical (she thinks she plain, he thinks she’s something out a Shakespeare sonnet) maybe if Speer had kept to directing movies (because this would be a beautiful movie) instead of writing books, then maybe I would have liked it a little bit more. I don’t know, maybe I expected too much out of it. If you’re looking for a novel that involves a strong angel hating girl, and very good looking angel I recommend Angelfall by Susan Ee (seriously, read it. It’s bad A.) If you’re looking for a series on the ins and outs of fame in Los Angeles read anything by Lauren Conrad. If you’re looking for a really weird combination of the two and then add to them what felt like a cross between the aforementioned Foster the People song and A Cinderella Story (remember that movie with Hilary Duff and Chad Michael Murray?) then Immortal City is totally for you.

As I Wake

Author: Elizabeth Scott

Series: Stand Alone

Genres: Dystopia, Science Fiction, Romance, Young Adult

Publisher: Dutton Juvenile

Released: 15 September 2011

Summary: via goodreads.com Ava is welcomed home from the hospital by a doting mother, lively friends, and a crush finally beginning to show interest. There's only one problem: Ava can't remember any of them - and can't shake the eerie feeling that she's not who they say she is.
Ava struggles to break through her amnesiac haze as she goes through the motions of high-school life, but the memories that surface take place in a very different world, where Ava and familiar-faced friends are under constant scrutiny and no one can be trusted. Ava doesn't know what to make of these visions, or of the boy who is at the center of them all, until he reappears in her life and offers answers . . . but only in exchange for her trust.

My Review: As I Wake is one of those novels that you either love or you hate. Unfortunately, although I am a huge Elizabeth Scott fan, I had an incredibly hard time with this one.
Scott relies so much on the idea of parallel universes without really explaining hers. In every novel I feel that if the author is going to introduce a new, or at least new to the novel concept they should at lease try to explain it. However, reading As I Wake is like walking into the mid season finale of a show that you’ve never seen and trying to catch yourself up on the past three seasons. I kept waiting for a big reveal scene that never came.
As I Wake is definitely more of a science fiction novel than anything else. And it left me wondering why Scott had left behind her Sarah Dessen-like characters for something like this. It was hard to understand and when a book comes in a not even three hundred pages it makes you wonder, if Scott had time to explain things why didn’t she? Why didn’t an editor tell her to?
Honestly, I picked this book up because I liked Scott’s past work, and because the cover was really gorgeous, but after reading it I felt confused. I would definitely pass.

Waiting

Author: Carol Lynch Williams

Series: Stand Alone

Genres: Realistic, Young Adult, Contemporary

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Released: 1 May 2012

Summary: courtesy of goodreads.com After her brother’s death, a teen struggles to rediscover love and find redemption in this gripping novel.
Growing up in Africa and Latin America as the children of missionaries, London and Zach were as close as could be. And then Zach dies, and the family is gutted. London’s father is distant. Her mother won’t speak. The days are filled with what-ifs and whispers: Did Zach take his own life? Was it London’s fault?
Alone and adrift, London finds herself torn between her brother’s best friend and the handsome new boy in town as she struggles to find herself—and ultimately redemption—in this authentic and affecting novel from award-winning novelist Carol Lynch Williams.

My Review:There is something that you should know about Waiting. It is written in that weird free verse sort of way that Crank is written in. I did not know this before reading it. And I think that pertains in part to why I did not like this book. Waiting was hard for me for a number of reasons.
Reason 1: The love triangle. SERIOUSLY! Why?! Love triangles are completely ridiculous and should be banned from ya books. Since when have girls like London become the object of guy’s affection? I mean, she is one messed up chick, which brings me to reason 2.
Reason 2: London is annoying. How many times do I have to read a YA book where every other verb seems to be crying, sniffling, weeping, etc. I get it. This book is sad, but there are ways to do sad. There are ways to balance it out and make you think more about life than death.
Reason 3: The relationships. In addition to London having weird, awkward, and ultimately unresolved amounts of boy trouble she also has really weird family issues going on.
In addition to the reasons listed above this writing style really just drove me completely crazy. It felt like a high school essay contest, dripping with angst that by the time I finished I was exhausted. (and it’s a fast read!) It seems like so many YA books today are dealing with death, which means that it has been done right before. Books like Saving June, get it right. This book was not one of those. I honestly can't say what exactly it was about this book that truly bothered me so much, but it's definitely not one that I would read again. Once was enough. 

The Forest of Hands and Teeth

Author: Carrie Ryan

Series: The Forest of Hands and Teeth # 1

Genres: Horror, Zombies, Young Adult

Publisher: Gollancz

Released: 1 January 2009

Summary: via goodreads.com In Mary's world there are simple truths. The Sisterhood always knows best. The Guardians will protect and serve. The Unconsecrated will never relent. And you must always mind the fence that surrounds the village; the fence that protects the village from the Forest of Hands and Teeth. But, slowly, Mary’s truths are failing her. She’s learning things she never wanted to know about the Sisterhood and its secrets, and the Guardians and their power, and about the Unconsecrated and their relentlessness. When the fence is breached and her world is thrown into chaos, she must choose between her village and her future—between the one she loves and the one who loves her. And she must face the truth about the Forest of Hands and Teeth. Could there be life outside a world surrounded in so much death?

My Review: Is it wrong to dislike a book because it scared the pants off of you? Maybe, but that, in addition to the fact that Mary (the main character) drove me completely crazy is why I feel the need to give this a lower rating than I normally do. The entire time I was reading I had to wonder: what is the motivator? And why doesn't Mary make any stinking decisions until it's too late? As others have stated, I felt that this would have been a good companion book to The Dead Tossed Waves and The Dark and Hollow Places. I felt that Mary was too childish and self-centered to be truly liked by the audience. I wish I could have seen her make some solid decisions instead of wavering on nearly everything. As far as zombie books go, I enjoyed the premise, but that, however doesn't make up for the fact that the heroine was a massive annoyance. And also that it was one of the saddest books I have read in a long time. 

When the Sea is Rising Red

Author: Cat Hellisen

Series: Stand Alone (for now)

Genres: Young Adult, Paranormal, Dystopia, Fantasy

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Released: 28 February 2012

Summary: via goodreads.com After seventeen-year-old Felicita’s dearest friend, Ilven, kills herself to escape an arranged marriage, Felicita chooses freedom over privilege. She fakes her own death and leaves her sheltered life as one of Pelimburg’s magical elite behind. Living in the slums, scrubbing dishes for a living, she falls for charismatic Dash while also becoming fascinated with vampire Jannik. Then something shocking washes up on the beach: Ilven's death has called out of the sea a dangerous, wild magic. Felicita must decide whether her loyalties lie with the family she abandoned . . . or with those who would twist this dark power to destroy Pelimburg's caste system, and the whole city along with it.  

My Review: This book wasn't really my cup of tea, it was very well written and the plot was well established. It held with the same ideas through the entire thing and I felt that all of the characters were justly motivated I just didn't really like any of the characters.

Dash can basically be caught as a player from a mile away. He’s a drunkard and a drug addict that likes to sleep around, and while Jannix is quite devoted to Firell (Felicita) he is still a vampire, and pretty open about what a bad guy he is.

Felicita (known throughout most of the book as Firell) is kind of a pansy, never really stepping up to the plate until she absolutely has to, and even then she kind of fails miserably. This got off to a good start, which is why I kept on going, but it quickly tapered into something that I didn’t find very appetizing.

I guess my problem isn't with the author, because the book is quite well written, but with the publisher. This book is marketed as a paranormal love story, and whilst they got the paranormal part correct this is in no way a love story. None of the Firell's (Felicita’s) relationships are particularly healthy at all and that was hard for me to deal with. I felt so sorry for the main character the entire time that it was impossible for me to like the book.