Lois Lane: Triple Threat

Since seeing Gwenda Bond at ReadUp Greenville in October, I’ve read all three of her Lois Lane books.  She’s taken the iconic Lois Lane character and given her a spunky, sassy personality.  This third book in the series is no different.

Teenage investigative reporter Lois Lane has seen some weird things since moving to Metropolis:  cloning, mind-melding experiments, and cyber bullying.  Through it all, Lois has found a set of in real life friends (something she’s never had before because of moving around for her dad’s army job) and online friends (like her mysterious SmallvilleGuy).  In this book, Metropolis is full of weird sightings of silver-tinged teens doing superhuman things, like lifting cars and flying.  Lois decides to start investigating for her newest Scoop article but soon realizes that these teens have an odd fascination with her.  To make things more complicated, her cyber-maybe-more-than-a-friend SmallvilleGuy is coming to Metropolis for a birthday trip which means they will finally get to meet in real life.  Lois is also still trying to figure out if another online acquaintance TheInventor is a friend or foe, especially when he leaks a list of usernames to the government to retaliate for Lois’s snooping.

This book focuses more on Lois’s personal life than her news story this time, which is fine, but it makes the news story seem like an add-on story. She does (finally) figure out why these silver kids are trying to recruit her, but it wasn’t because of her investigative skills.  She found out more because she lied to her friends and charged into trouble without thinking things through.  

Overall, it was good book, especially since you’re already invested in the characters and their outcomes from the previous books.

Pride and Prejudice and Mistletoe

I love Pride and Prejudice.  It’s my favorite classic novel for many reasons that I will not go into here (see this post for all my P&P love).  And because I love the original story so much, I’ve read lots of retellings and modern adaptations, like Eligible and Jane in Austin.  Pride and Prejudice and Mistletoe tops that list.  

I know, I know…it’s written as a fluffy Christmas story, and it is.  But it’s also more than that.  The author captured the original angst of the story and the misconstrued intentions perfectly, even if the setting is modern.  There are also a few other changes I enjoyed, like the role reversals.  In this story Darcy Fitzwilliam is an independent, self-made woman who has a fantastically lucrative career in New York City.  But when her mother has a heart attack, she must go back to Pemberly, PA, her hometown that she hasn’t been to in eight years.  There she reconnects with her best friend Bingley Charles and her neighbors, the Bennett boys.  

Another change I liked was the story being told from Darcy’s point of view.  Most retellings stick with Jane and the Bennett sisters, since they are the main focus of the original novel, but I enjoyed being in Darcy’s head throughout all the confusing, conflicting feelings she’s having for Luke Bennett, her old high school rival.  I was expecting the novel to flip back and forth between the two points of view, but by sticking with Darcy, the story seemed more honest and truthful.  

Could I have used a few more details throughout the story?  Sure, being only 225 pages.

Did I read this practically in one sitting?  Why yes, I did.

Did I throughly enjoy it?  Most definitely.

You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas

The thing I love about my book club is the fact that it gets me out of my reading comfort zone.  When you’re in a group with a dozen other people, there’s a very diverse pull for what books to read.  Some I’ve been pleasantly surprised with, but sometimes you come up with a dud, like this month’s book.

Augusten Burroughs is a nonfiction writer who writes about his life in a very satirical way, much in the same writing style as David Sedaris.  From what I gathered from our book discussion, this book is in the same vein as his other books.  Burroughs wrote seven short stories about different Christmases he’s experienced over the years.  Some parts are slightly humorous, like when he tricks his parents into buying all the presents on his list by demanding a horse or when his newly renovated house floods.  But mostly it just made me depressed and feel sorry for him, like the Christmas he didn’t remember because he was blackout drunk or the last Christmas he spent with his AIDS-infected boyfriend.

What I really wanted to read was a hilariously funny set of Christmas stories, but instead what I got was story after story of hardships and confusion and struggles, like a tasteless cookie with some sprinkles on top to try and make it look better.

Love a la Mode

This book is pure sugar and spice.  Rosie and Henry meet on the airplane to Paris, and soon realize they are both heading to the same place, an exclusive cooking school founded by Chef Laurent.  They are both excited and overwhelmed with their experience—Rosie with her lackluster cooking skills since she’s a pastry chef and Henry with keeping up with his academics and the pressure by his overbearing mother—but as the semester continues on, they realize that their connection is more than just as friends.

Honestly, this book was predictable.  The cooking school part was interesting, along with the diverse mix of characters from all over the world—30 kids from America to Sweden to Germany to England—but the whole story seemed very fluffy.  I kept mentally yelling at the book, “Why don’t you just talk to him/her instead of saying it in your head?  Then all the tension and drama would be resolved.”  

Did I enjoy reading it?  Sure.  Would I be okay handing this off to a high schooler, or even a middle schooler?  Sure.  I just felt like the characters could have been developed more and the teen hormonal drama toned down a smidge.  

**This book was just published!  Thanks to Net Galley and Disney-Hyperion for the free copy in exchange for an honest review.**

Grim Lovelies

Fairy tale stories have always intrigued me, so the premise of Megan Shepherd's new book Grim Lovelies hooked me.  The question:  what happens to the animals in fairy tales that get turned into humans?  And how hard would they fight to stay human?

In the story, Anouk is a beastie, meaning she was created from an animal by a witch.  She's spent her year of life cooking and cleaning for Mada Vittora, the witch who created her, but after a tense night meeting, Anouk finds Mada Vittora dead.  In fear, Anouk and the other beasties--Cricket and Beau--flee for their lives and try to find a way to remain human forever before Mada Vittora's spell fades away.

This book is pure fantasy.  Yes, it's set in modern day Paris, but the magic, witches, royals, and goblins dominate the story.  The first half is straightforward--introductions and survival.  However, the second half of the novel gets a little crazy, in my opinion.  There’s an Ocean’s 11-esque heist and a goblin party in the subway tunnels.  There are living topiaries and love interests.  And, of course, there’s deception and trickery while Anouk figures out who she can trust.  

In my opinion, it was laid on a little thick, but it does set up for the next book in the series.

**Thank you, Net Galley, for this free book in exchange for an honest review.**

The Glass Ocean

If you know me, you know I love history, especially the opulent time of the Gilded Age.  Although technically the Gilded Age stopped around 1900, the wealth and extravagance lasted into the 1910s and 1920s.  The Glass Ocean is a historical fiction book chronicling the final passage of the Lusitania, an ocean liner that was sunk by a German U-boat in 1915 during WWI.  

The Glass Ocean is written by three authors—Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White—and the story is told from three women’s perspectives.  Two of the women lived in 1915, Caroline a wealthy socialite and Tess a con woman, who were both on the Lusitania.  The third is Sarah, a historical writer in the modern day who is investigating a mysterious note left by her great-grandfather, a steward who died on the Lusitania.  Her research lead her to England and John Langford, a descendant of another Lusitania passenger who was the supposed sender of the mysterious snippet.  While John and Sarah try to piece together how their ancestors connect and why a coded message was safely sealed in a waterproof bag for a century, the reader is pushed back in time to see the events play out in real time.

If I had to classify this book, it’s historical fiction but also a mystery.  I liked figuring out the new pieces and realizing who people were in relation to the modern day research Sarah was doing, but the beginning and the end of the story was uneventfully slow.  It took me a while to swap to the different character’s perspectives and to be invested in their outcomes.  Once they made it onto the boat, the action and suspicions started picking up and made the book better.  But the ending seemed a little…up in the air?  Anticlimactic?  It was just missing something.

Overall, I’m glad I read it.  I’m also glad that I checked it out from the library instead of buying it.

Love, Life, & the List

Kasie West currently reigns over sappy chick-lit stories in the middle school world.  Others have cycled through, but what I love about West’s writing is that it sets up love triangles and situations that relate to middle and high schoolers without all the unnecessary sex scenes.  My (current) favorite of hers is PS: I Like You, mainly because of the quirky characters and their banter.  Love, Life, & the List was good, just not my favorite.

This story is about Abby and Cooper, two best friends since 8th grade.  It’s their first summer together without their other two friends—Rachel’s touring Europe with her family and Justin’s on a church mission trip all summer—and Abby’s realizing that her unrequited love for Cooper may be one of the things holding her and her art back, along with her fear of change and her agoraphobic mother.  With the help of her mother and her grandfather, Abby makes a list of things to do over the summer—from trying something new to facing a fear to finding out a stranger’s story—to try and help her expand her world for herself and for her art.

Like I said, this book was just okay.  I guess I was frustrated at Abby most of the book because she knew Cooper didn’t like her back the same way, but she still enabled him to have a hold over her.  I know it’s harder to do than to just say “let him go” but her own personal happiness was so caught up in this one person that I just felt it to be unhealthy.  I do like how it shows that having more than one friend group is okay.  Each friend you have can bring something new out of you, and that’s what I feel Abby finally realized.  She’d been a four-some with her friends for so long, she didn’t have any other close friends to confide it.  So when two of the four were away for the summer, it forced her to make some new friends.  I’m not saying you need to be friends with everyone but having diverse friend groups you’re a part of is a good place to be.