Book Review: Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta

Title: Jellicoe Road
Author: Melina Marchetta
Publisher: HarperTeen
Source: Library, Amy
Young Adult, Contemporary

At age eleven, Taylor Markham was abandoned by her mother. At fourteen, she ran away from boarding school, only to be tracked down and brought back by a mysterious stranger. Now seventeen, Taylor's the reluctant leader of her school's underground community, whose annual territory war with the Townies and visiting Cadets has just begun. This year, though, the Cadets are led by Jonah Griggs, and Taylor can't avoid his intense gaze for long. To make matters worse, Hannah, the one adult Taylor trusts, has disappeared. But if Taylor can piece together the clues Hannah left behind, the truth she uncovers might not just settle her past, but also change her future. (From GoodReads) 






So I have to say that the blurb does the book absolutely no justice, and the thing about Jellicoe Road is that there really isn't a description that could. 
Britney has been recommending this book to me for some time as it is her favorite book in the history of ever, and she got Amy to read it. Then I had the two of them telling me that I had to read it RIGHT NOW. They also gave me the warning I'm going to give to you: The first half of this books makes about zero sense. 



Trust me, the way it all falls together is totally worth the confusion you'll feel at the beginning.

And the middle.

Melina Marchetta's writing is superb. Even when you have no idea what's going on, her writing is poignant and beautiful. Not many authors can make the jumping back and forth in time thing work, but she does it brilliantly. Her characters are real and raw and painful and human. While her writing is in fact lyrical and flowing, every part of the story is relevant, either to what's happening in the present or to what's happened in the past. 

Taylor Markham is easily one of my favorite contemporary female leads. She is not easy to like. She is tough and complex and layered. She is unkind, except when she isn't. Life has dealt her a lot of blows and the way she responds to those blows and the way she reacts to the people in her life is very real. 

There's so much you can't say about this book because it would spoil the whole thing, which is a testament to how tightly written the book is. 

Jonah Griggs is amazing. He is completely flawed and his story is beautiful and heartbreaking. His interactions with Taylor are some of my favorites.  

And there's Santangelo and Raffy and the Five and Ben...gosh this book is beautiful. 

Here, I'll describe it like this. 

Reading this book at the beginning is like having your nose pressed against the painting Reflections of Clouds on the Water by Monet. You see beautiful colors, but it doesn't make any sense because all you can see is the space right in front of you. So you read a little bit more, take a step back, look left and right and see a little bit more. It's still a little fuzzy, but it's still beautiful. You keep reading, take more steps back and you see more and more. By the end, you're able to see the whole picture and it's magnificent and breathtaking. 

I won't lie, I didn't feel this way until over halfway through the book, around page 222, in fact. In talking to other people who have read it, they hit that "Oh. Oh I need to sit down for the rest of this" moment at different points. So just trust me. If you pick up this book and you're reading and reading and still have felt the magic, just wait. It'll happen. 

Melina Marchetta is adapting Jellicoe Road for a film. 

You can read more about how where they are in this process at her blog: 

http://melinamarchetta.wordpress.com/2014/02/21/dear-melina-marchetta-when-is-jellicoe-going-to-be-a-film/

I'd recommend this book to everyone.

There were three parts where I cried and I can't tell you about any of them because again, spoilers, but I will give you my favorite line. It doesn't seem like much without context, but it will stay with me.

I remember love.

Up next, I'm reading Swim That Rock and On the Wrong Track.

Nostagically,
Gabi

Book Review: Anew by Chelsea Fine

Title: Anew
Author: Chelsea Fine
Publisher: Firefall Publishing
Series: Archers of Avalon #1
Source: Barnes and Noble
Young Adult; Fantasy/Romance




So I hadn't used my Nook in well over a year, and I finally decided to charge it and update it so I could see what the new OverDrive app looked like. Much to my surprise, I had three or four YA titles I'd purchased on sale some time ago and I figured I should read them since I'd apparently thought they were interesting at some point. The first of these that I read was Anew by Chelsea Fine.

Anew is the first in the Archers of Avalon trilogy that follows the story of seventeen year old Scarlet Jacobs and twin brothers Gabriel and Tristan Archer. We meet Scarlet when she wakes up in the woods outside of Avalon, Georgia. She's fifteen and she knows her name, but nothing else. Not how she got there or where she came from. Skip ahead two years and Scarlet's been taken in by her guardian, Laura and goes to high school with her best friend Heather like any other teen girl. She meets the smart, handsome, funny, endearing, mysterious etc Gabriel at Avalon's annual Kissing Festival (!) and the two strike up a relationship. Gabriel has secrets, though, including a twin brother that might hold the key to Scarlet's missing memories and her life before Avalon. However, the closer she gets to Gabriel and Tristan and the closer she gets to unlocking her memories, she finds herself in more and more danger with less and less time.

There are aspects of this book that I genuinely enjoyed and other aspects left me looking for a bridge from which to suspend my disbelief.

That sound you hear is the bridge creaking.

I know that the whole amnesia thing is not exactly breaking new ground, but the mythos that Fine constructs is really interesting. Without giving too much away, Scarlet is the victim of a curse gone wrong, a curse that affects not only her but both of the Archer brothers. Her fate has been bound to the twins for a long, long time. What one brother needs destroys the other; what the other brother wants destroys them all. As far as angsty, dramatic set ups go, it's a doozy.

Fine also has some really snappy dialogue, especially from green-eyed brother Tristan. For example:

Gabriel glanced down. “Seriously, Tristan? You drive around with a trunk full of weapons?”
“Of course.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m the family bad guy.”

And also very poignant lines like this:

“Knowing death is nearby gives you a chance to live...deliberately." 

On the flip side of that, there's a lot of ridiculousness from Scarlet's best friend Heather who literally speaks in text lingo. Now, I'm guilty of occasionally dropping a "jsyk" or "brb" into a conversation, but this character's sentences are full of "O-M-G" and "Scarlet, W-T-H?" which made me want to strangle her juuust about every page. Scarlet picks this up at some point during the book, making statements like "Worst. Date. Ever."

L-O-L one more time.

Heather's character is a little over the top in the crazy fashion obsessed sense but she's fun and oddly perceptive and I feel like the text lingo is a disservice to her character. While she is over the top, she's also smart, honest, and willing to defend her friend no matter what. I liked her, but my willingness to get behind her as a character was thwarted by her charming quirk.

Oddly enough, I also liked the love triangle aspect of this story. I know, I know. Hold your tomatoes. Because of the intricacies of the curse, it puts a different spin on it. It had the potential to be really heart rending. Yup, I said had potential. One of the more frustrating aspects of the story was also the love triangle. It's fairly obvious early on which brother she's "supposed" to be with, and because of that the other brother doesn't get as fully developed of a personality.

A moment to address how Scarlet first meets Gabriel. At a town-wide Kissing Festival, a two day event in which everyone (parents and kids) in the town of Avalon randomly kisses their neighbors, the postman, the dentist... There are also events like the Kissing Sock Hop and Kissing Booths...I just...can't... A Valentine Festival with a kissing booth is one thing. An entire multi day event where one might be accosted and kissed by anyone in your community is weird. Maybe that's just me. 

I also wanted better development of the brother's relationship. There's denial and secrecy between siblings, sure, but Tristan and Gabriel seemed almost clueless about each other at points. Their main focus is Scarlet, but they've also been brothers for a long, long time. (No, they are not vampires. Or werewolves.)

The story is good and the characters are for the most part interesting. It seemed inconsistent, because there are a lot of great scenes and dialogue moments but there are enough eye roll moments that it detracted from the experience. I did finish the book wanting to know what happens next for these guys, but I'm not compelled to make the second in the series, Awry, my next read.

No movie news on this one, but you can watch a book trailer on the author's Goodreads page.

If you'd like a quick fantasy read with a bit of a little twist, you might enjoy Anew. Or, this might be a good recommendation for a reluctant young teen reader who enjoys triangles and text lingo.

Srsly,
Gabs

Review: The Secret Journeys of Jack London: The Sea Wolves by Christopher Golden

Title: The Secret Journeys of Jack London: The Sea Wolves
Author: Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon
Publisher: HarperCollins, Feb. 2012
Series: Secret Journeys of Jack London #2
Source: Library


The first book in this series, The Wild, frustrated me so much that I ran right out and picked up the second one from my library the next day. Now mind you, I work at said library so it's not like I went extraordinarily out of my way, but I might have done so if necessary. There's a stark wildness about these books that appeals to me, plus I desperately need to know if the character Jack develops into by the end of the first book carries through successfully into the second.

The Sea Wolves picks up immediately after where The Wild leaves off. Headed for home to assure his mother that he's still among the land of the living (hover-parents should chew on the idea of the communication capabilities in the eighteen hundreds for a moment) when his ship is attacked by pirates. And, as it happens, these are no ordinary pirates. In his valiant attempt to stave off the attack, or at least save lives aboard his own ship, Jack manages to become a prisoner aboard the pirate ship. He quickly learns that his survival is dependent upon his quick wits, which have at least temporarily earned him favor in the eyes of the captain. He is not the only prisoner on board, and soon the survival of a trapped young woman lies in his young but determined hands.

The Sea Wolves is a fantastic high seas adventure with a most terrifying paranormal touch. Jack is certainly more realized as a character, and his escapades left me breathless. I read this book in one evening. There are more supporting characters in this go 'round as well, and most of them are very well developed. There were a couple that could have used some more time, but it is all about Jack so it's forgivable. I cared about Jack, his choices, and his fate much more here. Christopher Golden leaves no lag time, and readers are jerked through the pages from one intense moment to the next, Jack and his allies (?) facing both physical, mental, and emotional challenges.

The ending left me pulling at my hair going, "Seriously? We're leaving this here?" There's a hint of a third book on Golden's website, and clearly that's where this leads. No word on a possible pub date for book three that I could find, which is sad.

Egads. This series.

If you like adventure stories, paranormal YA, or suspense, this book might be for you. If you're on the fence because of the first one, skip it. This story, while it alludes to the first book, gives you enough of a bridge so that you won't be lost, but not so big a bridge that it's annoying. (You know what I'm talking about, former BabySitter's Club readers.)

The Sea Wolves, as part of a package with The Wild, has been optioned for film by Fox.

Liam Hemsworth for Jack, anyone?

Booking it,
Gabi

Review: Secret Journeys of Jack London: The Wild by Christopher Golden

Whatever I thought this book was going to be, it turned around, slapped me in the face and made me feel like a girly-girl for saying (out-loud in an outdoor voice) EW on more than one occasion.

This book. Crikey.

I really love adventure based stories, and I really love boy-adventure with all the nitty-gritty survival and danger elements. A lot of this is because I live vicariously through it, because you wouldn't catch me dead more than a day's journey away from a shower. The rest of it you can blame on my older brother for introducing me to the Hardy Boys and Batman at a very young, impressionable age. Hiking, mountain climbing, river rafting - I love it all to pieces and partake of these activities, but only if I know there's a shower waiting for me at the end.

There are no showers in this book, mmkay? But you'd expect that, with Jack London being the main character and all. Christopher Golden and his co-writer, Tim Lebbon, have taken famous author Jack London and made him into the seventeen year old protagonist of a series about formerly unknown adventures that Jack London had as a young man. If you've read Call of the Wild, (and if you haven't, what's wrong with you? Get thee to a library!) you know that London (the real one):

A) admired dogs/wolves and the spirit of the wilderness and
B) was not adverse to writing violence.

Golden and Lebbon keep to that legacy quite well.

Young Jack London sets out for the Yukon to experience the untamed land and to attempt the hunt for gold. At first he is accompanied by his sister's husband, who is older than him by almost fifty years. (No, really, fifty years.) His brother-in-law, realizing he will not survive the journey if he attempts it, leaves all the supplies and hope on Jack. Our intrepid hero is not deterred, and sets off into the wild alone. Meeting a couple of kindred spirits on the way, Jack and his compatriots soon run afoul of men who prove to be almost as wild as the land they're exploring, or so they think. Dark creatures lurk deep in the undiscovered country, creatures that are very hungry and take familiar shapes before devouring their prey. Jack must overcome all the dangers the Yukon has to offer: man, nature, the supernatural, and the wildness within himself if he is to ever return home to California.

As far as characters go, Jack can be a difficult one to live with for as much as he carries the story. Jack asks of himself several times, "Who is Jack London?" at a couple of places I felt like the authors weren't sure, either. Jack is young and impulsive, which makes sense in a seventeen year old boy who is on his own. However, he also comes off as cold and completely uncaring towards his companions in places you'd expect a little concern or compassion. The authors give us a pretty promising secondary character named Merritt (which is awesome) who really gets the short end of the stick as far as development from the authors and sympathy/concern from Jack. Jack is also learning to communicate with the wild, including a wolf that has seemingly supernatural capabilities.

Maybe I wanted too much from Jack as a character, but I really struggled through the middle of the book.

It paid off.

The end beastie that Jack tangles with is absolutely hair-raising, spine-tingling, read-through-your-fingers terrifying. This is the part at which I was shouting "EW! Ew, ew, EW!" repeatedly. I won't spoil what it is, but it is based in actual myth/lore, and I may never camp in the north.

The last quarter of the book is stuffed with all the things I was hoping for throughout, and it was a good payoff for my reading investment.

(But seriously. Ew.)

If you like high outdoorsy adventure, historical supernatural folklore fiction, or Jack London, The Wild might be a tree for you to bark up. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

The Wild was published in 2011 by HarperCollins. According to Christopher Golden's website, 20th Century Fox has picked up the film rights to The Wild and the second book in the series, Sea Wolves.

There's also a hint of a third title to be added to the series later.

In my next post, I'll be recapping the awesomeness that was BEA2012 in the Big Apple, which I traveled to with my fab coworkers Amy and the very awesome Brtiney of I Eat Words and got to meet lots of bloggers and had a generally smashing time! 

Happy howling!
Er, reading!
Gabs

Review: The Iron King by Julie Kagawa

Okay!

So, fervent apologies for creating a blog and then disappearing into the void. I hear that's bad for business. I moved and had no internet (long story, boo installation scheduling) but now I have internet. Yay!

And I have an apartment, which is fun. It's certainly different.

For instance, the maintenance guys are here chillin' as I write this.

Well, they aren't chilling, per say, as much as they are...maintaining? They're super nice, though.

At any rate, I digress.

While I had no internet I did get quite a bit of reading done, and I made my first foray into a teen fiction dealing with the Fey.

And not just any fey, The Fey. Fey of Shakespearean proportions and epicness, who wage fearsome politics, magic, and have love affairs with humans. (Also optional: Terrifying or kidnapping said humans.)

I bought The Iron King as an ebook ages ago, but hadn't gotten around to reading it until recently. I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. Don't get me wrong, the cover is gorgeous and the premise sounded fun, but as much as I love Shakespeare (and I do love me some Shakespeare) I wasn't sure I wanted a whole story about an American Teen in King Oberon's Court.

Ye who fear Shakespeare, fear not! Kagawa's world building is magnificent - and no stuffiness to be found. (The Bard forgive me.)

Meghan Chase, our heroine, is an average teen girl whose insecurities and difficulties mostly stem from economical and social class issues. Her family is poor, and all her classmates are aware of it. Meghan at points seems to wear it as a badge of honor. She's not a genius, but she's smart. She doesn't think she's the hottest thing since sliced French bread, but she (as far as I remember) doesn't think she's the ugliest stick in the woods either, which I appreciated. I like my lead characters to have some semblance of self-confidence.

For example, after she discovers Robbie's true identity and he does his "trick" with the crows, I especially appreciated her total and complete freak out. It wasn't some ho-hum moment where she knew it all along or wasn't phased because he'd been her best friend forever. It's a legitimate what-the-heck-is-my-life-right-now moment and it's fantastic.

Also fantastic? Puck. He's hilarious and dangerous and is willing to defy his King to assist Meghan in her quest to rescue her little brother. *insert girly sigh here*

I also loved Ethan, Meghan's younger brother. He's absolutely adorable. Think:

Honey from Ouran High School Host Club 

 It's a little ridiculous how cute this kid is. (And yes, all you Ouran fans, I know Honey is like ...seventeen. Work with me.)

There's a lot of action and adventure in this story, which keeps it moving at almost break neck speed as Meghan and her companions try to navigate the NeverNever to accomplish her mission of finding Ethan and discovering her own identity in the world of the fey. Meghan grows as the story goes along, and she becomes pretty savvy, even if she makes a few unfortunate deals. (The fey take their deals very, very seriously.) All though, one such deal brings us the character Grimalkin, who is the most awesome cat. If this ever gets made into a movie, Alan Rickman needs to be the voice of Grimalkin. That's how awesome this cat is.

And yes, there is the complicated fact that Meghan finds herself attracted to the Winter Prince, Ash. I'm not overly fond of Ash in this first outing, but I'm willing to give him a chance in volumes to come.

Over all, I very much enjoyed the Iron King and will certainly be continuing on with the series to find out what happens to Meghan, Puck, Ash, and Grim.

The Iron King was first published by Harlequin Teen in 2010.

I give The Iron King four out of five stars and would recommend it to teens and YA readers who enjoy fantasy, action/adventure, and snarky cats.

Booking it,
Gabi

do what she please

Okay, so I'm the only person in North America not at the Hunger Games premiere tonight and this is tragic, mainly because I am super excited to see Lenny Kravitz as Cinna. 

And if I knew nothing about the Hunger Games, this alone would have me in line for a ticket: 

Seriously. 

I have read all three books, so I can also claim loftier reasons (and I definitely have other reasons) for wanting to see the film other than Lenny. Erm, Mr. Kravitz. 

All that to say that I really love reading and books and music and film and the mixing of all kinds of media. My name is Gabi and this will be my blog to follow my love of all of those things. But mostly books. 

I've worked libraries for a while and I've been at my current library for two and a half years. I can tell you that approximately 105 people are on hold for the first Hunger Games novel so it might be time to make a "while you're waiting" reading recommends list. 'Cause that's gonna take a while. 

My favorite books/authors right now are: 

- All of the Inspector Gamache novels by Louise Penny. She is an amazingly gifted writer and she crafts a terrific mystery. More importantly, you will absolutely fall in love with her characters and make your heart wrench with what happens to them. 

- The Seven Kingdoms trilogy by Kristin Cashore. A gorgeous YA series that takes you to the lands of the Seven Kingdoms and the Dells, you'll meet strong young women, gifted ones called Gracelings, Monsters, princes, the creepiest villain this side of Voldemort, and a librarian called Death. (Technically pronounced Deeth, but still. :D) 

- Anything and everything Sherlock Holmes. I fell in love with Holmes and Watson when I was twelve and never looked back. When they announced the BBC Sherlock I thought I wouldn't be able to take the idea of Sherlock in modern times but Holy Mother of Doyle it is the Best Adaptation Ever. The Brits make the best television. 

Not a book, but I also have a great love for: 

My Doctor is 11. Bow ties are cool. 

Mysteries and Young Adult are my two home genres, so I'll mainly be reviewing those. I do like to spice things up sometimes and throw some random historical fiction or romance or a western in there occasionally. One never knows. 

Thank you for stopping by and I'm extremely excited to meet everyone in the book blog-o-sphere and I hope you'll bear with me as I get this blog off the ground! 

Booking it, 

Gabi