Tag Archives: contemporary

Minis: YA Contemporaries

Time to catch up on some reviews! I’ve read some of these books months ago, but I never got around to reviewing them around that time. Here we go! :D

Amelia O’Donohue is So Not a Virgin by Helen Fitzgerald
Sourcebooks Fire, 217 pages

At this boarding school, even the wildest rumors don’t measure up to what’s really going on…

Rachel Ross is asthmatic and “more bottled up than ketchup,” but that’s fine. Nothing will prevent her from graduating at the top of her exclusive new boarding school and getting into Oxford.

Rachel refuses to be distracted by the present until she uncovers a shocking secret on campus. She realizes that someone is in desperate need of help and that she actually has something to share-and more friends than she knew.

With an utterly original, hilarious, and honest voice, Amelia O’Donohue delivers a sexy new boarding school tale with true heart-and a surprise ending you won’t forget.

This book had me at “asthma”. Being an asthmatic myself, I like reading about characters who deal with the same thing. Amelia O’Donohue Is So Not a Virgin sounds like a fun book from the title alone. Rachel Ross (sidenote: Friends reference, anyone? :D) is uptight…but that’s okay, because her parents finally allowed her to go to the boarding school she wanted, so she can go to Oxford. She works hard to be the best in class, until she discovers a secret that could totally change the life of someone in school…if only she can figure out who it is.

Did I say fun? Oh yes, it was, and I found myself smiling at several parts of the book. I realized, though, that Rachel is really uptight, and sometimes it gets tiring to be in her place. Loosen up a little, girl! I found myself getting annoyed at her for not even trying to reach out…until the mystery is uncovered. When the secret was revealed, I had a teeny tiny suspicion about who owned that secret, but I wasn’t sure. I mean, there were no clues! Until I got to the end, and I had to flip through some of the previous parts to look for proof. Talk about mind games, Helen Fitzgerald. Well played.

Amelia O’Donohue is So Not a Virgin is a fun and smart book that talks about friends and family and a lot of mystery that can only happen in a boarding school. It’s a quick escape, and I enjoyed reading it. Oh, and this is not about Amelia O’Donohue. ;)

Rating: ★★★★★

The Treasure Map of Boys by E. Lockhart
Ruby Oliver # 3
Delacorte Books for Young Readers, 244 pages

Ruby is back at Tate Prep, and it’s her thirty-seventh week in the state of Noboyfriend. Her panic attacks are bad, her love life is even worse, and what’s more:

·        Noel is writing her notes,
·        Jackson is giving her frogs,
·        Gideon is helping her cook,
·        and Finn is making her brownies.
·        Rumors are flying, and Ruby’s already sucky reputation is heading downhill.

Not only that, she’s also:

·        running a bake sale,
·        learning the secrets of heavy metal therapy,
·        encountering some seriously smelly feet,
·        defending the rights of pygmy goats,
·        and bodyguarding Noel from unwanted advances.

Ruby struggles to secure some sort of mental health, to understand what constitutes a real friendship, and—if such a thing exists—to find true love.

I liked the first two Ruby Oliver books I read, and I wasn’t planning to buy The Treasure Map of Boys, until one day I was left waiting somewhere without a book. So I finally got this so I would know what happened to Ruby and her state of Noboyfriend. In this book, Ruby seems like she’s back to square one, but this time there’s Noel. And Hutch. And Jackson again. And there’s lots of baking, and Nora and friendship that may or may not be ruined because of boys.

Oh poor Ruby. It was nice going back into the Tate Prep world, but I really, really want Ruby to have her happy ending. But I’m not even sure if her happy ending should involve a boy, because I think she should find a way to be happy by herself first before going out of the state of Noboyfriend. Not that I personally know, of course, but I wanted to give Ruby a hug every time she gets a nervous breakdown in this book! She becomes a bit more mature here, but even so there were wise and stupid decisions made. In a way, I think there’s a little Ruby Oliver in all of us.

As always, I liked how real Ruby’s voice was here, and funnily enough, her thoughts are not just thoughts of teenage girls but also sometimes, thoughts of someone who’s way past that age. Ehem. :p I loved the other characters, too, especially Ruby’s friends. I didn’t like how she treated some of them…but high school, oh high school. The pettiness makes me cringe, but I can’t say I didn’t go through the same incidents Oh, Ruby, you are not alone! I’m looking forward to reading the last book in the series, and I really, really hope that she gets the ending she really and truly deserves.

Rating: ★★★★★

Amplified by Tara Kelly
Henry, Holt and Co, 293 pages

When privileged 17-year-old Jasmine gets kicked out of her house, she takes what is left of her savings and flees to Santa Cruz to pursue her dream of becoming a musician. Jasmine finds the ideal room in an oceanfront house, but she needs to convince the three guys living there that she’s the perfect roommate and lead guitarist for their band, C-Side. Too bad she has major stage fright and the cute bassist doesn’t think a spoiled girl from over the hill can hack it. . .

I like music, but I can hardly play any instrument or even really sing (except in karaoke sessions), but for some reason, I love books about music. Or books with characters who are in a band. I don’t know why — perhaps it’s because I secretly dreamed of being in a band? Or is it because one of my dream jobs is to become a band’s manager? But I love reading books with them, so I’ve been wanting Amplified by Tara Kelly for a while now. Thanks to Celina for giving me a copy!

Amplified is about 17-year old Jasmine Kiss, who was kicked out of her home after saying she wanted to defer college so she can become a musician. She goes to Santa Cruz to find a place to stay and stumbles upon C-Side, an industrial rock band looking for a new guitarist ASAP and offering a room to rent, as well. Jasmine tries out, even if the band wants a male guitarist, and she has no idea what she will do with her stage fright when they told her they need the new guitarist for an upcoming show.

Just like the other books with a band that I have read, Amplified is full of rocking fun. I liked Jasmine, even if she was a little too uptight. She stuck to what she believed in, and she was so out of her comfort zone in her new place that I almost wished she’d give up and go back home because some of the things they tell her were painful. I also liked the other band members, especially Veta and Felix, who were both darlings. The romance was also well-developed, and there was good enough tension and slow enough development that made it believable — and Sean very crushable. ;) I liked their band dynamic, although I wished I could’ve seen a bit more of what makes the other characters tick — like more conversations between them, instead of just Bryn being almost as uptight as Jasmine or you know, having too many band practice.

But overall, Amplified is a novel full of rocking band fun and music. I still wish I could hear some of the songs they sing, though, just for the fuller experience of reading something like this. The author is writing a companion novel for Amplified entitled Encore. Sign me up, please — I want more of C-Side!

Rating: ★★★★★

The Comeback Kiss

Reunited

2 Replies

Reunited by Hilary Weisman Graham
Simon & Schuster, 336 pages

1 Concert
2000 Miles
3 Ex-Best Friends

Alice, Summer, and Tiernan are ex-best friends.

Back in middle school, the three girls were inseparable. They were also the number one fans of the rock band Level3.

But when the band broke up, so did their friendship. Summer ran with the popular crowd, Tiernan was a rebellious wild-child, and Alice spent high school with her nose buried in books.

Now, just as the girls are about to graduate, Level3 announces a one-time-only reunion show.

Even though the concert’s 2000 miles away, Alice buys three tickets on impulse. And as it turns out, Summer and Tiernan have their own reasons for wanting to get out of town. Good thing Alice’s graduation gift (a pea-green 1976 VW camper van known as the Pea Pod) is just the vehicle to get them there.

But on the long drive cross-country, the girls hit more than a few bumps in the road. Will their friendship get an encore or is the show really over?

I got my first taste of boyband love when I was in Grade 5, when I first saw the Backstreet Boys perform Get Down on a noontime show when they stopped by the country. I had no idea who they were, but I thought the song was catchy, so I asked for a cassette tape (!!!) of their first album. I fell in love with them (specifically, Nick Carter!) ever since then. I had several friends who were also fans, but I think I was the biggest fan among them. By high school, some of them have moved on from the boyband phase to other pop stars, while I stayed happy in my teenybopper bubblegum pop world a little while longer.

In Reunited, we meet Alice, Summer and Tiernan, best friends who share the love for the rock band Level3. That is, until high school, anyway — when Level3 disbanded and their friendship dissolved for reasons that they didn’t really want to remember. Alice is the good girl, the one who held them together and would want to remain friends with them if things didn’t fall apart. There’s Summer, the budding poet who eventually became Miss Popular. Then there’s Tiernan, who’s the school’s resident rebel, and this rebellion reaches even in her home life. When Level3 announced that they will have a reunion concert, Alice buys tickets without thinking and convinces Summer and Tiernan to go on a road trip with her to watch this one-time reunion concert. So here we have three (ex) friends, a band, and a road trip — oh, I am definitely sold.

The story switches from the point of view of each of the girls, which gives us a pretty equal glimpse of how they feel about each other. There’s this big mystery of sorts about why they fell apart from the first place — things were alluded to, but I couldn’t really guess what happened that made them swear off each other like that. The voices of the three girls were pretty distinct, and I liked being in Summer’s head the most because it felt like she had the most to lose and the first to let the trip go. That almost came true, and in the end, I was happy how she pulled through for the two other girls, and I felt sympathetic with what really happened between the three of them.

As with every road trip, there’s craziness: from an ex-convict to having no gas to falling in love/in crush, to dance contests and parties. There was this one part that felt a little too hard to believe, and I felt like it was used to make that one thing happened, and I wasn’t really completely sold. It set a lot of things in motion, that made the ending a little bit more hilarious than I expected.

I’m not sure how I feel about the ending. It was cute, but it felt like it was a little bit on the wish-fulfillment side. It’s the stuff my high school fan girl dreams were made of, actually, which is probably why I feel like I can’t really believe it. But maybe that’s just me. It’s not like some of my fangirl dreams never came true, anyway.

Oh and as much as I like reading books that has bands and music on it (Audrey, Wait! and Five Flavors of Dumb, for example), it feels a bit hard to really get into the music when I don’t know how the songs sound like. The lyrics were a nice touch, but I wish books like these come up with a soundtrack of sorts. Although it might be a little bit difficult for this one because Level3 has a pretty big discography in the story. ^^

Reunited is okay — quick and fun and interesting. While I didn’t really feel like it’s totally awesome and groundbreaking, I enjoyed reading it. It’s the type of book I would recommend to anyone who has ever been a big fan of any kind of band at some point of their teenage life. Better if you share it with friends who love the same band, too. :)

Rating: ★★★★★

Other reviews:
Buried in Books
Kirkus

Every Day

3 Replies

Every Day by David Levithan
Knopf Books for Young Readers, 304 pages

Every day a different body. Every day a different life. Every day in love with the same girl.

There’s never any warning about where it will be or who it will be. A has made peace with that, even established guidelines by which to live: Never get too attached. Avoid being noticed. Do not interfere.

It’s all fine until the morning that A wakes up in the body of Justin and meets Justin’s girlfriend, Rhiannon. From that moment, the rules by which A has been living no longer apply. Because finally A has found someone he wants to be with—day in, day out, day after day.

I can’t exactly say I’m a huge, huge fan of David Levithan’s books, although I admit that I like reading his stuff. I mean, I enjoyed The Lover’s Dictionary immensely and I am rather charmed by Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares, but it doesn’t make me feel like I would go out and read everything he ever wrote. For Mr. Levithan, I still rely a bit on reviews before I actually get one of his new books again.

And that is why I got myself a copy of Every Day. Truth be told, the summary isn’t enough to get to me — I tend to avoid paranormal things unless I’m watching the series or I strike a particular mood, and Every Day‘s synopsis kind of reminds me of those insta-love things that I don’t really like. Granted, it seems more sci-fi than paranormal, but it wasn’t until I read Wendy’s review of the book that kind of sealed the deal for me.

So A is a…being. Something. He wakes up in a different body everyday, and he has no attachments, no nothing. He cannot afford to have them because nothing is permanent in his world anyway. Until one morning, when he wakes up in the body of Justin and meets his girlfriend, Rhiannon. Suddenly, there’s something that makes him want to stay — and it’s Rhiannon.

We don’t get explanations why A jumps from one body to another, so we pretty much have to accept what he can do at the start. It was a bit hard for me to swallow, especially when my mind gets confused when A is in a female body but in my mind he is still a male. Then I recount his/her interactions with Rhiannon, and it gets even more confusing. There’s a lot to question, and if you’re sci-fi buff, you’d wish for an explanation, and that was never really provided in the book.

However, there is something about the way Levithan writes. Just like Dash in Dash and Lily and that unnamed narrator in The Lover’s Dictionary, Levithan’s words captured me and made me dog-ear so many pages in the book. Case in point:

What is it about the moment you fall in love? How can such a small measure of time contain such enormity?…The moment you fall in love feels like it has centuries behind it, generations – all of them rearranging themselves so that this precise, remarkable intersection could happen. In your heart, in your bones, no matter how silly you know it is you feel that everything has been leading to this, all the secret arrows were pointing here, the universe and time itself crafted this long ago, and you are just now realizing it, you are just now arriving at the place you were always meant to be. (p. 23)

This is what love does: It makes you want to rewrite the world. It makes you want to choose the characters, build the scenery, guide the plot. The person you love sits across from you, and you want to do everything in your power to make it possible, endlessly possible. And when it’s just the two of you, alone in a room, you can pretend that this is how it is, this is how it will be. (p. 175)

Every Day had the right amount of angst and hope and sentimentality to make me sigh at the early parts of February. Some book club friends and I had a readalong for it, and we had a very interesting discussion about love, about A and if there’s anything selfish about falling in love. I honestly felt sad for A because he cannot afford to have memories, and so he clings so hard to Rhiannon because she seems to be the only good thing that he can hold on to.

It’s sad, and somehow you knew it was a doomed thing from the start. I wondered how Levithan would end it, and I was really pleased with what he did with the ending. It seemed the most right thing to do. It wasn’t the easiest decision, but perhaps it was the best for the both of them. It doesn’t make it less sad, though.

But…that’s love. More than being a decision, love is choosing what’s best for the other person, even if it is at the cost of your own happiness. I read this article sometime last year that hits this right on the head (emphasis mine): How do you truly know whether you are committed to this person and that you truly love him or her? Here’s how you know: Your love is directly proportional to your willingness to act unselfishly, to even let the person think less of you, if in doing so you are serving their spiritual advancement.

Every Day isn’t the kind of book that will give you all the warm fuzzies, but I think it’s a pretty good one even so. And while I still can’t say I’m a huge David Levithan fan after this, I will still be on the look out for his books, if only to read passages such as the ones above and one like this:

When first love ends, most people eventually know there will be more to come. They are not through with love. Love is not through with them. It will never be the same as the first, but it will be better in different ways.

Rating: ★★★★★

My copy: paperback, bought from NBS

Other reviews:
taking a break
The Midnight Garden
The Readventurer

Queen of the Clueless

5 Replies

Queen of the Clueless by Mina V. Esguerra
Interim Goddess of Love # 2
Bright Girl Books

If you’ve been feeling neglected by the Goddess of Love lately, don’t worry — Hannah Maquiling, college sophomore, is in training to take over. The Original Goddess is missing, but Hannah is Interim Goddess now, and she should figure out how to solve humanity’s love problems soon. Quin (God of the Sun) is still her mentor, still really hot, but apparently isn’t as honest about his other earthly relationships as she thought. It’s frustrating, and enough to make her check out possibilities with Diego (God of the Sea) and Robbie (Cute Human).

In the meantime, she’s decided to spend some of her precious training time helping to break up a relationship, instead of putting one together. Why? Because the girl in question happens to be her best friend Sol, whose boyfriend is stealing not just from her, but from other people on campus. Sol didn’t exactly summon the Goddess, but this is what power over Love is for, right? Surely it’s not just about matchmaking, but ending doomed relationships too. (Even when it’s not what people want.)

Hannah Maquiling is still the interim Goddess of Love, and this time around, she’s taken her best friend Sol as her project. Not because she was summoned, but because Sol is her best friend and if her goddess powers can help, then she would willingly use it. But instead of getting Sol together with someone, Hannah is actually trying to split them up. She’s all for her best friend’s happiness, yes, but not it if involves a boyfriend who steals from people. That’s what the Goddess of Love would do, right?

After a long wait, the second book of Mina V. Esguerra’s Interim Goddess of Love series is finally out! I was really, really excited to read this that even if I said I would finish reading Les Miserables first before anything else, I dove right in. I was so excited to read about Hannah, and the cute guys (god and human) around her. Hee. Queen of the Clueless is still as entertaining as the first book, despite having a slightly different tone. I liked how there seemed to be a villain in this book, someone who seemed like a complete mystery to them, even the gods. Somehow this had less of the cutesy romance and more of the fantasy. While I still kind of wanted more swoon, I think seeing more of how the gods and goddesses’ powers work was also fun.

There was more Diego here than Quin, although since we’re in Hannah’s head, Quin was always still there. My heart went out to Hannah at the final parts of the book — girl, I think most of us have been where you are, too! Except maybe we didn’t fall in love with the God of the Sun. I liked how we got to know Diego here, though, and it feels like it’s always more fun when he’s around. Robbie the Cute Human is also growing on me, and I may be thisclose to changing my side from Quin to Robbie. But who knows what will happen by the third book?

This had more of a cliffhanger ending than the first one, which I understood because like in Mira Grant’s Deadline, the second book is really a bridge to the end. If you’re looking for things to make sense in this one…well, you won’t, not so much. No loose ends were tied in this, so it’s really more of Hannah finding out more about her powers and the complications of her feelings. But more theories can be formed (and if you have some, let’s talk about it. Because I kind of need to talk to someone about my theories, haha). And I think an indicator of a good second book in a trilogy is when you want to get the next book in your hands now now now when you’re done with it. Because I kind of want to get the last book in my hands now now now. :)

Queen of the Clueless is currently available in ebook format on Amazon, but there will be an international paperback version with that cool cover up there (IGoL has a pretty new cover, too!). The Philippine edition of Interim Goddess of Love published by Summit books should be out by Valentine’s Day, too — that’s yesterday, so I think it’s time to hunt for copies in local bookstores soon. :D

Interim Goddess of Love – Summit edition

Rating: ★★★★★

My copy: Kindle edition

Other reviews:
Chachic’s Book Nook
reading is the ultimate aphrodisiac

Reviews of other Interim Goddess of Love books:
#1 Interim Goddess of Love

One More Page

because reading "one more page" is never really enough :)

Tag Archives: contemporary

Minis: YA Contemporaries

The Comeback Kiss

Reunited

Every Day

Queen of the Clueless