The Forbidden Orchid by Sharon Biggs Waller

TL:DR lucrative flower hunting was a thing

TBR #1330, added Jul 18 2015

finished 7/21/16

I honestly didn't think I would finish The Forbidden Orchid. Historical fiction isn't really my type in the first place, and I had a whole bunch of motivation issues trying to read anything, let alone the library books I'd already renewed and not touched. 

The book was really slow to pick up steam. I also hated how Elodie had no autonomy -- which I understand is a result of the time period, but it was frustrating nonetheless. I'd read up to page 80 and still didn't have much of a reason to continue on because her society was like "lol nice try, being a girl in this day and time." 

(And yet somehow the world still feels like that sometimes. It's awful.) 

The book does pretty well at keeping the pace up once Elodie comes to the decision to go with her father back to China. Elodie makes some decisions and meets some people and it became much more interesting for me after that. The plot was definitely more concise and directed. 

I'm totally unfamiliar with the history of plant-hunting, or even the time period in general, so I can't say how historically accurate it is. It felt accurate to me, but I'm not a reliable opinion for that. 

I wasn't really sold on the romance aspect, but I could appreciate the relationship they had otherwise. They seemed like a good pair. (Also, I'm a sucker for the trope they used. I thought it was done nicely.) There were hints of a love triangle at times, but it was refreshing in that it never became a Team vs Team thing. It was a true triangle. More than once if you really think about it, but hey, I never felt bitter about the inclusion of them, and normally I despise them. I think it was done tactfully and realistically. 

TL;DR I wasn't really in the target audience in terms of preferred genre, but it was still a solid 3 stars for me. I think it would be enjoyable if you like 1860s (right?) England and the aesthetic of exploring uncharted territory Lewis-and-Clark style. 

(I probably mixed up two different significant periods in time. Feel free to correct me. I liked history class but I've never had a great sense of time itself, if you couldn't tell.) 

I Woke Up Dead at the Mall by Judy Sheehan

TL;DR teenagers misusing the afterlife

TBR #867, added May 11 2014

finished 7/24/16

I am apparently extremely in the minority about this book, at least on Goodreads. It took me until page 3 of the reviews to find one I agreed with. I did not enjoy this, and honestly I should've just DNFed it. 

This is going to be a really bitter review. I apologize in advance. 

The premise itself was interesting enough, but the execution was anything but. Starting with the setting of the Mall of America. If all these kids in the story are from NYC, why are you sending them to Minnesota? And why are there only four kids throughout most of the story? I find it really hard to believe that only two kids from the city died and ended up there over the course of the book's time period. New York is huge. You can't tell me only two kids were murdered in the (weeks? months? who knows!) since Sarah was murdered. 

(I also don't think the Mall of America was used to its full extent. Sure, I haven't been there since middle school, but I never experienced any kind of nostalgia for it. The setting wasn't built up enough to feel anything more than "okay, they're at a large mall. We get it.")

And oh man, I hated Sarah's narration from the beginning. It didn't feel authentic at all and felt like it was trying too hard to be ~cool~ and ~teenager-like~, more like MG narration by someone who doesn't actually know how kids sound in real life. It was choppy at times and honestly, Sarah was not a sympathetic 1st person narrator. 

None of the characters were sympathetic, really. They never felt like real people. They were too one-dimensional for most of the book, and then when they did actually change, it didn't feel earned. I couldn't tell you what specifically had led to their character changes. (I mean, this could be because Sarah wasn't there at the time, but I think there could've been other ways to show it as well.) 

Nick was interesting when he first showed up and was all flirty, but there was nothing supporting the romance Sarah had with him. He never did anything that really earned him this affection. He just kind of existed and got Sarah to fawn all over him. Their romance only influenced the plot negatively and got them into situations that a) could've been easily avoided and b) weren't helpful to advancing the storyline. Their one big fight also had little to no basis and felt forced in order to move the plot along, rather than make a point about their relationship.

The paranormal aspects also missed a lot of their potential. Sarah's "Knowing" was only used conveniently, despite how she saw it, and was more like a convenient plot point than anything useful or hurtful (like she swore it was up until the last, like, three chapters). The Boy was disappointing as a character and was honestly useless as an authority figure considering how much the kids disrespected their (and Bertha's) commands and got away with it. I also don't think The Boy and angels should've been used as concepts in the book when there's no other mention of any religion or religious ideas / figures. Ghosts to me are a very anti-religious concept and the mall-walkers and other broken-record-ghosts don't mesh with what I know about various religions' concepts of afterlives. (I guess you can make an argument for Purgatory, but it didn't feel much like that in the story.) 

The ending was also super dissatisfying after all the book built it up to be. Sarah spends all this time trying to do something, and even gets the other kids on board with helping her with her narrative while rarely helping theirs, and then the solution they finally complete is lackluster and doesn't wrap anything up that well. 

TL;DR I was consistently disappointed by how the book was executed and I'm upset that I made myself read the whole thing only to find a fall-flat ending and unsatisfying character growth. 

This is also my first one-star review for this year. I'm surprised my good-book streak lasted this long. 

Saving Montgomery Sole by Mariko Tamaki

TL;DR Monty is a metaphorical shaken-up soda

TBR #1560, added May 7 2016*

finished 7/21/16

I am ashamed of the fact that I had this book checked out since May 18th and only managed to get around to reading it after renewing it twice (the limit at my library) and forgetting to return it on time. I finally got around to reading it because it was a day overdue and I had to run an entire load of laundry before I could get dressed for the day.

(On a related note, you can get through this in about 2 hours. It's a good light read.) 

I'm glad for the company it made while I was waiting for the laundry to finish, but I'm not sure I would've had the motivation otherwise. It was a good contemporary novel that felt real in that the plot progression felt organic, but the downside to that is that the plot didn't feel entirely unified. I didn't quite understand the point of the book until I reached the end. 

Which could go either way, depending on if you like being along for the ride over reading with a purpose. 

(To clarify the plot progression thing: I've found with a lot of contemporaries that if there's a chapter that ends with the MC saying something like "everything was perfect" or "in this moment, I was content", there's a 99% chance that the next chapter is immediately something to ruin that. There was never a setup like that in Saving Montgomery Sole and I wasn't able to tell by the narration setup whether the next chapter would bring something good or bad for her. Which is good! I don't like whiplash chapters like most contemps have around the climax.) 

The characters didn't quite feel organic, though. I think the book was a little too short to explore anyone with any depth. We got to see some of them in different lights but it was never as long as I would've liked. I did appreciate the background for Monty's parents explored within the context of the story. I was glad that we got to see her parents as a happy and established couple, and how they fit into the world, but that it wasn't the entire story. I feel like so many LGBT+ books focus so much on the troubles of being gay that we rarely ever explore them just being happy and existing like people.

Honestly, my favorite thing is that there was no romance for Monty. I didn't realize it until I'd finished the book. It was just so natural that I never noticed it, and I really wish more books were like this. This story worked perfectly well without a romance and I loved that the focus was on Monty's relationships with her family and friends. So many contemporaries focus heavily on love interests, too, and it gets really tiring as an ace girl. Saving Montgomery Sole gets major thumbs-ups from me for that. 

TL;DR it's most likely not your thing if you don't like character-driven plots, but it's a contemp with no romance and I'm gonna be happy about that for a long time. 

(I'm a little deprived.) 

*I added this book to my TBR after I read its Google Play sample. I was lucky enough to find a copy at my library soon after that. I can officially say that downloading a bunch of Google Play samples at once did actually help me find a book I enjoyed. 

The Devil's Intern by Donna Hosie

TL;DR death and time travel paradoxes

TBR #853, added May 8th 2014

finished 7/18/16

I picked up The Devil's Intern for about the same reason as I did Devil and the Bluebird. (That about encompasses the amount of YA books my library has about Hell, so at least this streak was short-lived.) I don't think I realized it was already on my TBR when I checked it out.

I came close to returning it to the library without finishing it. The concept was interesting, but the book wasn't very compelling overall. I had to push myself to keep picking the book up until I got past halfway through. I was at least invested in what was going on by that point, but I wish it would've happened sooner.

The characters didn't feel all that deep to me, and I think the worldbuilding in general was a little lacking. The scenes were kind of generic in my head as I was reading and I would've liked to see more of the concept of Hell running as a corporation. (Also, there were very few details of where they were in the human world other than when they were in New York City. They went to DC and I feel like I only know where they were because I live here, and even then it was weak. There was no mention of the Mall or any of the other monuments besides just Capitol Hill.)

Honestly, I think I'm most disappointed in how Medusa didn't feel consistent. Her characterization kept painting her as bitter and I never got the sense that she felt anything nicer than mild irritation with Mitchell, let alone any romance. Also, she was unreasonably jealous over the girl Mitchell kissed for never telling him how she felt. She felt like a caricature of a teenage girl and I didn't connect with her even though I really wanted to. Teenage girls really aren't moody like that.

I also wasn't happy with the end result of all the time traveling. I liked the logic that was initially set up behind the time-turner's mechanics (I can't spell the actual word for the device), but I felt like the ending of the book completely went against all of the setup and unraveled the legitimacy of what they experienced. You can't mix different kinds of time travel easily without creating huge logical holes.

Looking at Goodreads, it looks I'm in the minority on how I feel. I don't regret reading it, but I feel like it could've been done a lot better. I forgot this is part of a series, and I do want to see if the concept is explored any better, so I am planning on continuing with The Devil's Dreamcatcher. I'm not setting my expectations bar that high though.

TL;DR it's a unique concept but I felt like the characters and the world in general were really underdeveloped and missed a lot of their potential to make the story hella. (Ha. I'm funny.)

Devil and the Bluebird by Jennifer Mason-Black

TL;DR Blue searches for her sister and finds herself, too

TBR #1392, added Jul 22 2015

finished 7/15/16

I was cised to get my hands on Devil and the Bluebird. I've been really interested in the "deal with the devil" trope in stories because of working on Casanova, and the premise is so good that I would've picked it up either way. 

Unfortunately I fell into a reading slump about halfway through the book and almost returned it to the library without finishing it x( But I didn't! I picked it up again after renewing it for a second time with the determination to finish it. Honestly, once I read a couple pages past where I'd been stuck, it was really easy to finish. 

I loved how character-driven the book was. Blue and her family were so compelling as characters, and I loved how their relationships were shown. They weren't perfect but they were still a family, and they fell victim to human nature. Blue's character growth was very organic and I enjoyed reading about her journey.

Though I have to be honest, the physical journey was hard for me to read. It confronts a lot about human nature, both good and bad, and I had to put the book down a few times because I didn't want to think too much about the negative aspects. So much has happened in the month and a half that I've had this book in my possession and I wasn't ready to face the struggles Blue did while facing the aftermath of terrorist attacks and police brutality in the real world. 

So that's a lot of the reason I had to put the book down for a couple weeks. I think Devil and the Bluebird handled its topics delicately, and it definitely shows such a positive side to human nature, too, but it was a little too much for me to handle for a period of time. 

I'm also really happy with the turn the book took shortly after I picked it back up. It got progressively more positive and uplifting after that point and it ended so perfectly. I came very close to crying when I finished reading. 

Devil and the Bluebird was also a much better experience with magical realism than I had with A Fierce and Subtle Poison. The magical aspects aren't explained much better, but in Devil and the Bluebird there are at least hints of where the magic comes from and how it is bigger than just Blue's journey. 

TL;DR it's a little gritty at times but it the ending is definitely worth it. Devil and the Bluebird is definitely a "the journey is more important than the destination", character-driven book. I loved it. 

A Fierce and Subtle Poison by Samantha Mabry

TL;DR Puerto Rican magical realism

TBR #906, added Jun 23 2014

finished 7/5/16

I'm a complete sucker for magical realism / urban fantasy, so I was excited to get my hands on this. I was also really curious about Puerto Rico, since we passed up our chance to go in December. 

The worldbuilding was definitely strong in that I had a clear picture of all of the settings, which is usually pretty rare for me. I normally can't keep a good mental picture of book settings without any pictures. (I'm pitiful.) As for the magical realism ...

I can say it gave me the same vibe as Like Water for Chocolate, which I read in my AP Spanish class junior year. However, we read it entirely in Spanish, and as a non-native speaker a lot of the book went way over my head. (Our teacher also didn't explain it was magical realism, so I was "???" most of the time. I just read the Wikipedia page and am even more confused.) Anyway, my point is that I feel like the magic aspect of Isabel wasn't used as much as it could have. 

(Maybe the point of magical realism is to leave the magical aspect as a complete mystery? I don't know. I don't have a very good track record with the genre so far.) 

The characters were interesting, but I honestly was ever attached to Marisol, and half of that was because of the events of the book. (I feel really weird for admitting that.) I liked that the main character was a guy, and I thought he was written well, but he was also really impulsive and kind of hard to connect with. I didn't agree with the direction he took in the second half of the book. His friends also weren't the greatest people in the world, though to their defense they only ever saw Lucas for like three months out of the year, so I figured they weren't tight-knit with him. 

The end of the book felt kind of anticlimactic after all the drama / action in the middle of the book, and I didn't have any of my questions answered by the end. The story just kind of stops and then picks up with a small epilogue that still doesn't answer anything I was curious about. 

Even with all that, though, I still rated the book 4 stars. The aesthetic is strong and it did live up to the creepy vibe I was getting from the blurb without being a suspense book. (I'm a baby. This book met the higher end of my creepy-tolerance scale.) It does also have a good mystery aspect, especially if you don't mind when things are still left open by the time the narration finishes. It kept me interested enough to finish when I haven't managed to finish the other four library books I've now renewed twice. 

TL;DR I'm not really sure what my final feelings are on the book between the magical realism and the ending, but I definitely think it's worth a try if you like mystery and / or unsettling aesthetics. 

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

TL;DR very Halloween aesthetic

TBR #69, added Jan 11 2013

finished 7/2/16

I bought my copy of The Raven Boys from the thrift store in surprisingly good condition. It sat around in my room for a couple months before I started reading it at the end of March, put it aside around page 40, and sat again until I took it along for a long day trip. 

I'm really glad of my decision to take it along to our family gathering. I read it most of the time instead of socializing lol. I also read it in the car as long as I could before it got too dark, and then finished off the last couple chapters once we got home. 

The Raven Boys is definitely something that you should read uninterrupted. I should've started over instead of picking up from where I'd left off in March, and I probably missed out on some details by reading it on and off at the gathering. (Especially the details that separate the boys from each other. I can't really match them to their names.) I'm definitely planning on re-reading it. 

I think the series is definitely worth the hype, at least based on the first book. It's got a really solid aesthetic, and once I started to understand what was really going on, I didn't want to put the book down. I'm still not sure how to describe The Raven Boys, and I definitely couldn't tell you what the whole series is truly about, but dang am I on board with this fandom. 

I've also seen a lot of cool fanart from cherryandsisters on instagram (tumblr) and some amazing aesthetic boards on Pinterest (none of which I can track down right now in my sea of bookmarked boards). These were definitely half of the reason I decided to pick up the book again after I neglected it for my library books. 

The Raven Boys probably isn't something to read late at night, unless you like potentially creeping yourself out. It's definitely more anticipation of something happening than scary stuff actually happening (for the most part). I really want to see what happens in the subsequent books. 

I'm pretty sure the last book in the series came out recently, so I think this would be a really good series to marathon. I'm really hoping the library has available copies, or that I'll get some lucky finds at the thrift store soon. I haven't read Stiefvater's other series but I'm thinking about trying it out after my success with this. 

TL;DR it's a great setup to a series and I'm definitely hyped to continue with it. 

(On an unrelated note, I'm pretty sure this is the highest book on my TBR I've read since I started keeping track of it OTL. I really need to get better at this.) EDIT: I went back through my notes and found that North of Beautiful was #49 and Winter was #17, so The Raven Boys is actually like the third-highest. 

The Square Root of Summer by Harriet Reuter Hapgood

TL;DR a summer of regret and wormholes

TBR #1665, added Jun 10th 2016

finished 6/29/16

The Fierce Reads twitter has promoted The Square Root of Summer a lot, which was the majority of the reason I picked it up. (I do have to admit that their promotion didn't win me over on it, though. I wasn't expecting to like it as much as I did. Twitter isn't the best medium because of the character limit.)

I was initially drawn in because of Gottie's voice. I really connected with her narration, and that alone usually kept me reading when my attention tried to wander off and do other things. I did do a lot of pick-up-put-downs, though. It's pretty easy to jump back into, but my copy from the library was bigger than I'm used to and I had to search longer to figure out where I left off on the page. (That's my own fault, though.)

I also connected a lot to how Gottie felt over the course of the book, with how her life was changing even without the wormholes. The book felt especially melancholic to me because of that.

Reuter Hapgood does a really good job with explaining the science of what Gottie is experiencing. I've landed on the Wikipedia pages for a lot of the topics, both out of research and Wiki Adventures, and she explained them a lot more concisely than Wikipedia had. It's not hard sci-fi, so you should be able to easily understand what's going on even if you suck with science like I do.

Also, the illustrations in the book were both cute and very helpful. I wish more YA books had little illustrations in them tbh.

The timeline was a little hard for me to wrap my head around, especially once Gottie starts to understand what the wormholes are doing, but that's probably a problem on my end. I wasn't really expecting a closed-loop paradox based on how the book was progressing. I'm definitely up to re-reading the book to see if I can follow it better a second time around, and I like the idea of buying a copy to keep it around. I can see myself re-reading this more than once.

I'm not usually that good with matching songs to books, "Let's See How Far We've Come" By Matchbox 20 seems to fit really well! (It came up on shuffle while I was writing this post lol, thank u Amazon Prime Music)

TL;DR it's melancholic but also pretty light (which I wasn't expecting) and I liked the time travel of it. I definitely liked Gottie as the main character and I'd love to own a copy of the book in the future.

Casanova Progress: Apr - Jun 2016

These posts are supposed to hold me accountable to working on Casanova. I've been trying to get it to a point where it can be read beginning to end, but it's been an absolute struggle so far. And I'm still not holding myself accountable enough to the more behind-the-scenes stuff like actually planning where the plot is going.

I obviously know what I'm doing as a writer. 

I posted these two charts in my April Camp NaNo reflection, but here they are again! I did really well with writing consistently for Casanova the entire month. I honestly rely on NaNo because otherwise I'm likely to make excuses. NaNo works for me because I'm a sore loser when it comes to goals lol

I slacked off after April. I felt kind of worn out from Camp and wrapping up the spring semester, so I didn't set any specific goals during May. I still had some really good writing days though! 

I didn't get much accomplished for Casanova during June, also because of burnout. (And I let myself slack even more.) I worked on two other projects this month, which probably also contributed to it. It's fun to work on a bunch of different writing projects at once, but it means that none of them get all that much attention. 

Anyway, I did have some good epiphanies about how to improve the story and some of the characters. It's developed a lot so far compared to how I was writing it back in November and I'm really grateful for it. I'm also really grateful for what inspired it, too, since I don't think it would've happened without how my May and June transpired.

I also did manage to name some more characters and get a slightly better idea of a timeline, so I'm hoping that July's Camp NaNo will help me out a lot. (I'm doing well so far!) I definitely want to have a solid first chapter by the time school starts up again, but we'll see how that goes. I'm still really unsure of how I want to start the story in terms of Toni's narration.

Hopefully I'll have more posts about Casanova coming up soon! I've drafted a couple but I don't know when I'll finish them. (OTL.)

#murica: American Dystopian Book Recs

Because what better way to celebrate the 4th of July than by sharing some good dystopians set in our oh so wonderful country?

(lol I think I'm funny)

I know this list is totally biased, because most of the dystopians I've read take place in the US as it is. I'd love to do a list of ones not in the US in the future, but I think I need some more time to read and and find some more I can add to that list.

I excluded Divergent from this list because I'm assuming anyone interested in YA or dystopians has probably read it already. (If not, you're probably missing out.) The books below are ones I think deserve a little more attention.

Insignia trilogy by S.J. Kincaid

Insignia is set around my home turf of DC (the Pentagon, more specifically), as well as the middle of space. 

I don't remember how I found this series, but man did I enjoy it. I'm not really one for big sci-fi stuff but I hit it off well with the Insignia series. It's a little bit like Ender's Game. (I think I liked Insignia better because I was reading it of my own free will and not because of a school curriculum.) 

Legend trilogy by Marie Lu

Legend takes place in Los Angeles, and the other books feature other locations in the country.

I think I found Legend at my high school's library. It's got a higher level of immediate danger than the Insignia series does, because June and Day don't have robots they can use to fight for them. I liked Lu's speculations about the future of the country and the planet as a whole and how things would change. (It's also pretty depressing.) I'm also in love with how the series was designed and how Day's chapters were always in a different color. 

The Selection trilogy by Kiera Cass

The Selection trilogy takes place primarily in Los Angeles (if I remember correctly). 

I haven't had a very good history with this series, but I can see why it's been popular and why people like it. It's not as doom-and-gloom as the other two series I recommended, but it still does touch on topics like oppression and social class issues. It's also got prime shipping material if that's something you look for. Nothing like a little romance to spice up your country falling apart, right? 

Orleans by Sherri L. Smith

This takes place in New Orleans (go figure). 

Orleans was actually a pretty depressing read -- death and destruction are huge themes throughout the book. It's also a pretty high-stakes book, though it's not quite the "immediate danger from the government" like Legend. This is also a standalone book, which is great if you don't want to commit to a trilogy. 

Plus One by Elizabeth Fama

This takes place in an alternate-history Chicago.

I've found a lot of writing prompts similar to the premise of Plus One, so I was really intrigued in how Fama would handle it. I think it was an interesting way to examine social divisions and how artificially-imposed most of ours are. This is also a standalone (with a companion short story prequel, which I haven't read). This is also a good romance-y book if you want something on top of the "defying societal norms and most laws" thing. 

Delirium by Lauren Oliver

This takes place in Portland, Maine according to Goodreads. 

I've only read the first book out of the series, but I felt like I should include it in this list. The premise was definitely interesting, but I wasn't intrigued enough to continue past Delirium. I don't think I'll pick up the series again (since it's been four years) but I think it's worth a try for someone else.