Review of Dreams of Gods and Monsters, by Laini Taylor

Fantasy, Paranormal, Teen Fiction Review 0

Dreams of Gods and Monsters

by Laini Taylor

Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2014. 613 pages.

This is the culminating volume of the trilogy that began with Daughter of Smoke and Bone. I’ve been waiting impatiently for it since I finished Days of Blood and Starlight.

This book begins not as expected, with the Seraphim of Eretz coming to earth as a legion of angels, which happens in the second chapter. Instead, the first chapter introduces a new character, a graduate student named Eliza, who has horrible dreams of worlds being devoured, dreams involving gods and monsters.

We do get back to Akiva and Karou, still in love, but pulled apart by circumstances. Now they need to work together to save earth from Jael, the evil emperor of the Seraphim who has gone to earth, pretending to lead the heavenly hosts from earth’s religions, but actually planning to acquire weapons of mass destruction, to do away with the Chimerae once and for all.

Can the remaining Chimerae, led by Karou and the White Wolf, and the Misbegotten, the disillusioned Seraphim, led by Akiva, possibly form an alliance to overcome astronomical odds and defeat Jael? Can they overcome their hostility and generations of enmity for a greater good?

Let me say first off that this book does provide a satisfying, epic conclusion to the trilogy. We see both Akiva and Karou come into their own. And I especially like the way lowly humans Zuzana and Mik contribute their talents to saving the world.

I was surprised, however, by how long it took me to get through the book. More than just the length, I think the omniscient narrator and the epic scope meant there were many places where it was easy to put the book down. The tone was a little too self-aware in spots – it called my attention to the narrator.

This part was probably a good thing, overall, but I also got discouraged by the many setbacks our heroes faced. Now, they did manage to overcome almost all of them, but at times it looked too dark for me, which provided more points where I was willing to put the book down. And the author did throw in yet more plot threads that were only hinted at in the earlier books, or were entirely new, such as Eliza’s part in the bigger picture.

And this love at first sight thing? This idea of soulmates knowing each other instantly despite years of one’s people being enemies? This is perhaps overdone. It makes a nice story, and I’m especially happy for the characters involved, but I was a bit skeptical. Nice, though. I can’t help being happy for those who found this Destiny, even if there did seem to be an awful lot of them.

However, I do have to say that by the end of the book, the author had pulled together the various threads masterfully. She wrote an epic tale about the fate of worlds and wove it nicely with ancient religious tales. And she made us wonder: What if gods and monsters are simply souls like us, dressed in bodies that don’t necessarily express the hearts inside?

daughterofsmokeandbone.com
lainitaylor.com
lb-teens.com
bookish.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/dreams_of_gods_and_monsters.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Constable & Toop, by Gareth P. Jones

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Paranormal, Starred Review 0

Constable & Toop

by Gareth P. Jones

Amulet Books, New York, 2013. 391 pages.
Starred Review

I like the blurbs at the front of Constable & Toop. They’re by “The Ghost of Oscar Wilde,” “The Ghost of Dr. Johnson,” and other distinguished ghosts. The Ghost of Emily Brontë says, “I very much enjoyed the melancholy and tragedy contained within these pages. The humor was less to my taste.”

Sam Toop can talk to ghosts. The ghosts know him as a “Talker,” and often ask him to help them with their unfinished business, like give a message or uncover a hidden will. But there’s something terribly wrong at the church where one of the ghosts wants his body buried.

Meanwhile, Lapsewood has been doing his desk job faithfully, in death as in life. But when he gets transferred to another department, and expected to check on residents of haunted houses, as the past Outreach worker has gone missing, he also stumbles on something terribly wrong.

At the same time, Clara’s parents invite an exorcist to their home. As Clara had suspected, they did have a ghost haunting their home, but the exorcist banishes her. After that event, nothing feels right, but things are even worse after the body of a girl is found in their home.

Constable & Toop is set in Victorian London, at a time when people were obsessed with death and funerals and the supernatural. Gareth Jones spins an entertaining tale of plots and murderers, among the living and the dead, and good people who try to do their bit to help.

This story is highly imaginative, intricately plotted, and a whole lot of fun.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/constable_and_toop.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, by Holly Black

Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

by Holly Black

Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2013. 422 pages.
Starred Review

I’m not a fan of vampire novels. In fact, I liked Twilight specifically because it didn’t read like a vampire novel. However, I am a fan of Holly Black. So when she wrote a vampire novel, I had to at least try it.

Tana wakes up after a big party lying in a bathtub. When she goes out to see where everyone else is, she finds them all dead.

One of the windows was open, she noticed, curtain fluttering. The party must have gotten too warm, everyone sweating in the small house and yearning for the cool breeze just outside. Then, once the window was open, it would have been easy to forget to close it. There was still the garlic, after all, still the holy water on the lintels. Things like this happened in Europe, in places like Belgium, where the streets teemed with vampires and the shops didn’t open until after dark. Not here. Not in Tana’s town, where there hadn’t been a single attack in more than five years.

And yet it had happened. A window had been left open to the night, and a vampire had crawled through.

But Tana learns that not everyone is dead after all. Aidan, her ex-boyfriend, has been bitten, but is alive, and tied to a bed. And there’s a vampire boy chained beside the bed.

When Tana was six, vampires were Muppets, endlessly counting, or cartoon villains in black cloaks with red polyester linings. Kids would dress up like vampires on Halloween, wearing plastic teeth that fitted badly over their own and smearing their faces with sweet syrup to make mock rivulets of cherry-bright blood.

That all changed with Caspar Morales. There had been plenty of books and films romanticizing vampires over the last century. It was only a matter of time before a vampire started romanticizing himself.

Crazy, romantic Caspar decided that unlike decades of ancient, hidebound vampires, he wouldn’t kill his victims. He would seduce them, drink a little blood, and then move on, from city to city. By the time the old vampires caught up with him and ripped him to pieces, he’d already infected hundreds of people. And those new vampires, with no idea how to prevent the spread, infected thousands.

In America, they ended up shutting the vampires up in Coldtowns. Anyone infected was supposed to go to a Coldtown. If an infected person could keep from drinking human blood for eighty-eight days, the infection would flush out of their system. But few could do that. Tana’s mother couldn’t.

Tana ends up setting free Aidan and the vampire. But as they escape out the window, one of the vampires from the slaughter gets his teeth on her leg, so she may be infected, too.

Tana knows they need to get to Coldtown. The trouble is, no one who goes into Coldtown is allowed to come out, infected or uninfected. There’s only one way out, and that’s with a token you get for turning in a vampire. For some reason their vampire companion, Gavriel, wants to go into Coldtown. He says he has a friend he needs to kill. So Tana gets a token for bringing him with her. If she can keep from turning into a vampire, she’ll be able to go home when it’s all over.

This book is scary and compelling. The world is frighteningly believable. Vampires in Coldtown livestream their parties, and Tana meets some teens who have always wanted to go to Coldtown and become vampires. The life is glamorized, and the reader isn’t surprised when it doesn’t turn out as they hoped.

Along the way, Tana makes friends and allies and gets involved with Gavriel, who has some dark secrets. But worst of all, her little sister decides to come find her.

If you like vampire novels, you’ll love this one. If you don’t like vampire novels, like me, you just may find yourself loving it anyway. You certainly will have a hard time putting it down unfinished.

blackholly.com
lb-teens.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/coldest_girl_in_coldtown.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on an Advance Reader Copy I got at an ALA conference and had signed by the author.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Far Far Away, by Tom McNeal

Fantasy, Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Far Far Away

by Tom McNeal

Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2013. 369 pages.
Starred Review
2013 Capitol Choices Selection

Here is how Far Far Away begins:

What follows is the strange and fateful tale of a boy, a girl, and a ghost. The boy possessed uncommon qualities, the girl was winsome and daring, and the ancient ghost . . . well, let it only be said that his intentions were good.

If more heavily seasoned with romance, this might have made a tender tale, but there was yet another player in the cast, the Finder of Occasions, someone who moved freely about the village, someone who watched and waited, someone with tendencies so tortured and malignant that I could scarcely bring myself to reveal them to you.

I will, though. It is a promise. I will.

This strange and fateful tale is narrated by the ghost himself — who is, in fact, the ghost of Jakob Grimm, and someone who knows something about tales.

Jakob was alarmed, after death, not to find his brother Wilhelm anywhere about. He did, however, find a boy in a small town who was able to hear ghosts, Jeremy Johnson Johnson. But this boy was in danger. Jakob knew that somewhere in the same town was the Finder of Occasions, who would want to harm such an uncommon boy.

This story tells about that harm, and how Jakob attempted to help. Along the way is a remarkable tale, fully worthy of the Brothers Grimm. Jeremy and his friend do go far far away, but can they end up with a happily ever after?

I always said that I’m not particularly a fan of ghost stories. Yet 2013 may have changed my mind about that. It seems to have been a year for excellent ghost stories, each one having a flavor and plot all its own. In this story, there’s nothing sinister about the ghost. But there are definitely sinister forces endangering Jeremy, which the ghost tries to protect him from. Beautifully told.

mcnealbooks.com
randomhouse.com/teens

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/far_far_away.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on my own copy, which I got at ALA Annual Conference, and had signed by the author.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Conjured, by Sarah Beth Durst

Fantasy, Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Conjured

by Sarah Beth Durst

Walker Books (Bloomsbury), 2013. 358 pages.
Starred Review
2013 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #9 Young Adult Fiction
2013 Cybils Finalist

I wasn’t sure about this book at first. It seemed awfully dark, and I wasn’t sure what was going on. But oh my yes, Sarah Beth Durst pulled it all together into a fantastic and powerful story.

Eve doesn’t remember anything. As the book opens, she’s being taken by two people from the Agency to live in a home. It’s a Witness Protection Program, but she doesn’t remember what she witnessed, why she is being protected by the Agency, even what sort of Agency it is. She’s sure her face didn’t use to look like it does now. And she remembers surgeries, but not what was done. And she has strange powers. But whenever she uses them, she blacks out and has a vision, a sinister vision of a Magician.

Here is a scene from the first chapter:

She wondered how she even knew this was a bedroom when she didn’t remember ever having one. She’d known what a car was too, though the seat belt had felt unfamiliar. She could recognize a few kinds of birds. For example, she knew that these painted ones on the walls were sparrows and the live one outside had been a wren. She didn’t know how she knew that. Perhaps Malcolm had told her in one of her lessons.

Or maybe it was a memory, forcing its way to the surface of her mind. But the sparrows she remembered flew. She pictured their bodies, black against a blindingly blue sky. She didn’t know where that sky was or when she had seen it. The birds had flown free.

Eve raised her hand toward the birds on the wall. “Fly,” she whispered.

The birds detached from the wall.

The air filled with rustling and crinkling as the paper birds fluttered their delicate wings. At first they trembled, but then they gained strength. Circling the room, they rose higher toward the ceiling. They spiraled up and around Eve’s head. She reached her arms up, and the birds brushed past her fingers. She felt their paper feathers, and she smiled.

Then she heard a rushing like a flood of water, and a familiar blackness filled her eyes.

Eve gets a job, since her handlers want her to live a normal life, meet other teens. Her job is a library page. (I love that detail.) A teenage boy also works at the library, and he seems quite taken with Eve. But is it safe to make friends?

This book is a little confusing at the start, mirroring Eve’s confusion. But trust me, it all comes together by the end and is completely worth a little confusion! A wonderful and imaginative story.

sarahbethdurst.com
bloomsbury.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/conjured.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of The Dream Thieves, by Maggie Stiefvater

Paranormal, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Dream Thieves

Book II of the Raven Cycle

by Maggie Stiefvater

Scholastic Press, New York, Sept. 17, 2013. 438 pages.

This sequel to The Raven Boys takes the mysterious magical happenings in Henrietta, Virginia, to another level.

We still have Blue, the only non-psychic in a family of psychics, entangled with three Raven Boys, Gansey, Adam, and Ronan, from the private school Aglionby. The boys, led by Gansey, are looking for an ancient Welsh king that Gansey is certain is buried in the area. Whoever finds him will have a wish granted.

This volume focuses on Ronan and his ability to take objects out of dreams. We find out this ability is all wrapped up in family secrets. And there are others who want it. Dangerous others. And there are surprises and mysteries along the way.

I’m not quite sure why I don’t like this series more. It’s well-crafted and powerfully written. The plotting is intricate and keeps you intrigued. Each book has a doozy of an ending. I think the main problem is that I don’t particularly like the characters. There’s a new character we see more of in this book who is a drug addict and generally distasteful. We also follow the activities of a hit man. His addition to the book adds much to the story, and I like that we do get to see his side. But he’s a hit man! I can’t quite like him.

I will, however, definitely snap up the next book as soon as I get the chance. I don’t love these books, but I like them very much, and I am absolutely hooked. I should also say that Maggie Stiefvater, did, in fact, win me over to the heavily foreshadowed romance strongly hinted at in the first book. I had a feeling she would.

Here is how the Prologue begins:

A secret is a strange thing.

There are three kinds of secrets. One is the sort everyone knows about, the sort you need at least two people for. One to keep it. One to never know. The second is a harder kind of secret: one you keep from yourself. Every day, thousands of confessions are kept from their would-be confessors, none of these people knowing that their never-admitted secrets all boil down to the same three words: I am afraid.

And then there is the third kind of secret, the most hidden kind. A secret no one knows about. Perhaps it was known once, but was taken to the grave. Or maybe it is a useless mystery, arcane and lonely, unfound because no one ever looked for it.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/dream_thieves.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on an Advance Reader Copy I got at ALA Annual Conference.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of The Madness Underneath, by Maureen Johnson

Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Madness Underneath

Shades of London, Book 2

by Maureen Johnson

G. P. Putnam’s Sons (Penguin), 2013. 290 pages.
Starred Review

This is the second book in the Shades of London series, and, yes, you should read the first book, The Name of the Star to properly enjoy this one.

Without saying too much about the first book, Rory is an American who’s going to boarding school in London. But while there, she has an almost-dying experience and then begins to see ghosts. And then one of those ghosts begins recreating the murders of Jack the Ripper. And he knows she can see him.

Book Two comes after she has survived what the Ripper tried to do to her. Her parents are upset and have been keeping her in a bubble. But some powerful friends want Rory’s help — she gained some power through her experience — and they are able to make it happen that Rory goes back to school.

But she didn’t get much work done while she was away. And the schoolwork in England was difficult already.

So now she’s in danger of failing, and there is more than one group who is interested in her, and it seems a crack has opened under her school that connects to the burying ground of Bedlam, the old mental hospital. And the ghosts that are coming out now are not happy.

In many ways, this book feels like a bridge between what went before and what comes next. But some dramatic things happen in this book, and I’m dying to know what Rory will do next.

I love Maureen Johnson’s writing style. I could easily imagine her tweeting most of the things that Rory says. The style is a little demented and a whole lot of fun, and Rory’s the kind of person who would always be fun to be around. So we get to be around her for as long as it takes to read these books.

maureenjohnsonbooks.com
penguin.com/youngreaders

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/madness_underneath.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of The Screaming Staircase, by Jonathan Stroud

Adventure, Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Paranormal, Starred Review 0

Lockwood & Co.

Book One

The Screaming Staircase

by Jonathan Stroud

Disney Hyperion Books, New York, 2013. 390 pages.
Starred Review

What a marvelous adventure this book provides! I’m not surprised — Jonathan Stroud is the author of the Bartimaeus books, so I knew he’s a brilliant writer. This new series is wholly different, but as clever and as much fun. The Screaming Staircase is the first of a new series, but the story is entirely complete. Instead of tantalizing the reader with unfinished plot threads, “Book One” is a happy promise that we will see more of Lucy and Lockwood and George.

For decades, Britain has been plagued by the Problem.

If you look in old newspapers, like George does all the time, you can find mentions of scattered ghostly sightings cropping up in Kent and Sussex around the middle of the last century. But it was a decade or so later that a bloody series of cases, such as the Highgate Terror and the Mud Lane Phantom, attracted serious attention. In each instance, a sudden outbreak of supernatural phenomena was followed by a number of gruesome deaths. Conventional investigations came to nothing, and one or two policemen also died. At last two young researchers, Tom Rotwell and Marissa Fittes, managed to trace each haunting to its respective Source (in the case of the Terror, a bricked-up skull; in that of the Phantom, a highwayman’s body staked out at a crossroads). Their success drew great acclaim; and for the first time, the existence of Visitors was firmly imprinted on the public mind.

In the years that followed, many other hauntings started to come to light, first in London and the south, then slowly spreading across the country. An atmosphere of widespread panic developed. There were riots and demonstrations; churches and mosques did excellent business as people sought to save their souls. Soon both Fittes and Rotwell launched psychic agencies to cope with the demand, leading the way for a host of lesser rivals. Finally the government itself took action, issuing curfews at nightfall, and rolling out production of ghost-lamps in major cities.

None of this actually solved the Problem, of course. The best that could be said was that, as time passed, the country got used to living with the new reality. Adult citizens kept their head down, made sure their houses were well stocked with iron, and left it to the agencies to contain the supernatural threat. The agencies, in turn, sought the best operatives. And, because extreme psychic sensitivity is almost exclusively found in the very young, this meant that whole generations of children, like me, found themselves becoming part of the front line.

Lucy Carlyle has recently joined the smallest such agency in London, Lockwood & Co., run by Anthony Lockwood, with help from George Cubbins. They operate without adult supervision, and they all have psychic abilities. The book opens with a case that goes rather wrong — in finding the Source of a manifestation, Lucy inadvertently burns down the client’s house, though they do find a body bricked up in the wall, which explains the haunting.

Besides a rollicking adventure tale, as the three fight to contain Visitors, there is also a mystery (Who killed the Visitor?) and of course a deadline, as they must pay for the client’s house before their agency is disbanded. The first haunting is just a taste for their later adventure in one of the most haunted houses in England.

There’s real danger facing the agency. No one who has faced the Screaming Staircase at night has ever lived to tell about it. The ghosts haunting England, are, for the most part, distinctly unfriendly.

And of course we have the fantasy of kids running their own agency. After all, adults lose any psychic sensitivity. The interaction between the three is half the fun of the book, as they work together to get the job done.

You’ve got adventure, suspense, mystery, humor, ghosts, and even swordplay. (Silver-tipped rapiers are one of the best ways to protect yourself from ghosts.) I thoroughly enjoyed every moment spent reading this book. I’m going to be watching to see if it comes out on audio, because the only thing that would make it better would be getting to experience it all over again with a British accent reading it to me.

jonathanstroud.com
LockwoodandCo.com
disneyhyperionbooks.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/screaming_staircase.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Gorgeous, by Paul Rudnik

Fairy Tale Variant, Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Gorgeous

by Paul Rudnick

Scholastic Press, New York, 2013. 327 pages.
Starred Review

Here’s a light-hearted and upbeat modern fairy tale, with sly jabs at the fashion industry, celebrity culture, and popularity.

Becky Randle’s mom doesn’t go out much. She weighs almost 400 pounds and seems afraid of life. But Becky loves her fiercely.

However, on Becky’s eighteenth birthday, her mom dies and leaves Becky a phone number. When she calls the number, she’s offered a thousand dollars and a plane ticket to New York.

In New York, she’s offered a bargain from the mysterious and glamorous designer Tom Kelly.

“Let’s talk about you,” he said. “You’re eighteen years old, you’ve finished high school and you couldn’t be more ordinary. Yes, you have the tiniest hint of your mother, but don’t kid yourself. You’re nothing. You’re no one. And you look like – anyone. You don’t exist.”

I knew I should punch him or shoot him or at least disagree but I couldn’t, for one simple reason. He was right.

“So here’s my offer,” he said, sitting up straight, as if he was about to conduct serious business. “I will make you three dresses: one red, one white, and one black. And if you wear these dresses, and if you do everything I say, then you will become the most beautiful woman on earth. You will become, in fact, the most beautiful woman who has ever lived.”

She decides to try his offer. She gets poked and prodded and measured by an entire crew of people, including handmade shoes and custom jewelry. I love the part where they take a blood sample:

“This is couture,” explained Mrs. Chen, depositing the spool in a test tube. “Every garment will be custom made, only for you. You will become a part of each dress.”

When the first dress, a red one, is finally ready, Tom Kelly takes Becky out to a gala.

We passed a large framed poster, under glass, announcing the schedule for upcoming operas and concerts, and I was inches away from the glimmering reflection of a woman who was not only unthinkably beautiful, but at ease with herself and entertained by my gaping. And that was when I first suspected that the reflection, and the woman, and the miracle, might be me.

My instantaneous response was a screaming brainload of panic. I pulled my arm away from Tom and I ran down the nearest available hallway, to the ladies’ room.

Looking in the ladies’ room mirror, she sees her old self. But when someone else walks in, her reflection again shows Rebecca Randle, the most beautiful woman in the world.

And then Tom Kelly adds the kicker, another fairy-tale element:

”By the way,” said Tom Kelly; he was leaning into the room with both hands braced against the door frame, like a warm-hearted Christmas Eve dad, checking that I was tucked in and that sweet dreams were on their way.

“I should mention something. You have one year to fall in love and get married. One year, or all of this, by which I mean Rebecca, all of it disappears forever.”

So, Becky’s adventures begin as the most beautiful woman who’s ever lived. I love her sense of humor about it, as well as her friendship with the down-to-earth Rocher, from back home. She meets the teen heartthrob she’s had a crush on since childhood (Turns out, he’s gay.) and gets to star in a movie with him. She meets royalty and other celebrities. Who is she, really, under that astoundingly beautiful exterior? Is Rebecca Randle, most beautiful woman in the world, a real person at all?

The book has an unexpected but completely satisfying ending. The last paragraph is one of my favorites ever and made me laugh out loud.

Oh, and the author has mastered the art of chapter endings that make you want to keep reading. If you don’t want to spend half the night reading this book, let me give you a hint: stop in the middle of a chapter! I didn’t, and was sorry the next day.

For a modern fairy tale about beauty and identity, with plenty of humor along the way, try Gorgeous, by Paul Rudnick.

thisisteen.com/books
scholastic.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/gorgeous.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Doll Bones, by Holly Black

Adventure, Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Fantasy, Paranormal, Starred Review 0

Doll Bones

by Holly Black

Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2013. 244 pages.
Starred Review

Wow! Holly Black has surpassed herself with Doll Bones. It’s a kids-going-on-an-adventure novel, a ghost story, a growing-up tale, a story of friendships changing, and a story of coming to terms with parental expectation. And it’s all carried out beautifully.

Zach and his friends Alice and Poppy have an incredibly detailed imaginative world going. In a episode that reminded me of the ship scene in Momo, Zach leads his action figure William the Blade on a pirate ship adventure, attacked by Poppy’s mermaids and assisted by Alice’s Lady Jaye.

But Zach is twelve years old, and it’s not only other kids who think he’s too old to play with action figures. When Zach comes home from basketball practice, his Dad has thrown all of them away, saying it’s time for Zach to grow up. Zach doesn’t want to tell the girls.

That anger curdled inside his belly and crawled up his throat until it felt like it might choke him. Until he was sure that there was no way he could ever tell anyone what had happened without all of his anger spilling out and engulfing everything.

And the only way not to tell anyone was to end the game.

Not surprisingly, the girls don’t take kindly to that. Poppy tries to entice Zach back into the game by taking the creepy doll her mother owns, the doll they call The Queen, out of its glass cabinet. But when she does so, that night she has a vivid dream.

“It wasn’t like a regular dream,” Poppy said, her fingers smoothing back the Queen’s curls and her voice changing, going soft and chill as the night air…. “It wasn’t like dreaming at all. She was sitting on the end of my bed. Her hair was blond, like the doll’s, but it was tangled and dirty. She was wearing a nightdress smeared with mud. She told me I had to bury her. She said she couldn’t rest until her bones were in her own grave, and if I didn’t help her, she would make me sorry.”…

“Her bones?” he finally echoed.

“Did you know that bone china has real bones in it?” Poppy said, tapping a porcelain cheek. “Her clay was made from human bones. Little-girl bones. That hair threaded through the scalp is the little girl’s hair. And the body of the doll is filled with her leftover ashes….

“Each night she told me a little more of her story.” Illuminated by the flashlight, Poppy’s face had become strange. “She’s not going to rest until we bury her. And she’s not going to let us rest either. She promised to make us miserable unless we help her.”

So the three kids set out. Zach and Alice aren’t sure Poppy’s not making it up, until more strange things happen. Their plan is to take a bus to the gravesite up the river in East Liverpool, Ohio. But a crazy man on the bus spooks them, and they get off the bus too soon, and then must escape the attention of officials.

I’ve said in other reviews that I don’t normally enjoy creepy stories. But this one is done beautifully. I should say that there’s a lot more scary dread than anything that actually happens to the kids. But I think it’s fair. The doll gets upset when they get sidetracked from their mission, but she has no reason to be upset as they near the goal.

Readers also might fault it for how nicely all the emotional threads tie up in the end. But I loved it. The different emotional threads are woven into the story with a delicate touch, and even though they tie up nicely, it never feels too good to be true.

This book is excellent on so many levels. The friendship between the kids changing on the cusp of adolescence feels real, with all the touchiness inherent in those changes. The quest is in the classic tradition of The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. The kids aren’t well-prepared, and they argue along the way, but they follow their quest to a tremendously satisfying conclusion.

blackholly.com
KIDS.SimonandSchuster.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/doll_bones.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!