Burn for Burn / Jenny Han & Siobhan Vivian

   Sometimes when you are tired of listening to a very long audiobook ostensibly about the Black Death but so far it's only been about the Medieval Warm Period (I get it, it's set up, history is normally my jam, omgosh so boring) you just need a short detour and so you look around for a not-too-long, not-set-in-1200s-Europe book and you see the cover for Burn for Burn and think "didn't someone say this was good?" And that's how I ended up reading it. And it was good!

   Lillia, Kat, and Mary are in highschool and they are Out For Revenge and their plans quickly escalate from mostly harmless to quite harmful. Things get out of hand! Their parents don't seem very involved in their lives! They don't consider the long-term consequences of their actions! They are teenagers. At one point one of them says she's going to miss their 2:00 am revenge planning meetings and I was like "gurl you are not getting enough sleep" but then one of the other characters said essentially the same thing SO, at least one of them is at least somewhat reasonable in this one area of her life but not many others, namely: drugging people.

   There are some moments where it seems mega obvious that this book had two authors. Like one of them had an idea and the other was like "sure" and then there's this dissonant thing and the reader is like "what? okay." But it's still good. The ending is pretty abrupt.

   This book was enjoyable, but I don't think I'll be continuing with the trilogy because a) I heard a spoiler and I don't so much care that a major plot point is spoiled so much that it is THE WORST PLOT POINT OF ALL TIME, and b) I got the second book out from the library and it is a brick. It's like 600 pages. I already read The Count of Monte Christo thanks that's enough revenge for me.

We Were Liars / E. Lockheart

   This post is going to outline the ending of this book in detail, so if that's not your thing then don't read on, I guess. Consider yourself spoiler-warned or whatever. I also listened to it as an audiobook, so I don't have anything interesting to say about the layout of the writing
besides that
I'm glad I didn't
have to
slog through
a whole book
of this.

   This is one of those books that sits on my ebooks holds shelf until I forgot why I put it on hold in the first place, then my turn to have it comes, I download it to my phone, and since it is shorter than all the other audiobook options I currently have checked out, I listen to it. The narrator was good, so I pressed on. I like audiobooks, they make my life easier.

   So: the book. Cadence (Cady) Sinclair suffers migraines but she does not suffer fools, or so she says. We Were Liars follows her, her cousins, and her love interest Gat (not her cousin, this ain't no Victorian lit) through a series of summers spent on her family's private island near Martha's Vineyard.  In a word, the Sinclairs are privileged. It took me a while to decide whether or not I really cared about Cady and her family and her problems, and by the time I arrived at "meh" it was too late to turn back. Basically, Cady has head trauma of mysterious origin (because of AMNESIA) and we spend the book trying to figure out what it is. Blah blah blah there are a lot of over-drawn metaphors and some good bits and it's confusing when she describes emotions as physical trauma but also describes physical trauma as physical trauma with nary a distinction between the two. Are there real wounds involved? Your guess is as good as mine.

   Here's where we talk about the ending.

   Okay, if Lockheart had gotten to the burning the house down bit and stopped there, I would have been on board. Yes, they burned the house down, maybe someone got hurt, they killed the dogs accidentally, thank goodness Cady has remembered. BUT THEN Gat, Mirren, and Johnny were, wait for it, GHOSTS THE WHOLE TIME.

   Once upon a time I arrived at my friends' house and they, for some reason unknown to the three of us, were watching some Nicholas Sparks twaddle; I don't even remember the title, nor will I put the effort into finding it. I asked what movie, they told me, I immediately started laughing, because I had heard (on a podcast maybe?) that this particular film ended with the big reveal of: she was a ghost the whole time. Nothing seemed more ridiculous to me in that moment than a story hinging on any number of characters being ghosts (The Sixth Sense, whatever, I haven't actually seen it) that only a person such as Nicholas Sparks, or I suppose M. Night Shyamalan, would come up with it. We fast-forwarded to the big ghost reveal and then fell on the floor in bouts of laughter.

   Listen, I like unreliable narrators. I like clever twists. I like a good metaphor and a good reveal. I like this book fine except for the ending. What I do not like is a set of ghosts of people who are only dead because of truly remarkable ineptitude when it comes to arson. A word of advice, from someone who hasn't even burned a house down but does possess a modicum of sense: if you are on the main floor of a gas-soaked building and your cousins and boyfriend are on the other floors, wait until they (and you) are OUT OF THE HOUSE BEFORE YOU LIGHT IT. There is gas everywhere, it is a old building, it is full of paper and wood, it will burn NO PROBLEM. You don't have to monitor it! OH MY WORD.

   E. Lockheart, I believe you can be better than Nicholas Sparks. Be better than Nicholas Sparks! Please, do it for the children.

before/after

   Usually it bothers me when I read a child who is written as overly precocious. "That's not the way a baby person would talk or think!" "That child would not be that intelligent or understanding!" I mean, obviously Alia Atreides and nearly all of the characters in Ender's Game/Shadow/etc get a free pass on this one but inter-planetary science fiction is a realm unto it's own. However, I can't be the only person who read Ender's Shadow and was confused by that part where baby-Bean hides in the toilet. At first I was all "so, he hid behind it? What? That is not a very good hiding place." and then I realized that OSC meant he hid IN the tank of the toilet and I was all impressed by imaginary baby-Bean saying "daaaaang, gurl, that water is cold" but the more I thought about it the more ridiculous it was. How did he get the lid back onto the tank? How did he climb up and in there? How did he not perish from hypothermia? Does everyone named Orson think they're a magical genius?

   Regardless of my feelings surrounding Bean and Alia and Ender, I was somewhat concerned going into In The After / Demitria Lunetta. I'd heard many good things about it, but I had also heard that it featured an uncommonly bright six year old. I can suspend my disbelief with the best of them, and I like far-fetched stories, but kids thinking beyond a believable cognitive level? Ugh.

   All my fears were assuaged, however, when Amy found Baby and the two of them began to bond. A story about sisterly BFFs? Working together in a post-apocalyptic world? Never speaking and developing a modified version of American Sign Language instead? Yes please. This is one of the best YA dystopia/science fiction books I have read in a long time. And it's a debut novel! I'm excited for what Lunetta comes up with in the future.

   Basic story line: monsters have invaded the earth and killed/eaten pretty much everyone. Amy was fortunate enough to have a environmentalist father and a paranoid mother, and lives in a veritable fortress. She's able to survive the onslaught, and one night while out scavenging, comes across a toddler in a supermarket. She dubs the girl "Baby", and adopts her as her sister. The book follows their adventures and misadventures, and is exciting and touching and enjoyable. I read it in a day.

show

   If there is one thing I despise in books it is description done badly. Here I am, expecting to be reading about a spooky asylum, and you're telling me what colour of scarf one of the characters is wearing?!??! NO THANK YOU. What are these authors thinking? "Ah yes, fresh-faced youths exploring some sort of creepy building. But wait! They have changed clothes since yesterday so I must tell the reader." Please note, authors, I have an imagination and I can use it to dress the characters in your book (will wonders never cease). And if you've already (meticulously) described something (a building, someone's hair, whatever) then it's okay, you don't need to do it again.

   What I'm saying is, I started reading Asylum / Madeliene Roux and despite the chillingly creepy cover and equally creepy premise, I barely got into it before I tossed it aside with an emotion somewhere between frustration and disgust. It takes the premise in Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children, namely: inserting old found photos that will give you the WILLIES as a part of the story, and makes it boring and too describe-y. And THAT is all I will say about THAT.

YA

   Let's talk about Young Adult Fiction because I stayed up way too late earlier this week reading Delirium / Lauren Oliver* and I have some capital-O Opinions on the subject.

   First off, Delirium is about 70% not thrilling and I was only staying up late (or should I say early) in a spirit of "please let's just get this over with" before I remembered that I can darn well read what I want/stop reading what I want. I won't tell you what time it was when I had the realization "OMGosh there are so many things I'd rather be doing right now (namely: sleeping)" and I put the book down by my bed and have picked it up once since to read a single page and confirm my fears: it's really not that great. My main complaint is "ugh, so lovey-dovey" which I probably should have seen coming based on the book's premise: it's the future and love has been labelled as a disease and when people turn 18 they get a surgery to burn the ability to love out of their brain. Think Equilibrium but with teens. Interesting premise, right? It is, but be prepared for some serious teen angst.

   This book did a few ideas well, like acceptable vs illicit music. The main illegal thing "uncureds" do is go to concerts. At one point the protagonist, whose name I can't actually remember at the moment, finds out that there are a series of raids going on so she goes to the house where her former best friend (with whom she has had the stupidest falling out) is at a concert to warn of imminent capture. Alas, she is too late and the party gets busted. WHICH LEADS TO one of the most annoying aspects of the story. Protagonist gets bitten by a police dog and the injury is described as a chunk of flesh missing but she only suffers ill effects, such as pain, for about a day. WTH, Lauren Oliver.

   Side note: while it annoys me that seemingly everyone and their dog is getting on the YA dystopia train, I'd rather they be pumping out novels about a dismal future world instead of trite vampire books. If you want to read about vampires go ahead but at least start with Dracula / Bram Stoker so you have a good base to work off of. Also, Delirium is the first in a trilogy and oh man, can we please just have some stand alone books now?

   Okay, back to the subject at hand: YAF. You know when you are reading something and you just want to grab the protagonist's shoulders and say "give it a rest"? Well, turns out that is often what happens while wading through the world of YA novels. However! There are some true gems out there and Yours Truly is willing to search them out. Benefits of YAF include, but are not limited to, quick reads, scope for the imagination, and some genuinely good books. While I don't exactly recommend finding a YA author and sticking with them (YA, like many other aspects of the book biz, suffers from a value of quantity over quality) I do heartily advocate finding a genre and working from there. My favorites almost always end up in one of two categories:

1. Dystopian stories
2. Houses that are creepy

    Give me those two things and I am SOLD SOLD SOLD.

   Anyways, this has become super long so here is a very short list of YA books that feature either fiendish houses or society gone wrong that I want you to read and we'll leave it at that**:

• Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children / Ransom Riggs
• We Have Always Lived in the Castle / Shirley Jackson
• Coraline / Neil Gaiman
• The Giver / Lois Lowry
•  The Hunger Games / Suzanne Collins***

*Delirium is dystopian and as I've said many times I love dystopia but lets be honest: it's not all created equal and this one is a dud.  
**I had to severely limit myself in listing books here or this post would go on and on and on and I'd be saying "oh and that book reminds me of this one! And that author is quite good! And I was reading a review of that book and it led me to this one!" and so on. 
***please don't despise me for listing HG alongside The Giver. To be honest these were the first two in the genre that came to mind. And while we're here, why couldn't the second and third HG books just be about Finnick ODair and Johanna Mason? Why why why why indeed. Give me Hunger Games sans Katniss' romantic waffling and I'd be happy.

peculiar

   If ever you are desiring to get out of a reading slump, there's not much better for it than YA fiction. Don't concern yourself about it being for youth. You can read it. It's okay. I promise. If you just can't bring yourself to delve into the wonderful world of imagination that YA offers, then I suppose you can grab a quick murder mystery and call it a day.

   Even if you aren't in a reading slump, I highly recommend the occasional foray into the gems offered up by YA fiction. I found one such treasure in reading Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs and I've been all agog with love for spooky/creepy stories since. Well, that's not entirely true; I've always been smitten with spooky/creepy stories. Multiple times while trying to sell a friend on a book, I've used the phrase "it was so creepy, I loved it." (The Phantom of the Opera / Gaston Leroux being the most notable of these. If you haven't read this book, you are messing up big time on an ongoing basis. I have two copies, come borrow one immediately.)

   If you are even slightly interested in vintage photography, time travel, adventure, or remote islands in Wales, grab yourself a copy of Miss Peregrine's Home and get reading.