arr Archives - The Y Logs

Yzabel / November 25, 2013

Review: Reaping Me Softly

Reaping Me Softly by Kate Evangelista

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

Ever since a near-death-experience on the operating table, seventeen-year-old Arianne Wilson can see dead people. Just as she’s learned to accept her new-found talents, she discovers that the boy she’s had a crush on since freshman year, Niko Clark, is a Reaper.

At last they have something in common, but that doesn’t mean life is getting any easier. All while facing merciless bullying from the most powerful girl in school, Arianne’s world is turned upside down after Niko accidentally reaps the soul of someone she loves. This sends them both into a spiral that threatens to end Arianne’s life. But will Niko break his own Reaper’s code to save her? And what would the consequences be if he did?

Review:

(I got this book from its author through ARR #144 in the We ♥ YA Books! group, in exchange for an honest review.)

I’ve had a hard time rating this novel, and am still not completely sure. I guess I’d give it a 2.5: nice enough in some parts, and difficult for me to get into in others.

What I liked:

* The world of Death and the Reapers. Their hierarchical, bureaucracy-like organization formed an interesting counterpart with how some of them, at least, seemed to look out for each other. Death is a harsh master, but also one who can show some forms of concern—or the contrary, depending on the situation and on how you see it.

* The Reapers being immortal in a different way: through reincarnation. This gives them the means to appreciate every step of human life, and I think this is a great idea.

* Carrie. Her positive attitude and optimism, in spite of her predicament, were real sunrays, and reminders that life is fickle, and that all things considered, most of us should really be happy with what we have: bodies that aren’t perfect, but that do their job nonetheless.

* Ben. Such a sweet guy.

* Ari being in love with Niko for years: no insta-love for her, but something that had had the time to develop and get stronger. This is believable for me.

What I couldn’t wrap my mind around:

* Sometimes the text really went in convoluted ways, with similes that just didn’t make much sense, or at best felt weird. I didnd’t understand the need for those.

* Why did Niko remain oblivious to Ari for years, even though they shared some classes, but suddenly started paying attention to her? I wondered if it had to do with his depression, but the latter having been lasting for longer than just a few weeks, I’m not sure.

* The extent of Darla’s influence. Of course, bullying does exist, and there will always be cliques and people who twirl others around their little finger. However, having everybody in her pocket, teachers included? Not believable. I would’ve liked to see more of what was going on behind the scenes with her, to ‘get’ how she managed all that. She seemed close to a sociopath profile, yet we don’t learn enough about her to know for sure.

Overall, it kept me entertained enough, but I admit to rolling my eyes quite a few times.

Yzabel / July 11, 2013

Review: DiSemblance

DiSemblance by Shanae Branham

My rating: [rating=2]

Summary:

Jason Tanner’s life has always been different from the ordinary citizen’s. It started when he was an infant and his parents were only teenagers. A computer science prodigy, Lloyd attended MIT but left a pariah in the eyes of the school’s dean—but a computer physics genius in the eyes of his primary investor. Then his theories and ideas created a holographic machine and their world shrunk as contact with the outside world became less and less frequent. A computer prodigy now himself, Jason is about to learn that the world never waits for you if you have the ability to change it: it will come for you.

Detective Bruce Durante has been handed the case of the Comfort Killer, a serial killer so named because he appears to abduct terminally ill patients before returning their corpses to their families in refrigerated coffins. When he picks up the trail, it leads straight to the home of Lloyd Tanner.

Jason has been living life through the world of Lloyd’s invention and wishing he could carry on a relationship with Boston, the beautiful girl next door. When his father is murdered and framed as the Comfort Killer, he is brought back to reality in a hurry. He is forced to destroy all of the planted evidence—and finds he is being targeted as the killer’s new fall guy. But the secrets of his father’s invention run deep and Jason, his brother Isaac,Boston, the Comfort Killer, and Detective Durante hurtle towards one another on a deadly collision course that leaves everyone’s life hanging in the balance.

Review:

(Book provided by the author through ARR #110 in the We ♥ YA Books! group, in exchange for an honest review.)

I’m having a hard time writing this review, because I’d like to rate the book a little higher, but am not sure I should. In all fairness, I’d give the idea and story a solid 4 stars, but I wasn’t too thrilled about the writing itself.

“DiSemblance” is a story that you need to pay attention to. Don’t read it in a packed train, or juggling several things at once. It contains a lot of little details that are easy to miss if you’re not focused, and that are the very ones which help you puzzle everything back together. The author definitely did a good job at blurring the boundaries here, and more than once you’ll find yourself frowing at some plot point, reading back and wondering if there was a mistake… and no, there wasn’t, everything’s working according to plan. There’s a point after which things become clear, and in hindsight what happened in the first part of the book suddenly makes total sense; and yet, even then, you keep on wondering what’s true and what isn’t, what’s part of reality and what’s make-believe. In that, I’ll recommend this book if you like being bounced back from clue to clue without knowing clearly whether you’ve read those the right way or not. It’s got quite an exciting quality.

Unfortunately, I had a harder time with the style and pacing. There’s a lot of short chapters and sentences that give a jumbled feeling to the text as a whole, as well as what I’d deem “telling” about the characters and their actions rather than really showing them, which I found distracting (and as I said right above, this isn’t the kind of story where you can allow to let yourself be distracted). Also, connecting with the characters proved difficult. They’re interesting in their own ways, but with things moving so fast, I felt like we were only grazing at the surface, and as a result, I didn’t empathize with Bruce, Lisa, Jason or Boston as much as I would’ve liked to. Part of this might be related to how limits between reality and virtual world(s) keep shifting—we never know if we’re dealing with the real person or not—but I’m not sure it’s the only, nor the main reason.

In terms of plot, the ideas explored within this novel, as well as how the author manages to carry us from beginning to end, are great. But I think it would benefit from more editing, to make it easier to focus on the story.

Yzabel / November 17, 2012

Review: Reapers With Issues

Reapers With Issues by H.E. Ellis

My rating: [rating=5]

Summary:

Death and the other Reapers have a challenge. Earth’s population has made soul collection a big problem, and according to Death’s figures, it will only get worse. Death is a skilled but reluctant bureaucrat who tries to enlist help before Human souls start backing up.

But since no good deed goes unpunished, Death and the other Horsemen will have to put up with a whole new approach to management from Heaven.

What is an entity to do?

Review:

(Book provided by the author through ARR #610 in the Making Connections group, in exchange for an honest review.)

I’m always up for stories that poke fun about serious themes, and ‘death’ and ‘angels’ have always been such themes for me. Reapers With issues deals exactly with those: the heavy celestial bureaucracy, with all the defects the latter term entails, and how figures of terror, the Four Horsemen, must deal with very day-to-day, down-to-earth problems regarding death. Their main problem being that there are only the four of them to do the job, while humanity keeps on multiplying. ‘Grim’ and his fellow horsemen go to quite a few lengths to keep their heads up, from filing up reports to indulging in buying weed from Saint Peter’s offspring. I found it very funny to see familiar figures of heaven and hell depicted under various, different colours here, within what is a nice satire of the corporate and bureaucratic world. Lucifer is exactly the kind of smart, manipulative bastard I’d expect him to be. Grim tries to tackle problems as seriously as possible, but let’s just say that between War’s antics and the new management imposed by God, this is proving harder and harder as the story progresses.

The least I can say is that this novel made me smile and chuckle, a lot. Granted, there were a few times when the humour wasn’t very subtle; but I think the author also did a good job in not overdoing it, and when fun is being poked at sensitive themes, it is always done so in a good-natured way, not in a voluntarily offensive one. Also, I commend the editing work done on this book. I didn’t notice any of the usual typos and misprints that tend to spring, and the author’s writing style was fluid and pleasant, both in descriptions and in dialogues.

Really, I can’t find many faults with this book. It made me spend a very good time, it was a short and fun reading, its characters made me laugh, and all in all, it’s a novel I’d easily recommend to my friends.

Yzabel / October 18, 2012

Review: Dark Tidings

Dark Tidings by Ken Magee

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

What happens when ancient magic meets the internet? One thing is certain, modern life will never be the same again.

A thousand years ago, a young thief, Tung, and a disgraced wizard, Madrick, are thrust together in an executioner’s dungeon.

In the darkness, Madrick reveals an incredible secret about a legendary spell. The great spell helps them escape their prison cell… and eventually their century.

Catapulted into the present day, their lives collide with Michael, a computer hacker who plans to destroy the world’s largest bank. But sinister people are tracking their every move and they will stop at nothing to steal their spell.

Review:

(Book provided by the author through ARR #421 in the Making Connections group, in exchange for an honest review.)

The premise of this book made it look like the kind of story I could enjoy—magic and technology mixed with a hefty dose of humour—and enjoy it I did. Granted, I thought the two storylines would converge much sooner; instead, they do after a while only, and at first I wondered when that would be. However, when the author brings them together, it all makes up for it. Besides, Tung’s and Madrick’s antics in their own era provided for very fun moments, that made me laugh a lot; not to mention I have a soft spot for such characters with a definite ‘loser’ streak, yet are able to get through their problems in the end.

The overall plot flew nicely and fast enough, with magic of old intertwined with conspiracy theories and modern means of action. The ending, while a cliffhanger and reminding me that there is a sequel, was of the kind I’d find brilliant—from the moment the characters made their decision, it spelled (pun intended) something grand and terrible in the making.

There were two things that bothered me in this novel, though. The first was the style itself, that I found at times a little too dry and descriptive, thus keeping the characters at a distance from the reader, so to speak; there were plenty of inserts such as “little they did they know at the time that…”, and while those were, in a way, in line with more traditional “tales formatting”, I’m just too keen about that. Also, I’d have liked to see more of Tung’s and Madrick’s reactions to the modern worled (the way things went, they just seemed to adapt much too quickly, in spite of a couple encounters and mishaps, and I think this removed some potential for more funny situations and interactions).

Still, I’ll probably pick the second installment along the way, as I want to know more about what the three heroes left behind.

Yzabel / October 8, 2012

Review: Claus

Claus: Legend of the Fat Man by Tony Bertauski

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

Some legends are forged in fire.
Others are born in snow.

In the early 1800s, Nicholas, Jessica and Jon Santa attempt the first human trek to the North Pole and stumble upon an ancient race of people left over from the Ice Age. They are short, fat and hairy. They slide across the ice on scaly soles and carve their homes in the ice that floats on the Arctic Ocean.

The elven are adapted to life in the extreme cold. They are as wise as they are ancient. Their scientific advancements have yielded great inventions — time-stopping devices and gravitational spheres that build living snowmen and genetically-modified reindeer that leap great distances. They’ve even unlocked the secrets to aging. For 40,000 years, they have lived in peace.

Until now.

An elven known as The Cold One has divided his people. He’s tired of their seclusion and wants to conquer the world. Only one elven stands between The Cold One and total chaos. He’s white-bearded and red-coated. The Santa family will help him stop The Cold One.

They will come to the aid of a legendary elven known as… Claus.

Review:

I must admit I didn’t enjoy this book as much as the other one I read from the author. Nevertheless, it was enjoyable in its own right, and proved a gripping read.

It was also a somewhat weird novel, in that some things in it that might have thrown me off-course actually proved palatable in the end. The idea of the elves as a science-based civilization is so different than the usual take on the whole North Pole/Santa Claus/elves vision that even though it seemed weird at first, it very soon left me going all “Sure, why not?”, and discovering it became an enjoyment in and of itself. Same went with Jack’s antics: in the very beginning, I thought they’d be unnerving… but then, all of a sudden, I realized that I was actually waiting to see him come into the story again, with his crazy ways of acting and the way he would treat the people around him.

The story also tackles touchy themes, such as the loss of memory (which is probably worse than dying for some people, at least) and how gestures (or lack thereof) seen as insignificant, or overlooked, in the past may give birth to a monster. Those are part of the themes I can easily be brought to appreciate in a fictional setting.

I think the one thing that left me hesitant was the 19th century aspect of “Claus”. I couldn’t relate to those parts of the story—being an avid reader and student of 19th century litterature, I didn’t find the ‘feeling’ I would expect from the chapters about the Santas’ life before arriving amon the elves. I probably wouldn’t have minded as much hadn’t I already had quite a pile of previous readings behind me, though. Still, it happened. That’s too bad.

Otherwise, if you like different takes and original twists on very traditional tales, go for it.

Yzabel / October 3, 2012

Review: The Tube Riders

The Tube Riders by Chris Ward

My rating: [rating=4]

Summary:

Mega Britain in 2075 is a dangerous place. A man known only as the Governor rules the country with an iron hand, but within the towering perimeter walls of London Greater Urban Area anarchy spreads unchecked through the streets.

In the abandoned London Underground station of St. Cannerwells, a group of misfits calling themselves the Tube Riders seek to forget the chaos by playing a dangerous game with trains. Marta is their leader, a girl haunted by her brother’s disappearance. Of the others, Paul lives only to protect his little brother Owen, while Simon is trying to hold on to his relationship with Jess, daughter of a government official. Guarding them all is Switch, a man with a flickering eye and a faster knife, who cares only about preserving the legacy of the Tube Riders. Together, they are family.

Everything changes the day they are attacked by a rival gang. While escaping, they witness an event that could bring war down on Mega Britain. Suddenly they are fleeing for their lives, pursued not only by their rivals, but by the brutal Department of Civil Affairs, government killing machines known as Huntsmen, and finally by the inhuman Governor himself.

Review:

(Book provided by the author through ARR #534 in the Making Connections group, in exchange for an honest review.)

A long book packed with action and events, for sure, and one that I had a hard time putting down whenever I had to.

First, the theme. A book about young people riding trains, barely hanging onto them with tiny boards, and using them first for games, then to escape and run for their lives. In Tube stations and tunnels. In the hands of a reader who’s been known to ride the London Tube and explore corridors and stairwells there just for fun. Awesome. Also, I think the author did a good job depicting his world. Granted, there were a few points on which my suspension of disbelief was somewhat stretched at times (some of the experiments, and a couple of plot junctures). But Chris Ward quickly falls back on his feet, giving us explanations about Mega Britain’s shortcomings, that make it more understandable why a group of fugitives manages to outsmart officials for some time. If anything, I would’ve liked to know a little more about how exactly that country and government came to be; on the other hand, the books is already quite long, and this probably isn’t absolutely essential in order to enjoy it (it’s just me being curious).

The characters portrayed throughout the story were all heroic in their own ways, while remaining very humane, with both merits and flaws. Among the heroes, I especially liked the street-savvy Switch, always so resourceful, and Jess, who had to wade through so much grief and try to find her own answers. And I really wasn’t happy about seeing Simon go… but with such unjuries as he sustained, at best he’d have had to be ‘left behind’ to heal, so from the moment it happened, I kind of suspected what would happen… The villains themselves had humane sides and redeeming points, in spite of their vices; the Huntsmen were clearly victims before being monsters, and Dreggo herself had a vulnerable side and a very hard past that made her anger and resentment all the more understandable. For sure, she was a resilient and interesting adversary.

I’m still hesitant about the ending, to be honest: I can’t decide whether I’d like to see a sequel or not. So much may still happen—the Bristol guys, the person left on the beach at the very end…—yet at the same time, the story still feels self-contained no matter what. It’s hard to tell.

Yzabel / September 25, 2012

Review: Revamp

Revamp by Beck Sherman

My rating: [rating=4]

Summary:

FOR THREE DAYS, IT WAS DARK.

News reporters scrambled. This was the biggest story to come along in weeks.

They called it a blackout.

The last one was in New York City in 2003, but this one was different, special, because the grids in six major cities across the country had been fried, kaput, see-you-next-Sunday. Everyone with some jurisdiction blamed each other, and when there was no one left to blame, terrorism rode in on its gallant steed.

It was the media’s fault. They were so busy stuffing fanatical Muslims with a penchant for Allah and decapitations down the American citizen’s throat, that they never saw it coming. I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on them.

They were partially right.

It was terror after all, but a whole new kind. And when the lights came back on, things had changed.

The dark had brought us visitors.

Review:

(Book provided through Read It & Reap in the Shut Up & Read group, in exchange for an honest review.)

I found this book fairly enjoyable; I dont have a lot of time to read non-academic books these weeks, but if I had, I’d probably have read it in two or three sittings only (it’s a long novel).

The pace was fast enough, the events unfolding in a way that made me want what would happen next. Emma’s reactions regarding the existence of vampires seemed logical enough to me: she didn’t accept it too easily, trying to find more realistic explanations, but she also wasn’t too retentive about it, confronting the ‘revelation’ to her own experiences in order to check if this could be true or not.

There were highly tense scenes, made easy to picture oneself thanks to vivid descriptions. That’s usually the kind of thing I expect from my vampire novels—to show the gruesome nature of the beasts underneath, even though they still seem human on the surface. And yet, the book also tackles an interesting aspect of the duality of such creatures, for throughout the story and at the end, they were, all in all, still close enough to humanity to reproduce exactly the same old schemas (shortages, class divisions, the ‘rich’ hoarding all the good blood while the ‘poor’ had to stick to the vampiric equivalent of junk food…). I liked that the author decided to explore such aspects, because from the start, I thought that such a takeover by vampires couldn’t go smoothly, and that the mighty bloodsuckers were sooner or later run into the conundrum of “now that we’ve gotten rid of the humans… what do we eat?” In fact, I’d have been disappointed if it hadn’t happened.

I liked the flashbacks used to explain what had happened to some of the characters. I usually have no problems following those, and they were probably a better method to involve us readers than simply have said characters tell them in a dialogue or long-winded first-person explanation. And I liked that Emma’s ‘romance’ with Cooper was only a budding one, a few potential hooks here and there: it leaves room for more, while still being believable.

I have a couple of gripes with the story, though. First, I’d have liked to read more about the blackouts themselves: they seemed mysterious enough in the cover blurb, but reading about them after the events was a bit anticlimatic (considering the blurb, that is). Also, I’ve wondered a lot about Emma’s reaction regarding her family: she’d sometimes think about the boyfriend she had left on campus… but what about her mother who probably lived a few miles only from where her daughter now had to live? Why didn’t Emma try to discover what had happened to her mother—or, at least, why not show her thinking about it a little more often (even if only to conclude “she’s a vampire or dead, and I shouldn’t think about it anymore”). And I’m really not sure either about the last vampire the hunters off at the end: sure, it tied with something mentioned at the beginning of the novel, but… I don’t know, it just came as kind of “what the hell?…” to me.

But no matter those, I liked the story. I don’t know if there’s a second installment in the making. I think this one works well as a standalone, as the main issues are solved at the end; at the same time, there are still enough elements left to development for a second book to be welcome too. If there’s going to be one, I’ll definitely be interested in reading it.

Yzabel / September 11, 2012

Review: When Love Is Not Enough

When Love Is Not Enough by Wade Kelly

My rating: [rating=4]

Summary:

A six-year downward spiral into a world of lies and deception leads to the end of one man’s life when self-discovery crosses the line between being the perfect son or following his heart.

Jimmy Miller never intended to lead a double life starting the day he fell in love with Darian, but his parents’ divorce, fighting in school, and constantly keeping secrets for his closeted best friend and protector, Matt, force his hand. Jimmy finds the demands too great to withstand and ends it all prematurely, leaving behind an angry best friend and a shattered lover.

Matt and Darian cling to one another in the aftermath of their loss, forging a new friendship immediately tested by the truths of their relationships with Jimmy that are hidden in the pages of Jimmy’s journals. Will Matt and Darian discover what truly happened to their friend? And will this tragedy birth something beautiful between them as they learn the balance between life, family, and friendship when love is simply not enough?

Review:

(Book provided by the author through ARR #455 in the Makinc Connections group, in exchange for an honest review.)

I hesitated a lot about which mark to give this book, pondering a 3 at first. I have a few gripes with it… but all things considered, it was a beautiful story that got me hooked no matter what, more complex than it seems, and so I settled on 4 stars.

Part of me perceived the characters and their reactions as often too angsty, too over-the-top, and at first sight too skewed. I thought I may not like this novel in the end. The author tackles a lot of issues in it: violence at home, broken parents-children relationships, homosexuality, rape (left unseen), lies bordering on cheating… Do so many things happen to people? Was it believable? Wasn’t it just, well, ‘too much’?

Then I thought some more, and realized that those plot points, what went in the characters’ lives, were precisely why I liked the book in the end: it made me wonder, it made me try to question people’s motives and reactions, try to understand why such event would lead to such reactions. And this was quite interesting.

There were moments I didn’t get Jamie. I didn’t get Matt. I didn’t get Darian. Why would Jamie keep everything separated, everything hidden? Why wouldn’t he just leave, give the finger, and steer his own life as soon as he was legally of age? Why would Matt be so hell-bent on one night stands? Why would Darian fall into Matt’s arms like that? I couldn’t get those. In a way, their reactions made me angry. That said, as soon as I started thinking more about them, they actually made sense, too.

– Jamie, desperate to be accepted for who he was, yet also knowing deep inside (without admitting it to himself) that it just wouldn’t happen; trying to balance out everything, to keep everything in little boxes because this may have been the only control he felt he could have on his life. I wondered why, after everything he had been through, one conversation would prompt him to commit suicide; but the very nature of that talk, as well as the people involved, had a shattering potential, and I can understand why someone like Jamie would suddenly make a terrible decision after that, after realizing openly that all his efforts were in vain.

– Matt: acting that way, I suppose, because not involving himself, not committing himself, removed the dreaded possibility of having to come out to his family. As long as he kept things like that, he wouldn’t have to make the choice, to cross the line, and could go on pretending that he was ‘just like the others’, like what other people expected him to be. In that regard, he too was caught in the same trap as Jamie, that of feeling he had to conform and hide who he truly was inside. In spite of assuming his being gay, he only assumed it far enough from home to be of no consequence to his official life.

– Darian: so desperate, alone, a young man who from the start had been robbed from half his close family, and was so frightened of losing his newfound happiness that, paradoxically, trying to escape those feelings could have destroyed him. And then Jamie was gone, making Darian’s worst fear come true, in a much cruel and ironic twist. But in spite of his frailty, of his inability to cope, he was still strong in many other ways. Strong in how he assumed who he was from the start. Strong in how he admitted he was afraid, and made the choice to not give in, even though this meant running straight into someting that a lot of people would deem as shocking. He was a beautiful soul, a person with a heart of gold, plenty of love to give freely, and the ability to commit himself fully to the one he loved, without conditions.

As I wrote above, I had some gripes with the book, and I can’t not just mention them, because even though I enjoyed the story, they may be a turn-off for a different reader:

– A couple of inserts were really, really weird. I’m thinking more specifically about that part where Darian reads from a book to Jamie, and we get the whole details about the title, author, the book being on Goodreads, an excerpt from the real text… Although I usually enjoy cameos, that one was too much like some kind of ad, that temporarily made me go “what the heck?” and broke my train of reading. I recovered quickly, but it was seriously weird.

– Matt’s speech in the end. It was spot-on, sure, yet it was also too much of a literal sermon. That too made me quirk an eyebrow and wonder if it was so necessary to present it this way.

– Not so much a gripe as a “I would have preferred if…”: Darian and Matt’s relationship. It evolved too quickly to my taste. It was beautiful, and it sort of made sense in that both of them were drawn together by the very pain that might have destroyed them had they stayed along… but I think I’d have liked it more if it had been closer to budding friendship, with love developing from there, and not the way it had started.

I suppose my review might come off as bizarre and unbalanced: a story that made me angry, confused, with characters whose reactions felt flawed at first, with an episode that destroyed my suspension of disbelief, with a sermon… and I’m still giving it such a high mark?

That’s precisely because it made me angry—and I’m not prone to a lot of feelings while reading, so any author who proves able to elicit something in me like that get to have bonus points. And in spite of the other flaws I mentioned, the way the story managed to captivate me is something I definitely can’t ignore.

(Bonus points go to Jamie’s mother, too, for being one of the craziest bitches I’ve seen in a novel so far. What’s most mind-shattering is that in the real world, there *are* people like her, who should clearly not be left running a family, yet are such skilled manipulators that nobody ever notices how screwed-up they are. I hated that woman, really.)

Yzabel / August 28, 2012

Review: The Annihilation Of Foreverland

The Annihilation of Foreverland by Tony Bertauski

My rating: [rating=4]

Summary:

When kids awake on an island, they’re told there was an accident. Before they can go home, they will visit Foreverland, an alternate reality that will heal their minds. Reed dreams of a girl that tells him to resist Foreverland. He doesn’t remember her name, but knows he once loved her. He’ll have to endure great suffering and trust his dream. And trust he’s not insane. Danny Boy, the new arrival, meets Reed’s dream girl inside Foreverland. She’s stuck in the fantasy land that no kid can resist. Where every heart’s desire is satisfied. Why should anyone care how Foreverland works? Together, they discover what it’s really doing to them.

Review:

(This review was done for {Read It & Reap 57} in the Shut Up And Read group. It dates back to May, but I felt I should have posted it here way sooner, so here goes.)

The new cover is really much better! ~~Although I really wasn’t thrilled by the cover~~, the book’s summary got my attention, and I don’t regret picking it. It turned to be a pretty good surprise.

I got pulled in the story fairly quickly and easily. No dilly-dallying, no slow build-up, but the mystery from the start: where are those boys, what’s happened to them, and what lies behind this weird island they’re living on. I like when something’s smelling fishy from the start, and here I wasn’t disappointed. The world built up by the author was believable, felt real enough, and its secrets were revealed with just the right amount of pacing in my opinion. As for the main characters (three for me, Reed and Danny Boy, of course, but also Zin), I really liked following their progress. They proved likeable, and resourceful in the case of Danny and Zin. And while Reed wasn’t given that much screen time comparatively, I could feel his presence pervading the narrative all the time, his fate an impending Damocles sword. In fact, I felt that this novel offered more than just your standard YA plot, raising questions and darker themes that may appeal to an older audience too. Finally, a word about the few news clippings inserted at the beginning of each part: I think they are a nice add-on, distillating some information that made me wonder what character they were about. It wasn’t too hard to find out, of course, yet it was enjoyable nevertheless.

There are a few things I couldn’t wrap my mind around, though, and it’s too bad, because there weren’t that many, but they made me wince regularly enough (hence the 4-stars rating, but really, I’d have probably made it a 4.5 if GR had allowed it). A few uses of capital letters that I found jarring—I get it that they were here to illustrate a point, but no need to shout it in my face. Sometimes too the style was a little too abrupt, and the point of view tended to change abruptly too, which made things a little confusing in a few places. Mostly, though, what irked me was the use of the word ‘son’ by approximately everyone. I’d expect it from the Investors addressing the boys, but not from one boy to the other; it felt really weird every time it happened, and it happened often.

Other than that, it was a compelling story, and I heartily recommend it.

Yzabel / August 24, 2012

Review: Taste

Taste by Kate Evangelista

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

At Barinkoff Academy, there’s only one rule: no students on campus after curfew. Phoenix McKay soon finds out why when she is left behind at sunset. A group calling themselves night students threaten to taste her flesh until she is saved by a mysterious, alluring boy. With his pale skin, dark eyes, and mesmerizing voice, Demitri is both irresistible and impenetrable. He warns her to stay away from his dangerous world of flesh eaters. Unfortunately, the gorgeous and playful Luka has other plans. When Phoenix is caught between her physical and her emotional attraction, she becomes the keeper of a deadly secret that will rock the foundations of an ancient civilization living beneath Barinkoff Academy. Phoenix doesn’t realize until it is too late that the closer she gets to both Demitri and Luka the more she is plunging them all into a centuries old feud.

Review:

(Book provided by the author through ARR #32 in the We ♥ YA Books! group, in exchange for an honest review.)

Alright, first, I appreciated that there weren’t any vampires in this book. This might not ring a bell to every reader, far from it, but the “prestigious academy with day students and night students” is something I had already read about in a manga (Vampire Knight); it would’ve been too bad if “Taste” had been about ‘mere’ vampires in that regard, and I much preferred the flesh-eating approach than the bloodsucking one. One good point for Kate Evangelista here.

This book was a nice read, compelling and well-paced enough for me to read it in a breeze. I especially liked its take on ‘zombies’: not undead, brain-eating monsters, but a civilisation of flesh-consuming human-looking beings, with thoughts and feelings of their own, but who had to turn away from their natural food sources due to specific reasons, and whose survival is quite the conundrum now. Their laws and way of living had a tight, enclosed feeling that mirrored the abstinence they had to inflict upon themselves, and of course it made sense that sooner or later, all of this would rot and fester, and lead to conflict. The scientific twist brought in all that was also a nice add-on: not too complex for a non-scientific to understand, but believable.

I liked the male cast overall. Demitri’s and Luka’s classical archetypes opposition worked well, and their hidden pains gave them depth; Dray was touching in his own ways, with his mad scientist antics walking hand in hand with deep love and caring for his people, and a genuine desire to help; and Darius’s personality seriously made me grin, especially after a certain description Phoenix made of him. What I appreciated less was the love triangle: the two boys seemed to have equal chances at getting the girl, but Luka’s interest felt somewhat forced—he gave more vibes of ‘naturally a good friend’ than ‘love interest’.

On the other hand, I really, really didn’t like Phoenix. At all. I found her tremendously annoying, whiny, bitchy, and not so clever for someone supposed to have a high IQ/study at a prestigious academy for talented youth. Granted, she was brave… although I often wondered if this was bravery or sheer stupidity on her part. Her childish reactions spelled ‘catastrophe in the making’ from beginning to end; it’s a wonder she managed to stay alive at all (poor Demitri and Luka, such a piece of hard work keeping her safe must have been for you two!). This is too bad, because if not for her character, I’d likely have rated this book higher (for now, it’s more of a 3.5/5 for me).