Hunger by Jackie Morse Kessler + Contest!

Published October 2010.

Lisabeth Lewis has a black steed, a set of scales, and a new job: she's been appointed Famine. How will an anorexic seventeen-year-old girl from the suburbs fare as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?

Traveling the world on her steed gives Lisa freedom from her troubles at home - her constant battle with hunger and her struggle to hide it from the people who care about her. But being Famine forces her to go to places where hunger is a painful part of everyday life, and to face the horrifying effects of her phenomenal power. Can Lisa find a way to harness that power - and the courage to fight her own inner demons? (book back blurb)

I don't normally set expectations for things because if whatever it is doesn't live up to those expectations, you have no one to blame but yourself. So outside of reasonable expectations, I don't go into things like, say, most books, all ramped up for it thinking it was going to be something great. Usually. Unfortunately I did that with this one and, sad to say, my expectations were not lived up to. My bad.

I guess going in the concept I had brewing of an anorexic girl as Famine was beyond what this story provided. And that's okay, but I wasn't all that impressed with where it went. And I do think that's thinking outside of my original expectations of it.

Lisabeth is anorexic and for some unknown reason, Death knights her into Famine to spread the doom piece all over the world. Her outward battle with her new-found powers and the bitch that is War blatantly mirrors her inner struggle with her eating disorder. I get that. But I couldn't help but feel that the story was missing something.

The writing's pretty good and it helped that the story was short so I zipped through it pretty quickly. I liked how Lisa's problem is portrayed in conjunction with her friends that want to help her and her "friend" that enables her. It's a good dynamic. But tied in with being Famine, I just felt the connector was a little flat.

Lisa goes from petulant denial that's she's anorexic to fully accepting the fact that she's anorexic in only a matter of pages but there wasn't really any big revealing action that caused that epiphany. One moment it was denial and the next she was kind of going over herself as Famine and the word just sort of fell into her thoughts. And she was okay with that. I didn't like that.

But the lack of a 'why' was what really turned me away from the story. Death kind of latched onto this sick girl, gave her these crazy powers, all to teach her a lesson? Why? It just seems like such an infinitesimal thing for such an infinite being to do and the explanation for it wasn't anywhere near what I felt it needed to be in order to properly explain that why. At the end of the book Lisa isn't suffering from Special Child Syndrome. She doesn't differ from any of the other thousands of anorexics in the world. So why her? That question wasn't answered for me and that really bothers me.

Overall it's a decent book. I liked all of the characters and the situations they were put in but I just didn't feel it was strong enough to carry the premise. There were a few too many holes in a very interesting topic for me (the Horsemen) that were left unexplained. I honestly don't know if I'm going to venture further into the series as it comes out. If I don't have anything in my pile to read, maybe because I wasn't uninterested. But I'm not itching to grab the next book.

Contest Time!!!

Want my ARC? All you have to do is fill out the form below for your chance to win. Open to US residents 13 years of age and older only. One entry per person per email address. Duplicate entries will be deleted. Contest ends February 15th at midnight, EST.

Crazy by Han Nolan

Published September 13, 2010.

Fifteen-year-old Jason has fallen upon bad times-his mother has died and his father has succumbed to mental illness. As he tries to hold his crazy father and their crumbling home together, Jason relies on a host of imaginary friends for guidance as he stumbles along trying not to draw attention to his father's deteriorating condition. (from netgalley.com)

After coming off of A Blue So Dark by Holly Schindler, walking into another book with an exceptionally similar plot garnered a particular set of high expectations. Unfortunately Crazy did not meet them and I ended up not finishing this one.

As I said, the plotlines of this and A Blue So Dark are really similar: a teen living alone with a mentally unstable parent while being their sole caretaker and trying to balance their own lives at the same time. Both are relative loners and both try to pass off their parents' illness as if it's something they can take care of. But where A Blue So Dark pulls you into the MC's feelings and emotions, makes you live them right along side the character, Crazy pushes you away because, well, there are already a lot of voices in the MC's head and there really isn't any room for you.

There is a disconnect between the reader and the characters because of the lack of intensity on the part of the MC. Instead of showing what's going on, we get the kid's life dictated to us by the talking heads in his head. Frankly I found it grating that the guy created his own sitcom and expected us to feel what he was feeling based entirely on the tellings of several different voices throughout the story. Really I am shown nothing and told everything about Jason and his father. All of the flashbacks are not relived with intense feeling from Jason but "witty" asides from the cast of characters in his head. Am I supposed to feel bad that his father tried to bury him in the backyard because the rest of the characters take it as a joke. And their voices are a hell of a lot louder than Jason's. And I get it's a coping mechanism but I think maybe it was a little too good because it pushed me away from the severity and realism of what was going on.

I felt more for the secondary characters that Jason has those school psych meetings with. Their problems aren't tempered by the voices in Jason's head because they know nothing about those kids. So there's finally peace. Those characters are allowed to come through and be themselves. I can actually see them. Jason? Not so much. He's hidden too far behind his headful of talking heads. It's kind of hard to keep reading a story where I just can't connect to the main character. At least for me, anyway.

Maybe if you can appreciate the type of quirky going on in this book you'd like it but it was put up against some pretty stiff competition. And not intentionally. Crazy just didn't elicit the same emotions for me. I didn't feel much for Jason and I had a hard time trying to look around of veil of voices talking at me the entire time. When I was finally able to, all I saw were the secondary characters. Not Jason. Personally, if you want a story about a teen having to handle a mentally ill parent, read A Blue So Dark. If you insist on reading this one, read it first, and then pick up A Blue So Dark for comparison. But don't read A Blue So Dark first because it will set the bar far too high and Crazy won't come anywhere near it.

Adios, Nirvana by Conrad Wesselhoeft

Published October 25, 2010.

When you piss off a bridge into a snowstorm, it feels like you're connecting with eternal things. Paying homage to something or someone. But who? The Druids? Walt Whitman? No, I pay homage to one person only, my brother, my twin.

In life. In death.
Telemachus.

Since the death of his brother, Jonathan's been losing his grip on reality. Last year's Best Young Poet and gifted guitarist is now Taft High School's resident tortured artist, when he bothers to show up. He's on track to repeat eleventh grade, but his English teacher, his principal, and his crew of Thicks (who refuse to be seniors without him) won't sit back and let him fail. (from netgalley.com)

Sad to say, this was another Did Not Finish. By the halfway point I just felt the plot was sluggish and I really couldn't stand the voice. Not to mention it went far too into guitar detail for my liking. I mean, I get it. The kid's a guitar player. But with all of the chord talk and types of guitars, I found myself zoning out. I like a good guitar as much as the next guy but I'm not at that level. I just couldn't appreciate the knowledge.

The voice of the story was the biggest issue for me. It was angsty to the Curt Cobain degree. Like the kid stepped out of 1992 dripping in unwashed plaid and Doc Martins. Not only did I feel the voice was misplaced for the setting (it's a current setting but seeped in 20-year-old music, surely not every teenager in Seattle is gaga for the ancient grunge scene still), it was just trying too hard to be all "I don't give a shit" pissy and I just found it really annoying. Yeah, I get it. The kid's brother died (whom I couldn't get over the fact that anyone would name their kid Telemachus) and he's coping but I'm not a fan of anyone wallowing in their own self-pity, let alone a kid set to his own devices in a contrived situation where no one really gives a crap.

I could blame it on his mother but I just felt her really cliche. Some deadbeat pseudo-whore that leeches off of her son, forcing him to make a better life for her instead of being the mother she actually is. Yeah, it's a shitty situation but I just felt it was tired so I couldn't really empathize with anything.

So between Jonathan's pissing and moaning and constant guitar-playing and "LOOK AT ME" pseudo-suicide attempts, the mismatched and misplaced voice and a stumbling-along plot, I just couldn't make it to the end. Maybe if the voice were different. Maybe if it didn't try so hard to be a byproduct of Curt Cobain's pre-emo emoism and Mitch Albom's latent inner-teen's nightmare. Maybe if it was just truer to itself, I would have liked it more. Maybe someone with a little more patience than me could make it through to the end but I just didn't care enough about the MC, or his story, to do it.

Sources of Light by Margaret McMullan

Published April 12th, 2010.

It's 1962, a year after the death of Sam's father—he was a war hero—and Sam and her mother must move, along with their very liberal views, to Jackson, Mississippi, her father's conservative hometown. Needless to say, they don't quite fit in.

People like the McLemores fear that Sam, her mother, and her mother's artist friend, Perry, are in the South to "agitate" and to shake up the dividing lines between black and white and blur it all to grey. As racial injustices ensue—sit-ins and run-ins with secret white supremacists—Sam learns to focus with her camera lens to bring forth the social injustice out of the darkness and into the light. (from netgalley.com)

This one almost ended up being a DNF but, literally, right at the middle page of the book, a plot element caught my eye that made me want to keep pushing through. Now, I can't remember what that element was. I can say it was a piece of action in an otherwise rather inactive story. It was a catalyst enough to keep me turning the pages.

But unfortunately I didn't have any kind of "OMG I'm so glad I kept reading!" revelations. The story was okay and I liked the writing enough but I don't think it popped. There wasn't too much that stood out, that struck me as being really powerful. I think it's because I felt the story was rather run-of-the-mill. It's the story of a Yankee white girl moving down to Jackson, Mississippi where outcasts are just as unwanted as anyone with a hint of color in their skin. Unfortunately I just didn't feel it was original enough.

There was a major historical element in the book, the sit-in at the drug store counter, that the MC was placed into but I just didn't feel it. I didn't feel the hum of the air or the hatred in the waitress's eyes or the fear at being caught "on the wrong side" of the fight. It was a girl hidden behind a camera documenting an event that others wanted to happen but they didn't want proof of.

On the other side I liked the growth of Sam throughout the story. You get a real sense of just how immature she is for her age at the beginning of the book and how self-conscious she was about her differences from everyone else. You wanted Stone to not be the Kreeper that kept on being insinuated because Sam liked him so much. But at the same time you wanted to slap her upside the head because of the way she kept convincing herself that he wasn't bad. By the end you could see her as an adult. By staying hidden behind that lens, she developed the backbone she needed to embrace her differences, to take a stand against the popular opinion, to work for what's right. You can actually see her cracking her way out of the shell wrapped around her and I loved her character for it.

But ultimately I just couldn't get myself involved in the story. It's not that I wasn't interested in the events going on, or the turmoil going on in Sam's life. It didn't matter how much I wanted to get engrossed; I just couldn't. I don't really think there's a legitimate reason for me not too. The writing was pretty good and as I said, I loved Sam. But I just wasn't feeling it. I think I felt it lacked passion for what was going on outside of Sam. Sam was a pure focus with everything else taking second chair. Maybe there was too much focus put on Sam and not enough on what was going on around her. Maybe reading it I couldn't get myself far enough out of her head to really feel what was going on. I'm not sure. I do think a lot of people would really like this book but it wasn't for me.

The Mermaid's Mirror by LK Madigan

Published October 4, 2010.

There's something drawing Lena to the water. It's making Lena sleepwalk to the beach. It's compelling her to surf even if it means putting herself in grave danger and going against her father's wishes.

A woman emerges from the waves—a woman with a silvery tail.

She has a message.

She has a key.

When Lena finds a brown leather sea chest and uses the key to unlock it, she has no choice but to look into the watery depths of her secret past through the mysterious mermaid's mirror . . . Lena's life will never be the same. (from netgalley.com)

I wouldn't say I had high hopes for this one but I was expecting a little more than what I got. Unfortunately, this ended up being a Did Not Finish. I let myself get to the halfway point before shutting the pages (or turning off the eReader, as it were) on it for good. When it becomes a chore to read, it's time to move on. At least with this one I wasn't trading reading for bathroom scrubbing.

I found the writing to be, at times, mechanical, like there was no heart in it. You'd think it'd be a little more whimsical, being a mermaid story and all but I didn't get that. In fact I felt that a lot of the telling (because that's what it was) was robotic, like I was watching the characters jerk around on the page, moving from one action to another without much thought other than what exactly they were doing. One character told the other character this. They surfed. They walked on the beach. They went to school. They got a ride home. I just didn't feel involved. I felt it all rather emotionless.

The story itself was drawn on what I thought was unnecessarily long. At the mid-point I was just getting to be more involved with the mermaid. And I don't mean me personally. I meant the story. She pops up (literally) a couple of times until that point but it's more as an aside than a direct involvement. She doesn't actually engage with the main character until about halfway through the book and by then I was already struggling.

And then there are the insinuations hinted at to Lena's mother. And the mermaid. Really they're blatantly obvious. Because I didn't read to the end I can't tell you if what's so blatant is actually true but it wouldn't surprise me since that was the road it was headed down when I left. And it just made the reading that much more tired. I think because it was made so obvious more than it being the storyline itself. I wasn't thrilled with it but at the same time it wasn't really written with finesse either so that didn't help.

I think the book overall needed a serious plotline shift. Move the mermaid stuff up further and stop hovering over Lena's social life for so long unless it actually played a vital role later on in the story (again, I can't answer if it did or not because I stopped reading but at the pace it was going, I doubt it). But because of such a slow pace and the uninteresting writing, I just couldn't get involved in the story. So much time was spent on Lena and her friends and her boyfriend that the mermaid part was stuffed to the side that it just wasn't interesting for me. I didn't have the patience to wait and see the mermaid aspect rise to the surface like it should have in the beginning.

If you have the patience, I'm sure you'd like the story. It seemed like it was going in an interesting direction. I know I've seen some good reviews of this one out there. But it wasn't for me. I didn't have the patience enough to wait and see.

The Clearing by Heather Davis

Published April 12, 2010.

Amy is drawn to the misty, mysterious clearing behind her Aunt Mae’s place because it looks like the perfect place to hide from life. A place to block out the pain of her last relationship, to avoid the kids in her new town, to stop dwelling on what her future holds after high school. Then, she meets a boy lurking in the mist—Henry. Henry is different from any other guy Amy has ever known. And after several meetings in the clearing, she’s starting to fall for him. But Amy is stunned when she finds out just how different Henry really is. Because on his side of the clearing, it’s still 1944. By some miracle, Henry and his family are stuck in the past, staving off the tragedy that will strike them in the future. Amy’s crossing over to Henry’s side brings him more happiness than he’s ever known—but her presence also threatens to destroy his safe existence. (from netgalley.com)

I'm a little late to the game getting to this one but better late than never, without a doubt. Oh. My. God. What a great book.

Amy is standoffish, not trusting of anyone and rightly so. But because of this attitude she adopts in order to protect herself, she doesn't let anyone in and she doesn't let them know why. Until Henry. Henry allows her to open up. He doesn't put on a show. He doesn't make her promises. He's as come-as-you-are as you can get and Amy is wholly attracted to that.

I'm not a romance person by any means. I like the characters I read to suffer, as sadistic as that is. I want them to earn the love they're seeking. I don't want it to be easy. And man did Amy earn Henry's love. I don't mean by being a performing chimp at an organ grinder for him. She just went through crap and a half before getting to him and it's about damn time she found someone to love that loves her back just for being her. Her ex is a dick. Her former friends are dicks. She's earned Henry and everything he has to offer. And he has so much to offer her, so much he can provide for her and ultimately he gives it to her. He just can't give himself to her and that, my friends, had me in tears.

I felt for what Amy went through, her character was totally believable. And when she stood up to her ex, when she told him to FOAD that final time, I was cheering for her. Yes! A protagonist that stands up to the dick! That won't let him push her around or hurt her anymore! While she went into a push and pull with Henry, she ultimately accepts what he is to her and, in the end, that's okay. It has to be. It's not like she has a choice.

I just can't say enough wonderful things about this story without sounding like some drooling fangirl. It's a love story that'll have you screaming at the end of it because it's a happily ever after but not in the way you think it's going to be. The past has finally been righted and that's all the happy there needs to be, for everyone.

I couldn't help but wonder why no one had gone through the mist before. I know it has some physical effects on whoever walks into it so maybe that would be enough of a deterrent. Plus there were some haunting stories surrounding the property, so add those two elements together and it might be enough to keep the superstitious at bay. But it still made me wonder.

At the end of the day, Amy's a strong character that deserves everything she gets in this story. Davis isn't afraid to try her even more than she's already been tried, but she just ends up coming out the other end even stronger than when she went in. Amy learns not everyone she meets is a total douche. Real, genuine love is possible. It's okay to be happy. But I warn you all, you may cry at the end. And damn it all if I wasn't at work reading this. Thankfully I was able to keep my head down long enough to dry my mascara.

Wildthorn by Jane Eagland

Pub date 9/6/2010.

They strip her naked, of everything-undo her whalebone corset, hook by hook. Locked away in Wildthorn Hall—a madhouse—they take her identity. She is now called Lucy Childs. She has no one; she has nothing. But, she is still seventeen-still Louisa Cosgrove, isn't she? Who has done this unthinkable deed? Louisa must free herself, in more ways than one, and muster up the courage to be her true self, all the while solving her own twisted mystery and falling into an unconventional love . . . (from netgalley.com)

"Excessive study, especially in one of the fair sex, often leads to insanity."

Imagine that's the norm. Women reading? There must be something wrong with them. Why would they want to study? They're not capable of doing what the men folk can do. They don't have the brains for it. They'd only overexert themselves. Possibly twist their brains into incomprehension trying to process all of information that they could ever hope of processing.

Disregard every freedom you have today. Those TBR piles? Gone. The ability to read freely? Gone. College? Gone. You, as a woman (sorry guys), are expected to do womanly things only and that certainly doesn't include a scientific education. You want to be a doctor? Haha! Silly girl. Doctors are for dicks.

I wanted to read this book so horribly badly the second I found out about it simply because it's horrifying what happened to women during the Victorian era. It was legal for people to stick chicks in nut houses because they were a burden, they weren't acting properly, they were moody. Just think about that. Your husband thinks you're being a little too irrational and it might affect his standing with his peers. Well, he's just going to send you to a place like Wildthorn to help you out a little. Too bad their version of "helping out" was drugging you, treating you like shit, electrifying you, binding you up and leaving you in a tub for hours. You know, cathartic things.

And don't think for a second that we wouldn't all meet each other in a place like that if the times were different. All this reading? Cause for insanity.

So going into the book my inner feminist was ramped up. I've read about asylums from back then and I knew how horrible they were but you don't often hear stories from the patient's perspective. The story starts and you don't know if Louisa really is sick or not. The way she talks, acts, she seems perfectly fine. True, the insane don't really know they're insane but you're in her head and it doesn't seem so crazy in there. The only thing that kept me legitimately questioning her sanity was the name issue. She was admitted as Lucy Childs but she kept insisting her name was Louisa Cosgrove. That kept me questioning for a long time.

I also had to keep guessing at the incident that Louisa/Lucy felt got her locked up. The closer the story got to the reveal, the more obvious it got and honestly, I like the twist the story took at that point. Without giving too much away, it highlights an issue that I'm sure was thoroughly ignored during that time despite it actually being in existence. And the relationship that was formed because of it was so endearing and loving it was hard not to get a little misty about it.

I was turning from one page to the next without wanting to stop. What happened to Louisa/Lucy while locked away at Wildthorn was horrendous. And to think that actually happened to many women is even more horrifying. You tried to defend yourself and you were considered even crazier and sent to an even crazier ward of the hospital where you were left to start questioning your own insanity and your own reason. So many women went into places like that totally sane and lost their minds to those institutions. It's so sad.

The plot itself is very stagnant. If you're not at Louisa/Lucy's aunt's house or her own home, you're at the asylum. There's not too much action in terms of action/adventure but the trials that Louisa/Lucy went through were more than enough for me. Fighting for the very status of your own brain is a mighty feat and she never gave up, even when her situation looked end-of-times bleak. She's such a strong character and I think if only more women were really as strong as she was, they might have fared a little better. Or maybe worse, as it were, unfortunately.

When the following things could have gotten a woman locked in a terrifying insane asylum without any recourse whatsoever -

facts indicating insanity observed by myself - An interest in medical matters inappropriate for one of her age and sex; A neglect of appearance and personal toilet, and wearing unsuitable clothing for a young lady of her status

other factors indicating insanity communicated to me by others - Excessive book-reading and study leading to a weakening of the mind; Desiring to ape men by nursing an ambition to be a doctor; Self-assertiveness in the face of male authority; Obstinacy and displays of temper; Going about unchaperoned to London alone in a third class railway compartment

- it's hard not to immediately sympathize with the main character when you yourself exhibit all of those characteristics. It's hard not to sit there and have your heart break when you read what happened to this girl because she read a little too much; because she wanted to be a doctor. I just connected with this book on such a personal level that I want to read it over and over and over again.

Hopefully we've learned from history and these kinds of atrocities will never repeat themselves. Let's hope it's forever relegated to compelling stories and no one will ever be able to describe what it was really like in one of those places. Reading Wildthorn I could actually feel what it was like. I had dreams about it. It made me thank the gods I live in the time that I do.

Read this if you want an excellent historical fiction. Read it if you want a compelling story about a girl having to deal with a situation far beyond her control. Read it if you can even for a second imagine what it would be like to have all of your rights ripped away because someone couldn't be bothered with you. Read it if you want an amazing story.