For True Jane Austen Fans

I've been Pinteresting a lot of Pride and Prejudice funnies lately, so I tried to find some Emma or Northanger Abbey funnies, and found...nothing. Zip! It's like 90% of "Jane Austen"-related conversations are about Pride and Prejudice. Well, true Jane Austen fans know that she wrote other great books! So I bring you this meme in honor of Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, Mansfield Park, and Northanger Abbey.

Review of The Infinite Sea by Rick Yancey

What is a starred review? Seriously, aren't they all "starred"? I don't know a single book review site that allows you to give a book a 0 star rating. So by definition, all the reviews are starred. The back of this book though, Rick Yancey's The Infinite Sea, features three "starred reviews" that praise the first book in this seriously awesome series, The 5th Wave. "Amazing!" "Gripping!" "A Sure Thing!"

And okay, they do not lie. This is a damned good series so far. I don't have any free time (really, I don't), but I just sat down with this book and read it in about five hours. Should I have spent five hours reading? Probably not.

Definitely not.

Could I have stopped?

Not a chance.

The Infinite Sea is the second book in an absolutely must-read YA sci-fi series. You will not be disappointed. Aliens, mind games, twists, unforgettable characters - it's all there. And you know how second books in a series tend to feel a little disappointing? Like, it's good, but it's not as good as the first book . . . wrong! The Infinite Sea is just as good as The 5th Wave. It even answers some questions we've had since the beginning, some really important questions - which second books in series rarely do. Second books often feel like watered-down bridges that are just getting you to the third book, in which the real important stuff happens. Not The Infinite Sea. There's a considerable amount of progress, many questions get answered, many things are discovered - but don't worry! There's still plenty left over for the third book. Not everything adds up yet. You still need to know what happens next.

I still need to know what happens next.

Excellent work, Mr. Yancey.

Consider this a 5-starred review.

I'm Not Getting Any Younger: A Reading Challenge

When you go to the bookstore, or the library, or browse books online, are there certain books you notice over and over again and keep saying "Wow, I really need to read this, it's a classic! Everyone else has read this! It's supposed to be amazing! I really need to remember to read it this year"? I do this all the time. I majored in English in college, and even though I graduated two years ago, I still feel like it's my duty to read all the great classics. Well, all the interesting-looking ones anyway (aka all the ones not written by Charles Dickens, whose Great Expectations almost destroyed my love for reading in the 9th grade).

I just feel like I'm missing out on something big. So I'm making a list of all the major classics I want to read, and I vow to read at least 5 of them per year. Yes, I know, that's a very modest goal, but I have two jobs and am a stay-at-home mom, so cut me some slack! I'm being realistic. 

Ulysses by James Joyce

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Watership Down by Richard Adams

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (in Spanish)

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Dracula by Bram Stoker

The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien (!!! No, I haven't read it!)

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell

War & Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Into the Wild by John Krakauer

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

How many of these classics have you read? Are any of these also on your TBR list? 

Review of The Accident Season by Moira Fowley-Doyle

The Accident Season
by Moira Fowley-Doyle

Release date: August 18, 2015
Kathy Dawson Books, 304 pages

Source: Penguin's First to Read eGalley

"For fans of We Were Liars and How I Live Now comes a haunting, sexy, magically realistic debut
about a famiy caught between a violent history, a taboo romance, and the mysteries lurking in their own backyard.  

Every October Cara and her family become inexplicably and unavoidably accident-prone. Some years it's bad, like the season when her father died, and some years it's just a lot of cuts and scrapes. This accident season--when Cara, her ex-stepbrother, Sam, and her best friend, Bea, are 17--is going to be a bad one. But not for the reasons they think. 

Cara is about to learn that not all the scars left by the accident season are physical: There's a long-hidden family secret underneath the bumps and bruises. This is the year Cara will finally fall desperately in love, when she'll start discovering the painful truth about the adults in her life, and when she'll uncover the dark origins of the accident season--whether she’s ready or not."- from Goodreads.com 

The short of it: 

Buried beneath a haze of magic and mystery lies a secret story that too many people know all too well. Spooky and sensual, The Accident Season is a must-read not just for lovers of the paranormal, but also for readers of contemporary YA fiction.

The long of it:

The Accident Season has something I don't see a lot in YA Lit: magical realism. While the novel was a pleasure to read as a supernatural mystery, what really bumped it an extra .5 stars for me was that underneath all the magic was the kernel of an ugly, all-too-real, truth. I won't say anything more, as slowly figuring out this truth was even more interesting to me as a reader than trying to figure out if the magic was real or if Cara was crazy.

The Accident Season is spooky and magical at every turn; somehow even the rhythm of the words is haunting, reminiscent of a chant. Main character Cara's life seems to exist outside everyone else's reality, replete with changelings, witches, Tarot cards, secrets collected by girls everyone forgets, red buttons in haunted houses, and of course, accidents that may not be accidents at all.

For US readers, the foreign Irish setting will lend a certain allure to the novel, and complement the feeling that magic is just at the edges of your vision, lurking in the shadows of the trees and the whispering of the river.

I think one of the things that really intrigued me about The Accident Season is that it didn't come out and say it's a paranormal mystery, but instead sort of danced around the subject, leaving so many possibilities open as to the origin of the accident season. I couldn't tell if "haunting" meant it was going to be a ghost story, because the accidents sounded like a fairy thing, and maybe there were witches too - and then I realized that it didn't matter to me what creature was responsible, because the story already appealed to me.

My rating? 4.5 out of 5 stars

Friday Finds #8

Yesterday, in preparation for Friday Finds, I started "organizing" my haphazard library of books. If you've followed me on Twitter @RaineReviews, you've seen the overflowing disaster that our one solitary bookshelf is.

I put organizing in quotation marks because I had a pretty....unique....system going: I made a stack for my favorite books, stacks for collections by the same author, a stack for books I was no longer interested in (oh my!), a stack for classics, and most importantly, a stack for my TBR list.

My hubby walked in on me surrounded by seemingly random stacks of books and just stared, a little bemused and a little amused. His response reassured me that I married the exact right person: "I'm going to build you some bookshelves." Hurray!!

And hurray also for separating my TBR books from the rest of my little library. For the first time ever, I have an actual physical stack of books to get through. 31 books. A lot of these are classics I collected while I was an English major, and even though I'm not in school anymore, I still think the classics are important, especially to my education as a writer. I'm loosely considering setting myself the goal of finishing this physical stack by the end of the year, but I haven't yet decided if that's a realistic goal. This would be aside from books I buy to read immediately, and any ARCs I'm sent, like, for example, this new addition to my TBR list (which is already in my digital library, and about to get opened!):

And I'm HOPING to get this bad boy from First To Read, if I'm lucky:

Yes, I'm keeping it short and sweet. I want my new shelves to at least LOOK nice for a little while before I overflow them with books. 

Do you, too, have a TBR pile somewhere in the house? Share a picture with @RaineReviews! I'll be posting pictures of my stacks all week, because what's better than a bunch of well-organized books?

Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by MizB @ A Daily Rhythm that showcases the books you've added to your TBR list this week. Everyone is welcome to join in. 

Throwback Thursday #3: Trickster's Choice by Tamora Pierce

Okay, you've guessed it by now: Throwback Thursday is just an excuse for me to mini-review my favorite books. And by review I mean rave about. For example, today's throwback is one of my all-time favorite books.

Trickster's Choice 
By Tamora Pierce
Publication date: September 17, 2004
Scholastic Press
453 pages

Mini review:
The Daughter of the Lionness series is my favorite series by Tamora Pierce (and I've read them all). The main character Aly is, simply put, a total badass. She's incredibly intelligent, sneaky, kicks ass in a fight, and did I mention her razor-sharp wits? In this book, Aly literally builds herself from the ground up, going from slave to - well, I won't give it away, but let's just say that I was obsessed with being like Aly for years. Hell, thinking about TC is making me want to reread TC for the billionth time, just to read about Aly of Pirate's Sweep, and okay, maybe a little bit to read about Nawat, who is possibly the hottest male interest ever written in YA. Not only is he actually supposed to be pretty hot, but he is also totally guileless, which provides a nice contrast to the very guile-ful heroine. And of course, one of the best things about this book is that it's set in the fantasy realm of Tortall, which is the setting for several other series by Tamora Pierce (all fantastic and highly recommended by this blogger.) My only warning is that if you are very sensitive about issues of race, this may not be the fantasy for you, as it does talk about it a lot.

Definitely recommend TC to lovers of other Tamora Pierce books, Garth Nix's The Old Kingdom (Abhorsen) series, or C.S. Lewis's classic The Chronicles of Narnia.

Do you have a favorite Tamora Pierce series?

As always, feel free to join in on Throwback Thursday in the comments below or on your own blogs. And don't forget to leave a link here so I can go check it out!

Throwback Thursday is a chance to showcase great books read a long time ago, but remembered as clearly as if they were still on the nightstand with a bookmark between the pages. Write a short and sweet review and post it on your blog or on the comments to join in. Because sometimes the oldies deserve the spotlight too.

Beautiful Words #5

Oh, Neil Gaiman, you are so wise. Even if this quote is apparently paraphrased from a longer text by G.K. Chesterton, who is apparently responsible for converting C.S. Lewis to Christianity. 

Have you ever Googled something and ended up jumping from one unexpected fact to another and reading a bunch of random stuff? I learned about four nearly-unrelated people just because I happened upon this quote.  

Teaser Tuesday #4: The Accident Season by Moira Fowley-Doyle

This book hasn't been released in the US yet, so instead of the usual two-sentence teaser, here is a different kind of teaser: an interview with the author, Moira Fowley-Doyle, via Penguin Platform.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along! Just grab your current read, open to a random page, and share two teaser sentences from somewhere on that page. Be careful not to include spoilers!

Friday Finds #7

It's that time of the week again...time to share the books we've added to our TBR list! Just in time for the weekend, too. Time time time. Where does it all go? Will there ever be enough time to actually finish my TBR list? Only time will tell...but for now, I'll tell you what:

I'm pretty happy with all four of these finds. If (okay, when) I decide to trim my TBR list, these guys will definitely make the final cut. Are there any books you're confident you want to read? Does your TBR list have levels? Ooooh, levels...guess I know how I'm spending the next six hours of my life. *organizational frenzy begins*


Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by MizB @ A Daily Rhythm that showcases the books we've added to your TBR list this week. Everyone is welcome to join in. You can comment on my post or on your own blog.

Friday Finds #6

Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by MizB @ A Daily Rhythm that showcases books you found and added to your TBR list this week.

This week I did a dangerous thing: I visited the library. We just moved to a new town, and the library is only five minutes down the road. (!!!!!!!!) This worried my husband a little bit because our new home is already overrun with books, which I of course unpacked right away despite our only having brought one bookshelf, and now we are likely to always have a few (dozen) library books floating around as well. Lucky for him, the library only let me check out two books this time because I'm a brand new member. Which brings me to my Friday Finds:

I'd heard about Grave Mercy a few years back when Figment.com held a giveaway for it, and I've been wanting to read it ever since. I was especially excited to check out Grave Mercy and Dark Triumph together, because I always like having the whole series on the off-chance that I love the first book so much that I go on a reading binge and just need to read them back-to-back. Plus, I was feeling a little stumped because I had just looked up A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas on the library catalog and discovered that there were 25 people on the waiting list. 25! If they each held on to the book for their 2 weeks, I wouldn't get to see ACTR for another year. Sooo yeah. I'm probably going to end up buying it. But in the meantime, let's read about assassin nuns. Woo. 

Want to share your Friday Finds? Comment below or join in on the Friday Finds fun on your own blog!

Throwback Thursday #2: The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud

Welcome to a second round of Throwback Thursday! I'm so excited about inviting other bloggers to join me, I'm thinking about making a special linky button logo thingy. You know the kind.

In case you weren't around for last week's post, my Throwback Thursday is a chance to showcase great books I read a long time ago, but remember as clearly as if they were still on my nightstand with a bookmark between the pages, with a short and sweet review. Because sometimes the oldies deserve the spotlight too.

Today's throwback is:

The Amulet of Samarkand
By Jonathan Stroud
Publication date: January 1, 2003
Disney-Hyperion
463 pages

The review:

I absolutely love this book. There's nothing more charming than having two peculiar antiheroes as protagonists. Nathaniel is a spoiled, unlikable main character. Bartimaeus is a witty, yet incredibly likable demon. Set in the best parallel reality since Harry Potter, this fantasy book's quirky characters are sure to win you over. This book also has a pretty unique feature, at least in the world of novels: footnotes. If you're thinking about stuffy old academic papers written by squinty bearded men, and forced on millions of students every year - don't! Witty and incredibly funny, these footnotes are basically my favorite part of The Bartimaeus Trilogy. Definitely recommend this book to lovers of Harry Potter, The Golden Compass, or the show Supernatural.


That's it. Short, sweet, to the point. If you like the idea of Throwback Thursday, feel free to join in by posting on the comments below or on your own blog. Just make sure you leave a link in the comments so I can check out what past read you've been thinking about lately :)

Friday Finds #5

It's Friday again! Where did the week go? I must have spent it buried in a fantasy book...and adding more to my TBR list. 

Have you read any of these recent releases? What did you think? 

Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by MizB @ A Daily Rhythm that showcases books you found and added to your TBR list this week. 

Want to share your Friday Finds? Comment below or join in on the FF event on your own blog!

Throwback Thursday #1: Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor

There are a lot of definitions of "Throwback Thursday" in the book blogging world, so I'm just coming up with my own: a chance to showcase books I read a long time ago, but remember as clearly as if they were still on my nightstand with a bookmark between the pages, with a short and sweet review. Because sometimes oldies deserve the spotlight too.

Today's throwback is: 

Daughter of Smoke & Bone 

By Laini Taylor

Publication date: September 27, 2011

Little, Brown 

418 pages

The review:

A truly original, beautifully written fantasy. The magic is in the quirky details. And I mean, really quirky. A main character with blue hair, a secret past, and a shady second life. A father figure who collects teeth, grants wishes, and oh, isn't exactly human. One of the hottest antagonists ever to be found in books.

Yep, definitely a must-read for YA Fantasy lovers.  

That's it! Short and sweet. If you like the idea, feel free to join in on Throwback Thursday in the comments below or on your own blog. Just make sure you leave a link back in the comments so I can check out what past read you've been thinking about lately :)

Beautiful Words #4

One of the wonderful birthday gifts I received yesterday was this beautiful writing journal. I felt so inspired this morning sitting down to write that I felt I needed to share the quote on the cover.

Friday Finds #4

A month ago, when I realized I was going to be another year older again, I promised myself I would finish writing a piece as my birthday gift from myself. Normally this would be easy enough, but between life and a baby, there's not a lot of time left over to get creative. I knew that if I really wanted to reach my goal, I was going to have to actively avoid my TBR list, bookshelves, and sites like Goodreads, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon. I almost made it, too! With only a few days until my birthday, I happened to notice the monthly YA newsletter from Goodreads, which I couldn't help opening, and one thing led to another... So here are my Friday Finds:

Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by MizB @ A Daily Rhythm that showcases the books you found and added to your TBR list this week.

What's new in your TBR list? Share in the comments!

Beautiful Words #3

Yes, I know, yet another quote from The Fault in Our Stars by John Green...it's not my fault he's one of those people who write great one-liners!

"Waiting On" Wednesday #3: To Hold the Bridge by Garth Nix

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Jill @ Breaking the Spine that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating. Since she's invited anyone to join in, let me share with you a book I've been anticipating for a long time. Since he is one of my favorite YA Fantasy authors, I follow Garth Nix on Facebook and Twitter, which is how I found out about this collection of stories:

"An entertaining short-story collection from bestselling fantasy author Garth Nix, including an Old Kingdom novella, a short story set in the same world as Shade's Children, and another story set in the world of A Confusion of Princes. 

Garth Nix is renowned for his legendary fantasy works, but To Hold the Bridge showcases his versatility as the collection offers nineteen short stories from every genre of literature including science fiction, paranormal, realistic fiction, mystery, and adventure. Whether writing about vampires, detectives, ancient spirits, or odd jobs, Garth Nix's ability to pull his readers into new worlds is extraordinary."  

-Barnes & Noble online

The Old Kingdom series is one of my top favorite of all time, so I can't wait to read that novella! What book are you most anticipating? Comment below or join in with a WoW post on your own blog!

Review of The Ruins of Ambrai by Melanie Rawn

The Ruins of Ambrai
by Melanie Rawn

Publication date: March 7th, 1997
Pan Books, 928 pages

Source: Borrowed from a friend

"A thousand years ago, Mageborns fled prejudice and persecution to colonize the planet Lenfell--a perfect refuge for those whose powers were perceived as a threat by people not gifted with magic. But the greater the magic, the greater the peril. Lenfell was soon devastated by a war between rival Mageborn factions that polluted the land with Wild Magic and unleashed hideous specters called Wraithenbeasts. Now, generations later, someone is planning another war on the still crippled planet that will tear three Mageborn sisters apart."

- Goodreads.com

The short of it: 

With the intricacy of R.R. Martin's popular series A Song of Ice and Fire, the spywork and cultural undertones of Tamora Pierce's Daughter of the Lioness series, and Melanie Rawn's own unique and very clever gender role reversal twist, The Ruins of Ambrai is a must-read, especially for lovers of strong female characters.


The long of it:

I did it! I finally finished this monster of a book. It took me a little longer than usual because my little one is teething and needs constant comfort and distraction...and, okay, I was stuck at the last 100 pages of resolution, to be honest. Once I knew how the climax, which had been building for about 700 pages, turned out, it was hard to find the motivation to keep going. But as soon as I finished it, I ran downstairs to go pick up the next book, because these books may be long, but so worth it. So let's get to the review, shall we?

The political plotting and covert operations, all set in the fantasy world of Lenfell, reminded me a lot of Tamora Pierce's Daughter of the Lioness series, which is one of my absolute favorites. However, The Ruins of Ambrai is definitely not a YA pageturner; in fact, the intricacy of the political and cultural webs rivals the now-popular A Song of Ice and Fire. That means that sometimes you have to get through chunks of world-building before getting to a bit of action, but, like in A Song of Ice and Fire, it's so, so worth it. And thankfully, Melanie Rawn is much more merciful with her characters than R.R. Martin.

Having compared this book to two other entire series, I'd like to go into what makes it totally unique from anything else I've ever read: it's set in a true matriarchal society. Sure, I've read books that called their societies matriarchal, but instead of women ruling like men have for centuries in the real world, these societies were just gender-equal, or attempted to be. It took reading Melanie Rawn's version to realize that they hadn't been very good imaginings of matriarchies. Here's what I mean: in The Ruins of Ambrai, men are constantly knitting. Knitting. And mending clothes. And decorating houses. And raising children. And arranging flowers. But it's not just that the men are doing all the "girly" things; Rawn even changes how people in the world of Lenfell perceive certain activities. Men are allowed to enjoy leisure activities like hawking and hunting, but these are considered the activities of the weaker sex. One of my favorite moments in the book is when a male character is being described as the perfect "modest male" for being covered in clothes from head to toe, including a hair-covering coif. It's just too funny.

Do you need to have some sort of perverse sense of feminist satisfaction to enjoy this book? Not at all! What I really enjoyed about this matriarchal world is the shock value of imagining this totally upside down society. I've always considered myself a woman-empowerer, but the fact that I was thrown off-balance every time a man sat down to knit in this book really opened my eyes to how deeply ingrained our patriarchal way of thinking is. So not only was the gender role reversal amusing, but it was also enlightening and thought-provoking.

Oh, and the magic and battling were super cool too.

My rating? 4.9 out of 5 stars.

Top Ten Tuesday #1: Inspiring Quotes from Books

So last Tuesday I missed out on Teaser Tuesdays because I was still reading the same (very long!) book as the previous Tuesday, so I had no new teasers to share. This week I find myself in the same situation (I'm not kidding, this book is loooong) so I thought I'd try out a different ongoing book feature on those weeks that I'm still reading the same book: Top Ten Tuesday!

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature created by The Broke and the Bookish. Each week, they share a new Top Ten list for bloggers everywhere to answer. If you want to join in or check out some other lists, drop by The Broke and The Bookish. Today's theme is...

Top Ten Inspiring Quotes from Books

1. From F. Scott Fitzgerald's great classic, The Great Gatsby:

2. From Vladimir Nabokov's controversial Lolita:

3. From Christopher Paolini's Eragon:

4. From John Green's newly popular The Fault in Our Stars:

5. From Antoine de Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince:

6. From Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower:

7. From Sarah Dessen's The Truth About Forever:

"Some things are meant to be broken. Imperfect. Chaotic. It's the universe's way of providing contrast, you know? There have to be a few holes in the road. It's how life is."

8. From Veronica Roth's Divergent:

9. From Rick Yancey's The 5th Wave:

"That's what you do when the curtain is falling--you give the line that the audience wants to hear."

10. From Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke & Bone:

These are only a few of the good quotes I've come across in my recent reading, not necessarily my all-time favorite quotes. I love seeing book quotes reproduced in image form; it enhances their already evocative imagery. If you haven't read some of the books from this list, you are missing out! What are some of your favorite quotes from books?

Shelf Candy Sunday: Michael Wagner

This Sunday's Shelf Candy recognizes Michael Wagner's epic mystical covers for Michael Scott's series, The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel. 

I've been admiring these covers for years. I find them so charming that I keep getting tempted to buy the books, even though I've read the jacket descriptions, the online descriptions, and even a chapter without feeling interested. The covers are just so dang mystical and spellbook-y, I can't resist. Bravo, Michael Wagner! Clearly he did his job well, as a cover is meant to lure readers in to discover the book's story. My only complaint is that the author's name kind of gets lost in this busy cover, and I personally think remembering the author's name is a pretty important part of being a reader. Aside from that, this is definitely a fantastic cover design. Maybe I'll buy the books and just pretend I have a bunch of spellbooks...oooh.

Beautiful Words #2

This quote is from a poem that has echoed in my mind since high school required reading.

- "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot

Friday Finds #3

Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by MizB @ A Daily Rhythm that showcases the books you "found" and added to your To Be Read (TBR) list...whether you found them online, or in a bookstore, or in the library - wherever!

My FF this week were found mostly online: Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, the usual.

If you'd like to share your Friday Finds, leave a comment! I'd love to see what you've found to read this week.

"Waiting On" Wednesday #2: Off the Page by Jodi Picoult and Samantha van Leer

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Jill @ Breaking the Spine that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating. Since she's invited anyone to join in, let me share with you a book I found out about this week and immediately wanted to pre-order. If only I wasn't a broke stay-at-home mom!

"From #1 New York Times bestselling authors Jodi Picoult and her daughter and coauthor, Samantha van Leer, comes OFF THE PAGE, a tender and appealing romantic YA novel filled with humor, adventure, and magical relationships. 

 Meet Oliver, a prince literally taken from the pages of a fairy tale and transported into the real world. Meet Delilah, the girl who wished Oliver into being. It’s a miracle that seems perfect at first—but there are complications. To exist in Delilah’s world, Oliver must take the place of a regular boy. Enter Edgar, who agrees to play Oliver’s role in the pages of Delilah’s favorite book. But just when it seems that the plan will work, everything gets turned upside down. 

Full of humor and witty commentary about life, OFF THE PAGE is a stand-alone novel as well as the companion to the authors’ bestseller Between the Lines, and is perfect for readers looking for a fairytale ending. Fans of Sarah Dessen and Meg Cabot are sure to appreciate this novel about love, romance, and relationships."

- Amazon.com

I feel like lately I've only been reading books by authors I already like, so I've been making an effort to discover "new" authors. Still, it's always nice to have reference authors to compare to, like in the above description. As a teenager I was a HUGE fan of both Sarah Dessen and Meg Cabot, so I'm interested in this book as a sort of throwback to my younger days. It sounds funny and imaginative. And the good news is it comes out next month!

What book are you waiting on?

Review of The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

The 5th Wave
by Rick Yancey

Publication date: May 7th, 2013
G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers, 457 pages

Source: Purchased

"After the 1st wave, only darkness remains. After the 2nd, only the lucky escape. And after the 3rd, only the unlucky survive. After the 4th wave, only one rule applies: trust no one.  

Now, it’s the dawn of the 5th wave, and on a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs from Them. The beings who only look human, who roam the countryside killing anyone they see. Who have scattered Earth’s last survivors. To stay alone is to stay alive, Cassie believes, until she meets Evan Walker.  

Beguiling and mysterious, Evan Walker may be Cassie’s only hope for rescuing her brother—or even saving herself. But Cassie must choose: between trust and despair, between defiance and surrender, between life and death. To give up or to get up."  

- Goodreads.com

The short of it:

I hope that if aliens ever do attack the Earth, they don't bother to read our literature first, because if they get their hands on this book we are so, so screwed.

The long of it:

It's no secret that the man-made dystopian future is all the rage in YA Lit these days. (Read: The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Giver, The Maze Runner, and The 100 all making it to the big screen last year.) Rick Yancey enters this intimidatingly successful "dystopian future" arena with a secret weapon: aliens. What a great way to remind us that there is something more terrible than making children battle to the death in entertainment arenas. After all, gladiators aren't new to the history of humanity. Humans have been doing terrible things to humans pretty much since the beginning of known history. The 5th Wave has plenty of that too, but with the terrifying addition of total loss of control under the boot of a superior being, an Other. The idea that the entire human race could be powerless - now that is a powerful, inevitable apocalypse.

Despite the fact that the main characters are struggling to survive on basically every page, this book isn't just action. There are some amazing deep thoughts in here, and the writing is often lyrical, with lines so beautiful I had to pause to really savor them. Seriously, fantastic writing. Let me give you an example (don't worry, it's not a spoiler):

"Sometimes in my tent, late at night, I think I can hear the stars scraping against the sky." -pg. 29 (Hardback)

Anyone who has ever studied poetry can appreciate how carefully, beautifully crafted this sentence is. Anyone who hasn't studied poetry can appreciate that it's a kickass line.

I do have one teeny tiny complaint, something that nagged me throughout the whole book: the book switches from present tense to past tense a lot, and if there's a system to it, it wasn't instinctive enough for my taste. I found it confusing at times and had to re-read to figure out what was going on. I understand and appreciate that present-tense really complements The 5th Wave's action-packed story; I just wish it had stuck to it more.

Equal parts funny, lyrical, and gritty, I definitely recommend The 5th Wave to basically everyone who enjoys YA Lit, specifically sci-fi and fantasy, even more specifically apocalyptic or dystopian stories.

My rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars