A few weeks ago, people were posting their Top Ten Tuesday posts via photos on Instagram, and I participated for the very first time. “Seriously?” Yes, seriously. While I participated in other memes over the last 5 years+ that I’ve been blogging, that Instagram post was my first time having some top ten fun, and this week, for the first time, I attempted to do Top Ten Tuesday on my blog. I’m a huge fan of fairytale retellings, so I thought this was a great time to share some of the ones I loved and some others that I hope to read soon.

Here they are, in no particular order:

1. A Curse Dark As Gold by Elizabeth C. Bunce: When I was a kid, “Rumpelstitskin” was one of my favorite fairytales. It was a happy coincidence for me when Scholastic Canada sent me a copy of this award-winning, historical YA a few months after I started YABookShelf.com. If “Rumpelstitskin” is one of the fairytales of your heart, too, and you love strong female characters, you should definitely check it out.

2. Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce: I’ve read all the books in Pearce’s Fairytale Retellings series, but the first book, Sisters Red, is by far my favorite. She takes “Little Red Riding Hood” to a new level. Rather than one main character, Pearce divides Little Red into two sisters, Scarlett and Rosie, who tempt werewolves sexually and then attack them with weapons they’re hiding on their person. The action sequences are amazing, but the thing that spoke to me most was the close relationship that Scarlett and Rosie share.

3. Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi: While not YA fiction, I fell in love with Oyeyemi’s writing and the way she not only explores “Snow White” from the perspective of the evil stepmother…at least at first. In addition to “Snow White,” the author makes allusions many other famous fairy tales and nursery rhymes, but also invents entirely new ones, which places readers squarely in the uncanny world of the Gothic that I love so much. With a diverse cast of characters, you can’t go wrong with this example of an adult literary retelling.

4. Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu: Part retelling of “The Snow Queen,” part re-imagining of C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, part a lot of fairytale allusion goodness, Anne Ursu leaves breadcrumbs for middle grade readers of any age to follow while Hazel goes on her quest to save Jack.

5. The Selection Series, especially The One by Kiera Cass: I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, the Cinderella-esque story of The Selection, The Elite, and finally, The One are some of my favorite, guilty pleasure reads. The One, in particular, is pure, cotton candy bliss in a book. I also like how the series is continuing through Eadlyn’s perspective, but it’s not a Cinderella story by any means.

6. The Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste: Rooted in Caribbean folklore, especially the Haitian tale “The Magic Orange Tree,” Tracey Baptiste crafts a creepy book for middle grade readers that you won’t soon forget.

7. While Beauty Slept by Elizabeth Blackwell: As a child, I loved “Sleeping Beauty” and the idea that you could somehow fall under an enchanted sleep and wake up 100s of years later, completely unchanged. It’s pure magic. So when I heard about Elizabeth Blackwell’s adult novel, While Beauty Slept, I immediately added it to my Goodreads TBR list. Unfortunately, it’s still there, but I can’t wait to read it when I have a chance.

8. Red by Alyxandra Harvey: Alyxandra Harvey is a Canadian author who understands how to craft a creepy, Gothic story, which is something I really value. I can’t wait to read how she uses her signature style to make the “Little Red Riding Hood” fairytale her own.

9. Mechanica by Betsy Cornwell: This is another Cinderella retelling that is on my TBR with a steam punk vibe. Anyone who I know whose read it already – and whose reviews I trust – has loved it, so I can’t wait to check it out for myself. 

10. The Night Parade by Kathryn Tanquary: The Night Parade was pitched to me as a middle grade cross between the movies Spirited Away and Pan’s Labyrinth, so I knew I had to read it. For those of you who don’t know, not only are these two of my favorite movies, but also the former – a Ghibli studio animation classic – is based on a Japanese fairytale about a magical place where you visit for what seems like a short time, but when you return to the real world, hundreds of years have passed. It doesn’t come out until January of 2016, but I’m so excited to see how the story unveils itself.

Have you read any of these books or are any of them on your TBR? Let me know in the comments’ section below!

Buy Alchemy’s Daughter
Special price $15.68 Regular price: $16.95
Publisher: Lake Street Press
Format: Paperback
Reviewer: Melissa on July 30, 2015
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Santina Pietra is 17 and the daughter of a merchant in San Gimignano, Italy, which means that she’s expected to marry someone of her station. However, Santina only has eyes for Calandrino, a brilliant young scholar who is preoccupied with ancient alchemical texts and her tutor. When Santina meets Trotula, the village midwife, who many believe is a strega, or witch, she is challenged to forget this young man and become the woman she is meant to be. Some of the villagers believe that Santina is a victim of the midwife’s spell of enchantment, but despite what they think, she’s determined to become a gifted midwife, just like Trotula, even when calamity strikes. Alchemy’s Daughter, the second book by Mary A. Osborne, is set in a different time and world, but contemporary readers – even those who are typically skeptical about books set in the middle ages – will find that the strong-willed heroine mirrors their own search for themselves and meaning in their lives.

One of the first books I reviewed for YABookShelf.com was Osborne’s debut novel, Nonna’s Book of Mysteries, which is set in the lush, artistic world of the Renaissance. As someone who took as many art classes as possible in high school and wished my undergrad schedule permitted me the opportunity to take some studio classes in addition to the classes I took that, in part, discussed art history, Osborne’s debut künstlerroman and Emilia’s story was one I had to read. Since then, I’ve been waiting to read the prequel, Alchemy’s Daughter, which tells the story of Emilia’s grandmother and the knowledge that Santina passed down to the women in her family through an alchemical text, settling, finally, with Emilia in the earlier book.

Normally, I shy away from medieval settings and literature, in part because one of my professors made books I wanted to read, like Beowulf and the mythology of King Arthur, extremely dull. Alchemy’s Daughter doesn’t have the fast pace of many YA novels published today, but there is something so intriguing about a world in which midwives use scientific methods, and when necessary for the health of mother and child, caesarean section to deliver a healthy baby, but are persecuted for their methods because of superstition and the backward medicine of the day. This novel is full of dramatic moments that made me keep turning the pages. Moreover, just like Nonna’s Book of Mysteries, this story is about a woman loving a man who she is forbidden from seeing, but sticking by her convictions – even if it means being forced to leave the protection of her father’s home and striking out on her own in uncertain times. It is also about at time of great upheaval and change in Europe because it depicts the beginning of Bubonic Plague, which swept through Europe killing men, women, and children in large numbers. Through it all, Santina demonstrates the strength of character and sense of individuality with which contemporary readers will identify.

In addition, it’s a story about a young woman who is seeking knowledge of the alchemist’s path and the Elixir of Life. Initially, the book details how Santina’s curiosity about alchemy comes to light through overhearing her father and Caladrino attempting the typical experiments one associates with alchemy, such as “using salts and metals, trying to make gold” in the attic. However, over the course of the novel, the alchemical process becomes a metaphor for becoming who Santina is meant to be: a midwife and healer. Moreover, it’s about realizing that what you don’t know yet is just as important as what you do know because experimenting on something or someone without the correct understanding and technique can have devastating effects. While readers may not have any interest in becoming a midwife themselves, readers will find, upon close reading of this book, that the alchemist’s path can be used, metaphorically, for any type of knowledge in which they’re seeking to become an expert.

Finally, this award-winning novel speaks to the experience of loss and grief in a way that will resonate with both teen and adult readers, even ones like myself, who typically shy away from this historical period. It reminds us that we can wallow in the darkness of despair when we lose the one we love or when someone we know dies, but when we’re able to find a way to move forward authentically, there will be something beautiful around the corner, even if it is only our own, personal growth.

For these reasons and many more than I can delineate in this review, Alchemy’s Daughter is one that will continue to resonate with me for a long time coming just like the earlier book in the Alchemy Series.

Buy Alchemy’s Daughter today and benefit from 7% off the regular price!

Buy The Longest Ride Blu-ray + Digital HD
Regular price $19.96
Distributor: 20th Century Fox Entertainment
Format: Blu-ray + Digital HD
Reviewer: Melissa on July 27, 2015
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Based on the bestselling book my “love story” writer, Nicholas Sparks, The Longest Ride centers on the star-crossed love between Luke Collins (Scott Eastwood), a guy who used to be a champion bull rider before an accident put him out of commission for a while, and Sophia (Britt Robertson), a college student who nearly finished her art degree in North Carolina and about to begin her first internship in New York City’s art world. While conflicting paths and ideals in life test their relationship, they make an unexpected connection with Ira (Alan Alda), an old man whose memories of his relationship with his beloved wife become a touchstone for the young couple. Spanning three generations with two intertwined love stories, The Longest Ride movie explores the obstacles to and infinite rewards of relationships that beat the odds.

In a review by Pete Hammond of Deadline, The Longest Ride (directed by George Tillman Jr.) is called “the best [Sparks’ film adaptation] since 2004’s blockbuster The Notebook.” As someone who has watched most, if not all, of the film adaptations of Sparks’ books without reading them,* I was pretty excited to hear this comparison. Even when I read Hammond’s entire review and not just the sound bite and learned that he thought it wasn’t “in the same league as that Ryan Gosling/Rachel McAdams tear-jerker,” I was still looking forward to watching it. Now having seen it, I can say that it’s a decent romantic comedy that is perfect for girls’ night in or date night in front of your home entertainment center, on your computer, tablet, or even your phone with the digital HD copy.

Of course, my assertion that The Longest Ride Blu-ray a decent rom-com doesn’t mean it’s a perfect movie. There are a few plot holes, including the physical distance between NYC and Walkerton, NC isn’t insurmountable in contemporary society if Luke and Sophia truly have true love on their side. With this in mind, I think the description of them as star-crossed lovers is an overreach of the highest level. I do agree that it’s an obstacle or a complication, but it’s not the same as being from opposite sides of a bloody family feud, like in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Similarly, there’s a twist at the end, which makes things a little too easy for the young couple to set aside all of their differences and to each have what they want out of life in a way they never expected would be possible. I almost called it a Deus ex Machina-like device, but it actually isn’t divine intervention or completely implausible, just unlikely.

In addition to the relationship that develops between Luke and Sophia, I really loved the how the romance that grew between Ira – the older widower who they help – and his wife Ruth is depicted through old love letters that he wrote to her. When Sophia reads the letters aloud to Ira because his eyesight has declined over time, Ira, the young couple, and the viewer are transported from the present moment back to his life from the 1940s, initially, and then over the course of their decades-long marriage (played by Oona Chaplin and Jack Huston). The letters depict the good and the bad of their relationship, the benefits and the hardships that they have to overcome, which sticks in the minds of both Sophia and Luke when they need to make a compromise. As one would expect, there are several parallels between the type of people Ira and Ruth and Luke and Sophia are – this is an adapted film after all – which isn’t realistic, but makes for a better story.

While it won’t wow you as much as The Notebook did, this film will definitely had the power to launch the careers of Scott Eastwood – yes, he’s the son of Clint Eastwood – and Britt Robertson. Moreover, if you pick up the Blu-ray with Digital HD combo pack, you’ll be able to enjoy a decent choice of Special Features, including:

• Deleted and Extended Scenes
• Audio Commentary by director George Tillman Jr. and actress Oona Chaplin
• A Writer’s Journey: A Day in the Life of Nicholas Sparks
• Beyond the Ride
• Bringing It to Life
• Meet the Bull Riders
• Luke’s Bull Riding School 
• Gallery

While The Longest Ride on Blu-ray and Digital HD won’t win any Oscars, it is definitely a romantic movie that will fit the bill.

Buy The Longest Ride on Blu-ray + Digital HD today and get it for $19.96!

Buy The Jumbies
Special price $15.42 Regular price: $15.53
Publisher: Algonquin Young Readers
Format: Hardcover
Reviewer: Melissa on July 20, 2015
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Nothing scares Corinne La Mer. Not scorpions, not the boys who tease her, and certainly not jumbies. She knows that jumbies are just tricksters that parents in her island community make up to frighten their children. In Tracey Baptiste’s spine-tingling tale, Corinne chases an agouti all the way into the forbidden forest and gets lost in the process. She’s sure that the yellow eyes that seemed to follow her to the edge of the trees couldn’t have belonged to a jumbie. But what if they were? In The Jumbies, Corinne sees a beautiful stranger speaking to the town witch at the market, she knows something unexpected will happen. When Severine, the same stranger, shows up at her and her father’s home, Corinne is sure that danger is around the corner. However, bewitching her father, Pierre, is only the first step in the plan that Severine has concocted. To save her island home, Corinne must call on her courage and her friends and learn how to use the ancient magic that she never knew she possessed.

Up till now, I haven’t read a lot of middle grade fiction, as readers of YABookShelf know. However, every time that I pick up one of these books, I fall in love, and my experience reading The Jumbies was not an exception to the rule. I grew up reading and loving European fairytales, just like the author Tracey Baptiste. However, her experience of Western fairytales was supplemented by hearing the oral folktales about jumbies during her childhood in Trinidad. With The Jumbies, Baptiste offers an original, fairytale-like twist on the classic Haitian folktale “The Magic Orange Tree” with a brave female protagonist and lyrical prose that both young people and adult readers of MG literature will love, especially if they like their fairytales with a creepy atmosphere. And in the diverse case of characters, which is reflected in the beautifully creepy cover designed by Vivienne To, and it’s clear that this book’s time has come.

As an adult reader of this book, The Jumbies wasn’t scary enough to keep me up at night. However, having been a child who sought out creepy stories and novels from a young age, I know that this would have also been one of my favorites because Baptiste has a clear understanding of and ability to deliver a creepy atmosphere at the drop of a hat. For example, when Corinne runs into the forbidden forest to retrieve the necklace her mother gave her before she died from the agouti, she doesn’t have a worry in the world. She doesn’t notice how far into the woods they’ve gone, so it isn’t until she has secured the necklace that she realizes what has changed. In that moment, the creepy surroundings come into focus for Corinne and the reader, and we suddenly find ourselves no longer in the safe surroundings that the characters had come to expect. At various other moments in the novel, Baptiste masterfully removes the veil to show that the terrifying world Dru, Malik, and Bouki believed in, but Corinne didn’t, is – in fact – their reality.

Beyond the creepy surroundings, The Jumbies is jam-packed with Caribbean mythology and superstitions that come to life through Baptiste’s writing. Since Corinne doesn’t believe in these myths, until she is forced to do so, most of the knowledge that the reader gets about these creatures – at least at first – is through her new friend from the market, Dru, who tells Corinne about what several types of jumbies can do and what they look like. Unlike Corinne who has been raised to question the veracity of these stories, Dru seems terrified of them and most of the other things on the island whether she’s hiding behind her mother’s sari or trying to stay as far away as possible from anyone she thinks of as dangerous. To save the island and all of their friends and family, Corinne will not only have to become friends with Dru and brothers Malik and Bouki, but also admit that she needs their help, and convince them to join her despite the dangers. Once they come face to face with the various types of jumbies on the island, even readers will begin to believe in them from the fabulous descriptions that Baptiste gives us.

While Corinne is the main character, the story is told from the third-person perspectives of Corinne’s friends, one of the jumbies, and, to a lesser extent, the town witch. This authorial decision means that readers will get information when they need it, even if it’s before other important characters in the story know what’s happening. Moreover, Baptiste varies the chapter lengths, such as when the climax of the novel is approaching, to increase the tension of the story and to denote that the events in various chapters are happening simultaneously. Finally, she uses alliteration throughout the book and rhyming song lyrics at key points, which speak to her facility with literary devices and personally, made me try to guess at what the melodies were, so I could sing along while reading.

While The Jumbies may not appeal to all 8-12 year old readers, especially those who get scared easily, Tracey Baptiste has created a winning story and world unlike any I’ve ever read before, which is perfect for those who love ghost stories, are a creepy-loving young person at heart, or who enjoyed Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu.

Buy The Jumbies today and benefit from 11¢ off the regular price!

Thanks for commenting, Andrea. That’s a good one, but I haven’t seen it in a long time. Must re-watch it.

Sweet Home Alabama

I do, too, Paola!:)

I love Clueless!

Buy Whatever Life Throws At You
Special price $9.42 Regular price: $12.44
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Format: Paperback
Reviewer: Melissa on July 15, 2015
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Life loves a good curveball…. Seventeen-year-old Annie Lucas’ life completely changes when her father returns to major league baseball as the Kansas City Royals’ new pitching coach. She’s living in cold Missouri, attending a school without any boys, and trying to navigate the complicated world of professional sports. But she also has dreams of her own – namely placing first in every mile and two-mile race she’s in and becoming friendlier with the Royals’ newest hot rookie pitcher. Of course, 19-year-old Jason Brody is completely off-limits, and not just because her dad would kill them both if he ever found out. Brody has an “interesting” past, and his fan club mainly consists of C-cupped models, not high school aged “brats” who could run circles around every player on the team. The very last thing that Annie should be doing is falling in love, but in Julie Cross’ Whatever Life Throws At You, baseball isn’t just a game for these characters. It’s their lives. And sometimes, it can break your heart….

To say that I’m not a baseball fan would be an understatement. In fact, the last time I watched it willingly was in 1993 when the Toronto Blue Jays were in and won the World Series for the second consecutive year. Even then, I only watched the last games between them and the Philadelphia Phillies, not any of the regular season games or the previous games in the world series. While I may not love baseball, I really enjoyed reading Whatever Life Throws At You, even though baseball isn’t just a prop used by the author to create drama. Cross uses all sorts of other baseball-related details and terminology, which make the world of the major leagues real for readers even if they’re hardcore fans of this sport.

Of course, baseball isn’t the only sport featured here as Annie held the state title for the one mile when the book opens in Arizona. As with most sports narratives, there’s a lot on the line, especially for Annie, her dad, Jim, and Brody. If Brody messes up, then he could be sent back to the farm team in Texas, Jim might be out of his first high-paying job in years, and Annie will no longer be able to attend the new school with high academic standards and one of the best track and field programs in Missouri. With consequences this high and an example of what can happen when sports stars don’t have a plan B in Jim Lucas, it really keeps readers on their toes when they know that brooding good looks, 100 mph fastball, the ability to run a four-minute and fifty-four second mile, or a charming personality might not be enough to guarantee either a high-powered career in professional sports or the attention of a university scout.

While sports are a huge part of the story, they’re not the only plot line worth noting in this book. (Due to the nature of the story and the characters ages, some readers would classify it as either YA or New Adult (NA) romance. *) Annie and Brody’s relationship is all kinds of sexy as is Brody himself– it’s no surprise why Annie froze when she saw him for the first time or why so many beautiful women are throwing themselves at him. However, the hot guy factor isn’t the main reason I recommend this book. First, Brody is a very hard-working, Hispanic guy, who doesn’t have any contact with his family or culture and has a learning disability. In other words, he’s a great example of a diverse, intersectional character and a welcome addition to YA.

I also loved that Annie and Brody’s relationship puts a huge emphasis on communication, especially when it comes to sexual consent. We’re told that Brody has a bad reputation before Annie ever meets him in person, but once they become friends and begin a relationship together, we realize that he isn’t the type of person we’ve been told he is. If he ever was, he isn’t anymore. No one who valued communication and mutual understanding as much as Brody does could really be a bad guy. When so many popular romance storylines involve a bad boy who goes from bad to worse in some way over the course of the novel, it’s nice to see warm and fuzzy feelings developing between a good girl and a guy who really deserves a second chance.

What initially hooked me on Whatever Life Throws At You, however, was the relationship between Annie and her dad, especially the specter of cancer in their lives. Long before this novel begins, when Annie was a baby and Jim Lucas had only played his first major league game, he was diagnosed with osteosarcoma and had his leg amputated. Over the first three chapters, Annie slowly details what she knows of the back-story, the sound his non-leg makes on the floor of their home, and how it affects her life today, including the stressful scans he still has periodically. When I read these details, I wanted to ask my dad questions because his mother – my grandmother – was diagnosed with the same type of cancer and had one of her legs amputated before I was born. ** This personal connection to the parent-teen relationship made me want to keep reading when I was still unsure about the baseball theme.

Beyond the first details that intrigued me about Annie’s relationship with her dad, I loved how well they get along and respect one another. Her dad includes her in important decisions that will affect her, such as whether he should take the job with the Kansas City Royals, which is important because her mother, who is mostly out of the picture, is a huge source of stress for Annie. At the same time, it’s a real and believable representation of the father-daughter bond because it isn’t without conflict. Even when they don’t see eye-to-eye, it is clear that their familial relationship is important to both of them, and readers will get the sense that they’ll be able to overcome these problems before they become insurmountable.

From strong parental figures and a believable exploration of major league sports to a steamy romance, Whatever Life Throws At You won’t make you turn pages as quickly as Brody’s fast ball or Annie’s mile or two-mile runs, but it’ll be pretty close. Add in the tension-filled plot twists included in the novel, and you’ll have a really good story featuring a diverse and intersectional love interest.

Buy Whatever Life Throws At You today and benefit from 24% off the regular price!

* Since Annie is only 17, I’m inclined to call this a YA novel, especially since it’s part of the Entangled Teen imprint, not one of their NA imprints. However, Jason Brody is 19, and some of the intimate scenes between him and Annie are not only smoking hot, but also on the explicit side of what is shown in most YA novels. In other words, I think it straddles the lines of typical young adult and new adult fiction, ensuring that it will easily appeal to both young people and adult readers of YA.

** In my grandmother’s case, the amputation was too late, as the cancer had already metastasized unbeknownst to her doctors, and she died before I could ever meet her.

Thanks for your comment, C. Lee. I can’t wait to see if it holds up to the comparison, too, though if it doesn’t, perhaps it speaks more to the lesser quality of the movies released over the intervening years since The Notebook.

Great way to do what you enjoy and not have to explain! I loved The Notebook, so will see how this one holds up to that high mark. Thanks.

Sorry, this giveaway is closed, Taylor! As you can see below, the Rafflecopter widget is displaying the winners.

Want more books!!!!

Thanks for sharing, G K. Not sure if I saw that one, though I know what it’s about for the most part.

The Proposal

Buy Finders Keepers
Special price $23.27 Regular price: $30.00
Publisher: Scribner
Format: Hardcover
Reviewer: Melissa on July 9, 2015
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

“Wake up, genius.” So begins Stephen King’s most recent exploration of a vengeful reader. The genius is John Rothstein, the iconic author who created the famous, nonconformist character, Jimmy Gold, but who hasn’t published anything in nearly two decades. Morris Bellamy is furious, mainly because the last Jimmy Gold novel saw his favorite character sell out for a career in an advertising agency. Morris kills Rothstein and empties the money from his safe, but for this one-time fan, the real treasure trove is the pile of notebooks, which contain at least one more Gold novel. After burying the booty in a trunk, Morris is given a life sentence for an unrelated crime. Decades later, a 13-year-old boy named Pete Saubers finds the treasure, and now Bill Hodges, Holly Gibney, and Jerome Robinson must rescue Pete and his family from the ever-more deranged and vengeful Morris when he’s granted parole after thirty-five years. Once again King gives fans a new story about an obsessive reader, a theme that he hasn’t explored since Misery, but this time our favorite band of crime-solving characters from Mr. Mercedes are along for the ride. Finders Keepers is an intense novel that will keep your heart pounding, but is simultaneously a great example of how literature can forever alter a life – for good or bad.

Last summer, I read and fell in love with Mr. Mercedes, which is King’s homage to Psycho and “A Rose for Emily.” In other words, Finders Keepers was one of my most anticipated reads of 2015 when I realized that Bill Hodges’ story would be a hardboiled fiction trilogy and not a standalone novel. And it didn’t disappoint. In fact, King’s most recent detective novel solidified my long-standing belief that writers of popular, contemporary genre fiction can be masters of metafiction and have an equal understanding of what it takes to be a great writer and a lifelong reader. In the moments where Pete first falls in love with Jimmy Gold series, King provides an insight into how the love of reading begins:

For readers, one of life’s most electrifying discoveries is that they are readers – not just capable of doing it […], but in love with it. Hopelessly. Head over heels. The first book that does that is never forgotten, and each page seems to bring a new revelation, one that burns and exalts: Yes! That’s how it is! Yes! I saw that, too! And, of course, That’s what I think! That’s what I FEEL! (136)

When I read this passage, l was transported to the books that made me into a lifelong reader myself, calling to mind whatever I’d retained from their plots, the way they made me feel, and the original covers that made me pick them up in the first place. At the same time, however, I found myself thinking, “Yes! That’s how it is!” because King had perfectly encapsulated the thing that connects one reader to the book they’re reading, whether for the first, hundredth, or thousandth time.

What makes this story, which is, in part, an extended metaphor about readers even more perfect is how King constructs the characters of Morris and Pete as perfect foils for one another. They both went through financial hardship during their formative years, necessitating a move to the same home on Sycamore Street. They even slept in the same bedroom and played at the same rec centre before it was closed in a cost saving measure. And, most importantly for a novel that centers on an obsessed reader, they both fell in love with reading, especially the Jimmy Gold trilogy. In fact, they both didn’t just fall in love with this series – they were both completely obsessed with it, reading the novels over and over. In addition, they both met characters, who criticized their opinions of the books as being naïve: Morris’ mother and Pete’s sophomore English teacher, Mr. Richer, respectively. Despite the things that connect them, readers will find that there are fundamental differences about these characters as well, things that cement one in the role of protagonist and the other as antagonist. To avoid giving away any spoilers, I’ll let you read this first and come to your own conclusions about what accounts for the different ways they react as King’s novel unfolds.

Finally, Finders Keepers demonstrates King’s masterful ability to slowly increase the tension until the reader’s heart is left pounding long after they’ve read the last page. To say that this novel is intense wouldn’t begin to cover it. Even better – King piqued my interest in the last book and gives readers an inkling of how the stakes will be, once again, raised for the conclusion of his series. I don’t know when End of Watch, the last book in the Bill Hodges Trilogy, will be published yet, but it’s already on my Goodreads TBR for a reason.

Bonus points for YA lovers: Tina Saubers, Pete’s little sister, reads Veronica Roth’s Divergent while the tension mounts and says that her mom promised to bring her to see the Divergent movie staring Shailene Woodley and Theo James. Love seeing shout-outs to YA books and YA movie adaptations that I enjoyed by popular adult authors!

Buy Finders Keepers today and benefit from 22% off the regular price!

Buy Suicide Notes From Beautiful Girls
Regular price: $17.99
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Format: Hardcover
Reviewer: Melissa on July 7, 2015
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

They say Delia was burned to death in her stepfather’s shed. They say it was suicide. But June doesn’t believe the rumors. June and Delia used to be the closest of friends. Their friendship came before everyone else – before guys and before their families. They had tons of secrets, which held them together with metaphorical, silk cords. However, one night June, Delia, and June’s boyfriend Ryan had a little too much fun, and the morning after things got out of hand, June knew things would never be the same. Lynn Weingarten’s Suicide Notes From Beautiful Girls begins a year after that fateful night with Delia dead, and June certain that she was murdered. After everything they’ve been through, June feels like she owes it to her ex-BFF to find out the truth, but she will soon realize that the truth is far more complicated than she could have ever imagined.

Even though I read Weingarten’s The Secret Sisterhood of Heartbreakers in 2012 and should have known that Suicide Notes From Beautiful Girls would be more dark thriller than cathartic, contemporary YA, this book totally took me by surprise at every turn. I thought it would be a story about friendship and the grief that only the tragic loss of a young person to suicide can evoke, but it really isn’t a tear-jerker. Instead, readers of this dark, atmospheric novel should get ready for a page turner with an ending that you’ll never see coming.

Alternating between one or a few chapters in the present timeline to various periods in the past while June and Delia were friends, this novel tells the story of both the good and not so good moments of their friendship. You don’t need to worry that the multiple timelines will be confusing, however, as they’re clearly demarcated. If anything, it will be the clues left but not fully elucidated right away that will keep you guessing (and keep you reading). In addition, there are instants that reek of a toxic connection between these two girls, but the typical moments of girl drama or slut shaming aren’t there. What is there, especially after the night that June and Delia stop hanging out, is a type of jealousy and rivalry that June had never felt before.

In fact, for the majority of the book, it seems more like June idolized Delia, in part, because before the latter girl walked into her life in the third week of the 6th grade, exactly 5 years, 3 months, and 8 days earlier, June didn’t have any friends. June even assumes that either Delia made a mistake or hadn’t had the chance to meet cooler people when she invites June over to her house for a sleepover on the day they met. If you’re the ideal reader, then you’ll undoubtedly see the world through June’s eyes, especially for the first half of the book. You’ll believe everything that June believes and says, and with good reason. Yes, June has low self-esteem, that’s obvious very early on, and yes, she feels loneliness whenever she’s apart from Delia when they were friends or from Ryan after her Delia stop hanging out, but there’s no reason to doubt her view of the world.

Some of the other characters you meet, such as Delia’s boyfriend Jeremiah, June’s boyfriend Ryan, and even Delia herself are more suspect. Even June isn’t sure who to believe – the boy who Delia was dating, the one who June was in love with, or her best friend. (Yes, her ex-BFF is dead, but June finds a letter Delia wrote a year ago, which calls many things June was sure of into question.) If you’re like me, you will be just as unsure as June is about the who, what, where, when, and why of this book. Getting to the bottom of this mystery will require that you follow the shifting sand on top of which the friendships and loves in this book have been built, but one thing is for sure – you won’t be able to put Suicide Notes From Beautiful Girls down once you pick it up.

Ultimately, I think the comparison of Suicide Notes From Beautiful Girls to Gone Girl is a bit of an overreach because June is largely the victim of considerable manipulation by others, but innocent of it herself. Nevertheless, readers who are well-versed in the world of thrillers will find that the semi-open ended conclusion will satisfy their desire for a super creepy finish, even if it means that they have to infer a few pieces of information themselves.

Buy Suicide Notes From Beautiful Girls today!

I have a soft spot for rom-coms. I could watch them all day, every day, and never get bored with the swoony feels they give me. (My boyfriend, John, would definitely protest if I did this, so I don’t. However, if he was away for a week, and I was in a movie-watching mood, then I’d catch up on all the romantic comedies I’d missed or re-watch old favorites.)

So I was super excited when a Press Assistant from Think Jam contacted me to see if I’d be interested in reviewing and offering a giveaway of The Longest Ride on Blu-ray and Digital HD on YABookShelf.com. I may have even done a little happy dance.

Reviewer, Pete Hammond from Deadline, called The Longest Ride the best Nicholas Sparks’ movie since The Notebook, so I can’t wait to see it and judge for myself. The Longest Ride centers on the star-crossed love affair between Luke (Scott Eastwood), a former bull riding champion who is looking to make a comeback, and Sophia (Britt Robertson), a college student who is about to embark upon her dream job in NYC’s art world. These characters couldn’t be more different, so it shouldn’t be surprising that their conflicting paths and ideals test their budding relationship. However, when they make an unexpected connection with Ira (Alan Alda), they become inspired by his decades-long romance with his deceased wife. Spanning generations and two intertwining love stories, The Longest Ride explores the challenges and rewards of enduring love.

Ever since I watched the movie version of Nicholas Sparks’ The Notebook, I’ve been determined to see all the film adaptations of his novels. In fact, I’ve only ever read one of his books, The Last Song, which I didn’t love in part because my mother spoiled the ending for me before I ever read it. Since then, I decided that I’d happily watch every movie that ever gets made from his books, but I’d rather not spend the time it would take to read one of what he calls a “love story,” but which we all know are romance novels because of this inane distinction he insists on making. With a TBR filled with so many amazing romantic books (and others), I’d rather pick up other books instead of his, but I’ve always got time for a rom-com.

The Longest Ride comes out on Blu-ray and DVD on July 14, 2015, which means that sometime between July 7th and the 27th, I will post my review of the movie. Keep your eyes peeled for the review!

In the meantime, if you want to win your very own Blu-ray with Digital HD copy, then now’s your chance. If you’re a resident of the US or Canada, then enter through the Rafflecopter widget below between now and July 26th at 11:59 pm EST.

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Buy The Heir
Special price $14.90 Regular price: $18.99
Publisher: Harper Teen
Format: Hardcover
Reviewer: Melissa on July 3, 2015
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Twenty years ago, America Singer entered the Selection, against her better judgment, but over the course of the contest, she fell in love with Prince Maxon. Since then, they’ve lived their happily ever after together. Princess Eadlyn has always thought that her parents’ love story had a fairy tale quality to it, but it’s never been the path that she wants for herself. Unfortunately for her, King Maxon and Queen America think that she should lead the first ever Selection where a woman chooses her husband in the fourth novel in the Selection Series, Kiera Cass’ The Heir. Eadlyn is certain that she won’t find love among the thirty-five eligible guys presented to her. However, as the competition begins, possibilities that she never imagined may capture her heart and prove that finding her own happily ever after isn’t as impossible as she always believed it to be.

When we meet Eadlyn, she’s very ambivalent about the place in which she finds herself. She has mixed feelings about being the heir to her father’s throne, a situation that came about by being a mere 7 minutes older than her twin brother Ahren. In part, her ambivalence stems from the overwhelming amount of work that has been heaped upon her and the decisions that she knows she’ll have to make on her own once she becomes Queen. When her parents suggest holding a Selection, independent Eadlyn is completely against the idea. She’s only 18 years old, and she’s definitely not ready to be married. In fact, if she had it her way, she would never have to settle down with anyone. However, after a conversation with Ahren and a little planning, she comes up with a deal for her father that she thinks will allow her to work the Selection to her advantage as long as she really “tries” to give the experience a chance.

Much of the negativity that Eadlyn voices toward the beginning of the novel inevitably sets her up to be called spoiled and somewhat ungrateful by many readers. I understand where they’re coming from and agree that she’s spoiled to an extent. For example, I’ll admit that she goes a little too far when whining about Josie taking yet another one of her tiaras. She claims that it’s inappropriate for Josie to pretend to be a royal, but I couldn’t help but give a little eye roll considering the fact that most little girls would do the same thing if they could. That said, I also believe Eadlyn is a modern woman with dreams that, understandably, go beyond her duties of getting married and producing an heir for Illéa. This box that she’s forced into, whether she likes it or not, is one of privilege, but it also means that she’s the only citizen of Illéa who is locked into a role now that the castes have been eliminated. As the plot unfolds, however, it becomes increasingly clear that eliminating the castes didn’t magically make everyone happy, and simultaneously, Eadlyn realizes that maybe she could have feelings for one or more of the Selected.

While I didn’t love The Heir as much as The One, which is my favorite book in the Selection Series so far, I have a feeling that the as of yet untitled fifth book in the series will be more satisfying. While Eadlyn is sorting through her feelings, particularly for Kile, Henri, Hale, the other remaining Selected guys, and even the one guy she shouldn’t have feelings for, Erik, I think most people will be, Team Kile, like I am. This is, in part, because of the way the book is set up. Cass doesn’t mention most of the Selected by name until late in the novel and due to circumstances beyond her control, Eadlyn doesn’t even have one-on-one dates with all the guys over the course of the first book.

However, what I found most interesting about Eadlyn were the ways in which her negative attitude blocked her from really seeing who was around her, including Kile who lived in the castle with her all her life. Up till now, she’s always seen young men in one way, and one way only, because she didn’t intend to be married for some time, so she never gives them a chance to make an impression on her. In distancing them, she also distances herself from seeing them in any depth. Instead, she seems only the shallowest parts of who they are. From this perspective, it’s no wonder that she had no interest in any of the guys who crossed her path before the Selection and why it takes her a long time to accept that maybe she could end up with a ring on her finger.

In addition to Eadlyn’s distancing behaviour, there are other factors to consider, including issues that never came up when Maxon was looking for a wife. This time around it seems as though Cass is trying to give readers more than just a fluffy, romantic story. For example, Eadlyn comes up against the sexism of her patriarchal society in much the same way that female celebrities do. While Maxon could sneak a kiss or two in a dark corner with several of the young women in the first three books in the Selection Series, when Eadlyn shares an innocent kiss with one of the selected, she is criticized publicly by the press. In other moments, Eadlyn’s vulnerability as a woman is another point of difference from the first three books in the series, and speaks to how ill prepared King Maxon was for this new Selection. Finally, the changing class dynamics and the problems that this has created throughout Illéa is important, and will likely become even more important in the last book. In other words, you’ll really be seeing the Selection from a whole new perspective in The Heir.

If you’re as much of a fan as I am of the first three books in the series, then don’t wait – pick up The Heir today and be sure to tell me who you hope makes Eadlyn agree to ring the wedding bells!

Buy The Heir today and benefit from 21% off the regular price!

Buy Rose Under Fire
Special price $9.88 Regular price: $9.99
Publisher: Doubleday Canada; Disney-Hyperion
Format: Paperback
Reviewer: Melissa on July 1, 2015
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Rose Justice is a young, American pilot with the British Air Transport Auxiliary during World War II. She has been flying since she was 12, meaning that she has more flight hours than many of the men with the same job or who are in the Air Force. Nevertheless, while on her way back from a secret flight to France in the waning days of the war, she is captured by the Germans and finds herself in Ravensbrück, the notorious concentration camp for women in Nazi Germany. In Rose Under Fire, the companion novel of Elizabeth Wein’s critically acclaimed novel Code Name Verity, Rose meets an unforgettable cast of characters while imprisoned, including a resilient teenager who was a human guinea pig for Nazi doctors; the once glamorous and celebrated French detective novelist whose Jewish husband and three children were killed right before her eyes; and a Nachtheexen, or Night Witch, a female fighter pilot and military ace for the Soviets. Under the most harrowing of conditions, these broken women must bond together to help each other survive. As in Code Name Verity, this story continues exploring themes of friendship and loyalty, unwavering bravery in the face of evil, and right and wrong.

Back in 2012, I read and fell in love with the characters Elizabeth Wein developed in Code Name Verity, but I didn’t get around to reading the companion novel, Rose Under Fire, until very recently. For the most part, I know this neglect had something to do with my very large, and ever-increasing TBR pile. (I’m sure that most of my readers understand where I’m coming from here.) However, another part, the part that I didn’t allow admit to myself was that unlike Code Name Verity, Rose Under Fire takes place in a concentration camp, so I knew that it would be hard for me to read. It’s not only the inhumanity of man indicative of Nazi concentration camps, but also the setting meant I’d have to revisit the chilling memories I have of visiting Auschwitz and Birkenau with my sister.

Even though Wien’s writing about a different concentration camp than the ones I visited, I would get flashbacks to the bunks and washroom facilities in Birkenau whenever Rose and her friends speak about the conditions in Block 32. I’d heard about the benefits of sleeping on the top bunk from our museum tour guide at Auschwitz-Birkenau, but Wein infused these and other inhumane conditions with the living, breathing three-dimensional characters that she develops, including Rose, Elodie, Róza, Lisette, and Irina, which made these horrific experiences more real to me. Similarly, the damage to the Rabbits’ legs at the hands of Nazi doctors was particularly well done. I remember the tour guide pointing out a particular building at Auschwitz where heinous experiments, like the ones Róza experienced, took place. But it wasn’t until reading Rose Under Fire that I had a real understanding of what they’d done and it became clear to me how this form of torture affected the 74 prisoners’ lives forever more. While Wein often fills in the gaps of historical knowledge in her other novels with guesses about what happened, she didn’t need to do that with Rose Under Fire. Instead, everything that Rose and the other inmates experience is a clever transformation of real-life facts into flesh and blood experiences.

In addition to these descriptions and the effect they had on me, Wein’s writing is absolutely breath-taking. She develops an extended metaphor about hope and the way it changes for people who have come face-to-face with the horrors of concentration camps and war. It also speaks to Rose’s understanding of when having hope is hurtful, when it only holds off the pain of knowing the truth a little longer, when it gives the people experiencing it a false sense of security that will, at some point, come crashing down. Wein also uses parallel structure at a key point in the narrative to speak to the all-consuming fear that Rose and her friends felt after the events of New Year’s Day, 1945. Finally, Rose’s poetry and the fantasies she tells her bunkmates where Nick rescues them and brings all the food she wishes they could eat, suggest that an extensive imagination can keep even the darkest thoughts at bay a little while longer. It is these, and other, stunning turns of phrase that make it impossible to put down Rose’s story once you pick it up.

One of issues that Rose and her friends grapple with is how unthinkable the Nazis’ crimes were. Even though their doctors and other medical professionals tortured Róza, I loved how she struggled with believing how far the Nazis would go to enact a campaign of genocide. The victims, in this case, parallel the disbelief that some people who weren’t privy to the Nazis’ daily acts of violence might have had after the war. It isn’t that Rose and her fellow inmates consider the survivors from Auschwitz to be liars, but rather, the number of murders the Nazis were responsible are beyond comprehension. Róza asks, “Who was doing the counting?” immediately after Rose creates a counting rhyme with the names of the 74 Rabbits. This juxtaposition acts as proof that just as Rose, Róza, and Lisette will remember the names of the Polish women who were tortured by doctors, there were other survivors at the death camps who kept a mental record of the lives lost there, even though we don’t know the latter by name. Through her clever language play, Wein strengthens her own, and Rose’s, mission to tell the world what happened at Ravensbrück.

If you still haven’t read Rose Under Fire, then pick it up today. Wein brings back the themes that readers have grown to love about her novel, Code Name Verity, and even gives us glimpses of some of our favorite characters, like Maddie. While the main characters may be fictionalizations, readers of historical fiction, in general, and YA historical novels, in particular, will appreciate the factual truth of everything Wein shares about one of the darkest periods in the 20th century.

Buy Rose Under Fire today!

Buy We Are All Made Of Molecules
Special price $14.91 Regular price: $16.99
Publisher: Tundra Books
Format: Hardcover
Reviewer: Melissa on June 25, 2015
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Thirteen-year-old Stewart is an academic genius but has a lot to learn socially. Fourteen-year-old Ashley is THE most popular girl in her class, but her report card leaves something to be desired. These opposites collide when Stewart and his dad move across town to live with Ashley and her mom. While Stewart is trying to be 89.9 percent happy about it, Ashley is 100 percent horrified by this turn of events. She already needs to hide the real reason that her father moved out, but being connected with “Spewart” could further complicate her place on the social ladder. While they aren’t anything alike personally, Susin Nielsen’s We Are All Made Of Molecules shows that they have at least one thing in common: they – like everyone else – are made of molecules.

When it comes to We Are All Made Of Molecules, there is one thing that needs to be said immediately: I loved this book with all of my heart. While a lot of adults read YA, this book for 10-14 year olds is a true crossover novel, which is sure to garner the attention and affection of tweens, younger teens and adults alike. From the opening page, I was already in love with Stewart. He is a bit of an oddball, but he has a big heart. He’s also one of the most positive, optimistic, and brave characters that I’ve ever had the chance to “meet,” and one of the most real and authentically himself teen boys in YA. Most importantly, he’s not afraid to try new things or protect other vulnerable people, even if it puts him in a helpless situation or if those he’s trying to protect don’t appreciate what he’s doing.

Unlike Stewart, Ashley took a little more time for me to like her, but over the course of the novel, she grew on me. If there’s anything that you need to know about Ashley, it’s this: she’s the epicenter of fashion at her high school and overly dramatic on the surface, but much of the stress that she puts on herself (and everyone else in her family) stems from how insecure she feels. She can’t share what’s really going on in her life with her friends because her position as the most popular girl in school could come crashing down at any time. She may not appreciate what she has – two parents who are both alive and happy, even if they’re divorced because her father came out later in life – but again, it all comes back to her insecurity and lack of self-esteem. To me, that’s the very definition of a “real” teen girl. Not that they’re all insecure, but when they are, it makes sense that they’d act out in that ways that Ashley does.

Finally, Ashley is unintentionally hilarious. It’s rare that malapropism** is done so well and so consistently in a YA novel; We Are All Made Of Molecules and Ashley in particular contributed to my joie de beaver, or joie de vie as most of us know the expression. (Susin Nielsen, if you’re reading this, joie de Bieber may have worked just as well even if it would, undoubtedly, become a little dated in the future. *) In a novel that deals with a number of difficult subjects in a sensitive way, like bullying, homophobia, grief, sexual assault, and the threat of compromising photos in addition to the themes of blended families, teenage drinking, and finding creative ways to help others, Ashley’s voice offers a huge, and much-needed, serving of comedy at key points.

Both Ashley and Stewart grow over the course of the novel, often in touching ways. I’m not going to lie – you might cry while reading this book. (If you’re like me, you might even cry while reading this book in public.) However, it’ll also give you a good belly laugh at exactly the right place. Whether you’re a teen or an adult reader of YA, We Are All Made Of Molecules will blow you away. It’s an inspiring look at what it means to grow up, what it means to have courage, and what it means to be a real friend to someone else. It’s also Susin Nielsen’s writing at her very best. Pick it up today and look for it to be nominated on all the award programs honoring books published this year!

Buy We Are All Made Of Molecules today and benefit from 12% off the regular price!

* I say the future because I think that this book will be read for a long time to come. It’s that good.

** Malapropism, for those who don’t know, is the use of an incorrect word in place, usually, with a similar sound, resulting in a nonsensical, often humorous utterance. In case you want to learn more about it, check out the Wikipedia definition of malapropism.

Buy Last Year’s Mistake
Special price $14.54 Regular price: $17.99
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Format: Hardcover
Reviewer: Melissa on June 23, 2015
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Before: Kelsey and David became best friends over the summer before freshman year in Gina Ciocca’s Last Year’s Mistake. They were inseparable until a misunderstanding turned Kelsey into the school joke and everything in her life crumbled – including her friendship with David. When her parents decide to move away, Kelsey can’t wait for a chance to start over. The only kink in her plan is that David doesn’t want to let her go. After: It’s senior year, and Kelsey has everything she wanted: a new group of friends, popularity, and a hot boyfriend. Everything’s perfect until David’s family relocates to the same town and shakes it up all over again. Old feelings bubble up to the surface, threatening to destroy Kelsey’s second chance at happiness and making her realize that she never truly let David go. And maybe she never wants to.

Alternating between the present timeline and the past, Last Year’s Mistake slowly unveils everything – good and bad – that happened in the past between Kelsey and David. One of the things that I loved was how realistic the world Gina Ciocca creates is. She doesn’t sugar coat anything, but rather, develops characters who are three-dimensional and who make mistakes with friendships and both current and budding relationships repeatedly. For example, Kelsey pushes her friend Maddie away during freshman year when Maddie changes the way she dresses under the influence of the popular crowd because she is jealous of and disappointed in her, but it’s for the wrong reasons. Still, these types of mistakes didn’t leave me face palming because, in my opinion, they present her as a “real” teen, and I always assumed that she would find a way to correct the things that went wrong both this year and last year.

Beyond Kelsey, my favorite characters were David and Candy, one of her Newport, Rhode Island friends. On the one hand, David is swoon-worthy in a way that Kelsey’s senior year boyfriend, Ryan, never was to me. He always has other girls, like Amy and Isabel in Norwood, Connecticut, and Violet, in Newport, fawning over him, and even Kelsey admitted to herself that he was cute upon meeting him. Of course, cute guys are common in YA. Where David stands out from the pack, however, is in the way that he always goes out of his way to make sure Kelsey is okay, really understands her in a meaningful way, and plans romantic gifts and evenings just for her. As for Candy, it’s easy to see that she is more than a bubbly cheerleader. Beyond David, in fact, I’d say that Candy is probably the peer who knows Kelsey best and is a real friend to her. She knows Kelsey’s feelings better than Kelsey knows them herself, and gives her advice when she needs it. She’s also one of the few girls with whom Kelsey doesn’t have any drama, which was a nice change of pace for me.

If you’re wondering about the drama that seems to plague most of Kelsey’s female friendships or what fault I had with Ryan, then keep reading for the things that I didn’t love so much about this novel. In both the present and past timelines, Kelsey infrequently lapsed into slut shaming several of the female friends, ex-friends, and outright enemies with whom she comes into contact, including Violet, Maddie, and Isabel respectively, toward the beginning of the novel. Whether she was referring to Isabel as the “Sloppy ho” because of an argument involving a sloppy joe in the cafeteria or using words like “tramp” or “whore” in anger over jealousy, I was always taken aback by this type of language. Don’t get me wrong – I do think that it is realistic language and usage for some teen girls, but as an adult, who would love to see women sticking up for one another and not tearing them down, it was hard to read and took me out of the story. That said, most of the instances are within the first third of the book, so if you can set your feelings aside (or if you don’t have any negatives thoughts about this), then you may still enjoy the book as I did.

Ryan, in my opinion, was a little harder to swallow than the language issue. He may have been a hot guy, and I’m glad that Kelsey enjoyed his company, but personally, I need more than looks to be satisfied by someone, and I don’t think he delivered. In the very first chapter, he jumps all over Kelsey with suspicion and jealousy about the guy friend she used to know – David – who had a St. Christopher Medal just like the one in Ryan’s car. This behavior rubbed me the wrong way, and when it was followed up with Kelsey needing to talk him down from his jealousy over David when the latter enters her Newport high school, my ill opinion of him was solidified. In short, I thought he was a complete jerk. While I don’t mind love triangles in novels if both love interests are evenly matched, Ryan seemed like the weak link in this one, which put a damper on it for me.

So should you pick up Last Year’s Mistake or will it be a choice you wish you could take back? To answer that question, you have to take a look inside you: can you get past the toxic way Kelsey refers to other girls toward the beginning? Can the presence of one swoon-worthy guy and one maybe less-than-enchanting one in a love triangle get your heart racing? If you answered yes to both of these questions, then you’ll likely find Last Year’s Mistake to be a fun, realistic teen romance. If not, you might want to move along.

Buy Last Year’s Mistake today and benefit from 19% off the regular price!

Buy Every Last Word
Regular price: $17.99
Publisher: Hyperion
Format: Hardcover
Reviewer: Melissa on June 19, 2015
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

If you looked further than Samantha McAllistar’s straightened hair and carefully applied makeup – in short, if you could read her mind – then you’d know that beneath perfect exterior lies a secret that the popular juniors she calls friends would never understand. Sam has Purely-Obsessional OCD, which means that she’s consumed with a stream of dark thoughts and worries that she can’t turn off. Readers of Every Last Word by Tamara Ireland Stone will see that Sam second-guesses every word she says, every move she makes, and every thought she has, in part, because her lifelong friendships become toxic with any “wrong” action she takes. Still, she’d have to be crazy to leave their protection, wouldn’t she? So when Sam meets Caroline, she has to keep her new friend a secret along with her weekly psychiatrist visits. With Caroline by her side, Sam finds Poet’s Corner and the tight-knit group of misfits who meet there twice a week. Sam’s immediately drawn to them, especially the guitar player with a talent for verse, and begins to discover a side of herself that she didn’t know existed. She feels more “normal” than she ever has with the popular girls…until something forces her to question both her sanity and everything she holds dear.

When I love a book by a particular author, I do one of two things. Often I do both. First, I check if they have any other backlist titles that I can dive into, and second, I often turn back to page one and start rereading the book over immediately. While I’ve always wanted to pick up Tamara Ireland Stone’s Time Between Us duology, even before Tiff from MostlyYALit.com recommended them to me the first, second, and possibly several other times, I really need to find the time to add them into my reading schedule after finishing Every Last Word twice. The first time I read Stone’s new release, I couldn’t put it down and finished it in less than a day. The second time, I slowly savoured every last word, swoony detail, characterization, tear, and most importantly, the way that the author infuses the clues to the novel’s climax throughout the book. Both times were absolutely lovely, and I have a feeling that there will be more readings of this story in my future.

How much did I love this book? Let me count the ways:

Unlike many books, TV shows, and movies that usually characterize OCD as a stereotypical series of outward compulsions, like repeatedly washing one’s hands or locking a door, I liked that Stone tells a story about someone with “Pure-O.” Sam does have a few compulsions, but they aren’t as obvious and they don’t conform to the stereotypes of someone with OCD. One of my favourite parts occurs when Caroline comes up to Sam’s messy room, and Caroline says, “I thought people with OCD were supposed to be clean” because it at once addresses the stereotype and knocks it out completely.

In addition, a large part of the novel deals with navigating friendships, which is a very common experience. (It’s something that I experienced between the ages of 11 and 14 in fact.) Sam’s relationship with the “Crazy 8s,” as she calls the popular girl crowd, is supremely toxic, but also indicative of the type of bullying that happens between girls. It’s the way that a teen girl’s actions, beliefs, clothes, etc. are scrutinized and torn apart. It’s the way that girls have to, if it occurs to them, find the courage to become who they need to be, even if it means distancing or completely ditching the people they’ve always considered a friend. Stone pulls off these complex relationships and growth in a way that seems authentic, healthy, and positive.

Remember when I mentioned Poet’s Corner and the group of misfits who meet up there? Well, they’re another part of this novel that I love so much. See, the “Poetic 9” as Sam calls them, are a group of teens with one thing in common – they don’t have any other safe place to go. While the reasons that they need some place aren’t clearly defined for the characters, Sam comes to realize that not only can the group be a safe place to share “the crazy,” but also she could be the person that some of the other characters need. Caroline, in particular, is the first person beyond her family and psychiatrist, who Sam can talk with about her mental health condition and who can share her own experience with medications, psychiatrists, and mental health concerns. Caroline is someone with whom Sam can share her truth, and this experience leads the way to making other meaningful connections with the rest of this new group.

Of course, Sam feels particularly “normal” around AJ, the guitar-playing character I mentioned earlier, the closer they get. Sam’s growing attraction to him and interest in being more than friends is so well done. The way she second-guesses everything he does and finds it hard to say what she really thinks work given her mental illness, but they also will speak to many a tongue-tied teen whenever they’re around someone they like. There are plenty of swoon-worthy scenes, including one that called to mind a song by Hayden, one of my fave Canadian musicians, called “Between Us to Hold,” where AJ teaches Sam how to play several chords on the guitar.

Finally, Sam’s relationships with her mom and her psychiatrist, a.k.a. Shrink-Sue, are incredible. Whenever things between Sam and her friends are verging on the toxic or Sam is in the midst of an out-of-control thought spiral, her mom is there to help her through it, even if it’s only via a text message conversation. Similarly, Sue is who Sam can count on to listen to her, and if necessary, to challenge her in healthy ways. Stone doesn’t clearly define some of the other adults in Sam’s life, and in fact, her father is only mentioned a couple of times, but this decision doesn’t take anything away from the novel as the most important adults to her treatment team are so strongly portrayed in relation to her and the story.

I have a lot of love for Every Last Word, and I’m certain that most of my readers will enjoy it, too. I’d particularly recommend it to fans of Nova Ren Suma’s 17 & Gone, Adrienne Stoltz and Ron Bass’ Lucid, Nina LaCour’s Hold Still, and Cynthia Hand’s The Last Time We Say Goodbye. However, it’s also a great for teens who are having issues with friendship and bullying, adults who remember similar experiences in their youth, and anyone who loves a good tear-inducing contemporary YA novel.

Buy Every Last Word today! 

Earlier this week, I asked some of my followers on Twitter, including @appifanie, @jennykacz, @MyfanwyCollins, @Word_Tapestry, @yalovemag, & many others, if they knew of any YA novels featuring vegetarian or vegan characters. I’d read several books with one or more of these characters, usually the protagonist, with diverse dietary choices – all of which I shared in Tuesday’s blog post about the representation of veg and vegan characters in YA lit. In case you missed it, I’ll just state here briefly that as someone who has lived as either a vegetarian or vegan for the last 13 years, I’ve become very attuned to way characters with similar dietary needs and ethics to the ones to which I ascribe are represented.

As for the veg and vegan characters portrayed in the following novels, I can’t really speak to whether most of the following are positive, negative, or neutral as I haven’t read them yet. That said, from comments I read on Goodreads or speaking to other readers and authors, it seems like there is a range of representations in the books below, including, in The Art of Falling, for example, a teen who uses veganism as a means of restricting or controlling the food she eats in a way that may be unhealthy. While I know it’s possible to have a healthy vegetarian or vegan diet, some teens and adults might not go about in the right way, which makes this story just as necessary as one in which there aren’t any problems represented.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I heard that The Mother-Daughter Book Club Series does something like what Gilmore Girls did with Mrs. Kim. One of the mothers is a health conscious veg or vegan, and when it’s her turn to supply treats for the book club, the other members do whatever they can do avoid eating them because they’re so “gross.” If this is true, I’d have a major problem with the representation, which would seem not only dated, but also overly biased in my opinion. Still, I want to read it just as much, if not more, than the other books on the list to judge for myself and to call it out for the problems that readers who don’t subscribe to this diet might not see.

Check out this list of books featuring veg or vegan characters, and let me know which ones you’re most interested in reading:

• Vegan, Virgin, Valentine by Carolyn Mackler
• The Mother-Daughter Book Club Series by Heather Vogel Frederick
• The Princess Diaries Series by Meg Cabot
• The Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini
• Dr. Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets by Evan Roskos
• The Art of Falling by Jenny Kaczorowski
• Truth or Dairy by Catherine Clark
• Wings by Aprilynne Pike
• Sirenz by Charlotte Bennardo and Natalie Zaman
• Jenna & Jonah’s Fauxmance by Emily Franklin and Brendan Halpin
• What Happened to Goodbye by Sarah Dessen
• Fat Cat by Robin Brande
• My Ridiculous, Romantic Obsessions by Becca Wilhite
• The Lighter Side of Life and Death by C.K. Kelly Martin
• Sweet Venom by Tera Lynn Childs
• Standing Up to Mr. O by Claudia Mills
• Jessica’s Guide to Dating on the Dark Side by Beth Fantaskey
• Fallen Series by Lauren Kate
• Yum by Nicole Antonia Carro
• Stargirl and Love, Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
• Out of Breath by Blair Richmond
• Dragon’s Dialogue by Anthony Jerome Brown
• Fireheart by Giuletta Maria Spudich
• Dragon Bound by Thea Harrison
• Transformed by E.V. Fairfell
• The World of Wickham by J.L. Morse
• The Love that Shouldn’t Have Been by Melissa Grijalva
• Trial by Fire by Josephine Angelini
• She Smells the Dead by E.J. Stevens
• Obernewtyn by Isobelle Carmody
• Blankets by Craig Thompson
• The Ex-Games by Jennifer Echols
• The Shadow Society by Marie Rutkoski
• Forecast by Rinda Elliot
• The Princess and the Hound Series by Mette Ivie Harrison
• Stealing Phoenix by Joss Stirling
• Donorboy by Brendan Halpin
• Notes From The Blender by Trish Cook and Brendan Halpin
• A Really Awesome Mess by Trish Cook and Brendan Halpin

Coming In July 1, 2015:

• Don’t Ever Change by M. Beth Bloom

Have you read any of these books yet? Or will you seek them out now that you know they have characters with either a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle? And just as important, do you any other books featuring vegetarian or vegan characters that are either already published or will be published in the future that my readers and I should read? I want to update this list or create new veg/vegan character features like this one in the future, and your eyes and ears will help keep my information up to date. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

When Gilmore Girls first aired in 2000, I didn’t see anything amiss with the fact that the food made by Mrs. Kim was always completely unappetizing. My sister was a vegetarian then, so I often ate vegetarian meals, but it never really stood out as dreadfully stereotypical in this regard because I wasn’t one yet. Fast-forward 15 years, however, and my perspective while binge-watching the series again, as a Gilmore Girls fangirl like myself is wont to do, was very different. I’ve been either a vegetarian* or vegan* for the last 13 years, so the 24-hour dance marathon episode, A.K.A. “They Shoot Gilmores, Don’t They?” I found myself feeling torn by the huge tub of eggless egg salad Mrs. Kim made for the participants to eat. Even though I occasionally have enjoyed a similar recipe, I found myself feeling disgusted because of the way it was presented.

Just as I didn’t notice anything amiss in the food that Mrs. Kim’s prepared back then, I likely wouldn’t have put much thought into how vegetarian characters were portrayed in books at that time. I may have subconsciously noticed whether they were represented in a positive or negative light, but it wouldn’t have stuck with me for any length of time. Now, things are different. For one thing, I notice when the author or the main character explicitly refers to a character or characters as vegetarian or vegan, which probably has a lot to do with my experience as one for so long. Moreover, as vegetarianism and veganism becomes more present in mainstream culture, it’s not surprising that authors have begun adding a more dietary diverse cast of characters to both their contemporary and fantasy worlds.

Whether you’re living a plant-based lifestyle like me and are looking for more books to add to your TBR pile that feature veg or vegan characters or are an author who wants to include some in your next project, keep reading to get a vegan’s perspective about the right and wrong ways to depict vegetarianism:

• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green: Just before the #TFIOS movie was released, I reread John Green’s novel to refresh my memory of it. It’s a good thing I did because otherwise, I might have forgotten that Hazel Grace Lancaster is not only a vegetarian, but also an ethical one. When Gus asks if she went veg because the “Animals are just too cute?,” I’m sure that I’m not the only veg reader, who completely understood where Hazel was coming from when she answers: “I want to minimize the number of deaths I am responsible for.” Even though the conversation shuts down after Hazel’s admission, her honesty is something that could have a positive impact on readers – vegetarian and omnivore alike.

That said, I think it’s worth noting that this detail and conversation is   completely absent from the #TFIOS movie. Hazel doesn’t become a meat eater, but the emphasis on her ethical vegetarian stance and Hazel and Gus’ request for a vegetarian option from the chef on their date in Amsterdam are both completely absent. I can understand why these details may have seemed extraneous to the main plot, but at the same time, I’m sure that vegetarian and vegan movie goers would have loved to see a young woman who is so committed to their ethical lifestyle represented in this mainstream film.

• Lola and the Boy Next Door and Isla and the Happily Ever After by Stephanie Perkins: When you set a book in The Castro neighbourhood of San Francisco, it shouldn’t be too surprising when one of the main characters has gay parents and is a vegetarian. The reason behind Lola’s vegetarianism isn’t so in your face with Lola and the Boy Next Door as it was in The Fault In Our Stars, but honestly, it doesn’t have to be. The detail is enough, especially when coupled with scenes where she eats a variety of veg-friendly foods, including falafel sandwiches. Technically, the vegetarianism of Isla and the Happily Ever After isn’t as clear, but spoiler alert, Lola does have a cameo in the last book in this series, so I’d say it counts.

• Kissing Frogs by Alisha Sevigny: Unlike either Hazel or Lola, Jessica in Kissing Frogs isn’t presented to the reader as a fully formed vegetarian character at the beginning of the book. In fact, she starts out the novel as the queen bee who has spent several years of her life trying to hide her true geeky self behind a perfectly put together exterior without any obvious signs of intelligence and no concern for the environment. Her experiences on a school trip to Panama, including being influenced by the plant-based lifestyle of Travis – though technically he’s a pescatarian* not a vegetarian, change her though. By the end of the novel, Jessica makes a commitment to at least try to adhere to a vegetarian diet, and while she will likely have some struggles along the way or may decide not to stick with it, I’m sure that newbies to the veg or vegan way of life will appreciate her efforts. Also, for those of us from Canada, Alisha is from Toronto, which is kind of a bonus.

• The Revelation of Louisa May by Michaela MacColl: For those of you who don’t know, Michaela MacColl writes great YA historical mysteries that blend the facts of various historical figures lives – including some great authors and poets – with fictional situations that could have inspired some of their most famous novels and poems. The Louisa May of the title refers to Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women, one of my favorite books as a 12 year old. What I never knew before reading MacColl’s novel, however, is that Louisa and her family were ethical vegetarians who not only avoided consuming meat, poultry, and fish, but also didn’t consume dairy.

From the novel, it’s hard to know whether Louisa would have subscribed to this diet of her own accord or not as their family’s decision to refrain from these foods but to eat eggs was influenced by her father, Bronson Alcott’s philosophical beliefs that chickens freely gave eggs to them for consumption. Still, I think this is a great book for teens and adult readers of YA to learn that while vegetarianism has become a more popular dietary choice recently, there were people in North America who ascribed to this diet in the 19th century.

• The Queen of Bright and Shiny Things by Ann Aguirre: As with Louisa Alcott, Sage Czinski decides to go vegetarian because her aunt who has acted as her guardian for the last three years is one. It’s worth noting that Sage is adamant that she would NEVER be able to give up cheese and thus, mentions that she’s glad her aunt isn’t a vegan.

While I didn’t love that she started maintaining this diet even when she wasn’t at home because she was afraid that she’d be sent back to the group home where she used to live if she didn’t, there are more positives than negatives. First, I think this is one of the few, or perhaps only books that I’ve ever read where the main character serves seitan* to a bunch of her non-vegetarian friends from school, but also they enjoy the tacos so much that she has them over to her house for her aunt’s famous vegetarian lasagna. Second, I think readers will agree that somewhere along the way Sage becomes committed to vegetarianism for herself, and not just to please her aunt.

• Loop by Karen Akins: In Bree Bennis’ present – the 23rd century – everyone is a vegetarian / vegan. While it’s not explicitly stated why as far as I remember anyway, I didn’t get a sense that Bree and her friends had an ethical reason for their dietary lifestyle. Rather, it seemed to amount to the fact that humans could get all of their nutritional needs from a vegetarian diet.

• XVI by Julia Karr: I read this novel when it first came out in 2011, so some of the details are a bit sketchy in my mind. However, from what I remember, the future where Nina lives, like the world of Loop, is a vegetarian one. That said, another reader said that Nina’s society is vegetarian because there are so few animals left in her world according to the book.

• The Mortal Instruments Series by Cassandra Clare: While each of the previously listed books featured a vegetarian protagonist, Cassandra Clare created a secondary character – Simon Lewis – who starts the series as one. While events occur over the course of the series that prevent him from maintaining this dietary choice, it’s interesting to see how his ethics complicate the life he is forced to lead at later points in the series.

• I Was Here by Gayle Forman: As with Cassandra Clare’s series, I Was Here features several side characters, including several unnamed ones, who are vegetarian or vegan. First, there’s the “hippie” named Tree, who was one of Meg’s college roommates. From the story, Cody and the reader come away with the sense that Meg never had much of a relationship with any of her roommates, but even Cody keeps Tree at a distance, othering her for most of the story. It’s interesting, however, that Tree seems to be the only character who recognized that Meg’s behavior was a result of depression.In addition, Ben McAllister – the boy who broke Meg’s heart and becomes a major figure in Cody’s attempt to unravel the mystery that was Meg – repeatedly talks about his vegan roommates. We never learn their names because they’re unimportant to the plot. Instead, we learn about them only insofar as Ben attempts to avoid eating a strictly vegan diet, including how he hides cheese in a Tupperware container at his apartment and the copious amount of meat he eats when not at home to make up for his mainly vegetarian diet. In both cases, I found the representation of veg/vegan characters to be a little lacking in this book, but this didn’t change my positive opinion of the book in general.

• The Catastrophic History of You and Me by Jess Rothenberg: This is another book that I read when it first came out in 2012, which makes the details a little sketchy for me. I’m including it here because I have read it and it was included on a Goodreads list of vegetarian and vegan protagonists.

• Every Day by David Levithan: Like Jess Rothenberg’s novel above, I don’t specifically remember a vegetarian or vegan character in David Levithan’s novel, and since A wakes up in the body of a different person every day, I doubt A was the one with veg or vegan principles. That said, it’s a great book that you should read, and it was included on a list on Goodreads related to veg and vegan characters.

• The Disenchantments by Nina LaCour: I love Nina LaCour’s writing, so I read this novel when it first came out in 2011, and I wasn’t disappointed. However, having seen this book on a list of books featuring vegetarian or vegan characters makes me want to reread it when I have a chance because this is a detail that slipped my mind from my first reading.

It’s been 15 long years since Mrs. Kim and her vegetarian diet first aired on Gilmore Girls, so it shouldn’t be surprising that there are more examples of vegetarians and even vegans in pop culture. Even better, more often than not, the representation of characters with diverse dietary needs – vegetarian, vegan, or otherwise – is generally presented in a more positive way. With that in mind, feel free to answer any or all the following questions in the comments:

• Have you read any (or all) of these books with vegetarian or vegan characters?
• Did you remember that there were characters with diverse dietary choices in any of these books?
• Are there any other books that you would recommend to a vegetarian or vegan, who wants to add more books featuring these types of characters to their reading list?

As always I’d love to hear your suggestions and will use them along with some others that I’ve already obtained through Twitter from @appfanie, @Word_Tapestry, @MyfanwyCollins, @yalovemag, and @jennykacz later this week! Thanks so much for your help!

Vegetarian Terminology: 

* A vegetarian is someone who eschews red meat, pork, poultry, seafood and fish, but who might consume dairy products, eggs, and other animal products, such as honey.

* A vegan is someone who eschews all meat, poultry, seafood, and fish, and refrains from eating dairy, eggs, and may avoid other animal products, like honey. Some vegans prefer the term “plant-based,” and they may also refrain from using all animal products, meaning that they won’t wear leather or wool.

* A pescatarian is someone who doesn’t eat red meat, pork or poultry, but who may consume fish or seafood. Depending on the person, they may also consume or refrain from consuming dairy and eggs.

* Seitan is a protein-rich, meat substitute composed primarily of wheat gluten. It has a texture that is very similar to the type of meat that it’s attempting to imitate and can be flavored in a way that makes the similarity nearly complete. In fact, the first time I ever tried it after having given up all meat, poultry, and fish for several years, I was scared that the veggie chick’n I was consuming was actually chicken. Alas, now, as a gluten-free vegan, I can’t eat it anymore, but that doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t love it if you gave it a chance.