bookshelves of doom

Yesterday @KirkusReviews...

...I wrote about Jaclyn Dolamore's Dark Metropolis, which was a mixed bag for me, but which ultimately had a silver lining: it allowed me to revisit Madonna's Express Yourself video.

Today @KirkusReviews...

...I wrote about Tess Sharpe's Far From You, and holy cow, it is just SO GOOD:

I have six and a half pages of notes in front of me, but they can be condensed into four words: I LOVED THIS BOOK. It’s about friendship, loyalty, trust and love; about betraying the person you love most in the world in order to save her; about addiction and grief, guilt and shame; about fear, family, and about how no one knows how long they have in this life: sometimes, someday never happens.

Today @KirkusReviews...

...I talk about Paul Acampora's I Kill the Mockingbird, which I found hugely enjoyable:

Say that you’re browsing Twitter one day, and Wil Wheaton retweets something from a group called I Kill the Mockingbird. Being a book-loving person, you’d totally get curious and click through, right? I know I would.

...and I just now realized that I forgot to mention YET ANOTHER thing I like about the book: the cast of characters is notably diverse, and said diversity is never an ISSUE. It's just an everyday part of life. Which is always nice to see.

Today @KirkusReviews...

...I wrote about Rachel Ward's The Drowning:

...which sets out to be a love story, a ghost story, a story about abuse, and a story about family. Of the four, the ghost story comes the closest to being successful. The idea of a ghost that can travel via and control water is scary in and of itself, and Ward really makes great, cinematic* use of it, sometimes with powerful, gushing torrents, sometimes with insidious, creeping mold. Ghost Rob’s growing strength is rivaled only by his malevolence, and Carl’s deteriorating mental state—despite clear signs of an actual haunting, at times I wondered if it really might all be in Carl’s head—adds to the tension.

As it sadly didn't do a whole lot for me, I went ahead and recommended some OTHER books that I enjoyed much more...

INCLUDING A CERTAIN SERIES STARRING MISS SHIRAZ BAILEY WOOD.

And also one that I haven't read yet, but that LOOKS really super.

Sidenote: Due to the water and the palette, this cover is pretty ambiguous... but if the girl on the cover is supposed to be Neisha Gupta, with her "big brown eyes" and skin with "honey tones", then it looks like the UK cover has been whitewashed.

Related articles

Yesterday @KirkusReviews...

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Yesterday @KirkusReviews...

Today @KirkusReviews...

Earlier this week @KirkusReviews...

...I wrote about Lanie Bross' Fates:

Ten years ago, Corinthe made a huge mistake. Since then, she’s been exiled from her sister Fates, living on Earth among the humans. To earn her way back into the good graces of the Unseen Ones and be allowed to return home, she is tasked with helping humans achieve their destinies: whether that means facilitating meet cutes, making someone late for work, preventing an accident, saving a life...or ending one.

(I couldn't post the link earlier due to the Typepad debacle.)

Today @KirkusReviews...

...I wrote about The Vigilante Poets of Selwyn Academy, and OMG I LOVE LOVE LOVED IT:

I laughed SO MUCH while reading it. Laughed and laughed and laughed. If Ethan wasn’t “stewing in the Crock-Pot of betrayal,” he was taking a “dumbwaiter ride to hell,” or becoming part of a “tornado of justice.” I loved the scenes with his triplet sisters; Ethan’s ongoing willingness to play with language (the past tense of high five is apparently “high fove”); and the many, many literary references (“...we were kicking it old-school, searching his files in the grand tradition of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler”)

Today @KirkusReviews...

...I wrote about Lisa Colozza Cocca's Providence:

It’s Becky’s voice that makes Lisa Colozza Cocca’s Providence work. She’s tough and honest; craves affection but is understandably guarded; she’s prone to quoting her father but hasn’t adopted the entirety of his philosophy. She’s practical, but has dreams; she’s generous and tenacious; she’s funny, awkward, creative, reliable, independent and sweet. Though her situation is a very different one, she feels like a direct descendant of another stubborn farmgirl: D.J. Schwenk, of Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s Dairy Queen.