The Folk Keeper by Franny Billingsley

Years ago orphaned Corinna became Corin and started a new life as a Folk Keeper.  A Folk Keeper is important.  It is they who keep the Folk satisfied so they don't cause the crops to spoil and animals to sicken and die.  Everything changes when she is taken to be Folk Keeper at Marblehaugh Park, a manor house by the sea.  By the sea, Corinna is suddenly overwhelmed by powers she didn't know she had, and begins to piece together who she really is.

I loved Chime by Franny Billingsley but hadn't read anything else by her.  The Folk Keeper has some similarities with Chime, in particular the story twists and turns and keeps you guessing and then all comes together wonderfully in the end.  The Folk Keeper wasn't anywhere as confusing as Chime, which I always warn kids that they won't know what's going on for the first half but stick with it because it gets awesome.

Corinna decides to become a boy because she's suffered through life as a servant for others.  As a boy, she can be a Folk Keeper.  She has no training, of course, but she learns by listening and bribing others and becomes quite a good one.  Corinna has constructed for herself a very careful world devoid of emotions or attachments.  If someone does her wrong, she quickly and quietly gets revenge on them.  This is how she has survived alone for many years.  She is cold and vindictive and careful to make sure everyone respects the position she has so carefully built for herself.

Corinna is thrown when Sir Edward and Lady Alicia come asking for her by her true name, as she's gone as Corin for years.  She meets with Lady Alicia's husband, who speaks with her briefly before dying.  He wants to take her into his household.  She refuses, but agrees to come if she can stay Corin and be their Folk Keeper.  So Corinna, still as Corin, travels to the seaside where Marblehaugh Park is.

At Marblehaugh Park Corinna meets Lady Alicia's son, Finian.  Finian is heir to the estate, but all he wants to do is build boats and sail.  Corinna, for all her boasting and confidence in her abilities finds the Folk of Marblehaugh Park are nothing like anything she's experienced before.  They are ravenous and blood thirsty and Corinna is hardly able to hold them off.  In order to arm herself against them, she makes a deal with Finian.  He will tell her secrets of the estate she might be able to use to protect herself against the Folk, and she will give him convictions to be able to stand up to his mother and stay with the sea he loves.

Corinna has more people in her life then she ever had before.  She is actually beginning to care about people, which she doesn't like at all.  She is also experiencing strange things.  Why did she take to sailing so easily?  Why did swimming in the water feel so natural that one night?  What is Sir Edward hiding?  Why did Lady Alicia's husband want her here in the first place?  Who is the Lady Rona?

Just like Chime, everything comes together in the end.  Corinna pieces everything together and then must make a choice: stay with the people she perhaps has grown to love, or return to her true home.

Great middle grade fantasy with mystery, betrayal, and a little bit of romance.

Stealing the Game by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Raymond Obstfeld

Chris is a quiet kid. He keeps his head down and doesn't stir the pot.  Chris' parents have high expectations for him.  They expect him to go to law school like his older brother Jax, who Chris looks up to.  But then Jax turns up, apparently having dropped out of law school and gotten involved in some pretty questionable things.  Chris is confused.  Something doesn't seem right.  This isn't the brother he knows.  Has Jax gotten himself into something bad?  Or is something else going on?  Chris has never thought of himself as the smart kid who could figure things out.  But this is something he's willing to take on.

What we have here is mystery story with a good dose of sports action.  Chris and his friends all play basketball, and one of the shady things Jax does is set up Chris and his friends to play a game against another team, a team who turns out to be way older and bigger than they are.

The story has plenty of action and excitement.  Aside from the basketball games, there are blow-ups with family and friends, elaborately staged break-ins, amateur sleuthing, and more sports action.  Chris gains confidence throughout the book, realizing he's not just the dumb younger brother who will never live up to his parent's expectations.  He's got a lot going for himself, and he finds the courage to speak up and show what he's good at.

What's actually going on with Jax seemed a little far-fetched and out of the realm of likelihood for me, but I think it will work just fine for middle school boys, who will find the story exciting and probably won't focus on plausibility so much.

I will definitely get this book for my library, along with the first one in the series, Sasquatch in the Paint.

Stealing the Game comes out February 1, 2015.

Shadows of the Silver Screen by Christopher Edge

Penelope Tredwell is 13, but that doesn't stop her from owning the Penny Dreadful, a magazine filled with horror stories of her own writing.  No one knows the stories are written by Penny, as she writes under the name of Montgomery Flinch and has hired an actor to play the part of the now famous writer.  Talking movie pictures are beginning to capture the population of Victorian Britain's imagination, and a filmmaker has approached the Penny Dreadful for permission to turn one of Montgomery Flinch's stories into a movie.  But as filming begins, strange things begin to happen, and actors seem to be becoming their characters.  Penny must find out what's behind the horror before her own creation is the end of them all.

Shadows of the Silver Screen is the second in a series.  The first was Twelve Minutes to Midnight.  I don't think Shadows of the Silver Screen stands up well on its own.  It felt like all the character development must have been done in the first book, so it wasn't bothered with in this one.  It seems like Penny is suppose to be a plucky heroine,  but in action, she really wasn't that interesting and didn't really do very much.  She was under the spell of the magical movie camera as much as anyone else.  She didn't really do anything on her own.  She planned to, but then couldn't because of one thing or the other and had to be rescued in the end. 

Having not read Twelve Minutes to Midnight I don't know if that holds true in the first book as well, or if Penny is more interesting and more of a character.

The plot of Shadows of the Silver Screen was confusing and contrived.  The filmmaker has a camera that brings ghost into the world by taking the souls of others.  I didn't understand why he went to all the trouble of getting the rights to Penny's story, especially since he changed it dramatically to make it fit his own lost love story.  That was the foundation for the whole thing, and I didn't think that made a whole lot of sense so the story itself was a bit shaky.

I think there are much better, much more exciting middle grade mystery stories.  I would skip this one.

Shadows of the Silver Screen comes out September 1, 2014.

Ribblestrop by Andy Mulligan

Ribblestrop is a school like no other.  There is no roof.  The teachers are a bit odd, and strange things are going on in the secret underground labyrinth of the building.  The students are an unusual mix as well, from Millie, an arsonist who's been kicked out of her other schools, Sanches, the son of a Colombian gangster, to Sam, who's had the bad luck to fall into the middle of it all.

I did not enjoy.  My expectations were high because Ribblestrop was actually published in the UK in 2009 and won The Guardian's Children's Fiction Prize.  I mostly didn't like it because I felt like it was a book full of unpleasant characters that I didn't care about.  I've had this issue before.  When everyone is unpleasant, it's very hard for me to get invested in the story.  Most unlikable was Millie, and she was suppose to be our antihero.  The problem was she was so unpleasant I wanted someone to put her in her place.  The problem with that was that everyone else was so unpleasant I didn't want them to come out on top either.  So yeah.  I spent the whole book shaking my head over how nasty everyone is. 

A quote from the publisher's website is "With the "crazy-school appeal of Hogwarts and the grim humor of Lemony Snicket" ("The Independent") Ribblestrop is sure to delight the most mischievous among us."  And maybe it will, although I totally disagree with The Independent.  Hogwarts didn't have a "crazy-school" vibe for me, and the tone of Ribblestrop is completely different from A Serious of Unfortunate Events, which I loved.  It didn't have that sly, tongue-in-cheek humor.  There wasn't really any humor in Ribblestrop.

Just because I did not enjoy the book does not mean others won't.  While the nastiness turned me off, that could certainly be an appeal for some kids.  It has adventure and mystery.  It has descriptions of soccer games.  It has a creepy science-fiction sort of twist.  It has a car chase.  I can certainly see how it would appeal.

Aside from Millie, the other characters were either unappealing or undeveloped.  The school has brought in a whole bunch of orphans from overseas.  Some of the orphans get names, most of them don't.  What we know about the orphans is that they're just so delighted to be at the school and will cheerfully do any kind of work needed.  The whole "we've taken in a bunch of orphans from a third-world country and are making them rebuild our school" thing made me a little uncomfortable.  Another main characters is Sanchez, the gangster's son, who's actually fairly decent, but like everyone else gives into Millie and I really wish he hadn't.  He was doing so well telling her to shove off, but then he gave in.  Even Sam, who's supposed to be sweet a lovable annoyed me.  Stand up for yourself, Sam!

But you know what, I did read the whole book.  I didn't give up part way through.  So I guess you win, Ribblestrop.

Ribblestrop comes out August 19, 2014.

Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage

Moses (Mo) LoBeau has been looking for her Upstream Mother ever since infant Mo washed up in Tupelo Landing, North Carolina during a hurricane.  Not that she's unhappy with her life with the Colonel and Miss Lana and helping to run the cafe, far from it.  The summer's looking great, but then one of the regulars turns up murdered.  Of course Mo and her best friend Dale are convinced they will solve the case before the questionable city-slicker detective.

Three Times Lucky had been on my "to read" list since it came out.  Everyone was saying how fabulous it was, and it did get a Newbery honor.  It was just as great as everyone said.

What wonderful character voices!  For everyone!  Each character, no matter how important they were to the main plot, had a rich, distinct voice.  From Mo herself to Grandmother Miss Lacy Thornton.  The fact that this small town was a close-knit community was important to the story, and it was clear right away that this was the case from the way the different characters spoke to each other.  Everyone knew everyone else.  Everyone knew everyone else's business, troubles, secrets, problems.  They annoyed each other and were there for each other.  It was like a gigantic family.

Doll Bones by Holly Black

Poppy, Zach and Alice have been playing the game for years.  With actions figures, dolls, and toys of their own creation the three friends have been telling an ever-expanding fantasy story.  And ruling over them all is the Great Queen, a bone-china doll in Polly's house no one is allowed to touch.  But now the three are in middle school, and Zach's father wants him to spend more time with his guy friends and playing basketball.  Before the game came can end, Polly insist the Great Queen has come to her in a dream, and the three must head out on a final quest.

This was a perfect mix of realistic fiction and a tiny bit of horror.  It's never clear if, in fact, the Queen really is speaking to the children.  Is she really moving around in the night?  Is she really sending them dreams?  Do other people really see her as a person?  It's not clear.  It might be all pretend.  Or something creepy might be going on.  You get to decide.  So it's a little dark and spooky, but not too spooky.  It can be as spooky as you make it.

Each of the three kids are dealing with their own private family issue.  Alice's parents are dead, something she doesn't talk about very much, and her grandmother is so over protective it's hard for Alice to do the things that she loves.  Alice envies Polly, whose parents are hardly ever around and aren't very involved in Polly's life.  Polly, however, feels this parental lack of interest in what she does.  Her parents can't even come and get her after she's disappeared.  And Zach is dealing with his father returning to his life, after growing up with just him and his mom.  Zach resents his father suddenly trying to act like a father and tell him what to do.  The nerve of this man saying he knows what's best of Zach, when he's been gone for years.  Despite their years-long friendship, the three can't tell each other what's really happening.

When Zach's father throws away Zach's characters, he can't bring himself to tell Polly and Alice.  Instead he just says he doesn't want to play anymore, that it's a baby game and they're too grown up for it.  Polly, always the leader, then tells Zach and Alice that the bone-china doll has appeared in her dreams and told her a terrible story.  Zach and Alice are both skeptical, but use to following Polly, agree to go along.

Things, of course, do not go as planned.  Strange things happen, and ultimately, the three end up revealing secrets to each other they have been keeping.

Toward the end, the three are sleeping in a library (where they go to try and figure out the location of the graveyard they're trying to find) and are discovered by the librarian.  The librarian with pink hair and green glasses.  Thanks, Holly Black.  Thanks for sending the kids to the library when they need to figure something out and having a librarian who isn't a 80-year old women with a bun and orthopedic shoes.  Thank you.

Great, slightly creepy middle school read.

When Did You See Her Last? by Lemony Snicket

Lemony Snicket's All the Wrong Questions series continues with his second wrong question, "When did you see her last?"  Snicket and his incompetent chaperon, still in the dying town of Stain'd-by-the-Sea, take on a new case of the missing Cloe Knight.  Snicket's chaperon quickly decides Miss Knight has run away to join the circus, but Snicket is doubtful.  Evil villain Hangfire is still on the loose, and Snicket and his collection of journalist, taxi driving, and statue-stealing friends work to get to the bottom of the mystery, which grows more mysterious all the time.

I felt the same way about this as I felt about this first in the series.  OK, but not quite up to A Series of Unfortunate Events.  Not as clever, not as sharp, not as funny, and not as interesting.  We are slowly learning more things about Snicket and the mysterious organization he works for, but not much.  It is still very much a secret.  We do learn that Snicket has both a brother and a sister, and that his sister is in another city, preforming a task alone which Snicket should have helped her with.

It is revealed that Hangfire is also part of a secret organization, that seems bent on doing evil.  Perhaps a connection to the villains that kept popping up in A Series of Unfortunate Events?

As with last time, I enjoyed all the little asides Lemony Snicket is famous for, but for whatever reason, this series just doesn't work as well.  I still keep reading them because I want to see how much will be revealed about the secret organization. And I am curious: will Beatrice ever make an appearance?  There are two more books in the series to find out.

Rachel Rising: The Shadow of Death by Terry Moore

Rachel wakes up and digs herself out of a shallow grave.  She isn't sure what's happened.  And why she looks so strange.  And why people are freaking out when they see her.  Rachel is dead.  And she's going to find out who killed her and why.

Rachel Rising is another graphic novel I've been hearing about for a while, due to how awesome it was, but hadn't gotten around to getting a copy.  I have finally read the first issue.  It was pretty awesome.

It's very dark.  People are dying in violent ways.  Rachel wakes up with strangulation marks around her neck.  A man gets --> decapitated in elevator doors.  Yeah, dark and violent.  But not gratuitously so, I didn't think.

The story is a mystery.  Rachel is trying to figure out who killed her and who is behind other people dying.  She sees a strange woman, who no one else, with the exception of a little girl, can see, who seems to show up, and then terrible things happen.  And Rachel isn't the only one coming back from the dead.

The first volume is doing a lot of set up.  It establishes some major characters and raises lots of questions and doesn't answer any of them.  I am looking forward to reading the next volume and seeing where it goes.

The art is black and white ink drawings.  For the most part it's in a traditional panel format.  The darkness of the panels fits well with the tone of the story.

Chicagoland Detective Agency: The Drained Brains Caper by Trina Robbins, illustrated by Tyker Oage

Megan Yamamura, anime lover, and writer of haiku, has just moved to Chicagoland and unfortunately for her, is now starting summer school at Stepford Preparatory Academy.  Megan knows something strange is going on on her first day: why are all the kids so...weird?  Will she be able to find out what's going on at Stepford Prep?  Or will she become one of them?

As the name of the school suggests, all the kids were being brainwashed by an evil scientist.  Megan is captured, but escapes with the help of Raf, her computer programmer friend.  The two manage to destroy the evil scientist's computer program and free all the kids.  They also find a super intelligent talking dog, which they free and take home.  The three then form the Chicagoland Detective Agency.

I've read a few graphic novels by Trina Robbins, and they're always fine.  Some better than others.  I love reading her histories of comics.  I think that is her strong point, rather than the fictional stories.

I read the first two Chicagoland stories: The Drained Brains Caper and The Maltese Mummy.  It looks like the bad guy is the same in each story.  She always escapes at the end, and will no doubt keep showing up to cause more mischief.

While neither plot nor dialogue is especially stunning, what I did like was that the fact that Megan's a girl and Raf's a boy played no part whatsoever.  Sometimes Megan needs saving, and sometimes Raf needs saving and they work together and help each other out.  They have different strengths and weakness.  So that was nice.

The art is black and white, and clearly manga influenced.  Mostly traditional panels, with a few full-paged spreads.

Who Could That Be at This Hour? by Lemony Snicket

The chance we've all been waiting for - the opportunity to learn about the elusive Lemony Snicket.  Snicket, who has had an unusual education, begins his first assignment with his chaperon.  Unfortunately, plans have changed causing Snicket to break his promise to a friend.  Now he and his chaperon are in the practically abandoned town of Stain'd-by-the-Sea trying to locate a statue, which may or may not be priceless, of the Bombinating Beast, which may or may not have been stolen from its owner.  Of course, there is much more going on than meets the eye.

Who Could That Be at This Hour didn't quite have the snap the A Series of Unfortunate Events books did.  It's very much written the same way.  Very tongue in cheek.  Use of sophisticated words which are then explained.  Adults aren't very smart and children are.  It didn't accomplish these things as well as in past books.  It felt a little forced and weighted down.

This is a beginning of a four-part "biography", so it was laying a lot of groundwork.  Many questions are left unanswered (of course), and knowing Lemony Snicket, it's entirely likely they will never be answered.  I think what made this difficult to get into is that we don't really know any of the characters.  Everyone is so shrouded in mystery, the reader doesn't really have any idea what's going on.  Sure, there's a mystery that's trying to be solved, but the mystery that's the focus of the book is clearly not "the right question."  So while this makes things mysterious and interesting, it also left me with a disconnected feeling.  I got into it more as it went along, I had a harder time at the beginning.

One thing I had a lot of fun with was the casual references that are made to books, I enjoy figuring out what ones they are.  For example, "I'm reminded of a book my father used to read me...A bunch of elves and things get into a huge war over a piece of jewelry that everybody wants but nobody can wear."  "I never liked that book...There's always a wizard who's very powerful but not very helpful."  Hehe.  The only one I wasn't familiar with is a book about a lawyer and a tap dancer.  Anyone know it?

Fans of Lemony Snicket's other books will be eager to get their hands on this one.

Paper Valentine by Brenna Yovanoff

Hannah has a serious problem.  She is being haunted by the ghost of her dead best friend, Lillian.  She doesn't know why she's there, or what to do.  And then someone in Hannah's quite little town begins killing girls.  Lillian pushes Hannah to find out who is behind the murders, sending Hannah far outside her comfort zone.

This was a creepy murder mystery.  Hannah is the girl who always looks happy and sweet.  In her hand-made vintage dresses and her pasted on smile, Hannah tries to convince herself that everything is fine.  Of course, everything is not fine.  Even if Lillian weren't haunting her, things wouldn't be fine.  It's never come right out and said, but Hannah seems to feel guilty about Lillian's death.  Lillian was anorexic, and slowly starved to death.  Hannah knew.  It's never gone into detail, but it seems Lillian managed to avoid treatment essentially the entire time.  Hannah knew and could have gotten her help.

Now, Lillian never leaves Hannah alone.  But it isn't the real Lillian, and having her there is not comforting, only frightening and a burden.  It becomes harder and harder for Hannah to pretend.  Then young girls start being murdered, and there's no way to act like everything is going to be just fine.  Lillian encourages her, but Hannah herself feels herself drawn toward the dead girls and begins trying to find a connection between the girls that were murdered.

Hannah is also drawn to Finny Boone, a boy with a poor reputation, and certainly not the kind of boy a girl like Hannah would be seen with.  But Finny seems to be able to see Hannah's sadness and confusion under her smiles and pretty clothes, and seems willing to take the time to find the true her.  Even with all the terribly things happening around her, Hannah is able to begin finding herself, which includes shaking off the expectations of others.

It's never made clear why exactly Lillian was able to stay, or why Hannah was able to see and communicate with ghosts.  I guess it wasn't necessary to the story.  It's just something that happened.

This is a great pick for high school students looking for something more edgy than a supernatural romance or a realistic fiction book that deals with serious issues.  In terms of the mystery, there weren't really any clues to try and figure out who the murder was yourself, it wasn't that kind of mystery.  The focus was more on Hannah trying to find herself.
 
Paper Valentine will be available January 8, 2013.

Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

“There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark’s Eve,” Neeve said. “Either you’re his true love . . . or you killed him.”

It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive.

Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them—not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her.

His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble.

But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can’t entirely explain. He has it all—family money, good looks, devoted friends—but he’s looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, who notices many things but says very little.

For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She never thought this would be a problem. But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.

So I took the wimp way out and just used the summary from the publisher, but here's my nitpick about it: the summary focuses on the romance aspect of the book which is somewhat important but is definitely not the majority of it. At least for this book. The real focus should be on the fact that Blue, Gansey, Adam, Ronan, and Noah, are four messed up individuals who find something in each other that connects them. They all find a balance in having the group together, and if any of the dynamics are thrown off they all fall apart.

The real drama comes from the relationships and the fact that Gansey has enlisted/emotionally hijacked them all into a fantastical quest. They are looking for King Arthur's body. Yep. King Arthur from the Round Table. It seems that Gansey has made it his seventeen year old life's mission to find it. What he doesn't know is the fact that some other boys have also looked for it from Aglionby and one of them ended up dead.
There are some big themes and plot twists in this, and I kind of wasn't expecting it to come together like it did. In a positive way. I was surprised that Maggie Stiefvater was able to get all of these big ideas to work almost cohesively. I had a few issues with the villains, I thought some of them were a bit clunky and not well developed. Otherwise pretty freaking good. The characters are all very unique and have distinct voices, which is maybe why she had five different narrators. Which I found quite jarring. I wish it would've been written from no more than two perspectives. Not that it wasn't interesting to see the plot unravel from different eyes, but that I felt like I was just getting into the rhythm of a character and then we'd jump to someone else. On the flip side of it, I don't think I would've emotionally connected to the characters as much as I did if she hadn't done four of the narrations, so I guess it's a trade off.

There's still some mysteries to unravel, and I'm already eagerly anticipating the sequel. It was an interesting and intense setup to a series.

Raven Boys comes out Sept. 18.

Mystery Society by Steve Niles, art by Fiona Staples

Husband and wife team of Nick and Anastasia created the Mystery Society to uncover paranormal secrets.  They are in desperate need of others to join their group, and luckily, they are joined by Secret Skull (a ghoul), twin girls Nick freed from Area 51 and a robot with the brain of Jules Verne.  They'll need all the help they can get when Nick is framed for a crime he didn't commit.

Mystery Society is a five part series that has been gathered into one volume.  I was disappointed to find that there don't seem to be any more in the works.  Why ever not?!  It was such fun!

There are various adventures going on at once in Mystery Society.  First, we have Nick springing the twins from Area 51, while Anastasia fights off Secret Skull, who ends up being an ally.  Then Nick is framed for killing people during his raid of Area 51 and they're all on the run.  Meanwhile, someone has stolen the skull of Edgar Allan Poe, and Secret Skull and the robot with the brain of Jules Verne are off to retrieve it.

I loved Nick and Anastasia's relationship.  They're so in love with each other, and protective of each other, but also secure in how capable the other person is.  They have a real partnership, and work together well.  Besides Anastasia, we have three more very capable female characters.  Secret Skull is (or was, she's dead so it doesn't matter so much now) a women, as are the twins, who have hardcore supernatural powers.

Nick stresses the importance of not hurting people when it isn't necessary.  The twins at first want revenge for what was done to them, but Nick convinces them that that's not the way to go.

The "twist" at the end was a little lame.  The twins are hiding a secret from the Mystery Society!  Whatever could it be?  Are they, in fact, evil?  Aliens from another planet?  No, they're...actually only one person who was split into two.  So what?  Who cares?  Why was that a dramatic reveal?  So that part was meh, but otherwise I really enjoyed this and am sad there's no more for me to read.

The art is done by the fabulous Fiona Staples, who I love.  In Mystery Society, she used colored backwashes that connected to certain characters and feelings.  The coloring gave the world a washed out kind of feeling, which made me feel like things are not great with the world.  In contrast, panels where the Mystery Society was together were drawn in darker, more substantial colors, and with more detail.

Definitely recommended!

Waiting on Wednesday: The Nightmare Affair by Mindee Arnett

"Waiting On Wednesday" is a weekly event hosted by Breaking the Spine to spotlight an upcoming release that we're excited about. This week I'm waiting on The Nightmare Affair by Mindee Arnett.

16-year-old Dusty Everhart breaks into houses late at night, but not because she’s a criminal. No, she’s a Nightmare. Literally. Dusty is a magical being who feeds on human dreams.

Being the only Nightmare at Arkwell Academy, a boarding school for magickind, and living in the shadow of her mother’s infamy is hard enough. But when Dusty sneaks into Eli Booker’s house, things get a whole lot more complicated. He’s hot, which means sitting on his chest and invading his dreams couldn’t get much more embarrassing. But it does. Eli is dreaming of a murder. The setting is Arkwell.

And then it comes true.

Now the Dusty has to follow the clues—both within Eli’s dreams and out of them—to stop the killer before more people turn up dead. And before the killer learns what she’s up to and marks her as the next target. (Summary from GoodReads)

I stumbled upon this randomly on Amazon. It sounds super intriguing and I love the cover. The idea of a person being a nightmare is pretty great right?

The Nightmare Affair comes out March 5th, 2013.

The Girl in the Park by Mariah Fredericks

Rain Donovan used to be best friends with Wendy, but they haven't really spoken in years.  Early one morning, Wendy's body was discovered in a park.  She'd been strangled.  Rain wants to give Wendy justice, so she quietly starts investigating herself.  Her first hunch, however, leads to the wrong person being accused.  Now Rain is short on time to figure out what really happened, and the answer might be more then she's willing to face.

At first I didn't realize this was a mystery.  I thought it was another YA realistic fiction book about a girl found murdered.  Have you noticed there are a lot of them in the past year or so?  So I was in a particular mindset when I started reading it and was not ready for the twists and turns a mystery has.

After the first person was accused, but it clearly wasn't the right person, I realized what it was.  Then I thought it was kind of a lame mystery because the actual killer was super obvious.  But well done Mariah Fredericks because she put in several good twists that kept me guessing and I didn't actually figure out who really did until close to the end.

The Book of Blood and Shadow by Robin Wasserman

Professor Hoffpauer is obsessed with decoding the mysterious Voynich manuscript that supposedly explains how to create the Lumen Dei, a device that would let some communicate directly with God.  Nora, her best friends Chris and Adriane and her boyfriend Max work with the professor doing Latin translations.  Nora's job is to translate the letters of a girl from the late 1500s, Elizabeth, whose father may have cracked the Voynich manuscript.  Soon Nora begins to realize that Elizabeth is the key to it all.  But there are those who would stop at nothing to get this information, and they're ruthless.  Now Chris is dead, Max is missing and Adriane is catatonic.  With the help of mysterious Eli, Nora makes her way to Prague, where Elizabeth spent much of her life, and begins to put the pieces of the Lumen Dei together.  Literally.

It took a really long time to for this book to get where it was going, and it didn't have to.  I think I would have liked this a lot better if there had been less...I'm not even completely sure.  Just less.  This did not have to be a 352-page book.  Long before the end, I started skimming in places just to get through it.  I was interested in what was happening, and uncovering all the clues and who was going to betray who, but it just took so long for anything of consequence to happen.

Spoilers

Morning Glories Vol. 1 by Nick Spencer, Joe Eisma, and Rodin Esquejo

Morning Glory Academy is one of the most prestigious prep schools in the country. Only the intellectual elite are allowed into the hallowed halls. For the new students, this could be the start of an incredible future.

Casey is an outrageously smart girl, with a drive to outdo her peers and do what's right. Morning Glory is Ike's last chance after being kicked out of seven other schools, he is a privileged psychopath with no real desire to care for anyone else. Zoe always gets what she wants, especially if it's coming from a boy. Hunter is the boy next door, with a strong moral compass and a fatherly benevolence. Jade is a rather stereotypical emo, with a rather unhealthy crush on her teacher. Jun has an agenda and the abilities to carry them out, but no one else knows what they are. They think they're all special in some way, until they meet one another at Morning Glory Academy. As they try and survive orientation, they must question not only why they've been chosen for the school but also what the true agenda of the sadistic Miss Daramount is, and what else is inhabiting the school

I would like to state that I wasn't gung ho about this series when I picked it up. It sounded too violent and a bit cliche to hold anyone's attention. That's when I read the first ten pages and got bitch-slapped in the face and sucker-punched in the gut. This graphic novel is a fast-paced psychological thriller. Yes it's violent, and yes there's some romance, but it's also got more twists than the first season of Lost. I kept reading it and thinking, "What the what?" Well that's not really what I was thinking, but my parents read this so we'll keep it PG-13. Morning Glories never really lets you stop to ponder why something is, it is so crazy fast. It just leaves you with the absolute need to continue reading in the hope that something, anything, will be explained or some crumb of information will be handed to you. Instead Nick Spencer makes you work for it. You can't say once you've finished that you get anything in this literary universe, but you know that you crave a bit more. Fan-fricking-tastic.

Steady Beat by Rivkah

Leah is frustrated with being compared to her perfect older sister Sarai and under appreciated by her overworked mother. But when Leah finds a passionate love letter for Sarai signed "Love, Jessica" she is thrown in a mental whirlwind and feels the need to discover who Jessica is and what this means for her sister.

The mystery thickens when Leah is contacted by an anonymous caller saying that he can explain the love letters. Leah misses her chance to meet with him when she is a car accident, but meets a family that is very different from her own with a handsome young man that tries to help her. It seems that Leah's life is about to get even more interesting as she tries to come to terms with her sister's sexuality and her own.

This series was the winner of the Manga Academy's Create Your Own Manga competition back in 2005 and it's a YALSA recommended title. Eh. The themes are excellent, I like the idea of Leah trying to understand her sister's love life while she figures out her own but the whole side-plots of soccer, mystery caller, and Elijah's family seems unnecessary. It was all rather trite, I don't really understand why the whole mysterious caller thing is necessary to the plot line. I also didn't like the artwork. Let's be honest, I could not do better and I am not a professional art critic, but I thought that the artwork was a bit amateur and cliche.

I guess my response could be summed up as being: The themes should make it an awesome high YA manga, but the plot and artwork dumb it down.

I feel kind of bad for saying it, but there it is.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore, Kevin O'Neill, Ben Dimagmaliw and Bill Oakley

In 1898, Campion Bond has put together a team of misfits to save London from an evil Doctor. He sends out the beautiful and secretive Mina Murray and mercurial Captain Nemo to gather up Allan Quatermain the legendary opiate-addicted hunter, the psychopathic invisible Hawley Griffin, and the nervous and monstrous Dr. Henry Jekyll/Mr. Edward Hyde. They create the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. As they try and learn to cope with one another they must also try and understand what the true motivation of Bond and their mysterious benefactor M is.

I really enjoyed this book. An interesting premise, gathering notorious literary characters and putting their abilities together, followed up with the equally intriguing idea of putting them in famous plot lines (volume two takes place during War of the Worlds). I found the artwork to be quite beautiful and the attention to details lovely.


Enough of the accolades. While overall an awesome book there are some issues, I had a hard time with how they dealt with women. I don't have an issue with Mina Murray being the only leading woman, but she's constantly being attacked and cannot save herself. Isn't she supposed to have some special abilities? Why can't she defend herself? All other victims are either men who are violently killed or women that are sexually assaulted or killed. Doesn't seem quite right, does it?

Anyway, I liked the book, will read the rest of the series, will try and cope with the underlying misogyny.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Yeah, I know I'm seriously behind the times.  A few years ago when the entire world was reading this book, people kept asking me if I'd read it yet and what I'd thought and I'd say, "Yeah, it's on my to-read list."  However, my to-read list is about a million books long, and I just wasn't that interested.  It seemed to be one of those love-it-or-hate-it books.  Either people said it was the most amazing thing they'd ever read, or people were totally unimpressed, didn't know what the big deal was and discussed how it was clearly written by a middle-aged man, as no one else could write a book where female characters of various age kept jumping into bed with a middle-aged man.

I finally decided to read it because of the American version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is coming out and I saw the preview and it looked kind of awesome. And since I feel strongly about reading the book before seeing a movie based on a book, it was, at last, time to read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  So I did.

In case you've been living under a rock, or work in a field where you primary read YA literature, it is the story of Mikael Blomkvist, a respected journalist who's just been find guilty of libel, which puts a crimp in his career.  Blomkvist is hired by Henrik Vanger, the head of an old and powerful Swedish family to ghost-write his autobiography, but the real reason Vanger hired Blomkvist is to solve a decades old murder of his grand-niece, Harriet, who vanished without a trace in 1963.  Blomkvist joins forces with Lisbeth Salandar, a researcher with a photographic memory and authority issues.

Here's the interesting thing about this book: almost half of it was set-up.  Things didn't actually start happening until more than halfway through the book.  The story is so incredibly detailed that over 200 hundred pages are spent giving us all the background we need in order for the action to really start.  While this was kind of annoying after a bit, I was interested and involved enough (and horrified enough) to want to see where things were going to go, so I carried on and was reward with one royally fucked up story.  Whoa.  Holy shit.  I was so, so, so, not prepared.  How is it that whenever people talked about this book no one ever said, "Oh, P.S., not for the faint of heart."  Or maybe, "Involves graphic violence against women."  Or even, "You may want to throw up at various points while reading this book."  Something.  Anything.  I'd like to have been warned is all.  Because holy shit.  Fucked.  Up.  So disturbing. 

So...yeah.  It was certainly an engaging story.  Lots of twists and turns and near escapes and horrible, horrible things happening to people.  I kept reading, even when I was absolutely horrified, so well done book.  I am now a lot more wary about seeing the movie.  I also don't feel the need to read any of the subsequent volumes.  Unless the movie's really good and then I'll have to, I guess.

In conclusion: graphic violence against women.  A lot of it.  Just be prepared.