Book Review: Son

I don't know what I can say about Lois Lowry, about the book Son, the conclusion to her Giver series, or about all four books in general that haven't already been said by people way more articulate than I. But I'll start with this, I love them. And I love Lois Lowry with the kind of love that I usually reserve for highly revered members of my family. But like family members I love, she can sometimes do things that fluster and frustrate me.

The Giver movie adaptation was one of those things. I have not seen The Giver yet, but the trailer was enough to put me off the enterprise. I just got the feeling that the heart of the whole book was missing. My feeling has always been that in order to bring the book to the screen, the format should be much shorter/sparser like the book was, but that's neither here nor there. While I applaud the effort, I feel like there were several missteps there.

So I read Son with a lot of ambivalence still floating in my system. I wasn't sure if I could trust the journey. Well I'm happy to report that the journey I was taken on was an extremely great ride. I loved this book so much, probably because initially it revisited the world The Giver had taken place in at the very beginning. The way this book intertwined with The Giver and had been so effortlessly meshed with that first story was no easy feat but Lowry handled it with ease.

But this story, like those that came after The Giver is about showing all the fractures in the cultures that exist outside the seemingly Utopian society of The Giver. Where the book really got going is when the main character left that world. The main character, or at least the main character for the first two-thirds of the book is the mother of the baby that was introduced in the first book, Gabe, the baby with the swirling blue eyes.

The story starts with the birth of the child and the mother's grappling with the birth and her inability to keep the baby she gave birth to. At first she just tries to find ways to visit and be with the child but as the events of The Giver unfurl within her life, she finds it more and more difficult to be with the child.When the child is taken, the bottom falls out, both literally and figuratively. She seeks refuge on a boat she hopes will help her find her son but then it sinks and so does her memory of where she was before and of her son, but that was the one thing that wouldn't stay buried.  A tiny enclosed village takes her in where she starts reclaiming her memories and herself.

Where the story really gets going is when she makes the decision to seek out her son by climbing a treacherous cliff that has separated the village from the rest of the fractured societies existing in the world. Those chapters filled me with a sense of wonder and dread and anticipation for what happened next.

The part of the book that lost me was the last third where most of narration and focus is on Gabe, her lost son. A big portion of the wind let out of the sails around that point mostly because it focused on a character who didn't know what we already knew and didn't grab and keep my attention as well as the first two sections had.

Also, *spoiler alert* the ending felt like a cheat or hurried or both. It was interesting that a character introduced in the third book would be brought back and was used in interesting ways, but the pay off didn't quite work because I don't think it was quite earned.

Also, and this just may be me talking, but can she please give me a map so I have a handy lay out for all these different societies that sprouted up after the apocalypse? There was Jonas's Seemingly Utopean society that the first book made me believe stretched over a huge stretch of land. Then there was Kira's society and a third society Jonas was the leader of that the third book focused on. In this book, I felt like two more had been added to that list, a land with seafaring people with whom Jonas's society did a bit of trade and commerce with and the other being the village that was cut off by both sea and cliff. I needed a reference for just how this land was laid out and how far spread apart or close everyone may have been.

But overall it's a great capper to the series that started with The Giver. Not my favorite in the series, not by a long shot but still worthy of your time and a read. It's a solid B.

Book Review: Shaken

I’ve been wracking my brain as to what to say about Susan Hatler’s Shaken: Book One in the Mind Reader Series. There’s so much I can say, want to say that it’s hard to know where to start. Let me start with the fact that it’s a perfect YA book. I’d also like to say that I love this book so much, I’m jealous I didn’t write it. It’s a fun thrill ride that I couldn’t put down and was so good that I had to run to Amazon to see what else in the series I could buy (nothing right now, as it turns out, which Boo! Dear Susan Hatler; Please write faster. If you ever show up to my Starbuck’s again to write a few chapters regarding this series, I’ll happily cheer you on and encourage you to write like the wind.).

Kylie Bates is a smart, driven 16 year-old who is great at school and horribly sarcastic and snarky with boys she likes. Her daily routine consists of journaling her dead mother, making sure her 4.0 GPA doesn’t dip and trying desperately to not be a spaz around her current crush. Until she finds out she can read minds. Things take a turn for the weird when she realizes she can see people’s thoughts by touching their hands. Things take a turn for the dangerous when her father asks her to use her new abilities to help find a missing girl. The very same people who kidnapped the girl may be the ones looking for her.

With the help of Trip, a determined 17 year-old from her school who wants to become a detective, they try to unravel the mystery of who took the girl and what they want and what the girl’s abduction has to do with her.

This book is a thrill ride that explores the tricky territory of telepathy, telekinesis and the even trickier territory of navigating high school, the crushes, the friendships, the family relationships, the classes.

Let me just say that not since, I dunno, Mr. Rochester have I had such a strong crush on a literary character. Trip is like Cliff Pantone mixed with Christian Slater’s character from Gleaming the Cube.  He’s layered and complex for a 17 year-old and determined in ways most love interests just aren’t. The sixteen year girl in me just completely fell for him. 

This is a really fun book and well worth a pick up. A+

Book Review: Gone with the Wolf

Okay, before I get started with this review proper, you need to know that I once met Kristin Miller and she was as generous and friendly as anyone I've ever met. She was at a coffee shop trying to type a few pages out on deadline and she still took five minutes to talk to me. I became a fan of the person before I even became a fan of the author.

The second thing you need to know is that this book fit every one of my pleasure centers from the get-go. It involved werewolves for chrissakes! That's all I needed to dive in whole-hog.

Based on all that, I'm not sure how unbiased I'm capable of being regarding this book, but I'll give it a try. The book centers on Emelia, a bar-owner and temp employee at Wilder Financial who wants some answers regarding the deed to her bar that ended up in the hands of the CEO of Wilder Financial, and Drake Wilder, the head of Wilder financial who is also a three-hundred-year-old alpha werewolf.

The two meet at the very beginning and sparks fly. Only for Drake the meeting means so much more. Emelia turns out to be Drake's luminary, the life-partner and soul mate he was destined to meet. It becomes extremely tricky, bringing her into his world. For one, she doesn't know that he is the CEO who has the fate of her bar the Knight Owl in his hands. And for another, Drake has a twin brother who wants to be Alpha hell-bent on Drake's destruction and Emelia is the chess piece he needs to win control.

Some of the plot lines feel a little worn here (I mean, I'm sorry, but an evil twin?) but the book makes it very clear that it's not really about the plot. It's about establishing the romantic chemistry between the two leads and let's be honest, it's about the sizzling sex scenes. To which I say, that's how it should be, because those pieces are top notch work. The way the two leads play off of each other, the different ways in which the fit and then bristle against each other is what really works.

It's a really quick read. I started reading it while I had a plane to catch and finished it the next day. For the record, I don't recommend reading this in a crowded place. I think I flushed red twice during my plane trip. This is definitely a read while you're at home, alone, with the doors locked kind of a book.

If you're looking  for a fun, quick romantic read, this should be right up your alley. B+. Good stuff.

Book Review: The Devil and Preston Black

My childhood home was pretty deceptive looking. On the outside it looked like a mobile home, but it had an addition built on to it, a massive den the size of the two bedrooms combined. This was everyone's sanctuary, with mom's sewing table in a corner, dad's massive pile of books in another and a card table that served as my arts and crafts table in later years but served as a gaming or puzzle table pretty much all the time.

At the far wall was the big built-in entertainment center, The TV sat high center, with all of the electronics on a shelf above it. On the shelf below the TV sat all the musical equipment, a reciever, a tape deck, in later years, a CD player and on top of all that, the record player. On either end were massive shelves filled to the brim with vinyl. I spent a good chunk listening to it, all of it. I had my favorites of course, guilty pleasures too, but I tried to take it all in. In the intervening years I'm still not sure I scratched the surface (Ha, see what I did there!) of the collection. But I loved all of it and am suddenly sad I didn't spend more time at the alter of the player. I probably would have had I not damaged the needle when I was eleven, which took my parents entirely too long to get fixed.

The Devil and Preston Black  is exactly what the title says it is. It's a book about Preston Black, a down-on-his-luck musician just trying to find his way and having to fight the devil to do it. It's about wayward rock idols, old music, ways of life on the verge of extinction and the character trying to figure out who he is when his entire history was a blank page. It's about music giving a life meaning when that life can't find the meaning on his own.

If Hellbender was my childhood diner, then  The Devil and Preston Black is the den of my childhood home, filled with scratched vinyl  and tuneful music both new and old. I haven't been this at home in a book in a long time, if you consider a place where the main character has very philosophical text conversations with Joe Strummer, argues with John Lennon and where Jerry Garcia's death bed felt quaint home, which I do.

But the book isn't just filled with musicians no longer with us, it's filled to the brim with music, so lively and fluid it came right off the page. I got into a twitter discussion with Jason Jack Miller where he mentioned that he was worried that the sections in which he described the music being played were too tedious, but to me they were some of the best parts because I was transported into the music. I haven't been able to read sheet music since around ninth grade and the talking about chord progressions wasn't something  I understood, but it's something I felt. I could feel how the music was taking place around him, how it progressed and shifted and was shaped while the characters were playing it.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I'm probably gonna run right out and by The Revelations of Preston Black just to be a completist (Sshhhh! Don't tell my husband). I'm giving this one an A+. It invoked my parents record collection for crying out loud. Any book that can do that gets an A+.