1-800-WHERE-R-YOU Series Book #5: Missing You by Meg Cabot

I know I said in the last review of this series that Sanctuary was my favorite, but I think I changed my mind. I’ve only read Missing You once and even then it was in bits and pieces every time I went to the bookstore – back then my local library sucked with getting the new releases. So after eight years, I finally had the chance to read it again and OMG. This one was definitely my favorite.

It’s been two years since the events of Sanctuary and Jess is different. She finally caved into Dr. Krantz’s pleading and went to work for the government. The only problem is that she was actually in the war zones and saw things that a 17/18 year old shouldn’t see. She comes back with nightmares, her powers gone, and according to Rob – broken. Speaking of one of my favorite male characters, Rob and Jess have broken up thanks to a misunderstanding that she saw when she came back from the war. She hasn’t seen him since…until he shows up at her apartment door in New York.

Turns out his sister – half-sister: same father different mom – is missing and even though he’s heard that Jess doesn’t have her powers anymore he’s hoping that she’ll at least try to help. Shockingly, the next day, she knows exactly where his sister is only she’s not missing. She ran away to be with her older – he’s 27 and she’s 15 – boyfriend. Who also turns out to be the son of one of the new major developers in the community. Yikes.

Like I said, this book was amazing. I love Jess’s non-violent attitude and her interactions with Rob are just a complete hoot. You finally get to see what happened after Jess introduced Rob to her folks as her boyfriend – mom gave a speech about statutory rape that made him run – and why Rob was put on probation – I would crack up about it, but considering when he told her I was still in shock. You also get to see Jess and her mom have that blowout that I’ve been dying for since book 1. I’m sorry, but moms in YA books just drive me completely bonkers. The only thing I would have wished is that you got to see Rob on his bike more. I was really disappointed that he traded up for a truck.

Final Rating: 5 out of 5 stars. Great conclusion to an awesome series.

Bookshelf worthy? Seriously, I need more bookshelves.

The Here and Now by Ann Brashares

I’m going to come out and say this before I start this review: I love Ann Brashares’ writing. I loved The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series and I loved The Last Summer (of You and Me). She lost me a little on her other time travel/past lives novel My Name is Memory, so I was sort of skeptical about this book, but like with a lot of books, I gave it one hundred pages before making my final decision.

The crazy thing is? I was so deep into this book that I didn’t even notice when the one hundred pages passed.

This story is about a girl named Prenna who is an immigrant, but she isn’t from another country. She’s from another time. In this time, the world has been savaged by plague. Prenna and the others’ mission is to save the world from this plague, but they have twelve rules that they have to abide by while completing the mission. The one rule that Prenna is having a problem with has to deal with getting involved with someone from this time. There’s a boy – Ethan – who has been her friend/whatever for a while now and she feels like he knows her better than anyone else does.

But when a homeless man tells her that her people aren’t doing anything to change the future and that an event is coming up that will doom them all if it’s not stopped, she starts to question everything that she’s come to know in the last four years. She fights her own people and goes off with Ethan to try and save the world.

This book was ridiculously fast paced. Seriously, like I said above, I was really surprised at how fast one hundred pages went. The Here and Now gives the reader no time to breathe as it goes from one event to the next. Like the homeless man that alerts Prenna to what her people are really up to with the glasses and the medicine? He dies, but after he dies it’s revealed that he’s Prenna’s father. Wait. What? Yeah, that’s what I thought! I really had to go back and read that scene twice and yet I still didn’t catch it.

Prenna’s relationship with Ethan is hot, it’s kind of awesome that he’s been imagining being with her for the last four years. I was just disappointed that after everything they went through, they can’t actually be together because of the threat of the plague. I felt that it was a big let down.

Final Rating: 4 out of 5 stars. Still didn’t really care for the time travel aspect of this book – I still can’t get my head around the logistics of it. Still this book was much better than My Name is Memory.

Bookshelf worthy? Electronic or support your public library!

The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler

In preparation for reading this book, I read all six novels by Jane Austen so that way I knew what these ladies were talking about during the book. Turns out? I didn’t really need to.

The Jane Austen Book Club is barely about the book club, it’s more about the members of the book club. A good 75% of the 288 pages (actually 260 since my digital copy included the readers guide) were mostly the member’s back-story and what caused them to be who they are. Shockingly, the movie was actually better than the book.

Final Rating: 2 out of 5 stars. It would have been nice to see the characters actually talk about the books that they were reading more. I mean, even the chapter where they are supposed to talk about Pride & Prejudice is basically just about the library benefit. They don’t discuss the book AT ALL.

Bookshelf worthy? No, save yourself and go read something else. Like, the six novels by Jane Austen.

Artemis Fowl Series Book #7: The Atlantis Complex by Eoin Colfer

So just in case time travel, demons, Opal clones, and Mrs. Fowl finding out everything her dear son has been up to for the last six years wasn’t enough, Eoin Colfer throws a new curve ball for the readers. Artemis Fowl, the criminal mastermind at fifteen years old, has finally gone mad. He has OCD, multiple personality disorder, and numerous other psychoses that all add up to the rare fairy disease – The Atlantis Complex.

This shouldn’t be too much of a problem, because as he’s presenting his new idea to save the world to his friends – Foaly and Holly – they realize what’s going on with him and are going to try to fix him. The only problem? There’s another plan going on that Artemis and the gang get caught up in, and his Atlantis Complex has to take a back seat as they try a figure out who is behind this plot and what the endgame ultimately is.

It’s not Opal like they all think – thankfully, there’s only so many times you can use that particular villain without it getting boring. This time around the villain is a familiar face, in fact he worked with Opal in book 2 during the goblin uprising. Yeah, that’s right, the villain in this book is Turnball Root – Julius Root’s brother. This guy…I wanted to like him, because he was trying to get out of jail for a good cause, to return to his wife who is desperately in love. He ruins it though when it’s revealed that Turnball used a compulsion rune to make her love him. That’s just so wrong.

This book was good – just not as good as the last two have been. I’ll admit the Atlantis Complex for Artemis was quite comical, especially when he gets shocked by Holly and his other personality Orion comes out. I wish there would have been more Orion, he was the romantic that Artemis never seems to be.

Final Rating: 4 out of 5 stars. The comedy was still present in this book. The characters were fantastic – especially Juliet’s memory of the People coming back. The only thing I didn’t like was how easy the characters seemed to make it out of their sticky situations. How many more times can we get out of this unscathed? A good question indeed.

Bookshelf worthy? Electronic or support your public library!

Entwined by Heather Dixon

So a few years ago, the big thing was vampires and werewolves. Then came zombies. Now, the big thing seems to be the retelling of fairy tales. Entwined is the retelling of ‘The 12 Dancing Princesses.’ I’ll be honest that I never read that fairy tale when I was a kid.

So in this book you have eleven princesses, all sisters and named after flowers alphabetically. The twelfth princess is born within the first chapter, but takes their mother – the queen – away. They immediately enter a period of mourning that is supposed to last a year. But the princesses have a love for dancing and they can’t seem to quit. So when they find a magical passageway in their room that leads to a ballroom where they can dance with no judgment from their father, it seems to be fate.

But it’s not. It turns out that the guardian of this magical dance floor – Mr. Keeper – has a task for the girls to complete in exchange for using his ballroom. He is in the ballroom because of a spell, and he needs them to find the magical object that is binding him there.

This book was okay. It had a really slow start, and sometimes the different princesses’ personalities drove me a little bit nuts. I mean, they’re trying to entertain all these gentlemen, but instead they chase them away with their practical jokes. And I agreed with Mr. Keeper near the end when they called them ‘too trusting.’ I mean, c’mon! There’s a magical ballroom in a secret passageway in your room, and you just start dancing right away? You don’t even question what it’s doing there? Or who the hell this Mr. Keeper is? I’ll give points to Azalea for being wary of him from the start…but GAH! Her search for the magical object drove me insane.

Azalea: Maybe it’s the sugar teeth?

Me: It’s the handkerchief!

Azalea: It’s not the sugar teeth. Maybe it’s the sword?

Me: It’s the handkerchief!

Azalea: It’s not the sword. Oh, my sister’s went to the ballroom. I have to go after them! …Oh, is that mother? Mother, I’ll place the handkerchief on the your face. Oh, dear why is it melting your face?

Me: Because that’s not your mother, and holy crap! It’s the HANDKERCHIEF!

Oy.

Final Rating: 3 out of 5 stars. I liked the way Azalea, Mr. Branford, and the King developed over the course of the book. But I’m still curious as to what exactly happened with the King’s bullet wound that was supposed to kill him, but didn’t.

Bookshelf worthy? If you love retellings about fairy tales, then yes. Otherwise rent it from your library!

Morganville Vampires Series Book #14: Fall of Night by Rachel Caine

At the end of the last book, Claire told Amelie that she was finally taking her up on her offer to leave for MIT and that she wanted her to allow Shane to leave too if he wanted. When this book starts, Claire is actually doing it. She’s leaving Morganville in the pre-dawn to go and achieve her dream.

But Shane isn’t going with her. Claire hasn’t 100% forgiven him yet for believing that she would cheat on him with Michael, and she really wants to try and do this on her own. She wants to make sure that their relationship can survive them being apart.

The best laid plans… Shane follows Claire to Boston, and watches her just to make sure that she will be all right. The crazy thing is, Shane isn’t the only stalker that Claire has to deal with. Her roommate – and BFF from high school – Elizabeth’s ex-boyfriend Derrick has been stalking her for ages. And that’s just the start of the craziness outside of Morganville.

Claire’s independent study professor – Irene Anderson – is a former resident of Morganville and Myrinn’s former assistant too. She helps Claire with her project – the device she was working on in the last book that can, in theory, take a vampire emotion and neutralize it. A weapon like that could be dangerous, and as the book goes on it does.

Turns out Irene is one of those anti-vampire residents of Morganville. In fact, she was the reason that the vampires didn’t find a cure for their disease quicker. But she isn’t alone. Some organization, called The Daylight Foundation, has been helping her with her research.

This is another book that drove me absolutely crazy at the end. It was a great book – Claire outside of Morganville, trying to fit in, hating her roommate, missing Shane – but then it turned into a total WTF moment. What exactly is the Daylight Foundation? No answer is really given and just when you think that it won’t matter, Claire and the gang go back to Morganville and don’t exactly get welcomed back with open arms.

Final Rating: 4 out of 5 stars. The plot was good. I just wished that Claire could have been in Boston without so much drama for a little longer. And what the hell is the Daylight Foundation???

Bookshelf worthy? Electronic or support your local library!

Morganville Vampires Series Book #13: Bitter Blood by Rachel Caine

The draug are gone and Morganville is on it’s way back to becoming what it once was. But not in a good way. Now that Amelie has no enemies left, she believes she is top of the food chain and she reintegrates the old rule of Morganville.

Vampires get free reign and one free hunt every year.

Things have changed and Claire and the Glass House gang are trying to keep the humans from declaring all out war. But it’s getting hard especially when the humans start coming after them.

So, this book drove me absolutely nuts. I mean, seriously. You would think that Amelie would realize that it was because of the humans that she was able to survive the attack of the draug. You would also think that the human residents of Morganville would rally around Eve and Michael because Michael used to be one of them, and he hasn’t really changed all that much – except for the whole vampire thing. But he isn’t like the other vamps.

Then the whole Naomi thing was just so frustrating. I mean, you would think that considering these vampires know what she is capable of and that she is from Amelie’s bloodline that she would try to make a play for the throne. Especially because she already tried when the draug were attacking in the last book. That’s why Oliver made an attempt to kill her…but didn’t succeed. It turns out, the reason that Amelie is going back to the old ways of Morganville is because Oliver – who is being controlled by Naomi – has been whispering in her ear.

The sickest thing is that Oliver isn’t the only one who was being controlled. Hannah gets controlled, and Michael too when he goes out to find Captain Obvious. I literally threw the book across the room when Naomi took control of Michael and told him to break up with Eve. And the way he made Eve – who was in the hospital – believe that things were over between them… GAH. I seriously sat in shock for a few minutes.

Final Rating: 5 out of 5 stars. I loved the plot. I loved being disgusted with characters and their actions. I loved Claire’s ‘don’t mess with me’ attitude after everything settled. The only thing that made me nervous about the ending was the fact that she hadn’t quite forgiven Shane for his actions during the whole Michael under Naomi’s control thing.

Bookshelf worthy? Electronic or support your local library!