Review: Dare You To by Katie McGarry

I got the ARC of this novel from the publisher via Netgalley free of charge – thank you very much! Of course that fact didn’t influence my review in any way.

Synopsis:

Beth Risk is…a risky girl. Small wonder – she lives with a mother addicted to drugs who constantly chooses bad guys and never hesitates to bring them home. The acquaintance with Beth means only one thing: shame and troubles. The girl herself seems to follow the steps of her only parent - she has already slept with different guys who dumped her in no time. She drinks  and smokes pot. What’s more, Beth feels responsible for her mom and sometimes intervenes when a particularly nasty boyfriend  hurts her. She seems unaware that it should be completely the other way round – mothers are here to protect their kids. Dysfunctional doesn’t even starts to cover their relationship.

One night Ryan Stone tries to pick Beth up in a Taco Bell joint. It was a dare between him and his buddies – chat that strange chick up, although she has ‘mean’ written all over her face, and make her give you her name and phone number. Ryan loses and he hates losing so he decides to try and try again – especially when Beth moves to his home town and happens to be related to one of local baseball heroes, Scott Risk.

Ryan is a high school baseball star – an excellent player, a boy from a good family every father would like to greet as his daughter’s boyfriend. When he falls for Beth, though, he meets a wall of distrust and worry. Will he be able to overcome it? Will Beth allow him to do so?

What I liked:

I am very happy to inform you that, in my humble opinion the second part was better than Pushing the Limits. Firstly I liked its heroine, Beth, far more than Echo - she was more edgy, more conflicted and dark. Secondly I liked the pacing – especially the fact that the romance between Beth and Ryan developed slowly and we were given the opportunity to know them before they actually hooked up.

I also liked how the feelings between Beth and Ryan influenced their lives – especially Ryan’s family life, not so perfect as it seemed at the very beginning.

What I didn’t like:

Firstly I might repeat my main grievance from the previous book: the chapters narrated by Ryan sometimes read as narrated by a girl. Not by Beth, fortunately, but by a girl nevertheless. They were better than Noah’s chapters from the previous part but still not persuasive enough.

The author kept Beth’s silent admirer and companion, Isaiah, from the first book and created something almost like a love triangle. Keeping him was fine, love triangle – not so much. That ‘almost’ word saved the novel but honestly, how many times a girl must say ‘I love you like a FRIEND’ so the boy gets the message? Especially that from the sneak peek included at the end of the ARC I know Isaiah is going to have a book on his own and he is going to fall in love with a different girl. How it is supposed to work? No idea.

Some fragments of the novel felt a bit overlong – I admit I did skim over such scenes as girls’ bonding and adjusting to new school or arguing with friends over some trust issues or baseball-speak of Ryan.

I mentioned earlier that I liked Beth…yes I did, most of the time. Still there were moments when she felt too clean and almost too innocent for such an experienced character.

Final verdict:

A nice YA romance (sic!) which I requested on a whim and started reading without expecting anything good at all. It proved to be quite decently written, with interesting characterization and characters which made sense. I hope the third part will be even better although I am not a big Isaiah fan.

Review: Pusing the Limits by Katie McGarry

Thank you, my fair Rameau, for lending me this one! You rock!

Book info:
Form: pdf e-book
Genre: YA romance (or New Adult but really I am yet to spot the difference)
Target audience: older YA.

Synopsis:

The last year of high school, somewhere in America. A girl meets a boy. She is called Echo, he is called Noah. Both have serious family issues but of different kind. He falls for her because she smells like cinnamon rolls. She falls for him because he is a very handsome, bad-boy stoner with...er... issues.  And a six-pack stomach. The crazy attraction between them refuses to go away although their friends are not impressed. Will they stay together? SPOILER: You bet

My impressions:

I rarely read YA novels nowadays. Why? The moment I start them the plot seems so strangely familiar, too familiar to be honest - after a page or two I am pretty sure I've read it before. Like one hundred times before. It holds no appeal as there are no real surprises or twists I wouldn't have predicted. Not nice or even downright boring. Pushing the Limits wasn't an exception to the rule.

Echo, is a high school student who went from a popular girl with a jock boyfriend to a gossiped-about outsider with "freaky" scars on her arms during one month. Noah is a boy who has lost his parents in a fire and cannot visit his younger brothers so he is revolting against the school rules and any rules at all. Both are attracted to each other because they are in fact very similar in their rejection of ugly reality. You don't have to be a genius to assume they will be an item at one point "against all odds" - especially that she is a very attractive girl and he is a very handsome young man. The main problem is not "what happen" but "how" and "when".

And here I wasn't impressed - the execution simply didn't work for me. It felt too overwrought, too obvious, too overwhelmingly angsty and dramatic to make me really engaged with the story. Almost spurious. While I was able to feel for both Echo and Noah occasionally, I didn't really connect with them.

The book is narrated by both of the main characters. First annoying feature: Noah’s and Echo’s voices were quite similar, very surprisingly so. The only thing really differentiating them: Noah’s dialogue was peppered with profanities. Well, perhaps it's just me but personally I found Noah's chapters also the silliest of all. He thought like a girl - I mean no teenage boy would speak/think like that. His repeated use of expressions like “siren”, "angel", “nymph” and “seductress” produced more snort-laughs than swoons from me and the constant reminder of how Echo smelled (cinnamon rolls) made me only annoyingly hungry (where's the nearest bakery, pronto?) but honestly, do tell me, do you know any REAL GIRL who smells like that without using any kind of perfume?

There are also many kinds of cliche secondary characters which have been featured in EVERY SINGLE ONE high school YA novel I've read so far: a douche bag hunky boyfriend (Luke), a false female friend who is also a bit of a meanie (Grace), a bunch of evil gossipers, Noah's 'bad company' consisting of heavily tattooed, marijuana-smoking misfits who still have a single savin g grace or two...I wasn't able to find even one inch of originality here.

Final verdict:

A decent story; still an instantly forgettable one. It was short and relatively readable but also nothing that can persuade me to read YA novels more often.

Review: Enshadowed (Nevermore 02) by Kelly Creagh

Book info:

Form: pdf file
Genre Poe-related fantasy romance
Target audience: YA

Synopsis:

It is the sequel of Nevermore, reviewed by me not so long ago. If you haven’t read the first part and you are spoiler-sensitive, please omit this section.

Isobel returned home from ‘Poeland’ and had to destroy Varen’s notebook in order to break the link between that place and her reality. However she was tricked by Reynolds to believe Varen returned as well when in fact he got stuck there as a slave of Lilith, an ancient demoness. Now Isobel wants to do everything in her power to find her way back and help Varen return. Still, is she really up to the task?

Juggling cheerleader duties, the final year of her high school and her family, more and more worried, Isobel finds it hard to have one calm day or night. She is tortured by visions of Varen, she still meets Pinfeathers, one of the dreadful Nocs from Poeland, and her former boyfriend, Brad, is now just a life-weary cripple. A trip to a Baltimore’s cemetery where Poe was buried, seems to be her only chance. There, in the early morning hours of Poe's birthday, a mysterious stranger known only as the "Poe Toaster" will make his annual homage at the legendary poet's grave. Only the Poe Toaster holds the key to the way between worlds. Will she make it on time? Will she know how to fight the demonic Lilith? Will Varen be the same person she fell in love with?

What I liked:

You know the curse of the sequels? It is very difficult to write the second part of a series as good as the first one. Ms Creagh took a risk and wrote it differently. I admit it was brave of her.

The Poe-themed world building was still one of the highlights here, along with the further information about Lilith, provided by Isobel's best friend, Gwen. I also enjoyed a truly original take on the Nocs, demonic ghouls which can disperse into a mist but are quite fragile otherwise. The narrative reveals  many wonderful details about Varen and his dream world. And I was perfectly happy with the fact that Isobel’s family was still there, trying to understand and help her as much as they could and/or were allowed by Isobel herself.

What I didn’t like:

Unfortunately I must say a book almost without Varen was 100% worse than the first novel with him playing an active part. Also the fact that the story is still narrated by Isobel herself started to grate on my nerves as that girl too often had nothing interesting to say. Small wonder – you see, she doesn’t like reading.

And here I hit my main grievance: Isobel. Or rather her attitude towards life, Varen, her family, books and finding info therein. Overall her attitude, full stop.

Ok, she is depressed, she can’t confide in anybody apart from Gwen and even Gwen is not to be trusted with everything. However let me ask a simple question: why? Would it be such a big mistake to tell your family what you feel and why? Would it hurt to mention some alternate reality and the fact that your boyfriend might be imprisoned and tortured there? By the way Isobel’s obstinacy to see that her beloved might be at least partially guilty of anything was surprising. Let’s face it,  Varen failed to connect appropriately with humanity at large and hence  he actively sought the understanding companionship of a soul-sucking demoness, go figure! The problem here is not that he's being made to face the consequences of his actions, but rather that Isobel seems utterly blind to his being at fault at all. She wants to stop Lilith from ever hurting anyone ever again, but what if they, like Varen, want her to be summoned? What then!?

Now a bit about reading. Imagine that your boyfriend is imprisoned in a kind of alternate universe which is somehow connected to the works of a particular author. You love your boyfriend dearly and you would do anything to set him free; wouldn’t reading a bio of that author along with the majority (if not all) of his collected works be your absolute priority? Meanwhile Isobel never takes a book into her hand. Most of important information she gets because a) she was told b) somebody has read it to her (often Gwen) c) she overheard it, accidentally or not d) she dreamt about it. Really, is reading so difficult to swallow?

My last carping and a warning: this novel ends with a big cliffie: (a spoiler, highlight to read or skip) Isobel wakes up in an ICU and she observes her own failed resuscitation. Still the reader, like her, is not sure whether she really dies. Varen seems to be responsible for her fatal injuries – he was acting under Lilith’s compulsion. I hate clffies.

Final verdict:

I am a bit torn: on the one hand I would like to know how this story ends and whether there has been a method in this madness. On the other hand I’m afraid the third book might be a waste of time because nothing, literally NOT ONE SINGLE THING prepared Iso to deal with Lilith and her realm, the biggest obstacle being Isobel herself. I am not sure the author can come up with a trick good enough to sound believable or real.

"A word to the wise… cover your mirrors. 
That’s how they find you."

Review: Nevermore by Kelly Creagh

Book info:
Form: pdf file, e-book
Genre: Poe-inspired fantasy/romance
Target audience: YA

Synopsis: 


What can a blonde cheerleader extraordinaire and a Goth oddball wearing eyeliner have in common? They attend the same school and they’ve just paired for an English literature project by a mean professor. Neither Isobel Lanley nor Varen Nethers are exactly thrilled – he perceives her as a pink Barbie doll without brains, she thinks he drinks blood and sleeps in a coffin just to shock people and prove he can. Still both of them need a good grade and so they decide to work on that project and it starts their big adventure with Edgar Alan Poe and the world of dark fantasy resembling a bit the court of Unseelie, dark faeries from Irish mythology of the Daoine Sidhe.

Yes, they fall in love in-between – Isobel finds herself making excuses and lying just to be with Varen a little bit longer (unfortunately we don’t know what Varen thinks because the novel is narrated from Isobel’s POV). Steadily pulled away from her old circle of friends and a possessive football player of a boyfriend she ventures deeper and deeper into the dream world, seeing and talking to strange creature nobody can see or hear. She meets a man called Reynolds but is he real? Why does he look as if he jumped straight from another era? Will he help her to explore the mystery around Varen and his black notebook he carries whenever he goes?

What I liked:

Firstly let me say that the blurb didn’t make me warm up to this novel. Nevermore had the potential to be incredible, but also incredibly bad. First of all it is the first part of another YA series grrrr. Unfinished series to add (double grrrr but don’t let your dog hear you). Secondly a cheerleader girl is more often than not somebody I wouldn’t like to meet or read about – for plethora of reasons. Yes, plethora – one of these words your ordinary cheerleader from different YA stories would  confuse with a fancy, old musical instrument from France.  Still I, like most people in their right mind, love and appreciate poems and stories of Edgar Allan Poe and I have been informed that the male hero is a Goth kid who loves Poe to no end. What’s more I’ve been assured by my dear Heidenking in her great review that this book doesn’t feature any vampires, werewolves or angels, fallen or otherwise,  so I decided to give this one a chance.

Cover of Edgar Allan Poe
yeah, chicks dig moustache

I have to admit I didn’t expect to be caught in the story as much as I did. I ended up reading the book in two sittings without noticing the passing hours. Why? Oh it is such a page-turner for YA and adult readers because the author cleverly and skillfully weaves many known facts about Poe’s life and mysterious death into the plot. She relates Poe’s works with the mysteries of a haunted ‘dreamland’ similar to the domain of elves from Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Suzanna Clarke (if you read and liked the magical aspect of that one you will enjoy Nevermore as well – different epoch, similar athmosphere) AND then she adds a well-know high school plot to it.

I’d also add the character setting to the number of advantages. Isobel is at first just your ordinary empty-headed cheerleader but then she shows her mettle confronting all the stereotypes and tropes – she starts reading Poe (ok, skimming more like, not being an avid reader and Poe not being a very easy author to read), she dares dump her boyfriend, she almost turns her entire life inside out just to find out more about Varen. 

I loved especially one short, funny scene when Isobel, visiting Varen’s house and looking at his childhood photo, discovers something truly shocking about him:

“You're really a blond," she said, her tone just short of accusatory.

"And if you tell anyone, I will come to you in the night and smote your everlasting soul.” 

As her world begins to unravel around her, Isobel discovers that dreams, like words, hold more power than she ever imagined, and that the most frightening realities are those of the mind. Now she must find a way to reach Varen before he is consumed by the shadows of his own nightmares – a very ambitious task for a cheerleader or a teenage girl I suppose.

The best part is that neither Isobel nor Varen are perfect creatures, both are textured and layered. Ms. Creagh takes her time building these characters, starting with initial mutual dislike, and slowly peeling back the layers of their personalities. Varen is a classic young Severus Snape (a character from Harry Potter series) – a gifted boy, alienated at school and with an abusive parent to boot. He is also much more: he works in an ice-ream parlour, (yeah, actually selling ice-cream; can you imagine Snape doing that?) he dyes his hair and drives along in a vintage Jaguar (very cool!). Still, compared to intrepid Isobel, he seems too preoccupied with his reading, writing and Goth persona to be a truly active character; finally he falls into a not very manly category of damsel in distress (but I told you the author is playing with tropes and stereotypes, right?)

 What I didn’t like:

 Even though I'd looked forward to Isobel's exploration through the Poeland (I really couldn't restrain myself, 'Poeland' is so...right), but it turns out the progress of Isobel's learning more about Poe  is a rather rushy one, Isobel's own opinion on neither the author nor his works, is largely missing. We only got to see her read through The Masque of the Red Death then commented on it and there's no more mention of her opinion on Poe's works. I understand that she is not a reading type but I suppose if your fate and the fate of your beloved depends on information from books you should be far more committed to reading and finding stuff; still dear Isobel always acts as if she expected somebody to explain her everything (a fairy theory for dummies on Youtube,  not longer than 3 minutes, would definitely fit her better) and when nobody wants to do it she sulks. As a result she lands in that alternate reality, chased by ghouls and nocs (a kind of demons), completely unprepared and the fact that she actually manages to pull through comes as a major miracle.

Let me also carp about the role of adults. Unfortunately here the author decided to stick to the well-known patters. Although parents exist in this one, they are either too busy or completely out of touch with their kids and the reality for different reasons. As a result when the main lead has a problem she can talk to a friend or to her reflection in the mirror. I wish I read a book which author dared change that, showing a parent who not only cares but also knows how to show it and can actually impress their progeny with his/her knowledge.

My wishes for next parts.

I found Varen too vague a character to dominate the book (and I wish he DID dominate), there are so many things about him we don't know, e.g. his family's background, the reason why he had such a bad relationship with his dad, how he discovered Poe and became the way he was now, how he found a job in that bookstore and ice-cream parlour etc. After finishing Nevermore I'd very much love to learn more about him. Also some questions about Poeland simply beg for a creative answer – e.g why some people get trapped there and some can return to the land of living?

Final verdict:

Kelly Creagh's Nevermore is a very ambitious and interesting Young Adult novel which manages to bring  mystery and dark fantasy to life. Overall it is a worthy read not only for teen Poe's and/or Goth's fans. I'm looking forward to the sequel although, being spoiled and all, I know it is not as good as the first part. Maybe the third book will straighten things up nicely? I am definitely willing to give the author the benefit of the doubt.

Also check out the fantastic review wrote by Heidenkind.

A good idea for an alternative cover version

Review: The Girl in the Steel Corset by Kady Cross (Steampunk Chronicles #01)

Book info:
Form: pdf file
Genre: steampunk-flavoured romance/adventure
Target audience: YA

Synopsis:

1897, Victorian England.16-year-old Finley Jayne is convinced she’s a freak. No normal girl has a darker side that makes her capable of knocking out a full-grown man or throwing him across the room. Is that monster inside her an ally or her biggest enemy? How has she ended up like that?  Who knows. One thing is true – it is the only option left to Finley. Only Griffin King, a young peer of the realm, sees the magical darkness inside her as something good, something that means she’s special . . . that she’s one of “them”, a gang of freaks of nature or maybe people who’s just got to another evolution stage. Still difference is not always a good, acceptable thing especially when somebody equally gifted tries to use it to take over the whole country and maybe even the whole world.

What I liked:

It started like a YA novel full of great ideas, taken from different books. As Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by R.L. Stevenson are two of them (I read and liked them both) I decided to give it a try. Finley also seemed like a heroine with some spine – unfortunately she had to crash into Griffin King too soon and then her potential was somehow diminishing with every page. I was on board with the whole Jekyll/Hyde dichotomy and the battle for good and evil going on inside of her but it ended in no time.

Also the cover is very nice.

What I didn’t like:

My first carping is that, in my humble opinion, the author couldn’t decide how steampunky this novel should be. Ok, there are automatons, bionic people and other fantastic aether devices but they never get into the spotlight, not truly – that’s why I wouldn’t call this book ‘steampunk’, it just comes with a steampunk flavour. In real steampunk novels the love is always in the details– it’s not just about shoving in some wheels, engines and corsets, you have to create the entire world in all its depth and intricacies. Here random devices make appearances for no apparent reason as if the author was afraid she can bore her female readers with too many technical elements. Well, if you write about  kick-ass heroines and their female side-kicks who are also technical whizzes you surely must be aware such types exist in real life as well. So who is your real audience?

What’s more the scientific aspect hasn’t been researched well or rather it was mixed with the ordinary religious beliefs: correct me if I am mistaken but either there is a ‘spirit world’ with the souls of the departed (so human beings have a soul and there is God, Heaven, Hell etc) or there are just those particles of life, the Organites, found in the core of the Earth by Griffin’s father, which make it possible to cure all illnesses, enhance your natural talents and even resurrect freshly deceased if only applied in copious amounts by somebody skilled (so no soul is needed, right? No soul = no creator, just evolution). Either or. Meanwhile Ms Cross tries to sell us on both. Which is not exactly the best idea from my point of view.

My second remark: the plot and the narration style. The book was very predicable and a bit boring. The first crime the author committed is too much telling instead of showing. The next - a bland bunch of characters. A baddie starts as a big, strong, bogeyman and ends up a broken creature, almost hopelessly weak without any mechanical help. Finley’s little problem also is resolved with childish ease (I did expect it go far worse and somehow it didn’t); her dual nature seemed nothing else but a device which had to justify the fact she had two boyfriends. By the way if you have to have a duke in the book please, do your research, and call him something nice and probable, not Griffin King. ‘King’ sounds spurious even to teenage American readers and believe it or not, some of them know European history and peerage pretty well. I know, it might come as a surprise but still…

And here we hit my third major complaint: two love triangles would be bad enough in any YA book but here, additionally one element of the main triangle (Griffin-Finley-Jack), Jack Dandy was simply misconstrued. He was supposed to be that epitome of bad boy: dark, lean, handsome, ruthless, criminally-inclined, street-wise, mysterious, irresistible. Instead he was a sissy who danced around Finley like a well-trained circus poodle and never even dared to kiss her. We also weren’t told anything about his nefarious exploits which seemed a bit strange to me as well – such a big criminal mastermind and not even one juicy burglary? No fisticuffs? He seemed to exist just to mangle Queen’s English, buy Finley that gorgeous fancy dress and provide useful info to Griffin. Booooring.

Finally, imagine it or not, one of the major criminal mysteries (the identity of the killer of Felix, the rakish son of the employer of Finley, beaten to a pulp by her at the beginning because of a rape attempt) is left unresolved and even forgotten. No character mentions it, nobody wonders what happened to that obnoxious type and it seemed so important to all of them at first...

Final verdict:

I know it’s the first in a planned trilogy but on its own, “The Girl in the Steel Corset” felt like a novel half-done. I admit the ideas were great but it is also another example of a book which significant potential was sadly squandered. It was not the YA Steampunk entertainment I was hoping for and it made me definitely unwilling to continue the series.