amongtheauthors

Uppercase vs. OwlCrate – A Review

Lately, I’ve been a little obsessed with subscription boxes. We’ve fallen in love with Blue Apron, our weekly meal subscription box that has pretty much eliminated the tedious trips to the grocery store for us, and that led me to look into what other kinds of subscriptions I could find. Loving YA Lit as much as I do, that was the first thing I searched for – and the list of available subscription boxes is pretty extensive. What I discovered though, was that there are two YA subscription services that tend to stand out among the rest. Those two are Uppercase and OwlCrate.

After spending several minutes researching, browsing pictures of the contents of past boxes, and reading a handful of reviews, I still couldn’t make up my mind which I would like better. So, I joined the waitlist for OwlCrate and signed up (no waitlist!) for my first Uppercase box. I didn’t last long on the OwlCrate waitlist though, three days later, a spot was open and I signed up – ready to test both November boxes.

Continue reading “Uppercase vs. OwlCrate – A Review”

Off the Shelf: A Review of Wolf by Wolf by Ryan Graudin

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“Once upon a different time, there was a girl who lived in a kingdom of death. Wolves howled up her arm. A whole pack of them – made of tattoo ink and pain, memory and loss. It was the only thing about her that ever stayed the same.
Her story begins on a train.”

I’d always considered myself not such a fan of alternate history. Something always made my stomach a bit nervous when people toyed with real people in a book just like they would a fictional character straight from their mind. That being said, Wolf by Wolf actually made me a fan of an alternate history story. There was just enough fantasy slipped in to ease my mind out of established history and into Graudin’s new world.

I received Wolf by Wolf as part of my very first subscription box with Uppercase. (I also am receiving my first Owlcrate this month as well, so keep checking the blog for a side by side comparison.) I’m so thrilled that it was picked for this month’s book because, otherwise, the thought of reading an alternate history might have lessened my chances of picking it up on my own… Then, I really would have missed out. It also came at just the right time – day four of being stuck in bed, sick, with nothing to do. I devoured this book in under six hours.

This story is set in 1956, in a world where the Axis Powers actually won WWII. Each year, to celebrate their victory, Hitler and Emperor Hirohito host the Axis Tour – a treacherous motorcycle race from Berlin (now Germania) to Tokyo – with the victor receiving a ball in their honor attended by both Hirohito and Hitler.

Yael is a survivor of the death camps, one who hides the numbers on her wrist with a fresh tattoo of five wolves, four for the memories of people she has lost and one as a reminder. As a small child, she was the subject of an experiment that granted her the ability to skinshift, transform her appearance into that of any other female. It is with this skill that she becomes the resistance’s best hope. Yael uses her ability to skinshift into the Axis Tour’s only female victor, Adele Wolfe, in order to win the race, dance with Hitler, and be the one who murders him on live television.

The story switches between Yael’s present day fight to succeed and her struggle-filled past that tells the story of each wolf permanently etched on her arm. Keeping up appearances gets complicated for Yael as she races alongside Adele’s twin brother and her former fling, Luka. No amount of research has prepared her to slip into these relationships without arousing some suspicion. She has to balance her lies with certain degrees of truth if she hopes to make it to the finish line first.

Things I enjoyed:

Yael – She’s strong, resilient, and a true heroine. The stories from her past are what truly shape this character and how she thinks, feels, and acts. It was very easy to get lost in her mind and race right alongside her.

It’s not a love story – Too often good stories with strong female leads get side tracked by a love interest. This one does not. It reminds me more of the first Hunger Games book in the sense that “yes, male character, you’re charming and all, but there’s quite a bit of death and destruction happening right now, and a relationship doesn’t really take priority over my mission”.

Graudin’s writing style: Simply beautiful wording and imagery. It makes me want to scrap all of my current projects and start over, in hopes that one day I will be able to write with that level of showing-not-telling skill.

Things I didn’t enjoy:

There wasn’t anything I outright didn’t like about this book. It was well paced and interesting. I even enjoyed the alternate history, something I was originally wary of. I suppose if I have to pick something, it’s that I didn’t look at the back cover closely enough to realize this would be a series. At least it’s one that I will gladly wait for though.

Overall rating:

4.5/5

This story is compelling, and it’s rare in my busy schedule anymore that I get to make my way through a book entirely in one sitting. While my review of the Uppercase box is forthcoming, I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed the Uppercase bonus feature post its, as they really drove me forward to reach the next one as I read. The moment I finished, I started recommending it to friends. It’s definitely worth a read, and it has been one of the most thrilling adventures I’ve read recently.

Add Wolf by Wolf to your shelf on Goodreads

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Check out Uppercase box subscriptions here!

Waiting on Wednesday #1

As I am starting to look forward to blogging more and doing more reviews of what I’ve been reading, I’ve decided to also add a weekly Waiting on Wednesday post to highlight upcoming YA releases that I’m excited about.

And as with most things, I’m immediately breaking the rules…

By the time you read this post, the book that I’m desperately looking forward to getting my hands on will no longer be in pre-publication status. It will, in fact, have been published the day before. -BUT- I work for the public library, which means, it may be a little bit before this lovely book falls into my hands, so I’m saying it still qualifies.

The book I’m awarding the very first Waiting on Wednesday post just so happens to be…

The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch
By Daniel Kraus
Publication Date: October 27, 2015

Synopsis (via Goodreads)
May 7, 1896. Dusk. A swaggering seventeen-year-old gangster named Zebulon Finch is gunned down on the shores of Lake Michigan. But after mere minutes in the void, he is mysteriously resurrected.
His second life will be nothing like his first.

Zebulon’s new existence begins as a sideshow attraction in a traveling medicine show. From there, he will be poked and prodded by a scientist obsessed with mastering the secrets of death. He will fight in the trenches of World War I. He will run from his nightmares—and from poverty—in Depression-era New York City. And he will become the companion of the most beautiful woman in Hollywood.
Love, hate, hope, and horror—Zebulon finds them. But will he ever find redemption?

Ambitious and heartbreaking, The Death & Life of Zebulon Finch, Volume 1: At the Edge of Empire is the epic saga of what it means to be human in a world so often lacking in humanity.

Why I’m Waiting

When I first read this description, I was reminded of one of the most intriguing writing prompts I’ve ever found – “You’ve been dead for 67 days. You awake to the entire world watching the first human revival. Your revival.”
Playing with the concept of revival will always be interesting to me, as I was fascinated by stories like Frankenstein from an early age. The idea of a gangster receiving a second life and experiencing notable events throughout history has me ready to grab this book as soon as it hits the shelves.
If you happen to get to read it before I do, I hope you’ll post your opinions. I have high hopes for Zebulon Finch, and I can’t wait to see if they are met.

Add The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch on Goodreads

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What are you waiting on this week?

Safe to Say

It’s safe to say that I’m perhaps the worst blogger in the history of blogging. It always seems to happen that I’ll think of something I should post about, and then life immediately gets in the way. What have I been up to lately?

1. I started grad school! – Huzzah! It’s well overdue, but I finally made the leap and started classes this fall. I’m almost to midterm now, and it’s certainly been an adjustment getting back into the swing of things. I’m taking all online classes through the University of Kentucky for my Master’s in Library and Information Science.

2. I bought a house! – What an adventure this has been… I’ve dreamed of owning my grandparents’ home since I was a child, and a few months ago I was finally presented with this chance. I jumped on it. It’s still a dream come true, but it is in need of so much TLC. Renters certainly have not been kind to it, so there are tons of repairs and remodeling, most of which we (my other half, Joffree, and me) are doing ourselves. It’s definitely an ongoing project.

3. Spellbound Scribblers – A short story blog maintained by myself and my two best buds and fellow librarians. Last month got a little hectic between house/grad school, but I’m looking forward to getting back to regular posting with these two talented writers. Check it out HERE.

4. Anthology #2 – The Wicked Wordsmiths of the West published our second anthology last month, Stories from the Stacks. All short stories are related to libraries in some way, and I have two stories published in this one – “Saturday Librarians” and “A Novel Change”. It’s available in Kindle and paperback HERE.

And so now we are here, the start of October, with November and NaNoWriMo looming just over the horizon. A little while back, I was browsing through some old files on my computer and located an outline for a book I’d always wanted to write. It was surprisingly good, and so it’s been sticking in the back of my head that maybe just maybe I could use it for NaNo. Sure, it’s probably insane to even be considering participating in NaNoWriMo this year between the house and grad school, but this will make my fourth year. I can’t break the chain now. This year I am fortunate enough to have a co-ML to help in the planning and implementing of write-ins, so I figure that’s a plus. And, if I don’t want to use the outline I’ve been dwelling on, I can always be a NaNo rebel and write a collection of short stories, which also sounds like something right up my alley. I can do it, right? Right?! Nothing seems to motivate me more than overwhelming amounts of pressure. *sigh* Here goes nothing…

Back in Action

Beginnings always seem to be the hardest, and here I am, ready to begin again. I’ve taken far too much time off from the things that I care about, including writing. Depression will do that to you. And it was refreshing to find out last week that my goddess, my spirit animal – Jenny Lawson, is devoting her new book to discussing her struggles with depression and anxiety. This woman can make even the most painful ordeals something hilarious. Quite often, I find myself binge-reading her blog just to cheer myself up, and I’m counting down the days until I can hold Furiously Happy: A Funny Book about Horrible Things in my hands and devour it joyously.

“I think everyone can relate to the fact that a ton of bullshit happens every single day and the only way we can battle that bullshit is choose to be furiously happy whenever we have the opportunity.”

So lately, I’ve been choosing to be furiously happy instead. I’m pushing myself back into art, writing, and time with the people that I care about, and I’ve discovered just how much I missed myself.

There are a couple of new writing projects on the horizon:

1) A new W3 anthology – Wicked Wordsmiths are all currently hard at work writing new short stories that are themed around libraries for this anthology. I’ve got one story down, heavily in need of some painful editing and at least one more brewing in my brain currently.

2) “Captive” – It’s a working title. I wrote a piece of flash fiction recently that really started to eat away at my thoughts. It begged for something more to be written. So, in my free time, I’ve been adding bits and pieces and watching a story develop. It will likely end up a much longer piece, ideally novel length. Without giving too much away, the story revolves around a kidnapping victim and the nightmares she encounters as her captor creates a sinister choice for her. The theme of captivity seems to be popping up a lot in the pieces I’ve been writing recently, so I’m just going to roll with it and see where this goes.

As the weather gets warmer, I become more active, and thankfully, that is making my brain be more active as well. Just have to keep the motivation and keep choosing to be furiously happy. I can do this, and so can you.