Tag: amreading

Waiting on Wednesday #7

I’ll admit, when I read the description of Local Girl Swept Away by Ellen Wittlinger on teenreads.com, I pictured a somewhat different story. The summary began “They are four best friends who’ve shared joy and secrets, love and memories, and since the beginning, Lorna was the one who held them all together”. In my head, that sentence conjured up memories of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, a series which my childhood friends and I had enjoyed greatly. Obviously, as the summary continued, the book described clearly wouldn’t be as light hearted as the Sisterhood series, as it deals with the circumstances of the presumed drowning of Lorna and how the three surviving friends cope with their grief and questions about Lorna’s death. When I read the teenreads summary, I assumed that all of the survivors were female, which probably lead to my connecting it with the Sisterhood series, but it was enough to strike my interest and for me to seek out the title on Goodreads – at which point, I found something even better than what I originally expected.

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Local Girl Swept Away
By Ellen Wittlinger

Publication Date: June 15, 2016

Summary (via Goodreads)

Stark, uncompromising, seductive, beautiful – this describes the tourist town of Cape Cod, where a young woman’s body remains to be found. Three friends struggle to come to terms with their missing leader and with the secrets each endeavor to hide.

Set in the Cape Cod village of Provincetown, Massachusetts, this is the story about 17-year-old Jackie’s struggle to overcome her grief and confusion after her best friend is carried out to sea during a storm. Lorna had been the dynamic leader of a tight-knit group of four friends – Jackie, Lucas and Finn – and her disappearance changes the dynamics between the surviving three. Jackie is still hiding her feelings for Finn, who had been Lorna’s boyfriend, and Lucas has withdrawn to the point where Jackie wonders if he is keeping a secret even larger than her own. Meanwhile the future looms, and Jackie fears leaving the only life she has known.

Why I’m Waiting:

This story seems to be less about Lorna the Leader and more about Jackie, the best friend with conflicted feelings. As the friendship dynamics shift, I’m interested to see how certain suspenseful twists build and questions start to arise. Did Lorna fall? Was she pushed? Did she jump? Or is Lorna even really gone at all? I suspect that there’s loads of potential for this story in the mysteries that surround Lorna’s death. Will this group of friends support each other through their grief or will their secrets tear them apart?

Also, I have to give a major shout out to Ellen Wittlinger. She’s essentially living my dream. If you read her bio, you’ll find out that Ellen was once a children’s librarian, and now, she has several award-winning novels under her belt. The idea behind this blog’s name – Among the Authors – is that I adore my job as a Youth Services librarian, but that I also hope to one day have my own books published and shelved among the authors I admire on the library’s shelves. Congratulations, Ellen, I can’t wait to check this one out!

Add Local Girl Swept Away to your To Be Read Shelf on Goodreads
Pre-Order via Amazon
Pre-Order via Barnes & Noble 

Off the Shelf: A Review of The Cresswell Plot by Eliza Wass

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” he said, chest contracting as he caught his breath. “How beautiful the world becomes when you think you might have to leave it?”

I remember when I first became familiar with the very creepy concept of family annihilators – those that will kill their families to “save” them.  My exposure was all thanks to an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Binge watching Law & Order is a guilty pleasure of mine, and the episode “Family Values” had the detectives tracking down a father who went on a killing spree of his daughter’s drama teacher, his former boss, and most importantly – his entire family – before kidnapping his daughter so they could leave this world together. Why? Because he was disturbed that his daughter wore a low cut costume in a school play and would soon be performing in another play written by a homosexual. He wanted to make sure his family got to heaven, so he killed them to save their souls. It was incredibly disturbing, and at the end I kept thinking, “There can’t really be people in this world that believe that way, can there?” Unfortunately, there are.

You’ve got to hand it to Eliza Wass. She picked one heck of a topic to tackle for this novel, and she delivers a well written narrative with insight into a disturbing family dynamic.

I received an advance read copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The Cresswell Plot by Eliza Wass will be available on June 7, 2016.

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Continue reading “Off the Shelf: A Review of The Cresswell Plot by Eliza Wass”

Off the Shelf: A Review of The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater

Goodbye beautiful Cabeswater.
Goodbye impossible dreams.
Goodbye to my ravens and lily, the ones who let me be a part of this magical adventure, and the ones I laughed, cried, and loved with.

It’s over… It’s really over. The Raven Cycle has come to an end, and in a way, I’m having a hard time dealing with the loss. There’s still so much more left that could be explored. So many questions I have that are going unanswered. So much potential for MORE. And yet, no. I’m comfortable with the way we, the readers, left Henrietta, and I want to celebrate the magic that is this series coming full circle.

“Depending on where you began the story, it was about this place: the long stretch of mountain that straddled a particularly potent segment of the ley line.”

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Caution: As this is the last book in the series, to talk about it fully and do it justice, there may be spoilers ahead….

Continue reading “Off the Shelf: A Review of The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater”

Off the Shelf: A Review of Paper & Fire by Rachel Caine

I was blessed beyond measure to receive an advance read copy of Paper & Fire from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

You can read my review of the first book in the Great Library series, Ink and Bone, by clicking here.

As someone who grew up with an immeasurable amount of love for books and reading, I remember the fiery passion with which I first devoured Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. To this day, it is still one of my favorite books, and I think the reasoning for that is because it sends a message…a message that Rachel Caine clearly communicates throughout the Great Library series as well: If you take away a person’s right to knowledge, you also take away their freedom. Nothing could ever be more effective at controlling a population.

I share Ink & Bone with everyone that I possibly can. It’s my go-to recommendation for young adult readers in the library. It’s a book that I feel very strongly about, and that I know will have a lasting impression on my life the way Fahrenheit 451 did. When I received the ARC of Paper & Fire, there was nothing that could hold me back from jumping right in, desperate to see if it lived up to the glory of book one. At the same time, I had one of the most demanding projects of my grad school career thus far due, but even that couldn’t stop me. I read the book from my phone in snippets of stolen time whenever I ate lunch, whenever I used the restroom, whenever I was fighting sleep, etc. This book absolutely lives up to the first one, if not surpasses it in greatness.

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Summary (via Goodreads)

With an iron fist, The Great Library controls the knowledge of the world, ruthlessly stamping out all rebellion, forbidding the personal ownership of books in the name of the greater good.

Jess Brightwell has survived his introduction to the sinister, seductive world of the Library, but serving in its army is nothing like he envisioned. His life and the lives of those he cares for have been altered forever. His best friend is lost, and Morgan, the girl he loves, is locked away in the Iron Tower and doomed to a life apart.

Embarking on a mission to save one of their own, Jess and his band of allies make one wrong move and suddenly find themselves hunted by the Library’s deadly automata and forced to flee Alexandria, all the way to London.

But Jess’s home isn’t safe anymore. The Welsh army is coming, London is burning, and soon, Jess must choose between his friends, his family, or the Library willing to sacrifice anything and anyone in the search for ultimate control…

Continue reading “Off the Shelf: A Review of Paper & Fire by Rachel Caine”

Waiting on Wednesday #6

You might be expecting that for this week’s Waiting on Wednesday I would choose The Raven King. I did just finish reading all of the Raven Cycle books, and the final one is being released next week, but NO! That would be too easy. You already know how much I’m looking forward to that one, so let me tell you instead about another book being released very soon that I’m excited about.

Everland

By Wendy Spinale

Publication Date: May 10th, 2016

everland

Synopsis (via Goodreads)

Forget the story of Peter Pan you know. Because in Everland, the only way to grow up is to survive.

London has been destroyed in a blitz of bombs and disease. The only ones who have survived are children, among them Gwen Darling and her siblings, Joanna and Mikey. They spend their nights scavenging and their days avoiding the ruthless Marauders — the German Army led by Captain Hanz Otto Oswald Kretschmer.

Unsure if the virus has spread past England’s borders but desperate to leave, Captain Hook hunts for a cure, which he thinks can be found in one of the survivors. He and his Marauders stalk the streets snatching children for experimentation. None ever return. Until the day they grab Joanna. As Gwen sets out to save her, she meets a mysterious boy named Pete. Pete offers the assistance of his gang of Lost Boys and the fierce sharpshooter Bella, who have all been living in a city hidden underground. But in a place where help has a steep price and every promise is bound by blood, it will cost Gwen. And are she, Pete, the Lost Boys, and Bella enough to outsmart Captain Hook?

Why I’m Waiting

When I first found this book, it had the same release date as Raven King. At first I was bummed that it has been pushed back to May 10th, but then I realized that gives me plenty of time to devour the last Raven Cycle book, come to terms with however it ends, and move on to something pretty, shiny, and new – in this case, Everland.

Not too long ago, I tossed around the idea of writing my own fairy tale retelling. I love retellings with every fiber of my being, but the first one I ever did (my very first NaNoWriMo project) was a big pile of slop with nothing even remotely usable. I really wanted to try again, focusing on one specific tale rather than trying to incorporate so many, and I wanted to make it dark. Really dark. I’d performed in our high school play of Peter Pan (I was Tiger Lily, Wendy’s understudy, a pirate, the Stage Manager, makeup artist, and really any part they could throw me into – we didn’t have much of a theatre group at the time). So doing a retelling of Peter Pan was one of my first thoughts. I hadn’t really found anything in the YA genre that had done that before. Unfortunately, the idea never came to fruition, BUT luckily, Wendy Spinale has filled that gap with her debut YA novel – Everland. I’m sure it will be everything that I’m hoping for in a Peter Pan retelling.

Also, you should definitely check out Wendy Spinale’s site, especially more about her personally. She was an actress for Disneyland, and yes, her real name is actually Wendy – it’s not just a pen name since her book deals with Peter Pan.

I think Everland will have all of the dark, dystopian elements that I love, but there’s one more reason that I’m really looking forward to it: Spinale has set the story in an entirely steampunk world. I hadn’t really considered a steampunk approach to a fairy tale before, but now that the thought is in my head, I’m dying to see how she approaches it. Imaginative ideas like this in the YA genre make me truly want to never grow up!

Add Everland to your To Be Read Shelf on Goodreads
Pre-order Everland via Amazon
Pre-order Everland via Barnes & Noble