Tagged: ya
The Book of Ivy by Amy Engel
(Cover picture courtesy of NetGalley.)
After a brutal nuclear war, the United States was left decimated. A small group of survivors eventually banded together, but only after more conflict over which family would govern the new nation. The Westfalls lost. Fifty years later, peace and control are maintained by marrying the daughters of the losing side to the sons of the winning group in a yearly ritual.
This year, it is my turn.
My name is Ivy Westfall, and my mission is simple: to kill the president’s son—my soon-to-be husband—and restore the Westfall family to power.
But Bishop Lattimer is either a very skilled actor or he’s not the cruel, heartless boy my family warned me to expect. He might even be the one person in this world who truly understands me. But there is no escape from my fate. I am the only one who can restore the Westfall legacy.
Because Bishop must die. And I must be the one to kill him…
[Full disclosure: I received a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]
At first, I thought The Book of Ivy would be a guilty pleasure read. I’m a sucker for the failed-assassin trope, I’ll admit. What I didn’t really expect was that it would have as much depth as it did.
In her debut novel, Amy Engel has created some truly amazing characters. Ivy is one of the more memorable characters I’ve read in a long, long time. She’s brave and not afraid to stand up for herself, but at the same time she can be weak and vulnerable when it comes to her family. Not only that, she also knows how to act: she can hide her feelings from those around her reasonably well. But when Bishop starts to worm his way into her paranoid heart, she starts to question all that her family has told her about the current regime. It’s not perfect, but maybe the Westfalls don’t have Ivy’s best interests at heart.
Bishop was more than your typical love interest as well. He’s kind and patient, waiting for Ivy to come around rather than trying to force his affection on her once he falls in love with her. He knows that she doesn’t trust him and instead of saying “I am trustworthy”, he demonstrates it. Some of his actions are rather shocking to our sensibilities, but in the fairly brutal future they make sense. To his credit, he did the right thing but he is also disgusted about what he did in that case. That makes him a memorable character as well instead of just Generic Male Love Interest.
The world-building is excellent. There’s not much I haven’t seen in post-apocalyptic/speculative fiction but The Book of Ivy manages to combine old tropes with Amy Engel’s new take on them. She paints a realistic picture of a horrible world where the survival of the fittest is very, very true. Even within their community, there is always danger lurking around the corner and dissent is punished severely. I would like to know a little more about the founding of the community, but Amy Engel manages to explain all of the essential things in the course of the book. So I’m looking forward to learning more, but I’m not desperately seeking information in order to actually understand the book.
The only place that I felt The Book of Ivy was shaky was the plot. Not the pacing, which was excellent for a largely character-driven novel, but the plot itself. It was fairly fast-paced and the way Ivy changes is very believable, but I was a little annoyed at the end. Ivy did some counter-intuitive things in order to advance the plot at the end and set up the next book The Revolution of Ivy. I get that she needed to finally meet the rebels on the other side of the fence, but it could have been done in a more believable fashion. Still, it’s a first book and it didn’t make me mad or even anything more than slightly annoyed.
All considered, The Book of Ivy is an amazing debut that’s better than the books of more established authors. It’s one of the better post-apocalyptic books that I’ve ever read in the YA genre and considering how many I’ve read, that’s saying something. I can highly recommend picking it up when it releases on November 11. I can almost guarantee that once you finish it, you’ll be like me and become extremely anxious for November 2015 when the next book releases.
I give this book 4.5/5 stars.
Serenade by Emily Kiebel
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
Suddenly the voice she prized is now dangerously seductive…
Lorelei Clark’s only concern was her future as a classically trained soprano, that is, until the day her father was tragically killed. Shattered by his death, she hesitantly accepts an invitation from a mysterious aunt to visit her lavish oceanside home in Cape Cod. She quickly discovers that her aunt and the two women who live with her are harboring a frightening secret they are sirens, terrifying mythical creatures responsible for singing doomed sailors to their deaths. Even more astounding, Lorelei is one of them. In this new world where water comes alive at her touch and an ancient power pulses beneath the tide, the most important rule Lorelei must learn is that a siren never interferes with fate. When she breaks this rule by rescuing a handsome sailor who should have died at sea, the sirens vow she must finish the job or face grave consequences. Finding herself inexplicably attracted to him, she must fight to keep him safe from the others, even if it means risking her own life, and her heart, in the process.
[Full disclosure: I requested and received a free ebook copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]
I’ve actually read quite a few books about sirens now since they seemed to be trending in YA for a while, but the thing that attracted me to Serenade especially was that the main character was a classically trained soprano. I love opera and I decided to see if Emily Kiebel’s take on sirens was different from that of the other books in her niche. Thankfully, it was.
The world-building in Serenade is actually much better than in most siren books. In this version, sirens don’t lure people to their deaths, they just soothe them as they die because it’s the will of Fate. They don’t really control their power but at the same time they can’t escape it because the sea will always call to them. Of course this makes for some interesting moral dilemmas like “What if I don’t want to help people die for the rest of my life?” or “What if someone isn’t ready to die?”. It’s that last question that gets Lorelei in some serious trouble, but it presents an interesting answer to the question of whether or not sirens really have free will.
Not only was the world-building pretty good, I liked Lorelei as a main character. She absolutely loves singing and is willing to defy her own mother to pursue a career in opera. When her father dies in an accident right before her eyes, you really do feel for Lorelei even though you’ve pretty much just met her. It’s a rare author that can make you truly connect with a character so quickly, but Emily Kiebel managed to do it. My only problem character-wise was the secondary characters. None of them really stood out for me; they were more average in terms of being fleshed out and I didn’t really connect with any of them, even our handsome sailor that Lorelei rescues and falls in love with.
As for the plot, it takes a while for Lorelei to get her bearings as a siren so it’s not exactly fast-paced in the beginning and middle of the book. There is a lot of tension, though, as she wrestles with many moral dilemmas surrounding her siren calling. But the action really doesn’t get going until she saves someone who is supposed to die. Then pretty much everything goes to the dogs in her family and Lorelei is faced with killing a man who isn’t ready to die or risking exile and knowing he’ll be killed anyway. It’s really not a good situation and I like the little turn of events at the end. Still, I think Serenade could have been a little faster paced without sacrificing the character development.
This book doesn’t release until July 15th, but I definitely urge you to pre-order it. It’s one of the best books in the siren sub-genre of YA that I’ve read lately and I have to say that Emily Kiebel really knows her opera (although that’s just a bonus when paired with the world-building and main character).
I give this book 4/5 stars.
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*Not yet available for pre-order.
Discussion: The Next Supernatural Creature Fad
I think we all remember the boring horror that was the vampire craze spawned by Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga. (I still can’t get over the fact that her vampires sparkled.) For several months you could not find a YA book that didn’t feature vampires in some way or another as every author and their dog tried to cash in on the vampire craze.
Thank goodness it’s died down to a somewhat reasonable level of late. There have been quite a few trends since then, what with zombies, werewolves and shapeshifters. I’m not saying trends are bad but they’re a little boring when that’s all you see on the shelves at your local bookstore.
As for the next trend, I honestly don’t have a prediction. I think shapeshifters are relatively popular right now but there’s not as big of a market for the supernatural as there was even a year ago. Right now it’s still all dystopia, all the time in the YA market.
Anyway, what do you guys think will be the next supernatural fad in YA? Shapeshifting werewolves, sparkling zombies or something equally ridiculous? I can hold out hope that authors will try to move away from European myths and draw creatures from African and Asian cultures, but that’s really quite a pipe dream.
Discussion: Violence in Literature
Yes, today I want to talk about violence in literature. More specifically, my thoughts on it in YA literature.
I personally think teens are capable of handling much more than most people give them credit for. Yes, violence in a story can be awful but as long as there’s justification for it in the narrative I don’t see what’s wrong with including it. If it becomes gratuitous (i.e. there’s no real reason for it other than to gross the reader out) I think that’s a little too much for Young Adult literature. It’s too much even for adult literature when it becomes gratuitous.
Basically, as long as the violence is ‘justified’ (makes sense in the context of the story and either conveys character or plot elements) I’m generally okay with it. Sometimes I have to put a book down because it’s so disgusting, but in general I don’t think I’ve ever come across that in YA.
So what do you think of violence in literature? Do you think the amount of violence in YA should have limits simply because of the target age group? Or do you think it’s the parent’s job to monitor what their kids are reading?
Evermore by Alyson Noël
(Cover picture courtesy of Alyson Noël’s website.)
After a horrible accident claims the lives of her family, sixteen-year-old Ever Bloom can see people’s auras, hear their thoughts, and know someone’s entire life story by touching them. Going out of her way to avoid human contact to suppress her abilities, she has been branded a freak at her new high school — but everything changes when she meets Damen Auguste.
Damen is gorgeous, exotic and wealthy. He’s the only one who can silence the noise and random energy in her head – wielding a magic so intense, it’s as though he can peer straight into her soul. As Ever is drawn deeper into his enticing world of secrets and mystery, she’s left with more questions than answers. And she has no idea just who he really is – or what he is. The only thing she knows to be true is that she’s falling deeply and helplessly in love with him.
For a couple of years now I’ve seen Evermore floating across the blogosphere but dismissed it because the blurb sounded so ridiculously cliché. I mean, a near death experience, a girl with a weird name, a mysterious wealthy boy and soul mates? I don’t think you can possibly fit more clichés into one blurb if you tried. Still, I saw it in the used section of my bookstore when it was having its closing sale so I decided to pick it up anyway. For $2 it wasn’t much of a gamble I’ll admit.
Imagine my surprise when it was better than I expected! I actually sort of enjoyed reading it and wanted to know what happened next. The plot was pretty cliché but I was actually invested in the characters who were somewhat genre-savvy. Ever knows that it’s kind of crazy to be attracted to a guy she just met and that there’s obviously something off about him but she just can’t deny that attraction. She’s not totally naive and eventually she realizes she’s making excuses for why Damen is so different from other teenagers. Sure, she’s stupid sometimes but I like how she’s not your typical YA heroine simply because she does question things.
And yes, Ever does have psychic powers but Alyson Noël made them a burden more than a gift. Her senses are constantly overloaded and she tries her best to avoid touching people because when she does she’s tortured by their thoughts. Her psychic abilities are actually more of a disability in that they really do weigh her down and make her unable to function sometimes (and not just when it’s convenient to the plot). I can completely understand Ever’s little pity party toward the end of the novel; I’d probably end up doing the same thing if I had her curse.
Some of the plot twists were fairly transparent while others were unexpected. Alyson Noël hasn’t really done much new but at least she took the time to put some twists on old tropes. We don’t really get to see much of the abilities of immortals in this novel but we do see some and they were enough to make me want to read the second book in the series. Is this the most original novel ever? Heck no. But it’s not a bad novel and I actually didn’t mind indulging in a little guilty pleasure this time around. Basically, if you’re going to read it keep in mind that this will likely be guilty pleasure rather than high literature and that’s perfectly okay.
I give this book 3.5/5 stars.