Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: Parts One and Two by J. K. Rowling

★★★★

"Those we love never truly leave us, Harry.  There are things that death cannot touch."

After growing up with Harry Potter and reading the novels more time that I'd like to admit, I had mixed feelings about a "new" Harry Potter book coming out after all these years.  While it wasn't the same as reading the original books, I did enjoy this one.  I think the aspect that I missed the most was the descriptive characters and magical world that J. K. Rowling created.  This was a screen play and a different format entirely, and I felt like some of the magic that I have grown to love from the books didn't come across.  It was really interesting to see Harry and his friends grown up and having children of their own and I loved the scenes from the original books that were revisited.  And, of course, I would love to see this brought to live on stage!!

Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge (audio)

★★★★

"They said that love was terrifying and tender, wild and sweet, and none of it made any sense.  But now I knew that every mad word was true."

This was a unique combination of mythology and a retelling of the classic fairytale, Beauty and the Beast.  I have read several "retellings" over the past year or so and this one was one of the best that I have read in awhile.  It was filled with so many unique and unexpected aspects and had me hooked from the very beginning.  I loved the description of both the characters and the world that the author created.  I'm still not sure how I felt about the ending, but I very much enjoyed the book none the less.

After Alice by Gregory Maguire (audio)

★★★

"As for dreams, they are powered by urgent desire, even if that desire is only to escape the quotidian."

I never know how I'm going to feel about a Gregory Maguire book.  Wicked is one of my all-time favorite books and I also really enjoyed the fourth book in the Wicked series, Out of Oz.  I really struggled to get through Son of a Witch (book #2) and A Lion Among Men (book #3) and Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister - the only other Maguire book I've read - was good, but not great.  

(There were all read before my review-writing days, so no links...)

I have a lot of admiration for the author and his amazing storytelling abilities and imagination, but I had a hard time getting into this book.  Since the title is After Alice, I guess I was expecting the book to be what happened after Alice went down the rabbit hole and returned from Wonderland.  But instead, it told the story of Ada - Alice's best friend who went after Alice and ended up in Wonderland herself.  Much of the story also focused on Ada's sister Lydia and the town looking for Alice and Ada in Oxford in the 1860s.  This was interesting and gave a lot of insight to the original story by Lewis Carroll, but I still struggled through the book.  It was a little too complicated and I found it hard to focus on what was going on.  I'm sure that is a lot more to the story that meets the eye, but I couldn't figure out what it was.  What I loved about Wicked was the extreme detail of the people and culture of OZ and I felt that this book just didn't have that kind of depth to it.

I don't remember when I read Alice and Wonderland, but I must have been before I started keeping track of the book I read in 2004.  I remember being older - maybe 12 or 13, but I found some parts hard to understand and I was easily distracted while reading it (something that usually doesn't happen to me...)  I liked the story, but it was a little too "out there" for my tastes at the time.  I hoping to go back and re-read it one of these days, so maybe I will have a different perspective reading it as an adult.  

I have a ton of respect for Gregory Maguire and I will continue reading his books, but After Alice was not one of my favorites of his.  I'm sure this will appear to hard-core Maguire fans, but it defiantly isn't for everyone.

Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard (audio)

★★★★

"The truth is what I make it.  I could set this world on fire and call it rain."

I was almost ready to give up on this one in the beginning.  I felt like this story had been done so many times already - the dystopian world, the unprivilaged youth, being chosen for something greater that doesn't have the 'fairy-tale' ending that it was suppose to, the love triangles.  After having just read The Selection, I didn't know it I would read the same story again.  But, I kept reading and it started to grow on me.  The characters seemed a lot more dynamic and I started to really enjoy the world that Aveyard had created.  It was... different somehow.  It wasn't perfect, but it definitely kept my interest and left me wanting to read more.  A lot of the plot twists also really surprised me - which is always a plus!

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

★★★★

"What an unequaled gift for disaster you have."

This enchanting tale tells the story of Agnieska -  a young girl taken from her quiet village to serve the Dragon for ten years time.  No one knows what happens to the girls he takes, but they come back changed.  Agnieska was never suppose to taken and finds her self in a world of magic and mystery as she attempts to figure out what the Dragon wants from her.  And the she has to save her family - and the entire village - from the evil Wood that is slowly destroying them.

The book draw me in from first couple pages - the first couple of sentences actually.  I loved the writing style and the perfect mix of fairy-tale and humor.  My favorite thing about the book was the relationship between Agnieska and the Dragon as they learn to work together and (surprise!) fall in love.  It was essentially an more adult and developed version of Beauty and the Beast.  Both of the characters were so charming and together they created this unexpected, but wonderful chemistry.  The book was also extremely funny.

I would have loved for the book to continue to focus mainly on Agnieska and the Dragon's relationship.  The author did an amazing job, but I felt like there was so much more to explore.  I also would have enjoyed learning about the other girls that the Dragon took.  But, alas Agnieska had to develop her magical powers and go save the world from the evil trees and corrupted royal family (or something like that...).  That's where the book sort of lost me and I lost interest for awhile in the middle.  But, overall I thought it was a wonderfully written story and I'm always a sucker for fairytales.  I also thought the ending was pretty much as close to perfect as you can get!  

Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol

★★★★

"You may look normal like everyone else, but you're not.  Not on the inside."

Anya is a young immigrant from Russia living in the United States with her family.  She doesn’t seem to fit into anywhere at her private school, is constantly worrying about her appearances, and is in love with a popular boy that barely knows she exists.  While walking to school, Anya falls down a well and meets Emily, a ghost from World War I that fell down the well after her parents were murdered.  Anya is eventually rescued, but several days later Emily appears at her house and starts following her around.  At first, Anya loves having the extra help at school from Emily and finally has a friend she can talk to, but Emily begins to become very controlling and threatens Anya’s family.  Anya learns that Emily killed a couple because she was jealous and finds away to send Emily to the afterlife where she belongs.

I enjoyed reading this book.  Even though it was brief, the author was able to create a fascinating story that incorporated many different thematic elements about identity and friendship.  I thought that the graphic novel format was a very efficient way to tell the story and effectively showed elements that a traditional novel would not have been able to capture.  I really enjoyed the character of Anya and thought she was very easy to relate to.  I loved the she used the experiences of meeting Emily to change her need to conform and be popular.  I would recommend this book to young adults, especially those struggling with personal identity.

Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind (audio)

★★★ 1/2
"People are stupid.  They will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true."

This is one of those books that I've been meaning to read for years and years and haven't managed to get around to it until now.  I felt like it was a very "typical" epic-fantasy novel: lots of action, ok writing, and very predictable.  The story was interesting and I enjoyed learning about the world that the author created, but everything else was pretty much average.  I was glad I listening to it as an audio book - all 33 hours of it.  Would I read the rest of the series if I was stuck somewhere for a week with no other books to read? - definitely.  Will I realistically finish the series? - probably not...there's a lot of them.

The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo

★★★ 1/2
"In the darkness of a thousand withered souls, it was Er Lang's hand that I sought, and his voice that I longed to hear.  Perhaps it is selfish of me, but an uncertain future with him, in all its laughter and quarrels, is better than being left behind."

 Li Lan, the daughter of a bankrupt family, receives word that she has been offered a proposal to be a ghost bride for the heir of the Wealthy Lim family.  The marriage would guarantee Li Lan and her family a respectable future, but she would have to be the wife of the dead son.  As Li Lan considers the options, she gets to know the Lim family and discovers their secrets.  During the night, she is visited by the son's ghost and during the day, she begins to fall in love with Tian Bai, the new heir of the family.  After a tragic accident, Li Lan finds herself trapped between this world and the next and struggles to survive before she is stuck as a ghost forever.

I have mixed feelings about this book.  I really enjoyed the beginning.  I loved the description of Malaya and it's traditions of marriage and family life.  The author made the scenery and time period so real, I could picture myself right in the books.  I thought that Li Lan's situation was really unique and couldn't wait to find out what was going to happen.  Toward the middle of book, I got a little restless.  Li Lan travels to the spirit world and I felt like this part of the book dragged on a lot.  It was interesting at first, but I kept wanting to get back to Li Lan's life in Malaya.  The ending was good, but the build up felt a little flat for me.  All in all an interesting read though.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

★★★★
"Adults follow paths. Children explore. Adults are content to talk the same way, hundreds of times, or thousands; perhaps it never occurs to adults to step off the paths, to creep beneath rhododendrons, to find the spaces between fences. I was a child, which meant that I knew a dozen different ways of getting out of our property and into the land, ways that would not involve walking down our drive."

When a middle-aged man returned to his childhood home he begins to remember an odd time in his past - when he met a girl named Lettie and he was thrown into a world of darkness and mystery.  This lovely little book was weird and different and wonderful.  I always fine myself amazing at how Neil Gaiman is able to write about things so far out there that I have trouble relating to.  This one was definitely outside of the box!

 

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness (audio)

★★★

"Just because something seems impossible doesn't make it untrue."

For me, this book was basically an adult version of Twilight.  Basically, Diana is a witch/historical scholar at Yale.  After her parents die at a young age, she goes to live with her aunt and her aunt's partner (both witches) and decides she wants nothing to do with her magical background.  This all changes when she discovers a lost manuscript while completing her research at Oxford and the world of magical creatures, as well as her own, is turned up side down.  Oh and she falls in love with a vampire (of course) named Matthew who loves yoga and is an excellent cook (really??)

I was expecting to enjoy this book more than I did. I loved the historical part of the book and how they were incorporated into the story.  Diana's family are descendants from Bridget Bishop of the Salem Witch trials and this linage becomes an important aspect in the story in a really interesting way.  I also really liked the world that was created where humans, witches, vampires, and demons could co-exist with little problems (at least so far).  Plus it's set in a library!!! These are the only reasons I was able to give this book three stars.

What I didn't like was the romance.  It was way to "chick-lit" and didn't seem to fit with Diana's character or the storyline.  I felt like the author created this really interesting fantasy world and story and then decided to stick in gobs on annoying romantic scenes between the main characters to make the books more appealing to the readers.  Frankly, it was just annoying.  I'm all for romance, if it fits the story and is believable - neither of which I found in this book.

Son by Lois Lowry (audio)

★★★★ 1/2

"It'd be better, I think, to climb out in search of something, instead of hating what you're leaving."

I really enjoyed this book!  I read the first three books of the quartet a few years ago in my children's lit class, and was excited to see that Lowry had written a fourth and final book.  The book was written almost twenty years after The Giver and tells the story of Claire, Gabe's mother.  It comes full circle and begins in the society that Jonas and Gabe grew up in.  When Claire is assigned "birth mother" at the ceremony of twelve, she is a little disappointed, but takes her new role seriously.  After a troubling birth, her "product" survives, but it is deemed that Claire can no longer have children.  She is reassigned to the fish hatchery and is expected to forget her child.  As the months pass, finds herself drawn to Gabe.  When Jonas and Gabe leave the community (the ending of The Giver), Claire goes after then.  After her boat crashes, she finds herself in a new places and struggles to remember her past.  Over the years, memories of her son slowly come back to her and she is determined to find him.

I've been waiting a year or two to read this book and finally got around to it.  I loved Lois Lowry's unique description and world-building in the quartet.  I loved that each book focused on a different futuristic society. With so many "dytopian" books coming out lately, it was really interesting to read one that was started two decades ago.  A big comparison that I found was that these books didn't center as much on relationships. Recent books like The Hunger Games and Divergent have such huge themes of romance.  While entertaining, I feel that these aspects sometimes take away other elements of the book. There was some mention of young love and romance, but the main focus was the big picture of the characters and the different societies that had been created.  

I really liked Lowry's theme of community throughout the four books.  Each one focused on a very different type of community - often focusing on taking a logical idea to the extreme.  Some worked well (like in The Messenger and Son), and others ( like in The Giver and Gathering Blue) did not.  It was also interesting to see how the different communities dealt with problems they were having.  The books had a lot of political themes and brought of questions of sacrifice and choices.

The Messenger by Lois Lowry

★★★★

"That's why they call you Seer.  You see more than most."

Updated: 5/23/2014

Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry

★★★★

"Take pride in your pain; you are stronger than those who have none."

Updated: 5/22/2014

The Giver by Lois Lowry

★★★★★

"The worst part of holding of holding the memories is not the pain.  It's the loneliness of it.  Memories need to be shared."

Updated: 5/20/2014

Since Lois Lowry's fourth and final book of the Giver Quartet, "Son" came out a few years ago, I figured I should re-read the whole series again.  Luckily, they are quite short and I listened to this one in less than two days.  

I can't say enough good things about this book!  It's one of those books that can be re-read again and again and you still find something new and interesting about it.  I loved Lowry's ability to create a dystopian world in less than 200 pages.  She had me hooked from the very beginning.

The reality is that there are both good and bad parts of life.  In Jonas's society, all of the "bad things" have been taken away to create a "perfect" world.  Everything is the same.  Everything is provided for.  There is no pain.  No suffering.  Everything is decided in the best interest of the people.  When Jonas is choose to receive special training from the Giver, he begins to realize that the world that was created, is also missing the love, pleasure, and pain of life before.  As he is slowly introduced to the memories of the past, he also sees the true horrors of his society.

One of my favorite aspects of this book is the simple layout of a world where everything bad is taken away.  Every negative thing about life could have a solution, but at what cost?  

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

★★★★

"I wish I could freeze this moment, right here, right now and live in it forever."

Just re-read this one again before the movie came out.  A few years later, this remains one of my favorite YA dystopia series.  When they first came out, I read all three books in about a week.  After the first book, I wasn't sure how the next two were going to turn out.  I was expecting something big for the Quarter Quell, but the ending took me by surprise!!!  I really enjoyed reading about all of the secondary characters in this book - all of the past winners of the Hunger Games.

Between the Lines by Jodi Picoult and Samanta Van Leer (audio)

★★★

"Everyone deserves a happy ending."

I'd read a few of Jodi Picoult's books in the past and have always enjoyed them.  I love her writing style and how I can always have trouble putting them down.  This one was very different.  First of all, it was a fantasy and young adult novel.  She also wrote the book with her daughter, Samantha Van Leer.  

Fifteen year old Delilah is a bit of a loaner.  Instead of hanging out with kids her age, she would much rather spend her time reading books.  One book in particular has caught her attention - it's an old children's fairytale that she found at her school's library.  After awhile she begins to talk to one of the characters in the book: a prince named Oliver.  Oliver and the other characters in the book are trapped in the story that they must act act every time someone reads the book.  As Delilah begins to fall in love with Oliver, she becomes determined to get him out of the book.

I enjoyed this story.  It was really cute and a good "modern-day" fairytale.  It was a lot different than what I was expecting, and there were quite a few of unexplained things in Oliver's world, but I'm glad I read it.  I really liked that the actual fairytale was written in between the novel!

The Lightning Thief: Percy Jackson and the Olympians Book #1 by Rick Riordan

★★★

"Even strength must bow to wisdom sometimes."

I've been meaning to read this book for awhile and finally got the chance the month for book club (click here).  It was pretty good for a children's book.  I felt like this area of children's books has been a little over done lately.  This reminded me a lot of Harry Potter (which I LOVED), but with Greek history instead of wizards and magic.  I did enjoy re-learning about Greek and Roman mythology though.  And I liked the idea of how the Gods would adapt to out world today.

Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare

★★★

 " 'One must always be careful of books,' said Tessa, 'and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.' "

" 'You know,' Gabriel said, 'there was a time when I thought we could be friends, Will.'

'There was a time when I thought I was a ferret,' Will said, 'but that turned out to be the opium haze. Did you know it had that effect? Because I didn't.' "

I read this book as part of a workshop on book discussions that I attended last week in Madison called Reading by the Lake.  Only finished it a couple of days late...

This book was ok.  It had a lot of really interesting fantasy and steampunk (I learned what that was this weekend!) elements.  When a young girl named Tessa travels to England in 1878 to live with her brother, she is captured by the Dark Sisters.  She is suddenly thrown into an underground world of vampires, warlocks, and demons and learns that she has an ability as well - the ability to transform into another person.  She is recused by the Shadowhunters, where she begins to learn about herself and is caught up in the mysteries underworld.

I'd say that the book was an average young adult fantasy novel.  It had some unique twists with the characters and elements of the early industrial revolution. I really liked the historical aspects of 19th century England and Tessa's love of books.  The plot was so-so, but it caught my attention enough to finish the book. 

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

★★★★★

"I turned to the window and gazed out in wonder.  The yard was full of children, almost all of whom I recognized from yellowed photographs.  Some lazed under shade threes; others tossed a ball and chased one another past flowerbeds exploding with color.  It was exactly the paradise my grandfather had described.  this was the enchanted island; these were the magical children.  If I was dreaming, I no longer wanted to wake up or at least not anytime soon."

"I used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary.  I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was.  Likewise, I never imagined that home might be something I would miss."

This book was #6 on my top ten list of 2013.

Out of Oz by Gregory Maguire

★★★★

"They could not cross the carpet to take each other in their arms.  Maybe someday, but not today"  More of their childhoods had to be stolen, yet, for that to happen - or maybe some of it returned to them.  The charmless future would show them if, and when, and how."

"I mustn't keep you, dear.  And I have much to attend to myself.  I just so wanted to know if it was true, and now I know.  Maybe Elphaba will come back one day, or maybe she won't, but in the meantime I have known you.  That will see me through, I do believe."

"She would make no plan but this: to move out into the world as a Bird might, and to perch on the edge of everything that could be know.  She would circle herself with water below and with sky above.  She would wait until there was no stink of Oz, no breath of it, no wight of it on any horizon no matter how high she climbed.  And then she would let go of the book, let it plunge into the mythical sea.

Live life without grasping for the magic of it.

Turn back, and find out what that was like; or turn forward, and learn something new.

A mile above anything known, the Girl balanced on the wind's forward edge, as if she were a green flick of the sea itself, flung up by the turbulent air and sent wheeling away."

"Oz at sunrise.  What one makes out, from any height, are the outlines.  The steel-cut peaks of the Great Kells, the pudding hills of the Madeleines.  The textured outcroppings of Shiz, Bright Lettins, the Emerald City...This is a roughed-out landscape only coming into life.  A map done in smudged pencil, a first draft.  Much to be filled in when light arrives.  But thank you, Mr. Baum, for leaving the map where I could find it.

Watching the world wake up, dress itself in the dark, take on its daily guise, reminds me of how we fathom human character when we encounter someone at a distance, at a gallop, in the shadows.  We get no more than a quick glance at the man on the street, the child in the woods, that witch at the well, the Lion among us.  Our initial impression, most often, has to serve.

Still, that first crude glimpse, a clutch of raw hypotheses that can never be soundly clinched or dismissed, is often all we get before we must choose whether to lean forward or to avert our eyes.  Slim evidence indeed, but put together with mere hints and echoes of what we have once read, we risk cherishing one another.  Light will blind us in time, but what we learn in the dark can see us through.

To read, even in the half-dark, is also to call the lost forward."

This is the fourth and final volume of Gregory Maquire's "The Wicked Years," an interesting twist on L. Frank Baum's "Wizard of Oz" children's book serious.  The first volume tells the tale of Elphaba, who eventually becomes known as the wicked witch of the west.  "Out of Oz" is the story of Rain, Elphaba's grand-daughter, in the mist of a great civil war in Oz.

These books are one of the best series I have read!  I love Gregory Maguires unique storytelling abilities to capture a world reads already know and turn them into something else entirely.  The second and third volumes took me a little longer to get through then the first (which I've read at least three times already), but reading the final volume made it completely worth it!

This book was #7 on my top ten list of 2012.