Tag: young adult book review

Cinder Book Review

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Cinder by Marissa Meyer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This review was done based on a recommendation of Erin from That One Geek Girl. You can check out her list on why you should read the book here. 

You Can Find the Book At:

GoodReads

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Author Website

GoodReads Summary:

Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl. 

Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.

My Review:

Cinder was one of those books that kept popping up on my radar, either on other blogs or just spotting the cover on shelves at bookstores. But I had never really thought to actually pick it up. I’m not really sure why. It just wasn’t on my radar that way. It wasn’t until Erin from That One Geek Girl asked me to read it, as a personal recommendation from her, for a contest, that I really took it seriously and read it.

And it took me a few days, being so wrapped up in NaNoWriMo and Catching Fire and Doctor Who that I was.

However, I just finished, not even twenty minutes ago, and I’m so glad I was finally able to get into it.

I’m not quite sure what I expected from this book, but it definitely defied my expectations. I’m not huge on fairy tale retellings, because I find that most of them just aren’t done very well at all but this is so definitely NOT the case in Cinder. Cinder builds its own world, a beautiful, scary, calculating and thrilling world that sometimes, for a moment, you’ll forget you’re even reading a book that’s based off of Cinderella.

I love Cinder as a character. She’s a cyborg, part human and part machine, and forced to work and live under the rule of her guardian/stepmother. She’s a lower class citizen, not just because her stepmother makes it so but because she’s a cyborg. But I think the strength and intelligence that she possesses throughout the novel, the courage and determination, really makes her so much better than any other Cinderella character I’ve ever met. She both accepts who she is, but fights it at the same time. And she doesn’t wait for someone to come and save her, she does everything she can to save herself. She’s incredibly unique. I also love the twist that comes at the end of the book for. I think it sets up so much for her growth and for her future. I can’t wait to dive into the next book.

I also think the mix of science fiction and classic fairy tale is truly inspired. It helps to carry the story along. The mix of the plague and the cyborgs and the mysterious Lunars and the sort of dystopian world that Earth has become. It is an incredible example of world building. You recognize the world but its been tugged and pulled into something else. There’s sort of elements from the past and then brand new elements from a future. Its brilliant. I love that we get these sort of old school markets, where Cinder is a mechanic and fixes things, and we have the future feel of hovercrafts, and then she finds a gasoline car in a junkyard and is determined to fix it. So many familiar things and yet things that we’ve only dreamed of. I like the idea that there is still a Europe, and an Africa and all that, but wars and other things have also made it kind of unrecognizable.

Also, the characters! We see those familiar characters/archetypes of the familiar story: Cinderella, the prince, the stepmother, the stepsisters, and so forth, but they are so different too. They are super deep and rich characters and so much better than any other characters I’ve seen in a story like this. You really get a sense of all of them. You understand all of them, even the ones you aren’t supposed to root for.

I think Marissa creates a compelling familiar story in a mixed up world, and creates enough mystery and romance and action and tension to keep anyone reading. The conflict between Earth and the Lunars, the relationship Cinder begins to build with Prince Kai, and the mystery of Cinder herself is really what holds this book together, and I can’t wait to read more about all of it in the second book, Scarlet.

Rating:

4 out of 5 stars

*      *      *      *      *      *

Burn for Burn Book Review

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Burn for Burn by Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian

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You Can Find the Book At:

GoodReads

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Author Website

GoodReads Summary:

BIG GIRLS DON’T CRY…
THEY GET EVEN.

Lillia has never had any problems dealing with boys who like her. Not until this summer, purchase when one went too far. No way will she let the same thing happen to her little sister.

Kat is tired of the rumours, about it the insults, the cruel jokes. It all goes back to one person– her ex-best friend– and she’s ready to make her pay.

Four years ago, Mary left Jar Island because of a boy. But she’s not the same girl anymore. And she’s ready to prove it to him.

Three very different girls who want the same thing: sweet, sweet revenge. And they won’t stop until they each had a taste.

My Review:

I felt like this book left a lot to be desired. This was the first book that I had read from either author. I have heard good things about both of them, and just haven’t really had the chance to read either one of them, so when I saw this book, I decided to pick it up.

I felt like there was a story there. Obviously there’s a lot more going on under the surface than we just think. At first, Jessica Brody’s The Karma Club came to mind, and I had preconceived notion that it was a contemporary novel about three girls ready to get even with those who have harmed them in the past, but as the story went along, I started to see that there was more to it, especially with Mary, something a bit supernatural. Unfortunately I just didn’t get to see much of that in the actual story and it left a lot to be desired. Obviously Mary is struggling with something but we don’t really get to see what’s she struggling with. I think they wanted to leave it as a sort of mystery, but its so mysterious that’s its almost bewildering. I am kind of wondering how that plays in the story and whether it’ll be important because it really doesn’t seem to be important in the first book in the slightest.

The characters also felt very one-dimensional to me. i didn’t really get the feeling that they were real people. They just felt too…typical to me. You had the popular, smart, pretty Lillia. The punk, poor, outcast Kat. The once-fat, shy, lacking of confidence Mary. But there wasn’t a whole lot of depth to those characters. You can definitely have those archetypes and still create characters that are memorable and still create characters that a reader can fall in love with. In fact, I think with writing YA, all or most of your characters fit some sort of archetype because in high school, its like you’re always trying to fit into something like that. You haven’t quite figured out that you are so much more than a simple label. But I feel like neither Han or Vivian really gave these characters depth. You can *kind of* understand why they want the revenge but not fully. All the reasons seem sort of superficial. Mary gets a little more depth than the other two, but we really don’t get a real story out of it, and I felt myself wanting to know more about these characters that I didn’t get.

I didn’t think that either Han or Vivian were bad writers. In fact, I was impressed that a book that was written by two authors had a nice flow to it. Sometimes you can tell the difference between the two writers while writing a similar story but it didn’t seem that way. I don’t know if that is because I haven’t read either author before so I don’t have previous experience with their “voices” but that part seemed to be done with ease (though I know it probably wasn’t). I feel like it could be one of those sort of easy reads, an enjoyable light read but it was TOO light. There just wasn’t enough story, enough background for me to really be invested in this book. In a week or so, I probably will have forgotten a lot of the book, and maybe some of the characters’ names. Overall, I just wasn’t overly impressed.

Rating:

3 out of 5 stars

Shadow Kiss Book Review

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Shadow Kiss by Richelle Mead

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You Can Find the Book At:

GoodReads

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Author Website

GoodReads Summary:

It’s springtime at St. Vladimir’s Academy, erectile and Rose Hathaway is this close to graduation. Since making her first Strigoi kills, Rose hasn’t been feeling quite right. She’s having dark thoughts, behaving erratically, and worst of all… might be seeing ghosts.

As Rose questions her sanity, new complications arise. Lissa has begun experimenting with her magic once more, their enemy Victor Dashkov might be set free, and Rose’s forbidden relationship with Dimitri is starting to heat up again. But when a deadly threat no one saw coming changes their entire world, Rose must put her own life on the line – and choose between the two people she loves most.

My Review:

Note: This review will NOT contain spoilers for THIS novel, however there WILL most likely be spoilers for the first two novels of the series. 

I think this is the book that finally sold me fully and completely on the Vampire Academy series. I have thoroughly enjoyed the first two novels, and have enjoyed them enough to continue to read them, especially since everyone keeps telling me to read them, and keeps applauding me the further that I venture into the series. However, I think that with the first two books, I was merely reading them and enjoying them, and marveling at the fact that I was so enjoying books about vampires (gasp!) but after this third book, I can say, officially that I’m converted.

I am a fan. I’m a fan of the Vampire Academy series and I haven’t even finished it yet. This book was incredible. From beginning to end, it had me hooked. There was SO much going on in this book and it was hard to keep track of what was going to happen, what could possibly happen. Richelle Mead has completely mastered the idea of a red herring. She has your attention for so long on something and then suddenly, wham! Something happens that you honestly would have never expected and it leaves you wanting to throw the book against the wall. Not in a bad way though, in the best way. I was left absolutely flabbergasted, unaware that this was the way the book was going to end. I am COMPLETELY broke right now and am unable to purchase the fourth book right now, and I hate that. I want to know what happens next!

I really like that in this book, you really start to see more of Rose’s personality outside of her duty. Because of the events that have taken place in previous novels, she’s kind of a wreck in this novel but she refuses to believe for a moment that she is. She continues to stand tall, and straight and she refuses to ever let anyone think something is wrong because of her duty. She doesn’t want Lissa to know because Lissa will feel anxiety and Rose is extremely protective of Lissa and is her future guardian and doesn’t want to cause burden on her. She doesn’t want to share it with Dimitri, I feel, because it makes her look weak and it makes her look maybe younger, and that’s the last she wants. She’s in the last stages of her guardian training and its so hard for her. But as she starts to sort sift through the things going on in her life, she starts to focus more on herself and less on everyone else. She starts to question all the things she’s been taught is 100% law her entire life.

And I really like that direction that she’s going in, even if I’m confused and scared and anxious about where it will take her. I appreciate that Rose is dhampir, a guardian and that she wants to protect Lissa, but I’ve always felt like everything in the world gets set aside for that, including her own personal choices and life. She doesn’t really get to choose where to go to school; she’ll go to school wherever Lissa goes to school. She can’t choose to be with the one she loves because of her duties as a guardian. There is a lot holding her back and I feel like there is a huge part of this novel where she starts to question that and I like that. I like that Rose is not stuck in her ways, but she questions and she changes and she challenges and its going to be interesting to find out where this goes in the next few books.

I don’t want to say too much more because I fear that I will spoil it all but I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. There was so much that Richelle Mead put into this novel. There was a TON of action, there was friendship and romance and there were loyalties tested, and there was the psychology of what was going on with Rose that causes a lot of tension and anxiety and there’s just a lot going on in this book. From page one to the very end, it had me absolutely hooked and I can’t wait to speed through the rest of it to find out what happens next to the characters. She has a beautiful world built and a wonderful, exciting and gripping story going on and I am already so addicted.

So call me a fan. I’m a bandwagon fan, but I’m here. These books are SO good so far.

Rating:

5 out of 5 stars