You will know how it feels.

You by Charles Benoit

Haunting.  This is the word that is sticking with me after finishing this book.  Kyle Chase is a fifteen year old boy that is trying to be himself but he can’t actually find out what that means.  His parents and teachers talk at him, his friends are losers that he doesn’t even like.  His grades are beyond help but there is always Ashley.  He doesn’t know what brought him to where he is and he realizes that every decision big and small change your life. 

You is written in second person and it is a fantastic example of how to use second person correctly.  To me, second person is the hardest point of view to explain and to use.  English teachers, read this book so you know where to send your teenage students!

I tried to explain the book to a co-worker and had a difficult time telling her exactly why I was enjoying it so much.  First, I think it’s interesting to be in the perspective of Kyle, a hard to get to know character.  I felt that he was a good kid at heart, but was constantly looked down upon from his folks and teachers.  It’s like everyone expected him to be a screw up, poor kid.  Second has to be the second person point of view, loved it! Third, would be Zack.  I can’t give any spoilers, but it’s just a character you would love to hate.  Very interesting.

This book took me just a few hours to read, it’s fast paced and a good read.  I recommend it to anyone that has a free weekend to read a book.  Keep Reading my Friends!

Who is without Hope?

Hopeless by Colleen Hoover

Sky Davis is about to start her first year of high school, as a senior.  Her adopted mother Karen has been incredibly strict with her and has kept all technology out of the house including cell phones, TVs, computers, you name it the Davis family doesn’t have it.  Sky has been ok with this, but she has begged her mother to start public school to spend as much time with her best friend Six.  Every good book needs a little twist at the beginning, therefore Six has decided to go abroad and go to school overseas for 6 months and now Sky is starting her first year by herself.  She is struggling with a reputation she didn’t earn or deserve.  She meets Breckin, who is also new to school and therefore she can bear the “slut and whore” comments behind her back with a friend.  One fated day she goes to the grocery store and meets Dean Holder.  The most gorgeous creature she has ever laid eyes on, where the other boys in her school turn her off, when she meets eyes with Holder there is a physical response to his presence.  She can’t stop thinking about her encounter with this hopeless boy so she goes for a run, she literally runs to his house without realizing it.  There is so much that takes place in this book that I can’t give you a synopsis on everything.  

This book was awesome.  I could tell some things were coming, but I was taken by surprise by more twists in the story line than I was guessing correctly.  I loved the love story between Sky and Holder.  He was the perfect guy.  I couldn’t believe the things that would come out of his mouth, he was wise beyond his years and would say things to Sky that a normal senior in high school would not say.  This could pull a person out of the story and say “Yeah right!” but Holder was nothing but genuine and perfect.  I loved Sky’s funny sense of humor and the way she would just live her life, whether it was with Six, Holder, or Breckin she was fun and a great character to read. 

I gave this book 5 stars on good reads, I finished it the day after I started it, and I’ve already recommended it to other readers.  Everyone I know that has read it loved it and I think that any reader would fall for these characters and want the book to keep going and going.  I wonder though if it was a little graphic in the love scenes for a young adult book.  It wasn’t Fifty Shades of Cray or anything, but there were some pretty hot scenes that I wouldn’t want my teenage daughters (that I don’t have) reading it.  I would say 17 and older for this one.  Read this book, you won’t be disappointed.  Keep Reading my Friends!

Fang and Angel, coming to the end of Maximum Ride

 
Fang by James Patterson and Angel by James Patterson (Both Maximum Ride Novels)

In Fang, we watch as Fang and Maximum Ride become a couple, separate from the flock and rejoin all with Angel trying to become the leader and undermining Max’s authority and telling Max and Fang that Fang will soon die and leave them forever.  We are also introduced to Dr. Hans and Dylan, a power hungry doctor and the clone that he created to be Max’s exact match. 

In Angel, Fang has left the flock and formed his own gang as Max tries to learn to live and lead the flock without her right hand man.  Angel seems to have let go of her need to lead and is submitting to Max’s authority but there is a new group out to destroy the world.  Their message is to save the world, kill all humans.  As both Max and Fang’s groups try and find the root of the world phenomenon The Dooms Day Group, they may have to form alliances to take down this seemingly evil group.  But while Fang is away, Dylan looses no time in letting Max know his true feelings about her and it quickly becomes a thing between them. 

This series is an interesting story, from the beginning we’ve watched the bird kids grow up a little and defeat all odds to not only stay alive, but to beat anyone who is trying to destroy the world.  These two books are the sixth and seventh book in the series and there is only one left.  The question of the day is, do I continue and finish this last book of the series or do I quit while I’m ahead?  I’ll probably finish it.  This series is written for a much younger audience than even I read.  It would be great for ages 12-14ish.  I of course am always behind so I’m reading it in my… well never mind.  So, if you have read the other books, go on and keep going, but if you have not started the series, then I’m not recommending this series.  Keep Reading My Friends! 

Love Cannot Be Stopped

Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver

This is the second book after Delirium, where the government and religious leaders have found that love is a disease.  When a person turns eighteen they are taken to a clinic to remove the section of his or her brain in order not to love.  Spoilers for Delirium from here on out, you’ve been warned!!!

Lena and Alex were caught.  The gate to their condemned hide out was found and she was taken back to her house and the procedure was scheduled for the next morning.  She ends up escaping with Alex, wild chase both Lena and Alex are hurt.  Lena makes it over the fence, Alex does not and the last we see of our hero, he is shot, bleeding and on the wrong side of the fence. When we come back to Pandemonium Lena is dying.  She is found by Raven an Invalid or otherwise known as free.  The book is a great show of what life is like on the other side of the fence.  We meet new characters and learn of a new life. 

The book is split into “now” and “then” and we switch back and forth between the past and what it currently taking place, all events are after Delirium.  Oliver did an excellent job of balancing the past and present and it makes Lena a deeper character and helps us understand her as a free person better.  In the present, Lena, Raven and Tack have joined the Resistance in New York and Lena’s job is to get close to the DFA, an organization against love and for the procedure.  She is supposed to go to all meetings and stay unseen.  This poses a problem when the leader’s son Julian is kidnapped and in order to stay close, she follows him down into the unused subway tunnels and is taken along with him.  As they are trapped for days and Lena keeps slipping about who she is and about her procedure being fake Julian learns a lot more about the resistance that he bargained for. 

The ending of this book will remain in my mind as a one of the craziest endings ever.  “Don’t believe her.” When those words were spoken, my heart leapt into my throat and I couldn’t believe what was happening.  I won’t spoil it, you just have to read it to see what happened.  I cannot wait for Requiem, the third and final book. 

If you are looking for a fresh new young adult series, look no further.  Delirium is different, outstanding and well written.  Keep reading my friends!

Love is a Battlefield

Delirium by Lauren Oliver

There is a cure for love.  The disease that can be transmitted causes horrible side effects and in some cases, even death.  Lena waits in anticipation for her procedure to be completed at the end of the summer on her eighteenth birthday, she and her best friend Hana have looked forward to their evaluations and being matched with an acceptable mate, career path and even the number of children the couple will have.  The government takes care of all of this for the citizens of the United States. But what happens when Deliria is contracted and love is caught?  This summer romance my not end exactly the way the reader anticipates.

I loved this book.  Delirium came highly recommended by my friend Traci.  She said it wouldn’t disappoint, and she was right.  It was well written with interesting characters.  I loved Lena and how she grew as a person throughout the entire story.  She kept surprising herself and doing activities that she would have never done months previous.  I also loved Alex, he was sweet and caring and had a good personality.  Hana was a little harder to understand and get to know.  She had this bad girl exterior but was contradicted with Lena’s perspective of her best friend whenever the law was supposed to come down. 

I love these young adult books that are different concepts.  I would put this book in the Hunger Games genre of a futuristic USA/North America.  I want to have creative juices flowing like this, I mean, who thinks of the concept of outlawing Love?  That’s crazy, but Oliver came up with it and sold lots of books, it will probably be a movie and make a few select people a lot of money.     

I would highly recommend this book to anyone that likes a good young adult read.  I can’t wait to start the next installment and then I will wait with crazy restraint for the third and I believe final book of the series. 

Let me know what you thought about this book!  Keep Reading my Friends!

Love within a Family

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

My parents were born in the mid Fifties, as was Mariam.  I was born in the early Eighties, as was Laila.  As I was growing up in the southern United States, Laila was growing up in Afghanistan in war.  Although these countries were going through hell, and neither character knew anything but war and misery, I knew nothing about these things.  I was sheltered from news around the world until 2 planes flew into two buildings in New York and I first heard the words, Al Qaeda, Taliban, and names like bin Laden.  I would like to place blame on my school growing up for not giving us information about international affairs, I could blame my parents for not making me watch CNN or Fox News while in high school, but when I think back on my oh so comfortable life, I can only blame myself.   Because even if I would have known that these horrible acts of war were going on in countries and miles away I would not have cared.  It would have been another test, another lesson, or something that I wasn’t really listening to while thinking about all of the things going on in my life.  Like being the editor of the yearbook, being section leader of my instrument in band, that cute boy from the other school, while Laila is living years that are hell beyond anything that I could ever imagine. 

Hosseini takes the audience down a crazy path when 16 chapters into the book he changes characters and there is no skip in the story or building of the old or new characters.  Usually when there is a drastic change in a book that’s when I take a break, go do a load of laundry, watch a movie, etc.  Not with this book, I kept reading and was more in love with the characters with every turn of the page. 

I read The Kite Runner first by this author and loved it.  I immediately picked A Thousand Splendid Suns and was horribly disappointed when it was different character and a different setting altogether.  I returned it to my “borrowed books” stack on my book shelf and didn’t touch it for a very long time.  Now that my “borrowed book” pile is gone and the last book read, I am glad that I waited and enjoyed this book without comparing.  I loved A Thousand Splendid Suns so much and enjoyed the characters, the heart ache, and the redemption that at last we long for and get to see a small section of what is to come. 

I hope you take the time to read A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Kite Runner, both are excellent reads and I enjoyed both!  Keep Reading my friends!

Next Book Please.

Rapture by Lauren Kate

I did not like this book.  The writing was horrible, not just the style, but the grammar and word choice, the characters were uninteresting and boring.  I wanted to quit, but I knew that this was the last book of the series and I just couldn’t stop midway through.  I’m not saying this was the worst book of my reading career, but it was pretty close.  I did not like Fallen, the first book of the series, but the second book was pretty good, the third book I liked a lot so I waited with high anticipation for this last book to come out.  I don’t know if I waited too long, read too many good books between 3 and 4, or if it just sucked that bad, but I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone.  I actually wouldn’t suggest this series to anyone either.  Save your time, there are too many excellent books out there that will entertain and heighten your reading experience and help you to enjoy other books, this book just made me want to read something else.  Anything else!

This book is about a fallen angel and the girl that is reincarnated every lifetime in a curse of repeating meeting each other and dying and being born, meeting each other dying and doing it over and over throughout the span of time.  This lifetime is different because she was born into a family that has no religious affiliation and therefore her soul is up for grabs from both heaven and hell. 

Keep Reading my Friends, just not this book.