Category Archives: Read This

Read This!: AFTER THE WOODS by Kim Savage

Read This, Reviews,

After the WoodsAfter the Woods by Kim Savage

Summary: Would you risk your life to save your best friend? Julia did. When a paroled predator attacked Liv in the woods, Julia fought back and got caught. Liv ran, leaving Julia in the woods for a terrifying 48 hours that she remembers only in flashbacks. One year later, Liv seems bent on self-destruction, starving herself, doing drugs, and hooking up with a violent new boyfriend. A dead girl turns up in those same woods, and Julia’s memories resurface alongside clues unearthed by an ambitious reporter that link the girl to Julia’s abductor. As the devastating truth becomes clear, Julia realizes that after the woods was just the beginning.

At once a twisty psychological thriller, an exploration of the shifting boundaries of friendship, and the story of two teenage girls attempting to navigate the toxic situations they have been dealt, this book will haunt you long after you reach the last page. Julia’s been called a hero, a miracle, a plucky teen who beat the odds – but she knows that there is more below the surface of the day that she attacked the man trying to kidnap her best friend, Liv, and was then taken by him in her place. Despite Liv’s deflections and the advice of her mother and therapist, Julia is determined to find out the truth – even if that means turning to a skeevy reporter ready to use Julia to further her own career. Julia made it out of the woods alive, but will she – and her friendship with Liv – survive the aftermath?

AFTER THE WOODS is out now.

View all my reviews

Read This!: LEARNING TO SWEAR IN AMERICA by Katie Kennedy

Read This, Reviews,

Learning to Swear in AmericaLearning to Swear in America by Katie Kennedy

Summary: An asteroid is hurtling toward Earth. A big, bad one. Yuri, a physicist prodigy from Russia, has been called to NASA as they calculate a plan to avoid disaster. He knows how to stop the asteroid: his research in antimatter will probably win him a Nobel prize–if there’s ever another Nobel prize awarded. But Yuri’s 17, and having a hard time making older, stodgy physicists listen to him. Then he meets Dovie, who lives like a normal teenager, oblivious to the impending doom. Being with her, on the adventures she plans when he’s not at NASA, Yuri catches a glimpse of what it means to save the world and save a life worth living.

What a joy this book was! For me, this was one of those reads where I didn’t want it to end, didn’t want to leave the world of the story behind, and I wanted to just hang out with the characters. Yuri is such a winning and relatable character – and that’s saying something, considering that he is a physics prodigy who’s never done any of the normal things most seventeen-year-olds have done, like kiss a girl or go to gym class. The secondary characters are just as three-dimensional, from the older scientists suspicious of Yuri’s abilities to teen artist Dovie and her hippie family, who expand Yuri’s horizons all the way to American swearing and the prom. This is my favorite kind of book: the kind where the story proceeds directly from the characters and the way they spin in and out of each other’s orbits. When the asteroid hurtling toward Earth turns out to be much more dangerous than originally thought, it’s Yuri’s teenage audacity as much as his brilliant mind that gives the world a fighting a chance. Yuri has to make choices at a grand, world-saving scale, and also at a much more intimate one, as he learns just how far he is willing to go to do the right thing.

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

LEARNING TO SWEAR IN AMERICA is out now.

View all my reviews

Read This!: UNDERWATER by Marisa Reichardt

Read This, Reviews,

UnderwaterUnderwater by Marisa Reichardt

Summary: Morgan didn’t mean to do anything wrong that day. Actually, she meant to do something right. But her kind act inadvertently played a role in a deadly tragedy. In order to move on, Morgan must learn to forgive—first someone who did something that might be unforgivable, and then herself. But Morgan can’t move on. She can’t even move beyond the front door of the apartment she shares with her mother and little brother. Morgan feels like she’s underwater, unable to surface. Unable to see her friends. Unable to go to school. When it seems Morgan can’t hold her breath any longer, a new boy moves in next door. Evan reminds her of the salty ocean air and the rush she used to get from swimming. He might be just what she needs to help her reconnect with the world outside.

This story easily could have become maudlin or trite in less skillful hands, but in Reichardt’s sensitive telling, it is a deeply compelling tale of a teenage girl finding her way back from tragedy. Morgan hasn’t left her apartment for months – she can’t shake the terror of the shooting at her high school, where she had an encounter with the shooter himself that she can’t admit to anyone. Anxiety, PTSD, and more than a little survivor’s guilt have kept her trapped in her apartment, pushing away her friends. Then Evan moves in next door, sparking her interest and her desire to venture out again, and she begins to take baby steps – to the welcome mat, to the top of the stairs, to the post office on the corner. The reader feels the difficulty of every step along with Morgan, the fear of opening herself up to other people even as she grows to understand that it’s the only way she can heal. With the help of her therapist, Morgan is finally able to move outside of focusing on her own pain and sympathize with that of others – her friends, the alcoholic father who abandoned her, and even the shooter himself. This book handles the shooter with remarkable humanity, never excusing his horrible actions but going far beyond the paint-by-numbers villain treatment that so many books about violence offer as Morgan tries to make sense of his actions. Morgan is a sensitive, brave, caring character trapped in a horrible circumstance, and her story demonstrates all the resilience of the human spirit.

UNDERWATER is out now.

View all my reviews

Read This!: GENESIS GIRL by Jennifer Bardsley

Read This, Reviews,

Genesis Girl (Blank Slate, #1)Genesis Girl by Jennifer Bardsley

Summary: Eighteen-year-old Blanca has lived a sheltered life. Her entire childhood has been spent at Tabula Rasa School where she’s been protected from the Internet. Blanca has never been online and doesn’t even know how to text. Her lack of a virtual footprint makes her extremely valuable, and upon graduation, Blanca and those like her are sold to the highest bidders. Blanca is purchased by Cal McNeal, who uses her to achieve personal gain. But the McNeals are soon horrified by just how obedient and non-defiant Blanca is. All those mind-numbing years locked away from society have made her mind almost impenetrable. By the time Blanca is ready to think for herself, she is trapped. Her only chance of escape is to go online

Blanca’s been kept digitally pure her whole life – away from the internet, with no virtual identity. Her future depends on it, because she is days away from graduation, when her digital identity will be harvested by a corporation who will make her the face of its advertising. Vestals like Blanca are considered trustworthy by the public because they have no nasty real identity to detract from the products they pitch. But Blanca’s fate changes when a virus – a viral blogger – takes her picture and posts it online. Purchased by the blogger’s father in attempt to reunite with his son, Blanca is soon drawn into a world she never imagined – one where actual feelings, relationships, and choices matter. Her purchaser, Cal, turns out to be a decent guy who wants to give Blanca a real life, and when she falls in love with his son, she begins to question everything she has been taught. When Blanca tries to help her Vestal friends, she is drawn into secrets and lies that go back to the very founder of the Vestal order. But Blanca’s greatest struggle is internal, as she fights against years of conditioning to become her own person and save the people she loves. A fast-paced cautionary tale about the dangers of technology and the even more insidious dangers of extremism.

GENESIS GIRL is out now.

View all my reviews

Read This!: HOW IT ENDS by Catherine Lo

Read This, Reviews,

How It EndsHow It Ends by Catherine Lo

Summary: It’s friends-at-first-sight for Jessie and Annie, proving the old adage that opposites attract. Shy, anxious Jessie would give anything to have Annie’s beauty and confidence. And Annie thinks Jessie has the perfect life, with her close-knit family and killer grades. They’re BFFs…until suddenly they’re not. 

Any female can tell you that friendships – especially best friendships – during adolescence can be as full of drama as any romantic relationship. And it can hurt a lot more when they implode, too. Very rarely are the nuances of female friendship so well explored as they are in HOW IT ENDS, where we see the alternating points of view of Jessie and Annie as they meet, connect, become best friends, and fall apart. I went in expecting, based on the title, that this would be chronicle of Jessie and Annie’s friendship from beginning to end; as I neared the end of the book, I was dreading the idea, because both girls were such winning characters and watching their friendship fall apart was painful. I am happy to report that the title doesn’t refer to what you think it does, and the book ends exactly as it needs to. Both Jessie and Annie have complex family lives and personalities that both drive them together and try to tear them apart. They face very real challenges – mental illness, teen pregnancy, bullying, a parent’s remarriage – but these elements never feel tacked on or heavy-handed.

I admit that, as a bookish introvert, I identified far more with Jessie than with Annie. I especially appreciated the way the author explores the intricacies of girl bullying, with the character of Courtney picking on Jessie so subtly, maliciously, and chronically that Annie doesn’t even see it. This story felt both universal and extremely personal and specific – these girls aren’t anybody’s symbols, but fully realized people struggling to figure out what’s most important in life.

HOW IT ENDS is out now.

View all my reviews