Category Archives: Reviews

Read This!: SUFFER LOVE by Ashley Herring Blake

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Suffer LoveSuffer Love by Ashley Herring Blake

Summary: “Just let it go.” That’s what everyone keeps telling Hadley St. Clair after she learns that her father cheated on her mother. But Hadley doesn’t want to let it go. She wants to be angry and she wants everyone in her life—her dad most of all—to leave her alone. Sam Bennett and his family have had their share of drama too. Still reeling from a move to a new town and his parents’ recent divorce, Sam is hoping that he can coast through senior year and then move on to hassle-free, parent-free life in college. He isn’t looking for a relationship…that is, until he sees Hadley for the first time. Hadley and Sam’s connection is undeniable, but Sam has a secret that could ruin everything. Should he follow his heart or tell the truth?

When I first started reading this book, I didn’t think I would like the two main characters very much. But less than twenty pages in, as I got to know them better, I started to fall in love with both of them. (And don’t even get me started on Sam’s friend Ajay. I burn, I pine, I perish for an Ajay-centric novel.) That experience is the whole point of this sensitive, deeply involving story: it’s easy to judge the choices other people make, but there’s always more behind them. Sam and Hadley’s relationship, by any sane standard, should be impossible. But it’s real and lovely and deliciously steamy. Ashley Herring Blake writes some of the best makeout scenes I have ever read. Filled with characters who are both deeply flawed and deeply likable, this is a book that will suck you in.

SUFFER LOVE is out now.

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Read This!: RESURRECTING SUNSHINE by Lisa A. Koosis

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Resurrecting SunshineResurrecting Sunshine by Lisa A. Koosis

Summary: At seventeen, Adam Rhodes is famous, living on his own, and in a downward spiral since he lost the girl he loved. Marybeth – stage name Sunshine – was his best friend from the days they were foster kids; then she was his girlfriend and his band mate. But since her accidental death, he’s been drinking to deal with the memories. Until one day, an unexpected visitor, Dr. Elloran, presents Adam with a proposition that just might save him from himself. Using breakthrough cloning and memory-implantation techniques, Dr. Elloran and the scientists at Project Orpheus want to resurrect Marybeth, and they need Adam to “donate” intimate memories of his life with her. The memory retrieval process forces Adam to relive his life with Marybeth and the devastating path that brought them both to fame. Along the way, he must confront not only the circumstances of her death but also his growing relationship with the mysterious Genevieve, daughter of Project Orpheus’s founder. As the process sweeps Adam and Marybeth ever closer to reliving the tragedy that destroyed them, Adam must decide how far he’ll go to save her.

This stunner of a story has largely flown under the radar, which is inconceivable to me. With its ethics-stretching premise and compelling plot, this book is ideal for bookclubs and classroom discussions: it’s a page-turner that keeps you engaged from the start, it’s got an ending that readers are sure to have strong opinions about, and it’s even in paperback, making multiple copies affordable. Get on this, teachers and librarians! Adam is a flawed, emotional mess, his voice keeping the science stuff firmly grounded in the effect it has on real people’s lives, and he is at once admirable and pitiable in his quest to do right by those he loves. This book kept me up late several nights in a row because I *had* to find out what happened next. With its big questions about who deserves a second chance, who actually gets one, and what do with the chances we’re given, RESURRECTING SUNSHINE will engage your mind and heart in equal measure.

RESURRECTING SUNSHINE is out now.

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Read This!: THE LAST CHERRY BLOSSOM by Kathleen Burkinshaw

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The Last Cherry BlossomThe Last Cherry Blossom by Kathleen Burkinshaw

Summary: Yuriko was happy growing up in Hiroshima when it was just her and Papa. But her aunt Kimiko and her cousin Genji are living with them now, and the family is only getting bigger with talk of a double marriage! And while things are changing at home, the world beyond their doors is even more unpredictable. World War II is coming to an end, and Japan’s fate is not entirely clear, with any battle losses being hidden fom its people. Yuriko is used to the sirens and the air-raid drills, but things start to feel more real when the neighbors who have left to fight stop coming home. When the bomb hits Hiroshima, it’s through Yuriko’s twelve-year-old eyes that we witness the devastation and horror.  This is a story that offers young readers insight into how children lived during the war, while also introducing them to Japanese culture. Based loosely on author Kathleen Burkinshaw’s mother’s firsthand experience surviving the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, The Last Cherry Blossom hopes to warn readers of the immense damage nuclear war can bring, while reminding them that the “enemy” in any war is often not so different from ourselves.

Yes, this is a story about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and that makes it a much-needed entry into children’s literature. But Burkinshaw does something much more than just give readers a child’s-eye view of a horrific event: in this sensitive novel, inspired by events in her own mother’s life, she plops readers right in the middle of the joys and sorrows, the friendships and messy realities and sometimes petty rivalries of Yuriko’s childhood. The foreboding losses of war (and the government propaganda that insists Japan is winning, always winning – chilling to read in our current politic landscape) are threaded throughout the narrative, but when the pika don (literally “flash boom”) comes, it is a shock to the reader as much as it is to Yuriko. Because really, who could ever anticipate such horror? The aftermath of the atomic bomb is handled in a straightforward but not overly graphic manner, and the focus is always kept on Yuriko’s story, as it should be. In this slim volume, Burkinshaw takes an historical event that is too large for most of us to wrap our minds around and brings it to the scale we can all understand: the effect on the life of a character we have come to care about. Like the cherry blossoms that bloomed in the year after the bombing, defying all the odds, Yuriko learns how to find hope and courage in the ashes.

THE LAST CHERRY BLOSSOM is out now.

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Read This!: THE LAST OF AUGUST by Brittany Cavallaro

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The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes #2)The Last of August by Brittany Cavallaro

Summary: Jamie Watson and Charlotte Holmes are looking for a winter break reprieve in Sussex after a fall semester that almost got them killed. But nothing about their time off is proving simple, including Holmes and Watson’s growing feelings for each other. When Charlotte’s beloved uncle Leander goes missing from the Holmes estate—after being oddly private about his latest assignment in a German art forgery ring—the game is afoot once again, and Charlotte throws herself into a search for answers.  So begins a dangerous race through the gritty underground scene in Berlin and glittering art houses in Prague, where Holmes and Watson discover that this complicated case might change everything they know about their families, themselves, and each other.

I was lucky enough to read an early version of this book. And I guess it says a great deal about how much I LOVE this book and this series that I had already read it 5 times before its release date. I can’t pretend to be anything like objective when it comes to Jamie Watson and Charlotte Holmes. I love their relationship, with all its complications and twists and turns. I love how every character in this book is painted in vivid color. I love the voices of the characters – oh, man, the voices – Jamie’s wry, smart, adrenaline-fueled narration, and the fact that we get several chapters of Charlotte’s cool, precise voice at the helm (because Jamie is basically unconscious for that period, naturally). I want these books to be blankets, so I can build myself a fort out of them and never emerge.

THE LAST OF AUGUST is out now.

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Read This!: IT’S A MYSTERY, PIG FACE! by Wendy McLead MacKnight

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It's a Mystery, Pig Face!It’s a Mystery, Pig Face! by Wendy McLeod MacKnight

Summary: Eleven-year-old Tracy Munroe and her family have just gotten back from their family vacation—why did no one realize that her little brother, Lester, a.k.a. Pig Face, was allergic to sand, salt air, and the ocean before they decided to go to the beach?—and now she has three big goals to accomplish before she goes back to school: Figure out a fantastic end of summer adventure with her best friend, Ralph, budding Michelin-star chef. (And no, Ralph, perfecting a soufflé does not count.) Make sure Pig Face does not tag along. Get the gorgeous new boy next door, Zach, to know she even exists. But when Tracy and Ralph discover an envelope stuffed with money in the dugout at the baseball field (and Lester forces them to let him tag along), they have a mystery on their hands. Did someone lose the cash? Or, did someone steal it? St. Stephen has always seemed like a quiet place to live, but soon the town is brimming with suspects. Now they’re on a hunt to discover the truth, before the trio is accused of the crime themselves.

It’s a mystery, all right – and it’s a great middle grade read, too! Tracy isn’t so excited when her little brother Lester, AKA Pig Face, inserts himself into the amateur detective work that she and her best friend Ralph have decided to undertake. But it turns out that the precocious, if annoying, nine-year-old is just what they need to keep them grounded as the case of the found bag of money spins out of control, and Tracy’s own attempts to hang with the cool kids get the better of her. A funny, tender, and achingly real tale of friendship and sibling bonds.

IT’S A MYSTERY, PIG FACE! is out now.

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