STACKED

books

Starters by Lissa Price

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Callie Woodland* and her brother, Tyler, are orphans – their parents were killed in the Spore Wars and they’ve been surviving on their own ever since. The Spore Wars actually killed off everyone between the ages of 20 and 60, and as a result, those over 60 have disenfranchised those under 20 of much of their rights: they can’t hold a job or vote, for instance. 
With no legal means of making money and no adult to claim them, Callie is desperate, especially since her brother is ill and in need of care. So she decides to sign on with Prime Destinations, a company that allows “Enders” (those over 60) to take over the bodies of “Starters” (those under 20) for a brief period of time. It allows the Enders to experience what it’s like to be youthful again and nets the Starters a significant amount of money.
Unfortunately for Callie, the procedure goes awry. She wakes up before the Ender who rented her body has relinquished it, but if she goes back to Prime Destinations and tells them, she won’t get paid. Callie isn’t even in complete control of her body at this point – she’ll black out again and then wake up in another place, knowing the Ender had re-taken control for that period of time. What’s more, she fears that the Ender has something dangerous in mind for her body, and Callie is determined to prevent it from happening.
Starters is such a fun read. It’s one of those books that you set down after reading the last page and say to yourself “Whew!” It’s a finish-in-one-sitting, don’t-want-to-put-it-down read, with bountiful secrets and breathless revelations. Basically what I’m saying is that Starters is a page-turner of the highest order.
Unlike some fast-paced, plot-driven books, Starters doesn’t feel thin or hastily put together. There’s some character development, one or two subplots, and at least some semblance of world-building (although that is probably its weakest part – more on this later). It’s unpredictable, twisty, and superbly written in that way that makes you completely fall into the story without surfacing until you realize you should probably eat sometime that day.
I always used to consider myself a stickler for world-building that makes sense in all aspects, but more and more I’m realizing that it’s not as important to me as long as the writer sells it with conviction. Delirium has, arguably, one of the most ridiculous premises I’ve ever encountered, but I quite enjoyed it despite that. Starters is a little more believable, but there were still a couple points that irritated me: 
1. The Spore Wars killed off everyone between the ages of 20 and 60 because they weren’t given the vaccine, but it’s impossible to believe that no one in this age range had access to it, legally or otherwise. The Spore Wars and the illness they caused are sketchy at best, so don’t go into this expecting any explanation.
2. Everyone over 60 is called an “Ender,” even though people at this point in time routinely live to 200 years of age or more. When not even half your life is finished, I don’t think you can really be called an “ender.”
Plot has always been my main reading love, and Starters has one of the best. It’s backed up by solid writing and an expert sense of timing. Starters is ideal for all readers who enjoy fast-paced, plot-driven, mind-bending reads, and especially for fans of Divergent.
(Do you like the cover? I don’t have anything against the shininess, but the image of Callie is really off-putting to me.)
*If I were this book’s editor, I would have asked Price to change her name to something a little less similar to “Caddie Woodlawn,” which I must have said in my mind a dozen times.
Review copy received from the publisher. Starters is available now.

This is Not a Test by Courtney Summers (+ giveaway)

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This is Not a Test Courtney SummersSloane Price picked today to end her life. She had it all planned out. Today was the day.

But then dad went and messed it up. Like he always did.

It wasn’t just dad throwing a wrench in the works, though. It was what was happening outside. What was causing destruction and havoc.

The zombies.

Sloane’s still alive a week later, as are five of her classmates, and together, they’ve built themselves protection in their school from the chaos outside. The thing is, Sloane still wants nothing more than to die.

This is not a test.

Courtney Summers delivers a unique take on zombies in her genre-bending This is Not a Test, and it’s one of those books I’m pretty sure will be sticking in my mind long enough this year to make it to my favorites list.

Sloane’s home life sucks — her father is extremely abusive. For much of her life, Sloane had her sister Lily to turn to, to love her, to support her, and to suffer with. They made a plan to escape their house together when Sloane turned 18. Except, Lily breaks the promise, leaving Sloane to fend for herself. The abuse is so much that Sloane has no reason to have hope anymore. In the initial scenes of the book, it’s evident how brutal her life has been, and she immediately garners sympathy. Even though what she wants to do isn’t necessarily sympathetic, it’s understandable. And when the zombies arrive, Sloane is elated; it’s her chance to die, and not at her own hands, either.

Once the initial zombie story unfolds, we’re tossed into Cortege High School, where Sloane and five fellow students have barricaded themselves inside. There’s Cary, Harrison, Rhys, and brother and sister duo Trace and Grace. It’s frantic and desperate at this point, at least to those five; Sloane, on the other hand, is annoyed. Her plans were ruined, and now that these five have dragged her to safety, she’s even more frustrated. The thing is, she can’t seem to find a way away from these people who want to live, and even when she has the chance to end her own suffering, she doesn’t.

And the zombies keep banging against the barricades. . .

Sloane is one of the most interesting and enjoyable characters I’ve read in a while, but she’s very challenging. She is obedient in every sense of the word. Because of everything with her father, there’s a sense of reluctance in her. She allows herself to be dragged to safety (where it would be easy for her to not), and she doesn’t actively seek out her options for dying when she has the chance at Cortege. Rather, she continues to follow what she believes is the right thing to do. To stay alive. Sloane is entirely removed from her body because of the abuse. Anything she could feel for herself has been taken away, physically and emotionally. That’s part of why she’s unable to actually go through with ending her life. Amid all of this, Sloane is likable; there’s just enough hope inside her and just enough desire to move forward to make readers pull for her and believe she can survive.

This is Not a Test is a character-driven novel, not a plot-driven novel. Despite the zombie apocalypse occurring, what matters in the story is not the undead coming alive but the living coming alive. Secondary characters in this book are fully developed, and they each serve distinct purposes for Sloane. Trace and Grace at first make her almost envious, as she’s watching how a brother and sister function together and love each other despite their differences and despite spats. Cary becomes a tap for Sloane, one that allows her to learn more about her sister Lily (and therefore herself). Harrison, the quietest character who has the least page time, serves almost as a mirror of Sloane herself — he’s used as a tool among the characters in a similar manner Sloane was used as a tool by her father. And finally Rhys, who comes off as sort of a dangerous guy, becomes a hugely important person in helping Sloane discover who she is. I found each of the characters interesting and realistic, and their desire to survive and protect one another worked well.

What Summers excels in is her use of subtlety to develop the characters, particularly Sloane. There are single lines or short scenes so raw they sting, and they speak volumes to who Sloane really is (who she is, not who she’s told she is or who she has come to believe she is — a big difference). One that stood out to me, that pushed home the fact Sloane really has no physical ownership of herself, comes when she’s observing Grace. She talks about how she’s never really had a body worth anything and that she wishes she could be like Grace and own what she had. Be confident in it. It’s telling not only for the obvious, but also for the less obvious, which is that tiny spark of hope still dwelling within Sloane, even when she’s told herself there is none. The pacing in the book is deliberately slow, begging the reader to pay attention to these things. The story doesn’t drag, though. Summers delivers on strong writing that doesn’t try too hard and works to advance these characters.

Moreover, this is a story about observation. Sloane is keen-eyed; she has to be because of her history. She’s watching everyone around her because she has no other choice, but she watches carefully how they interact with one another because she doesn’t quite have a true frame of reference for how people relate to one another in a healthy way. She romanticizes the sibling relationship between Trace and Grace, and she watches in both shock and admiration a private moment between Grace and Cary. And it’s that moment which sets her to the realization she deserves to have good things for herself. Rhys, too, is a character who thrives on observation, but his comes in the form of watching Sloane. That observation ends up propelling him to teach her about how she can come to own her own body, her own emotions, and her own future.

This is Not a Test is an extremely physical book. Each blow can be felt, as can each of the more tender moments. Not only is it physical in the body sense as it relates to Sloane, but it’s physical in its use of place — Sloane describes everything quite meticulously. We know where things are lined up, we know who is bringing in breakfast, and we know just how much blood has been spilled. The book doesn’t shy away from brutality nor does it shy away from being gruesome; despite being heavily vested in reality, it’s still a novel about the zombie apocalypse. The metaphor of the physical reality of Sloane and the other teens vs. the non-physicality of the zombies feels obvious, but it’s woven in smartly enough to pack a punch. I felt beat up and bruised reading this; fortunately, I had the same moments of hope and promise Sloane did throughout.

Perhaps the thing I appreciated most about this book was that Summers doesn’t throw in a romance to throw in a romance. In fact, there’s no romance in this book at all. While Rhys and Sloane share a couple of very intimate moments, they’re not at all sexy. They’re tender. They’re the result of Rhys’s observations of Sloane’s needs, and rather than allowing herself to be overshadowed or saved by a boy, Sloane’s instead coming into herself because of his selflessness. Because she’s allowed herself to finally feel and finally own herself. The softness with which some of this comes across had me near tears because of how much I had invested in Sloane herself. How much I wanted her to love herself.

This is Not a Test ended perfectly for me. There’s a definite conclusion to come away with, and the way it’s done is savvy. Sloane has to make a series of very difficult choices that force her to confront everything she’s been so eager to shy away from. She’ll revisit everything with Lily and her father and come to realize her body and her choices and her life are hers. So while this is a story of survival, it’s also a story about what we fight for, and why we fight for things at all.

I’ve talked at length about how much worked in this novel, but there were a few problems. The biggest one for me was it took a while to become invested in the secondary characters — I wanted to know them a little more from the onset, and I felt that Harrison sort of fell out of the story. It makes sense on some level because Sloane herself is determined not to get attached from the onset, but it didn’t make it forgivable for me. Harrison became a toy in a game of power for a while in the book, and to have him sort of disappear didn’t quite work for me. While he wasn’t important, I wanted a more solid break. My other big challenge was that I had difficulty gauging passage of time; while we’re given time frames, they weren’t always the easiest to discern. Again, this is due to the story being told from Sloane’s perspective and we know it’s skewed, but given how much she observes her world, it felt like something she’d have kept better tabs on (especially in light of how many days past her planned death day had then passed).

For me, this is Summers’s strongest novel to date. This is Not a Test takes the edgy and raw aspects of her contemporary stories and mashes it with the elements of a terrifying zombie apocalypse. I think there’s no doubt there’s a readership for this book, but I do think it might be a tad tricky to nail it. Fans of contemporary fiction will find Sloane’s story compelling but they may shy away a bit at the zombie element, whereas hardcore zombie fiction fans may find the story treads a little too closely to realistic fiction. They may also complain there are simply not enough zombies in the story. That said, I do think readers on either side of the divide will find something enjoyable here and those who love stories that transcend traditional genres will want to give this one a try. I could see this one working very well for fans of Cecil Castellucci’s First Day on Earth, as these books have a lot of interesting similarities in terms of theme and execution.

I’ve got a copy of This is Not a Test to give away for one lucky reader. Fill out the form below, and I’ll draw a winner June 30.

Review copy received from the publisher. This is Not a Test will be published June 19. In full disclosure, Courtney and I are friends. 

Enchanted by Alethea Kontis

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Sunday Woodcutter is the youngest of seven daughters, all named for days of the week. She is supposed to be “blithe and bonny and good and gay,” but what she really wants is to be interesting. She enjoys writing, but her stories have a nasty habit of coming true in the worst ways, so she writes only about things that have already happened. She’s busily scribbling in her journal in the forest when she encounters a frog. The frog, naturally, can speak. Sunday knows she lives in a magical world, so at the conclusion of their first conversation, she gives him a kiss as a courtesy to try and break the spell. Nothing happens.
Despite this initial disappointment, the two continue to meet each other and a friendship grows. It should come as no surprise to you that the frog does eventually turn back into a man – and it happens rather early on in the story. The rest of the book is concerned with the man-turned-frog-turned-man-again wooing Sunday on his own terms while trying to prevent her from finding out just what happened between him and Sunday’s (now dead) older brother, which could doom their relationship. There’s also a bit of political maneuvering with the king and a couple of fairy godmothers plus some interesting back story about Sunday’s very odd, very magical family.
Enchanted is a strange little book. While it’s predominantly inspired by The Frog Prince, it’s got elements of almost all major Western European fairy tales, including Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Rumpelstiltskin, Sleeping Beauty, and more. It became a fun sort of game to spot as many as I could. Kontis juggles it all well: it could have seemed like a hodgepodge without any real cohesion, but she neatly avoids that pitfall. Mostly it just seems clever.
I liked that Kontis used The Frog Prince as her springboard but did not limit herself to a mere re-telling. By that I mean she created a new mythology with new magic, injecting some originality into these very old stories. Unfortunately, this is also the story’s weakness. The fairy tale aspects were so easy to understand, but the new elements were often confusing. I suspect that I needed a bit more explanation of the magic as well as Sunday’s family history for it all to really crystallize in my mind.
Still, Kontis’ novel is an overall winner. It’s got some lovely writing, a fun mix of new and old, and an interesting protagonist in Sunday (and her sisters are equally interesting – I particularly liked the one that eloped with a pirate, even though I think she actually gets no physical page time). Hand this to readers who like their retold fairy tales to remain plainly in the fairy tale realm – no modernization required. I suspect it would go over well with fans of Ella Enchanted, but as always, it nowhere approaches that book’s greatness (in fairness to Enchanted, nothing ever does).
Review copy provided by the publisher. Enchanted is available now.

The False Prince by Jennifer Nielsen

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This is a really hard book for me to review. Not because I didn’t enjoy it (which I did), but because I think the discussion about it needs to involve a major spoiler. Without discussing the spoiler, the review doesn’t get the chance to say a whole lot of substance (in my view), so I’m going to bite the bullet and weave the spoiler in. Not right at the beginning – I’ll warn you in bold before I start discussing it, so if you’d like to avoid the spoiler, you’re safe reading the first part.
Fourteen year old Sage is an orphan in the country of Carthya. He’s got no family and no money, although he does have a home in a sad little orphanage run by a woman who doesn’t like him (or any of the orphans, really). He gets by in life by stealing: food, money, whatever he can get his hands on. Except one day, someone steals him. That someone is a noble by the name of Conner, and he has big plans for Sage and three other boys he’s taken.
Prince Jaron of Carthya, the heir to the throne, disappeared during a pirate attack at sea a few years ago and has been presumed dead since. Conner intends to make one of his boys into the picture of the prince and place him on the throne. All in the name of patriotism of course: with no apparent heir to the throne, the late king’s advisers are chomping at the bit to be named the next ruler, and it could send the country into civil war, which would in turn make Carthya susceptible to attack by neighboring countries.
None of the boys resemble the dead prince too closely, but Conner is convinced that with the proper training, clothing, and hair dye, he can pull it off. Of course, only one of the boys can be his choice. As to what would happen to the others – well, Conner can’t let anyone talk about his plans to anyone else, can he? Sage isn’t sure if he’s down with this competition, but when the alternative is death, there really isn’t a choice.
WARNING: SPOILER BELOW
I’m an avid review-reader. Before I pick up a book, I go to Goodreads and see what people are saying about it. Sometimes it will convince me to give the book a pass, and sometimes it will make me more excited to read it. In this case, reading reviews helped me spot the spoiler, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing. I don’t read reviews with spoilers deliberately, and none of the reviews I read actually revealed the spoiler, but they revealed enough. Really, all they had to do was tell me that the book reminded them of The Thief.
If you’ve read The Thief and you’ve read this far in my review, I bet you can call the ending of The False Prince without even reading the first page. I sure could. Every time I think about this book, I wonder if I would have discovered the twist at the end if I had not read that comparison, and I honestly can’t say. Perhaps. But it would have been harder, it would have taken me longer, and I wouldn’t have been so sure until I got there.
When I first read The Thief, the twist ending is what elevated it from a book I really liked to one I would remember forever. It was all good, but the real joy came in re-reading and determining just where Turner had dropped those hints. In The False Prince, I looked for those hints right from page 1, and they seemed so easy to spot. It makes me struggle to determine the true quality of the book – is the twist a gimmick because it’s predictable and too similar to another middle grade fantasy novel? Or is my experience with The Thief clouding my judgment?
I don’t know the answer to those questions. What I do know is that despite my foreknowledge, I still raced through the book and was completely engaged the entire time. Even though I knew how it would end, I wanted to see how Nielsen got us there. So I can safely say it’s a good book, but I don’t know about great. It’s got plenty of excitement, a lot of action, and a good voice in Sage. Sage’s fellow prince contenders are quite well drawn, as are the two female ancillary characters, though they don’t get a lot of page time. And I definitely plan on reading the sequels. Nielsen can’t use this same trick in them, so I’m interested to see where the story goes.

Level 2 by Lenore Appelhans: Cover & (P)review

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Over the last couple of years of blogging, I’ve had the chance to meet so many great people, and one of them is Lenore Appelhans. We had the chance to spend quite a bit of time together at last year’s BEA, where we talked about books we loved, about authors we’re huge fans of, and about her book. Since then, we’ve talked more often than not, and earlier this year, she approached me about beta reading Level 2. It meant a lot to be asked to offer feedback and suggestions and I was so excited to do it for her.

I can’t imagine how nerve-wracking it was for her to ask that, but I’ll tell you this much: I was just as nervous to read and give honest feedback on her story. It’s a different world than when you’re reading a finished book and review it. You have to remove your own preferences or preconceptions of genre and instead evaluate the story as it stands. You also have to completely separate story from writer, too, in a way that’s much more challenging than when you review a book.

I was scared, too, because Level 2 wasn’t my kind of book.

As I was reading and offering feedback, though, I found myself invested in this story. These characters were so well-developed and the world was well-built. It’s never quite clear who is good and who is bad, and what the characters tell you about themselves doesn’t necessarily end up being the case. There’s palpable and fierce romantic tension here, too.

But before I offer you up my review — which is less a review and more a recommendation because I cannot possibly review this book without bias — Lenore asked me if I’d be willing to share the full finished jacket of her book. You’ve already seen the behind-the-scenes work of what went into the creation of the jacket, but what I’ve got here is the full deal.

When I first saw this cover, I fell in love. Aside from fitting the story so well, it avoids many of the things I don’t care for in YA covers. First, it’s bright: this is a book that’s going to stand out on bookshelves because it’s white and pinkish orange, a combination that pops. The use of the circles all over exist in the story. The cover model, who looks a little bit like Bjork, is how I imagined Felicia to appear. She’s facing readers in the image, and it’s clear she is pained. It’s clear she’s aching. But rather than looking passive, the girl on the cover here doesn’t look like she’s ready to just take it. The tension in her body language says she’s going to fight.

If there were a few words I could use to describe Felicia, Level 2‘s main character, they would be pained, aching, and….a fighter.

The cover is so clean and crisp, and that’s precisely how I imagined the world of Level 2. But there’s something amiss in a world that’s so sterile. And I think this captures that well. I’m also a huge fan of how the title and author name is sideways, and that style is mimicked on the chapter headings, too.

Anyone who follows me on Goodreads has probably seen my comments on this title already, but now that the cover’s out there, I’m going to share them again here. Before I do, I want to put the disclaimer out there that I read this in manuscript form — well before this made it to galley form — and some elements of the story have been changed since my read.

Felicia’s life in Level 2 is comfortable. She’s got everything she needs, and she’s able to be so content because she can slip into her machine and relive her memories. Except she is unable to be happy because she can’t put her finger on what happened to her. The problem is she keeps reliving a memory that breaks her heart: she keeps living through the time she lost her chance with Neil, the boy she’d fallen for. When she’s about to reach the truth, it slips away from her cruelly.

So when Julian shows up in Level 2 and promises he can reunite Felicia with Neil, she jumps at the chance to know the truth about her life, her death, and to reunite with Neil.

Appelhans’s debut is a dystopia with a dash of the supernatural, written in compelling, action-packed prose. What seems like a fairly straightforward story of escaping from what looks like a utopian world — Level 2 — turns out to be something much more sinister. Felicia is caught between two worlds, and the success or failure of either and both depend upon her. The story is told both in the present and in the past, through Felicia’s memories, which gives the reader not only a sense of who she is now, but a real feel for the whole girl who has lost so much in her life.

What made this book work for me was that it’s never clear cut who is good and who is bad. It’s easy to see Felicia as the good girl, but there are many times I wondered if she wasn’t. If she was just as bad as people like Julian…or if Julian himself was even bad. He did offer Felicia a chance to meet Neil again, even if it meant giving away a part of herself. When it looks like he wants to do nothing more than use her as a tool, he flips the switch and gives readers (and Felicia) reason to wonder if he really DOES want the best for her. That he’s not being selfish and greedy. Appelhans does a great job of never hand-holding the reader.

I’m not a romantic, but the moments between Felicia and Neil made my heart swell quite a bit, especially since it was so uncertain. But I can so see readers thinking they’re very wrong for each other. That Julian is the person to whom Felicia should give her heart. There’s also the question of whether Felicia deserves to be with anyone, given her less-than-perfect history.

Level 2 is a complete story, though there are enough threads left open to warrant another installment. 

As a thanks for giving feedback, Lenore sent me a copy of the soundtrack she made while writing the story (and German chocolate!).  If I could pick one song that really captures the essence of Level 2, it would be this: 

Interested yet? Make sure you head over to Lenore’s blog for a chance to win an ARC of Level 2 and add this book to your Goodreads shelves here. Level 2 is slated for a January 15, 2013 release.