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Geeks and the Holy Grail (Camelot Code #2), by Mari Mancusi, for Timeslip Tuesday

The first book in the Camelot Code series, The Once and Future Geek , mixed time travel between the medieval world of King Arthur and our own, and it is a very entertaining book.  The second book in the series, Geeks and Holy Grail (Hyperion, October 2019), is also entertaining (though not quite as funny; King Arthur as a modern day high school student is hard to beat....). When Morgana, sworn enemy of King Arthur, attacks the druids of Avalon, Nimue, the youngest of them, takes the Holy Grail and runs with it.  King Arthur is dying, and only the Grail can save him.  Desperate to keep it from falling into Morgana's hands, she stumbles into Merlin's Crystal Cave.  But instead of Merlin there to help her (he's on vacation in Los Vegas, in our time), there's only his very inexperienced apprentice, Emrys.  His attempt to hide the grail works, in a sense--as a small, flatulent dragon, it sure doesn't look much like a grail.  But it isn't much use to Arthur as a...
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The Secret

The Secret

'Starters' by Lissa Price

Can I just start by saying this is a terrible cover? Awful design, the person looks ugly and fake, and it has pretty much nothing to do with the book. In fact, I thought this would be a robot book at first. Plus, the little phrase is unrelated to the plot. 'Survival is just the beginning.' Ugh.

So, the summary tells me that this book is set in a post-apocalypse setting. There's a girl and her younger brother (the brother being near death) hiding from authorities that will... what? Kill them? It was never clear why they were hiding.
Anyways, to get money, the girl (Callie) sells her body. No, it's not prostitution. Her body is now a rental body that rich old people can enter and live in for a bit. The organization that controls this operation is called Prime Destinations.

This is definitely a good start. The plot is creative and full of opportunities for self-reflection, nuance, and moral issues. Heck, I think this book could even go to the level of Miyazaki, if well played.

However, the book immediately (well, not immediately, I guess - more on that later) plunged into "Oh golly Prime Destinations is so evil!" There's no thought, no real conflict (plenty of angst, though) - I would classify this book more as a chick flick book than a fantasy, adventure - whatever the book portrayed itself as in the beginning. Oh yeah, there's a love triangle. Naturally, Cassie is in the middle of it - and she obviously doesn't respect herself (love triangle wise) so I find it hard to respect her.
Also, the world is poorly built. Nothing is fully explained (as I mentioned earlier), so you can't form a picture in your head. I ended up putting a stereotypical dark gray, ashy, dead city apocalypse setting in my head - which didn't entirely fit the book. Thus, coherence was lost.

Shortly after Cassie sells her body to Prime Destinations, she is immersed in multiple conspiracies, romances, and betrayals. Sure, she doesn't know who to trust - I'm okay with that. What I ablsolutely despised was that Cassie would trust one side with all her heart - be traumatized at her betrayal and move to side 2 (whom she would also trust with all her heart) - then be traumatized at being betrayed and go back to side 1 (and trust with all her heart - you get the picture). It's so cliche, so dramatic, so.... obvious. It's boring!
In the end, I hated the book, I hated the plot, I hated all the characters, and most of all I hated Cassie. Don't read this book.

I would rate this a 1. Perhaps a Sadaharu Aoki caramel macaron (see link). It's wonderful, you expect it to at the very least be a decent dessert. Instead, you get a stale and hard shell, burnt caramel, disgusting flavor... You go from excited to ready-to-vomit. There are so many better desserts to eat (or, in this case, books to read) - don't even bother picking this one up.

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Storm

By: D.J. MacHale This is the sequel to SYLO where a small island off the coast of Maine was invaded by the US Navy (the US navy is called SYLO).  The main characters, Tucker, Kent, Olivia, and Tori escaped from Pemberwick and got to Portland, Maine.  In Storm they pick up another character, Jon, a doctor from a Portland hospital.  As it turns out the US Navy is at war with the US Airforce.  Over three fourths of the worlds population is dead.  Tucker, Tori, Kent, Olivia, and, Jon are trying to get to Nevada where a radio signal they picked up said to come if they wanted to fight back.  There is a lot of action and the plot moves along at a good pace.  One thing that was different from the first book was how much you found out about their relationships.  Kent is with Olivia and Tucker is with Tori.  It sort of bothered me that they were so into who was with who when they were trying to figure out why most of the world's population was killed. ...
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