Kate's Tales of Books and Bands

By: Carey Corp and Lorie Langdon Once again I found myself reading a romance.  This is not exactly my genre.  While I can admire romances in books with intricate plots, romances just  don't do the same thing for me.  In general, I find it annoying when one character is constantly thinking about another.  This was an average romance.  The main character Veronica was in love with another character, Jamie, the entire time.  There was some suspense and action but most of it was about the romance, which makes sense, because Doon is a romance.  I won't say it was an extraordinary romance but it also didn't fall short.  Veronica is a girl from the United States.  Her dad left her when she was 12, her mom is marrying someone she hates, and her boyfriend just left her.  Overall, her life is pretty bad.  Her friend Kenna takes her to Scotland for the summer where they discover a magical world called Doon.  Doon passes time at about...

Written by: Lisa T. Bergren Gnaw on some beef jerky and a loaf of bread for this diverting novel. Everyone feels like hunkering down for a gritty adventure novel once in a while, and I recommend this one. Set in the gritty and unappealing future, a pack of gifted warrior teens (the remnants) are burdened with the task of saving the world. Andriana, the main character with the power of reading emotions travels through the empire with her companions, searching for the missing members of their bedraggled yet fearsome squad. They must fight the wealth disparity in the country, the crippling and oppressive upper echelon who keep the masses under their heavily bejeweled thumbs. There's a whole lot of action in this novel, and I got to get down and dirty in the mud with the remnants. The plot was packed with fight scenes and escape scenes, captivating scenery, and an overwhelming sense of urgency. Bergren took me through forests, caves, waterfalls, cloud, and mountains. Danger was everywh...

Written by: Heather Terrell Relic: Grab a Popsicle and chill out as you read this one (oh so punny). Relic is set in the future, after the great floods sweep the globe and leave only those worthy as survivors in the polar ice land. Society has reached a peaceful and righteous equilibrium, and from the looks of it everyone is happy in their pre-determined life stations. Or so it seems. Terrell starts out with the death scene of the main character's brother, Eamon. Eamon is murdered by a mystery killer as he was climbing the forbidden ice cliffs, and Eva, the main character, is introduced to us in mourning. She chooses to honor her brother by casting away her simple life of docile maiden, and replacing him in the Testing, a competition against nature, time, and other youthful competitors. The point of the competition is display your strength, wit, and skill by surviving and returning with a relic from the ice cliffs. The relics are examined and displayed for all to see; they serve as...

Written by: Jane Nickerson Pacify your sweet tooth with a honey stick and a slice of sweet potato pie. If you're hankering for a run of the mill adventure romance, you might as well stop reading here. The Mirk and Midnight Hour is a book set in the time of the American Civil War about a young Miss Violet Dancey who stumbles upon a little magic and a little excitement as she adjusts to her shifting environment brought on by the war. As she romps through the forest with her little cousin, they meet a wounded man holed up in Violet's old secret hide out. For a number of different reasons (the war, a deceased sibling, some ominous villains) the solider, Thomas, must be kept hidden in the woods, even in the face of possible danger. There are several different plots that sneak through the book, and they are written fairly well. Violet's life is both quaintly average (for the times), and secretly exhilarating.  On the whole, the subplots were good. On their own the independent sto...

By: Stephanie Diaz The set up for this book was very good.  The idea was excellent.  It was similar to a lot of dystopian novels with hints of science fiction and romance which made for a very interesting mix.  The setting was on a different planet, Kiel.  The main character, Clementine, is from the surface.  Everyone from the surface goes to school and until they are 16.  When they turn 16 they take a test to find out what their "promise score" is.  If they are in the top ten then they are "extracted" and get to live in the core.  If they are not selected they are either replaced or they are simply killed once they turn 20.  Everyone alive on the 20th birthday dies.  The moon spews acid which can kill someone in 10 minutes.  The core set up a force field  to protect against the acid but sometimes it leaks.  As always in books, the main character is selected to live in the core.  Her only problem is that leaving the s...

Hey guys,      If you found this post then welcome to the blog! As part of YALSA, we're supposed to review books. This is the public side of reviewing online. Hopefully you're getting closer to writing your first blog review. If not, don't sweat it. You've likely never done something like this before. Or maybe you don't feel like it, you're busy, or procrastinating (I know I'm guilty). Blogging and I don't mix      In any case, here I'll outline the basic steps I follow in my blog posts. I intend this page to be a permanent fixture to help all future CCHS YA Galley Groupers (groupies? members? denizens?) get some help sharing their opinions on this blog. 1. Read a book, any book... but preferably an advanced readers copy (a galley). You don't have to finish it or like it to review it (I couldn't read more than a fourth of The Flame in the Mist). 2. You probably have some opinions about the book once you're done with it. After reading, jus...

By: Andrew Smith If you cross Catcher in the Rye with the 1950's movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers you might get something like Grasshopper Jungle.  The back describes the book to be about "Austin and his best friend, Robby" who "have accidentally unleashed an unstoppable amy.  An army of horny, hungry, six-foot-tall praying mantises that only want to do two things."  After reading the back its pretty obvious that this book is either going to be really good or really bad.  Let's just say it wasn't my favorite.  Ok, so to start with the problems. 1. The back of the book failed to properly portray what this book is really about.  First of all, it's not really Austin and Robby who "unleash" the preying mantises.  It just so happened that it is the bunch of boys that beat them up earlier that day.  The back said NOTHING about Austin's girlfriend, Shann.  Shann is one of two things Austin thinks about.  The other is his friend Robby. ...

Written by: Elizabeth Fama Crack these pages open while gobbling up a rich chocolate cake laced with spice.  If you’re a solid romance buff like me, but also enjoy alternate reality adventures, this is the book for you.  Sol Le Coeur is part time hot-headed sass master and part time devoted caretaker. She keeps her heart closed off to everyone but her Poppu, who she is fiercely devoted to, so much so that she is willing to risk her freedom so he may hold his great-grandchild in his arms before his dying day. When she accidentally swipes the wrong baby from the hospital, Sol is caught up in a whirlwind of intrigue and confusion that all lead back to her estranged brother, Ciel, and the fractured society they must live in. Sol must navigate her way through the mysteries while conforming to a rigid day-night schedule. She is only allowed out under the cover of darkness. And she manages to handle (we hope) this all while braving the emotional roller coaster of true love. I really ...

By Bethany Hagen . Release date: February 4th 2014 (tomorrow!)        Madeline Landry lives in the luxury of the antique Landry estate with her mother and father. They are among the few elite living in a post-war Jane Austen-romance-novel-styled society. Their opulent lifestyles are supported by a large common lower class. Below the lower class are the Rootless, the poorest of the poor stuck with the worst jobs: handling spent radioactive charges used for generating electricity. There's a lot of responsibility on Madeline's shoulders to step up to the role of the next of her line, the most powerful family in the United States. As Madeline receives more pressure from her father to follow family responsibility, she learns more about the Rootless than she ever knew before.        The upper class in this book is literally modeled after a Jane Austen novel. Inexplicably, in post-war society, they reverted to the 1700's. They drink t...

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. ...

By: Anna Jarzab When I was reading this I was ready to give it a 4.5 or something like that.  I thought it was really good.  The writing was great and everything just in general was good.  It was enjoyable to read and I looked forward to reading it.  Reading it was like standing outside in the middle of the spring with a nice sweet breeze that smells like wet grass and a little like mud --  refreshing after a long winter.  Tandem was about a high school girl, Sasha, who like many people gets asked to prom.  Grant is the boy she's liked forever and was happy to say yes.  He is popular and good looking and someone that she hadn't talked to since elementary school.  She's a little baffled as to why he suddenly had a change of heart.  Well as it turns out, he had this change of heart because it's not actually Grant; it's Thomas. Thomas is from an alternate universe.  This universe calls itself Aurora because one of the differences betwe...