Review: The Hallowed Ones
Title: The Hallowed Ones
Author: Laura Bickle
Publisher: Harcourt Children’s Books
Release Date: September 25, 2012
Format: Library book
Katie is on the verge of her Rumspringa, the time in Amish life when teenagers can get a taste of the real world. But the real world comes to her in this dystopian tale with a philosophical bent. Rumors of massive unrest on the “Outside” abound. Something murderous is out there. Amish elders make a rule: No one goes outside, and no outsiders come in. But when Katie finds a gravely injured young man, she can’t leave him to die. She smuggles him into her family’s barn—at what cost to her community? The suspense of this vividly told, truly horrific thriller will keep the pages turning.—via Goodreads
So here’s the deal: I love bonnet books.
A lot.
But more than liking the fictional, romanticized books, I find the Amish fascinating and I could probably write an entire post on my many, many thoughts and feelings on the Amish and how they’re portrayed in current media. (i.e, I think Breaking Amish is bullshit.)
ANYWAY.
My friend Michelle told me about The Hallowed Ones, a book that somehow flew under my radar, not so long ago while we were drinking very cheap margaritas during Happy Hour. Our conversation went like this:
M: Have you read The Hallowed Ones?
B: Nope. What is it?
M: Oh! It’s about Amish people and vampires.
B: I MUST READ THIS IMMEDIATELY.
I am SO glad that Michelle told me about this book because you guys—HOLY. BAZOO.
What I like about this book though, is that it isn’t really a bonnet book. Clearly, it’s about the Amish, but it’s not an angsty, saccharine romance.
It’s about a mothereffing vampire apocalypse.
These vampires don’t espouse Gothic romance. They don’t sparkle or brood or gain souls that they just end up losing and then regaining. They are bad news and they want to eat you and that is all.
It’s fantastic. And legitimately scary.
But there is a reason why this book is set in an Amish community, and one of the most clever parts of this book is the discussion of religion, salvation, and faith that the vampire apocalypse brings with it. Normally those are the types of topics I like to avoid in life because they get so messy and feelings get hurt, but the way Bickle handles the topic and material is really smart and quite impressive.
And y’all, I’m not joking when I tell you that I LOVED this book. Loved it. Read it twice in a row I liked it so much.
So, overall: Yay Amish setting! Yay scary vampires!
Yay yay yay!
Also, why isn’t it September 3rd yet?
Review: Scrap
Title: Scrap
Author: Emory Sharplin
Publisher: Green Leaf Book Group
Release Date: May 17, 2013
Format: eGalley
On the brutal streets of Hellip, a village in the vast empire of the cruel King Ibis, you either become good at running from the king’s Blackcoats or you die. This is the lesson that twelve-year-old Tucker Scrap, abandoned as an infant among the orphans of Hellip, learned early. Along with her friends Ash and Kally, Tucker spends her time keeping one step ahead of the unjust laws, stealing what she needs to survive, and pondering her own unknown origins—and those of the enchanted bracelet with which she was found.
Now, both Ash and Kally have vanished from the orphanage, perhaps headed for the faraway city where Ibis still rules. When a mysterious girl named Vivian arrives in Hellip with a strange invitation to Tucker, the leader of the orphans decides that this may be her opportunity to find her missing friends. But more than this: it may become an opportunity to recover her hidden inheritance, and to change the fate of an entire kingdom.
The introduction to a fantasy world rich with ancient magic, enigmatic gypsies, palace labyrinths, and deep woods haunted by strange and forbidding creatures, Emory Sharplin’s debut novel tells the story of Tucker Scrap: a bold, memorable heroine at the center of a centuries-old mystery, stepping into her destiny at last.—via Goodreads
Scrap had the potential to be really great.
In many ways, it’s a mix of Defiant by C.J. Redwine and Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas, both books that I enjoyed greatly.
Much like those books, the setting and world-building in Scrap are wonderful—the atmosphere is crisply described, hierarchies of class and ecosystem are described thoroughly, and the commoners’ ever-present fear of their king is palpable.
The plot is very well thought out, paced, and structured. But, the author uses one of my least favorite plot devices to move the book forward—withholding information from the main character and, thus, the reader.
Not like I couldn’t guess what the big piece of valuable information is—I could, and for the most part, I was correct. And I don’t mind authors not putting all their cards on the table up front in an attempt to create dramatic irony, but I very much take issue with the main character asking a crucial question and then the other character saying, “Be patient. I’ll tell you when the time is right. You have to trust me,” or some such nonsense.
Much of this book is based on that writing device. And though the writing in this book is lush and beautiful and the world is very well flushed out, that withholding of information until nearly the very end of the book really made me not enjoy reading this in the way that I wished I had.
Additionally, Scrap ends abruptly and on a strange note that will carry over into the sequel. I actually don’t mind an cliffhanger ending, but when a book feels like it comes to a jerky, OMG WE HAVE TO STOP NOW kind of end, it leaves me feeling unsettled and disappointed.
However. In many ways I think this book could be a great introduction to historical fantasy [I’m pretty sure that’s a category I just made up], especially for middle-grade readers. Though there is violence, devastation, fear, and paranoia in this book, I think that they are able to handle it and that this type of book is not too mature for younger readers.
Overall, Scrap is a rich, beautifully imagined world with dynamic, sometimes unusual characters and the potential to be a great book series. I have a very persnickety hang-up with it, but that does not mean that this book is less worthy of being read than others. So, if it sounds like your cup of tea, I absolutely recommend this one.
Laundry Day.
As The Boyfriend and I were marathoning Orphan Black, I was folding laundry.
I am a multitasking master.
The Boyfriend looks over at me and says, “Did you just fold that skirt really weird?”
It was a pair of his boxers.
Review: Brooklyn Girls
Title: Brooklyn Girls
Author: Gemma Burgess
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin
Release Date: July 2nd, 2013
Format: eGalley
Fantastically funny, fresh and utterly relatable, Brooklyn Girls by Gemma Burgess is the first novel in her brand new series about five twenty-something friends—Pia, Angie, Julia, Coco and Madeleine—sharing a brownstone in hip, downtown Brooklyn, and discovering the ups and downs and ins and outs of their “semi-adult” lives. The first story belongs to sophisticated, spoiled, and stylish Pia, who finds herself completely unemployed, unemployable, and broke. So what is a recent grad with an art history degree and an unfortunate history of Facebook topless photos to do? Start a food truck business of course! Pia takes on the surprisingly cutthroat Brooklyn world of hybrid lettuce growers, artisanal yogurt makers and homemade butter producers to start SkinnyWheels—all while dealing with hipster bees, one-night-stands, heartbreak, parental fury, wild parties, revenge, jail, loan sharks, playboys, karaoke, true love, and one adorable pink food truck. And that’s without counting her roommates’ problems, too. Gemma Burgess has captured the confusion, hilarity and excitement of the post-graduate years against a backdrop of the pressures and chaos of New York City life, with heartfelt empathy, fast humor and sharp honesty.
A charming debut series about five twenty-something girls and the humor, heartbreak, and drama that bring them together—via Goodreads
I’ll be honest. I thought I would hate this.
But for the sake of trying things I think I’ll hate anyway (I’ve been doing this with food lately too. It turns out that brussels sprouts do not suck!), I stuck with this past the first couple chapters and realized that this book is actually fun.
The story of five recent college grads living in a luckily inherited brownstone near Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, (which, btw, is a very nice and expensive neighborhood these days.), Brooklyn Girls focuses on Pia, an Ivy League-educated party girl who is deemed “unemployable.” Now, that sentence annoys me because no one I’ve ever met from an Ivy would be considered unemployable. If you can slap one of those schools on your resume and network with the alumni in your area, you’re golden. But, let’s abandon that knowledge and for a moment believe that a Brown grad can’t get a job in NYC. That’s where Pia is.
She’s been cut off by her parents, can’t keep a job due to her temper and her willingness to put immodest photos on Facebook, so she does what any entrepreneurial minded early 20-something would do: borrows money from a loan shark who enjoys Smart Water and buys a nearly broken food truck. She starts selling healthy salads and desserts and basically becomes an overnight success. But there are many setbacks.
The major plotline is a bit predictable, but in the best way. It’s a rom-com that you know is going to be like every other, but that you watch anyway just in case the writer decides to change something up on you. In this case, Burgess doesn’t—but the main plot isn’t really why you read this book in the first place. More than a tale of a privileged girl’s fall from grace and her struggle to become independent, it’s a story of friendship, and that’s really where this book’s heart is.
The friendships between the five girls who share the brownstone are layered, nuanced, and realistic. Some of the relationships are strained or straining, sometimes seemingly beyond repair, some of them are blossoming, while others are amazingly steadfast. Each of the girls has her own struggles, flaws, and successes, and the balance to how each is written and how she relates to the others is where the writing in this book is most impressive.
Overall, Brooklyn Girls is a light, fun read that’s perfect for the beach or vacation. The story ends in an almost annoyingly predictable way, but that’s not what the reader will walk away remembering anyway—it’s the friendships that will leave an impression on the reader and make him or her recommend this to others.
Review: Dare You To
Title: Dare You To
Author: Katie McGarry
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Release Date: May 28, 2013
Format: eGalley
If anyone knew the truth about Beth Risk’s home life, they’d send her mother to jail and seventeen-year-old Beth who knows where. So she protects her mom at all costs. Until the day her uncle swoops in and forces Beth to choose between her mom’s freedom and her own happiness. That’s how Beth finds herself living with an aunt who doesn’t want her and going to a school that doesn’t understand her. At all. Except for the one guy who shouldn’t get her, but does….
Ryan Stone is the town golden boy, a popular baseball star jock-with secrets he can’t tell anyone. Not even the friends he shares everything with, including the constant dares to do crazy things. The craziest? Asking out the Skater girl who couldn’t be less interested in him.
But what begins as a dare becomes an intense attraction neither Ryan nor Beth expected. Suddenly, the boy with the flawless image risks his dreams-and his life-for the girl he loves, and the girl who won’t let anyone get too close is daring herself to want it all….—via Goodreads
A companion novel to last year’s Pushing the Limits, Dare You To follows Beth Risk, a goth girl with a rough home life. In many ways she mothers her mother, who is all kinds of a mess, and she keeps herself safe by hiding behidn her keep-the-fuck-away-from-me attitude and clothes. Beth has created a life for herself, with friends she considers family, that she’s happy with.
But all of that changes when her uncle—the guy who has perhaps disappointed her most—comes back to town, sees Beth’s life, and decides to take her away from all of that by moving her back to the town she lived in as a child.
Though Beth realizes that she has no chioce but to go, that doesn’t mean she makes it easy on her uncle. Or his snotty wife. (God, she’s The Worst.)
Upon moving, Beth is introduced to Ryan, a guy she’s met—and humiliated—before. He’s immediately smitten with her, though at first it’s more out of challenge than actual feelings, and she sees him as her get-away-free card. But as they get to know each other, they realize that maybe they make sense together, despite the fact that no one would ever think that. It’s a nice slow burn that the right amount of frustrating.
Even though I was rooting for Beth and Ryan throughout the book, I was mostly rooting for Beth. Like in Pushing the Limits, McGarry does an amazing job of relaying the world of neglected, abused-by-the-system teenagers in a way that is laced with compassion, understanding, and provides little judgment toward the minors who find themselves brought up in those situations. In getting Beth away from that world, she sets up a different kind of frustration—the kind where you want people to understand Beth instead of belittle her or criticize her or immediate cast her out because she’s tough and calloused from life at an early age. It’s in juxtposing the different type of communities and upbringings that McGarry’s writing shines, and she brings an amazing amount of depth to Beth.
Overall, Dare You To is a mature, emotional, intense story of family, friendship, and learning when to let go and move on.
Bethany Larson 