Sick of taking a backseat to the endless rivalry between her school’s soccer and football teams, Lissa, the quarterback’s girlfriend, convinces other athletes’ girlfriends to join her in a sex strike. (Whew! I love a book with a one-sentence premise.) Lissa’s a little bossy and overly organized (she even works at the library! …um), but [...]
Review: Shut Out, Kody Keplinger (Sept. 2011)
May 30th, 2011 · 4 Comments
Tags: Reviews
Review: Hush, Eishes Chayil
April 7th, 2011 · 2 Comments
Gittel is a Chassidic Jew in modern Brooklyn, but in many ways her life looks — by design — like something out of Fiddler on the Roof. Everything is prescribed by law and tradition: what to wear, what to read, how her husband will be chosen.* To Gittel this feels perfectly safe and secure, until [...]
Tags: Reviews
Review: Bumped, Megan McCafferty (Apr. 26, 2011)
March 17th, 2011 · 3 Comments
In our near future, a virus wipes out the ability of adult women to carry children to term. Teen pregnancies become revered, trendy, and lucrative. Melody’s adoptive parents have groomed her to be the perfect Surogette who will “bump” for the highest bidders, with whatever genetically perfect stud the wealthy future parents choose. The only [...]
Tags: Reviews
The Kid Table, by Andrea Seigel
November 11th, 2010 · 1 Comment
4 out of 5 Ingrid and her sprawling extended family get together for every possible occasion, where no matter how old she and her teenage cousins get, they are always stuck at the kid table. Hanging out with each other beats discussing mortgages with their parents, but what will it take for the family to [...]
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Finnikin of the Rock, Melina Marchetta
March 22nd, 2010 · 3 Comments
Another very complicated story by the author of one of my recent favorites, Jellicoe Road. She’s trying out fantasy this time: when Finnikin, son of the captain of the guard of Lumatere, is a child, the ruling family is murdered and the city occupied. It’s also sealed off, Sleeping Beauty-style, by the dying curse of [...]
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Rampant, Diana Peterfreund
November 29th, 2009 · 3 Comments
The premise is pretty cool: unicorns are vicious killers which were wiped out several generations ago… but now they seem to be back, attacking people in the modern world. Our heroine joins up with a group of… Slayers, basically, who all have a Great Destiny (blech) to send the unicorns back to extinction. In the [...]
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Tender Morsels, by Margo Lanagan
October 8th, 2009 · 1 Comment
I’m not even going to try to summarize this one, except to say: interweaving of Snow White & Rose Red, Rumpelstiltskin, and probably some other tales into a lyrical novel with the most sexual creepiness I have had the misfortune to encounter in awhile. This is an excellent example of a book marketed to young [...]
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Sequel Summer: Attack of the Theater People, by Marc Acito
August 25th, 2008 · 1 Comment
How I Paid for College is one of my top 5 funniest books. (Not sure what the others are, honestly. Gordon Korman’s Son of Interflux and I Want to Go Home! are in there, for sure.) It is my standard Beach Reading Recommendation, and if I haven’t pushed it on you, consider it done. The [...]
Tags: Reviews
Fantasy birth control
August 19th, 2008 · 7 Comments
I just finished a wonderful book called Graceling, by Kristin Cashore. I’ll wait on the review, because the book doesn’t come out until October, and I don’t want you to forget about it because you can’t read it right now. (I don’t have a lending copy, unfortunately.) But I was talking with Rebecca (who lent [...]
Tags: Book lists · Musing
Grown-up Table: The Abstinence Teacher, Tom Perrotta
April 14th, 2008 · No Comments
In a recent post I set myself a challenge to read one grown-up book for every 2 or 3 YA books I read this year, to give myself the same chance at a literary lens for adulthood that I had for childhood/adolescence. For my first meal at the grown-up table, I picked The Abstinence Teacher, [...]
Tags: Grown-up table · Reviews