I love writing book reviews. They help me:

• Look smart. I mean, look at how much I read! I must be smart.
• Learn from others. Articulating what I do and don’t like in a book will help me revise my own novel, if I ever get off my ass to do such a thing.
• Practice writing. I haven’t touched my novel since the last day of NaNoWriMo 2008, so I have to do something to keep my fingers limber.

But I’ve started to wonder: Do others get as much out of my reviews as I do? And what, exactly, are they reading for? So tell me…

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Photo by smittenkittenoriginals.

Title: Me, the Missing, and the Dead
Author: Jenny Valentine
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 4/5
Summary: 16-year-old Lucas finds an old lady in an urn, who just so happens to have some connection to his missing dad. If he can find out who the dead lady was, can he find his dad?

Review: From the brief description of this on Amazon, I wasn’t interested. It sounded like a ghost story, and I don’t do ghost stories. Or scary movies, for that matter. I’ve been known to sleep with the light on after a particularly creepy episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for Pete’s sake.

But this book was a finalist for the Morris YA Debut Award this year, so ghost or not, I decided to give it a go.

What an odd little story. I loved it.

It made me laugh, but it also made my heart ache as Lucas comes to grips with his dad’s disappearance. Here’s a taste for you:

If we ever find my dad and he’s dead, I’m going to organize the biggest funeral you’ve ever seen…We’ll play the best music, and everyone he ever knew and liked will be there and cry their eyes out and say really nice things about him. Afterwards, back at our house, we’ll have the best wake and nobody will want to leave. They’ll look after Mum and make sure she’s OK. They’ll phone her every week instead of being too embarrassed to say anything or ever call because there isn’t a body and they’re a bit busy with work and they were his friends really, not hers.

On the funny end of the spectrum, there’s this scene where Lucas interrogates his little brother like a cop, which cracks me up to think of it even now, a good 2 weeks after I finished the book.

Borrow: Your local library | Swap
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Title: How Not to Be Popular
Author: Jennifer Ziegler
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 1.5/5
Summary: Maggie is in her senior year of high school, and her hippie parents are moving the family. Again. It hurts too much to say goodbye, so what would happen if in their new town, she tried to not make friends?

Review: I probably should have stopped reading this after 50 pages because I didn’t really like it.

Things that bothered me:

• Too much internal dialogue. It’s boring when the main character just comes out and tells you her emotions all the time.
• Ending fizzled. The only thing that kept me reading was the budding relationship between Maggie and Jack. And then the ending wasn’t even satisfying in that department.
• Dialogue attributions that got on my nerves. Don’t tell me you “reply truthfully.” I should be able to tell whether you’re lying. On second thought, don’t even tell me you “reply”! I know I’m being petty. But as long as I am…
• Crap everywhere. Maggie likes to say “crap” a lot—the first two words of the book are “Oh crap.” That’s fine. I am not a stranger to the 4-letter word. But she comes up with these variations on “crap” that I guess are supposed to be funny but just struck me as dumb. I mean, “Crap burger!” and “Crap-a-roni!”? Really?

Borrow: Your local library | Swap
Buy: Your local bookstore | Powell’s | Amazon

Title: The Hunger Games
Author: Suzanne Collins
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 5/5
Summary: In a post-apocalyptic world, the government picks two children from each of its territories to participate in The Hunger Games—an annual fight-to-the-death reminder that the government is in control, just in case you forgot. When Katniss’s 12-year-old sister gets picked in the fatal raffle, Katniss volunteers to take her place without a moment’s hesitation. But does she have what it takes to fight for her life?

Review: I was initially reluctant to read this one because it sounded so damn depressing. But after reading so many glowing reviews, I decided to give it a whirl. And boy, am I glad I did.

Yes, the world of Panem is grim. Yes, kids getting randomly picked to fight each other to the death is morbid. But this is a crazy good story. During the Games, I found myself getting ready to turn to the next page before I was even done reading the current page.

Collins manages to explore the idea of kids being pulled into violent conflict without hitting you over the head with the real-world parallels. Which is more fun because you get to come up with the parallels yourself and feel wicked smart for it.

The love triangle just broke my heart. Unlike some other recent YA love triangles (*cough* Twilight), I actually felt torn between the two love interests! Plus, the kissing scenes were yummy.

I cannot wait until the next in this series, Catching Fire, comes out.

Borrow: Your local library | Swap
Buy: Your local bookstore | Powell’s | Amazon

Title: Paper Towns
Author: John Green
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 4.5/5
Summary: High school senior Quentin can’t believe his luck when his crush Margo chooses him as her partner in crime in an elaborate all-nighter around town. But then she disappears, and he doesn’t know whether she’s just being Margo or if something bad actually happened.

Review: From the first page:

Most of my friends were in the band, and most of my free time during school was spent within twenty feet of the band room. But I was not in the band, because I suffer from the kind of tone deafness that is generally associated with actual deafness.

That totally cracked me up, but maybe I just have an odd sense of humor. Here’s another one you can try on for size. Quentin is trying to convince himself to stay somewhere a little, um, rustic:

I resolved right then to stay until morning. If Margo had slept here, I could, too. And thus commenced a brief conversation with myself.
Me: But the rats.
Me: Yeah, but they seem to stay in the ceiling.
Me: But the lizards.
Me: Oh, come on. You used to pull their tails off when you were little. You’re not scared of lizards.
Me: But the rats.
Me: Rats can’t really hurt you anyway. They’re more scared of you than you are of them.
Me: Okay, but what about the rats?
Me: Shut up.

But this book is more than funny. I loved exploring what happens when you put someone on a pedestal. I loved the adventure of the road trip. I loved learning about paper towns.

The only thing I didn’t love about this book—and it’s just the eensiest teensiest thing—is some of the dialogue at the end of the book revealing what happened to Margo. The dialogue felt a little too speech-y to me, but I also don’t know how that could be avoided given what we had to learn about at that stage of the story.

I look forward to reading more from this author. Plus, he’s on LibraryThing, which makes him even cooler in my book and therefore more likely to move up in my to-read list.

Borrow: Your local library | Swap
Buy: Your local bookstore | Powell’s | Amazon