Audience Pick!

Title: The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl
Author: Barry Lyga
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 3/5
Why I Read It: Because you told me to!

Summary: Fanboy gets picked on at school, he has only one friend who happens to be embarrassed by him, and his mom’s pregnant with his neanderthal stepdad’s kid. The only thing keeping him going is his dream of publishing his graphic novel, but then he meets Kyra, who turns his world upside down.

Review: I had fun reading about a kid who loves comics and graphic novels, since I’m just dipping my toes into that world now. And the climax of the story had me zipping through the pages to find out what would happen.

This part opened my eyes to the process of creating a comic book or graphic novel, which I never really thought about before:

This is actually the toughest part: not the writing or the drawing, but the lettering. Figuring out where to put the word balloons. Trying not to obscure too much art, or too much of anything important, at least. Making sure that the balloons are placed so that the dialogue flows naturally and leads the reader’s eye correctly. Prose writers have it easy: Everything starts in the upper-left-hand corner of the page and goes downhill from there. In a comic book, you start in the upper-left-hand corner, but from there you can go right, down, diagonal, whatever. You can have panel borders, or none. You can have word balloons that are connected, disconnected, broken. You can have characters speak from off-panel, or in voice-over captions. You have to decide if the words are important enough to cover up the artwork that’s telling half the story.

Overall, I enjoyed this story, but it didn’t stand out to me.

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Did You Like This Book? Try:

• An Abundance of Katherines—My rating: 4/5
• Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist—My rating: 3.5/5
• Twisted
• More Recommendations from LibraryThing

Title: Sweethearts
Author: Sara Zarr
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 3.5/5
Why I Read It: Nicole at Linus’s Blanket highly recommended it, and I needed a good read for my summer beach vacation (now in progress, yay!).

Summary: Jennifer and Cameron were each other’s only childhood friend, but then Cameron disappeared without saying goodbye. By high school, Jennifer has become Jenna, landed a cute boyfriend, and has lots of friends. So why does she feel like a fraud?

Review: From the title and the cover (must. bake. cookies. now.), I thought this would be a light little romance, possibly with large amounts of baked goods. Yum.

I was off base, though strangely not on the baked goods front. But this bittersweet story is worth every bite. And I’m not usually into bittersweet chocolate let alone books, so trust me on this.

On the writing side, I liked how Zarr dropped unnecessary words in dialogue, especially with one character’s speech, to make it sharper. In this snippet, it’s the character who’s speaking first:

“I could just see from looking at you that you had a good thing going. Didn’t need me coming along and messing it up.”

“Don’t say that,” I said quickly. Then: “You were never a part of what I wanted to forget.”

“Nice of you to say, but I know it’s not true.”

I knew what he was thinking, could see that he’d been carrying around the same burden all those years as me.

Now I’m interested in reading Zarr’s first book, Story of a Girl, and excited about her 2009 release, Once Was Lost.

Your Turn: Have you read any of these 3 Zarr titles? Which was your favorite?

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Did You Like This Book? Try:

• The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks—My rating: 5/5
• Story of a Girl
• The Adoration of Jenna Fox
• More Recommendations from LibraryThing

Title: Skunk Girl
Author: Sheba Karim
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Why I Read It: It released in 2009, and I was in the mood for something new.

Summary: 16-year-old Nina is a Muslim Pakistani-American. Her parents don’t let her date, but an Italian boy just moved to town and she can’t stop thinking about him.

Stopped on Page: 79
Why I Stopped: It was interesting to read about the Pakistani-American culture, but the main character never did anything. Other than making Rice Krispie treats for a bake sale, I can’t think of a single instance when she did anything besides go with the flow.

I also got a little tired of hearing her go on and on about the Italian boy she had a crush on, Asher.

Asher’s been here almost a week, but we haven’t spoken since his first day. He only nods his head at me whenever he sees me in the hall or in precalculus. This does not bother me. My love can feed on looks alone. What worth have words anyway?

Should I have kept going? Or was I right to stop?

Note: As an aspiring author, I respect the extraordinary amount of effort that goes into writing a book. I did not write this review in order to be unfair or negative about the book. My goal is simply to articulate why the book wasn’t for me.

Audience Pick!

Title: Girl at Sea
Author: Maureen Johnson
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 2.5/5
Why I Read It: Because you told me to! And I wanted to get in the mood for my upcoming vacation to the beach.

Summary: 17-year-old Clio just finagled a job where her crush works. But when her mom gets an out-of-town work assignment, Clio has to put her plans on hold and hang out with her dad on a boat in the Mediterranean. Sound fun? You haven’t met Clio’s dad.

Review: Maureen Johnson cracks me up. I read her blog religiously.

That said, this wasn’t the MJ book for me. I much preferred Suite Scarlett.

I loved the romance, and the humor cracked me up as always. But the middle felt too slow. Sometimes, it felt like details were included not because they were important to the story but because they set up a good joke.

A little taste of what I’m talking about, where Clio is getting a feel for the kitchen on the boat:

There was a lot more food in the galley now than there had been the night before. The yacht was packed like a UN provision ship. Eight loaves of bread were piled in the corner. Three cardboard boxes stuffed full of vegetables sat on the floor. Another two of fruit. A paper bag revealed meat. Just meat. The refrigerator had been filled with fresh fish—heads and all—trapped in clear plastic bags. There was something murderous about it. Like the Mafia had taken these fish out. These fish slept with the fishes.

I’m not sorry I finished this book because it was entertaining. But if this is the only MJ book you’ve read and it didn’t wow you, you have to give Suite Scarlett a chance.

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Title: First Light
Author: Rebecca Stead
Category: Fiction, Middle Grade
Rating: 2.5/5
Why I Read It: Becky at Becky’s Book Reviews enjoyed this one, so I decided to check it out.

Summary: This is a story of two kids from completely different worlds: 12-year-old Peter goes to Greenland with his parents on a research expedition, but his mom is teetering on the edge of another bout of depression. 14-year-old Thea lives in an isolated settlement called Gracehope, where they’re running out of space but no one will let her explore new areas.

Review: The premise created immediate mystery in my mind and kept me reading to find out how the worlds might intersect. Here’s the opening that grabbed me:

Most boys his age had never touched paper. There was little left. Paper was reserved for fine drawing and important documents. Mattias knew even before he could skate that if he were to harm any of it, if he were to crease one corner of one sheet, the consequences would be serious. But Mattias could not resist his mother’s drawing table.

In the end, the story came together well.

But I didn’t always enjoy the writing, namely:

• Too much telling—After a piece of dialogue, oftentimes a statement reiterated what we just learned in the dialogue. The quote below is an example of this.
• Exclamation heavy—I know, I’m being petty. But exclamation points seem silly in most cases.
• Sappy—The story got overly sentimental at times, especially near the end.

This isn’t the most compelling quote, but it’s a good example of the first issue listed above:

It was cold. At the steepest parts, they gave up walking and scooted along the tunnel floor in a sitting position, bracing themselves with their heels. This meant sitting in the icy stream that still rushed down the tunnel; their furs kept them dry, but couldn’t entirely protect them from the chill.

“Is it, uh, usually like this?” Peter asked. He was breathing hard. “With the water?”

“No,” Thea said fiercely, so that he wouldn’t ask more. She couldn’t help feeling a bit mean.

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