Nerds Heart YA Update: This is the last review I’ll post before I start posting my NHYA reviews! And don’t forget to enter the giveaway to win Cracked up to Be, The Latent Powers of Dylan Fontaine, or Leftovers. If you enter now, you’ll have a 1 in 5 chance of winning!

Title: How to Be Bad
Author: E. Lockhart, Sarah Mlynowski, Lauren Myracle
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 2.5/5
Why I Read It: I loved The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart.

Summary: Jesse’s mom has cancer. Vicks’s boyfriend went to college and hasn’t called. Mel is desperate for friends. So they all pile into the car for a road trip.

Review: First, a disclaimer. I haven’t had great luck with books that have alternating points of view. With that said:

• The Bad—The narration in this book alternated between the three girls, and I didn’t ever truly connect with any of them.
• The Good—I enjoyed the writing, and the plot kept me reading.

But without a connection to the main characters, plot and good writing weren’t enough for me.

Here’s a snippet of Vicks and her older brother Penn talking on the phone while he’s a the grocery store:

“I’m in the detergent aisle right now, looking for a box of—oh, there it is. You think Tide is better, or All?” [Penn says.]

“Which has a prettier box?” I ask.

“I don’t want a pretty box. I want a dude box.”

“Uh-huh,” I deadpan. “You want a dude box of laundry detergent.”

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

Title: Feeling Sorry for Celia
Author: Jaclyn Moriarty
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 3.5/5
Why I Read It: I saw this one on the shelf at the library and realized it’s a novel in letters. I’ve never read an epistolary YA novel, so I decided to give it a whirl.

Summary: Elizabeth Clarry’s best friend just ran away to join the circus, and her absentee father suddenly wants to spend quality time with her. So when Elizabeth’s English teacher starts a pen pal program with another school, she has a lot to say.

Review: I had a blast reading this hilarious book. Here’s a little snippet for you:

Mum,

I’m going to run over to Saxon Walker’s place and we’re going to train [for the 10K] together. He’s a guy from my school who catches my bus. He lives on Foxall Road. His mother’s the local councilor so you probably met her when you did your rollerblading protest.

Love,
Elizabeth

***

Elizabeth!!!

Who is this Saxon Walker? Is he Carolyn Walker’s son?

If he is, his mother is a demon from hell! Whatever you do, stay out of their house. If you see her in the distance, don’t smile at her. Just scowl.

Love,
Mum

***

Mum,

It’s too late. Saxon and I went for a run together and then he invited me back to his place for coffee.

His mother was quite polite for a demon from hell and she gave me a piece of carrot cake. I didn’t scowl at her at all. You always said before that I should smile and say thank you to my friends’ mothers. You are giving me confused and contradictory messages.

Love,
Elizabeth

So after this book and Jellicoe Road and Saving Francesca, I’ve decided I want to become Australian. They’re a funny lot. Or if they won’t have me, I would settle for being British like the marvelous Jenny Valentine. (btw, if you know anything about the process for changing one’s nationality, please let me know!)

This book was a perfect depiction of the push/pull a teenage girl feels between letting herself get excited about something (like a cute boy paying attention to her) and thinking she’s not good enough for it.

And the ending was brilliant.

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

Audience Pick!

Title: Travel Far, Pay No Fare
Author: Anne Lindbergh
Category: Fiction, Middle Grade
Rating: 2/5
Why I Read It: Because you told me to! This one’s been on the suggestion list since March, but it took a while for it to arrive via interlibrary loan.

Summary: 12-year-old Owen moves to Vermont when his mom decides to marry her widowed brother-in-law. Owen’s tasked with watching his 9-year-old cousin Parsley, but she keeps disappearing for long periods of time.

Review: I loved the premise of this book—that you can travel into your favorite books. (Tangent: Where would you go if you could? Hogwarts for me, hands down.)

But as fun as the premise was, I don’t think the writing held its own. Issues ranged from too much exclamation to a play-by-play of every thought and feeling the main character had. Here’s an example from a good ways into the book:

I’ve seen movies that had me close to tears, but even the saddest of them was nothing compared to this. Jody was hurting. I could tell! And I hurt with him: a tight, heavy kind of hurt that swelled inside my chest and behind my jaw. What did it mean? Was it because Flag was still there and condemned to die? Should I knock on the door and ask?

However, this book was written in 1992 so it’s probably not fair to hold it to my modern reading tastes.

I did like that the family conflict was front and center in the story, along with the parents. It heightened the tension and made it more realistic.

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

Title: Savvy
Author: Ingrid Law
Category: Fiction, Middle Grade
Rating: 3.5/5
Why I Read It: This interview with Ingrid Law at Maw Books Blog piqued my interest, and the first line of the book made me want to read more.

Summary: Mibs Beaumont is about to turn 13 and get her very own savvy. She can’t wait to see whether her special ability will be the type to move mountains or brew up a storm, or a different talent altogether. But when Poppa gets hurt, Mibs doesn’t get the birthday celebration she was expecting.

Review: Here’s that first line that reeled me in:

When my brother Fish turned thirteen, we moved to the deepest part of inland because of the hurricane and, of course, the fact that he’d caused it.

I’m happy to report that the rest of the book was just as engrossing.

My two favorite parts:

• Vibrant characters—Not a single character was a dud. They were all so unique and real to me, even given the supernatural elements of the story.
• Fun language—Mibs’s way of speaking was fun and young without straying into the Land of Sickeningly Cute.

Here’s the first full paragraph to give you a feel for Mibs’s voice:

When my brother Fish turned thirteen, we moved to the deepest part of inland because of the hurricane and, of course, the fact that he’d caused it. I had liked living down south on the edge of land, next to the pushing-pulling waves. I had liked it with a mighty kind of liking, so moving had been hard—hard like the pavement the first time I fell off my pink two-wheeler and my palms burned like fire from all of the hurt just under the skin. But it was plain that Fish could live nowhere near or nearby or next to or close to or on or around any largish bodies of water. Water had a way of triggering my brother and making ordinary, everyday weather take a frightening turn for the worse.

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

Like a lot of YA readers, I’m so anxious for the next books in the The Hunger Games and Graceling series that I’ve developed a bit of a nervous tic that crops up every time I come across any mention of them. In fact, typing that last sentence took me 5 tries to get right.

But I recently realized that of all the fully released YA series in the world, I’ve only read three: Twilight, Gemma Doyle, and Jessica Darling. Kind of pathetic for a YA wannabe, I know. The problem is that when I go to my list of books to be read, I tend to pass up the series in favor of one-off titles.

Reading a full series is a time commitment. Like marriage, but with a book. And even though you could be having a good time while you’re in it, you might get to the end of the series and find yourself at the bookstore ogling some sexy little one-night-stand, wondering: “Why did I waste my time on that old ball-and-chain when I could have had three completely different nights to remember?”

Here are the series currently on my list:

• City of Bones (Mortal Instruments)
• Tithe (Modern Tale of Faerie)
• Uglies
• The Wee Free Men (Discworld)

Can you help me get over my commitment phobia? Tell me which series are worth my time. Or tell me if my list is missing another great YA/teen series, or if any of these just left you saying “eh.”

Photo by judepics.