Can you trust me? Compare our taste!

Title: Lips Touch: Three Times
Author: Laini Taylor
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 4/5
Why I Read It: This book was a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award.

Summary: Three stories, each about a different girl and a kiss. And no ordinary kiss, either. These kisses carry a dangerous promise to forever change the girls’ lives.

Review: I must read more by this author. Soon after I started this book, I was jotting down page numbers of quotes left and right. When I hit page 100 and had filled up an entire post-it with page numbers, I decided I’ll just have to reread this someday.

These stories are weird, but deliciously so. They reminded me of Pretty Monsters, which I also loved.

The only reason this book didn’t get 5 stars from me is that the ending of the first story let me down a bit. I wanted more conclusion, but I don’t read many short stories so I’m probably just not calibrated for them.

Here’s a taste for you from the first story about a girl named Kizzy whose grandmother has just passed away:

Sometimes Kizzy imagined her grandmother knife-fighting her way down the long tunnel of death, but mostly her daydreams were of a very different nature. She daydreamed of slow-dancing with Mike Crespain and of sitting on his lap at lunch while he hugged her around the waist instead of Sarah Ferris, his knuckles resting lightly against the underside of her breasts instead of Sarah’s. She daydreamed about having slim ankles like Jenny Glass instead of peasant ankles like the fetlocks of a draft horse. About smooth hair instead of coarse hair, sleek hips instead of belly dancer’s hips. About a tinkling laugh, and a butterfly tattoo, and a boy who would tuck his hand into her back pocket while they walked, and press her up against a fence to suck her lower lip like a globe of fruit.

That’s hot. The next paragraph is even better, but I would’ve had to give you more background to the story.

So go read it for yourself!

Your Turn: What’s the last book you read where you found yourself jotting down a ton of quotes?

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Did You Like This Book? Try:

• Pretty Monsters—My rating: 4/5
• How to Steal a Car
• How to Say Goodbye in Robot
• More Recommendations from LibraryThing

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Title: Fire
Author: Kristin Cashore
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 3.5/5
Why I Read It: I loved Graceling, so this companion novel was a must-read for me.

Summary: Fire is part-human, part-monster. The monster part of her makes men wild and full-fledged monsters crave her blood. The human part has to cope with having the power to enter people’s minds and bend them to her will.

Review: I was a tad bit bummed to find out we wouldn’t be seeing the next round of steaminess from Katsa and Po in this book. But I need not have worried because parts of this story rivaled a sauna.

This book was a little slow getting off the ground, but it picked up in the second half. Part of that is that I had trouble clearly seeing Fire’s motivation in the first half.

What saved it for me and why I kept reading—aside from the yummy bits, of course—was that the world Cashore created is completely engrossing. I mean, monsters?! But I totally bought it from page one.

Also, did I mention the romance comes in the ever-so-delicious flavor of Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet?

Your Turn: That Austen chick sure knew what she was doing. What other YA books use the Darcy/Elizabeth dynamic?

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Did You Like This Book? Try:

• Shiver—My rating: 3/5
• Leviathan
• Graceling—My rating: 5/5
• More Recommendations from LibraryThing

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Title: The Last Exit to Normal
Author: Michael Harmon
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 2.5/5
Why I Read It: This book was part of the Nerds Heart YA tournament in 2009, and both judges who read it enjoyed it.

Summary: After 17-year-old Ben’s dad announces that he’s gay, Ben rebels by skipping school and doing drugs. Then his dad decides they’re moving from the city to a small town in Montana. Trying to fit in while sporting a mohawk turns out to be the least of Ben’s problems.

Review: I wanted to love this book. I did love several aspects of it, and I am glad I read it. But it wasn’t one of my favorites.

What I loved:

• The grit—The tough conversations between Ben and his dad were so real they were almost painful to read at times. In a good way.
• The issues—Homophobia, child abuse, abandonment. The book takes on big-ticket issues with a capital I, but it didn’t feel like a thinly veiled morality play.
• The funny—Here, Ben is about to go on a date with a country girl, and he’s asking his dad’s boyfriend Edward for advice. Edward starts off with what he knows about the girl’s dad:

“If I remember correctly, he’s a very harsh man, and one not to cross.” He thought for a moment. “Yes sir, no sir, thank you, please, nice to meet you, Mr. Johan, firm handshake, look him in the eye, and for God’s sake don’t eye her boobs, even accidentally, unless you’re at least a mile from the house. Men have shotguns for a reason around here.”

I nodded, soaking it all in. Fear gripped me, but love would climb any mountain. “One more thing.”

“What?”

“What is baling hay, anyway?”

He laughed. “And you thought you worked hard yesterday. Poor child.”

“Crap.”

But here are the things that got in the way of me loving this book through-and-through:

• Backstory frontloading—The first chapter was s-l-o-w. I almost put the book down. I once read a tip in a writing book that you should cut your first chapter, start with the second, and sprinkle the first chapter backstory in later only if necessary. This book might have benefited from that trick.
• Internal monologue—Not everywhere, but in certain spots I felt like I was getting Ben’s entire thought process.
• Melodramatic tendencies—As the story started to wrap up, a few scenes came off as a bit cheesy for my taste.
• Kiss offscreen—Maybe this is just because I’m a girl that this bugged me, but the first kiss between Ben and the girl he’s interested in happened…offscreen! It’s this offhand comment in the narration. Bummer!

None of these issues were huge, but they all pulled me out of the story and got in the way of me connecting on a deeper level to the book.

Your Turn: What’s the last book you wanted to love but didn’t?

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Did You Like This Book? Try:

• Debbie Harry Sings in French
• Down to the Bone
• Black Box
• More Recommendations from LibraryThing

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Title: Shiver
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 3.5/5
Why I Read It: Heather’s review at Tales of a Capricious Reader was the one that snagged me.

Summary: Every winter, 17-year-old Grace watches the woods behind her house for a wolf with yellow eyes—her wolf.

Review: Love at first sight can be a pesky little thing. Especially when you happen to fall for a guy who’s missing a few key chromosomes. Poor Grace.

I devoured this story of species-crossed lovers. And unlike most stories with alternating points of view, I felt an immediate connection to both Grace and her wolf, Sam.

But it also left me wanting more. Grace’s entire existence was wrapped up in Sam, and she didn’t seem to have much of a life outside of her yearning for him. All-consuming love, I don’t mind. But for me, it’s even more powerful if a girl is her own person with her own dreams and aspirations outside of being with a certain guy/wolf/vampire.

Still, I will be reading more by this author because the writing was engaging. Here’s a taste from the opening:

I remember lying in the snow, a small red spot of warm going cold, surrounded by wolves. They were licking me, biting me, worrying at my body, pressing in. Their huddled bodies blocked what little heat the sun offered. Ice glistened on their ruffs and their breath made opaque shapes that hung in the air around us. The musky smell of their coats made me think of wet dog and burning leaves, pleasant and terrifying. Their tongues melted my skin; their careless teeth ripped at my sleeves and snagged through my hair, pushed against my collarbone, the pulse at my neck.

While we’re on the topic of romance, be sure to check out the latest list of book recommendations over at Flashlight Worthy: The Most Romantic YA Books of All Time.

Your Turn: What makes for a better romance—an eternal love that obliterates all longing save the lovers’ desire to be together? Or a big ol’ mess of two separate people with their own wants and needs who have to figure out how to make it work on top of everything else?

Or, to put it another way:

Or…

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Did You Like This Book? Try:

• Lament
• Eyes Like Stars
• Fire
• More Recommendations from LibraryThing

Can you trust me? Compare our taste!

Title: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Author: Anne Lamott
Category: Nonfiction
Rating: 5/5
Why I Read It: I read this book a few years ago, and I thought it would make a good re-read.

Summary: A writer reflects on the writing life. Hint: It must include writing.

Review: If you are a writer—published or not—and you haven’t read this book, get thee to a bookery forthwith! Or, to put it another way: go get this book and read it NOW.

It’ll crack you up, it’ll be the flint that sparks your next great burst of inspiration, it’ll warm the cockles of your poor heart made bitter by all the self-doubt and the rejection and the hard work.

I almost had a breakdown trying to choose a quote to post with this review. Because it’s all so good. I would quote the whole book here if I could. But I had to pick one, so here you go:

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”

As I work on revising my most recent NaNoWriMo draft, I have to keep reminding myself of this. To really drive the message home, I think I’m going to tattoo one letter on each knuckle: B-I-R-D-B-Y-B-I-R-D.

Your Turn: What’s your favorite writing advice book?

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Did You Like This Book? Try:

• Writing Down the Bones
• Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life
• On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
• More Recommendations from LibraryThing