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

Can you trust me? Compare our taste!

Audience Pick!

Title: Story of a Girl
Author: Sara Zarr
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 4/5
Why I Read It: Because you told me to!

Summary: Deanna made a mistake when she was 13. A big mistake. Her father will never look at her the same way again, and she can’t shake her nasty reputation at school. So how is she supposed to move on?

Review: I just resubmitted a request to my library to order Zarr’s latest, Once Was Lost. Because this woman can write.

I liked Story of a Girl even more than Sweethearts, which I liked quite a lot. This gritty story completely swept me away. I felt like I was reading about a real girl and her real problems.

The opening:

I was thirteen when my dad caught me with Tommy Webber in the back of Tommy’s Buick, parked next to the old Chart House down in Montara at eleven o’clock on a Tuesday night. Tommy was seventeen and the supposed friend of my brother, Darren.

I didn’t love him.

I’m not sure I even liked him.

I want more book recommendations from you! You’re making me go back and read “old” YA instead of just getting caught up in whatever hot new thing just hit the shelves. Without that feeling of obligation to do what you say, I don’t know if I would have the discipline to branch out from recent releases.

Your Turn: Got a book recommendation for me? Please leave it in the Pick My Next Book box to the right of this post!

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

Did you like this book? Try:

• Thirteen Reasons Why
• Twisted
• Sweethearts—My rating: 3.5/5
• More Recommendations from LibraryThing

Can you trust me? Compare our taste!

Title: The Forest of Hands and Teeth
Author: Carrie Ryan
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 4/5
Why I Read It: This was a title in Rhiannon’s Dystopia Challenge, not to mention I’ve read a ton of glowing reviews.

Summary: Mary lives in the last known human village in a world overrun by the undead. A system of fences separates the humans from the Unconsecrated who crave their flesh. When the fences aren’t enough to protect her family and then the man she loves asks another to marry him, Mary is forced to join the Sisterhood.

Review: Man oh man, I loves me a good dystopia. I devoured this zombilicious story in less than a day. I was a little skeptical about that tricky little thing called suspension of disbelief because, c’mon. Zombies. But aspects of this world were eerily plausible.

From a writer’s perspective, this book is an excellent example of how to not go easy on your characters. As a reader, I ate up every juicy bit of it. Mostly. In a few spots when hope was as scarce as a tan in a throng of zombies, I wanted a silver lining. Even a speck of metallic dust would have been nice.

Still loved it, though. And oh dear, the Mary and Travis scenes. Mmm. Imagine me using my best zombie voice when I say “MORE!”

A little taste for you:

It is a complicated process, giving a living human over to the Forest of Hands and Teeth. The Guardians found out years ago that the transfer cannot be done too early because a live human cast into the Forest is nothing but food for the Unconsecrated who will tear at their flesh and eat until there is nothing left.

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

Did You Like This Book? Try:

• Need
• The Hunger Games—My rating: 5/5
• Wintergirls—My rating: 5/5
• More Recommendations from LibraryThing

Audience Pick!

Title: The Key to the Golden Firebird
Author: Maureen Johnson
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 4/5
Why I Read It: Because you told me to!

Summary: After their father’s heart attack, their mom starts working overtime and it’s up to the three Gold sisters—May, Palmer, and Brooks—to pull through it on their own.

Review: This story is about how grief can turn you into a zombie. And Johnson’s humor was the perfect way to temper the heavy topic.

Although I’m not usually a fan of alternating points of view, it worked for me in this story because a common grief united the three girls.

Here’s the first part of May’s story to give you a taste for the rest of the book:

May Gold’s actual name was Mayzie. As far as she knew, this was not a real name. It was a made-up, moon-man-language name based on Willie Mays, one of the most famous baseball players of all time.

All of the Gold girls were named after baseball players, a testament to their father’s obsessive love of the game. Brooks was named after Brooks Robinson, twenty-two-year veteran of the Baltimore Orioles. Palmer was named after Jim Palmer, who was considered to be the best pitcher in Orioles history. May’s sisters’ names had relevance in their lives. They played softball. (Palmer was, in fact, a pitcher.) Also, Brooks and Palmer were kind of cool-sounding names. May could imagine a Brooks or a Palmer working in a law firm or becoming a famous artist. Mayzie was someone who had a washing machine on her front porch and turned up on some trashy talk show for the “My Mom Married My Brother!” episode.

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

Did You Like This Book? Try:

• The Bermudez Triangle
• Girl at Sea—My rating: 2.5/5
• Devilish
• More Recommendations from LibraryThing

Title: How to Ditch Your Fairy
Author: Justine Larbalestier
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 4/5
Why I Read It: I never miss a post on the author’s blog, so I figured it was time I read a whole book by her.

Summary: In the city of New Avalon, most people have a fairy that helps them with something, like finding loose change or great clothes at bargain prices. 14-year-old Charlie has the lamest fairy of all, so she sets out to ditch it. All is going according to plan until she gets a crush on a new boy at school, who then falls victim to another girl’s every-boy-likes-you fairy.

Review: In the language of New Avaloners, this book was vastly doos! I zipped through it but drug my feet on the last few pages because I didn’t want it to be over. It was a complete and utter delight to read, but the story still had substance behind it.

My favorite part was the fresh use of language. It even has a glossary at the back! (doos: cool, ace, brilliant) Also, Charlie had such a sweet, non-dysfunctional relationship with her parents, which was refreshing.

I’ll let Charlie take it from here:

I have a parking fairy. I’m fourteen years old. I can’t drive. I don’t like cars and I have a parking fairy.

Rochelle gets a clothes-shopping fairy and is always well attired; I get a parking fairy and always smell faintly of gasoline. How fair is that? I love clothes and shopping too. Yes, I have a fine family (except for my sister, ace photographer Nettles, and even she’s tolerable sometimes) and yes, Rochelle’s family is malodorous. She does deserve some kind of compensation. But why couldn’t I have, I don’t know, a good-hair fairy? Or, not even that doos, a loose-change-finding fairy. Lots of people have that fairy. Rochelle’s dad, Sandra’s cousin, Mom’s best friend’s sister. I’d wholly settle for a loose-change fairy.

Your Turn: I loved Larbalestier’s writing so much I’m considering adding her Magic or Madness trilogy to my series TBR list. If you’ve read that series, please let me know whether it’s worth the time commitment!

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

Did You Like This Book? Try:

• Magic’s Child
• Skinned
• Suite Scarlett—My rating: 3.5/5
• More Recommendations from LibraryThing