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!

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Did You Like This Book? Try:

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

Title: This Lullaby
Author: Sarah Dessen
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 3.5/5
Why I Read It: This book made the YA summer reading list from Miss Shortskirt.

Summary: In the summer between high school graduation and college, Remy has a plan to tie up all her loose ends so she can start fresh. Until a clumsy musician named Dexter—the exact opposite of her type—barges in on her neat little plan.

Review: A perfect read for my summer beach vacation. This is my first Dessen book, and I will definitely be reading more.

I got so wrapped up in this romance that I stayed up two hours after my family went to bed to see how it would turn out.

Here’s where Remy meets Dexter:

I just looked at him. Wrong day, buddy, I thought. You caught me on the wrong day.

“The thing is,” he said, as if we’d been discussing the weather or world politics, “I saw you out in the showroom. I was over by the tire display?”

I was sure I was glaring at him. But he kept talking.

“I just thought to myself, all of a sudden, that we had something in common. A natural chemistry, if you will. And I had a feeling that something big was going to happen. To both of us. That we were, in fact, meant to be together.”

“You got all this,” I said, clarifying, “at the tire display?”

“You didn’t feel it?” he asked.

I also loved the banter between Remy and her closest girlfriends. Kind of like the Sex in the City gals, YA style.

Your Turn: Which Dessen book would you recommend next?

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Did You Like This Book? Try:

• Just Listen
• The Truth About Forever
• Someone Like You
• More Recommendations from LibraryThing

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

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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