Tag Archive for: book review

Monday Book Review: Winter by Marissa Meyer

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I started this book during winter break and didn’t finish for nearly two months. To be fair, I’m working full-time and going to school, and the book is over 800 pages long!

Title: Winter

Author: Marissa Meyer

Genre: science-fiction

Age group: young adult

Synopsis: This is the final book in the Lunar Chronicles series, in which we finally get to see all our princesses (Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter) resolve their problems. The book takes place almost entirely on the moon (Lunar colony), and the “girls” and their “boys” work together to defeat the evil Queen Levana.

When I started this series, I thought it was absolutely fantastic. Ooh, if only I could come up with a series idea as great as this! And Marissa Meyer did a great job with the first three books of this series, but something seemed to go wrong with this last one. I know part of the reason it took me so long to finish was that I have very little time for reading these days. Still, the plot seemed to move along at an achingly slow pace. I fear this may be a case where the author’s books were selling so well that the publisher just let her write and write and write. However, that meant what should have been an epic ending became a story that just. wouldn’t. end.

All due respect to Marissa Meyer (again, I should be so lucky to be as creative and gifted a writer as she is), but I think her editors failed her here. Somebody should have said, “This is great, but let’s cut this story in half. Four hundred pages should do just fine.”Save

Monday Book Review: Erin’s Ring by Laura H. Pearl

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Another YA book I was able to read over winter break (and have finally gotten around to writing the review!)

Book review for Erin's Ring by Laura H. PearlTitle: Erin’s Ring

Author: Laura H. Pearl

Genre: Historical fiction

Age group: YA

Summary (from back cover):
“When thirteen-year-old Molly McCormick, who has recently moved from the Midwest to Dover, New Hampshire, finds an old Irish Claddagh ring poking up out of the dirt in a garden outside her local parish church, she is immediately intrigued. The ring’s inscription, “To Erin–Love, Michael”, fills her head with romantic possibilities. She teams up with her new friend, Theresa Grant, to uncover the story behind the lost ring. With the help of the head librarian at the public library, the two girls become immersed in the rich history of the Irish immigrants who came to Dover in droves during the 19th century, to escape famine and poverty in their homeland and make better lives for their children and grandchildren.”

This novel would be considered a “time split” story. In other words, the story jumps back and forth between Molly’s time period (late 1990s) and the 19th century when Irish Catholic immigrants were moving into the New England area. If you are interested in Irish Catholic history in America, you would enjoy learning about the struggles of these immigrants. I don’t consider myself much of a history buff, but the author Laura Pearl has a writing voice that fits well for that time period. In fact, I much preferred the 19th century scenes as the voice rang truer in those scenes than they did for the the “modern” girls (Molly and her friend Theresa). The story is a sweet one that I’m sure history lovers (especially those who love Irish-American Catholic history) will enjoy.

 

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Monday Book Review: Rosa, Sola by Carmela Martino

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Can I resist a middle grade book with an Italian-American main character and lots of Italian vocabulary words sprinkled throughout?

No. No, I cannot. 🙂

Monday Book Review: Rosa, Sola by Carmela MartinoTitle: Rosa, Sola

Author: Carmela Martino

Age group: middle grade (on the youngish side)

Genre: historical fiction? (I read somewhere that anything from the Vietnam War or earlier is now considered historical fiction. This story takes place in the 1960s.)

Summary: Rosa Bernardi, an only child living with her Italian immigrant parents in 1960s Chicago, often feels alone, or SOLA, as her parents would say. But after she holds her best friend AnnaMaria’s baby brother for the first time, Rosa is sure that if she prays hard enough, God will send her a brother of her own. When Rosa’s prayers for a sibling are answered, she is overjoyed—until tragedy strikes. Rosa is left feeling more SOLA than ever, and wondering if her broken family will ever be whole again. (taken from Amazon)

School Library Journal called this a “gentle and moving story,” and I have to agree. Rosa is a good Catholic girl who desperately prays the rosary every night for God to send her a little brother. I don’t want to give the story away, but as the Amazon summary states, tragedy strikes the family. You can’t help but feel for Rosa and her family. Carmela’s descriptions of love and loss are dead-on. Make sure you’ve got a hankie nearby when you reach the mid-point of this book. Still, the story is told with such compassion and care for the characters that you can’t help but love them. This would be a wonderful book to share with a child who might be coping with loss.

Brava to Carmela Martino on a beautiful tale.

(And for those of you wondering: yes, I understood all the Italian words in the story. I didn’t need to peek at the glossary in the back once. 🙂 )

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Monday Book Review: Six Dates to Disaster by Cynthia Toney

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One of the best parts about winter break is having time to read something other than books for my doctorate program! I’m trying to get through several books this week, so hopefully, I’ll have several more Monday book reviews for you before the month is up!

Today, I’m covering the third book in Cynthia Toney’s Bird Face series.

Monday Book Review: Six Dates to DisasterTitle: Six Dates to Disaster

Author: Cynthia T. Toney

Genre: romance

Age group: YA

Summary: In this third book from the Bird Face series, high school freshman Wendy is finally dating David, and all seems to be going well so far. However, another area of Wendy’s life is falling apart. In the last Bird Face book, we learned that Wendy’s elderly neighbor, Mrs. V., was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Her son and grandson decided it would be best if she moved to Alaska near them. In this book, Wendy is desperate to get to Alaska to visit Mrs. V. one last time before she can no longer remember who Wendy is. The problem is that her parents have lost their jobs, and Wendy will have to earn the money on her own to get there. Wendy’s desperation leads her to some ethically questionable decisions. Can she find a way to earn the money for the trip to Alaska and still maintain her relationship with David?

If you’ve read the other two books in the Bird Face series, you’ll enjoy this one as well. Author Cynthia Toney keeps all the kissing scenes very PG, so parents can feel comfortable handing this book to their young teens. The story moves along swiftly, and I was able to finish in just a few nights.

Monday Book Review: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

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In case you missed it, this summer a new Harry Potter book was released.

The first thing that needs to be said about the latest Harry Potter book is that it’s not really a book. It’s a play.

The second thing that needs to be said is that it’s not really written by J.K. Rowling. The play is written by Jack Thorne, and it’s based on a story idea by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, and Jack Thorne himself.

harry-potter-and-the-cursed-childTitle: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

Author: Jack Thorne

Genre: fantasy

Synopsis: It’s nineteen years since Harry Potter and his friends defeated Lord Voldemort. (Uhh, should I have mentioned a spoiler alert? You did read the original seven stories, right?) Harry has married Ginny and had three children. It’s time for his second son, Albus, to head off to Hogwarts, but Albus isn’t thrilled about being the son of the famous Harry Potter. When an unexpected time turner is discovered, Albus and his new friend at Hogwarts decide to travel back in time to right some wrongs.

It’s hard to talk too much about the plot of this play without giving away too much. I’ll only warn you that the story skips forward in time pretty quickly in the beginning. Albus is just a first year at the beginning, and then suddenly he’s in his fourth year.

While it was a lot of fun to be back with the characters and settings of Harry Potter, I found a few things about the play to be distracting. First, because it’s written as a script, we didn’t get the descriptions of the characters we usually get. This might not have been a problem with characters we already knew from the first seven books, but when a new character (such as Delphi) is introduced, we get something very brief, such as “a twenty-something, determined-looking woman.” That doesn’t really tell us much, and at times, she came across as more of a kid than an adult.

Another thing that tripped me up was when characters would suddenly “appear” on the scene, but they would never actually enter the stage. At one point, a character begins speaking, and I thought, “When did he walk onto the stage? Where is he standing on the stage? Or are we just hearing his voice? Is this a voiceover?”

All that being said, the climactic scenes have some nice tension, and the characters remain true to how we’d expect them to act.

Final verdict? If you’re a fan of the Harry Potter series, you’ll probably want this just to add to your collection and to find out what might have happened to Potter and friends, but realize that it’s not going to read like the original series.

 

Monday Book Review: Ten Commandments for Kissing Gloria Jean by Britt Leigh

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I won this book in a giveaway and was happy to do so since it’s from one of my fellow authors from the Books for Catholic Teens Facebook group.

Monday Book Review: Ten Commandments for Kissing Gloria Jean by Britt LeighTitle: Ten Commandments for Kissing Gloria Jean

Author: Britt Leigh

Genre: contemporary romance

Age category: young adult (but on the young end, really more upper middle grade in terms of voice)

Synopsis: (from back cover) “Gloria Jean wants her first kiss more than anything in the world. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Parents, friends, the sex ed teacher at school, and her Confirmation class catechists: everyone has opinions about what a fourteen-year-old girl should–and shouldn’t–do. Even Gloria’s own body adds to the confusion with troubles of its own. In a world of mixed messages, Gloria Jean wonders how she can find a way to listen to her own heart, and how she’s supposed to follow the rules if she isn’t even sure what they are.”

The book opens with eighth grader Gloria Jean going on her first movie date with a boy–although she swears to her mom it’s really just boys and girls hanging out as friends since her two female friends are also bringing guys as well. Secretly, Gloria Jean is hoping this date will end with her first kiss, but part way through the movie, she experiences “the Troubles” and needs to run to the bathroom. It takes her a long time to come back to her movie seat, and the “mood” is ruined by then.

Eventually, Gloria Jean learns that the “troubles” she’s been plagued with is actual celiac disease. She can’t have any gluten, and when she does it wrecks havoc with her digestive system, making her feel absolutely miserable, and it could have serious consequences later in life. This means she can’t receive Communion, which makes participating in her Confirmation retreat and regular Sunday Mass a matter of utter social awkwardness for Gloria Jean. Every young teen and preteen just wants to fit in, and Gloria Jean is standing out like a sore thumb when she can only receive from the chalice.

If you heard me on the Jennifer Fulwiler show last week, we were talking about good books for Catholic kids, some overtly Christian and others not. As you can probably guess, this book is very overtly Catholic. It’s essentially Theology of the Body told in novel form. Her Confirmation classes are set up in direct contrast to her sex ed classes at her public middle school. At times, some teens may feel this book gets a bit preachy.

However, if you’re a parent of a preteen who doesn’t know how to get started talking about your values with regard to sex, this book may be a good place to break into that conversation. Or if you’re a parent of a child with celiac disease, this book might make them feel less alone.

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Monday Book Review: Footer Davis Probably Is Crazy by Susan Vaught

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Every year I try to read the Edgar Award nominees for juvenile and young adult fiction before the winners are announced. Due to time constraints with the doctorate program, I completely failed this year. However, I did manage to read the winner in the juvenile category recently, so here it is!

Footer DavisTitle: Footer Davis Probably Is Crazy

Author: Susan Vaught

Genre: mystery

Age group: middle grade

Synopsis: Footer Davis’s mother has bipolar disorder.  Sometimes she’s just fine–but not if she doesn’t take her pills. Prior to the opening of our story, there was a terrible fire on a neighbor’s farm. The two Abrams kids who live there haven’t been seen since. Were they so badly burned in the fire no one could find their remains? Or have they fled? Footer and her best friend Peavine decide to investigate, and what Footer finds scares her into thinking maybe she had something to do with the fire herself.

Author Susan Vaught works in the mental health field, so she’s definitely writing about something she has experience with here. The story is told in first-person from the perspective of young Footer Davis. Footer has a very unique voice. It’s one of the strengths of this story, but I’ll also admit it’s part of what made this story a little hard for me to get into at first. After all, Footer Davis “probably is crazy,” and her thoughts can be hard to follow. When are we being told the truth? When are we experiencing visions or a dream through Footer’s perspective? Or is she just remembering the past?

Thankfully, once you get used to Footer’s unique voice, the story moves along very rapidly. The author also does a great job with the ending. Often in middle grade mysteries, I can guess where the author is headed. It took almost until the surprising ending for me to figure out where this was all headed. And then once I figured it out, I wanted to shout at Footer, “Hey! Don’t you see what’s going on here?!?”

Some might wonder with all of this talk of mental illness if this is appropriate for middle grade readers. Yes, it’s definitely told with a middle grade voice, not a YA voice. I would put it a little akin to the great story So B. It by Sarah Weeks which deals with a character whose mother is mentally challenged.

So if you’re into middle grade mysteries with unique main characters, check out Footer Davis Probably Is Crazy.

Monday Book Review: Life-Changing Love by Theresa Linden

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I had a chance to read an advanced copy of Theresa Linden’s new release (officially, it comes out on May 26), and I’m happy to share a bit about it now!

Life Changing Love by Theresa LindenTitle: Life-Changing Love

Author: Theresa Linden

Genre: contemporary romance

Age group: YA

Synopsis: There are several “love stories” going on here, but the main character is Caitlyn, who is about to turn 15 and is being introduced to the idea of old-fashioned courtship. There’s no dating without parental involvement, and things must be taken slowly. Caitlyn would like to try out this way of getting to know someone with her crush, Roland West, but Caitlyn’s not the only girl with her eye on Roland. Another girl’s interested, too, and her parents aren’t holding her to any courtship rules. How can Caitlyn compete? To complicate matters, another girl she knows is pregnant, and the boyfriend’s pushing for an abortion. Then Caitlyn learns something about her own parents and their dating mistakes that makes her question everything she’s learned.

Theresa Linden is one of my fellow Catholic Writers Guild members, so she does a nice job of weaving Theology of the Body into her story. This book has a strong pro-life message and would be a great way to talk about difficult dating and sex topics with your teenager. Theresa keeps the story engaging and realistic (this is not a saccharine love story nor are the characters all goody-two shoes).

Plus, there are some scenes in Italy. Enough said. 😉

You can pre-order it on Amazon here.

Monday Book Review: The Sign of The Carved Cross by Lisa Hendey

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The Sign of the Carved Cross is the second book in the Chime Travelers series. I suppose I really should have read the first book in the series before diving into book 2, but luckily, Lisa Hendey fills in enough details that if you missed book 1, you can still read book 2!

The Chime Travelers series is about a brother and sister who travel back in time and visit with saints. Their time-travel journeys start with the chiming of church bells.

Monday Book Review: Sign of the Carved Cross--second book in the Chima Travelers series by Lisa HendeyTitle: The Sign of the Carved Cross

Author: Lisa Hendey

Genre: Mystery

Age group: chapter book (grades 2-4)

Synopsis: When a new girl starts at Katie’s school, Katie joins her friends in excluding her from all their fun. But when Katie and her family help clean the church and the bells begin to chime, Katie is suddenly transported back to 1675. Tossed into a Native American village, Katie gets a sense of what it’s like to be “the new girl.” Luckily, she finds a friend in Tekakwitha, a young woman who knows what it’s like to be an outsider. Tekakwitha has scars on her face from a terrible disease, and her uncle’s family looks down on her for being a Christian. While Tekakwitha and Katie bond, things become worse in the village for Tekakwitha, and soon the girls are forced to run away in the middle of the night.

You may have guessed that Tekakwitha turns out to be St. Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American woman to be canonized. While I remember hearing about St. Kateri in school and I remember her being canonized in 2012, I really didn’t know too much about her. This book is a delightful introduction to this beautiful saint. Not only is this a lovely, intimate way to learn about St. Kateri, but it’s a fun read as well. Hendey keeps the story  moving along quickly, and young people will enjoy getting to know Katie and her family through this series. I love that the very “real life” problems of bullying and exclusion are worked so nicely into this story and in ways that children can easily relate to.

The book also includes discussion questions, a prayer in honor of St. Kateri Tekakwitha, and a prayer before receiving Communion. There are at least four books in the series out now. You can check them out here.

For news on my upcoming middle grade mystery and a chance to win a free copy, be sure to join my Insiders Club here.

Monday Book Review: The Fantastic Frame #1 (Danger! Tiger Crossing)

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A couple weeks ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Lin Oliver, the author of the Fantastic Frame series, at an SCBWI meeting. (SCBWI stands for Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators.) In fact, Lin is one of the co-founders of SCBWI, so it was cool to hear how the group came to be and how Lin has worked in the television and film industry all the while hoping to become a children’s book author. If you recognize her name, it may be because she’s co-authored a ton of children’s books with Henry Winkler, a.k.a. the Fonz.

Fantastic FrameTitle: Danger! Tiger Crossing (The Fantastic Frame #1)

Author: Lin Oliver

Genre: fantasy

Age group: chapter book (grades 1-3)

Synopsis: Ten-year-old Tiger Brooks has just moved into a new neighborhood. He lives on the lower level of a duplex with a friendly girl named Luna Lopez living upstairs and a “crazy” old lady named Viola Dots living next door. When Tiger sees a talking, top-hat wearing Pig disappear into Viola’s house, he and Luna decide to investigate. Inside, they discover that many years ago Viola’s thirteen-year-old son disappeared inside a painting that had been hung in a fantastical frame. Tiger soon discovers that the frame has an “hour of power,” during which you can step inside whatever painting is inside that frame. Before long, he and Luna are sucked into the same painting that Viola’s son disappeared into. Now they need to find Viola’s son and bring him back home to his distraught mother.

Art lovers will probably really enjoy this series as Lin Oliver introduces a new famous painting into each book in the series. As you can imagine, Tiger and Luna head into each painting in order to find Viola’s son, but something always keeps them from bringing him back.

IMG_2633This story is cute and a very fast read. I think I read it in a half hour. As someone who reads and writes middle grade and young adult, I’m afraid I just don’t know enough about chapter books to do any kind of fair comparison for you, but the concept behind this series is a fantastic one, and art lovers will definitely enjoy it!

It was great fun meeting Lin, and I wish her the best of luck with this series!

 

 

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