Monday, March 21, 2016

Books You Wish More People Knew About List

Want a book that isn't on the best sellers, but still good? Tired of long waiting lists? Check out this book list...


1) "Graffiti Moon" by Cath Crowley

Alternating narrators and snatches of poetry tell the tale of love among graffiti artists.

Lucy has been searching for the mysterious graffiti artist Shadow, whose work seems to address her fear of romance. Unfortunately, the only guy who knows how to track him down is Ed, whose nose Lucy broke at the end of a disastrous date. Ed knows how to track down Shadow because he is Shadow—a secret he hopes to keep from Lucy while he leads her around town revisiting old haunts. When Lucy discovers that Ed has been lying to her, she must deal with her conflicted feelings over the artist and the annoying man. Readers will quickly realize that Ed and Shadow are one and the same, a fact that Crowley reveals fairly early on. With that mystery stripped away, Ed is difficult to like, lacking both a strong personality and emotional resonance. His difficulty at school due to dyslexia smacks of pandering and isn’t well integrated into the overall story. Lucy’s personality is slightly more developed; glassblowing is a talent not often seen in teen fiction. However, Crowley’s divided narrative doesn’t suit the characters, and the decision to intersperse poems into the mix further fractures their interactions.

There’s splashes of color, but teens will find their interest washes out rapidly. (Fiction. 13 & up)




2) "Once A Witch" by Carolyn MacCullough

Growing up Talentless in a family of witches has been hard on Tamsin, particularly since her older, perfect sister Rowena oozes Talent. When a mysterious, handsome stranger mistakes her for Rowena and asks her to “find” something his family lost, is it so awful that she doesn’t correct him and accepts the challenge? Well, yes, of course. Her very Talented childhood friend Gabriel has moved back from the West Coast to attend Juilliard, and, in addition to being totally hot, he’s willing to help her. Together Gabriel and Tamsin Travel to the past to recover the lost object, an action that lands Rowena in the clutches of the stranger and threatens Tamsin’s whole family—and the rest of humanity to boot. While MacCullough’s setup and plot may not shake the world with their originality, she has created an enormously sympathetic character in Tamsin, whose itchy relationship with her family will resonate with teens struggling to define themselves. Characters, setting, conflict—all develop nicely to create a light urban fantasy that goes down easy and will have readers asking for its sequel. (Fantasy. 12 & up)



3) "The Silver Kiss" by Annette Curtis Klause

A mesmerizing first novel that depicts the romantic but perilous love between a lonely girl grieving for her dying mother and a reluctantly immortal vampire who has spent centuries trying to avenge his mother's gruesome death. While Dad spends all his time in the hospital with Mom, now a pallid shadow of the vibrant woman whose paintings were ""charged with bold emotion,"" Zoe--always a contrast to her mother, ""a dark one. . .a mystery"" who ""wrote quiet poetry suffused with twilight and questions""--broods at home and goes for night walks. She first meets Simon, who ""looked like an angel in a Renaissance painting,"" in a deserted park by moonlight; in chapters that alternate between her point of view and his (letting the reader in on his grisly hidden life and eventually his past), the two establish a delicate, frightening relationship that builds to startling concluding events. Klause's sensitively drawn characters fit precisely in their exquisitely balanced roles; with lyrical writing and a rich sensibility, she makes Simon not only horrifying but profoundly sympathetic. A fascinating story.





4) "A Kiss in Time" by Alex Flinn

Sleeping Beauty wakes up in the 21st century; clichés ensue. When Princess Talia pricks her finger on a spindle on her 16th birthday, she fulfills a curse that puts the entire kingdom of Euphrasia to sleep for centuries. Modern teen Jack, on the lam from a guided bus tour of Europe, discovers the slumbering kingdom and wakes the princess in a decidedly creepy date-rape–like scenario. Both wishing to flee the clutches of the king, they escape together to Jack’s home in Miami, where the girls are either vapid sluts or nerdy brains and the boys are mostly just clueless. The narration shifts between Talia and Jack, but the device sheds little light into their characters; both are too broadly drawn to engage readers. She seems petulant and pampered but turns out to be kind and adaptable; he’s supposedly a slacker, but he’s really brimming with motivation. All too easily they buff away each other’s sharp edges, though their lack of chemistry makes their inevitable declarations of love forced and awkward. There is nothing fresh about this reinterpretation.(Fantasy. 11-14)



5) "Sisters Red" by Jackson Pearce

This is not the tale of Little Red Riding Hood your granny told. In this version, the sisters, Scarlett and Rose (shades of red, anyone?), were attacked by a werewolf-like Fenris and saved by Scarlett’s quick action with a broken mirror. The attack left Scarlett with one eye, bite and claw scars and an obsessive drive to rid the world of the Fenris clans. Told from the points of view of the two teens, joined by childhood friend and woodsman Silas, the story combines elements of fantasy and mystery in equal parts. The voices of both sisters are distinctive and clearly differentiated, though the dialogue is sometimes overwrought and melodramatic. The plot unfolds with steadily increasing tension and unexpected twists to a shocking climax. The ending may not be totally satisfying, but it is realistic given the depiction of both young women. This urban fantasy with its scarred heroine and intermittent violence is not for Twilight fans but may well appeal to Melissa Marr’s readers and teens who like their fantasy on the gritty side. (Fantasy. YA)




6) "Inside Out" by Maria V. Snyder

Trella’s world, called Inside, is divided both physically and socially. The upper levels of Inside house the white-collar class, and the lower levels are for laborers. Trella is a scrub, a lower-level resident whose job is to keep Inside clean. Her small stature enables her to travel around Inside via its environmental control system and spy on the Uppers. Then, her only friend enlists her to help hide Broken Man, who claims that he has found the Gateway to the outside world. By accident, Trella becomes the face of a scrub revolution, and she resorts to leading a double life in order to save both her friend and the hope that the Gateway exists. Despite a promising concept, the book fails to grab readers and never gains momentum. Broken Man’s role as the prophet of the revolution is never explained. The peripheral characters exist for their roles in the revolution save for an Upper named Riley, who becomes Trella’s love interest. Too many rushed plotlines about Inside’s history and families plus not enough character development or worldbuilding make for a dull story. (Science fiction. YA)

County Cat Link


7) "A Certain Slant of Light" by Laura Whitcomb

What should be a sure-fire ghost story/romance fails to ignite a spark. Helen is a spirit that cleaves to hosts, unsure of why she’s bound to earth. She picks very literary hosts (including Emily Dickinson), such as her current high-school English teacher. It is at school that Helen is “seen” for the first time, by teenager Billy Blake. Turns out Billy is actually “James”—another spirit who’s figured out how to inhabit a body. He and Helen fall in love, and he convinces her to find a body so that they can have sex (semi-graphically depicted, and somehow also coldly so). Their hosts both have troubled homes (one drugs, the other religion, both with messed-up parents), leading to a predictable close. Unsurprising plot, under-developed characters and adequate prose doom this first novel. The love story, and the device of a spirit gaining flesh, should be emotionally rich fodder, yet Whitcomb takes these nowhere. Young women will be drawn to this book, and will probably finish it, but unless the collection needs another forgettable easy-sell, skip it. (Fiction. YA)




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