Thursday, August 11, 2016
Moved to Wordpress...At Least Temporarily...
I have been having some issues with my site, and it's mainly because I use my iPad and iPhone to publish my posts. Blogger doesn't seem to like this. Unfortunately.
Things get cut off. HTML doesn't work, at least from these devices.
So until I can get my hands on a computer, I have moved mainly to .
My Tumblr still gets updated from Wordpress, which is another plus, besides the fact that both websites have apps and blogger no longer does.
So if you're not seeing fresh material, please check out my Wordpress blog. It is updated almost daily.
I promise I will come back to Blogger. I just need the right equipment.
Thank you for following me here. I am on Bloglovin' as well, so if you don't have Wordpress, please feel free to add me there and I will see you! Or subscribe via email!
Thanks and see you HERE soon. đŸ˜˜
Tuesday, July 26, 2016
Monday, July 25, 2016
Stars Above - Marissa Meyer (Review)
Title: Stars Above: A Lunar Chronicles Collection
Author: Marissa Meyer
Publisher: Feiwel and Friends, 2016
Genre: YA Fantasy, YA Retellings, YA Fairy Tales
My Review
I've never been one to read the novellas between books. I just am not a fan of short stories. I sometimes feel it's just superfluous information, and once a series is finished, it just doesn't make sense to tell stories of what happened before the book because, well, we know what happened in the end. The only novella that I actually felt added to the stories was Undivided, the fifth book in the Unwind Dystology by Neal Shusterman. However, now I can add another book to the list: Stars Above.
This was awesome. Though some of the stories were about events we knew about, they were fresh and original. I personal loved Glitches, The Princess and The Guard, and The little Android. Oh, and of course the final story, Something Old, Something New. The other stories were nice, but not necessarily ones that I couldn't live without. Carswell's Guide to Being Lucky was cute. The Keeper was informative. The Queen's Army just made me crazy with trying to picture what Wolf looks like after they alter him in Winter. He was so handsome before, and it's just hard to imagine a wolf-like face while still looking human. Sometimes I wish I had illustrations from Meyer herself so I can see what she sees when she writes these characters.
There's really no way to review the stories without spoiling them, so I'll say that most are set in the past...we have a story featuring Scarlet's grandmother Michelle, a story about Cinder's first arrival in the Linh house, and a story about Wolf being recruited to the army. We have a story about Carswell as a boy, a story about Cress and the origins of her placement into the satellite, and a wonderful story of Winter and Jacin as they grow up. Finally, there is a story about an android that falls in love with a human, a story from Kai's perspective of the first meeting between him and Cinder, and a story about a wedding...but I won't reveal whose.
Is it Classroom Appropriate?
All of Meyer's books in the Lunar Chronicles are appropriate. I used Cinder in a lesson plan because it is a perfect example of a modern-day fairy tale retelling. There's no sex, no swear words, and lots of warm and fuzzies. But there's also lots of adventure in the series. It's a great collection of stories, and I plan to use them in my classes. I honestly haven't met anyone that doesn't like the Lunar Chronicles, and that's good because I would think there was something seriously wrong with them.
Age Range:
I would say you could go as young as you want to on these books, as long as the reader can follow the plot. The books are big, and there's 4 of them: Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, Fairest, and Winter. Then of course there's this little collection of short stories. I think the only limitation would be reading level. Cinder rates as 12 and up with a Lexile score of 790L on Lexile.com.
End Result:
Read the series. It's worth every minute. And the covers are beautiful. Meyer is coming out with another book this fall about the Queen of Hearts. She's got high expectations after what she's accomplished with this series, so hopefully she'll be able to pull off another amazing saga. We'll just have to wait and see.
<a href="https://teacherofya.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/img_00101.jpg"><img width="1000" height="1507" alt="" src="https://teacherofya.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/img_00101.jpg" title="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-87"></a>
Author: Marissa Meyer
Publisher: Feiwel and Friends, 2016
Genre: YA Fantasy, YA Retellings, YA Fairy Tales
My Review
I've never been one to read the novellas between books. I just am not a fan of short stories. I sometimes feel it's just superfluous information, and once a series is finished, it just doesn't make sense to tell stories of what happened before the book because, well, we know what happened in the end. The only novella that I actually felt added to the stories was Undivided, the fifth book in the Unwind Dystology by Neal Shusterman. However, now I can add another book to the list: Stars Above.
This was awesome. Though some of the stories were about events we knew about, they were fresh and original. I personal loved Glitches, The Princess and The Guard, and The little Android. Oh, and of course the final story, Something Old, Something New. The other stories were nice, but not necessarily ones that I couldn't live without. Carswell's Guide to Being Lucky was cute. The Keeper was informative. The Queen's Army just made me crazy with trying to picture what Wolf looks like after they alter him in Winter. He was so handsome before, and it's just hard to imagine a wolf-like face while still looking human. Sometimes I wish I had illustrations from Meyer herself so I can see what she sees when she writes these characters.
There's really no way to review the stories without spoiling them, so I'll say that most are set in the past...we have a story featuring Scarlet's grandmother Michelle, a story about Cinder's first arrival in the Linh house, and a story about Wolf being recruited to the army. We have a story about Carswell as a boy, a story about Cress and the origins of her placement into the satellite, and a wonderful story of Winter and Jacin as they grow up. Finally, there is a story about an android that falls in love with a human, a story from Kai's perspective of the first meeting between him and Cinder, and a story about a wedding...but I won't reveal whose.
Is it Classroom Appropriate?
All of Meyer's books in the Lunar Chronicles are appropriate. I used Cinder in a lesson plan because it is a perfect example of a modern-day fairy tale retelling. There's no sex, no swear words, and lots of warm and fuzzies. But there's also lots of adventure in the series. It's a great collection of stories, and I plan to use them in my classes. I honestly haven't met anyone that doesn't like the Lunar Chronicles, and that's good because I would think there was something seriously wrong with them.
Age Range:
I would say you could go as young as you want to on these books, as long as the reader can follow the plot. The books are big, and there's 4 of them: Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, Fairest, and Winter. Then of course there's this little collection of short stories. I think the only limitation would be reading level. Cinder rates as 12 and up with a Lexile score of 790L on Lexile.com.
End Result:
Read the series. It's worth every minute. And the covers are beautiful. Meyer is coming out with another book this fall about the Queen of Hearts. She's got high expectations after what she's accomplished with this series, so hopefully she'll be able to pull off another amazing saga. We'll just have to wait and see.
<a href="https://teacherofya.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/img_00101.jpg"><img width="1000" height="1507" alt="" src="https://teacherofya.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/img_00101.jpg" title="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-87"></a>
Saturday, July 23, 2016
Strain of Resistance - Michelle Bryan (Review)
Title: Strain of Resistance (Book One)
Author: Michelle Bryan
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016
Genre: NA Dystopia, NA Science Fiction
**I received a copy of this book free from the Author in exchange for an honest review**
This review can also be found at TeacherofYa's Wordpress and TeacherofYa's Tumblr
My Review:
Whoa. That was a crazy ride. Like, for real. I was expecting a little more YA, but that book is definitely a New Adult book. I guess it just took me by surprise.
The book centers around Emma Bixby, or just Bixby as she prefers to be called. She comes from an alcoholic father and an enabling mother. We are introduced to her at the age of 12, and one night a strange crystallized dust scatters over the town. Bixby is attacked by it but skipped over, and when she runs home, her father has killed her mother...but it's no longer her father. Some sort of alien-like worm protrudes from his mouth, and Bixby is forced to kill him. She is found days later by other survivors who are immune to the alien plague.
We see her again eight years later, now a complete badass. The cover image is supposed to be her: the tattoos disguise a face-long scar from the night when her dad attacked her. She cusses like a sailor and refuses to get close to anybody...because the last boy she loved disappeared on a run. She casually sleeps with Luke, but she runs from his declarations of love. She, along with so,w other survivors, live in an old hotel called the Grand, and she fights what they call "the leeches" to protect themselves. Other bands of people called Ravagers are cannibals that seek out fresh meat. The world has become a dangerous place.
One day they get a distress call from their fellow traders at St. Joseph's hospital. The first wave of people to go check out the situation don't come back. This forces Bixby and others to see what is going on: the radio message last said that there were monsters, not leeches or Ravagers. What they come up against is a new evolution of the infected...a new "strain" of alien AND human DNA. They can reason. And speak. And all they want is to feed off the survivors of the first wave of infection.
It's pretty creepy and scary. It would make one hell of a horror movie. I'm still a little shook up by it.
Is it Classroom-Appropriate?
Oh, hell no. There's so much swearing, and not just "shit." Full on "F-word" status here, along with some creative uses of other swear words. There's even an instance of a word that sounds like "wussy." I'll leave it up to that to convey the level of language. Then there's the sex. Not as explicit as an adult erotica novel, but one scene we get blow-by-blow coverage. Yeah...this book would never enter a classroom of mine. So I must say the NA tag on it is appropriate. Do not confuse this for YA like I did, and like some NA can be. This is strictly for adults.
Age Range:
Um....18 and up? I guess that's a little too conservative of me. Probably at least 16 and up. Not for the young ones. Be prepared when reading this: this is NOT YA. If you remember that, you should be good to go. I did not, so I was surprised suddenly by it all.
End Result:
I enjoyed it. It ends with a painful cliffhanger that leads you to want to know what's going to happen next, so I couldn't put this series down now if I tried. I don't see a release date on the next installment, so it's a waiting game. It was hard for me to rate this one. I wanted to keep reading it, but I was left with a lot of questions about the aliens and the rest of civilization. Maybe that will be addressed in book two...maybe not at all. Bixby's character was pretty interesting: she's devastated by a loss, so she refuses to get close again. A little bitchy for me. But apparently it's part of her harm in Luke's eyes. The amount of crap she dishes out to him, and he just takes it....well, it just boggles my mind. I'm going to go with 3.5/5. On Goodreads,chat means I'll have to round up and do four stars. So for star rating systems: ★★★★☆. For all other intents and purposes: ★★★ and a half.
<a href="https://teacherofya.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/img_00081.jpg"><img width="333" height="500" alt="" src="https://teacherofya.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/img_00081.jpg" title="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-71"></a>
I will say this for the book, though...stunning cover. Absolutely stunning.
Author: Michelle Bryan
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016
Genre: NA Dystopia, NA Science Fiction
**I received a copy of this book free from the Author in exchange for an honest review**
This review can also be found at TeacherofYa's Wordpress and TeacherofYa's Tumblr
My Review:
Whoa. That was a crazy ride. Like, for real. I was expecting a little more YA, but that book is definitely a New Adult book. I guess it just took me by surprise.
The book centers around Emma Bixby, or just Bixby as she prefers to be called. She comes from an alcoholic father and an enabling mother. We are introduced to her at the age of 12, and one night a strange crystallized dust scatters over the town. Bixby is attacked by it but skipped over, and when she runs home, her father has killed her mother...but it's no longer her father. Some sort of alien-like worm protrudes from his mouth, and Bixby is forced to kill him. She is found days later by other survivors who are immune to the alien plague.
We see her again eight years later, now a complete badass. The cover image is supposed to be her: the tattoos disguise a face-long scar from the night when her dad attacked her. She cusses like a sailor and refuses to get close to anybody...because the last boy she loved disappeared on a run. She casually sleeps with Luke, but she runs from his declarations of love. She, along with so,w other survivors, live in an old hotel called the Grand, and she fights what they call "the leeches" to protect themselves. Other bands of people called Ravagers are cannibals that seek out fresh meat. The world has become a dangerous place.
One day they get a distress call from their fellow traders at St. Joseph's hospital. The first wave of people to go check out the situation don't come back. This forces Bixby and others to see what is going on: the radio message last said that there were monsters, not leeches or Ravagers. What they come up against is a new evolution of the infected...a new "strain" of alien AND human DNA. They can reason. And speak. And all they want is to feed off the survivors of the first wave of infection.
It's pretty creepy and scary. It would make one hell of a horror movie. I'm still a little shook up by it.
Is it Classroom-Appropriate?
Oh, hell no. There's so much swearing, and not just "shit." Full on "F-word" status here, along with some creative uses of other swear words. There's even an instance of a word that sounds like "wussy." I'll leave it up to that to convey the level of language. Then there's the sex. Not as explicit as an adult erotica novel, but one scene we get blow-by-blow coverage. Yeah...this book would never enter a classroom of mine. So I must say the NA tag on it is appropriate. Do not confuse this for YA like I did, and like some NA can be. This is strictly for adults.
Age Range:
Um....18 and up? I guess that's a little too conservative of me. Probably at least 16 and up. Not for the young ones. Be prepared when reading this: this is NOT YA. If you remember that, you should be good to go. I did not, so I was surprised suddenly by it all.
End Result:
I enjoyed it. It ends with a painful cliffhanger that leads you to want to know what's going to happen next, so I couldn't put this series down now if I tried. I don't see a release date on the next installment, so it's a waiting game. It was hard for me to rate this one. I wanted to keep reading it, but I was left with a lot of questions about the aliens and the rest of civilization. Maybe that will be addressed in book two...maybe not at all. Bixby's character was pretty interesting: she's devastated by a loss, so she refuses to get close again. A little bitchy for me. But apparently it's part of her harm in Luke's eyes. The amount of crap she dishes out to him, and he just takes it....well, it just boggles my mind. I'm going to go with 3.5/5. On Goodreads,chat means I'll have to round up and do four stars. So for star rating systems: ★★★★☆. For all other intents and purposes: ★★★ and a half.
<a href="https://teacherofya.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/img_00081.jpg"><img width="333" height="500" alt="" src="https://teacherofya.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/img_00081.jpg" title="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-71"></a>
I will say this for the book, though...stunning cover. Absolutely stunning.
Tuesday, July 19, 2016
Daughter of Smoke & Bone - Laini Taylor (Review)
**This review can also be found @ TeacherofYA's Wordpress and TeacherofYa's Tumblr
Title: Daughter of Smoke & Bone (Book One)
Author: Laini Taylor
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 2011
Genre: YA Celestial Fantasy, YA Paranormal
My Review:
It's easy to say you enjoyed or didn't enjoy a book. I've been fortunate enough to be on a good book streak...and it's probably because I'm reading books I've been dying to read for a long time, and are still popular enough to be checked out of the library and hard to obtain. I received this one by pure fate; I had abandoned the idea of ever reading this because it was impossible to find the first book in the series available. But one day, I walked in and it was there. And it was incredibly lucky that I found it, because I was starting to think it wasn't meant to be.
I'm so glad I did find it, too. The book has elements of traditional YA fantasy in that there are "angels" and "demons," good vs evil. But what Taylor does to make it wholly original is blur the lines between good and evil: are demons bad because they are demons? Are angels good because we believe they are G-d's soldiers? The book makes you think: and it definitely has more twists and turns than many of the genre.
Karou, a 17 year old Prague art student, has a strange family. She sketches their pictures and classmates think she is just imaginative. Her hair is blue, but they believe it's dyed that way. And the palm of her hands bear the eyes of hamsas, but they think they are simply interesting tattoos. Karou doesn't lie, but the students and even her best friend think that she's just whimsical and silly. But the truth is stranger than fiction: her family are chimeræ, monsters that are half man-half animal. Her hair is blue because she wished it to be. And her hamsas...well, she doesn't know where they came from because she's always had them.
On occasion Karou must run errands for Brimstone, the eccentric goat man that is a member of her foster family. He dispenses wishes to the desperate in exchange for teeth. There's also three others that live in Brimstone's shop, and only Karou is allowed in...because she was raised by them. One day, though, scorched handprints appear at the doorways to all the portals that open to Brimstone's shop. Karou thinks nothing of it (mainly because she knows very little about Brimstone and the chimeræ), but when an angel starts following her and attacks her, she starts to wonder what is really going on with her foster monsters. And her biggest question that has haunted her all her life begins to beg an answer: who is Karou? Why is an angel following her? And what does Brimstone do with the teeth she brings him?
It's a pretty trippy ride. And Karou's life is a big blank for most of the book, but we get to go on the journey of self-discovery with her...and the answers we get are nothing we could possibly fathom. It definitely takes you by surprise.
Is is Classroom-Appropriate?
I'm having a hard time finding books that are usable in the classroom lately. This, sadly, is still not one of them. Though brilliant in its execution and plot, there are words right off the bat that are adult in their use; Brimstone tells Karou that she should keep her life free of "inessential penises" after she breaks up with her boyfriend. So right off the bat, there's no way that the sexuality in the book is appropriate for a high school class setting. However, it's filled with funny situations and wordplay, and it would definitely make a good read for recreational purposes.
Age Range:
This is a tough one. The conservative in me thinks 15 minimum. But the more relaxed part of me thinks that because it's not explicit sex and just more allusions to the act, that the reader could be as young as 13 and still not get warped by the book. I have yet to read the next books in ten series, but they are en route from the library so it won't be long. But to err on the side of caution, I would just average the age to 14 and say that's the minimum (just to be safe).
End Result:
I can't believe I'm giving another book five stars. ★★★★★! I must be just lucky, and I'll get a horrible book next...Ugh. Taylor surprised me, and I look forward to seeing what happens to Karou and the chimeræ and Akiva. It has a cliffhanger ending. I won't be satisfied until I know what is to become of my blue-haired heroine.
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Monday, July 18, 2016
Shatter Me - Tahereh Mafi (Review)
**This review can also be found @ TeacherofYA's Tumblr**
Title: Shatter Me (Book One)
Author: Tahereh Mafi
Publisher: HarperCollins, 2012
Genre: YA Dystopia, YA Fantasy
My Review:
Author: Tahereh Mafi
Publisher: HarperCollins, 2012
Genre: YA Dystopia, YA Fantasy
My Review:
A-mazing!! Wow, what a wordsmith! Mafi writes this story like a stream of consciousness...we as the reader are truly inside Juliette's head, and we can see her revised thoughts and sudden feelings. I've never felt so in touch with a character. Yes, the sentences sometimes run together, and yes, sometimes phrases are repeated or even crossed out. At first, it was a little unsettling, as I was unused to this technique. But as I read on, I realized I was actually in the character's head, and I was experiencing everything practically through their mind. I could understand Juliette on a whole other level. It was truly amazing.
When we start, we learn that Juliette is in an asylum, placed their by her own parents. The word play in this part of the book is beautiful:
Killing time isn't as difficult as it sounds.I can shoot a hundred numbers through the chest and watch them bleed decimal points in the palm of my hand. I can rip the numbers off a clock and watch the hour hand tick tick tick its final tock just before I fall asleep. I can suffocate seconds just by holding my breath. I've been murdering minutes for hours and no one seems to mind.
I've never read anything like it. As she sits in her cell, counting the time and writing in a small notebook for 264 days, she receives a new cellmate. However, it's a boy, and she seems to know him. As Juliette begins to let her guard down, she constantly reminds her cellmate not to touch her. We find out later that her touch is deadly; she accidentally killed a child she was trying to help up from a fall. Turns out, her cellmate is no cellmate at all, but a plant to get her to talk and open up about her powers. A man known as Warner, head of the Resistance (a group that has essentially taken over the world in a dictatorship-type system with military force), has taken a special interest in Juliette and her killer touch. He takes her out of the asylum, but what he has in mind for her is much, much worse. Also, Adam, her mock cellmate, is seeming to try and help her. But who can Juliette trust in a world where no one has touched her? Where her own parents couldn't love her? Is it actually possible that Warner is right, and she is bad deep down, or does Adam see the real her despite the ability to physically connect?
Points go to Mafi. This is a story that could be done a thousand ways, and yet she makes it wholly original. Having access to Juliette's mind is like allowing us to wear her insecurities and doubts and feelings like a second skin.
Adam stares at me so long I begin to blush. He tips my chin up so I meet his eyes. Blue blue blue boring into me. His voice is deep, steady. "I don't think I've ever heard you laugh."He's so excruciatingly correct I don't know how to respond except with the truth. My smile is tucked into a straight line. "Laughter comes from living." I shrug, try to sound indifferent. "I've never really been alive before."
Wow. Right?
Is it Classroom-Appropriate?
No. Unfortunately, no. It's sad, too. It makes an excellent example of how to break the mold in writing. But there's swearing, and a little too much physical intimacy for our younger readers. It would work as a great workshop book in a college writing class, but for the high school classroom, I would not use it. Definitely a free-read for an older YA reader. It's a shame because it really is a beautifully written book. It shows that, once again, YA can be as good, if not better than so-called "adult" books. I wouldn't be surprised to see this in a non-YA setting.
Age Range:
Maybe I'm being ultra-conservative here, but I would recommend 15 and up. There's nothing explicitly happening that is PG-13 (which, btw, really shouldn't be called that, since the material in PG-13 rated movies and TV shows is much too mature for 13 year olds). But this is a series, and I can speculate that more will happen through the series. Maybe 14 if the teen is mature for their age. No F-words, but other bad words are used. No sex, but it gets pretty hot and heavy. It's just highly suggestive, that's all.
End result:
Can I give more than five stars? Well, it is MY review, so technically I can. I'd give it ten stars. But since most rating systems are a standard 1-5 stars, I'll have to settle for giving ★★★★★. I recommend it to EVERYONE. I'm mad I waited so long to read it. I will leave you now with another beautiful quote from one of the most well-written books of my generation.
The sun is an arrogant thing, always leaving the world behind when it tires of us.The moon is a loyal companion.It never leaves. It's always there, watching, steadfast, knowing us in our light and dark moments, changing forever just as we do. Everyday it's a different version of itself. Sometimes weak and wan, sometimes strong and full of light. The moon understands what it means to be human.Uncertain. Alone. Cratered by imperfections.
Friday, July 15, 2016
Die For Me - Amy Plum (Review)
This review can also be found @ TeacherofYa's Tumblr and TeacherofYA's Blogspot
Title: Die For Me (Die For Me #1)
Author: Amy Plum
Publisher: HarperTeen, 2009
Genre: YA Paranormal Romance
My Review: I was hesitant to read this series...was it another vampire story? A Twilight reimagined? A regurgitation or amalgam of the most popular books and flavors of the month? I'm glad to say it wasn't...and yet, it kind of was. Let me explain... Katie and Georgia are orphaned after their parents are killed in a car accident (is it just me, or do a lot of people's parents seem to die in books that way?), and the sisters are whisked off to France to stay with their grandparents. Fortunately for them, they've summered in Paris all their lives so they speak the language. Georgia, the oldest, seeks solace in the company of new friends and a lower drinking age. Katie, on the other hand, withdraws into books (sounds like me!) and museums to escape her pain. A chance encounter with a handsome (of course!) French boy with mysterious comings and goings turns into a date...but how can Vincent possibly like plain old Kate? (Yep, it's one of those "I'm not pretty, but every boy seems to think differently" kind of books) When Kate, while doing homework for History class, comes across an obituary photo of Vincent and his friends in a decades old newspaper, she learns that Vincent is a revenant: essentially he cannot die because he's already dead. Oh, and to complicate dating even more, he has the mission to save others from death's door and sacrifice himself...because he can die over and over again. Kate wants to run screaming in the opposite direction, but ever since she's met Vincent she feels alive again. Can Kate make it work, or should humans and zombies just not mix?
I am a sucker for these kind of books. I'd love to say, "Oh my gosh, it's the Plain Jane insta-love story again!" But I can't. I think I have a guilty pleasure. Some people have a secret obsession with traditional Harlequin-type romance novels, or just love John Green books...I apparently love this kind of story. I know, I'm pathetic.
Is it Classroom-Appropriate? Yes, but there's not much academic value to the book. It's a trilogy, and you can bet your sweet bippy I'm going to read the rest, but this book is purely for recreational purposes only. It would literally be like trying to use Twilight in the classroom. "Ok students, today we are going to talk about the significance of Edward's sparkling skin when he's in sunlight...what's the message Meyer is conveying here?" Yeah, that's not gonna fly. Just say guilty pleasure and move on. This is free time only, folks.
Age Range: I'd say 13 and up. It's very PG, because Vincent is a "gentleman," which is another amazing phenomenon in these types of books, but I actually think it coveys a good message for teens to wait on the adult activities. No sex. No swearing. Just passionate kisses and some sword action (and I mean an actual sword!). Let the teens read it: it's harmless.
End Result: I can't give it the full five stars, because it's a little predictable. But I can honestly give it ★★★★☆. Probably on an accurate scale, 3.75/5 stars. But I round up. So the four stays. I'd recommend it to fans of Twilight obviously, but also fans of books like the Hush, Hush series by Fitzpatrick or maybe Vampire Academy (I'm just guessing because I've never read those, but they seem like paranormal romance to me). If you're totally just burned out on Mary Sue + untouchable God man = "insta-lurve" as my friends call it, then skip it. Plum's After the End is a lot better, and fits more into a fantasy/dystopian story with no insta-anything. It's quite good, and I've checked out the sequel at the library. So that's my two cents. Do with it what you will... Gotta admit though: this is one of the most beautiful covers I've ever seen. I'm telling you right now, people DO judge a book by its cover...it's what drew me to it.
Title: Die For Me (Die For Me #1)
Author: Amy Plum
Publisher: HarperTeen, 2009
Genre: YA Paranormal Romance
My Review: I was hesitant to read this series...was it another vampire story? A Twilight reimagined? A regurgitation or amalgam of the most popular books and flavors of the month? I'm glad to say it wasn't...and yet, it kind of was. Let me explain... Katie and Georgia are orphaned after their parents are killed in a car accident (is it just me, or do a lot of people's parents seem to die in books that way?), and the sisters are whisked off to France to stay with their grandparents. Fortunately for them, they've summered in Paris all their lives so they speak the language. Georgia, the oldest, seeks solace in the company of new friends and a lower drinking age. Katie, on the other hand, withdraws into books (sounds like me!) and museums to escape her pain. A chance encounter with a handsome (of course!) French boy with mysterious comings and goings turns into a date...but how can Vincent possibly like plain old Kate? (Yep, it's one of those "I'm not pretty, but every boy seems to think differently" kind of books) When Kate, while doing homework for History class, comes across an obituary photo of Vincent and his friends in a decades old newspaper, she learns that Vincent is a revenant: essentially he cannot die because he's already dead. Oh, and to complicate dating even more, he has the mission to save others from death's door and sacrifice himself...because he can die over and over again. Kate wants to run screaming in the opposite direction, but ever since she's met Vincent she feels alive again. Can Kate make it work, or should humans and zombies just not mix?
I am a sucker for these kind of books. I'd love to say, "Oh my gosh, it's the Plain Jane insta-love story again!" But I can't. I think I have a guilty pleasure. Some people have a secret obsession with traditional Harlequin-type romance novels, or just love John Green books...I apparently love this kind of story. I know, I'm pathetic.
Is it Classroom-Appropriate? Yes, but there's not much academic value to the book. It's a trilogy, and you can bet your sweet bippy I'm going to read the rest, but this book is purely for recreational purposes only. It would literally be like trying to use Twilight in the classroom. "Ok students, today we are going to talk about the significance of Edward's sparkling skin when he's in sunlight...what's the message Meyer is conveying here?" Yeah, that's not gonna fly. Just say guilty pleasure and move on. This is free time only, folks.
Age Range: I'd say 13 and up. It's very PG, because Vincent is a "gentleman," which is another amazing phenomenon in these types of books, but I actually think it coveys a good message for teens to wait on the adult activities. No sex. No swearing. Just passionate kisses and some sword action (and I mean an actual sword!). Let the teens read it: it's harmless.
End Result: I can't give it the full five stars, because it's a little predictable. But I can honestly give it ★★★★☆. Probably on an accurate scale, 3.75/5 stars. But I round up. So the four stays. I'd recommend it to fans of Twilight obviously, but also fans of books like the Hush, Hush series by Fitzpatrick or maybe Vampire Academy (I'm just guessing because I've never read those, but they seem like paranormal romance to me). If you're totally just burned out on Mary Sue + untouchable God man = "insta-lurve" as my friends call it, then skip it. Plum's After the End is a lot better, and fits more into a fantasy/dystopian story with no insta-anything. It's quite good, and I've checked out the sequel at the library. So that's my two cents. Do with it what you will... Gotta admit though: this is one of the most beautiful covers I've ever seen. I'm telling you right now, people DO judge a book by its cover...it's what drew me to it.
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