Review: Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: March 28, 2017
Pages: 544
Source: For Review from Hachette Book Group Canada
Rating: 4.5 Stars

The dream chooses the dreamer, not the other way around— and Lazlo Strange, war orphan and junior librarian, has always feared that his dream chose poorly. Since he was five years old he's been obsessed with the mythic lost city of Weep, but it would take someone bolder than he to cross half the world in search of it. Then a stunning opportunity presents itself, in the person of a hero called the Godslayer and a band of legendary warriors, and he has to seize his chance to lose his dream forever.
What happened in Weep two hundred years ago to cut it off from the rest of the world? What exactly did the Godslayer slay that went by the name of god? And what is the mysterious problem he now seeks help in solving?
The answers await in Weep, but so do more mysteries—including the blue-skinned goddess who appears in Lazlo's dreams. How did he dream her before he knew she existed? and if all the gods are dead, why does she seem so real?

In short: Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor is a feast for the imagination.

In some ways Strange the Dreamer is similar to Laini Taylor's previous trilogy, Daughter of Smoke and Bone: there's an epic and bloody war between two races, with star-crossed lovers at its centre. But that's where the similarities end. Strange the Dreamer is as original as it gets in the world of high fantasy fiction. Of course, we could expect no less from the Queen of Imagination, Laini Taylor. Strange the Dreamer is indescribably, beautifully BIZARRE, in the best way possible.

The set-up of the premise of Strange the Dreamer is complex and slow going, and less persistent readers may lose interest. But the payoff of patience is worth it as the story gets truly underway. And once underway the story is, in short, unexpected. Just when you think you know exactly where the story is going, a turning point hits and you're sent spinning off in another direction, again and again, right up until the novel's very unexpected cliffhanger ending.

At the story's heart is affable librarian, Lazlo Strange. He is not the usual hero type, more like the friendly bookish wallflower type (and all the more likeable for it). The old tale of the orphan underdog who dreams and wants more out of life is given new legs by Laini Taylor's adept prose and development. A story with a premise so indescribably strange can really only be done justice by an author whose writing is as lyrical and dream-like as Laini Taylor's. And I eagerly await what she comes up with next in the sequel, The Muse of Nightmares!

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Review: Just One Day and Just One Year by Gayle Forman

Publisher: Penguin
Published: January 8/October 10, 2013
Pages: 369/336
Source: Borrowed
Rating: 5 Stars

When sheltered American good girl Allyson "LuLu" Healey first meets laid-back Dutch actor Willem De Ruiter at an underground performance of Twelfth Night in England, there’s an undeniable spark. After just one day together, that spark bursts into a flame, or so it seems to Allyson, until the following morning, when she wakes up after a whirlwind day in Paris to discover that Willem has left. Over the next year, Allyson embarks on a journey to come to terms with the narrow confines of her life, and through Shakespeare, travel, and a quest for her almost-true-love, to break free of those confines.

In short: Just One Day resonated SO deeply with me that my love for Gayle Forman has reached a whole new level.

I loved If I Stay and Where She Went by Gayle Forman. I wasn't BLOWN AWAY by them like some people are, but I really did love Gayle Forman's beautiful prose and expert handling of the emotionally intense subject matter. Now, Just One Day on the other hand - WOAH. Just One Day resonated SO deeply with me that at times it was like Gayle was plucking thoughts and feelings that I've had in my life right from my head and putting them down in words, albeit much more eloquently and meaningfully than I could ever manage to in my head. I never quite felt that way with If I Stay, as much as I did love it.

It wasn't immediate love when I first began Just One Day. Of course I fell right into Gayle Forman's effortless writing and genuine characters right away, but it wasn't until I was most of the way through the book that I realized where the story and character arcs were going and how much it meant to me that Gayle was taking the route much less traveled. I had thought Just One Day was going to be another book about a girl "finding herself" in Europe with the help of a cute boy. But in reality, that cute boy is MIA for the rest of the book after the beginning. And then the girl does something remarkable: she "finds herself" on her own/with help from some good friends and WITHOUT the help of the cute boy, and she realizes she's made of tougher stuff.

I wasn't as in love with Just One Year as I was with Just One Day just simply because Willem's story wasn't as relatable to me as Allyson's. But the final moment of Just One Year got me GOOD because I can never resist a good coming-full-circle ending and this one was just perfection. I was already appreciative of Gayle Forman's writing from If I Stay, but Just One Day has taken me to a whole new level of LOVE for this woman and her profoundly meaningful stories. Just so much love.

Other Reviews:
Artsy Musings of a Bibliophile
Reading In Winter
YA Book Queen

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Review: Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: September 10, 2013
Pages: 433
Source: Bought
Rating: 5 Stars

Cath is a Simon Snow fan.
Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan . . .
But for Cath, being a fan is her life — and she’s really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it’s what got them through their mother leaving.
Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere.
Cath’s sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can’t let go. She doesn’t want to.
Now that they’re going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn’t want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She’s got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fan fiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words . . . And she can’t stop worrying about her dad, who’s loving and fragile and has never really been alone.
For Cath, the question is: Can she do this?
Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? Writing her own stories?
And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?

In short: Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell made a fangirl out of me.

"Loving Simon isn't something one does alone or once a year at a convention - for thousands of fans of all ages, loving Simon Snow is nothing less than a lifestyle." - pg. 141

Fangirl is the story of my life (I am only slightly exaggerating here). It is seriously so, SO similar to my life's experiences as an obsessive and active fan in the Harry Potter fandom. The above quote is so apt because for a decade, loving Harry Potter WAS a lifestyle for me. I never wrote any fanfiction as I am no writer, but there was a period in my life when all I ever read extracurricularly was Harry Potter and Harry Potter fanfiction. And in fact, I did read a number of Harry/Draco slash fanfics in my time that were EERILY reminiscent of Cath's Simon/Baz slash fanfics.

I am not a contemporary reader by any means and more often than not my reluctance for the genre stems largely from a feeling of discomfiture for the realism and relatability of a story line or character. You see, I prefer to read for escapism, plots that are far and away from my own life story. Contemporaries have the ability of cutting right to my core, drudging up uncomfortable experiences from my past, and creating feels that are not necessarily welcome. And Fangirl certainly did all these things. But for once, the scarily relatable story line didn't make me feel totally uncomfortable. It made me feel content and fulfilled.

And I cannot speak highly enough of Rainbow Rowell for this. Not only did she completely NAIL what it's like to be hopelessly obsessed and entirely involved in a fandom, only to have it end and have your raison d'être end with it, but also what it's like to start over in an unfamiliar setting as someone who has intense social anxiety (which is something else that I personally found hugely relatable about Cath...). Reading Fangirl was at times uncomfortable for me in the way that I have come to associate with highly relatable contemporaries, but it was also deeply rewarding. I finished the last page with happy tears and an overwhelming sense of closure. And it's been a long time since I've had that experience with a book.

Okay, so you can probably tell that my love for Fangirl was highly subjective and dependent on my own personal experiences. So now let me say a few things that might be useful for those of you who may not be able to relate as strongly as I did to Fangirl: I haven't read characters and dialogue this charming since Anna and the French Kiss. Seriously. And for those of you who, like me, have been frustrated at the limited and repetitive selection of NA books available - THIS is the New Adult book we've been asking for! A NA book set in college in which the romantic interest ISN'T a goonbag - who knew?

So yes, I guess you could say Fangirl made a fangirl out of me (sorry for the cheese). But for real - Rainbow Rowell became one of my top favourite authors with just one book. And that makes me a fangirl for LIFE.

Other Reviews:
A Girl, Books, and Other Things
Just Another Story
Late Nights with Good Books

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Review: The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon

Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: August 20, 2013
Pages: 480
Source: For Review from Bloomsbury/NetGalley
Rating: 3.5 Stars

It is the year 2059. Several major world cities are under the control of a security force called Scion. Paige Mahoney works in the criminal underworld of Scion London, part of a secret cell known as the Seven Seals. The work she does is unusual: scouting for information by breaking into others’ minds. Paige is a dreamwalker, a rare kind of clairvoyant, and in this world, the voyants commit treason simply by breathing.
But when Paige is captured and arrested, she encounters a power more sinister even than Scion. The voyant prison is a separate city—Oxford, erased from the map two centuries ago and now controlled by a powerful, otherworldly race. These creatures, the Rephaim, value the voyants highly—as soldiers in their army.
Paige is assigned to a Rephaite keeper, Warden, who will be in charge of her care and training. He is her master. Her natural enemy. But if she wants to regain her freedom, Paige will have to learn something of his mind and his own mysterious motives.

In short: The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon has a highly ambitious and imaginative concept, but the execution of the world building was not up to par.

I am not one of those people who gets scared off from reading a book because of the immense buzz surrounding it. Quite the opposite: I am a total lemming and I become instantly curious in any book that receives massive amounts of hype. And with a seven-book six-figure deal, a nineteen-year-old debut author, film rights already optioned, and a ton of early buzz reviews, The Bone Season definitely fits the bill. I needed to involve myself in the hype of this book to see for myself what all the fuss is about.

And the result was that I was both impressed and disappointed by The Bone Season. The highly ambitious and complex world building in The Bone Season was somehow both its strength and its weakness. Samantha Shannon - at the tender age of nineteen, still a student at Oxford, when she wrote this book - has crafted one of the most original and visionary fantasy worlds I have ever come across. It was so unlike anything I have read that it was hard at first to even wrap my head around the concept. But it's hard not to appreciate such breadth and richness of imagination.

It was the execution of the creation of such a unique world that I found issue. Notice how I have not even attempted a brief summary of the world in The Bone Season. There is just SO MUCH there and it's all very complicated, and I couldn't possibly adequately explain even the basis of it. The world building was not nearly as clear as I would have liked. It felt like a chore at times, keeping track of all the lingo and rules. There is a glossary in the back, which might have been helpful, except I wasn't aware of its existence until the end and it would have been a pain to flip to in ebook format anyway.

Perhaps I would have liked The Bone Season better if I had more patience. As it was, I didn't feel like trying to take in massive loads of complicated information and making sense out of this highly complex world. I actually really like complicated concepts and world building, but only if they seem effortless; this seemed laboured. If I were the type to DNF books, I probably would've ditched this one early on when the info dumps were numerous and the many details convoluted. But as it is, I am utterly unable to ditch books part way through, so I stuck it out. Thankfully, the story did get a bit easier to follow in time, and therefore way more enjoyable.

Don't get me wrong, The Bone Season was a good book that I liked and admired for its ambition and imagination. It is also a very fast-paced and exciting book once you get past the initial intro to the world. Characters were another highlight here; many were complex and enigmatic. There is the beginnings of a romance here and I have a feeling it's one that a lot of people will really love for its tension and intensity. So there was a lot of good in The Bone Season. I'm just not completely positive I am ready to commit to a seven-book series when I am still a bit fuzzy on the details of the world.

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Review: When You Were Here by Daisy Whitney

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: June 4, 2013
Pages: 272
Source: For Review from Hachette Book Group Canada
Rating: 4 Stars

Filled with humor, raw emotion, a strong voice, and a brilliant dog named Sandy Koufax, When You Were Here explores the two most powerful forces known to man-death and love. Daisy Whitney brings her characters to life with a deft touch and resonating authenticity.
Danny's mother lost her five-year battle with cancer three weeks before his graduation-the one day that she was hanging on to see.
Now Danny is left alone, with only his memories, his dog, and his heart-breaking ex-girlfriend for company. He doesn't know how to figure out what to do with her estate, what to say for his Valedictorian speech, let alone how to live or be happy anymore.
When he gets a letter from his mom's property manager in Tokyo, where she had been going for treatment, it shows a side of his mother he never knew. So, with no other sense of direction, Danny travels to Tokyo to connect with his mother's memory and make sense of her final months, which seemed filled with more joy than Danny ever knew. There, among the cherry blossoms, temples, and crowds, and with the help of an almost-but-definitely-not Harajuku girl, he begins to see how it may not have been ancient magic or mystical treatment that kept his mother going. Perhaps, the secret of how to live lies in how she died.

In short: When You Were Here by Daisy Whitney was a wonderfully moving read with a fantastic cast of dynamic characters.

When You Were Here is a novel about death, but it's also about moving forward after dealing with so much grief and reconnecting with life. Danny is three weeks away from graduation when his mother dies after a long battle with cancer. As he has already lost his father years previously and has broken up with the love of his life, he is left alone, despondent in his grief. With nothing left, Danny decides to take a trip to Tokyo where his mother spent much of her last few months to try to come to terms with his grief and the secrets his mother was keeping from him. When You Were Here is a novel that will strip you down with grief and then rebuild your spirit whole again in a beautifully effective way.

When You Were Here gave me an urge to see Tokyo in a BIG, BAD way. I've always wanted to visit Japan, but never before with quite the same fervour as this book made me feel. Tokyo's mix of flashy sites and more traditional Japanese culture was described so well and presented so vividly by author Daisy Whitney. The setting was like a character unto itself, which is my favourite kind of setting.

The characters were great and dynamic, as well. I've never personally had to deal with the death of a parent - thankfully - but I still found it easy to relate with Danny. It was so inspiring to see Danny regain his spirit after so much grief. I also love how a few of the characters remained something of an enigma for much of the novel, only to have their stories finally come together in a moment of true enlightenment at the end. Standout characters include Danny's dog, Sandy Koufax, - because dogs are THE BEST - and Danny's new Japanese BFF, Kana, - who, okay, was a bit of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG), but I still liked her a lot and I think she had a lot more depth than your standard MPDG.

The only thing that stops When You Were Here from being a 5 Star read for me is that I don't believe I felt the full emotional impact that I could have felt from the story. Don't get me wrong, it was definitely a lovely read, definitely a poignant story. But I wanted MORE. I wanted to feel more emotional investment with the characters and storyline. I wanted to be hit hard by THE FEELS. But this is a relatively small complaint because When You Were Here was still definitely a wonderful and moving story. This was my first Daisy Whitney read, but it won't be my last.

Other Reviews:
Good Books and Good Wine
i swim for oceans
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Review: The Sea of Tranquility by Katja Millay

Publisher: Atria Books
Published: November 13, 2012
Pages: 448
Source: For Review from Simon & Schuster
Rating: 5 Stars

Former piano prodigy Nastya Kashnikov wants two things: to get through high school without anyone learning about her past and to make the boy who took everything from her—her identity, her spirit, her will to live—pay.
Josh Bennett’s story is no secret: every person he loves has been taken from his life until, at seventeen years old, there is no one left. Now all he wants is be left alone and people allow it because when your name is synonymous with death, everyone tends to give you your space.
Everyone except Nastya, the mysterious new girl at school who starts showing up and won’t go away until she’s insinuated herself into every aspect of his life. But the more he gets to know her, the more of an enigma she becomes. As their relationship intensifies and the unanswered questions begin to pile up, he starts to wonder if he will ever learn the secrets she’s been hiding—or if he even wants to.

In short: Though The Sea of Tranquility by Katja Millay is an emotionally draining novel, it is also one that will leave you breathless from the outstanding beauty of the characters and the writing.

This book is angst-central. Nastya and Josh, the novel's alternating narrators, are two terribly defeated and depressed characters. They are both subject to some pretty appalling situations, which they deal with over the course of the novel. I usually find myself becoming annoyed with characters that are so angsty, but for some reason I found it didn't bother me in The Sea of Tranquility. Perhaps because debut author Katja Millay does such a brilliant job at showcasing her characters and their circumstances with such genuine and raw emotional depth that you can't help but truly FEEL what they are going through with painful clarity.

Alright, so that doesn't sound like so much fun, so let me clarify: The Sea of Tranquility is about a lot of pain, but through all that hardship, there is HOPE. There is no way I could have enjoyed this novel otherwise. Nastya and Josh can be fairly depressing - though still expertly written - but they do have an excellent support system in the form of some equally well written secondary characters who provide a much needed lightness to contrast all the despair. Plus, while the journey is hard, the ending is beautiful.

I think some people will probably find The Sea of Tranquility to be a bit slow in the beginning and hard to get into. For me, however, I feel that slow start was needed to ease myself into this incredibly draining story. And I urge anyone who is having a difficult time getting into the story to keep reading as what you will find in the end is a beautiful and heartfelt story that will stay with you long after you close the book.

In other news, I am becoming something of a contemporary-issues genre fan! Well... it has really just been The Sea of Tranquility and one other book a few months ago, but dammit if they weren't both truly amazing reads that left a profound effect on me. I am just impressed that someone like me - Miss Speculative Fiction Addict - could be finding new loves in realistic fiction, especially ones with such serious subject matter. Shows that it pays to go outside your comfort zone every once in a while! I HIGHLY recommend The Sea of Tranquility to both contemporary and non-contemporary fans.

Other Reviews:
Belle's Bookshelf
For What It's Worth
Tracy's Happy Bookshelf

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