As the finals are next Monday, I figured I’d round these up during the week, when I’m not running reviews….

Chime vs. Daughter of Smoke and Bone: One the one hand, NOOO! I seriously hoped E. Lockhart would pick Daughter for the win. On the other hand, I completely agree: “It is an awesome book, and I hugely recommend it to everyone, even though it ends with some of the mysteries unsolved because a sequel is forthcoming. Still, I am tipping the battle in favor of Chime by Franny Billingsley, largely because of my probably idiosyncratic inability to fall in love with that foxy, murderous angel.” Both are excellent novels; it’s a pity to see one go by the wayside. It goes up against Between Shades of Gray later this week; it’ll be interesting to see which one wins.

Drawing from Memory vs. Inside Out and Back Again: Again, I find I’m not surprised with judge Jewell Parker Rhodes decision to go with Drawing. I haven’t read it, and while I liked Inside Out, I wasn’t a huge fan. Besides, how can you compete with a book that’s “a full-fledged imaginative assault”? We’ll see tomorrow which book (I’m hoping for Wonderstruck, because that would be an interesting match) it’ll go up against.

Things are definitely getting exciting…