by Cassandra Clare
ages: 14+
First sentence: “‘Just coffee, please.'”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Others in the series: City of Bones, City of Ashes, City of Glass

I have to admit after finishing City of Glass, I wasn’t too sure I wanted to read this one. Clare wrapped up everything so nicely (with a bow and fireworks, too), that I figured what more was there to tell of the story?

Oh, ye of little faith.

This one picks up a few weeks after City of Glass ends, and everything seems okay. Simon is dating both Maia and Isabelle (oh silly, adorable Simon), and is trying to eke out as normal a life as possible. Magnus and Alec are dating (have I mentioned how much I adore Magnus? And I really do want to read the short story about why he’s banned in Peru). Jace and Clary are an item. But, because this book would be all sorts of boring without conflict, things start to go south.

Someone is trying to kill Simon. Jace is pulling away from Clary because of nightmares he’s having. And on top of that, Camille the vampire is back. Oh, and someone is trying to make demon babies.

This one, admittedly, is darker and more intense than the previous three. There isn’t nearly enough snark, and while Jace and Clary have some sexytimes (almost), I still wanted to smack both of them over the head. Thankfully, though, it’s not their story. Clare uses this to flesh out Simon (more Simon!) and his transition into being a vampire. It’s not pretty. She also uses it to flesh out Maia — we learn about how she became a werewolf — and Isabelle, who is no longer a stuck up fashionista. I was told it wasn’t as good as the original series, but I have to admit that I liked it as much as the other ones.

Clare’s a smart, fun writer, and she’s definitely got me hooked.

by Cassandra Clare
ages: 14+
First sentence: “The cold snap of the previous week was over; the sun was shining brightly as Clary hurried across Luke’s dusty front yard, the hood of her jacket up to keep her hair from blowing across her face.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Others in the series: City of Bones, City of Ashes

There will be spoilers for the first two books in the series. And possible for this one. So: if you haven’t read this trilogy, do. Know this: it’s smart, it’s fun, this one had awesome twists (even if I called one), and came to an acceptable conclusion.

We last left the little group recuperating after blowing up Valentine’s ship. They finally convinced the Clave that Valentine is a force to be reckoned with, especially now that he has both the Mortal Cup and the Mortal Sword. All that’s left is the glass, and he will be able to raise the angel Raziel.

As a result, Jace, the Weylands, and Clary are going to Alicante – the city of the Shadowhunters. The Weylands and Jace to meet with the Clave; Clary to find Ragnor Fell, who may have the key to waking her mother.

Of course, Jace pulls his “for your protection” move (infuriating! Seriously. Clary’s impulsive and headstrong, but STOP trying to protect her!) and leaves for Alicante without Clary. And of course, she has to be impulsive and follow. Once there, though, things get complicated. They meet a cousin of a friend of the Weylands, Sebastian, who ends up playing a major role, in spite of just being introduced. (Yes, I called this twist.)

While I enjoyed the book overall, it wasn’t perfect. Aside from Jace being infuriating (when is he not, though?), it kind of frustrated me that Clary’s mom just showed up halfway through the book. Sure, Clary got what was needed to wake her mom from the coma, but I kind of expected something… more …. satisfying. That she just showed up at one point and started acting like Jocelyn From Before was kind of anti-climatic. I know it’s not Jocelyn’s story, but I had hoped for something more dramatic there. And I kind of felt that Clare copped out with the deaths; she killed off a minor character, rather than going for the jugular and offing someone we actually cared about. Understandable, but wimpy.

There were parts I liked, mostly toward the end. In fact, I think I liked the whole end. There was enough tension there to make things intense, and both Isabelle and Clary got to shine in their own ways. And the ending was satisfying without wrapping everything up in a neat little bow.

I’m glad I finally got around to reading these.

by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves
ages: 11+ (It’s actually upper MG)
First sentence: “Once I got lost in my own house.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy is a publisher complimentary copy for my bookstore 6-8th grade book group.

Joey Harker is pretty much your average every-day boring tenth grader. Nothing special. Until one day, he’s out on a field trip with his social studies class (quick aside: no 10th grader has social studies, do they??), and he finds himself in a different… world. Fighting for his life, though he has no idea what was going on.

It’s a desperate fight, and the man sent to find Joey — Jay– doesn’t fare well. However, he does explain a couple of things: the Earth is only one of millions of possible earths, all along a continuum that spans from highly scientific to highly magical. There are two entities — HEX and the Binary who are vying for domination and control of all the earths. Joey, and all the alternate versions of himself, have banded together to form Interworld: they walk between worlds and attempt to stop the nefarious powers from universe domination.

I picked this one for the book group partially because I thought the idea had merit. And I wanted to attract some boys to the group. I don’t know if the second one worked (yet), but the first one, well… let’s just say the idea was a good one. But something was lost in the execution: I didn’t connect with Joey, or I didn’t really care about the fate of the worlds. And the bad guys — HEX– were kind of laughable caricatures. And definitely posers. I didn’t care for the Old Man — the head of Interworld — and his arbitrary methods with Joey (that whole memory-erasing bit didn’t make much sense). And aside from the creative variations of  “Joey”, I didn’t particularly like Joey’s team.

And the lesson learned here? A good idea does not a good book make.

by Rick Yancey
ages: 14+
First sentence: “There will be no awakening.”
Support yoiur local independent bookstore: buy it there!

We knew the aliens were coming; we saw their ship when it passed Mars. But little did we know what we was in store for us.

The first wave hit: an electromagnetic pulse that cut all our power. The second wave was a bomb that created a tsunami which destroyed the coasts. The third wave was a contagious disease that had a 90 percent fatality rate. And the fourth wave were snipers, picking off the stragglers.

Cassie is one of those: she, her father, and her younger brother Sam all managed to make it through the first three waves intact, only to be separated at a refugee camp. Soldiers took Sam, killed her father, and now she’s on the run for her life. She can’t trust anyone, she’s barely surviving. And yet, she made a promise to Sam: to find him, because family needs to stay together. The only question: will she survive the fifth wave?

Holy crap, this all sorts of intense. Going in, I was expecting it to be scary, and so I was surprised that it wasn’t. The aliens aren’t gross, menacing creatures, but rather distant forces bent on cleansing the planet. I wasn’t terrified of them, bur rather in awe. Amazed. Completely blown away. And even though Yancey uses some tried-and-true humans are resilient and strong and therefore can conquer the world tropes, he does so in ways that are new and refreshing. There are no magical or supernatural powers, no high-tech blow-em-up sequences, no kidnapping. Just good-old-human grit. And there’s a LOT of that. Think Zombieland, but with aliens.

The book made me mistrust everything in it. I was looking for clues, making connections, working hard to figure everything out. And in the end, I was still blown away by the twists and turns.

Awesome.

by Lois Ruby
ages: 12+
First sentence: “‘;I cannot believe we’re moving into that creaky old bed-and-breakfast,’ I mutter for about the hundredth time.
Review copy given to me by a manger at work because Ruby’s got a Wichita connection and I think she may be coming…

I kind of wanted to like this one, cheezy tag line (“What if you fell in love with a ghost?”) notwithstanding. The idea behind it sounded very, very promising: a Philidelphia girl, Lori Chase, moves to Gettysburg to run a B&B with her parents just before the re-enactment starts. She sees the ghost of a Union soldier (cute and young, of course), who tells her that he was murdered, and she needs to solve it before midnight on July 3rd, two days away. Of course she can do that, right?

But, even with a creepy/cool premise, the book went NOWHERE. It was a lot more creepy than cool — she fell in instalove with a dead guy? — and absolutely flat. No emotional pull whatsoever. And even though there was a (cute and young, of course) real guy to distract Lori, she fell for the murdered guy. Sure. Whatever.

There was also this weird subplot involving cranky old people who were on a treasure hunt for Abraham Lincoln’s ring, which felt Scooby-Doo-ish and not at all convincing. Not to mention the heavy-handed lecturing about how re-enactors are just playing at this whole War thing and Not Taking It Seriously At All. (Ruby should read Confederates in the Attic. Just saying.) I’m in a pickle now, though. What if she really is coming to the store? Do I go — I’ve been going to all the MG/YA events, in the hopes that they’ll have more?? Or do I stay home?

Because, truly, this was terrible.

by Leigh Bardugo
ages: 12+
First sentence: “The boy and the girl had once dreamed of ships, long ago, before they’d ever seen the True Sea.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy passed on to me by my manager at work.
Others in the series: Shadow and Bone

If you haven’t read Shadow and Bone first, be warned: there are spoilers.

Mal and Alina are on the run after their little run-in (to say the least) with the Darkling, hiding out in far away places, running from both Alina’s new-found power and the Darkling, whom they know is hunting them. Alina’s gone back to hiding her power — not only that she’s the Sun Summoner, but the collar/amplifier that binds her to the Darkling.

Except they can’t run forever, and the Darkling captures them again. They’re taken north, this time, to find yet another mythical beast, to make yet another amplifier for Alina. Except things don’t go exactly as planned: Alina and Mal end up in yet another player’s grasp, back in Ravka, as Alina tries to figure out her power and how to stop the Darkling once and for all, and still — somehow — remain true to Mal as well as the person she’s becoming.

Okay, yeah, all that is very cryptic. But there are a couple of twists and turns that I don’t want to give away. The relationship between Mal and Alina still bugs me, but I do like where Bardugo is going with it. I just happen to like other characters (who shall Remain Nameless) better. I like what is happening with the magic in the world, and the way she uses mythology and religion and science to support it. I actually like what she’s done with the Darkling as well. He’s still a bit bully-ish, but there is some complexity showing. And the climax is pretty intense.

Again: I’m quite curious to see where she’s going with the final book in this trilogy. Too bad I have to wait a whole year for it!

by Margaret Stohl
ages: 12+
First sentence: “One tiny gray dot, no bigger than a freckle, marks the inside of the baby’s chubby arm.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

I am making a declaration: alien invasions are the new dystopian. Maybe it’s just a stand-alone trend (yes, I am going to read The 5th Wave), but really: I think there’s some interesting ground to be covered with alien invasions.

Stohl’s take on it is this: seventeen years ago the aliens — now called the House of Lords — took over the world in a single attack. Their mother ship took over the Pentagon (why is it always America?), and they took out all the world’s major cities, instantly killing billions of people. They planted what’s come to be known as Icons near thirteen of the major cities left — Moscow, Paris, and L.A. — to keep control over the rest of the human population. The humans never see them (the Rebellion — of course there’s one — calls them the No Face); their only interaction with the House of Lords is through the Ambassadors in the cities.

Doloria — Dol to her friends — is a survivor of that day. No one knows why really. She’s been living at an orphanage outside of L.A. — called the Hole now — living there, in relative safety. Her most curious trait: the one gray dot on her wrist, and her ability to read other people’s thoughts and emotions. Her best friend is Furo — Ro — another like her: he has two red dots, and a propensity for fighting. They don’t think much of their powers until Dol’s 17th birthday, when the Embassy captures them and brings them in for “tests”. There they meet two others like them: the ambassador’s son, Lucas (three dots, can charm people into doing what he wants) and Tima (four dots; she’s called the Freak, but her talent — aside from shocking people with huge bursts of electricity when she’s angry — isn’t really explained). Together the four of them (if they can stop fighting) may be able to push back against the aliens who have kept the world hostage for so long.

On the one hand, I really liked Stohl’s vision of the alien invasion. It wasn’t little green men, and I appreciated that she left everything so vague. In many ways that was more intense. I liked the idea of the Icons, and the civilization that sprung up around them. I wanted her to spend more time there. And, to tell the truth, less on Dol. Because she grated on me (as did the love triangle. Really. *sigh*). In fact, I’m not sure I really liked any of the characters; they were all pretty bland. Even with the bland characters and predictable love story, the world building was enough to keep me interested and curious enough to wonder where Stohl is going to go next.