Tristan is STRONG

Strong character, strong series, strong everything!  Tristan Strong Punches a Hole is the Sky is one of those books that I am so glad to have read, but now mad that I didn't wait until the second and third and fourth were published because I want more!  I will have to wait until October, sad to say! 
This is part of a Rick Riodan Presents which I think is a pretty cool venture!
I haven't read any other books from the RRP imprint, but man, Kwame Mbalia has written a book that spins together today's world and myths that I found fascinating and funny and smart.  I don't know if I ever will get into the genre, I enjoyed the first Percy Jackson book but never read further even though I know they were well loved and probably are awesome but they are just so not for me. 
Mbalia's writing, the voice of Tristan and the supporting characters, um who couldn't love Gum Baby and John Henry and man...I have to admit it...I have to...I even dig Anansi!  I laughed a lot through this book but it also holds many universal truths, like myths do.  October can't get here fast enough.
And man, man I hope this becomes a MOVIE!!!!

Chick Lit with Death?

When You Read This is about a woman who has died from cancer.  So it isn't a happy, funny, light book.  Okay so maybe it is happy and funny but it isn't light.  But yet it is light...as in a quick read.  It has a good premise.  And if women's literature/chick lit is one's thing, then is one at that should be at the top of one's list!  It does have meat.  It just isn't my cup of tea. 

Just so well done

Rain is Not My Indian Name is a book I can highly, highly recommend for so many reasons.  It made me wonder why I have not read more from Cynthia Leitich Smith. One of places I always check when I read about with Native American characters is this site.  I was so pleased to see that this book is

(SPOILERS?) Everyone Handles Grief in His or Her Own Way

and probably because Matt handled it so differently from the way that I have handled it, I was unable to give this really good book 5 stars.  I did give it 4 because I do think that there are people who can resonate with the way in which he handled the loss of his best friend/love.  A Short History of the Girl Next Door was really well done.  I put the ? after Spoilers because I am not sure if the description of the book reveals that Tabby dies.  I didn't read the description before I read the book and the one on goodreads doesn't say that she dies, and I was surprised that she died.

To Lose a Friend

The Chaos of Standing Still was again one of those books written so well that I just think the author, Jessica Brody, had to have had the soul-crushing experience of losing a best friend.  Having had this soul-crushing experience, I feel that way.  The thing is, the main character here lost her best friend in drunk driving accident (the other guy walked away without a scratch-- and I am STILL the only one who thinks Prohibition is a good idea?!?)
There is survivor guilt at play here.  Ryn dealing with the divorce of her parents, and falling in love.  Great, great book.  Also, it was neat to have this set in the Denver Airport.  Which is quite the place!  And Blucifer IS SCARY!  I agree!! 

What if you could spend one last day with someone you lost? Spoilers maybe?

That's the tagline for the book Goodbye Days by Jeff Zentner.  The book is about a young man who texts his friend while his friend is driving a car filled with his other friends and his friend texts back, resulting in an accident that kills everyone in the car.  Carver Briggs is left with the grief of losing all of best friends and the guilt of being responsible.  Was he responsible?  At first I thought, "no way, not at all!" but then the book goes on to reveal that Carver did think that his friend was driving and purposely texted that friend anyway because he was the friend most likely to return his text right away.  So he did know that his friend would text him while driving.  So does that make him guilty of involuntary manslaughter?  Judges in real life have ruled that if the person texting the driver who was involved in an accident knew that the recipient of their texts was driving, they are responsible.   I am ashamedly guilty of doing this.  And I am going to stop.  I know people who put an auto block on their texts when they are driving and I get a "Driving now, will text back later," message in response.  This is a good thing!  I was trying for a while to figure out how to make my iPhone do that, but I never figured it out.  The friends I have who do this have droids.
Zentner's book is really good.  It isn't preachy.  It is diverse and inter-generational, too.  I really, really liked this book and look forward to reading more from him.

Jellyfish

The thing about The Thing about Jellyfish is that the author, Ali Benjamin, MUST know what it is like to lose a best friend.  I don't know what it is like to have lost a best friend in such a devastating way as Suzy, the main character has, but I do know that loss.  The whole "how does the world go on turning" deal.
I also learned a lot about jellyfish!  I remember being a kid and stopping by a beach in North Carolina (I say "stopping by" because we never stayed at a beach, we were just passing through) and seeing a girl who had just been stung on her side by one.  It just seemed terrible!
This was really, really an excellent book.

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

I figure that most ideas seem like good ones at one time or another, don't you?  Ideas we try out, anyway.  I mean I have had lots of bad ideas, but I think that when I have tried out ideas, put ideas into action, they really all seem like good ones.  Reading A Good Idea seemed like a good idea at first.  Then when I started listening to it, it seemed like a bad idea and I quit.  But then I picked it up again and it was a good idea!  In short, I really liked A Good Idea.  The only thing that I thought was weird was all of the underage drinking, but the store was really tough on checking IDs when people bought cigarettes.  Underage drinking went on all the time.  In bars, in houses, in front of the law and the mayor and parents, but yet, when the main character, Fin, went to purchase her cigarettes she was ID'd, even though the guy selling the smokes knew she was 18.  I guess I am sensitive to this because drinking can have such potential damage for people other than the drinker.  But smoking?  It just kills the smoker.  I think it's just such a strange thing.  Strange to see people pouring themselves into their cars, behind the wheel, after concerts, and driving off.  Yet people can't smoke in an outdoor concert venue.  Just strange to me.

But this was a good book.  A mystery that I really figure out.  It is a sad book in so many ways.  But good one.

Real

This is a very powerful middle-grade fiction story.  I liked it so much because the main character was likable and not likable, he was real.  Lost in the Sun is told from the POV of Trent, who has just entered middle school.  Entering middle school is bad enough, but Trent also is bringing with him a lot of baggage.  The winter before he shot a puck during a hockey game that hit a kid in the chest and the kid died.  It wasn't the fault of the puck, or Trent, the kid had a heart problem, but Trent blames himself.  He is full of so much rage against himself that he takes it out on the world.  This is also a story of friendship, as Trent becomes friends with a girl who has a scar on her face and is often the butt of jokes at school.  It is also the story of family, as Trent's dad has a new wife and she is having a baby.  Trent's dad comes across as a super-jerk, in my opinion.  He was super-easy to dislike has he is a seriously dualistic thinker and tells Trent that you only get one chance in life at most things, and of course, Trent, having had his part in the freak accident that resulted in the death of a friend, well, this man is just not a nice or smart man.  Also Trent can't read.  It is a book packed with things to discuss and it is also just a very compelling tween read.

Sucked Me Right In...but then got too complicated :(

I am an easy kinda reader.  Political thrillers can be too much for me.  Same with the legal thrillers.  I like easy.  Maybe I am lazy, maybe I am just not that smart.  Probably a combination of both.  Daughter of Deep Silence was great, it was.  It starts out very exciting and keeps on being very exciting, but then...it just gets too complicated for me...well, the end does.  I mean the "reveal" was too complicated.  The descriptions of Frances' passion for Gray were a little too Harlequin for me, too.  But over all, this was worth the read. Totally different from The Forest of Hands and Teeth series.  Totally.  But I liked it just the same!

Guys and Dolls

There aren't really any guys in The Doll in the Garden, except for the brother of Kristi, the little girl who lives next door to the place where Ashley and her mother have just moved.  Oh and the cats!  Both cats in the books are dudes.
As I always tell kids who choose a MDH book, this isn't like Scooby Doo where the "ghost" turns out to be Uncle Joe, so there is a real element of paranormal and scare here.  Doll in the Garden wasn't super scary, but the ghost is real.  This also addresses this issue of the death of a parent (Ashley's dad dies before the story begins) and the death of a friend.  Really good book!