The List of Authors Everyone Loves

Rebecca Stead is on that list!  The List of Things that Will Not Change is her latest.  And I did like it.  But for some reason I just can't really get into Stead.  I loved the love.  I heart-broken about Mission.  I thought the relationship between the two main character and her soon to be sister was very real.  I just thought the whole cousin thing wasn't needed.  I am not sure why it just seemed so out of place for me.  But the big secret surrounding Bea and her cousin...it just didn't fit for me and really did a lot of take away from my experience with the book.  

Forgotten

The Land of Forgotten Girls came out before Hello Universe, which won the Newbery last year.  Last year Kelly published You Go First which I actually liked better than Universe.  I also really liked TLOFG more than HU, but still these three are really great books.  This one was good even though I really didn't like the main character.  I could understand why she was so unlikable, having had a really raw deal all of her young life, but wow, she was just super not likable, which made her more real. 

Great TItle

You May Already Be a Winner was a great, great book with a great, great title.  Olivia is a winner, already.  Her parents...well, they have a lot of issues.  Things they are working on and will need to work on, but man, Olivia, she is a great kid.  Great book.  Probably the last one I will finish in 2018.   And a great way to end the year. 

Really Different

Courtney Summers has written a great book in Sadie and has told it in a unique way, as the book alternates between Sadie's POV and a podcast like Serial.  She has told it so well that the idea of book told at least in part as a podcast doesn't come across as a gimmick or cheesy.  And because of the nature of podcasts, this book was just meant for audio and so really enjoyed the listen.  I got so caught up in it that it was one of those books that I had to listen to the end and then go back just because the suspense was killing me. 

Just Really Good!

Tiffany Sly Lives Here Now came out this year and is another example of what I think has been a really great year so far for new books.  I am so glad that I randomly spied this one on the downloads available from my local library!  Dana L. Davis is a new to me author and well, I guess she is new to many as this is her first book!  It made me super happy to see that she already has a new one coming out next year.  And while that seems so far away, it will be here before we know it.  So I will be patient!
This was quite good.  Quite good.  Dealt with hard issues in a very real way and wasn't a "problem" novel, formulaic, that kind of thing.  I have to say that this was just really well done from all perspectives. The faith perspective is always the most interesting to me and I thought this was really well done.  Very real.  Good, good stuff.  I loved Tiffany and I ached for her and admired her.  I also loved Mrs. Stone.  And I didn't know what the DNA test results would show but I had my hopes the whole time.  And I was very happy with the results.  I also thought that Mr. Stone was such a real character.  So well drawn.  And London, too.  Just a really good read. 

Maybe

Secret Sisters of the Salty Sea is just a book that doesn't stir up a lot of a BIG feelings.

And that's okay!

I mean, Last Night at the Lobster might have been like that, but I still think about it! 

I should say that I have never read Lynne Rae Perkins before and so many of the positive comments about this book mention that is much like her others in that it is "gentle" read and introspective.  And she is a very excellent author.  The book is very well written, yes, yes!  It was just that a lot didn't happen.  Or maybe it did, in quiet ways but I am too loud to have heard it? 

Hmm...maybe I will be thinking about this one for a long time to come...

Or maybe it was just really boring.

Another Sign of the Times

P.S. I Miss You is another example of the ways in which people of faith are shown as following Jesus and loving those who love differently.  It is really, really good and really makes one think about the dangers that come when we don't live as Christ calls us to live.
Incredible book.  Very surprising resolution.

Life is Complicated

Just Under the Clouds is one of those books that reminds me that life is not easy.  This is a very real book in that Cora doesn't just have one complication in her life, she has many.  Like we all do.  As if being a middle schooler isn't hard enough when one's family is stable and intact, Cora is dealing with the death of her father, her family's homelessness, her mom's issues and her sister's exceptional abilities.  Each one of these topics is handled so beautifully and so well.  This was an amazing book.  It is Melissa Sarno's first and I can't wait until her next. 

Yeah....

Zen and Gone really didn't do it for me.
At all.
I know it has gotten rave reviews but wow, there was really nothing that drew me into this book.  I had to struggle to finish.  Ugh.   I am so sorry!  I hate writing that!  I know that Ms. France has to be talented and I don't fault her writing at all, but the story was just so not me.
I do want to read Signs of You though because her writing was really good.  I do hope that a different person narrates it though.  To me the narrator's voice sounded SO much younger than Essa was supposed to be. 
Also I think I hated this book so much because of the mother.  The mother was just awful, awful, awful.  And I just don't think I could get past that.  So the one star isn't a reflection upon the quality of the book, just my feeling on how it made me feel. 

How Appropriate

to be reading Give Me Some Truth on the Fourth of July.   As you know, I do spend most of my life under a rock and so Eric Gansworth is a new author for me.  After having read this, I immediately purchased If I Ever Get Out of Here and that will be my next book after the one I am listening to currently.  GMST was excellent.   Ganswoth is a man of many talents and he has written a must-read.  He is a citizen of the Onondaga Nation and grew up in the Turscarora Nation, as he is the descendant of two Onondaga woman who were there when the Onondaga Nation was founded. 
This book is an eye-opener for people who don't understand what the colonists did to the Native Peoples.  And what they continue to do.  For me, it wasn't as powerful as The Absolutely True Diary, because that was the first book to really open my eyes.  I suggest reading them both.  For sure.  Required reading for everyone. 

Generations

You Bring the Distant Near was a "fall into this book" kind of book.  Mitali Perkins just writes so well and it just sucked me in and brought me into a world very different from my own.  Not just because my family isn't from India but also because our family tradition is one:  We have no traditions.  So I have no sense of family in that way.  Beautiful and engrossing. 

Iris

I don't think I have ever known someone named Iris.  I mean I know of a gal named Iris, but I have personally never had a relationship with anyone named Iris.  And the book Irises is not about girls named Iris.  Rather it is about two sisters, neither or whom is named Iris.  But the one sister loves to paint and is a talented artist and she is painting Vincent van Gogh's Irises.  The book is by another new-to-me author, Francisco X. Stork and let me say that I want to read more from him because I found this book to be just excellent.  An excellent look at sisterhood and loss and the church and faith and the meaning of life and sacrifice.  I learned a lot, too.  I learned about PVS and the difference between a PVS and a coma.  Many people, myself included (is it me or myself here!) find the term "vegetative" when applied to human beings to be offensive.  It is not surprising that this term is much more common in the UK than in the US!  I mean, to me.  I am not a big UK fan!  Anywaaay...excellent book. 

More Like 3.5

Again it would be nice to have the 1/2 star option on goodreads.  I think that I Call Upon Thee was a 3.5 way more than a 3.  I read it in a book drought and was so thankful to have it.  It did have very interesting characters, I thought, even though the plot was a little hard to follow sometimes not because it was complicated but because it was spotty.  I found the characters so interesting that I wouldn't have minded it being a little longer, just to get to know them better and here more about their stories. 

If It's Tuesday, This Must be Belgium

The movie shows my age.  And admittedly, my age shows in my 4 of 5 stars instead of my typical 5 of 5 for anything written by Sarah Mlynowski, whom I love, love, love!  I See London, I See France is not for everyone.  Yes, yes we all behaved this way when were in college, I know that, but maybe that is why it made me so uncomfortable, I was embarrassed!  To be young and wild again!  Ah!  Of course, I wouldn't want to be free, I love being taken.  :)  But I could use a little more wild and young!  And Sydney and Leela are college students, and there are really good messages here.  Really good ones.  And I am most certainly going to read the next one, so glad it is a series.  For me this was a 4.9, just because it reminded me a little too much of my wild and reckless younger days.

Follow them to college?

I wish and wonder and HOPE that Jenny Han will follow Lara Jean and Peter as they go to college. At least through their freshman year!  Oh please, oh please!  I think Jenny Han has become one of my favorite writers.   And this series really is good.  Always and Forever, Lara Jean had an ending that surprised me a lot.  The only thing that I didn't like so much about it was the drinking.  Not that people were drinking.  I know that underage kids drink.  And I still think that is wrong.  But I am admittedly hardcore about drinking and don't see any point in it at all.  Check out what happened to a kid I knew when she was little.  She was the driver.  Just happened this week.  Here is the snapchat video of the night the accident happened.

Surprised

Siren Sisters took me a while because I had to read it.  It isn't available on audio.  I just don't know.  It was good.  I guess throughout it though, I kept wondering why it was chosen to be considered for the Newbery book group.  I just kept thinking it would get to that point where I would say, "Oh!  I see!" But it just never did, for me.  Don't get me wrong- I can totally see why this would be a well liked book!  I just didn't get that "Oh!  I see!" "Yes, this could be a Newbery!" feel.

Parenting

There is this part in Gem and Dixie that I can't remember exactly, but it is so true.  Gem is talking about her parents, who weren't ready to be parents and who weren't shown how to be parents from the way in which they were treated by their parents and, well that's how it ended up that Gem and Dixie didn't have capable parents.  And I was thinking about this young gal who came into the one place where I work and was a very young mom-to-be, not yet 16 and her mom was obviously drunk or under the influence of some kind of drug and also pretty young and I was thinking, this is one of those situations where it would be easy to assign blame and say that that 16 year old is troubled (she was very troubled, I don't mean the pregnant part, I mean there was just A LOT going on there) because of her own mother.  But then, I mean, who is to say what her mother was like?  Or her mother before her?  And back and back and so on.
I know one has to take responsibility but it is also hard to take responsibility when one doesn't know the first thing about what "usual" or what is "needed" or "expected."  Does that make sense?

Here is the thing about Sara Zarr, on goodreads I gave this book a 4, but I would have given it a 4.5, but if it were written by anyone else it would have been a 5+ because Sara Zarr is just. that. awesome. I have been wow'd by all of her books and I was wow'd by this one, just only a wee bit less than previous wows.  Still.  This is wow.

I guess I just really didn't like Dixie at all.  But then I kept trying to remember that she was just 14.  I still highly recommend this book.

P.S.

Remember when we used to write notes and include P.S. and P.P.S.S. and P.P.P.S.S.S.?  Well, maybe I just over communicate.
P.S. I Still Love You was gooooood.  Everything by Jenny Han is gooood.  And I was very excited to see that the third book in the series is out!  I can't wait to read it!

Julie Murphy

wrote Dumplin', which I really enjoyed even though David Levithan wouldn't have, because it has a person of size in and she doesn't hate herself.  Ramona Blue was just as great as Dumplin', but it was different.
This book takes place in Eulogy, Mississippi.  Ramona talks about how the devastation of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina overshadows the devastation along with the Mississippi coast.  I need to find out more about that.
Anyway, I like reading small towny and rural setting books because I know so little about these places "in real life."
I also loved the way in which Murphy addresses the fluid nature of sexuality. Or maybe Ramona is truly one of those people who loves hearts not parts?  Either way, just more testimony that the world is not black and white but shades.  Great book.

Jacob Have I Loved SPOILERS!

This wasn't a rip off of Jacob Have I Loved, not at all.  But it did remind me of that book, just now, not when I was reading it.  I had a father who was a mean guy.  Mean to my mom, mean to my brother and mean to me.  But he did the best he could.  He had a dad who was even meaner!  My mom is a wonderful soul, but she had a mean mom and she had to live with my dad, so she has painful issues of her own that still haunt her.  Still, I know that I was/am loved by parents who did the best that they could.  Generally I do think that people do the best they can.
But I am off on a tangent.
Thinking this and thinking about the mom in Notes from a Liar and Her Dog, I know that Ant is a liar, doing the best that she can.  Harder to feel grace toward her mother who is really tough on Ant, but she is an adult and so maybe doesn't get as much grace from me as Ant does.
Really good book.  Hard but good.  Just so you know, the dog DOES NOT DIE!