book review

Saving Maddie by Varian Johnson

Posted on by Beth Hull

Every now and then it’s healthy to go to the library and grab a random book off the shelf.

Okay, my search wasn’t entirely random. I desperately wanted something with no supernatural elements (yes, you read that right). Quick explanation: I’m tired of paranormal books, mostly because I’ve been revising my own for far too long.

So after a brief jacket check to make sure Saving Maddie had no vampires or were-amoebas in it, I brought it home and, one afternoon, I read it. The story is told in first-person point of view by Joshua Wynn, the seventeen-year-old son of a preacher. His childhood best friend, Maddie, returns to town and she’s no longer the young, innocent(ish) girl he’d known. Not only does Joshua battle with conflicting directives from his parents (help Maddie/stay away from that girl), but he’s also battling conflicting desires (be a good boy/have fun).

Joshua’s conflict was well-written. The pacing and tension alone kept me going, as well as the mystery as to why Maddie turned out to be such a “bad girl.” The prose itself, though, was sensual and sensuous. This paragraph illustrates this nicely:

She closed her eyes and I closed mine. I took in her scent again – I didn’t think I’d ever eat another scoop of vanilla ice cream without dreaming about her.

I’m a huge fan of sensory description, and Johnson does this all over the place (honestly, I just picked a page at random and found that paragraph).

Another interesting point: Johnson took a young adult male protagonist and added tons of girl appeal (a phrase I read in Mary Kole’s blog entry Boy Protagonists in YA). The “girl appeal” reminded me a lot of Beautiful Creatures (which I reviewed awhile ago), and strangely enough, The Virgin Suicides (which I read a long time ago). Which brings me to a total sideways thought: does “girl appeal” mean that the male protagonist has to be totally smitten with a girl character, in order to appeal to female readers? Based on Kole’s post, and my own reading, this might be the case.

But now it’s time to wrap up my review.

Saving Maddie was a refreshing trip back into a time when the end of the world seemed to balance on adolescent moral dilemmas, and everything felt so real, so crucial, and so brand-new.

You can visit Varian Johnson’s website here.

Dying for a Date by Cindy Sample

Posted on by Beth Hull

In this post, literary agent Nathan Bransford urges (begs, actually) authors not to ask whether or not we like a book, but to answer this question: did the author accomplish what she or he set out to do with her or his book?

So. Did Cindy Sample succeed in creating a gripping, humorous, and romantic mystery? The short answer: yes. I laughed, I didn’t want to put the book down, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself while reading it (even without an air conditioner. More on that later).

The long answer: there were two small problems. And I’m being extremely nitpicky here. My first issue was with the details, and this is a personal preference. In a few places, Sample provided details that I didn’t care to know. Remember I’m nitpicking here, so my example is this: the color of the daughter’s backpack. It really made me pause and ask myself: Is this relevant? Answer: Not really. But this happened maybe five or six times in the whole book, and some readers feast on those kinds of details, anyway. Nitpicking. Personal preference.

The second issue was I found it hard to believe the hottie detective (who I really liked, by the way), would put his career in jeopardy to pursue a romance with a murder suspect (i.e. the main character). However, Joe Morelli constantly does the same thing with Stephanie Plum, and Janet Evanovich’s readers don’t complain. And really, so much else is moving the plot along that I didn’t have time to worry about this until after I read the book.

More on what I liked: the main character. Laurel McKay is funny and real. I could identify with her and loved her voice, her sense of humor, and the hilarious antics she gets herself into. Sample is dead on when she describes Laurel as Stephanie Plum as a soccer mom. There’s a great scene involving a clown suit and that’s all I’ll say here.

The best thing about the book: I literally couldn’t stop reading. Even when our car’s air conditioner disintegrated in eastern Nevada at 3 p.m. on our way to Colorado and I was so bitchy and uncomfortable I would have tossed any entertainment aside in favor of napping – I read on. Great, gripping reads stand the test of a disintegrated AC.

I’m looking forward to the next book, Dying for a Dance, because I want to see more of the minor characters too: the poker-playing daughter (without her green backpack), the best friend, and some others. Oh, and especially Detective Hottie. I mean, Detective Hunter.

So, did Sample accomplish what she set out to do with Dying for a Date? Most definitely. And hey, guess what: I liked it, too.

Feel free to check out my interview with Cindy, if you haven’t already.

Update: Cindy alerted me to a total review faux-pas in how I hinted something about the ending. If you read an earlier version of this review, I apologize! And apologies to Cindy as well.

I Heart You, Georgia

Posted on by Beth Hull

I haven’t yet reviewed an entire series on this blog, but it’s slooooow going through my current (snooty-sounding) read, The Grand Permission: New Writings on Poetics and Motherhood, so I’m stepping back in time here.

Last October, Louise Rennison published the last installment of her Georgia Nicolson series. The one with all the extremely weirdly titled books, the kind that are hard to ask book store associates about over the phone because they keep saying, “What? What? Can you repeat that? Can you spell that? Did you say ‘basoomas’?”

Yes, you did say “basoomas.” This is a series of ten young adult books featuring the hilarious heroine Georgia Nicolson, a young woman with very little tact and poise and very a lot of hormones and hijinks. She blunders her way through manipulating her parents, butchers French and German phrases on a regular basis, has a huge case of potty humor, and alienates her friends and boyfriends with almost amazing regularity.

Georgia’s voice is the absolute best part of the books. The novels are written diary-style (I’m sure there’s an academic term for that kind of novel, but as Georgia would say, “Qu’est-ce que c’est le point?”). Her adoption of French and German phrases, as well as her clique’s slang creations, only add to the humor. Add that to the run-of-the-mill linguistic differences between the US and British lexicons, and you will need the glossary provided at the back of each book. But unlike a textbook glossary, you will enjoy reading it, because Georgia is just as funny there.

The girl has her flaws, though. She’s self-absorbed, disrespectful, and can be cruel to her friends on occasion. She makes bad choices. She buys too tight shoes. She spies on her nemesis, Wet Lindsay. She’s a boyfriend stealer. However, she grows, learns lessons, kisses a bunch of guys, and finally – FINALLY! – figures out the one who is right for her. (The last three books I was practically screaming at her as I read: “It’s ____! Stop messing around, you horny minx!”)

The series goes on a bit longer than it has to, and the last few books end on cliffhangers which is a Big No-No in my House Rules. [I should clarify: The very last book obviously does not end on a cliffhanger.] However, the books are funny, fast reads. Very light. They never fail to cheer me up.

If you’re interested in reading the series, here’s a list of the Georgia books in chronological order (US titles):

1. Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging

2. On the Bright Side, I’m Not the Girlfriend of a Sex God

3. Knocked Out by My Nunga-Nungas

4. Dancing in My Nuddy Pants

5. Away Laughing on a Fast Camel

6. Then He Ate My Boy Entrancers

7. Startled by His Furry Shorts

8. Love is a Many Trousered Thing

9. Stop in the Name of Pants

10. Are These My Basoomas I See Before Me?

For more information on Louise Rennison’s Georgia Nicolson books, you can visit the official website here. Happy reading!

Black Magic Sanction by Kim Harrison

Posted on by Beth Hull

The first book of Kim Harrison’s I read was Every Which Way But Dead. And I was blown away. Like Kelley Armstrong, Kim Harrison was one of the first women in the horror genre to actually get my attention. Yeah, Laurell K. Hamilton got my attention too, but the first book of hers I picked up was Cerulean Sins, and it got my attention more in the way a train wreck gets a person’s attention. Or, perhaps more accurately, in the way unexpected and distasteful pornography gets a person’s attention.

Kim Harrison made urban fantasy cool. Her world is so real, from the descriptions of all the Inderlanders (nonhumans) mingling with the humans, to the church her main character, Rachel, lives in, to the very idioms used by her characters. It’s such a thoroughly written setting that I feel like I could live there. Black Magic Sanction keeps the world alive. The characters, the creatures, everything is there.

***weak spoiler here…close your eyes, D-Chan***

Holy. Elf. Can you believe she makes herself pixy-sized and gets to see the inside of Jenks’s house/stump? I would read the whole book again just for that one description. This is where Harrison absolutely impresses me, because I never would have even explored the idea of going inside the pixy stump. I mean, Rachel is a human (well, a witch, but human-sized. You know what I mean), and way too big. But in this novel she has to get inside, for reasons I won’t divulge, and wow.

***spoiler over…you can open your eyes now***

The only problem I had with Black Magic Sanction was the issue most longer series get into: too many characters. There are so many memorable people in Rachel’s world, and that mirrors life exactly, because we all interact with many people on a daily or weekly basis (unless we are introverts who finally get our wishes and just get to stay home for a few days. Without toddlers. But I digress). This is where literature should not mirror life, and Black Magic Sanction could have benefited from a smaller cast of characters.

I keep waiting to read a Kim Harrison book in which Rachel has simply gone too far in her journey, where she’s hit the limit of her character growth and there’s nowhere else for Harrison to take her (again, not trying to rip on LKH, but see what Anita Blake is doing? If you do, you’ll understand why I get a little skittish once a series gets past book 5 or 6).

That hasn’t happened yet. Rachel is still learning and growing, and I’m thrilled to watch it all happen.

For Kim Harrison’s blog, click here. For her website, click here.