Book Review: Spelled

For my birthday I was given $25 to spend from my mother-in-law.  Normally I would spend it at the wool gathering, but I missed it this year.  Instead I made a trip to Barnes and Noble.  My son picked this book off the table for me to read.  I loved to cover!  I mean....what girl wouldn't love those shoes?  However, I regret buying this book.

I tried really really hard to like it.  I made it 60 pages in before calling it quits.  It was supposed to be a popular YA novel, but it seemed extremely juvenile.  The first chapter was enjoyable.  There was a lot of play on words.  That is how the whole book seemed to be designed.  It had potential, but I have trouble tolerating the same lame writing over and over.  It just seemed to be a lot of fluff.

It's probably perfect for a 15 year old, but not an adult that likes reading YA novels.  I will be giving this to my niece.

One thing that you should be aware of is that there is a lot of "cursing" in it.  The author made the character swear A LOT, but changed them to fairy tale swears.  I know some parents have issues with variations of swearing, so I figured it was of note to mention.  

Book Review: What We Knew by Barbara StewartThree

I won this signed copy from a Twitter contest.  I love reading YA novels, so I was super excited. I loved the cover art, but didn't know anything about the book or author.  Most YA novels that I read do not deal with adult issues.  This one did.

I am not a drinker, smoker, or drugs person.  I guess that makes me very clean cut.  So I took issue knowing who this book is marketed for with all the drinking and things that went on.  However, I am not naive enough to think that this is not how most high schoolers behave.  I know they do.

For the majority of the book I felt like this book was disjointed.  It didn't seem to flow well.  It seemed like some things were very abrupt like the author didn't know how to get what she wanted into the story.

Three quarters of the way through the book I started getting anxious while reading it.  It dredged up a lot of emotions from my past that I thought I had dealt with.  So that was a bit unexpected.

The last 20 pages or so were beautifully written.  It is almost as if someone else wrote those last pages.  I really wish the whole book were written with that quality of writing.

I will say that this book does have triggers.  So if you have dealt with any of the following issues I would think twice about this book.
rape
incest
molestation
drug abuse
alcohol abuse

Book Review: Shadowshaper

This book was mailed to me by one of my friends to read.  She had gone to BookCon and got this as book swag.  She knew I have been having a hard time, so she thought she would send it to me.  I was super excited to read this book because I love supernatural YA novels, but unfortunately this one left me wanting.  

It has a great concept for the book.  Spirits that get shaped into art.  It's a wonderful concept!  However, I felt that it didn't reach its full potential.  

The first half of the book seemed to have been written by a different person.  I almost couldn't continue the book because I felt that the writing was below what I would expect for a YA novel. I'm sure the grammar would be fine for someone in the 14-15 year old range, but for an adult it seems a bit amateur.    

Once I got through the first half of the book things started to connect better.  The writing seemed to get better, and the plot seemed to come together.  I felt that the plot seemed a bit slow.  Nothing seemed to catch my attention until I was 3/4 of the way through the book.  The last few chapters were great, but I wished the good parts of the book weren't so condensed into the end.  I feel like the author just didn't know how to end the story, so it was abrupt.  It was a very simple, easy ending.  

I had expected more.  Overall, I give it 3 out of 5 stars.  Mainly because I know someone like my niece would love this book.  It would be ideal for a 13-15 year old girl that likes art.  

I loved the cover art of this novel.  I should also say that it was an uncorrected proof, so it is possible a lot of what bugged me about this book has been corrected.