by Rae Earl
Reviewed by SA

For some of you, this book needs no introduction – I keep hearing about the show! So naturally, when the book became available on Netgalley, I jumped on it (thanks for approving me, St. Martin’s Press!). It turns out this is a new edition, so it’s not exactly a new book, but it was new for me so I think i can get away with reviewing it!

Summary 

It’s 1989 and Rae Earl is a fat, boy-mad 17-year-old girl, living in Stamford, Lincolnshire with her mum and their deaf white cat in a council house with a mint green bathroom and a refrigerator Rae can’t keep away from. She’s also just been released from a psychiatric ward. My Mad Fat Diary is the hilarious, harrowing and touching real-life diary Rae kept during that fateful year and the basis of the hit British television series of the same name now coming to HULU. Surrounded by people like her constantly dieting mum, her beautiful frenemy Bethany, her mates from the private school up the road (called “Haddock”, “Battered Sausage” and “Fig”) and the handsome, unattainable boys Rae pines after (who sometimes end up with Bethany…), My Mad Fat Diary is the story of an overweight young woman just hoping to be loved at a time when slim pop singers ruled the charts. Rae’s chronicle of her world will strike a chord with anyone who’s ever been a confused, lonely teenager clashing with her parents, sometimes overeating, hating her body, always taking herself VERY seriously, never knowing how positively brilliant she is and keeping a diary to record it all. My Mad Fat Diary – 365 days with one of the wisest and funniest girls in England.

Funny and witty sure covers it: the author had me even before the novel itself started, when she was still explaining Britishisms and slang. Even though I knew the words themselves, her definitions shed new light on them and had me roaring in laughter. So when the book itself started, I was happy to see that the author’s past self has that same voice: snarky, witty, and above all, incredibly engaging.

The plot itself wasn’t as exciting as I expected. When people call it a fateful year, or talk about having a whole show about this, I wonder what actually happens, because honestly, to me, it was a girl living her life, and looking for love. There are a few dramatic moments, but I guess it was the feeling of watching a year slide by in less than a three hour read that made the novel feel like not much really happened.

Even so, I still enjoyed the book: largely because of just how relatable Rae Earl is. She’s got the same insecurities we all do, worries the same worries, and has some seriously awful friends who are just making it all worse. The diary is a lens into a life some of us have shared, and somehow, her witty comments help validate the struggle in all of us. You can’t help but wish her well – or want to give her a hug and tell her she can make it through this.

But this is a diary: it’s real life, it’s not been made into a nice bundle for us to digest. There’s not always the resolution we want as a reader, not always the wish fulfillment. Life is messy. And this diary is a beautiful way of looking at life and capturing how difficult it can really be. How trying, and stressful, how maddening: how nothing always goes according to plan. Rae’s Diary is just so stinkin’ relatable.

This novel is definitely well worth the read!

by Roshani Chokshi
Reviewed by SA

Sometimes we all need a little magic in our lives, a captivating myth that reminds us of just how much a story can mean. The Star-touched queen is one of those stories: a novel unlike any I’ve ever read before, much more like a story passed on from generation to generation, of a powerful woman fighting for her place in the universe. It is a novel touched with magic!

Summary

Cursed with a horoscope that promises a marriage of Death and Destruction, sixteen-year-old Maya has only earned the scorn and fear of her father’s kingdom. Content to follow more scholarly pursuits, her world is upheaved when her father, the Raja, arranges a wedding of political convenience to quell outside rebellions. But when her wedding takes a fatal turn, Maya becomes the queen of Akaran and wife of Amar. Yet neither roles are what she expected. As Akaran’s queen, she finds her voice and power. As Amar’s wife, she finds friendship and warmth.

But Akaran has its own secrets – thousands of locked doors, gardens of glass, and a tree that bears memories instead of fruit. Beneath Akaran’s magic, Maya begins to suspect her life is in danger. When she ignores Amar’s plea for patience, her discoveries put more than new love at risk – it threatens the balance of all realms, human and Otherworldly.

Now, Maya must confront a secret that spans reincarnated lives and fight her way through the dangerous underbelly of the Otherworld if she wants to protect the people she loves.

Maya is a princess who lives in a Harem with her father’s other wives and daughters. A smart, headstrong girl, she does not want the life expected of her: she’s much rather study than marry. When her father shares with her his plans for her marriage, which involve a sacrifice on her part, she is ready to do her duty – that is until Amar shows up, and whisks her away as his wife to the mysterious land of Akaran.

Amar is insanely in love with her, and proud to call Maya his wife. He wants to win her love over gently, and so those who like romance in their novels will be all over this swoon-worthy king. However, in an unusual twist, it is Maya who has to save her husband, and not the other way around, leading her on an epic quest across realms and worlds, with a snarky demonic horse by her side (can’t leave home without one!).

The book says it is inspired by indian mythology, which is a great way of saying that it feels like an indian myth but never claims to be one. In that way, it manages to grab you into the fiction: the kind of tale that takes place in a mythical, far away land, with heroes and deities. Almost like a western myth in an Indian setting.

So imagine if you will that you’re sitting with your friends and one is telling you the most engrossing story. That’s how this novel feels. Any flaw you find, whether you find one character unrealistic, or a plot point too predictable, will be shushed away: we’re trying to enjoy the story here! And it makes it impossible to find anything to dislike in it. You are transported somewhere else entirely.

The world building in this novel is AMAZING. The depth of it! There are realms and other worlds, people and deities, an elephant that knits clouds for the sky!I was completely captivated, completely taken away.

Honestly, I could go on and on and on about this amazing novel. You NEED to read it as soon as you can! Thankfully there’s not too long to wait – it comes out April 26th 2016 by St. Martin’s Griffin.

by Robin Reul
Reviewed by SA

Hold on to yours hats, ’cause here comes a fun novel that will whisk you away! If you need a good YA in your life, one that runs deep and stays with you long after you’ve finished the last page, then you’re going to love “My Kind of Crazy”, a sweet, thoughtful, wonderful novel about fire and friendship.

Summary

Despite the best of intentions, seventeen-year old, wisecracking Hank Kirby can’t quite seem to catch a break. It’s not that he means to screw things up all the time, it just happens. A lot. Case in point: his attempt to ask out the girl he likes literally goes up in flames when he spells “Prom” in sparklers on her lawn…and nearly burns down her house.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, Peyton Breedlove, a brooding loner and budding pyromaniac, witnesses the whole thing. Much to Hank’s dismay, Peyton takes an interest in him—and his “work.” The two are thrust into an unusual friendship, but their boundaries are tested when Hank learns that Peyton is hiding some dark secrets, secrets that may change everything he thought he knew about Peyton.

When I first started this novel, I thought it was a comedy: as the book begins, Hank has just failed his promposal in the most epic dimensions… by lighting a garden on fire. The sparklers were a good idea when he saw them online, but now the dry grass has caught fire, and he’s been seen by Peyton, the girl across the street. So immediately, I thought this was going to be a ‘haha’ kind of book, where Hank needs to somehow make amends and keep his secret… but instead, it grew into something much more.

It is a story about growth. While it starts off funny, slowly you begin to realize how much depth these teenagers have, and how much they begin to grow up and deal with their conflicts. It’s a book about family, a book about crazy, a book about facing your issues. And it’s also a book about love, thought romantic love comes last.

Hank is crazy about comics, and has been working on one for years, but dealing with his father’s alcoholism and the loss of his mother and brother has left him thinking he has no real future. Peyton is an outsider with a love of fire, with a mother who doesn’t care for her, and a mother’s boyfriend who’s borderline abusive. Neither have good home lives. But the friendship that grows between them is beautiful.

The supporting characters are fun, but not as well defined as Hank and Peyton. Nick is Hank’s friend, and crushes hard on Peyton. You have Hank’s dad, the alcoholic, and his Dad’s girlfriend, Monica, whom I love so much for being the most badass stripper I’ve ever seen in YA. You have a joint smoking teacher, possible mafia families, and of course, Amanda Carlisle, the girl Hank set the promposal off for in the first place.

What impressed me was how quickly the plot I expected quickly sank into the background: Amanda wanting to find who set off the sparklers through a not-very-accurate online quiz, Hank not wanting to come forward even though he has a witness… All this became secondary when Peyton came along.

Though some of the action seemed unrealistic – like Hank’s reaction to most of the things that Peyton does – this novel includes also some of the most down to earth moments in YA to date. The entire friendship that builds between Hank and Peyton before either of them actually realized it’s love is just fantastic, healthy, and human. It felt incredibly relatable.

My Kind Of Crazy comes out April 5th from Sourcebooks Fire. I highly recommend it, and think it might be some of the best High School YA I’ve ever read!

by Aaron Thier
Reviewed by SA

Drop everything and grab this book at once. This book is a vortex that will suck you in and grab you tight, and won’t let you go even after you’ve read the last page and put it down. This is a beautiful, epic novel that I’m seriously so excited to tell you all about.

Summary

Key West, 2016. Sea levels are rising, coral reefs are dying. In short, everything is going to hell. It’s here that two young filmmakers find something to believe in: an old sailor who calls himself Daniel Defoe and claims to be five hundred sixty years old.

In fact, old Dan is in the prime of his life. It’s an incredible, perhaps eternal American life, which Mr. Eternity imagines over a millennium: a parade of conquistadors and plantation owners, lusty mermaids and dissatisfied princesses, picking up in the sixteenth century in the Viceroyalty of New Granada and continuing into the twenty-sixth, where, in the future Democratic Federation of Mississippi States, Dan serves as an advisor to the King of St. Louis. Some things remain constant throughout the centuries, and being on the edge of ruin may be one. In 1560, the Spaniards have destroyed the Aztec and Inca civilizations. In 2500, we’ve destroyed our own: the cities of the Atlantic coast are underwater, the union has fallen apart, and cars, plastics, and air conditioning are relegated to history. But there are other constants too: love, ingenuity, humor, and old Dan himself, always adapting and inspiring others with dreams of a better life.

There is just so much substance to this book that it’s difficult to lay it all out for you without giving away spoilers. The gist of it is this: five different people, spread from the 1500s to the 2500s, each gives us a window into their lives, surrounding their meeting of Daniel Defoe (or the ancient mariner), a man who seems constant across the centuries. He cannot die, though we don’t know why, and in every time he searches for his lost love, Anna Gloria, an obsession on his.

1560: a native Indian Pirahoa girl sold to the Spanish. She travels with Daniel de Fo and the Christian conquistadors on the search for her home town, which they call El Dorado.

1750: John Green, son of a slave and her master, is living a lie as a gentleman. When Dr. Dan joins him at the plantation, they hatch a plan to steal the landowner’s collection of Spanish coins.

2016: a college drop-out in 2016 worries about global warming, pops pills, and tries to make a documentary about the Ancient Mariner of Key West, who claims to be 560 years old, and together they hunt for treasure.

2200: The seas have risen and the world is no longer the same. Jam, a poor young orphan with barely any education, gets hired to work on a boat alongside Old Dan, who tells him stories and takes him under his wing.

2500: Jasmine Roulette is the daughter of the King of St Louis and president of the Democratic Federation of Mississippi States. Though born to a life of luxury, she is a self proclaimed ‘anachro-feminist’ obsessed with the lost American civilization. Her father buys a slave who calls himself Daniel Defoe, and who has many stories to tell about the past she yearns for.

Consider this novel as a combination of Cloud Atlas, Station Eleven, and Big Fish. When it comes to the man’s stories, telling fact from fiction is nearly impossible, and the characters themselves don’t know for certain that he is what he says he is, a centuries old man. Everyone always asks him about the past, and the stories he tells are compelling, believable, but also fantastical: does he himself believe what he is telling us, or is he having an extremely senior moment?

The novel also addresses the issue of climate change, and our involvement in global warming. However, the author does not get preachy, which is an incredible feat. Daniel Defoe has seen the Americas before the cities we cling to were even thought up, so for him they are just a blip. It reminds us of the cyclical nature of history, how we are doomed to repeat our mistakes. In fact, sometimes old Dan himself seems to state the future as the past, making us wonder just what he’s seen, if time works for him the way it works for us.Every character is dealing with a changing world, in some way or another.

I could spend hours talking about this book: I want to get all my friends to read it, so we can talk about the complexities, the little details slipped between the pages, the questions the book makes ourselves ask. What is truth? Is History true? Why are we doomed to repeat our mistakes? What is worth valuing in this world?

For fans of David Mitchell, in search for another gorgeous book to devour, Mr. Eternity is beautiful, gripping, and deeply complex. Trust me: you need to read this book as soon as it comes out, on August 9th.

Sorry folks, Kenzie and I are taking a week off! Well, took is probably the better word here, seeing as though we’re Saturday…  but we’ll be back next week with more reviews!

Sarah