Warm Bodies - Isaac Marion

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

Publication Date: December 25, 2012
Publisher: Atria/ Emily Bestler Books
Genre: YA
Pages: 239 pages
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Warm Bodies is a pretty clear cut Romeo and Juliet tale; the characters live in a world where zombies are threatening to kill all humans. R, a zombie, meets Julie and decides to save her instead of kill her. He instantly falls in love, aided by the fact that he ate her boyfriend's, Perry, brain and has his memories inside of him. Of course, this romance isn't accepted by either humans or zombies. With language reminiscent of the play at times and the infamous balcony scene included, there's no doubt that Warm Bodies is a play of the famous Shakespeare love story.

Except that it just kinda misses the mark on everything. R is a zombie, which means that, especially at the beginning, his communications skills are minimal. While R is also our narrator and able to explain everything as a human to the reader, when it comes to talking he doesn't get much further than 2 words. Yet, Julie, who has seen R and his friend kill all of her friends, still has an instant liking for him and an unexplainable trust in his goodness. While many argue Romeo and Juliet have the same thing, they actually are able to communicate (Romeo has some of the most beautiful speech in all of Shakespeare's work), she did not see him kill all her family and they lived in different times where teenagers were expected to pick partners for life. This is not the case in Warm Bodies and the whole storyline just falls flat with the love story. It doesn't make any sense, it's not believable and we never get a good grasp on Julie and why exactly she's so naive.

Besides that, everything else seems easily fixed too. All the problems, serious problems as in zombies killing all of mankind, are brushed over by the end and, though this is kinda a spoiler but not really if you read one page of the book, a happy ending is easily attained. Again, we are offered no explanation about how it exactly happened and what it means, the reader is just supposed to believe it.

For me, the appeal of Warm Bodies is non existent. The writing is not annoying, but it also never takes you into the world. This book is one of those books that make people say that all of YA sucks. It's simplistic, the characters are flat and undeveloped and while I enjoy the attempt at a modern Romeo and Juliet, it just misses all the marks that makes Shakespeare's story such a classic. 

Cinder - Marissa Meyer

Rating: ★★★★★

Publication Date: January 3, 2012
Publisher: Feiwel and Friends
Genre: YA
Pages: 390 pages
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The internet has failed me. For YEARS I have seen the Lunar Chronicles books pass and while everyone seemed to love them, no one really told me why. And that's why I didn't read them until now. AND HOW I LOVED CINDER. Next time, please let me know when I'm blatantly ignoring a book series that I could be falling in love with - it's what the comment section of this blog is all about after all!

Cinder is the story of the future world where a cyborg mechanic named Cinder meets the prince of her country in a most crucial historical time. Cinder is, like her fairytale namesake, stuck with a stepmother that hates her and one evil stepsister, but surprisingly also one nice one. When the prince asks her to fix something for him, she's suddenly thrown into a major medical problem which is basically the future version of the plague. Mechanics aside, the real problem is is whether a cyborg can help a human being, and a prince at that, save the world.

Now the first 50 pages of CInder had me in belief that fantasy isn't for me and that I wouldn't enjoy reading this book after all. We're introduced to Cinder and for me, the whole "she's not like other girls" vibe was just laid on too thickly. We get it. YA narrators are never like other girls and are special little snowflakes. But then again, they are not because they do things other girls will do and most importantly, what's wrong being like other girls? That pet peeve put aside, I struggled through these pages and after them, I was completely hooked. 

I'm still on the fence of Cinder as a character. She shows some amazing moments, but sometimes she just read too generic for me. I like the play on the original Cinderella character; not only is Cinder poor, she's also a cyborg while the prince is a human which is something just not done in that world. It made the divide between the two characters bigger and more believable when Cinder insists on constantly lying to the prince. However, at times I felt that Cinder was just kickass just to be kickasss. It was fake and out of character, but since there are more books in this series, I'm very excited to read them so I'll get a better grasp on her as a character.

A character that I did fall in love with is Lunar princess Levana who is just AMAZING. She's mean, cunning, intelligent and beautiful - exactly everything I want my villain to be. She doesn't hesitate to do whatever she needs to do to get what she wants and she manipulates absolutely everyone in the process. I loved how brutal she is and I can't wait to read more about her story in the other books.

Overall, this book was far from perfect. Cinder is an average character and the big plot twist at the end is something most readers will see coming before the halfway mark. However, I LOVED this book. I can see all its flaws and I can discuss them and yet I still absolutely adored it. It was just so much fun to read and so easy to escape in the world that Marissa Meyer created. This book really transported me from my own life to Cinder's and I think that's an amazing achievement for any book - so just for that reason, I can't give this less than 5 stars.

This Is Where It Ends - Marieke Nijkamp

Rating: ★★★★☆

Publication Date: January 5, 2016
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Genre: YA
Pages: 285 pages
Goodreads

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for a honest review. This in no way influenced my opinion of the book.

This Is Where It Ends is one of the most hyped up YA releases of the year, and since it came out about two weeks ago, I was excited to read it too.

This Is Where It Ends is the story of a shooter coming into a high school to avenge all the people that bullied him (in his opinion) over the years. Marieke Nijkamp follows an array of characters as they all respond to this stressful situation, including the sister of the shooter, her girlfriend, a guy who bullied him and someone who is outside and tries to help the kids in danger. The time is mentioned before each chapter which drives home the fact that the events take place in a very short time and that a lot can change in even just a hour.

What is great about this book is its haunting quality. After I put the book down, I was still thinking about the schools and all the kids that didn't make it out alive. The writing has a great balance between enough detail to make you care and yet leaving enough to the imagination so you're not grossed out the whole time. Part of this haunting quality is also the fact that we follow several characters. While I'm usually not a fan of this narrative technique, it worked really well for this story. You see characters who are really involved and who are on the outside and it gives you a real grasp on the severity of the situation. I also enjoyed the little 'breaks' from the characters near the shooter to the ones more removed. It's very tense to keep wondering who is going to die next and those breaks give the reader room to breathe and collect themselves before reading on.

The only downside is the fact that I couldn't relate to anyone all the way. The book is short and we spend little time with all the characters which means we barely scratch the surface on each of them. However, in this story this seemed to have mattered little, since you can always remember who is who and can relate to the goals they have.

Overall I really enjoyed this book. I wish it was longer so I would have gotten to know the characters better and even get some more background on the shooter. We never hear his voice, which is a technique that I can appreciate, but I wish his sister would have told us even more about him. This book is dark, haunting, serious and so basically everything that people say YA never is. Marieke Nijkamp proves them wrong and really takes you on a dark and twisted journey.

Illuminae - Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Rating: ★★★★☆

Publication Date: October 10, 2015
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
Genre: YA
Pages: 599 pages
Goodreads

Over the holidays, I asked my twitter followers what I should read next and gave them a choice of some fantasy YA novels. I'm a contemporary girl and I just can't seem to get why everyone loves fantasy so much, which is exactly why this year I'm going to read more of it and expose myself to something so many people love. So before you read this, note that I'm not a fantasy lover, I'm not very well aware of the books that are out there and this, obviously, might influence my review.

Illuminae is the story of a war between several planets/galaxies and the circumstances which place Kady right in the middle of it. Kady is a teenage girl who broke up with her boyfriend, Ezra, one morning, only to find her whole planet destroyed mere hours later. She's put on one of the two shuttle ships that are used to transport some of the remaining citizens to a safe place. Kady turns out to be a coding genius and is able to manipulate the systems and most importantly to find out why the AI, the core of the fleet, is suddenly disabled.

The thing that has made this book so popular amongst readers is the layout. Instead of a narrative told by Kady, the reader sees transcripts of chats, official documents, battle plans and the recorded inside data of AI. This means that the reader is constantly puzzling things together and finding out whose documents they can trust and whose are a bunch of lies. While I enjoyed this idea a lot, I think so much focus is on this narrative gimmick that the voices of the characters get lost. During all the chat conversations, everyone has the same voice, even when it's Kady, a teenager, talking to one of the highest officials on the fleet, someone who must be 40 or older. I doubt they would talk in the same way and use the same expressions, but that's what this book offers.

However, the book is a quick read and if you can put aside the generic voices of the characters, you'll find an amazing plot. The fact that there is no direct narrator means that the authors really can play with your expectations of the plot and then turn it around completely whenever they want. You can never predict what will happen next and that is what makes this story so very interesting.

I wasn't as blown away by Illuminae as most readers seem to be. When I put the book down, I was definitely left with a "what the hell??!!" feeling and I did thoroughly enjoy reading it. However, the characters aren't memorable due to their generic voices and I feel like some parts were too dragged out just so we could see the skill of the person designing the pages. Sometimes less is more and I'm hoping they'll show us that in the next Illuminae book.

My Life Next Door - Huntley Fitzpatrick

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Publication Date: June 14, 2012
Publisher: Dial Books for Young Readers
Genre: YA
Pages: 394 pages
Goodreads

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for a honest review. This in no way influenced my opinion of the book.

It's a week later than expected, due to a really bad cold, but I am finally back and will continue posting reviews on my regular schedule (twice a week)! I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Year and that you all got wonderful books that you can read!

One of my first reads of the year was My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick ; a novel that already seems to be very popular in America, but was only released in the UK last week. The story is contemporary and fluffy romantic, exactly what you would expect from the cover.

Samantha Reed has a very proper family with a politician mother and a rebel sister who leaves her no room to do anything wrong. However, she lives next door to the Garretts, who are everything she is not. They have more kids than anyone count, have a messy house that annoys Samantha's mother to no end, and most of all they always look extremely happy. After years of looking in from the outside, Samantha meets one of the boys, Jase. Their love happens fast, but along the way their different home situations turn out to be more difficult to converge than imagined.

I really enjoyed the love story in this one. It was done in a cute way without being too barf-worthy. Jase and Samantha fall in love fast, but also spend a lot of time together and both seem kind of lonely generally in life. This combination makes it pretty believable that they would cling on to each other fast. At the point where I really started to root for them, everything went downhill and that's where my only trouble with this book started.

Samantha is an enjoyable character, but undoubtably really really messes everything up towards the end of the book. She makes some awful choices and continues to drag out lies that she shouldn't have. Though it is explained in the book why she does this, it's really no justification for the amount she lies. But in the story, once she confesses to everything, she is immediately forgiven by everyone. Now I love a good Disney movie, so I get the happy ending concept, but I didn't buy this ending at all. You can't just mess things up for a hundred pages and be forgiven in one. Life is not a fairytale and while the romance aspect of this book does a very good job at portraying that, the unrealistic fast wrap-up at the end left me completely confused.

So while this is a good book, very similar in style to Sarah Dessen who I love as a writer, I felt like the ending needed more depth. I get that this book is light and fluffy, but if serious issues are brought in, they should have been dealt with accordingly. It's perfect to read if you want to really focus on the story, and the writing is amazing so it's easy to do, but only if you also want to forget all about real life, and real consequences.