This probably the best John Green book I’ve read that didn’t feature a delightful young man named Augustus. Will Grayson, Will Grayson stars, you guessed it, two kids named Will Grayson. WG #1 has a best friend named Tiny (who’s an enormous, black and gay, because it’s a John Green book and he really does like to mix things up) who constantly overshadows him. Will’s theory in life is to stay un-involved from things that might hurt him, so he avoids girls and conflict and all […]
No-frills fairy tale
This is a fine book, and an author I normally like, but I think it suffered from being read right after The Scar. Every time I picked the book up, I wanted to be back on the floating pirate city. Instead, I got a retread of a million other fairies-in-the-wood story. Nothing fresh, nothing groundbreaking, but well-written with okay characters. Sylvia (get it? like sylvan? like woods?) hasn’t been home to visit her grandmother Iris (get it? like a flower? Yay Nature!) in almost a […]
A Real Love Story (in all its 80’s glory)
This YA novel has been on my to-read list for a while and I loved it just as much as I thought I would. Rainbow Rowell’s novel, set in the 80’s, tells the unlikely love story of Eleanor and Park, two high school students who don’t quite fit in their Nebraska high school but for very different reasons. Park is the only Asian in his school—the son of a white father and a Korean mom, and has dealt with being “different” all his life. Though […]
Watch Out for Private School Boys
This first novel in a young adult series by Maggie Stiefvater creates one of my favorite main character names to date—Blue Sargent. Blue is the only non-psychic in a family of female clairvoyants, living in a small town. Though she seems to be “normal,” Blue amplifies the powers of those around her and so every year her mother takes her to an old church where they watch for the “soon to be dead” to walk by. Year after year, Blue never sees them until the […]