Book Review: Starters - Lissa Price

Starters - Lissa Price

HER WORLD IS CHANGED FOREVER

Callie lost her parents when the Spore Wars wiped out everyone between the ages of twenty and sixty.  She and her little brother, Tyler, go on the run, living as squatters with their friend Michael and fighting off renegades who would kill them for a cookie.  Callie's only hope is Prime Destinations, a disturbing place in Beverly Hills run by a mysterious figure known as the Old Man.

He hires teens to rent their bodies to Enders--seniors who want to be young again.  Callie, desperate for the money that will keep her, Tyler, and Michael alive, agrees to be a donor.  But the neurochip they place in Callie's head malfunctions and she wakes up in the life of her renter, living in her mansion, driving her cars, and going out with a senator's grandson.  It feels almost like a fairy tale, until Callie discovers that her renter intends to do more than party--and that Prime Destinations' plans are more evil than Callie could ever have imagined...

3/5 stars (liked it)
At first I didn't care too much for Callie but as the book progressed I grew to like her.  I love the mystery behind the Old Man and how he doesn't really have a name or face.  I wish the book alternated between Michael and Callie.  Michael seems like he would also have a good story to tell.  I started the second book as soon as I finished this one.

Book Review: Tales of the Peculiar - Ransom Riggs

Tales of the Peculiar - Ransom Riggs

Before Miss Peregrine gave them a home, the story of peculiars was written in the Tales.

Wealthy cannibals who dine on the discarded limbs of peculiars.  A fork-tongued princess.  These are but a few of the truly brilliant stories in Tales of the Peculiar the collection of fairy tales known to hide information about the peculiar world, including clues to the locations of time loops first introduced by Ransom Riggs in his #1 bestselling Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children Series.

Riggs now invites you to share his secrets of peculiar history, with a collection of original stories in this deluxe audio volume of Tales of the Peculiar, as collected and annotated by Millard Nullings, ward of Miss Peregrine and scholar of all things peculiar.  

4/5 stars (really liked it)

These stories were great and I love how we learn about the world of Peculiars.  I especially like how time loops were created and how peculiars were a long time ago.  Some of these stories were very interesting and I wanted to learn more.

Book Review: Bossypants - Tina Fey

Bossypants - Tina Fey

In her acceptance speech for Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, Tina Fey announced that she was proud to make her home in "the 'not-real America'."  It is perhaps that healthy sense of incongruity that makes the head writer, executive producer and star of NBC's Emmy Award-winning 30 Rock such a cogent observer of the contemporary scene.  Bossypants, her entertaining new memoir, shows that strangeness has been her constant companion.  Fey's stories about her childhood in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania are only appetizers for LOL forays into her college disasters, honeymoon catastrophes, and Saturday Night Live shenanigans.  Most funny read of the month; the best possible weekend update.

4/5 stars (really liked it)

I love Tina Fey.  I loved her on SNL, as a writer and in the show.  I also loved 30 Rock.  It was great to hear how she got to where was is today.  I loved hearing about her early jobs, her honeymoon and her husband's fear of flying.  I would definitely get another memoir of hers.

Book Review: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms - George R.R. Martin

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms - George R.R. Martin

Taking place nearly a century before the events of A Game of Thrones,  A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms compiles the first three official prequel novellas to George R.R. Martin's ongoing masterwork, A Song of Ice and Fire. These never-before-collected adventures recount an age when the Targaryen line still holds the Iron Throne, and the memory of the last dragon has not yet passed from living consciousness.

3/5 stars (liked it)

This book contains three short stories dealing with a Hedge Knight named Ser Duncan and a small boy named Egg (Aegon Targaryen).  My favorite story is the first one where these two meet. The second story is okay but the third one is good.  I loved the illustrations in this book almost as much as the book itself.

Book Review: The Magicians - Lev Grossman

The Magicians - Lev Grossman

Like everyone else, precocious high school senior Quentin Coldwater assumes that magic isn't real, until he finds himself admitted to a very secretive and exclusive college of magic in upstate New York.  There he indulges in joys of college-friendship, love, sex, and booze -- and receives a rigorous education in modern sorcery.  But magic doesn't bring the happiness and adventure Quentin thought it would.  After graduation, he and his friends stumble upon a secret that sets them on a remarkable journey that may just fulfill Quentin's yearning.  But their journey turns out to be darker and more dangerous than they'd imagined.

3/5 stars (liked it)

I didn't really like Quentin, I thought he was a bit dull, whinny and mopey.  I did like the other characters though.  This book spans his whole college education.  While most of his college times are fairly normal and boring it isn't until he graduates and is living in the real world that things pick up.  There we meet an old character Penny.  He brings them an adventure to the land of Fillory, which is a place that is in a book series.  Quentin has been obsessed with the books.  I almost think this book could have just started after Quentin and the others graduated and they spend more time on their adventure.

Book Review: Yes Please - Amy Poehler

Yes Please - Amy Poehler

In Amy Poehler's highly anticipated first book, Yes Please, she offers up a big  juicy stew of personal stories, funny bits on sex and love and friendship and parenthood and real life advice (some useful, some not so much), like when to be funny and when to be serious.  Powered by Amy's charming and hilarious, biting yet wise voice, Yes Please is a book full of words to live by.

4/5 stars (really liked it)

I decided to listen to the audio book instead of reading this since it is read by Amy Poehler herself.  I'm so glad I did, I don't think the book would have been as great without her voice and some other celebrity voices.  Sometimes I felt like I was listening to a radio show instead of a book.  She's funny and serious all at the same time.  I loved Amy before and now I love her even more.

Book Review: When She Woke - Hillary Jordan

When She Woke - Hillary Jordan

Hannah Payne's life has been devoted to church and family.  But after she's convicted of murder, she awakens to a nightmarish new life.  She finds herself lying on a table in a bare room, covered only by a paper gown, with cameras broadcasting her every move to millions at home, for whom observing new Chromes--criminals whose skin color has been genetically altered to match the class of their crime--is a sinister form of entertainment.  Hannah is a Red for a crime of murder.  The victim, says the State of Texas, was her unborn child, and Hannah is determined to protect the identity of the father, a public figure with whom she shared a fierce and forbidden love.

A powerful re-imagining of The Scarlet Letter, When She Woke is a timely fable about a stigmatized woman struggling to navigate an America of the not-too-distant future, where the line between church and state has been eradicated, and convicted felons are no longer imprisoned but chromed and released back into the population to survive as best they can.  In seeking a path to safety in an alien and hostile world, Hannah unknowingly embarks on a journey of self-discovery that forces her to question the values she once held true and the righteousness of a country that politicizes faith and love.

2/5 stars (It was ok)

I had higher hopes for this book.  But Hannah was not too likable.  She refuses to name the father of her unborn baby to protect him because of his position in the church and his marital status. He had an affair with her for two years and blatantly said he would NEVER leaver his wife for Hannah.  She also never told him that she was pregnant.  She also refuses to name the man who gave her the abortion because he was kind to her.  Therefore not giving those two names added 6 more years to her 10 year sentence as a Chrome.  She goes from her 30 days in prison to a religious halfway house where the people running it are horrible.  The only interesting thing that happens there is she meets another Red named Kayla.  I would have much rather have this book be about Kayla.  She is more likable and interesting.  From that point on the book just goes down hill.