Stuff I’ve Read and What I Think of It

Seriously, how much more straightforward can I be?

Disclaimer: In older posts I’ve proclaimed myself a hardcore non-fiction fan. I still am but last week I found myself thrust in the middle of something that was way over my head and guess what I did to cope? Read trashy teen fiction. And oooooh boy, was this stuff trashy.That’s not to say the lot of it was badly written but there were times when I had to stop reading and laugh hysterically. Belief can only be suspended so far, after all, before the lines start to snap.

These are rather irreverent reviews so if you want my serious  (read: more intelligent) take, drop me a line on Twitter or some such.

Also, I am TOTALLY providing spoilers for these books. As in, “it was Miss Scarlet in the library with the candlestick” type of spoiler. I’m warning you now just so I can disregard your angry comments later.

So without further ado…

Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick

Unbelievable premise: A sexy, mysterious boy and a smart, vulnerable yet snarky girl get paired up together in biology class. Sparks fly. Triangles are created. Scars are revealed. Murder is attempted- several times, Uh, do I really need to warn you about a spoiler? Guess what the mysterious boy is? He’s a freaking fallen angel. I mean, look at the damn cover.

Pros: Unbelievable premise is interesting. And the cover is pretty. Patch (yeah, that’s his name- seriously), the mysterious boy aka Fallen Angel dude isn’t completely unlikeable.

Cons: Everything and everyone else. The main character, Nora, is annoying. She’s attracted to Patch because he’s kind of a jerk and makes a lot of snarky comments towards/about her- yeah, every girl’s dream, right? And the dude works as a busboy or some crap which, yeah, if I was a fallen angel with the ability to make people do what I want them to do, I’d totes get a job at the local burrito place. Not.

Also, her father was murdered and what does her mom do? Leave her alone for most of the week in a big farmhouse in BFE so she can go sell antiques upstate or something.

Conclusion: I give this four out of ten pirate swords.

The cover is pretty and would make a nice addition to your coffee table. Not gonna lie though, I’m TOTALLY getting the sequel, just to know WTF this dude’s real name is. Patch the Fallen Angel sounds too much like Puff the Magic Dragon, if you ask me.

Need and it’s sequel, Captive, by Carrie Jones

Unbelievable premise:  Pixies. Pixies that have blue skin and sharp teeth but hide it all under something called a glamour. Pixies that go to high school in a small Maine town and have nothing better to do than to harass the new girl, whose father just died and whose mother sent her to live with her grandmother because she couldn’t deal with the sad-girl faces she kept making. Why do these pixies bug the new girl? Because she’s a hippie… and a pixie princess. Who has a werewolf boyfriend (Nick) with control issues. And is friends with like a were-eagle, a psychic, a human… and whose grandmother is a were-tiger. Oh and the school nurse is a were-bear (not to be confused with a Care bear). The first book sets up the second book which sets up the as-yet-unreleased third book.

Pros: The premise makes it sound laughable- and it is, but dude, I kinda dug these two. The main character, Zara, is a tree-hugging, peace-promoting, phobia-reciting bundle of nerves but she totally worked for me. I didn’t quite like the other characters as much but the pixies weren’t a bunch of Keebler-elf copies, which is a good thing.

Cons: Dude. Pixies and were-(insert animal here).

Conclusion:  I give these books six out of ten penguin scarves.

If  you’re stuck in a bookstore and someone has a gun to your head and is forcing you to buy a book RIGHTNOW but you’ve read everything else you could ever be possibly interested in… these books aren’t a bad choice.

 

Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception, and it’s sequel/companion, Ballad: A Gathering of Faerie by Maggie Stiefvater

Unbelievable premise:  Not pixies this time but fairies who decide to harass a gifted harpist named Deirdre who has a tendency to throw up before any public performances. She meets a mysterious boy (sound familiar?) and has several encounters with nasty versions of the creatures usually found hanging out with Peter Pan who try and kill her. In Ballad, however, the point of view switches over to her best friend, James, while they're enrolled in a school for gifted musicians. He has his own encounters with fairies and other creatures of the dark.

Pros: So… these were actually good. I could re-read them both and actually (gasp) enjoy them. The characters were smart and (dare I say) likeable. The dialogue was smart and funny. The pacing was good (except Ballad dragged a little) and the prose flowed smoothly. I’d actually grown to like Deirdre and James and got a little choked up when Deirdre had to make a tough decision (best friend or boyfriend who’s been tortured for the past thousand years, whose life do I save?) at the end of Lament.

Cons: That boyfriend I talked about? The one who’d been tortured for a thousand years? Yeah, I didn’t fall in love with him. He was mysterious, sure, and not a one dimensional bad boy like Patch or Edward-Jacob hybrid like Nick but I couldn’t figure out why it was Deirdre got all moony-eyed over the dude. Maybe it was because he held her hair back when she threw up that one time? The sequel/companion book was all about James, the snarky sidekick and while his POV was much more fun to read, this book fell flat for me. It’s well written but for some reason, I wasn’t as engaged as I was in Lament.

Conclusion:  I give these books eight out of ten platform heels.

Rainy day, nothing to do, no one to hang out with? Read these books.

 

Deadly Little Secret, and it’s sequel, Deadly Little Lies, by Laurie Faria Stolarz

Unbelievable premise:  A boy pops out of nowhere and pulls an Edward Cullen ala Twilight, saving Camelia from… something. I think it was a bus or a car or something. I can’t remember because these books were boring and long. Anyway, he fondles her belly or something before sprinting away so she doesn’t even get this name. He pops up again at her school months later and she’s like OMG U SAVED ME while he’s all like U IZ CRAZY! The boy, Ben, has a mysterious past (which makes him an object of fear and contempt and… dumb school pranks) and he also has the power to tell if someone is in danger by touching them. For some reason though, he can’t figure out how Camelia is in danger, or if she is. Anyway, at the end of book one he runs away and in book two…. he comes back.

Also thrown in: love triangles, dead ex-girlfriends, crazy lunatic aunts, family secrets and pottery scenes taken straight out of the movie Ghost.

Pros: Uh….

Cons:  Oh where do I begin? Ben was a whiny little bitch and I wanted him to either grow some or play in traffic somewhere. Camelia was equally as annoying (“La-de-da, people are sending me creepy messages and pajamas and breaking into my room but I won’t tell my parents because I’m sure it’s nothing!”) and her two sidekicks were caricatures of eccentric high schoolers. In short- the characters weren’t likeable, the plot was convoluted and not at all mysterious and the angst meter was turned up to HIGH, making it almost a comedy.

Conclusion:  No rating needs. Just don’t bother.

So there you have it. I’ve actually read about five more books but figured this post would get too long. And if you were wondering why I bothered spending money on any of these books, rest assured I didn’t. They were all actually a Christmas present from someone who thought it would be hysterical to send me Twilight-esque novels.

Comments

[Noah Banning]

Let's pray this doesn't happen but I feel these are destined to become trashy teen fiction movies...ugh