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 This review contains spoilers. Read the books first!
Todd and Fiona have arrived in Haven only to discover that it’s not a haven at all. It’s New Prentisstown and Mayor Prentiss has now declared himself the president of the entire planet. Fiona is seriously wounded and whisked from Todd’s view to heal, used as a threat to get Todd to cooperate. Todd himself is locked up with the old mayor of Haven, forced to spend time with Mayor Prentiss’s son Davy and commit ever more horrible acts against the Spackle during the day. When rebellion begins, Todd and Fiona begin to wonder who the Answer are and what is going to happen to New Prentisstown.
This is going to be a short review because I read this and Monsters of Men right after each other. I have quite a lot to say about the third book, but this one has somewhat blended in with it, so my observations are less clearcut. Still, I thought they each deserved their own post.
While I wasn’t so crazy about The Knife of Never Letting Go, I thought it was worth reading the rest of the series to see what happened with Todd and Fiona. This book was the perfect follow up for me because it took a step back, slowed everything down, and really fleshed out the world and the story. I’m not a huge fan of breakneck, breathless books, and so this was a breath of fresh air as Todd and Fiona stay in one place for the most part. They learn more about what happened in the past and they start to take strides towards changing the future. Their bond still remains very strong even though they’re apart for most of the book.
I can easily say the high point of this book for me was Todd’s relationship with Mayor and Davy Prentiss. I loved how the relationships gradually changed and were fleshed out as well as how genuinely true to life they were. Davy strives for his father’s approval but has never had Mayor Prentiss’s extreme, if cruel, strength of character, so he’s always going to be a failure. Todd does have that strength, and as a result Davy is almost naturally drawn towards him even if they’re enemies at first. It’s a fascinating dynamic and all of their emotions rang beautifully true for me.
By the time I finished The Ask and the Answer, I’d become a loyal fan of the series and could not wait to start Monsters of Men. I’m surprised by how much the book turned my feelings around, but I’m very glad, because Patrick Ness is a masterful writer and plotter.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
 This review will contain spoilers for the entire series. If you haven’t read these books yet, skip this post and read them!
I am not even going to attempt to summarize this, but I thought instead I’d just post a collection of thoughts now that I’ve finally managed to finish the book myself, before I go out and read all the other reviews that might influence my own opinion.
First of all, I had a harder time connecting with this book than with either of the first two. I found it difficult to recognize these characters after the horrors they’d endured, and Collins just kept piling on the pain. The entire world has become unrecognizable due to the rebellion, so I found that there were few points for me to hang onto as references; all I had was Katniss and even she is often drugged, suffering, and considered mentally unstable by everyone else. Every time something happens to her, on come the drugs and the seclusion and I got very tired of it. All of the other characters either die or become distant versions of themselves, so affected by the turmoil of war that they are fundamentally changed.
And I think that’s what I didn’t like about the book in the end, that it was basically war. The Hunger Games certainly weren’t easy to take in either of the first two books, but there was a definitive goal, things I knew had to happen to get to the end. I knew which characters were in danger. This is just the horrors of war, over and over, and even though the Capitol is designed like a Hunger Games arena, I just found it that much more difficult to deal with. I think it may have made it worse, reading all three in a row, because there’s just so much violence and pain and suffering. By this point, I couldn’t take it. She doesn’t soften anything at all.
I also really didn’t like how the deaths were almost glanced over. Here I’ve gone and become attached to all of these characters and they just die over and over and there was no break in the book to mourn them. I had this problem with another dystopia, The Knife of Never Letting Go, and it bothered me just as much here.
That’s not to say I didn’t like the book, although it’s harder to say I like such a very dark book. I thought most of what happened in it had to happen for the ending to come out the way it did. We all could easily see the rebellion coming, that Katniss was the focal point of it, and that people were going to die to make it all come out okay for the rest of them. The plot had a few surprises in store. It was still just as absorbing a book as the rest of them, but I am not sure it lived up to my expectations. About the only thing that completely satisfied me was the ending, which was just how I wanted it to be, and Katniss even shared my reasoning for her eventual choice. I was worried that she wasn’t going to choose at all, based on some blog titles I’d seen around and the way the book seemed to be going. I do kind of think the epilogue was unnecessary, but not entirely unwelcome.
I’m glad that, in the end, the book left me satisfied, but since I did a reread of the first two before launching into this one, I genuinely don’t think it’s as good. I didn’t like it as much, it didn’t absorb me to the same extent. I may change my mind if I do a reread of the whole series in a year or two, when my internal hype has died down, and I’ll see if the conclusion sticks as well as the first two did.
What did you think of Mockingjay?
 When she was a child, Grace was attacked and bitten by werewolves. She was only saved by the intervention of a yellow-eyed wolf, who has continued to watch her progress throughout her life. Now 17, Grace is making her way through high school but maintains a strange feeling of kinship with “her wolf”. When she meets a boy, Sam, with those same yellow eyes, Grace immediately feels drawn to him, especially when she realizes that he truly is a werewolf. As they fall in love, Grace and Sam struggle to find a way to be together before he turns into a wolf permanently.
I really, really wish I had liked this book more than I did! I’ve had a number of comments already from people who just loved this book and I was really looking forward to it. I think in this case, expectations really ruined the book for me. With the use of the word “chilling” on the cover and the fact that it was a book about werewolves, and that was more or less all I knew, I guess I expected it to be creepier. Or at least creepy somehow. Instead, “chilling” referred to the fact that winter’s cold turns the werewolves into their wolf selves. I felt a bit misled and perhaps if I’d paid more attention to reviews beforehand, I wouldn’t have been particularly annoyed.
As it was, this book is basically a teenage paranormal romance. As I was reading it, I could tell that my sixteen year old self would have been head over heels for it. But since I expected more, or at least something else, I wound up disappointed – I often do when I think I’m reading something and it turns into something else. The romance was sweet enough but it was clearly predetermined from the beginning and the story didn’t really have any twists that set it apart from a regular romance novel. I’m fine with all of these things when I know they’re happening, but for some reason this book and I didn’t click at all. Many of the scenes were slow-moving, focusing on just Sam and Grace and their developing relationship. There was a bit of drama focusing on Grace’s friends and a boy that goes after the wolves, but I was just reminded a little too much of what it was like to be a teenager.
I also really disliked how absent minded Grace’s parents were. It really brought home to me how much this is a flaw in YA books; I found it hard to believe a father could just forget his small daughter in a car days after she’d been violently attacked by werewolves! And what parents would miss the fact that their house was now inhabited by another person, sleeping in their daughter’s bed? It’s hard to believe parents could claim to love their child and then completely ignore everything she does. I’m sure they’re out there, but Grace’s parents just annoyed me every time they appeared in a scene.
Regardless of my disappointments, I still felt that the book was well-written, with Sam and Grace having distinct voices that made it easy for me to tell the difference between them. Stiefvater’s prose is lovely, with a number of gorgeous descriptions – that special part of the woods comes to mind immediately and I wish I had the book with me to quote it. I would certainly be interested in reading another book by her, but I think for once I’ll investigate a little more about the plot before I commit myself.
Would I recommend Shiver? I don’t know; probably not to someone who expected a creepier book! But I do think people who enjoy paranormal romance (or Twilight) would like it, as attested by its popularity.
I am an Amazon Associate. I borrowed this book from my local library.
 Isabel and her sister Ruth have been slaves their entire lives. On the eve of the American Revolution, their owner dies and sets them free in her will. But because of the turmoil, no one bothers to find the lawyer or read the will, so Isabel and Ruth are inherited and sold to a cruel Tory family who lives in New York. There Isabel tries her hardest to free herself and her sister just as her country tries to free itself from British rule. After all, if a country can be free, why can’t two little girls?
Slavery during the American Revolution isn’t something we always think about. There is so much going on in the period that I think we tend to get excited about Americans winning our independence from Britain and completely ignore the fact that we chose to keep thousands of people enslaved at the same time simply because of the color of their skin. Laurie Halse Anderson rightly points out how utterly wrong this was by writing this compelling tale of two sisters who are legally free but trapped because white people simply don’t care and don’t want to bother finding out the truth.
Anderson is a master at creating characters’ voices and I just adored Isabel’s, who is the narrator of this story. I felt for her the whole way through the book and I really, really wanted her to win freedom for herself and her sister. Her every failure broke my heart, especially when it wasn’t her fault. She’s just a child and that really becomes clear – it’s horrible how she’s treated. Somehow, though, this book is more readable than many books about slavery. Even though Isabel suffers, she doesn’t get beaten down. She has a fantastic spirit and I think it enlivens the whole book because hope remains in the darkest times for her.
It also speaks to Anderson’s talent that she took an era in which I have relatively little interest, for whatever reason, and make it the background for an utterly compelling book. I had never known that the British promised freedom to the slaves to get them on their side, for example. I’ve only ever read one book set in New York City at this time, The Tory Widow by Christine Blevins, and I was intrigued by the parallels and differences told by each author.
I thought Chains was a fantastic work of YA historical fiction. It’s compelling, readable, and haunting. I can’t wait for the sequel, Forge, and just wish it was out now!
I am an Amazon Associate. I borrowed this book from my local library.
 Adeline’s mother died when she was a baby. As the fifth child, with three brothers and a sister, she was always going to be teased, but when she was a year old her father remarried a woman who had it out for her predecessor’s children. Adeline’s stepmother was half French, automatically placing her above the rest of her Chinese family. While Adeline and her four older siblings wore old clothes, ate cheap food, and weren’t allowed to see any of their friends outside of school, her stepmother’s children were pampered and treated with endless luxuries. They walked to school while their younger siblings were given money for the tram or driven to the most exclusive schools available. Adeline yearned to escape and distinguished herself at school, but her life often seemed like the worst misery possible.
This memoir was absolutely heartbreaking. I just could not believe anyone could treat a little girl so badly. It’s obvious that Adeline (her Chinese name is Jun-ling) is a clever child with a huge heart. She loves her grandparents and her aunt, the only people who treat her well, with an earnest devotion that I wished she could have applied to her parents. Instead, her stepmother convinces her father that his older children deserve nothing but the worst – subsistence food, hideous clothes, unflattering but cheap haircuts. They are mocked in school and at home alike.
I was amazed that Adeline could retain her sense of self despite all of the abuse. She has no self-esteem, but she is a good person and as such she makes friends. Eventually, people flock to her, leading to one of the saddest scenes in the book. It wouldn’t have been so bad even if the siblings that shared a mother with her had compassion, but they are either innately cruel, venting their unhappiness on their little sister, or seek her stepmother’s approval and then continue to mock her.
Adeline’s story is intertwined with the history and culture of China. It’s often obvious that this is a middle grade book and that the history is slightly simplified for the child’s mind, but it lends flavor to the story and Adeline’s surroundings. The book would really be perfect for a middle grade reader eager to learn more about the wider world – I know I learned virtually nothing of twentieth century China in school. There is a follow-up for young adult readers which I have already requested from the library and am very eager to read.
Chinese Cinderella was a fast, simple but absolutely heartbreaking read. It’s a memoir that will have you cheering for Adeline and hoping that she finally earns happiness in the end.
I am an Amazon Associate. I borrowed this book from my local library.
 Hilary, now an old man, takes the time to reflect on one year of his life in a boarding school – the year he found love. He was a troubled child who often resisted authority, longing to be something he was not, and as a result had ended up unpopular and unsuccessful in different schools already. On a run with his entire school, he discovered a boy who lived by himself on the coast of East Anglia, where the water is slowly creeping up on the land. Hilary immediately did his best to cultivate a friendship with the boy, Finn, finding himself compelled to spend more and more time in Finn’s tiny cottage, totally unaware of the effects his friendship would have.
I am not honestly sure where to begin this review. I’ve let this book percolate in my head slightly too long, I think, for my thoughts to be coherent to anyone but me. I can say what I loved most about this book was the perfect way it captured teenage awkwardness. Meg Rosoff’s writing perfectly encapsulated everything Hilary was feeling – I could almost have been him. The fact that the book was narrated by Hilary’s older self remembering makes it all too poignant. I’m far from old, but my teenage years have already begun to take on a similar gloss, a comparison between what I thought I knew was true then and what I know to be true now. I’m sure it will only become stronger as the years march on.
There is an air of mystery surrounding the entire book. The narrator’s name is scarcely mentioned – it took a lot of searching before I found out what it actually was in order to write this review. And Finn, too, is a mystery – a character who barely speaks yet embodies virtually everything to Hilary. Hilary’s unsure whether he’s in love with Finn – and resisting his newfound homosexuality – or simply wants to be Finn, which he’s clearly more comfortable with and makes efforts to actually do. Rosoff never explicity spells this out, though, but merely gets it across with Hilary’s actions and thoughts.
I loved the book’s focus on history, too, Hilary’s awareness of the continuity of life. Things change constantly and his ruminations on history only remind us that what he’s going through will be over, too. The coast will continue to vanish and the remains of Roman forts will soon be taken away by the ocean.
There’s a twist at the end of the book which turned it all upside down, but I thought it just fit. I knew something was going to happen and I’d considered the idea at the start, but when it happened I was still surprised. I don’t want to give it away because the book’s pull won’t be nearly as powerful if you know the ending – there’s a constant, looming sense of almost dread throughout most of the book, a focus on the frailty of our lives. Ties in well with the history, doesn’t it?
Anyway, I’m not actually sure I preferred What I Was to How I Live Now, but it was certainly thoughtful and addictive. Rosoff’s writing is beautiful and perfectly emulates the teenage mind – I can’t wait to read more of her work.
I am an Amazon Associate. I borrowed this book from my local library.
 Fifteen-year-old Daisy goes to live with her aunt Penn and cousins in England when her stepmother gets pregnant. At first upset by her exile, Daisy quickly adjusts to life with her cousins and finds herself in the bosom of a family. At that moment, however, England finds itself in a severe war and the children are left without any parental supervision as the war comes right to their doorstep.
This is an incredibly compelling book. Daisy is a fifteen-year-old with serious issues. She makes light of her anorexia, which is severe, and she proceeds to fall in love with her first cousin in a matter of days. Yet I found her voice incredibly compelling, very much like a teenager would talk. I may be the only one who wasn’t annoyed by the run-on sentences. I just loved the way it changed over the course of the book as she matured and had to deal with harder and harder situations. I felt bad for her at the beginning but she really strengthened and even though her situation didn’t really improve, I started to believe she could handle it. Some of the realizations and changes she makes towards the end were brilliantly done.
I also thought the whole book was a stunning look at the effect a real-life war would have on a first world country at this point in time. The enemy takes over England and everything changes. I actually thought some of the sections towards the end, when two of the characters are particularly desperate, were some of the best in the book. They were so realistically drawn, even though there is a slight hint of fantasy throughout the book. It’s hard to tell whether it’s actually meant or just children’s imaginings but it fit well.
I suppose if I were to have any problem with this book, it might be the fact that Daisy almost instantly falls in love with her first cousin. But she’d never met him before, so it’s difficult to blame her even if it is a bit unnatural. Perhaps it’s just uncomfortable because the author writes their love story so well in the first place!
This was a perfect Read-a-Thon book but I’d recommend How I Live Now to anyone, especially those who like YA dystopias.
These are books 2, 3, and 4 in the Vampire Academy series. I reviewed the first one here.
I read all these right in a row, so it’s hard for me to differentiate them from each other. And it’s impossible to avoid spoilers. So I’m just mushing them all into one “thoughts” post, to remember what I thought about the series when the next one rolls around. For those who haven’t read them, I’ll just tell you that if you like YA boarding school stories with vampire romance, and don’t mind some diversions outside of the boarding school, this is a good series for you.
  
All of these books are from Rose’s viewpoint, with occasional peeks from her into Lissa’s head. I still liked Rose and I thought her relationship with the older Dimitri was sweet, but I have to admit that I thought her emotions were overwrought at times, especially in the last book, Blood Promise. She has loads of memories that we never saw in the first three books, except for the one time they had sex, and it kind of irritated me that we didn’t experience as much of their love story as I might have liked. If we had, maybe I wouldn’t have felt like she was being constantly dramatic, for all her talent as a master Strigoi killer. Her grief in Frostbite and the beginning of Shadow Kiss was more interesting.
I loved that Rose went to Russia and explored another part of the world that Mead created. I like the world and I felt like it became much more fully fleshed out in these three books. I liked that Rose’s mother showed up, and more than once, so we learn that there’s a reason behind this heroine’s absent-mother syndrome, and that her mother does love her. Rose and Lissa discover more about their shadow-kissed bond, and find other people who have it, too, as well as finding another spirit user. Since that’s been established, the fact that they might need to use spirit, as implied in the cliffhanger, doesn’t feel like a deus ex machina. The roots of all these problems were in the first book. Still, I had cause to wish the plots were tighter, especially in Shadow Kiss and Blood Promise. There is some purposeless rambling, and even more annoying one of the covers has a teaser line that isn’t answered until the last 100 pages of the book. I hate that, but it’s obviously not the author’s fault that the publisher is trying to make the book sound more exciting.
I do have to say that I really enjoyed this series. They were all very fast reads and I generally don’t mind cliffhangers when I have the next book right with me. I’m looking forward to the next one, but I’m not in a rush. I just hope that the series isn’t never-ending and doesn’t get longer and more dramatic with the next installment, but I will be reading it in May when it comes out.
I’m an Amazon Associate, I bought all these books.
 Melinda Sordino has a shameful secret that has changed her life. In one stroke, she lost her friends, her interests, and her sense of security. Going back to school after the fateful party when she called the cops is difficult. Melinda hardly speaks to anyone, not even her parents, and everyone in school judges her except a new girl that Melinda doesn’t even like all that much. Telling the truth about that night takes courage, and for that Melinda knows she will eventually have to speak.
This book was so affecting. It’s fairly easy to figure out what happened to Melinda, but that doesn’t make its impact any less heartbreaking. I’m only six years removed from high school and this book brought back just how painfully mean teenagers are to one another. Melinda’s friends disdain her simply because it isn’t cool to be seen with her anymore, not offering even the smallest kindnesses to her as a fellow human being. And her encounters with one person in particular made me very scared for her. Through it all, though, she retains a sardonic humor which made me hope that she would be okay, and see why people were her friends in the first place. I genuinely liked her, so when people reject her over and over I really hurt for her.
Something else I really liked about this YA novel was that Melinda’s parents were present. I didn’t know why they didn’t ask more often about why she didn’t speak to them, but they did at least notice her and had their place in her life. I feel like a lot of YA titles simply skip over parents and it was nice that Melinda’s actually existed.
I also enjoyed Anderson’s writing; I hadn’t read any books by her, but this one has persuaded me that I should get to more of them. The narrative covers an entire school year and since it’s just 200 pages, some time is skipped, but I never felt like I was missing anything. It all flowed naturally. The writing was occasionally choppy but fit well since we were in Melinda’s head.
I thought Speak was a great read. It brings to mind the difficulty many teens – and even older women – have when they are targeted like this. My heart broke for Melinda and I suspect yours will too.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
 Percy hasn’t even made it through his eighth grade year before he’s embroiled in another difficult magical situation. He and his friends Annabeth and Thalia attempt to save their friend Grover from a boarding school in Maine. In the process, they discover two new half-bloods, essential for the failing camp, but they also realize that a new enemy is after them. Following a prophecy, Percy goes on an adventure to save the world – and their friends – once again.
This is my favorite of all of these books so far. I’ve actually become fond of these characters and I enjoy the fact that the books are getting somewhat more serious. They’re still clearly written for children, but now I feel that I can more fully appreciate them, too. There are new tensions arising as the kids are starting to grow up, most particularly in my mind a romance situation between Percy and Annabeth, although neither of them seem to realize it just yet.
Besides that, I can more clearly remember eighth grade than sixth grade, and I think the books will continue to improve as the characters grow. Or maybe Riordan is just getting better at broader appeal. It’s hard to say.
This book is as full of action as the first two. Right from the first page, Percy and his friends are tossed into a suspenseful adventure, with some new characters added to balance out the absence of a couple of the older ones. We learn a little more backstory as well about the gods and a few of the characters, which was all very interesting and never slows the story down.
The Titan’s Curse was an enjoyable, very speedy read with some unexpected turns. I am looking forward to the next book in the series.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
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