Legend by Marie Lu

Legend by Marie Lu
Published by Putnam Juvenile, an imprint of Penguin

The Republic is a region in the west of what used to be the United States, a nation constantly at war with its neighbors. Fifteen-year-old June was born into one of the wealthiest families in The Republic, and she’s being trained to be a member of one of The Republic’s most talented military factions. Fifteen-year-old Day was born into a poor family in one of the worst parts of town, and now he’s The Republic’s most wanted criminal. On the surface, these two have nothing in common, but they cross paths when June’s brother is murdered and Day becomes the number one suspect. While June is desperate to avenge her brother’s death, she comes to realize that her and Day have one shocking thing in common, and this realization leads her to question everything she’s always believed about herself and her country.

I know there are a million and one YA dystopia novels out there, but let me add my voice to the chorus of those that have been saying that Legend is actually very good and worth diving into. The fact that the reader gets to hear this story from the perspectives of both Day and June is refreshing, and as a reader, I liked both of them quite a bit. To me, the concept – once you get to the heart of the story and find out what it really is – was clever and original, and actually quite terrifying.

The action in Legend is paced quite well, in such a way that I never got bored but also didn’t race through the book either. Lu sets the story up nicely, and I really felt that I got to know the characters and their world quite well while enjoying where the story was taking me.

The thing is that I went into Legend knowing very little about it, and I think you should too. So I’m going to stop now and say that if you enjoy a good YA dystopia, Legend will really fit the bill and I would recommend it. But beware because this is, of course, the first in a series! I enjoyed many things about this one, though, and I sincerely look forward to the second book.

A Long, Long Sleep by Anna Sheehan

A Long, Long Sleep by Anna Sheehan
Published by Candlewick Press

Sixteen-year-old Rosalinda Fitzroy is awoken from a sixty-two years-long sleep (known as stasis) when she is awoken to a world she knows nothing about. Her parents died during the horrific Dark Times, leaving Rose heiress to the biggest interplanetary empire that exists. But Rose is overwhelmed and terrified by the new world she finds herself in. She’s weak and frail from being in stasis for so long, and she doesn’t know who in her parents’ company she can actually trust. She finds herself falling for the boy who woke her up and becoming friends with the strange blue alien at her school, as he is an outcast just like Rose. She must adjust quickly to her new surroundings, though, because things are not what they seem and someone is searching for Rose with a deadly weapon – so she must uncover the mysteries of her past in order to move on with her future.

A Long, Long Sleep is novel constructed around a very interesting concept – the idea (inspired by Sleeping Beauty, according to Sheehan) that a person could literally sleep her entire life away and wake up to a whole different world – that, in my opinion, really delivered on this unique concept. This is a book that doesn’t fit neatly into one genre. It has aspects of science fiction, it is kind of dystopian, it is a twist on a fairy tale, it has a hint of romance… yet it all comes together seamlessly and really doesn’t need to fit into a specific genre to be successful.

The most compelling aspect of A Long, Long Sleep is Rose herself. She is a person who has been completely dependent upon her parents for her entire life, so to wake up to a world without them in it was shocking for her, to say the least. She was an interesting character because she had moments of feistyness and bravery and extreme intelligence, yet overall she was such a passive, compliant person because that’s who her parents raised her to be. So I quite enjoyed her journey over the course of the novel as she became the mature, independent, and spunky young adult/adult she should have been the whole time.

As far as the story itself and the world Sheehan created, I was definitely on board with everything. The story itself was believable and the world was not so out-there that it didn’t seem remotely possible. Possible in the very distant future, at least. The events toward the end of the novel shocked me and the ending definitely had me reeling. Let’s just say that Sheehan hooked me with this one and I was desperate to find out how it all turned out… and I loved what she did with the ending.

I read this novel as an audiobook and the narrator, Angela Dawe, is a voice I’ve heard before and really loved. She did an excellent job with A Long, Long Sleep and I can absolutely recommend experiencing this book in audio format.

One other thing – readers will be shocked to learn that this is NOT a trilogy! To be honest, this is one of the first YA books in a while that I’ve seen that doesn’t have a major cliffhanger ending because of a planned trilogy. Sheehan could definitely take this same world and characters and write another book, but there is a clear ending to this one. It was refreshing to see that, to say the least.

I enjoyed A Long, Long Sleep quite a bit. Definitely recommended!

Crossed by Ally Condie

Crossed by Ally Condie
Published by Dutton Juvenile, an imprint of Penguin

*This review may contain spoilers for the first book in the series, Matched. You have been warned.

In search of Ky, Cassia travels to the Outer Provinces in the hopes that he hasn’t already been killed and that Ky can be a part of her future – a future that is incredibly uncertain as it is. Her travels cause her to question everything she thought she knew about her life, including the one person who has always been steadily there for her, Xander. Outside the Society, nothing is as it seems, and Cassia is forced to make major decisions while huge unknowns exist all around her.

I read Matched over a year ago, and while I obviously enjoyed it [my review], when I sat down to begin reading Crossed I realized that I remembered almost nothing about the first book. That was kind of an issue, because Condie throws the reader right into the story here, and I found myself trying desperately to remember how the first book ended (unsuccessfully). I do wish I had read the two books closer together, to be honest.

That being said, Crossed was an enjoyable read. I didn’t love it, but I didn’t dislike it either. I was definitely intrigued by all the things that Cassia didn’t understand about the world around her, and like her I was anxious for some answers. I enjoyed the fact that Ky told parts of this story as well, as his character really grew on me as the book went on. If I remember correctly, this book was more action-packed than the first, and the plot definitely kept me turning pages.

I found the secrets revealed toward the end of the book incredibly interesting, and the ending did leave me wanting more. I think I just haven’t gotten as invested with these characters as I have with other books of similar type (Divergent and The Hunger Games would be two examples) which might be why I’m not over the moon about this series. I remember feeling a little more enthusiastic about the first book than about this one, although like I said, it wasn’t very memorable so I’m not sure how that plays into things.

Either way, I did enjoy Crossed, I did think it was a nicely done, solid sequel, and I will probably read the third book when it comes out.

Divergent by Veronica Roth

Divergent by Veronica Roth
Published by Katherine Tegan Books, an imprint of HarperCollins

In the not-too-distant future in Chicago, the city is divided into five factions, each focusing on a particular human virtue. There is Candor (honesty), Abnegation (selflessness), Dauntless (bravery), Amity (peacefulness), and Erudite (intelligence). Tris, born into Abnegation, must make a choice at the age of sixteen as to which faction she truly belongs in. She chooses Dauntless, and subsequently is pulled into a grueling initiation that causes her to question everything she thought she knew about herself, her family, and her society.

Divergent is one of those books that I just knew I would love, long before I began reading it. Set in Chicago (my hometown)? Yes, please. Kick-ass female main character? Yes, please. A book that’s been compared to The Hunger Games? YES. I’m happy to say that Divergent lived up to the very high expectations I had for it. I absolutely loved this book.

Tris is a fantastic character and I was drawn to her immediately. She is physically tough and very smart but also has a realistic vulnerability to her that makes her very believable. I empathized with her struggles to come into her own in the Dauntless faction, and with the internal conflicts she had as she left her Abnegation family and friends behind.

The non-romance romance between Tris and Four definitely captured my interest. I rooted for them from the start and hoped that they would figure out how great they would be together. The friendship that developed between the two of them was realistic to me and I believed in them as a couple.

I have to admit that the world-building in Divergent wasn’t as perfect as I would have liked. I feel that I have a good idea of what this society is really about, but what’s missing is how did they get to this point? But since this is the first book in a series (of course) I am confident Roth will give the reader more details in the following books.

I feel that I haven’t said very much about what made Divergent such a hit with me, but I enjoyed it so much that I don’t know how else to explain my feelings! I know this book has been compared to The Hunger Games, and I can see why, but they really are two very different novels. Pick up Divergent and let me know what you think!

When She Woke by Hillary Jordan

When She Woke by Hillary Jordan
Published by Algonquin Books

Hannah Payne has always been a good girl and followed the rules of her family and of her society. But when she’s convicted of murder for having her married lover’s baby aborted, her skin is dyed red to broadcast her crime, and her shame, to the world. Despite the pressure she receives from the press and her family, she refuses to give up the baby’s father’s identity, and because of that she becomes a Red, the worst class of criminals. She must now find her own way in the world, as her family and friends don’t associate with Reds, and along the way she begins to question the values and beliefs she’d previously taken for granted.

From the first page of When She Woke, in which Hannah wakes up in a stark, cold room with bright red skin and cameras filming her every move, I was hooked. I could not put this book down, not necessarily because of the action (although there was some) but more because of how intrigued I was by this world Jordan created. The thing about it is that the ideals this society holds dear aren’t too far off from what we value now. There are plenty of people in our world who would prefer women who get abortions to be convicted of murder, and Jordan just took that idea to the extreme. But it didn’t seem all that extreme as I was reading it, it seemed very much, terrifyingly, possible. Which is probably what made the book so compelling to me – I could imagine these attitudes being a basis for our laws and the idea of that is so scary to me.

The second reason I was hanging on to Jordan’s every word was the character of Hannah. She was the kind of character I can always get on board with, as I saw aspects of my own personality in hers. Like Hannah, growing up I was the quintessential ”good girl” (and still am, to a degree) who always tried to please my parents, teachers, etc. But like Hannah, I have of course made mistakes along the way and I cannot imagine suffering the kind of punishment for my mistakes that she has to suffer for hers. It broke my heart to see this formerly happy, confident girl become completely shunned by her family and friends and be forced to make it on her own. At the same time, I loved reading about Hannah’s journey to forming her own beliefs and building up her own sense of self, independent from what she’d always been taught.

I know that some readers have found fault with certain aspects of When She Woke, but I absolutely loved every second of it. I very much admire Hillary Jordan’s ability to craft a unique story with a compelling narrator and excellent writing to boot. Highly recommended.

Faith and Fiction Roundtable: Forbidden by Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee

Forbidden by Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee
Published by Center Street, an imprint of Hachette
Review copy provided by the publisher

In the not too distant future, the leaders of the free world have somehow built a world in which emotions do not exist. The only emotion people have the ability to feel is fear – which is perfect, because it keeps everyone afraid of what might happen if their leaders were ousted, and it keeps them in complete oblivion as to the possibility of living with actual feelings. But one day, a young man named Rom is accosted by an older man and handed a vial of blood that, when consumed, will give him the ability to feel emotions – essentially bringing his soul to life. But at what cost?

I haven’t ever read anything by Ted Dekker, but I’ve been seeing his books around for as long as I can remember. So when the Faith and Fiction Roundtable chose Forbidden as our next selection, I was excited to dive into Dekker’s work (and Tosca Lee’s, of course, although I am less familiar with her previous novels than with Dekker’s). I can definitely say that I enjoyed the experience of reading this novel, and although I won’t count it as a favorite by any means, I’m intrigued enough by the story to  want to read the sequel upon its release.

There were two huge aspects of the novel that I found to be discussion-worthy. The first, which is something that Hannah pointed out too, is that Dekker and Lee did an excellent job illustrating how important emotions are to our humanity. I am, by nature, an extremely emotional person – the kind of person you see described as “wearing her heart on her sleeve”. I tend to get my feelings hurt easily, I tend to care deeply about things that others might not spend one iota of time thinking about, and sometimes my emotions get in the way of what needs to be accomplished in my life (for example, career-wise). I’ve always thought of this as a negative part of my personality, especially in the sense that emotions don’t mix well with the industry in which I am employed. But I was cheered by how clear Forbidden showed how valuable emotions really are. And how, if we were to lose our ability to feel, everything that is essentially human about us would be gone too. It’s true – the fact that we can feel love, pain, sadness, etc., is an essential part of being human, and I loved how much the book reminded me that it is okay to be emotional at times. It makes me human.

The second aspect of Forbidden that was discussion-worthy, and this one I admit I didn’t talk about with the Roundtable participants, is the idea of using fear as a tool to manipulate the public. In this world, there is only one emotion which is fear, but that allows the people to be completely under their leaders’ spell. This reminded me a lot of the way sometimes politicians in the US – and the media, too – will use fear as a tactic to manipulate people’s thought processes and help them make decisions. Fear is a huge motivator for people, especially when it comes to things that are truly important (such as their kids’ education, keeping a job, being able to retire, etc.) and time and time again I have seen politicians use fear to encourage the public to vote their way. It always saddens me, and it saddens me even more that people fall for it. So I have to admit that this world created by Dekker and Lee didn’t seem all that far-fetched to me. The part where people have zero emotions wasn’t realistic, true. But the part where people allowed the fear instilled in them by their leaders to motivate their decisions? So possible. And scary.

Anyway, Forbidden was an interesting novel that gave me much food for thought. I would recommend the book, but keep in mind it’s very dystopian in nature and not exactly the most realistic of novels. And there is a bit of blood and gore. But I did enjoy it and will be reading the sequel when it is released.

Please visit the other participants of The Faith and Fiction Roundtable to see what they thought of the book!

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Grace by Elizabeth Scott

Grace by Elizabeth Scott
Published by Dutton Children’s, an imprint of Penguin

Grace is living in a world similar to ours but either in the future or in an imagined alternate place, in which she is an Angel, trained by the People to be a suicide bomber for their cause of fighting against the totalitarian regime of the current leader. At the exact moment of Grace’s supposed purpose in life, just when she is supposed to detonate the bombs that cover her body, she decides to flee the country and escape from the life she’s always known. This story is told in flashbacks as Grace along with another boy attempt to run away on a train toward the border and possible freedom.

Elizabeth Scott has done it again. What amazes me about her is that she writes hugely different books – both YA romances and also much more serious books like this one and Living Dead Girl - but no matter what the topics of her books are, they are always excellent. Her writing flows beautifully and her stories spill across the page in a way that makes it impossible for me to put her books down. I can’t possibly give a better compliment than that.

Grace is a short novel, but it’s an incredibly powerful one. The writing is stark and left me sort of breathless, as I couldn’t believe the kinds of things Grace was experiencing and living through. Elizabeth Scott lays it all out there, this one girl’s entirely sad and depressing life, in a way that made me believe it completely. Grace as a character was honest, raw, and incredibly realistic – her situation may not have been all that realistic, but the way she reacted to it was. She was in this insanely abnormal situation but still thought about things just like any other teenager would. It was chilling.

If I have one complaint about this novel it is that the world Grace lives in was not fleshed out enough for me. I wanted more – more information, more background, more knowledge about how the People came to be, how the totalitarian regime took power, what life was really like there, etc. I understand that’s not where Scott was going with the book, but for me personally I would have loved to know more about this world she created.

Grace is an absolutely breathtaking novel, one that will leave you heartbroken but ultimately illustrates the power of going your own way, of making your own decisions in the midst of having no real choice about anything. I have yet to dislike anything Elizabeth Scott has written and I believe I will attempt to read her entire backlist – her writing is just beyond.

Bumped by Megan McCafferty

Bumped by Megan McCafferty
Published by Balzar & Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins
Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley

Sixteen-year-old twins Melody and Harmony live in a world in which, due to a virus, girls become infertile at or around age eighteen, which has caused married couples to hire teen girls as surrogates for their children. Teen girls are the most important, prized members of society – baby bumps are worn proudly and the media is chock-full of messages about how important it is for girls to “bump”. Melody and Harmony were separated at birth and only now have reunited. Harmony has spent her entire life in Goodside, a religious community, preparing to become a wife and a mother, and when she meets Melody she comes up with a plan to convince Melody that getting pregnant for a profit is sinful. But everything changes for both girls when Melody is matched with the most famous boy in the world to bump with.

I finished reading Bumped over a month ago, and I’m still not quite sure how to feel about it. The subject matter is serious and relevant in today’s world – we see teens happily getting pregnant more and more frequently it seems (16 and Pregnant, anyone?) and McCafferty definitely played off that phenomenon in the book. What would happen if ONLY teens could get pregnant, at what point would it become the cool thing to do and at what point would people actually pay teen girls for their babies? I know that I enjoyed the time I spent reading this novel, but I have to admit that I didn’t think it was a perfect read.

For one thing, I felt that the tone of Bumped was entirely too light for the subject matter. I mean, teens being paid to have sex and make babies is serious stuff. Girls being drugged so they don’t get emotionally attached to their newborns – also serious stuff. But the tone was just very on-the-surface, so extremely light throughout much of the book, inappropriately so, at least to me.

I also didn’t like how the reader is just dropped into this world, with little to no explanation about what’s going on. I still find myself very confused as to what type of virus infected everybody, where it came from, etc. And it took me much too long to translate their slang and understand the meaning of a lot of what the characters were saying.

While there were some aspects of the book I clearly wasn’t a fan of, there were other aspects of the novel I really liked. For one thing, the plot was engaging and held my interest throughout. I found myself invested in the world McCafferty created and was anxious to find out how things would turn out for these characters. In terms of the concept, I found it really interesting and, as I said before, timely, and I thought McCafferty was very creative in how she handled it.

The characters also shined, in my opinion. Melody and Harmony are two very different people and McCafferty clearly wrote them as such. They grew up in such different environments and their attitudes and beliefs are so opposite from one another’s. Watching them form a relationship, a sisterly bond, after being separated all those years was fun and it their journey towards that relationship felt authentic.

I have to admit that, despite my misgivings, Bumped had me on the edge of my seat until the very end and I will be picking up the sequel when it comes out. While the book won’t make my favorites list anytime soon, the concept is very clever and the execution was acceptable – to the point where I enjoyed the ride but I have all the hope in the world that the second book will be even better. Definitely pick this book up if you’re looking for a fun dystopia with engaging characters and a plot that doesn’t easily let you go.

Delirium by Lauren Oliver

Delirium by Lauren Oliver
Published by HarperCollins
Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley

Seventeen-year-old Lena is just a few months away from the operation that everyone says will change her life. The world in which she lives has been cured of love, or the Deliria as it is called, and she knows that once she is cured, her whole future will begin to unfold:  she will select a mate, go to college, marry, and begin her career. But just when she’s begun to get excited about having the procedure done, the unthinkable happens – she falls in love.

Okay, guys, this is one of those situations in which I cannot speak eloquently about a book for the life of me. This book is SO good. Amazing, actually. I loved it, loved it, LOVED IT.

Where do I start? The characters in this novel are just fantastic. What I loved about Lena is the fact that she is such a “normal” teen. She is not a revolutionary, she has not spent years plotting to overthrow the government, she is not angry about her life. She is happy with things, and although she misses her mother (who committed suicide because of the Deliria) she knows that as soon as she is cured, those feelings will disappear. It is not until she meets Alex where she begins to question everything. Now some readers might think that this makes her weak, since she changed her entire outlook for a boy, but I just thought it rang true. Most people, in any given situation that they have been in their entire lives, simply accept things. People don’t think to question the system until they are confronted with evidence that the system is flawed, which is exactly what happened to Lena when she met Alex. Then she finally had a reason to think critically about her world.

The other wonderful thing about this novel is how well-thought-out the world Oliver created is. She really made everything come alive for me, and it is clear that she analyzed every single detail so that the reader would have no questions about how everything “worked”. I found it so interesting to think about all the little ways that love matters in our lives and how taking it away would have huge consequences. In the novel, music is not appreciated, people don’t really care about their pets, and there is no empathy for another person’s plight, among other things. It was just an expertly crafted novel, overall.

I am beyond excited for the next two books in this exciting trilogy – I have very high hopes for this series, as I truly loved this novel. Please read it yourself and tell me what you think!

 

Matched by Ally Condie

Matched by Ally Condie
Published by Dutton Children’s, an imprint of Penguin
I received an unsolicited copy of this book for review from the publicist.

It’s the day of Cassia’s Matching ceremony – the night she will find out who she will marry – and she is excited and nervous.  She needn’t worry, however, because when her Match is revealed, it’s Xander’s face she sees, her best friend and a boy she’s known all her life.  She’s extremely lucky to be Matched with someone she already knows so well – this is incredibly rare.  But when another boy from her town, Ky, mistakenly pops up on her Match screen the next day, everything changes.  Cassia, for the first time in her life, gets to think about what might happen if she were allowed the freedom of choice, an entirely new idea in her Society.

There’s a lot happening in Matched, and I didn’t want to give too detailed a summary for fear of spoiling important elements of the plot.  I personally had avoided most reviews of the book before reading it because I wanted to go in with little to no expectations.  Of course, I knew that Matched had been getting lots of love from bloggers, but that’s about all I knew.  Well, add my voice to the chorus because I really enjoyed this book.  It’s a creative and interesting concept and the trilogy has great potential.

I liked so many things about this novel that I’m not sure where to start.  I definitely appreciated the character of Cassia – she was smart, driven, and remarkably independent given the world she grew up in.  She was afraid of the new thoughts she was having, but still tried to examine them carefully and figure out what she should do and what it all meant.  I liked several of the other characters, especially Ky and Cassia’s grandfather.  Her grandfather wasn’t a huge part of the story, but he does have one incredibly poignant scene and really shaped a lot of her personality.  Ky interested me because he was so very different from everyone else in Cassia’s life – he craved independent thought and freedom of choice, and he encouraged Cassia to do the same.  While he made her life extremely difficult, he was the impetus for the change in her thinking, and I think Condie did an excellent job writing his character.

I loved the way the elements of this society were gradually revealed to the reader over time.  And everything about this world was SO well thought out, clearly Condie spent a lot of time making sure every aspect of the world made sense and fit together.  I would have moments where I would think to myself, “I wonder how such-and-such works”, and the next chapter the characters would run into that exact situation and I would understand.  Hard to explain, but if you read the book you’ll get what I mean.  Just, everything fit perfectly.  There were no plot elements or aspects of the society that made me cringe or have disbelief, it all just worked.

The ending of Matched made me extremely excited for the next book in the series.  This is a trilogy I’m really excited about, and I’m thrilled that I gave this book a chance.  It held up to my every expectation.  I would absolutely recommend it.