The Unwritten Rule

Sarah and Brianna have been best friends since kindergarten, and although Sarah’s always been in gorgeous Brianna’s shadow, Brianna has been a faithful friend all those years and has never let Sarah down. But now, Sarah has a crush on Brianna’s boyfriend, Ryan, and even though Sarah liked him first, and she knows Ryan feels the same, she knows she is the worst friend in the entire world. How can she even think of betraying her best friend like this? But feelings are feelings, and when Sarah’s crush turns into something more, her friendship with Brianna might never recover.

I’ve long been a fan of Elizabeth Scott, and this was one of her backlist titles I randomly spotted at the library that I finally got to. I don’t have a ton to say about The Unwritten Rule, but I did enjoy it, and it lived up to the standards I’ve sort of held Elizabeth Scott to over the years (because she is awesome).

While the story of one girl falling for a friend’s boyfriend has been done before in YA, Scott’s take on it is fresh and definitely held my interest. The thing is, as a reader, you end up rooting for Sarah. Although Sarah doesn’t realize it, Brianna is not a good friend to her and basically stole Ryan right out from under Sarah when she was just developing feelings for him. But at the same time, you end up rooting for Brianna because as it turns out, her home life sucks and it’s very clear why she is such a bad friend – she never learned how to be a compassionate, decent person. And although you don’t think it possible, you feel for Ryan too, because he genuinely likes Sarah and wants to be with her, but he is a good guy and doesn’t want to hurt Brianna in the process. It’s quite a love triangle.

What surprised me is that Scott didn’t choose to end the book how I expected she would, which I like. Unexpected endings work well for me, as long as they make sense in the context of the story, which this one did. I continue to recommend Elizabeth Scott as an excellent YA author, and The Unwritten Rule is just one more example of how talented she is!

Please Ignore Vera Dietz

Vera Dietz’s best friend and secret love interest, Charlie Kahn, has just died unexpectedly, leaving Vera shaken, grieving, but most of all, tormented by all the secrets she has kept for him over the years. Even though he betrayed her in the absolute worst way and completely ruined their friendship, Vera still feels that she must do something, say something, to clear his tarnished reputation now that he’s gone. But will she be brave enough to step up?

I don’t even know what to say about this book, I loved it so much. In my opinion, there are several different kinds of YA books – you have the supernatural/vampire stuff, the dystopian stuff, the romance/for fun/brain candy stuff, and then the last category is YA that says something. YA that I wish was around when I was a teenager. John Green, Maureen Johnson, Ellen Hopkins, David Levithan, these are examples of authors that fit into this category, and now I will happily add A.S. King there as well. Because this is not just a young adult book – it is a freaking awesome book that will impact you emotionally, I don’t care who you are. In my opinion (and keep in mind I love YA), all YA books have their merits and I enjoy many of them for different reasons, but it’s books like these that are the cream of the crop. Books like these that need to be shoved into teenagers’ hands.

Anyway, what can I say? Vera is the most adorable, smart, kick-butt, emotionally damaged character I’ve seen in teen fiction in a while. I absolutely loved her and felt her pain so deeply. So much of this story was hilariously funny but there were other moments that were just sobering, how sad they were. The book broke my heart and put it back together again.

I just want to say – if you are in any way interested in YA, read Please Ignore Vera Dietz. I loved Vera, I loved the book, and I hope you will too.

Wine to Water: A Bartender’s Quest to Bring Clean Water to the World

In 2004, Doc Hendley was a small-town bartender who decided to do something about the fact that millions of people around the world live without access to clean water. He began hosting wine-tasting events to raise money for clean-water organizations and to raise awareness about the issue. As Doc was researching different organizations who might benefit from the funds he had raised, he was given the opportunity to travel with one of them to one of the most dangerous places in the world: Darfur, Sudan. And after spending time in Darfur and actually working on the water projects firsthand, Doc became a changed man.

Wine to Water is a book by a truly great person who began an excellent and, what turned out to be highly successful, aid organization that has done tremendous things in the world. Doc Hendley never set out to be a success, or to be famous, or even to travel the world – he set out with the simple belief that every human being on this planet deserves access to clean water. While Doc Hendley had no idea how going to Darfur would change his life and catapult his organization, Wine to Water, to a place of success, he set out to make good changes in the lives of those without access to water. And he definitely did that, and luckily for us readers, he wrote this book to tell that tale.

I liked this book a lot, and I have to say that I think the main reason for that is that Doc is such a real, honest, normal guy and I couldn’t help but be drawn to him. He is sort of rough around the edges, he’s very straightforward and as a reader you truly feel that you get to know him over the course of the book. To be honest, he’s not the best writer in the world, so don’t expect beautiful prose in Wine to Water, but although I noticed the quality of the writing wasn’t amazing I didn’t care one bit. He tells his story in a very matter-of-fact way, and you don’t need flowery prose or beautiful sentences to be able to appreciate how inspiring and, frankly, awesome, this story really is.

And inspiring it is! The things that Doc Hendley experiences while in Darfur blew my mind. I cannot imagine living in a place where there is currently a government-sponsored genocide going on. He risked his life on many occasions and it was all with the goal to bring clean water to those who need it. He even went into the most dangerous parts of Darfur, by choice, because he knew that nobody else would go to those places. He was incredibly brave and selfless and his story is incredibly inspiring.

I can absolutely recommend Wine to Water and I think everyone should read it. The water crisis is a very real thing, and Doc Hendley brings the crisis to the forefront of the readers’ mind flawlessly. The way Doc took the simple idea, really a no-brainier concept of everyone deserves clean water, and created an entire aid organization around it will inspire anyone who picks up this book.

Then Came You

Jules Strauss, a senior at Princeton thanks to a full scholarship, has decided to earn a large chunk of money by donating her eggs, which she plans to use to get her father into rehab for what she hopes will be the last time. Annie Barrow, married to her high school sweetheart and a young stay at home mom to two boys, understands that the money she will make from being a surrogate will put her family in a much better financial situation. India Bishop is thirty-eight and desperate to have a child with her older husband, Marcus Croft, and turns to Jules and Annie for help. But when Marcus’ daughter Bettina decides to investigate India, all of their lives will be turned completely upside down.

I’ve long been a fan of Jennifer Weiner, and I typically make it a point to read anything she publishes, as soon as I can. While I have to admit that I didn’t love Then Came You as much as I have some of her other novels, this book was definitely compelling and the characters really made their way into my heart.

The plot of Then Came You is somewhat far-fetched, especially toward the end, but I have to say that I was willing to overlook that since I became so invested in these characters. Each of the women in this story had their own struggles to overcome and imperfections that made them seem incredibly human to me – I really believed each of their characters. Jennifer Weiner has always had a talent for writing women that could be people I know in real life, and this novel was no different. Even though I didn’t particularly like Bettina, toward the end of the novel she really grew on me and I began to understand the reasons behind why she made some of the choices she did.

As I said already, the plot of the novel is a bit more far-fetched than I’d like, with one too many coincidences, but honestly I was happy to overlook that based on the fact that I was enjoying it so darn much. The ending was incredibly saccharine sweet and not at all likely to happen in real life, but I can’t lie – I loved it! I wanted to be annoyed at how predictable it was, but really, by that time I was so invested in these characters and I wanted things to work out perfectly for them.

Then Came You might not be the best choice for a first time reader of Jennifer Weiner’s work, as I don’t think it is representative of her best novels, but for long-time fans I would definitely recommend the book. While I didn’t love everything about the book, and I know it’s definitely not her best, I still quite enjoyed it!

Mrs. Kimble

Ken Kimble has had three wives, and each couldn’t be more different from the next. Birdie, his first wife, drowns her sorrows in her wine bottle as she struggles to keep things together for the two children Ken left behind. Joan, his second wife, is a lonely woman who has long given up on love when Ken walks into her life and changes all that. His third wife, Dinah, also the former baby-sitter of his children, is half his age and yet she is the woman who, ultimately, has the ability to see through Ken’s deceptive nature into the person he really is.

This is a book revolving around one central character, Ken Kimble, but in fact the book is not about Ken Kimble, not really. Instead, it is about the women who chose to marry him, and to a lesser extent, about the children that resulted from these marriages. It is about how this one man was different things to different people, about how three women were so blindsided by something about him that they chose not to see the man he really was.

I loved many things about Mrs. Kimble. Jennifer Haigh has a knack for creating characters that are painfully flawed, but you can’t help but root for. While I wanted to shake each of the three wives, Birdie is the one I was most frustrated with. Her inattention to her children made me want to reach into the book and slap her into understanding just how seriously she was damaging her kids. But at the same time, my heart broke for her – she was truly lost without Ken and just could not sober up enough to get her life back on track. She was seriously depressed and needed the kind of help people didn’t ask for in the 1960′s. Joan bothered me to a lesser extent, she was more together (and didn’t have children to impact negatively) but I didn’t understand how such an intelligent woman would fall for a man such as Ken Kimble. I liked Dinah, actually, but I feel that overall the reader gets to know her the least, so I didn’t connect with her as I did the other two wives. But generally speaking, Haigh wrote these three women in such a way that I believed their stories, I felt their pain, and I wanted to jump into the book and scream at them for getting involved with this guy in the first place.

I have to say that my heart absolutely broke for Ken Kimble’s children – Birdie’s two and Dinah’s one – as they were the ones most affected by Kimble’s deceitful ways. Birdie’s oldest, Charlie, especially snuck into my heart and I absolutely loved him. There were several moments throughout the novel where I felt tears come to my eyes as I literally experienced the pain Charlie was feeling. He just had such a tough time growing up with Birdie as his mother and Ken as his completely absent father that I couldn’t help but feel for him.

A few readers of Mrs. Kimble have commented that the major flaw in this novel is the fact that Haigh never explores or explains how Ken Kimble got to become the person he is in the novel. I think that is honestly missing the point. I don’t see this book as being about Ken much at all, really, it is about the people in his life who were changed, literally, because of being with him – and later, because of being without him. Yes, the reader learns very little about Ken Kimble as a person, but Ken Kimble is not really the focus of this novel, and the women and children whose lives are changed because of him we do learn a lot about, and I at least grew to truly care about each one of them.

I am fully convinced that Jennifer Haigh is one of the more talented authors I’ve read in recent years. Her ability to really get inside a character’s head, to examine and reexamine the thoughts, feelings, and motivations of said character, is amazing. After reading Mrs. Kimble, I have now read two of her books (Faith being the first) and I can’t wait to read the rest. Highly recommended.

Never Eighteen

Seventeen-year-old Austin Parker has been diagnosed with incurable cancer. He’s been through treatment after treatment, and at this point the doctors have told him he won’t make it to his next birthday. Instead of wasting the time he has left, Austin sets out on a journey to visit each person in his life who has meant something to him. Along with his best friend Kaylee, he spends a few days attempting to repair some of the brokenness he has witnessed in his seventeen years.

Never Eighteen is a slim novel with a very important message that definitely resonated with me. Austin has been dealt a death sentence, but instead of moping around about it he decides to do something valuable with the remainder of his time here on earth. And over the course of a few days, he definitely does some valuable things – he mends some broken relationships (his own and others’), gives helpful words of wisdom, and even falls in love.

Here’s the thing – I liked the book. I even cried at the end. But I have to say that the overall feeling of the novel felt a bit over the top and saccharine sweet, for my tastes. It also felt a bit unrealistic – I highly doubt that in real life, just because a kid who is dying of cancer tells you to stop doing something or acting a certain way, you will automatically listen. And it wasn’t like that in every case in the novel, but the overwhelming majority of the people Austin visited were very quick to accept his words and take his advice. And to me, that just wasn’t realistic.

But like I said, it affected me emotionally. The end is incredibly sad-making and I definitely shed a few tears. Although it’s sad in a way you wouldn’t necessarily expect. The novel also got me thinking about what is really important in this life and if I only had a few months left, what would I want the people closest to me to know? Maybe we should think about that more often, and communicate those things before it’s too late.

So overall, I liked Never Eighteen although it is far from perfect, in my opinion. Although it felt a little contrived to me, the book did have me thinking long after I finished it. And that’s always a good thing, right?

As reading goes, I’ve had an excellent start to the year. I’ve completed eight books, and highly enjoyed each one of them. This whole reading whatever I want thing is really turning out nicely. I’m currently reading The Rules of Civility, a book I accepted for review last year and never got around to, and I’m liking it quite a bit so far. I’ve also decided to start reading short stories, so I’ve been working my way through The Best American Short Stories 2001.

I’m going to keep this short and sweet and get back to watching Harry Potter (the last movie, aka the only movie I really liked). What are you all up to this Sunday?

Gunn’s Golden Rules: Life’s Little Lessons for Making It Work

As the mentor on the TV show Project Runway, Tim Gunn has won over the show’s contestants as well as millions of fans with his charming personality and favorite advice, “make it work!” In this memoir, Gunn gives his advice on making it work, not just in fashion, but in work, love, and other aspects of life. He also goes behind the scenes of some of fashion’s biggest icons and dishes about celebrities, as well as his own personal life – details he’s never before been so public about. All the while, he keeps his hysterical voice intact, while the advice he gives is actually quite wise and incredibly useful.

I’ve been a fan of Project Runway since its second season (when my friend who was in fashion design school at the time turned me on to it – now she is an actual fashion designer in New York City – okay, sidenote over). While I’ve always loved Tim Gunn and thought him absolutely adorable and incredibly wise, I had no idea that he had published a few books. When I saw this at the library, it was totally an impulse grab, but it actually turned out to be quite enjoyable. It turns out that Gunn is just as fantastic in print as he is on television!

What I liked best about Gunn’s Golden Rules is the nice balance between funny and serious. Gunn does quite a bit of gossiping about his fellow celebrities, giving the reader insights on Project Runway secrets, and making fun of fashion faux pas, but he also gets honest about his personal life and offers some real tokens of advice that the reader can actually use. I laughed at the funny parts, and paid attention at the serious ones, and I have to say that rarely do I find a celebrity memoir as balanced as this one. I know Gunn intended to have a lighter tone with this book than many other celebrity memoirs have, and it definitely worked. The lighter tone just served to make the important parts stand out even more clearly.

I honestly can’t find anything negative about Gunn’s Golden Rules. It may not be the book for everyone, and you certainly would have to be a fan of Tim Gunn to genuinely “get” everything here, but I personally enjoyed it immensely.

Gone With the Wind

What can I say about Gone With the Wind? I can’t even summarize this 1000+ page book, to be honest. I’m sure most of you have read the book, watched the movie, or at least know the general plot, so I’ll spare you my clumsy attempt at a summary.

I first read Gone With the Wind in 1998. I was in eighth grade, and my friend Christina told me that it was her mom’s favorite book, and that she was going to read it and I should too. After we both read it, we watched the movie together at her house.  While I know I was a pretty intelligent eighth-grader, I am sure that I did not even begin to grasp how important of a novel this is at the young age of thirteen. Now that I have read it a second time, at twenty-seven, I am absolutely sure of how important this novel is. And I am here to tell you that I absolutely, without a doubt, LOVED Gone With the Wind.

Is it incredibly long and somewhat slow in parts? Yes. Is there waaaay too much racism and hatred in this book? Yes. But… is it historically accurate? I don’t know, I didn’t live in the Deep South during the Civil War, but based on everything else I’ve read about that time in our country’s history, I think that, yes, this book shows a pretty accurate depiction of that time. What surprised me most about the novel when I read it this time around is just how accessible it is. I always have a hard time with classics – I find the language and the writing clunky, difficult to get into, the dialogue unfamiliar, and the characters unlike people I have ever known in real life. Gone With the Wind is so different from that description – I had no trouble at all getting into the writing, and although some of the dialogue wasn’t what I’m used to (maybe part of that has to do with the fact that I’m a Northerner, ha!), it didn’t stop me from getting invested in the story and the characters. Scarlett seemed like a real person to me, as did Rhett, Melanie, Ashley, all of them. I was shocked by how refreshing this classic was – how even though the novel takes place in the 1800′s it felt incredibly modern to me.

And oh my goodness, the love story? EPIC. I mean, I have seen love stories be described as epic before, but guys – this is the most epic of epic love stories. And there’s more than one, really. And when Scarlett gets to the point in the novel where things finally click for her and she “gets” just how epic her love story has been… well, it’s amazing. And heartbreaking. Mostly heartbreaking. But I’ll let you discover that for yourself. Why didn’t anyone remind me how sad the ending is? I don’t think my eighth-grade self was capable of feeling the depths of sadness that I felt this time around when I finished the book.

Anyway, this has gone on long enough for a review in which I have nothing really new or interesting to add to the conversation about the book. But please, if you are one of the people who still hasn’t experienced Gone With the Wind, do yourself a favor and read it. I cannot imagine that you will be disappointed.

Demonglass

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

Sophie Mercer thought she was sent to Hecate Hall, a reform school for delinquent Prodigium, because she was a witch and had performed one too many spells with negative consequences. But that changed when she discovered the secret everyone has been hiding from her – she’s actually a demon. She decides she needs to go to London to endure The Removal, which will rid her of her demon powers, but when she gets to London things don’t go quite as she planned.

I enjoyed Hex Hall [my review] so much that I picked up Demonglass almost as soon as I could get my hands on it. Overall I have to say that the second book in this series lived up to my expectations and I’m excited to read the third when it is released in a few months.

The pace of this novel was a bit faster than its predecessor, and I liked how fast things moved along in this book. There was a bit more action and less world-building, which was nice. I enjoyed watching as Sophie got to know the father she’d never met and learned more about her family’s secrets. I have to admit that I find Sophie’s relationship with Archer extremely interesting – Hawkins makes their forbidden attraction extremely realistic, and I believed every minute of it. Also, it was cool that the setting of this novel was in an entirely different location from the first book, although with several of the same important characters. It was familiar but not – familiar enough that I didn’t need a reminder of what happened in the first book, unfamiliar enough to keep me on my toes, if that makes sense.

Demonglass is an exciting sequel to the fun and engaging series that began with Hex Hall. I’m truly looking forward to discovering what Hawkins does with the third book!