Cress

Cress The Lunar Chronicles #3 Marissa Meyer 4.5/5	Published 2014 First Sentence "Her satellite made one full orbit around planet Earth every sixteen hours."
Publisher's Description: In this third book in the Lunar Chronicles, Cinder and Captain Thorne are fugitives on the run, now with Scarlet and Wolf in tow. Together, they're plotting to overthrow Queen Levana and her army. Their best hope lies with Cress, a girl imprisoned on a satellite since childhood who's only ever had her netscreens as company. All that screen time has made Cress an excellent hacker. Unfortunately, she’s just received orders from Levana to track down Cinder and her handsome accomplice. When a daring rescue of Cress goes awry, the group is separated. Cress finally has her freedom, but it comes at a high price. Meanwhile, Queen Levana will let nothing prevent her marriage to Emperor Kai. Cress, Scarlet, and Cinder may not have signed up to save the world, but they may be the only hope the world has.
Dear Reader, Cress is now my favorite, I know I said that about Scarlet but I really mean it. Watch me get attached to Winter next... the characters AND the books get better and better. The writing is improving and I'm completely invested. I loved the complexity this book has surrounding Cress... having been left alone in a satellite for her whole life, with little contact with anyone. She is so isolated with only a younger version of herself keeping her company as a computer simulation. The journey she goes through in this book is pretty fascinating because we grow with Cress, we get to see what the world looks like from the eyes of someone who has only read about it. What does a forest look like? Water? Animals? How the world opens up... you can only imagine getting a little wigged out. Cress is so much more than that though, she is that computer nerd who thinks in codes, she is that techy girl I love. Now we have Cinder (the mechanic with courage), Scarlet (the brave warrior), and Cress (the geeky, odd computer genius)... fantastic cast of characters if you ask me. I love that any teenage girl reading this series will be able to connect with one of them and relate to their personality. I'm completely digging the girl power of this series, you can't deny that the heroes of this story are the females. This is not to say that I would consider this a book only for girls, absolutely not! The sci-fi aspect will really appeal to anyone and the otherworldly fantasy element is perfect for anyone willing to escape to a different world. I can't help feeling that not only is Meyer improving in her writing but the story is flying by smoother. These open endings are killing me, I've caught up (other than the next inbetween book 'Fairest') and now I don't want to wait until November! The torture... I hardly ever get addicted to series like this, but I'll admit, this one has me. I'm patiently (NOT) waiting for "Winter" to come out now. Happy Reading, AmberBug

Support Shelf Notes! Purchase your copy of this book here:

Pretty Is

Pretty Is Maggie Mitchell 3.5/5	Published July 2015 First Sentence "Everyone thought we were dead."
Publisher's Description: A fiercely imagined fiction debut in which two young women face what happened the summer they were twelve, when a handsome stranger abducted them Everyone thought we were dead. We were missing for nearly two months; we were twelve. What else could they think? -Lois It's always been hard to talk about what happened without sounding all melodramatic. . . . Actually, I haven't mentioned it for years, not to a goddamned person. -Carly May The summer precocious Lois and pretty Carly May were twelve years old, they were kidnapped, driven across the country, and held in a cabin in the woods for two months by a charismatic stranger. Nearly twenty years later, Lois has become a professor, teaching British literature at a small college in upstate New York, and Carly May is an actress in Los Angeles, drinking too much and struggling to revive her career. When a movie with a shockingly familiar plot draws the two women together once more, they must face the public exposure of their secret history and confront the dark longings and unspeakable truths that haunt them still. Maggie Mitchell's Pretty Is beautifully defies ripped-from-the-headlines crime story expectations and announces the debut of a masterful new storytelling talent.
Dear Reader, I really liked this book... up to a point. You know when you feel a story gaining speed but then it turns the corner and you realize you won't be feeling any loop de loop excitement... that was this book for me. This is not a bad book, at all. If anything, it was an entertaining read... but I wish Maggie Mitchell took the unexpected turn into the unknown instead of the predictable flat road. Let me start by giving you a little background. We meet Lois and Carly, two teen girls kidnapped by the same man. Both of these girls are from different parts of the country and don't know each other. Not only that, but after getting to know who they are, the girls don't seem to have much of a connection personality wise (maybe by being opposites). The cool part about this book is the puzzle... which isn't "what happened?" but "why?" Why did this man kidnap two girls with completely different personalities? The Author completely divulges all secrets and shows us a very ordinary interaction between everyone, which has the reader begging to know WHY? This man isn't sexually assaulting them, he isn't hurting them, he isn't doing much of anything really. Both of these girls grow up to wonder that same question... why? Why them? This story is told between the girls, back and forth and through time. Unfortunately, something that had the promise of being complex and different... didn't end up that way. I saw it coming... and it shouldn't have gone that way. However, the Author picked that ending, and the reader must live with it. This doesn't belittle the rest of the book into being unworthy of attention. I would gladly recommend this book, especially because of the unique storytelling that happens throughout. I hope you get a chance to check it out and tell me what you thought. Happy Reading, AmberBug P.S. - Leah from Books Speak Volumes has an excellent review of this book that mirrored my sentiments exactly (using better words). ;p

Support Shelf Notes! Purchase your copy of this book here:

Skink--No Surrender

Skink--No Surrender Carl Hiaasen 3.5 / 5	Published September 23, 2014 First Sentence "I walked down to the beach and waited for Malley, but she didn't show up."
Publisher's Description: The #1 New York Times bestselling author Carl Hiaasen serves up his unique brand of swamp-justice in Skink—No Surrender. Classic Malley—to avoid being shipped off to boarding school, she takes off with some guy she met online. Poor Richard—he knows his cousin’s in trouble before she does. Wild Skink—he’s a ragged, one-eyed ex-governor of Florida, and enough of a renegade to think he can track Malley down. With Richard riding shotgun, the unlikely pair scour the state, undaunted by blinding storms, crazed pigs, flying bullets, and giant gators.  Carl Hiaasen first introduced readers to Skink more than twenty-five years ago in Double Whammy, and he quickly became Hiaasen’s most iconic and beloved character, appearing in six novels to date. Both teens and adults will be thrilled to catch sight of the elusive “captain” as he finds hilariously satisfying ways to stop internet predators, turtle-egg poachers, and lowlife litterbugs in their tracks. With Skink at the wheel, the search for a missing girl is both nail-bitingly tense and laugh-out-loud funny.
Dear Reader, This was my first Hiaasen book, which also of course means it was my first encounter with Skink. I am now one of the many superfans of the crazy former governor. I don't know how much he shows up in Hiaasen's other novels, but I know that he is a beloved favorite - and I can understand why. (I almost wish I had already read other Skink adventures; then it would feel like I was reencountering an old friend!) This is the author's first foray into young adult novels, and I really think he successfully nailed it. Granted, I am far from the target YA audience, and therefore while *I* think his references were all up-to-date and his slang spot-on, I could be very, very wrong. However, none of the writing (the story was told from the first-person point of view by a fourteen-year-old boy) felt forced or uncomfortable, the way teenage talk can sometimes seem when an adult is trying to sound "with it." So, it at least worked for ME. The story itself is great because it's also not at all the condescending sort of YA, despite the author moving from adult to teen writing. The narrator is a young boy who takes off on an adventure with his new friend Skink, in pursuit of his cousin and best friend, who has run off with a boy she met on the internet. While Malley acts like everything is fine, Richard can tell that it isn't. When the old governor hears of Malley's predicament, since he is a man of action and appears to move from one serving-of-justice adventure to the next, he and Richard set off immediately in pursuit of the girl and her kidnapper. The book does not stop moving - the action is constant, and it's often fun and it's never really outlandish, even though so many things happen to the pair in the short span of a few days. While this isn't generally the type of book I seek out - it's relatively "light" fare (great writing, don't get me wrong, just fast-paced and what I think of more as a "beach read"), and I don't read a lot of adventure or action novels - this one was really well done, and I couldn't put it down. I will certainly seek out more Hiaasen. I also felt like I learned a lot about the Florida panhandle, where all of the action takes place. Hiaasen was able to bring in a lot of the area's history and biology without making it sound like he was teaching the reader - he simply managed to work these things in as part of Richard's narrative. I loved that. All in all, a very enjoyable story. If you want a great escape from everyday life for a while, this is a wonderful book to help you with that. Yours, Arianna

Support Shelf Notes! Purchase your copy of this book here:

(Kindle)

(Hardcover)

An Untamed State

An Untamed State Roxane Gay 4.5/5	Published 2014 First Sentence "Once upon a time, in a far-off land, I was kidnapped by a gang of fearless yet terrified young men with so much impossible hope beating inside their bodies it burned their very skin and strengthened their will right through their bodies."
Publisher's Description: Roxane Gay is a powerful new literary voice whose short stories and essays have already earned her an enthusiastic audience. In An Untamed State, she delivers an assured debut about a woman kidnapped for ransom, her captivity as her father refuses to pay and her husband fights for her release over thirteen days, and her struggle to come to terms with the ordeal in its aftermath. Mireille Duval Jameson is living a fairy tale. The strong-willed youngest daughter of one of Haiti’s richest sons, she has an adoring husband, a precocious infant son, by all appearances a perfect life. The fairy tale ends one day when Mireille is kidnapped in broad daylight by a gang of heavily armed men, in front of her father’s Port au Prince estate. Held captive by a man who calls himself The Commander, Mireille waits for her father to pay her ransom. As it becomes clear her father intends to resist the kidnappers, Mireille must endure the torments of a man who resents everything she represents. An Untamed State is a novel of privilege in the face of crushing poverty, and of the lawless anger that corrupt governments produce. It is the story of a willful woman attempting to find her way back to the person she once was, and of how redemption is found in the most unexpected of places. An Untamed State establishes Roxane Gay as a writer of prodigious, arresting talent.
Dear Reader, Wow, just wow. This book is very powerful, cruel and terror inducing. After reading this, you might never leave home again. If you know anything about my tastes (from reading this blog, or just knowing me), you'll know why a book like this will shine for me. Not because I need to be shocked but I need to "feel" something, when a book elicits an emotion (good or bad), the Author is doing something right. Roxane Gay did everything right with "An Untamed State", so much that I even had tears in my eyes and even had quite a few gasping moments (which is VERY unlike me, it takes a lot to make me upset). Roxane writes so believable, I could feel way too much of what the main character was going through (it was that good). I almost wished the Author didn't have that talent due to the graphic nature of the novel (although, I think that was the idea, to get through to you in that way). The main character, Mireille is a privileged woman who lives a pretty "normal" life with a caring husband and a beautiful new baby. She was born in Haiti but the family moved to the United States during her early childhood. The parents decided to move back to Haiti when the kids had grown up and the family business was booming. Although the family comes from Haiti, Mireille considers herself an American with Haitian parents. The family has an enormous compound in Haiti and will never be "without" (which is a stark contrast to the majority of residents of Haiti). Mireille's friends don't understand her origins very well, thinking Haiti to only be the one depicted on the news (poor and crippled). Her world falls apart when she is kidnapped (right in front of her family compound in Haiti), and things grow darker when her father refuses to pay the ransom, thinking if he gives in, the kidnappers will just come back and take another member of his family. Her husband, not having the money to pay the kidnappers, tries to find another way to find Mireille. The worst part, Mireille is so proud and strong, she doesn't give into the kidnappers demands of her and she ends up suffering at the hands of her captors because of it. She suffers some unimaginable things and almost everything you CAN imagine. Part of the skewed beauty of the story is the main character discovering the other side of Haiti, even though the circumstances, kidnapping, aren't ideal for a sociology lesson. Before reading this book, I was very unaware that Haiti was so dangerous. I've heard of kidnapping cases but didn't know what countries and areas they were prevalent in. An Untamed State really opened my eyes to certain things, I learned quite a bit about a place that I knew only by name. This book also made me search within myself, asking if I would have been strong enough, if I would have survived? How would I have coped with the situation after? The entire situation is so far removed from my life and yet... It had me thinking and trying to relate in ways I couldn't fathom. One of my favorite parts of the book was the relationship that formed with Mireille and her Mother In-Law, both when Mireille came and stayed to nurse her back to health and then when she herself was nursed back to health. I found that relationship comforting and true, the way her Mother In-Law treated her before she truly got to know her. I'm always fascinated when characters go through a transformation in their way of thinking (especially in this case), being weary of someone who comes from a different culture but coming around in the end and seeing that everyone has feelings that are not unlike our own. I'd like to say this book should be read by everyone, but I know there will be those who won't be able to handle it. This book will make you feel dirty and it will hurt to read it, but I'm still going to recommend it to everyone who I think can stomach it. Roxane Gay brings up so many topics that are gritty and challenging, she wants us to really look inside the deepest, dark parts of ourselves and come out with a little clarity. I think I've come out with a better understanding of Haiti, human trafficking, bondage, rape, kidnapping and how far a human mind can go before snapping. So, if you think you can stomach a few scenes within the book that will make you queasy, then you should read this book and learn from it (more about yourself and the world around you). Step out of the bubble and join us in the land of uncomfortable ideas, I believe it's important to feel squirmy about things every now and then. Happy Reading, AmberBug

Support Shelf Notes! Purchase your copy of An Untamed State here: