How to Say Goodbye in Robot: Review

Title: How to say Goodbye in Robot
Author: Natalie Standiford
Release Date: October 2009
Published By: Scholastic Press
Genre: Contemporary
Pages: 276 pages
Goodreads Rating: 3.84 stars

Review: Bea's the new girl in town, and she expects to be like a normal teenager and make normal friends. However, she's not really the most normal girl in the world, and she calls herself "Robot Girl" because of a lack of emotion. She meets another boy, who, like her, is far from normal - Jonah, a.k.a "Ghost Boy", a boy who is slowly disappearing. They become friends, and then something more - not a romance, but still love. Except as hard as she tries, Robot Girl can't stop Ghost Boy from fading away, and increasingly she wonders: is it time to let him go?

I don't think my review could do this book justice. HOW TO SAY GOODBYE IN ROBOT is quirky, odd, intense, touching, and sorrowful. Despite Bea's supposed lack of feelings, she is still as emotional as anyone else, and I could feel my heart aching alongside hers. Her relationship with Jonah is impossible to characterize - not friends, not lovers, they simply are. He enters her world and turns it upside down, continuing to affect her long after he's gone and changing her in ways she never anticipated.

The prose in this book is somewhat understated, unlike the flowery, in-your-face beautiful words I often find myself enjoying. The words here were quiet and unassuming, but were in their own way gorgeous and lovely, much like the story told as a whole. Even though the characters are broken, this is still not a depressing book, because it's also funny and sweet and authentic. This is life captured and pressed down on pages; this is the kind of book you could read over and over again, because as much as we might sometimes feel it, life never gets old.

HOW TO SAY GOODBYE IN ROBOT is a masterpiece. It seems simple but is so complex, speaking not of friendship, not of romance, but of love. The book moved along at a slow, steady pace that was absolutely perfect, and the beauty of the story was reflected in the typography of the book itself. Don't be fooled by the candy-pink cover. This book has earned its place in my top-five all-time favorites.

Stolen: Review

Title: Stolen
Author: Lucy Christopher
Release Date: May 2009
Publisher: Chicken House
Genre: Psychological
Pages: 301 pages
Goodreads Rating: 3.99 stars

Review: Gemma is a regular sixteen-year-old with her parents at the Bangkok airport. That is, until she's stolen by Ty, a handsome young man. He kidnaps her and brings her to the middle of an Australian desert, far from other civilization and life, telling her he did it to help her, that it was for her own good. He tells her he did it because he loves her, and he will do anything to make her love him back. The problem is, Gemma's starting to lose it after being separated from other life and suffering in the desert, and she just might start to delude herself into loving him back.

STOLEN was a difficult book to read not because it was badly written - on the contrary, I found the writing to be excellent - but because of the subject matter. Although Gemma started to find herself enraptured by Ty once she got over her initial anger and fear, I felt physically sick reading about him and his twisted, stalker tendencies. When she developed Stockholm's syndrome, I couldn't really understand how exactly she came to care for him because I had such a strong negative reaction to him. I did wish that I could understand her conflicted feelings with him more.

This wasn't quite a suspenseful read, even during her many attempted escapes. It flowed slower for me, much like the desert of Gemma's surroundings, but that's not a necessarily bad thing. Speaking of which, the desert was gorgeously described. I felt like I was there in the sweltering hot weather, the beautiful yet miserably hopeless empty expanse stretching out to reach nowhere at all, like I was seeing the stoic, tough desert plants scattered around. It's been a while since I've read a book with such vivid description, and that combined with the intense emotion made this a powerful book.

 Although I wished the kidnapping was portrayed more realistically and that we got to understand Gemma's feelings for Ty more, I overall found this to be an excellent if wrenching read. STOLEN isn't for the weak of heart - in fact, I consider myself to be very good at reading tough books and yet I felt a bit ill going through this. If you can handle it, though, this is an eye-opening, intense book that will make you want to read even more of this author.

8 Facts of My Week (8)

1. I'm learning to use the SEM (scanning electron microscope) at school, and let me tell you, some of those images are absolutely gorgeous and fascinating and even a little bit scary. It's quite complicated to use, too!

2. The other day in lit class, when class started, only half of us were there. Our teacher waited a bit and finally, confused, started the class, still glancing periodically at the door to see if anyone magically arrived. When class ended, the other half filed in, looking around confusedly and saying, "Wait, does class start yet?"

3. Our school had an annoying pep rally yesterday. It basically consisted of watching as various sports teams were called up and then listening to their names. Every so often, some shirtless guys would come out and paint the letters of the name of our school mascot on their torsos and then run around shouting their letters so that we could learn how to spell. It was very instructional, I'm sure, although I wouldn't know seeing as I was reading during the whole thing.

4. After school, my bus is supposed to arrive before 4:10, which is when school officially ends. (I won't even get into how off-schedule it is in the morning, when it's supposed to come at 7:01.) I ended up having to wait in the rain for half an hour until it finally showed up. We have decided this was the Great Bus Mishap of 2011.

5. I have a limited number of texts, and an unlimited number of things I want to say. This can only end well.

6. I have been studying like crazy for the past while. There's this one program I want to get into, and the super-hard admission test is coming up in a couple weeks!

7. I am running out of things to say.

8. Uhh... I like ice cream.

Book Blogger Hop (20) and Follow Friday (8)

This week's Book Blogger Hop question is...

Since today is April Fool's Day in the USA, what is the best prank that you have ever played on someone OR that someone has played on you?

It'll be fun to read answers for this! For me, I haven't been the victim of too many pranks nor have I played that many. I will say that once I contemplated putting "Out of Order" signs on every single stall of every single girls' bathroom, but then feared the repercussions. Too bad. A good prank I saw today, though, was when my friend hijacked another girl's laptop, went to Word, and made it so that every time the word "the" is typed, it will instead show up as "April Fools".

I also have to say that the Gmail motion prank was pretty awesome. If you haven't heard of that, go here and watch the video: gmail.com/motion

This week's Follow Friday question is...

What is the one book that you really don't want to admit to loving?

I don't really have an answer to this question. In general, I'm not that ashamed of my reading choices, at least on the blogosphere. But in real life, though, I wouldn't want to be caught with some of my favorite middle grade reads, like the Mysterious Benedict Society.

If you're new to my blog, welcome! Please leave a link to your blog in your comment so I can go return the favor :)