Under the Mesquite: Review

Title: Under the Mesquite

Author: Guadalupe Garcia McCall

Release Date: October 2010

Published By: Lee & Low Books

Pages: 144

Goodreads Rating: 4.01 stars

Review: Lupita is a budding actress and poet in a close-knit Mexican immigrant family, and her future stretches out brightly before her. That is, until her mother contracts cancer and everything falls apart. Lupita and her siblings' college savings are all decimated to pay for the medical bills, and suddenly children can not be children any more. She has to grow up, and fast.

UNDER THE MESQUITE is written in verse, and McCall's poetry here was impeccable. With sparse but seamless writing, she wove a tale out of a mere handful of words on each page. This book is short at 144 pages, but the story is painted in broad brush strokes and conveys the powerful emotion and resilience of Lupita during her mother's struggle with cancer.

However, there's a downside to the broadness of the story as well. Many smaller plot points were barely touched upon and lacked development that would have truly propelled the novel. Verse novels often have a fine balance between too little and too much detail, but in this case, it rested firmly in "too little". While intense emotion was definitely present, it was difficult to truly connect with the characters.

All in all, UNDER THE MESQUITE is a lovely little verse novel with beautiful writing but not enough story development. The author clearly demonstrates a talent for poetry with some turns of phrase that resound across the pages, so while I would not necessarily recommend this particular book, I look forward to other novels by her.


I received a free copy of this book from the publisher for review. This in no way affected my review.

Waiting on Wednesday (26)

This week, I'm waiting on...

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. Here's what Goodreads has to say: Seventeen-year-old Greg has managed to become part of every social group at his Pittsburgh high school without having any friends, but his life changes when his mother forces him to befriend Rachel, a girl he once knew in Hebrew school who has leukemia.

The synopsis sounds appealing by itself, but you honestly can't look at the cover and not want to pick it up. It's not physically possible.

Have you heard of this book? Do you want to read it? What are you waiting on this Wednesday?

Dealing with Embarrassing Book Covers

I am not ashamed to read YA, but I do admit that I am ashamed to read YA books that have covers featuring, for example, a girl and a guy with their lips glued together, or covers that look like they are meant to appeal to four-year-olds.

In general, when I'm reading a book with an embarrassing book cover like that, I just don't take it out in public. I'll read it at home, and when I want to bring a book with me somewhere, I just grab another one.

However, some people I know aren't afraid to walk around with their books, no matter how odd or embarrassing the covers are. I admire the bravery but unfortunately, I lack the courage to do so.

So what do you do with embarrassing book covers?

Some Girls Are: Review

Title: Some Girls Are

Author: Courtney Summers

Release Date: January 2010

Published By: St. Martin's Griffin

Pages: 246

Goodreads Rating: 4.07 stars

Review: Regina used to be part of the all-girl clique that ruled the school until rumors about her and the queen bee's boyfriend started spreading around. Now she's fallen to the bottom of the social ladder with only fellow misfit Michael Hayden as a friend - except he doesn't think of her as even that while she feels something more for him. But can anything even happen between them before her ex-best friends break them both?

Be honest: that summary doesn't sound really appealing, does it? It seems like a regurgitated plot formula spat out of every chick lit book ever and almost overflowing with cliches and unoriginality. A clique? The "Fearsome Fivesome"? Fallen queen bee? Romance with an outcast? Check, check, check, and check. And yet, even though this sounds like it's shaping up to be a stale book with a terrible plot and boring characters, we're forgetting one thing: SOME GIRLS ARE was written by Courtney Summers.

And everything she writes is a masterpiece. This book is no exception. I don't know how she does it, but each word that comes from her fingers is beautiful and lovely and sad. I found myself fully empathizing with Regina's situation, and Summers' words weaved a net around me that kept me completely entranced in the story. Every time I put the book down, I still felt a hollow ache in my chest for the characters and couldn't wait to pick the book back up again.

The plot sounds almost superficial, yet this book was anything but. The bullying going on was horrifying and raw, because while everything going on was so bad as to almost be unbelievable, there was an air of reality about it. You know as you read it that things like this can and do happen in real life.

SOME GIRLS ARE is a paragon of raw, painful, and beautiful contemporary YA. It's pretty much impossible to pick up this book without getting completely sucked in for as long as it takes to finish, because even though it hurts to read, you just can't put it down. The ending was a bit on the weak side, but the strength of the rest of the book more than makes up for it. If you're a fan of Courtney Summers or just never got started on  her books, this is for you.