Waiting on Wednesday (3)

 Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine. This week, my pick is...

Burnout by Adrienne Maria Vrettos. For this one, the summary is what drew me in! Here's what Goodreads says: On the day after Halloween, Nan wakes up in a subway car. She is not dreaming. She doesn’t know where she’s been or what she’s done. She’s missing a whole day from her life. And she’s wearing skeleton makeup and a too-small Halloween costume that she doesn't remember putting on. 

Nan is not supposed to wake up in places like this anymore. She’s different now, so far from that dangerously drunk girl who hit bottom in the Nanapocalypse. She needs to find out what happened to her, and fast. As she tries to put together the pieces of the last twenty-four hours, she flashes back to memories of her previous life. But she would never go back to her old friends and her old ways. Would she?

The deeper Nan digs, the more disturbing things get. This time, she may have gone one step too far. This time, she may be a walking ghost.

How awesome does that sound? I can't wait to get my hands on it!

What are you waiting for?

Doing the Impossible

In my Design class, I'm well-known for doing the impossible.

This is not always a good thing.

We use a program called Autodesk Inventor to model and design stuff, which is interesting and all, but there's just one little problem: I suck. No matter how many tutorials I go through, or how many exercises I do, I just can't make the program do what I want it to.

My partner for a big project we have to do is, on the other hand, quite good at it and often helps me out when I do something funky. So one day, I was twiddling around with the guitar we were making when it suddenly shattered into a billion pieces.

Which is not supposed to happen.

I tapped my partner on the arm. "Um, I think I broke it."

He glanced up, brow furrowed. "That's impossible.  You can't break it in assembly mode." Then he leaned over to look at my screen, sat back, and glumly looked at his hands.

"Well?" I asked.

"You broke it."

I raised my hand and the teacher came over. "What's the problem?"

"I broke the guitar," I said, pointing to the screen.

My teacher shook his head. "That's not even..." His words died away as he gaped at my computer. "How did you... you can't... that's not... I..." Shaking his head again in disbelief, he turned and walked away, muttering to himself.

My skills defy explanation.

Accomplice: Review

Title: Accomplice
Author: Eireann Corrigan
Release Date: August 2010
Published By: Scholastic
Pages: 296
Goodreads Rating: 3.36 pages


Review: Finn and Chloe, like many high schoolers, feel the pressure to get into the best colleges. They have spotless records, hours of community service, and perfect grades, but so do many other candidates. So to set themselves apart from everyone else, they do the unthinkable - stage Chloe's abduction, and have Finn rescue her, right in front of a riveted nation. Except things start going wrong. Very wrong. And there's nothing Finn can do about it.

When I first read the summary for ACCOMPLICE, I thought it sounded interesting but a little weird. I was worried that it was just too unrealistic - after all, what normal people would do something like this? But as I read, I quickly realized that Finn and Chloe actually aren't normal, and I was able to understand their somewhat twisted motivations. Chloe especially was always a little odd, always proposing strange ideas, and Finn followed her lead.

As you can imagine, the characters were very complex. I didn't feel for either of them very well, but it was riveting to read about how - to put it plainly - messed up they were. Finn was the more relatable one, grasping at the naive illusion that their little ploy could work, and struggling with the guilt and fear of being the one on the "outside" with Chloe hiding in her grandma's basement. It was hard for her to see everyone else so upset and afraid, and to be interviewed and talk with news stations.

Chloe was a fascinating character. Of course I didn't like her, but it was intriguing in a way to read about how twisted she was, especially as she spent so much time isolated. The crazy ideas she came up with to deal with the way everything was going wrong were frightening and added quite a lot of suspense to the story. During this, Finn started to recognize more clearly than before that there was just something not right with Chloe.

Overall, this was an intriguing character study with a surprisingly believable plot. ACCOMPLICE was a suspenseful read with plot twists that literally took my breath away. The themes explored were riveting and complex, dealing with truth, betrayal, and trust, so different from many of the YA books I've read. Don't be turned off by the mixed reviews or seemingly unrealistic plot line. If you're a fan of psychological suspense, then this book is definitely for you.

Cover Love (7)

This week, my pick is...

Getting Revenge on Lauren Wood by Eileen Cook. Seriously, how can you not love this cover? Every aspect of this cover is awesome. First, there's the fact that the design team wasn't afraid to get fun with the bold covers. The bright yellow background contrasted with the green grass and tag line definitely grabs your attention.

Of course, even more noticeable is the focus of the cover, the doll. As this is a book about getting revenge on a mean, popular girl, it's quite fitting that a "perfect" Barbie doll was chosen to represent her, complete with the "ideal" blonde hair and wide blue eyes. However, the doll also represents how lifeless she is, considering, you know, that she has a knife in her back (which is also a definite attention-grabber!). The positioning of the doll is good because your eye naturally follows the title, to the tag line, and then to the doll and author name.

The fonts chosen are rather notable as well. A fancy script is used for most of the title, which again goes with the theme of the perfect popular girl, but then that bright pink "REVENGE" flashes up. It's a strong font, which works because it's a strong word, and then the color gives it some flair. The font used for the author name was good because it didn't detract from the rest of the cover (author names that take up half the book are my pet peeve) but is a decent, legible font.

If I had to make one criticism, I would say that the cover would do just fine without the tag line. It doesn't say anything that the title and image don't imply, and I'm not a fan of that green directly on the yellow.

What do you think of this cover? Have you read the book, and if so, does the cover work with the story?