Waiting on Wednesday (66)

This week, I'm waiting on...

Girl Defective by Simmone Howell.

We, the Martin family, were like inverse superheroes, marked by our defects. Dad was addicted to beer and bootlegs. Gully had "social difficulties" that manifested in his earing a pig snout mask 24/7. I was surface clean but underneath a weird hormonal stew was simmering....

It's summer in St. Kilda. Fifteen-year-old Sky is looking forward to great records, and nefarious activities with Nancy, her older, wilder, friend. Her brother - Super Agent Gully - is on a mission to unmask the degenerate who bricked the shop window. Bill the Patriarch seems content to drink while the shop slides into bankruptcy. A poster of a mysterious girl and her connection to Luke, the tragi-hot new employee sends Sky on an exploration into the dark heart of the suburb. Love is strange. Family Rules. In between there are teenage messes, rock star spawn, violent fangirls, creepy old guys, and accidents waiting to happen. If the world truly is going to hell in a hand-basket at least the soundtrack is kicking. Sky Martin is Girl Defective: funny, real, and dark at the edges.

What are you waiting on this Wednesday?

172 Hours on the Moon: Review

Title: 172 Hours on the Moon
Author: Johan Harstad
Release Date: April 2012
Published By: ATOM
Pages: 368
Goodreads Rating: 3.48 stars

Review: Three ordinary teenagers, the winners of NASA's unprecedented, worldwide lottery, are about to become the first young people in space--and change their lives forever. Mia, from Norway, hopes this will be her punk band's ticket to fame and fortune. Midori believes it's her way out of her restrained life in Japan. Antoine, from France, just wants to get as far away from his ex-girlfriend as possible. It's the opportunity of a lifetime, but in the black vacuum of space... no one can come to save them.

As soon as I read the premise of 172 HOURS ON THE MOON, I knew I was going to like it, and not just like it but like it a whole heck of a lot - which I did. But the entire time I was reading it, I couldn't banish that niggling thought in the back of my mind that this whole novel is based on a completely unbelievable premise. I just can't possibly imagine something like this lottery getting approved, let alone that any set of loving parents would ever agree to letting their child go on a mission alone to the moon.

Apart from my inability to suspend disbelief, though, I did thoroughly enjoy this novel from beginning to end, which I attribute almost solely to the sheer creepiness of the story. From early on, the book had the hairs raising on the back of my neck, and the suspense didn't let up even after the plot twist and result of the ample foreshadowing was revealed. The ending in particular was incredible, the kind that makes you put down the book and look at the ceiling and reel in the delicious shock of what just happened.

Of course, this review wouldn't be complete without a discussion of the way the book was written. First of all, I wholeheartedly approve of the decision to write it in third-person because scary content is so much more suspenseful that way. Secondly, I actually liked the points of view except for the one of the janitor in the nursing home. It wasn't bad but it didn't really add anything special that the other foreshadowing wasn't already taking care of.

All in all, 172 HOURS ON THE MOON is an excellent horror novel (note that's much more horror than science fiction). The writing and the characters mesh perfectly into a suspenseful story that will not let you put it down, and the only quibble I have is the sketchy premise. Other than that, I would recommend this to anyone looking for a good thriller with a shocking ending.
 

Waiting on Wednesday (65)

This week, I'm waiting on...

When You Were Here by Daisy Whitney. Filled with humor, raw emotion, a strong voice, and a brilliant dog named Sandy Koufax, When You Were Here explores the two most powerful forces known to man-death and love. Daisy Whitney brings her characters to life with a deft touch and resonating authenticity.

Danny's mother lost her five-year battle with cancer three weeks before his graduation-the one day that she was hanging on to see.

Now Danny is left alone, with only his memories, his dog, and his heart-breaking ex-girlfriend for company. He doesn't know how to figure out what to do with her estate, what to say for his Valedictorian speech, let alone how to live or be happy anymore.

When he gets a letter from his mom's property manager in Tokyo, where she had been going for treatment, it shows a side of a side of his mother he never knew. So, with no other sense of direction, Danny travels to Tokyo to connect with his mother's memory and make sense of her final months, which seemed filled with more joy than Danny ever knew. There, among the cherry blossoms, temples, and crowds, and with the help of an almost-but-definitely-not Harijuku girl, he begins to see how it may not have been ancient magic or mystical treatment that kept his mother going. Perhaps, the secret of how to live lies in how she died.

Quantum Coin: Review

Title: Quantum Coin
Author: E. C. Myers
Release Date: October 2012
Published By: Pyr
Pages: 340
Goodreads Rating: 4.03 stars

Review: Ephraim thought his universe-hopping days were over. But then an old friend crashes their senior prom: Jena's identical twin from a parallel world, Zoe. It turns out that Ephraim's problems have just begun, and they're much more complicated than his love life: The multiverse is at stake—and it might just be Ephraim's fault. The three of them band together to figure out how to save the multiverse, but ultimately, the solution may depend on how much they're willing to sacrifice for the sake of humanity - and themselves.

In general, no one ever likes sequels, but thankfully, QUANTUM COIN was an exception. I thoroughly enjoyed Fair Coin more than I had expected to, and the same is true for this follow-up, except I liked it even more. This has a full kind of story, by which I mean you can really sit down, open this, and get immediately enveloped into the plot. This is the sort of book that can really keep you occupied from start to finish without ever having the desire to poke plot holes or put it down for a bit. It's not that it's suspenseful per se, although there are certainly suspenseful parts, but the book itself is just inherently pleasurable to read.

By far the greatest aspect of this book would be the characters. Ephraim, Jena, and Zoe all feel like living, breathing people, and the character development they all experience is fantastic to read. Even better, all the different versions of themselves, be they "victims" of personality changes or age, have fascinating interactions and make for an entertaining but not confusing read. 

Most notable of all the character interactions would be Ephraim's love triangle with Jena and Zoe. Normally I find love triangles rather hard to believe and endlessly tiresome, but QUANTUM COIN does it differently. Because Jena and Zoe are different versions of the same base person, the fact that Ephraim has trouble choosing between them is actually believable, and the triangle itself is not done too heavy-handedly. I liked it in Fair Coin and it continues to work well here.

All in all, QUANTUM COIN was a superb follow-up to Fair Coin, blending together wonderful character development, an excellent romantic sub-plot, and fantastic pacing to a fast-moving plot to make a novel hard to put down. I look forward to picking up future books in the series, and recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed the prequel.