The title and cover design are completely ambiguous, so I’ll let you in on a little secret: Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan is about interstellar futuristic space travel. For some reason I didn’t get the memo when I first picked up the book, and knowing that would’ve prepared me a lot better for the science fiction and physics mumbo jumbo that peppers the pages. Don’t know how gravity, inertia, and decompression work? Then I might suggest that you peruse Wikipedia or your dusty high school science book for a moment, because if you’re not careful the technicalities could distract you from how gripping a novel this really is.

Fifteen-year-old Waverly Marshall and sixteen year old Kieran Alden are the oldest children aboard the Empyrean, a large and multifarious spaceship that’s traveling from the destroyed “Old Earth” (that would be our planet, people… get your stuff together!) to an idealistic “New Earth” millions of light years away. Naturally, the trip will take decades – at the novel’s start, the ship has already been in space for forty-two years and won’t arrive for another forty-five – and the success of the mission to colonize a whole new planet depends on kids like Waverly and Kieran getting married young and having lots of babies. Although they hold the most responsibility as the eldest, they’re hardly alone – there are over two hundred children already on the Empyrean, plus their parents.

As with most science fiction novels, the first few chapters are bogged down with explanations, but Ryan wisely introduces the main conflict early: another ship, the New Horizon, has begun flying beside the Empyrean after forty two years without contact between the two. The New Horizon had been light years ahead of the Empyrean and was set to arrive at New Earth first, but something made them slow down, and the crew on the Empyrean isn’t very excited about finding out what.

This book is packed with action, conflict, and tension. While everything and everyone seems black and white at first, as the novel progresses facts unravel into half-truths that dissolve into lies, and yet, the reader’s never really sure who’s telling the truth, and who can be trusted. It’s at once exhilarating and at once frustrating, but it kept me ensnarled so I guess the exhilarating part won out.

The biggest triumph of Glow? The Empyrean teenaged girls are totally badass. While most female protagonists in young adult novels piss me off or annoy me, Waverly Marshall becomes my hero. She blows away all my expectations of a weak, dependent girlfriend and turns into an intelligent and nails tough leader.

But there’s one small caveat…

On the back of the ARC is this blurb: “Pulse-pounding and addictive, GLOW begins the most riveting series since The Hunger Games”.

Emphasis is mine. Oh my god nooooooo.

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m so tired of young adult series novels. Does every book have to have a sequel? What’s more, does every new concept have to start a trilogy or a tetralogy or something even longer? What ever happened to stopping while you’re ahead? It would be different if these books actually built on one another, becoming stronger with each installment, but it seems like most fall flat by the beginning of the second book, and then I’m upset because I spent the time and money for nothing. Glow has huge potential, but my disdain for most of the characters (besides Waverly and her friends, of course) and a sluggish midway point make me hesitate to invest any more time in the series. So I’m going to say I enjoyed this book but leave it at that.

Also… what’s up with all the ‘Hunger Games’ comparisons? This book was nothing like the Hunger Games. I wish publishers would stop trying to capitalize on one huge success and just market books for what they are, not what they want to be.

4/5 Stars.

I read a lot of romance novels – a lot – and I absolutely love the stuff. Trouble is, romance novels tend to be deficient in everything but the romance, and I’m all about well-rounded stories. So the really great thing about Making Waves by Tawna Fenske is that it has everything good romance novels need; character depth, a fast paced and entertaining plot, sexy and meaningful romance, and all the cleverness and originality you can shake a sparkling purple phallus at.

The novel focuses on 37-year-old Juli Flynn, 42-year-old Alex Bradshaw, and the various misadventures they find themselves in on their quest to overcome insecurities, seasickness, and unemployment. After being been laid off from her position in marketing, Juli uses her severance to travel to St. Johns and scatter her recently departed Uncle Frank’s ashes. At the same time, Alex and his coworkers – Jake Grinshaw, Cody “Cookie” Wilkins, and Phyllis Prescott – have lost their jobs and their pensions at the hands of unscrupulous former boss Tom Portelli. Broke and (rightfully) pissed, Alex decides to lead the ragtag group on a mission to sneak onboard of and loot Tom’s cargo boat – which carries an impressive illegal shipment of diamonds – for revenge. Where is this boat going to dock, you ask? On a small, unnamed island in the Virgin Islands, of course… ohoho, surely you saw that coming! Juli and Alex first meet at a seaside bar in St Johns, and naturally, nothing is ever the same.

There are a lot of stereotypical archetypes that spring up in romance novels, but you won’t find them here. Instead, every single character in this book is completely realistic and completely insane, but in a good way. Juli has the attention span of a chipmunk and the maturity of a woman half her age; Cody is a former Seattle Seahawks tight end who also happens to be a master chef (and likes to be called “Cookie”, apparently); Jake is balding, doughy, and awkward, and Phyllis is the fifty-something, toned former Olympic steeplechaser that has the hots for Jake. Alex is… well, he’s the green eyed, handsome sailor man. He could be missing all his front teeth and I’d still be all over him. Together, the characters create rapport that is funny and silly to read. 

Fenske definitely wins points for her realistic and offbeat portrayals of mature men and women living their lives and falling in love. Juli and Alex are much older than the protagonists from other romances I’ve read – usually the hero is around early-thirties at the most – and Alex is even beginning to gray, but neither of these things detracts from the sexiness of the relationship at all. Fenske’s lighthearted and clever writing creates sex scenes that are both classy and arousing; she never explicitly identifies certain body parts or what those parts are doing; this way, the reader has to fill in the blanks themselves to an extent. Once they do, however, they’ll end up panting and fanning themselves and wishing there was a hot sailor in the room to rub oil on. 

Any issues I had with the novel are teeny tiny. One example happens halfway through the book, when Juli disables the only laptop aboard the boat in order to prevent Phyllis or anyone else from doing a background check on her. Sounds reasonable enough until you consider the fact that Phyllis is a software engineer and computer technician, and it took her way too long to both figure out what was wrong with her computer and then to fix it. The incident seems like an overly convenient way of preserving the intrigue for a couple dozen more pages. The climax is a bit disappointing. I expect romantic comedies to have a certain level of suspension of disbelief, especially when they involve modern pirates and sparkling purple phalluses, but this novel’s climax is so rife with baffling and unnecessary characters that I couldn’t enjoy it, Malcolm especially. They detracted attention from the true stars of the story and honestly, only made the plot harder to follow.

All in all, though, Making Waves is touching, sexy, hilarious, and yes – very, very weird. Bottom line: Making Waves by Tawna Fenske is hilarious, hot, and offbeat romantic comedy at its best and just perfect for the beach. Four out of five stars!

You can read Tawna’s awesome blog here.

I’ve been a fan of Shannon Mckenna for years now, and have read every single one of her novels so far. The thing I like most about her is that her plots aren’t just pure fluff and declarations of love – her books are jam packed with mystery, intrigue, suspense, and drama that could stand completely on its own WITHOUT the romance, which says a lot for a romantic suspense book. In “Fade to Midnight”, McKenna definitely lives up to my high expectations, and in many instances, surpasses them.

Fade to Midnight is Kevin’s story, the brother long thought dead and buried. In Edge of Midnight, Sean and Liv’s story, the mystery surrounding Kevin’s disappearance was explored in detail, but ultimately left unsolved. The body thought to have been Kevin’s wasn’t. Sean, at least, thought his twin could still be out there. With the release of this novel, we find out that indeed he is, but Kev now suffers from amnesia and carries brutal scars from his torture all over his face and body.

For eighteen years, “Kev Larsen” lives with a lower class Italian family headed by Tony Ranieri, who rescued him from certain death. After a near fatal accident involving a waterfall, the cloud over Kev’s thoughts and memories is lightened, and he begins seeing fragmented, horrific visions of his past. In the end, though, he can only come up with one name: “Ostermann”. The quest to find the man that tortured him leads him to Edie Parish.

I think the reason why Fade to Midnight rings as such a winner for me is because of the build up from the directly connected prequel, Edge to Midnight. Because I had some inkling of the intense and far reaching conspiracy that threatened Kev and Edie’s life, I was even more desperate for a fitting conclusion. The tension in this book builds and builds and builds until you’re close to bursting, and I was hooked until the very last page. The criminals are evil to the point of being comical caricatures, which Shannon neatly rectifies by revealing the horrible circumstances that brought them to become sociopaths in the first place.

There are some negative bits that irked me, however. One, the lack of closure at the end. Although it’s been eighteen long, hard years for all of the McCloud brothers, there’s not a single moment of hugs or heart-to-hearts mentioned here. At the very least I would’ve expected a scene between Sean and Kev, seeing as they’re twins and have been showing up in each others’ dreams intermittently since the beginning, but no… the last bit of dialogue exchanged between them is Sean telling Kevin to “watch his f**king mouth”. Ouch, McKenna. I know these McClouds are tough as nails and kind of ornery, but you couldn’t show even the smallest bit of a man hug? For me, this is a huge problem that leaves the stunning conclusion very lacking.

The second big problem is something I’ve noticed in all of Shannon’s novels: characterization. At their core, every single main male and female heroine is the same. The woman is soft spoken, meek, and stereotypically nerdy before they have passionate sex with their leading male and grow a tolerable amount of backbone. The man is the classic alpha male – highly trained in combat, headstrong, way more intelligent than the average guy, and extremely dominating. There’s a scene in every novel where the angry and frustrated man uses his strength to coerce the female into sex, and frankly it pisses me off. In the following scene McKenna always explains it away as them trying to work through their intense love and devotion without seeming like a pansy, but I don’t buy it. These aren’t teenagers or college students – these men are in their late thirties or forties. They should know better than that. And what makes it worse is that the women go for it, starting out resisting the machismo but backing down without much of a fight and ultimately loving it. Um, what? That is not tolerable behavior from a lover; that is the behavior that gets you a middle finger and a “F**k you”.

Kev Larsen started out as my favorite McCloud brother because he was more collected and less like a neanderthal, but by the conclusion, it’s pretty ridiculous how identical he is to his brothers. Eighteen years of solitude, dissolved in an week. He went through some pretty heavy stuff, so some change is understandable, but the magnitude of it leaves me pretty baffled. Still, if you take the book at face value and don’t try to over analyze everything like I do, then it’s an awesome, edge of your seat read.

If you’re new to Shannon McKenna, however, it’s definitely recommended that you read the other novels in the series first, as there are a lot of references in this book to prior events that could confuse and discourage new readers. 

Been doing a lot of reading this month, so I figured I’d compile all my thoughts in one blog post.

The Hunger Games: Brilliant book. A little slow at the beginning, but it wasn’t long before I was on the edge of my seat (bed, really), my eyes moving faster than my brain could comprehend the words. At first it was difficult to create a corresponding world in my head where people are starving and living without electricity just a hundred or so miles away from a technological paradise, but then I recalled that the world of Suzanne Collins’ book is no different that today’s society, where everyone in the US and Great Britain and such have electricity but some people in Africa have never even seen a car before. Big wake up call there.

I noticed some typos that irked me here and there, but I was very happy with this read. Katniss, Gale, and Peeta are strong, intelligent, lovable characters that I can continue to root for. A+

The Dark Devine: Okay, what is up with the “Saturday”, “One hour later”, “what happened after lunch” tags on the chapters and scenes? That is not the way to engross me into a story. Strikes me as a bit amateurish, but that’s minor. Not that alone would be enough to keep me from reading the book.

There’s too much idle chitchat at the beginning. I’m a meat and potatoes kind of girl – tell me what I need to know when I need to know it. April is unimportant. Pete is unimportant. I don’t care anything about their pop quiz on Edward Hopper. The action sped up to my liking around page 150, but that’s almost half way into the novel. Not good. From this point I’m invested, but I’m still mostly skimming. The twists were great, though – wasn’t expecting any of that – but I can’t say I’m all that enthused to read the sequel, as the characters struck me as kind of flat. C-

Shiver: My one word reaction to this book is ‘meh’. Too sappy for my liking. Sure, it might be totally romantic to think of Sam loving Grace for his whole life while being trapped as a werewolf in the woods around her house, but it’s kind of creepy to imagine Grace returning it (Plus, there were a lot of similarities between Shiver and The Dark Divine, the most notable of which being that both main females share the same name. If I had read the books months apart from each other, I wouldn’t have cared let alone noticed, but since I read both books within days the similarities made me even more detached from the storylines). Some of the sensory images used in the book sound pretty enough, but they’re meaningless (‘A shattered spider’s web of many colors, cracked in ice, immeasurably sad.’  – what?). It gives the impression of an author – or maybe, a narrator – who is trying too hard.

I can’t even put a letter grade on this one – it’s not horrible, but it isn’t great either. So my letter grade is simply ‘Meh’.

The God Delusion: Really interesting read. Before picking up this book I considered myself agnostic with a heavy lean toward atheist. Now, I think it’s pretty safe to say that I’m all the way there, not because of Richard Dawkins himself but because of the excellent supporting points he makes throughout the book. I’m not a chemist/physicist/biologist so some of his jargon went way over my head, but Dawkins makes a valiant effort to break down his examples, arguments, and analogies into language us everyday folk can understand.

Only complaint I had was the length. He had delivered all his key points by chapter seven; the rest of it felt like padding, and contained arguments against the institution of religion that I’ve heard hundreds of times before, though it far from pained me to read them again in detail. B+

My first response upon reading the first few chapters of this novel was quite surprising: “This is nothing like I would expect a critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller to be.”

That’s not to say I think Neil Gaiman is an awful writer, though – he isn’t. His frank, no-nonsense style works considering the gritty story and characters he uses. Flowery or purple prose wouldn’t work here, and yet his use of similes (“But the words were coming out of him like the water spraying from a broken hydrant in summer” “Can’t you feel the joy in your own veins, rising like the sap in the springtime?”) offer a fresh reprieve from the standard “Her hair was a coppery red, and her clothes were expensive and very black” sentence format. What’s so surprising to me, however, is that he got published using a style that most critics I’ve heard from frown upon. There’s a lot of telling and very little showing, and he sometimes switches verb tense between scenes. Both are habits, I’ve been told over and over, that are no-no’s if you want people to take your work seriously. Since this is the first work of Gaiman’s I’ve read, I honestly can’t say if this is a style he applied for only this book, or if this is his normal style. Maybe he gets to break the rules only now because he’s already been established — I don’t know, but I’m very interested in finding out.

One more thing I feel obligated to mention – he uses run-on sentences in the most peculiar and annoying way. I guess no one told him that commas do not equal periods, semi-colons, or dashes in usage (“That night he had dreamed of an orchard under the moonlight, of skeletal white trees, their branches ending in bony hands, their roots going deep down into the graves”). Sigh.

Let’s move on to the actual plot. Basically, the gods of yesteryear are living in America struggling to get by because they’ve been replaced by the modern-day gods of television, shopping malls, credit cards, etc. Although I don’t consider myself a spiritual person, religion and mythology have always been subjects of great interest to me, so this book’s synopsis had me intrigued from the start. Shadow is pegged as the dude with the shady past from the start, but his love for his wife and earnest remorse for his criminal past make me empathize with him for the beginning, which is a good thing, considering he’s the main character. I won’t give out any spoilers, but enough happens in the first 100 pages to keep me constantly interested and speculating.

After that, though, the pacing slows to a sluggish sputter. Shadow is seen eating, sleeping, and “pissing” in detail way too much at this point. By the 294 page mark (the total word count is 588), I still haven’t come across any intrigue or action to keep me anticipating. Sadly, I’m bored and unimpressed, and have been for about 100 pages now.

On a more positive note, this is probably the best line I’ve read in a novel in a long time: (to offer some background, Shadow is lost in a forest when he encounters a raven that acts as a sentient companion to his current employer):

“Hey,” said Shadow. “Huginn or Muninn, or whoever you are.”

The bird turned, head tipped, suspiciously, on one side, and it stared at him with bright eyes.

“Say ‘Nevermore’,” said Shadow.

“Fuck you,” said the raven. It said nothing else as they went though the woodland together. 

Lulz. Unfortunately this chuckle-worthy excerpt was not enough to save the novel. Great idea, poor execution. Two out of five stars.