The Book Addict Reviews: What Happened To Goodbye by Sarah Dessen

Genre: Young Adult, Romance, Social Issues
Order Online: Amazon.com
Author Info: Website | Goodreads
Rating: 3 stars
Book picked up in a Paperbackswap game.

In A Nutshell:
I liked the story a lot. As someone who lived through a similar situation, I found Sarah Dessen’s portrayal honest and realistic. I wanted to be a part of this group of friends in the thick of it working on the model and having dinner at Riley’s house.

Review:
As a child of divorce, Mclean’s story tugged at my heartstrings. After watching her family fall apart, she struggles. What is her place? Does she belong with her mother and her mother’s new family? Does she belong with her father who almost seems married to his work?

While Mclean struggles with her family, she is also a teen who is trying to learn who she is. With each move, she tries on a new name and a new persona. When she arrives in Lakeview, she tries to follow this same pattern but that ends up being foiled. She has to be Mclean. She has to confront who she really is.

The key to the book is that Mclean has to learn to trust again. After the divorce, she feels that relationships and entanglements lead to heartbreak. They are not lasting. If her parents’ love could turn to infidelity and anger than nothing else has a chance of lasting. But Mclean meets people who want to be her friends and work their way around her defenses. She becomes entangled and finds she actually likes it.

This was my first Sarah Dessen novel, and I cannot wait to read more. Her characters are real. I remember being a child of divorce, and Sarah Dessen brought out the feelings and emotions with clarity and honesty. The only thing that left me unsatisfied that the some of the other characters’ stories were not fully explained, particularly Deb.

Recommendations:
After reading What Happened to Goodbye, I asked my friend's which Sarah Dessen novels they recommend.  Now I want to read these books:

Series In Review: The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare

Series are a tricky thing. I have series that I love as a whole, but an individual book within the series did not impress me.  So I am not always sure that reviewing the individual books is fair to the author's vision. However, I do not want to postpone all of my reviews of the books within a series until the end. With those thoughts in mind I decided to start Series In Review. In these postings, I will be looking at more than one book in the series or if possible the entire series at one time.
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**This review may contain spoilers for some of the books in the series**


Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, City Life, New Experiences, Urban Fantasy
Books Released in Series: City of Bones, City of Ashes and City of Glass
Next Book:  City of Fallen Angels
Author Info: Website | Goodreads
Rating: 3 stars
Borrowed books from the library.

In A Nutshell:
I had heard so many good things about this series that I was almost afraid--afraid it would not live up to all of the hype.  But it delivered.  This series has it all: adventure, action, romance, magic, family, everything.  I laughed, I cried, I longed, and I loved.  I cannot say enough how much I loved this series.

Review:
Clary goes to a club with her friend, Simon, and enters a world beyond her imagination.  She sees people and things that others do not see.  She has abilities that others could not even imagine.  She is part of a world that will change the course of hers and Simon's life forever.

Cassandra Clare writes her characters in such a way that there is always the ability to question assumptions.  Is this character on the side of good or evil?  What determines which side is good and which side is evil?  What determines what character is on which side?  Throughout the series, I found myself always questioning.  The moment I thought I knew what was going to happen, what side a character was on, or what connection was important, Cassandra Clare surprised me.  But the thing that amazed me the most is that she surprised me while still keeping true to her characters.  The intrigue was not caused by the characters changing as much as by our knowledge of their motives, their reasoning, their histories changing so that we could see them more completely.  Even the characters that appeared to be minor in the beginning, ended up being intriguing and having an important effect on the final outcome.

But I did have a couple of things that I struggled with in these series.  First, I noticed that each book is slow to get started.  I started City of Bones a couple of times before I was able to really get into the story.  Once I did get into the story I was hooked.  Then the same thing happened when I moved on to the next two books.  In some ways it was a little bit of a let down after finishing the previous book on a high.  But I stuck with it knowing that the chances were good that the book would get much better as I continued.  And I am glad I did.

Second, I struggled with Jace and Clary's relationship.  He was sarcastic to the point of rude and mean to Clary for long time.  I understand that it was hard for him to admit that he liked her, and I understand that he had not had very good role models growing up to show him how to handle emotions, how to treat people, or how to react to situations.  I understand that he did go out of his way to help Clary when she needed is (such as when she needed to find Simon in the Vampire hotel).  But the relationship was on an emotional roller coaster.  Clary spends time in each book lamenting when Jace has hurt her feelings or elated when Jace seems to be interested in her.  Is that a relationship to aspire to?  Is that the kind of relationship destined to last?

Recommendations:
I enjoyed the series.  I am glad I read it, but I have hesitated on reading the new book, City of Fallen Angels.  The copies I had of the book referred to this series as a trilogy.  Then after I finished City of Glass I felt like the story felt complete.  So I have doubts that I will read the fourth book, but I would like to read her new series, The Infernal Devices.

The Book Addict Reviews: I Loved You First by Reena Jacobs (Blog Tour Stop Coming Soon!)

Genre: Young Adult, Friendship
Order Online: Amazon.com
Author Info: Website | Goodreads
Rating: 3 stars
Book provided by the author in exchange for an honest review.

In A Nutshell:
The expectations I had after first reading the description of I Loved You First did not at all prepare me for what I got out of this story. I thought I Loved You First would explore friendship, but it explores more aspects of friendship than I expected. I expected a story where one friend had fallen in love with the other friend and a story where one friend was hiding his true self from the world.  I was surprised to see the story explore a friendship where one friend lost her sense of self.

Review:
What do you do when you fall in love with your best friend?  There is no easy answer.  Reena Jacobs adds another dimension to this question by asking what can Alex do when she falls in love with Seth, her best friend who is gay. 

Overall, I enjoyed the story.  I felt a connection to the characters, which I think had a lot to do with the way that Reena Jacobs incorporated the character's thoughts, motives, and reasoning into the story.  For instance, Seth's desire to hide his sexuality makes a lot more sense when he explains how he fears it would have affected his experience with the baseball team.  There was no easy answer for his situation--honesty could have led him to be ostracized in high school the way he was ostracized at the university.  However, it could be asked if he would have been ostracized in the same way if his sexuality had been revealed in a different way at the university. 

But Alex's question stuck with me the most.  At what point does a friendship become too much--too consuming?  When does a friend start losing him or herself in the friendship?  Is it a good thing or not?  What I liked the most was that Reena Jacobs does not give us the answer.  It is something that we as readers can discuss, can analyze, but the answer is not handed us in the story.  The ending is complex--not completely happy and not completely sad.  It is realistic.  It is honest.  And it left me with a lot to think about.  


Recommendations:
Usually, I recommend books that I think are similar to the book I have reviewed.  But today I am going to announce my participation in my first blog tour!!  I will be interviewing Seth--so if you have questions you would like to ask him please do not hesitate to let me know!  

Series in Review: The Steampunk Chronicles by Kady Cross

Series are a tricky thing. I have series that I love as a whole, but an individual book within the series did not impress me.  So I am not always sure that reviewing the individual books is fair to the author's vision. However, I do not want to postpone all of my reviews of the books within a series until the end. With those thoughts in mind I decided to start Series In Review. In these postings, I will be looking at more than one book in the series or if possible the entire series at one time.
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**This review may contain spoilers for some of the books in the series**

I was not sure if I should put this down as a Series in Review, but I read the prequel as well as the recently released book and I found that my opinion of both were affected by the fact that I had read the other.

Genre: Young Adult, Historical Fiction, Steampunk, Science Fiction
Books Released in Series: The Strange Case of Finley Jayne and The Girl in the Steel Corset
Author Info: Website | Goodreads
Rating: 3 Stars
Downloaded The Strange Case of Finley Jayne from Amazon and The Girl in the Steel Corset picked up in Paperbackswap games.

In A Nutshell:
I read The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde earlier this year, so I was excited when I learned about  The Strange Case of Finley Jayne and eagerly awaited the release of The Girl with the Steel Corset. I would love to say that the wait and the anticipation were worth it, but after finishing both books, I was underwhelmed and even a little frustrated.

Review:
My first frustration with the series is that the prequel, The Strange Case of Finley Jayne, seemed irrelevant. Finley Jayne was in the exact same position in the beginning of the prequel as she was in the beginning of The Girl with the Steel Corset--leaving a recent employment after one of the males in the household made unwanted advances to her. Did the people she worked with in the prequel do nothing to help her find employment after she successfully assisted them? And if we (the readers) were going to learn many of the same things about Finley, her situation, and the reasons she has so much trouble keeping employment in the first few chapters of The Girl with the Steel Corset, why have the prequel at all?

My second frustration with the story was that I found most of the characters flat and I did not think they developed much over the course of the story. Emily was the smart one who is physically weak. Sam was the strong one who is easily duped. Griffin is the rich one who everyone looks to for leadership. I saw those characteristics fairly strongly upon first meeting these characters--and very little about my impressions of them changed at the very end of the story.

As the story progressed I expected to see remarkable changes in Finley Jayne considering that she was supposedly integrating her two opposite personality halves into a cohesive whole. Shouldn’t a transformation like that have made a marked change in her personality and character development? But other than a few comments that Finley thought to herself that indicated she was gaining control over her darker half, I did not see that her personality, her conduct, or her character had changed that much after Griffin and she had worked on integrating her two separate halves.

I did love some of the steampunk elements of the story. I love imagining Victorian England with steam-powered vehicles and robots. I cannot even imagine what the world would be like today if they had really made those advances then?

Recommendations:
I will probably read the next book in the series when it comes out, but I do not think I will rush out to get it immediately.  However, since my favorite parts of this series were the Steampunk elements, I would recommend another Steampunk series (note: these books are not young adult!):

And if you are looking for more books about split personality, I recommend the classic.  I loved it!