2 star

The Fleshless Man by Norman Prentiss

by Stefani

The Fleshless Man by Norman Prentiss

Published October 30th, 2012 by Delirium Books

Photo and synopsis from the Goodreads book page

Buy this book at B&N / Amazon

Synopsis:

“The Fleshless Man wants to kill me,” his mother said.

Curtis never enjoyed the cool, oppressive atmosphere of his childhood home, and that atmosphere is even worse when he returns as an adult. His mother is dying, and her illness seems to infect everyone around her: Curtis’s brother has developed a nervous habit that might indicate more serious problems; the attending nurse exhibits puzzling, possibly sinister behavior; and Curtis himself suffers from nightmares and uncharacteristic dark thoughts.

It’s as if the house itself wants his mother to die more quickly—and it will achieve that goal however it can.

Even if it must inspire Curtis to imagine harming his own mother.

Even if it must summon the intervention of a strange entity called the Fleshless Man.

Rating (out of 5):

Review:

I have a feeling this might be a very short review, because it is a very short story.  My ebook edition of this was only 66 pages, so it barely qualifies as a novella but is too long for a short story.  Reading the synopsis I was fascinated by what this book had to offer.  Then I was surprised that it was so short, but still intrigued with the story I started on my way.  And that’s about when the confusion set in.  But, I am getting ahead of myself.

The writing in this novella is not bad, in fact it could be described as very good.  It was descriptive and compelling when it needed to be.  But unfortunately there wasn’t much to describe because the story was so thin.  This author is clearly a good author who deserves all the praise you find on his biography.  Given more time and length I think this story could have been incredible too.  But being so short just made this story confusing and boring in many places.

Let me be really honest here, that line at the beginning of the synopsis, “The Fleshless Man wants to kill me.”  I didn’t even see that part and so when the character Curtis says that his mother said it my first reaction was “Really?  Where? I didn’t see it.”  I still am not aware of when that was exactly because I couldn’t find it.  Much of this story starts as a dream, but I was never fully aware of when we were in a dream and when we were not.  If that was the author’s intention then it was done well, but I didn’t like it.  If it wasn’t the intention then that was a failure.

The monster in this story is glossed over and not really that important to the story which was a disappointment since it bears the monster’s name.  I just wasn’t quite sure what this was about.  If it had been longer and more detailed I probably would have liked it.  But instead I just got to the end and thought, “That’s it?  Really? I have no idea what I was reading for the last 66 pages.”  And even after some reflection, I still find that those feelings are very accurate.
This book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest and thoughtful review.  No money or promises were exchanged.

Alice in Zombieland by Gena Showalter

by Stefani

Alice in Zombieland by Gena Showalter

Published September 25th, 2012 by Harlequin Teen

Synopsis and picture from the Goodreads book page
Buy this book at B&N / Book Depository / Amazon

Synopsis: She won’t rest until she’s sent every walking corpse back to its grave. Forever.

Had anyone told Alice Bell that her entire life would change course between one heartbeat and the next, she would have laughed. From blissful to tragic, innocent to ruined? Please. But that’s all it took. One heartbeat. A blink, a breath, a second, and everything she knew and loved was gone.

Her father was right. The monsters are real….

To avenge her family, Ali must learn to fight the undead. To survive, she must learn to trust the baddest of the bad boys, Cole Holland. But Cole has secrets of his own, and if Ali isn’t careful, those secrets might just prove to be more dangerous than the zombies….

I wish I could go back and do a thousand things differently.
I’d tell my sister no.
I’d never beg my mother to talk to my dad.
I’d zip my lips and swallow those hateful words.
Or, barring all of that, I’d hug my sister, my mom and my dad one last time.
I’d tell them I love them.
I wish… Yeah, I wish.

Rating (out of 5):

Review:

I have long heard wonderful things about Gena Showalter, and so many people raved about her journey into YA.  I was interested in the title and the little “Off with their heads” on the cover.  But the synopsis is rather vague about exactly what this book is.  You vaguely get something about the undead, a bad boy, and losing her family.  I started to see some mixed reviews and got a little nervous about just what I was getting into.  I had hoped for great things with this book, and I was disappointed.

The first 200 pages of this book were completely mind boggling to me.  I was expected Alice in Wonderland retold with zombie greatness!  And yet the first half of this book was cliche, stereotypical, and over used YA romance.  You have Alice, who is blond haired, blue eyed, a good student, sweet to just about everybody, and thinks that she is completely average and mediocre at everything.  Yet somehow in being totally “average” she attracts the attention of the entire school AND the two hottest boys in said school.  Now hold on, this is all sounding terribly familiar.  Oh yes, I’ve read this in about 30 other YA novels recently!  Then you have Cole, or as I like to call him the controlling *******.  Gotta censor that if I want to put this on Amazon.  He scowls at Alice every chance he gets, snaps his teeth at her (seriously), and tries to control her in every way.  At one point he demands that she get into his car and give him her phone number.  Um most normal people would have said, “No pal, I don’t know you.  You might be planning on raping and killing me.  Back off or it’s a restraining order for you.”  But no, Alice fawns at him like he’s the best thing that ever appeared on earth.

This book is also the absolute top of the mountain with the insta-love crap.  Alice has visions of getting it on with Cole when she looks at him!  I wish I was joking, but I’m not!  Also throw in another love interest to create an unnecessary love triangle that was really never mentioned after the first 200 pages.  The first half of this book was devoted exclusively to this horribly cliche romance angle.  Oh and one last note, if you have “violet eyes”, you may want to see a doctor.  I found myself screaming at this book, stop with this lovey dovey garbage and show me some zombies!!

I almost wish I hadn’t begged for zombies so much once I actually got them.  Now, let me be clear, I have nothing against reinventing and reimagining monsters that we are all familiar with.  But in order to be successful at doing so, you must have two things.  1. You have to have a good story to back up your new and improved monsters.  2. You have to explain the new rules of your monsters enough so that people understand.  This book had neither.  The only story to back up these monsters was a godawful romance.  And it explained things plenty in typical info dump fashion.  But then other things were mentioned specifically and repeatedly only to never be mentioned again.  These zombies are not really even zombies either.  I kept thinking, okay so they’re like ghosts.  No, maybe vampires.  Ghost vampires!  No, these are not zombies, that is one thing I know for sure.

What switched this to two stars for me, instead of one, was the last half of the book.  For the most part we abandoned the stupid romance that we started with and got down to the meat of the story.  I wasn’t too fond of the twist in the plot, mostly because there was absolutely no hints or clues to it and that was frustrating.  If there’s going to be a twist, at least let me be able to look back and think “oh yeah, I should have seen that coming”.  But I couldn’t do that because it came totally out of left field.  If it had been hinted more it would have been amazing.  Some of the information at the end and a few of the fight scenes were also pretty interesting.

I can’t rate this book a one star because I can see that there is promise there and that some people will really love it (as evidenced by the very mixed reviews).  I had hoped that I would love it since it seemed to be exactly my cup of tea.  But alas it was just not good and I didn’t like it really at all.  I liked a few things at the end but it wasn’t enough to salvage my dislike of the majority of it.

 

 

Matched by Ally Condie

by Stefani

Matched by Ally Condie

First published: November 1st, 2010 by Dutton Juvenile

Synopsis and photo from the Goodreads book page

Buy this book at: Amazon / B&N

Synopsis:

Cassia has always trusted the Society to make the right choices for her: what to read, what to watch, what to believe. So when Xander’s face appears on-screen at her Matching ceremony, Cassia knows he is her ideal mate . . . until she sees Ky Markham’s face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black. The Society tells her it’s a glitch, a rare malfunction, and that she should focus on the happy life she’s destined to lead with Xander. But Cassia can’t stop thinking about Ky, and as they slowly fall in love, Cassia begins to doubt the Society’s infallibility and is faced with an impossible choice: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she’s known and a path that no one else has dared to follow.

Rating (out of 5):

Review:  First off I want to clarify something that has been bothering me, this should not be classified as a dystopian novel.  Dystopian novels are a genre defined by extreme poverty, oppressive governments, and just general ruin and depression for everyone in society.  That is not the case with Matched.  Yes there is an oppressive government but everyone is happy, everyone has a job, everyone has the same home and their every need met.  This is a utopian novel, not a dystopian novel.  Utopian novels are ones where everyone in the society is taken care of and basically happy, but there is almost always an undercurrent of something darker going on.  Okay, I got that out and I feel better now.

This was a book that I can’t really say I hated or liked, I was very ambivalent to it because I didn’t connect to the story or characters at all.  I found Cassia annoying and shallow and the world building was infuriating.  But let’s start with one thing at a time shall we?

I mentioned that I had a problem with the world building.  Here is that problem.  The author dumps us into this world but doesn’t bother to explain anything that’s going on.  You’re not allowed to share food, except for certain circumstances, but it’s not explained why that’s against the rules.  Cassia spends her days “sorting” in preparation for getting a job, but it’s not really explained just what exactly she’s doing with the sorting or why it’s important.  It’s not until the end when this is applied practically then you can understand but until then it was just looking at information for patterns and similarities.  Everyone dies on their 80th birthday, why that day?  Why that year?  None of those things are ever explained.  As a reader, I don’t want to just accept everything about your new world, I want you to explain that world to me or I just can’t have that much emotion about it.

Cassia was annoying and I spent most of the novel just wanting to strangle her.  She loves her life in this world.  Everything is provided for her, she has a schedule, she has a future and she doesn’t have to think for herself at all!  Then she gets her Match and it’s Xander, also perfect, but wait there’s Ky’s face there too.  Somehow, in that moment, she becomes obsessed with Ky and completely forgets that Xander exists.  She only remembers that Xander exists when she needs his help for something that could get him in trouble.  She spends the rest of her time fawning over Ky and making asinine comments about his deep, mysterious, color changing eyes.  She had barely even noticed his presence prior to that but somehow she’s decided oh I’m falling in love with him!  And because he questions Society’s rules, so does she.  Because he subverts Society’s rules, so does she.  This girl didn’t have an original thought cross her brain in the entire book.

There were a thousands fragments of a plot that never quite became a whole plot, combined with an irritating heroine who drools over someone and ignoring her Match and her “best friend”.  And then in the end she complains about how confused she is because she loves both of them.  No you don’t you self centered little twit!  You love that you can use Xander because he’s so damned loyal to you.  And you love fawning over Ky because he’s the forbidden fruit.  None of that is love girlie!  And could she be any more of an idiot about Ky?  She KNOWS they are watching her, she KNOWS they set up a circumstance for her to favor him unfairly and what does she do?  Favors him unfairly, knowing it will put him in danger!  Stop drooling over his eyes, grow a brain, and think about someone else’s welfare for once.  The author tries at the end to pull all these plot fragments together with the tried and true….it was all a conspiracy…line.  But it didn’t work for this book and just made me laugh at the absurdity of it.  I didn’t like this book, I didn’t like the plot or the characters.  At least I can say it wasn’t as awful as some other books I’ve read.

 

The Selection by Kiera Cass

by Stefani

The Selection by Kiera Cass

Published April 24th, 2012 by HarperTeen

Author’s Website: http://www.kieracass.com/books/

You can buy this book at: B&N and Amazon

Synopsis and picture from the Goodreads book page

Synopsis:

For thirty-five girls, the Selection is the chance of a lifetime. The opportunity to escape the life laid out for them since birth. To be swept up in a world of glittering gowns and priceless jewels. To live in the palace and compete for the heart of the gorgeous Prince Maxon.

But for America Singer, being Selected is a nightmare. It means turning her back on her secret love with Aspen, who is a caste below her. Leaving her home to enter a fierce competition for a crown she doesn’t want. Living in a palace that is constantly threatened by violent rebel attacks.

Then America meets Prince Maxon. Gradually, she starts to question all the plans she’s made for herself- and realizes that the life she’s always dreamed of may not compare to a future she never imagined.

Rating (out of 5):

Review:

This one is closer to a 1.5 than a 2, and I agonized over that a LOT.  I didn’t enjoy the book or like any aspect of it.  But it was not as bad as others I have read and rated 1 star before.  So a 1.5 seems the most logical choice.  This initially was a book that I fell for the cover for and bought it and took it home.  It was only after that I learned about all the drama and issues surrounding the author and her agent.  This disappointed me and I put the book away.  But I figured that since I have it already, I might as well read it with no prejudice about the earlier events.  To be quite frank, if I hadn’t already bought a copy, the author’s behavior would have been enough for me to never read it…but that ship had already sailed.

I had several huge problems with this book.  First was the writing itself.  I was under the impression that these were characters in their late teens, but the dialogue sounded like I’d run across a group of 12 year old girls gossiping in the school hallway.  The writing and dialogue was very immature, even for a YA book.  Of course I probably should have feared this when the dedication was “Hi Dad! *waves*”  No, I did not make that up, a grown adult actually wrote that in a published book.  It got worse when she uses “for reals” and “realzies” in the acknowledgements at the end.  The writing started to make a bit more sense after that.

My second big problem was with the premise of this book.  The government depicted here is a total monarchy, but if that were the case then there is no chance in hell that a common girl who was not of royal blood would EVER be married into that family.  That is how total monarchies work.  Now, if this was similar to the current British monarchy where the royal family is mostly a figurehead and has no political power then it would make sense.  But it did not.  The plot was also SO painfully predictable.  Of course America was going to be one of the Selected, of course there was going to be a love triangle, of course the ex would show up again, of course she’d end up actually having feelings for Maxon.  Naturally America would be the ONLY logical option for Maxon. I could have guessed all that from the blurb on the cover, which is a bad sign for the book.

The history in the book also annoyed me.  What was the point of telling me the history of the country’s birth if there was going to be zero other world building?  Yes, there was a caste system but it was so vague that I’m still not sure I get the logistics of it.  There is a monarchy and rebels, but its not explained what they are rebelling about so it’s hard to care.

One more point I want to address, what is wrong with some of the people in this book?  America’s mother basically pimps out her daughter, urging her to enter herself in the Selection because if she’s chosen then the family will get money and a better social standing.  Really?  You’re pimping your daughter to the prince for money and social status? But it got worse.  The girls in the book are required by law to remain virgins until they are married.  They have to sign a form that they are, in fact, virgins and if proof is found otherwise they will be executed for treason.  Then they make it a point that, even though that’s the law if the prince asks you for something, ANYTHING, you don’t tell him no.  So, if he wants to have sex with you, even if you do not want to you are still required to tell him yes.  Yes, that is exactly what it sounds like.  Rape is perfectly cool as long as it’s the prince.  And yes, I know, it turned out to be a misunderstanding and blah blah.  I don’t care.  It was still put out there and it made me sick to my stomach to see such a thing being touted in a book for teenagers.

Short ranty bit here, why am I supposed to care about any of these characters.  America is a whiner.  She whines about being poor when her family has chicken, pasta, tea with lemon, and popcorn for dessert while they watch tv.  You ain’t poor honey, get over yourself.  Aspen is an idiot who didn’t even belong in the book.  All we know about him is that he has a machismo complex that’s out of control and he likes making out with America before he convinces her to pimp herself out to the prince too…for his peace of mind and all.  We don’t get to know any of the girls in the Selection hardly at all.  We are told to hate Celeste and told to like Marlynn (or whatever her name was), but no one else is discussed in any kind of detail that you give a damn about them at all.  Maxon acts like a girl most of the time so I can’t really like him either.  And ultimately I wish this book had been written more like an actual episode of The Bachelor, then it would at least have been interesting.

Lastly, I have no idea why this needed more than one book.  Another few hundred pages and the story would be done, so what is the point?  I don’t care enough about this story to like one book, I certainly am not going to like two or three books.  And a final ranty bit, why the hell do we keep peddling weak assed women to teenagers?!  All America cares about is that she’s with Aspen and gets married.  That is just about her sole focus in the entire book.  Though I will say she handles breakups better than most YA characters, meaning she doesn’t get suicidally depressed and stalk him.  But instead she’s just weak and the first second the ass shows back up goes right back to sucking face with him as though nothing happened.  Most normal people don’t have these co-dependent, unhealthy relationships!  Why do we in YA!