The Beginning of Everything by Robyn Schneider

4 Stars

 

Ezra Faulkner had everything going for him – prom king, tennis star, hot girlfriend, etc., etc. A tragic accident leaves Ezra broken – both physically and mentally. Without his status as a top athlete, how will he fit in with his old friends Senior year? Does he even want to? When new girl Cassidy enrolls at his high school and an old elementary school pal pops back into his life, Ezra begins to realize maybe he wasn’t the person he has pretended to be all these years.

In what I thought was going to end up as yet another failed attempt at finding a book that would make me get all feely-feely, I realized my problem might be worse than I thought. I had been thinking I might be a robot, but then I wondered “what if the problem is even worse than that?”???




The first 10% of The Beginning Everything had me ready to throw in the towel. All I could think when I started this book was “good God Ezra is vapid”.



I don’t know, Kanye. I just don’t know anymore.

But . . . I am not a quitter, so I kept reading and then????



I slapped out of it. I got over the idea that I was going to find this novel “heartwrenching” like the blurb told me and just tried to accept it for what it was: a perfectly sweet tale of first love and first loss that make up the high school experience. And guess what? I more than liked it. (Ezra’s lack of self-awareness still grated, but he made up for it with Harry Potter references.) The saving grace that made me turn my frown upside down was how much I fell in love with all of the characters. So, instead of ranting with a 1 or 2 star rating, this one is getting a 4, because at the end of the day (although I didn’t cry) it made me have some good feels. Much like a John Hughes’ movie : )

Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Butler

3 Stars

 

ARC received from NetGalley. Thank you NetGalley!!!!!

The story of four childhood friends (and one wife), their marriages and divorces, successes and failures, as they attempt to navigate their way through their early 30s.

Until the day I started reading Shotgun Lovesongs, I had no idea the story was inspired by the author’s friendship with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver fame. In all honesty, the book got bumped ahead of some others on the TBR once I discovered this fact. I thought perchance it would remove “Skinny Love” from playing on an endless loop in my brain.

Wellllllll, I’m still singing “Skinny Love” – probably even more so now since reading this made Bon Iver become my Pandora flavor of the week. What can I say about this book? What did it make me feel? Sometimes it’s best to let the book speak for itself: “Melancholy is such a dramatic sounding word, but sometimes it’s the right one. When you’re feeling both a little happy and a little sad.”. This book made me feel melancholy the entire time I was reading it.

Nickolas Butler definitely has promise – he put readable words on paper, but something was just a bit off or missing. A couple of things that stood out were how many narrators were speaking in such a short novel and the bouncing back and forth between the present and past sometimes had me reading a few paragraphs or pages before I knew if I was in the “now” or “then”. But for a debut???? Butler did just fine. I will be interested in seeing what he comes up with next.

If you’re a fan of Justin Vernon and want to get a sneaky peak into what he might have been like/might be when he’s not busy being “Bon Iver”, this book will probably make you fall in love with him a little (or a little more).



If you’ve stuck through this review and still have no clue who I’m talking about, go download “Skinny Love” and thank me later when it remains on your iPod shuffle list ; )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5l8otW...

Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

1.5 Stars

 

Anna’s father decides it would be in her best interest to study abroad her Senior year. Anna finds herself studying in Paris, but missing her life back in Atlanta. Gradually Anna becomes more comfortable with her new life and new friends – especially Étienne St. Clair. The more Anna finds her feelings for “St. Clair” changing from friendship to love, the more she is reminded of his serious girlfriend. Will Anna get a chance at romance and a “French kiss” before her time in Paris is up?

Everyone loved this book. Except me. I think I might be a robot.



All but one of my Goodreads friends gave this a high rating, and how it was so cute, and they just fell in love with the characters, and on, and on, and on. I was so excited. I just knew going in this was going to be fluffy and adorable and I, too, would be posting a rave review. Sadly, it wasn’t meant to be. I found Anna to be insufferable and St. Clair to be a two-timing, spineless, doucheface. What’s wrong with me?????

The Ruins by Scott Smith

4 Stars

 

You know that old saying “timing is everything”? I have a feeling this book would have received a 5-Star rating from me rather than 4 had I not ran across a little ARC called The Troop several months ago. Upon my reading (and ranting and raving and begging every horror lover and their dog to read said ARC), a plethora of my GR friends started recommending The Ruins to me. Since I’m an idiot, I immediately forgot about it. Months later, the title popped back on my radar and I made myself check it out from the library within the hour so my brain couldn’t get a chance to fail me yet again.

Having now read both, one scene contained in The Troop was clearly, let’s say, “inspired” by a very similar scene from The Ruins. Had I read The Ruins first, The Troop may have received a demerit or two from me for borrowing something so memorable. However, The Troop was simply overflowing with chapter after chapter of new levels of mindbuggery so I maintain it is the better book.

Alright, enough of that – on to the review. The Ruins isn’t your typical horror novel featuring a super scary bad guy.

In fact, the bad guy seems pretty benign.

Although there’s definitely something out there that made a vacation go from this

to this

in the span of only a few hundred pages - and while there was plenty of gross-out factor, the true terror came from what was going on inside the characters’ heads.

An honest to goodness horror novel that will make you gag, scare the pants off of you and leave you torn between thinking you will absolutely not be putting it down until you’ve turned the last page to the polar opposite of throwing it across the room and screaming for a bit before returning.

One thing is certain, after you read The Ruins, you will most definitely rethink ever venturing away from the resort if you are on a Cancun retreat in order to see how the Mayans lived . . .

(and if you really want to induce vomiting, venture on out to Tumblr and look at the other gifs that I was kind enough not to share here)

Deliverance by James Dickey

4 Stars

 

A weekend adventure for four middle-aged suburbanites quickly turns sour when a couple of strangers interrupt their canoe trip . . .

With Spring just around the corner and the rumblings of “float trips” already being overheard in my corner of Redneckville, USA, I figured it was prime time to brush up on my camping knowledge so I can inform people what to truly expect on their weekend excursions.

 

Even if you are like me and have never watched the film version of Deliverance, I bet a lot of you are familiar enough with a certain iconic scene that when you hear a particular little ditty.
 

you immediately get a shiver down your spine.

Although I kind of knew what was going to happen, I still was going

and then was terrified at what could possibly happen next because there was a lot of book left. And what a lot of book there was. An edge-of-your-seat read that left me feeling like I might have burned a few thousand calories with all of the nervous knee bouncing I was doing. This book was so much more than the “one scene”. The ultimate tale of how far will a person go in order to survive that was written beautifully (I know that sounds strange when the book I’m talking about is Deliverance, but it really was), with honest, flawed characters, non-stop action and great dialogue. It’s easy to see why this made the cut for the “100 Modern Classics” list.

Uganda Be Kidding Me by Chelsea Handler

3.5 Stars

 

ARC from NetGalley.  Thank you NetGalley!!!!!

 

First, let me take care of a little bidness. Introducing my new guest blogger – Frank Engator. He likah da funny books and just laughed and laughed while reading his first selection by Chelsea Handler.

Now, on to the review . . .

If it weren’t for the fact that seeing her on television or hearing her voice makes me want to stab her in the face, Chelsea Handler would probably be at the top of my fave celebrities list. Luckily she writes books so I can just picture Elizabeth Banks’ in my head as the leading lady while reading all of Chelsea’s stories. Seriously, it works. They totally have that “separated at birth” thing going for them . . .

Once again, Chelsea’s book brought the funny that her television show just doesn’t seem to be able to do for me. Her tales of various travels told in her signature self-deprecating style with 100% ownage of the fact that she is a complete imbecile gave me multiple LOLs.

While the book is about Chelsea’s various vacays, for me (someone with the mentality of a 12-year old) the true guffaws came from her stories of public urination and one gutbuster about crapping her drawers.

The only problems I had were the signature “Uganda” story made up for about half of the book by itself and then the tales turned back to the normal essay style I’m used to while reading books by comedians. I also had a problem with the feeling of déjà vu I was left with at the end of the book – the realization that I’m more than likely a huge jerk for my unjustified rage whenever I see Chelsea on my T.V. screen and the feeling that she is probably the nicest asshole one could ever meet. After all, she was kind enough to leave me with the warning to never forget that “dolphin rape is a very real thing” that I’m now passing on to all of you.

The Good Lord Bird by James McBride

3 Stars

 

A young slave named Henry Shackleford gets caught up with abolitionist John Brown and the fight for freedom when Brown kills Henry’s father. A misunderstanding in the heat of the moment also has Brown believing Henry to be a Henrietta - a mistaken identity Henry continues to assume as he tries to stay alive.

Ack. This is a hard review to write. Mainly because I didn’t feel anything while I was reading this story. It generally takes me about a day or day and a half to get through a novel of this size. The Good Lord Bird took me three weeks. The first 100 pages were good and I was really thinking I was going to breeze right through and lovelovelove it, but then the story just became a loop of the same scenes complete with the same dialogue and I wanted to put it down. And put it down was exactly what I did. In the three week span of reading this book, I also read 12 others. By the time I reached the climax and the raid on Harper’s Ferry, I was more than ready to be finished.

I will say that Mr. McBride has a wonderful sense of humor and, as this won a National Book Award, he can obviously write. Sadly, he just didn’t write a story that resonated with me.