BBB's 2011 Book Awards

It's the first Book Awards over at BBB! I've read nearly 150 books this year and these are the best - and the worst of books I've read this year.

Best Dystopia

It took some thinking but my pick for this year's Dystopian is Crossed by Ally Condie. After waiting about a year for it after devouring Matches, it really lived up to expectations and I was surprised that Ky got a say in Crossed.

Best Contemporary

Hate List by Jennifer Brown was my most memorable contemporary this year and I'll happily re-read it again and again! Although it's a pretty thick book, I found myself flying through the pages with ease.

Best Historical

Giving a very descriptive account of life during the Plague, At the Sign of the Sugared Plum by Mary Hooper just squeezed past Revolution (which is only partly Historical, I have to admit). I can still remember this story vividly and look forward to the sequel, which is why I chose it!

Best Indie

This one is an easy one! Flat-Out Love by Jessica Park had me in fits of giggles and made me read out a lot of passages to my partner. I'll always remember this one fondly!

Pretty On The Inside

This nomination is for a book that is beautiful on the inside! I have to pick Low Red Moon by Ivy Devlin for this, as the word moon is in red and the chapter headers are beautiful.

Best Cover

Took A LOT of thinking about but in the end I had to go with The Goddess Test by Aimee Carter, whose publishers chose a model that looks like Megan Fox!

Most Unique Plot

Ultraviolet by R.J. Anderson kept me guessing right until the very end with it's many twists and turns!

Page Turner

Despite the size of it, Blood by Red by Moira Young was devoured within 3 hours!

Book I Read More Than Once

I loved the cover and I love the story - The Goddess Test by Aimee Carter gets it again!

And the worst...

Worst Dystopian

Eve by Anna Carey is almost worst than it's badly shopped cover, if you can believe that!

Worst Historical

Despite a lot of rave reviews from other bloggers, Prisoner of the Inquisition by Theresa Breslin almost put me to sleep, it was very long, very boring and the characters added nothing to the story.

Worst Cover

'Hi, this is the back of my head.' Seriously, Fallen Grace by Mary Hooper?

The Most Disappointing

Ah, I waited for a long time for this sequel but alas, Where She Went by Gayle Forman did not live up to my expectations. It was barely a story, just a piece for the fans.

And the one that made me angry...

If you want to really, really, really have me ranting about you, the best way to do it is to mess up a Historical detail, one so obvious that you could find it out on Wikipedia. So, Raven Queen by Pauline Francis, this one goes to you, for destroying a moment in history so badly, I nearly threw the book across the room.

Of course, I have to have an overall winner of awesomeness, with a big shiny star, a special place on my shelf and my shoving copies in everyone's faces. This year, that award goes to...

Plain Kate by Erin Bow 

Yup, this one is my favourite this year! I cried with sadness, happiness, every emotion at the awesomeness of this book! You should go read it. Now. It has a talking cat in it. Go buy it.

Review of Settling by Shelley Workinger

At the beginning of the summer, Clio Kaid was one of a hundred teens brought to a secret Army installation. But it was no ordinary camp and they weren't ordinary kids...

Picking up where "Solid" left off, Clio and the others have stayed on campus to get answers about the C9x experiment and its effect on them. But someone doesn't want them there and will do anything to drive them away - even kill.

Super-abilities continue to evolve, more secrets come out, and friendships will be tested as the teens continue SETTLING

~Add To Your Goodreads Shelf~ 

I reviewed the first book, Solid, a few months ago and I quite enjoyed it, so when Shelley asked me if I would like to review Settling I happily accepted. I was quite curious to know what had happened to all my characters after what had happened in Solid, find out more about their strange abilities and find out if new characters would be introduced. Plus, I wanted to see if the plot would be stronger, as I found the ending of Solid a little bit too cheesy for my tastes!

The plot in Settling is a little different for Solid, focusing on the group 'Settling' in and becoming used to their powers. Calliope, our main character, has almost found her feet in the strange little world the kids and the Government have built for themselves when she discovers a new killer – and some new powers too. The pacing felt much slower to me, and it took me a couple of weeks to finish the book (compared to around a book a day). I think this was due to boredom, almost. It takes a while for the first murder to occur, and whilst we're waiting for that, the characters are just getting on with their day to day life, which, as great as it was to see them again,seemed to get almost a bit similar after a while.

A particular highlight for me was the introduction to two new characters to the main group, Rae and Xavier. I felt that I could have got to know Xavier better, but I liked Rae a lot, she fitted in with the group really quickly and always seemed like a little ray of sunshine to me. I think she may have been a better choice of main character than Calliope, who, after about the half way point, started to get on my nerves for various reasons. I understood that she was acting like a total b**ch, she didn't need to tell me about it all the time! Unfortunately, Calliope's better half Jack wanders behind the scenes for the majority of the book, popping up every so often so we don't forget about him! But how could I forget about Jack? He's like the male version of Bliss, really sweet and considerate.

Although it took me a while to finish this, I enjoyed this sequel much more than Solid, and I felt that the ending was a little bit stronger too. There was much better character development and I felt that I could remember the characters easier than I did in Solid, because their personalities were much stronger. I loved the sudden twist in the tale.

 5/5

Review of Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan

What if you were bound for a new world, about to pledge your life to someone you'd been promised to since birth, and one unexpected violent attack made survival—not love—the issue?

Out in the murky nebula lurks an unseen enemy: the New Horizon. On its way to populate a distant planet in the wake of Earth's collapse, the ship's crew has been unable to conceive a generation to continue its mission. They need young girls desperately, or their zealous leader's efforts will fail. Onboard their sister ship, the Empyrean, the unsuspecting families don't know an attack is being mounted that could claim the most important among them...

Fifteen-year-old Waverly is part of the first generation to be successfully conceived in deep space; she was born on the Empyrean, and the large farming vessel is all she knows. Her concerns are those of any teenager—until Kieran Alden proposes to her. The handsome captain-to-be has everything Waverly could ever want in a husband, and with the pressure to start having children, everyone is sure he's the best choice. Except for Waverly, who wants more from life than marriage—and is secretly intrigued by the shy, darkly brilliant Seth.

But when the Empyrean faces sudden attack by their assumed allies, they quickly find out that the enemies aren't all from the outside. 

~Add To Your Goodreads Shelf~ 

I've put off reviewing this for a while as I was just so disappointed by the main character. I loved the world that Waverly and Co. lived in, I loved Kieran and hated Seth (in a good way) but I really really hated Waverly. She was just so.. ergh.

Let's concentrate on the good points first. This is definitely one for fans of Across the Universe and the plotline is bit richer too, much more action. I couldn't guess some of the twists and turns, which I thought was pretty awesome and I really felt the boys, who were left behind after the girls were kidnapped. I wasn't expecting Christianity to pop up at all, and when it did I was pleasantly surprised, it fitted in well the overall story. The idea of having two identical ships was a pretty clever one too.

Kieran has got to be the first male character in a book that I loved, I usually prefer the girls. He went through a whole bunch of crap from Seth, who seems to think he can run the ship better than the captain's favourite. When Kieran finally gets some control over the ship, he uses the Bible verses to keep morale up and connect the inhabitants of the ship together.

However, stuff that Waverly does at the end of the book really grated on my nerves (unfortunately I can't mention them due to spoilers). I understand that she'd been through a lot but there was no reason to act like a total bitch to everyone. Other girls had gone through the same thing as her and worse.

Throw in a cliffhanger at the end and I'm left thinking that I'm going to have to put up with Waverly's whining even more in the sequel, just so I can read about Kieran's story.

3/5

Received free from Macmillan in exchange for an honest review

Review of Happy Birthday To Me by Brian Rowe

Seventeen-year-old Cameron Martin has a huge problem: he’s aging a whole year of his life with each passing day!

High school is hard enough; imagine rapidly aging from seventeen to seventy in a matter of weeks, with no logical explanation, and with prom, graduation, and the state championship basketball game all on the horizon. That’s what happens to Cameron, a popular pretty boy who's never had to face a day looking anything but perfect.

All Cameron wants to do is go back to normal, but no one, not even the best doctors, can diagnose his condition. When he finds love with a mysterious young woman, however, he realizes his only hope for survival might be with the one person who started his condition in the first place...

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I'd seen this one around a lot a few months ago so when I got an opportunity to review it, I jumped at the chance. A story about someone who ages a year every day? Sounds fantastic! It was just as good as I hoped too – the narrative is simple but effective, the plot runs along smoothly and not too slowly (or too fast!) and the ending nearly made me cry. Nearly! I enjoyed watching the different characters develop and change throughout, which strangely enough doesn't happen that often in YA books. Cameron had the most development of course, mentally as well physically. He started off as a typical jock, pretending it was his birthday just to get free cake and as the story progressed went from one extreme to the other – learning the error of his ways and trying to make changes to getting violently drunk and crashing his Prom.

The characters in this were all rather odd. Wes, Cameron's friend was about the most normal, as well as Ryan, Cameron's teammate, whereas the rest of them seem to get Cameron in some pretty bizarre situations. I feel the need to mention Cameron's father in particular here. Oh my gosh, what on Earth was going on with him? The things he tried to do to Cameron were unrealistic and highly unbelievable, yet all the rest of the story seemed believable (believe it or not), and that made him even weirder. Then there was THAT situation with Cameron's mother and I don't even want to get into a conversation about what happened with his teacher (Water For Elephants anyone?). Weird.

One thing in particular I loved was the chapter headers, each telling you how old Cameron's age was at that time. So if it'd been a couple of days, you'd know pretty quickly. All in all this is a fantastically fun book and I can't wait to read the even more bizarre sounding sequel, Happy Birthday to Me Again – plus the third part, Happy Birthday to You is now available as of the 4^th December!

5/5

Review of A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

This is an extraordinarily moving novel about coming to terms with loss. 

The monster showed up just after midnight. As they do. But it isn’t the monster Conor’s been expecting. He’s been expecting the one from his nightmare, the nightmare he’s had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments, the one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming. . . .
This monster, though, is something different. Something ancient, something wild. And it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor.

It wants the truth. 

Patrick Ness spins a tale from the final story idea of Siobhan Dowd, whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it herself. Darkly mischievous and painfully funny, A Monster Calls is an extraordinarily moving novel about coming to terms with loss from two of our finest writers for young adults.

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Patrick Ness brings us Siobhan Dowd's last idea, a simple story about a boy called Conor, and takes us through the stages of grief as he slowly comes to terms with his mother's illness. I can strongly relate to Conor - I was 16 when my mother died of Multiple Sclerosis. It was a pretty horrible time and Conor's truth is something I can relate to - but I didn't feel guilty about it. I think Conor's age (14 I believe) may have something to do with why he feels so guilty, although 14 and 16 is a relatively small age gap, it's pretty huge in terms of mental development. 

The curse of the hype - it gets to us all. There was so much hype surrounding this book, that I eagerly bought a copy, and read it with a lot of anticipation, waiting to be moved to tears when I got to the end. Only... that didn't happen. And now I'm left with a sort of 'is that it?' feeling. Don't get me wrong, the ending was beautifully sad, the drawings were as wild and destructive as Conor's monster, everything was perfect. But I was just waiting for more. The story itself is exactly what I expected. Simple, yet full of mystery until we get to that final chapter, the ending we've all been waiting for. I found the ending painfully obvious and spent a lot of the book waiting and hoping for a twist in the tale. 

Altogether, the book really pulled me in and kept me reaidng from the beginning right to the very end which is pretty impressive, even for a short book. I do wish there would have been stronger character development, particularly Conor's father who was the most stereotypical character in the book. The illustrations are much stronger than the actual story which I'm not sure is a good thing but they were pretty amazing! If you buy this for any reason, buy it for the illustrator.

4/5