To Be Perfectly Honest

By: Sonya Sones

After the first 100 pages I was super excited to continue with this book.  It was amazing how well the narrator, Colette, would tell a story and then tell you at which point she started lying.  Starting from where she started lying she would continue to tell you her story until she once again told you at which point she was lying.  She continued on like this for the first 100 pages.  These 100 pages were great.  Colette and I could have been talking to me.  This is a novel in verse but was more like a conversation for the first 100 pages.  The next 350 pages or so were not as good.  Colette falls in love with Connor...la la la... things go wrong, what a SURPRISE!!!! How else would the book progress? Basically nothing happened in this book. Colette was in love with Connor and stuff happened between them.  Just like in any other romance.  There is an extremely predictable twist, so maybe just a bend.  The only good thing in this book was Colette's little brother, Will.  Will has a lisp.  My favorite quote of his is "Being a great actor / ith of paramount importanthe when you're / pulling off a thcam of thith magnitude."  He is always saying things that brighten the mood of the book.  Colette, on the other hand, is quite the downer.  A quote to describe her would be "I throw myself / onto my bed / and cry-- / I cry until my eyes are swollen shut."  Interesting right? By this point in the book I really didn't care that she was crying.  I also didn't think this book was that well written.  The only time I thought the format (novel in verse) was used well was "I owe that kid / a truckload / of gummy worms!"  I thought that this captured the way she lied.  She would be saying something but then sort of twist it to mean something else

I would give this book a 2.  One and a half for Will and a half for the predictable yet solid ending.  I would say this book was like a stale cupcake.  Old, overused, and not very good.  But, to be perfectly honest, you can't go completely wrong with sugar, right?

The Clockwork Scarab

By: Coleen Gleason

Two girls are dead and one has gone missing in 1889 London.  The only clues are an Egyptian Scarabs that were found at both the murder scenes. Well, not exactly murder, both deaths were made out to look like suicides.  Mina Holmes, as in Sherlock Holmes's niece, and Evaline Stoker, sister of Bram Stoker (author of Dracula), are called to a secret meeting at the British Museum by Irene Adler.  Stoker and Holmes are called to investigate these series of murders by the Princess of Wales.  Along the way Holmes makes friends with Dylan Eckhert.  Dylan was at the museum looking at the statue of Sekhmet,  and Egyptian  Goddess, when he touched a scarab on the statue.  Next thing he knew, he woke up in 1889 London.  His problems come from the fact that he's from 2016 London.  Miss Holmes also has a rivalry with Lieutenant Grayling, of Scotland Yard.  Miss Stoker runs into a mysterious pick-pocket, Pix (meaning Pixie), a couple times too many to  be a coincidence.

This book had a rather interesting plot but the characters were almost unbearable.  Miss Adler was aptly named after Alfred Adler, a psychologist who studied how an inferiority complex affected development, because both Miss Stoker and Miss Holmes have the most obvious inferiority complexes.  Them having an inferiority complex wasn't exactly the problem.  The problem was that neither of them got over it and they were both competing incessantly.  I doubt there was an entire page from Miss Holme's point of view that didn't say something about her superior powers of deduction.  By the end I was sick of it.  In fact, by the end of the first chapter I was was sick of it and I was pretty sure I would like Miss Stoker better than Miss  Holmes.  Miss Homes's inability to accept the fact that she had to have a partner just got tiresome by the end.  By the end Miss Homes says something about how Miss Stoker had become Evaline, no longer just an acquaintance.  While I was glad that this was true, it would have been better if it hadn't been stated.

Miss Holmes wasn't the only one with problems.  Miss Stoker has a fear of blood, which was one of the reasons for her inferiority complex.  She is supposed to be a vampire hunter but freezes at the sight of blood.  This was established in one of the earlier chapters but continued to be reinforced throughout the entire book.  In one of the final scenes, surprise surprise, Miss Stoker froze at the sight of blood.  At the beginning, I saw this as a way to develop Miss Stoker's character.  By the end I just saw it as an annoying handicap.  At the beginning I expected Miss Stoker to learn to overcome it somehow.  It could have been used as a way of connecting Miss Holmes and Miss Stoker or just a personal victory for Miss Stoker.  Because nothing was done about this problem I don't see how it was used.  Maybe this problem will be resolved in the next book.

Another frustrating problem with the book was how they played out gender roles.  The book did and exceptional job painting how gender roles were at this time period.  My problem was how focused Miss Stoker and Miss Holmes were on them.  I understand that they were trying to prove the stereotypes wrong, but, at some point, I felt like their focused should have shifted a little more towards actually solving the mystery since that was what was actually needed solving.  Despite this, I did enjoy how Miss Stoker and Pix played out.  It was extraordinarily predictable, but still funny.

Although I found many of the characters quite annoying I thoroughly enjoyed Dylan Echert's character.  Although, my fear is that I enjoyed his character because you don't find out that much about his character.  He was one of the only ones that didn't really show that he pitied himself.  Naturally, he wanted to get back to his own time, yet he still tried to help Miss Holmes and Miss Stoker.  He seemed to be the only one to grow in this book.  He started out wallowing in the basement where he transported back in time and in the end he turned out to be quite clever.  I also enjoyed his iPhone.  His everyday, our 21st century, problems were interesting given that in the book electricity is illegal.  Another good thing about Dylan was how excited he got.  He was one of the few, if not the only, character who showed emotion. He gets especially excited when he finds out who Miss Holmes and Miss Stoker are.  Like anyone would today, he recognized their names.

I also enjoyed Pix's and Lieutenant Grayling's characters.  They were a little more complex than either Miss Stoker or Miss Holmes.  The book needed to get to know Pix, Grayling, and Dylan better because they were the only characters with any depth.

I would give this book a 3 because it had an interesting plot and a couple interesting characters.  There wasn't that much to this book but it was still very interesting.  This book was like chocolate covered cranberries.  They're pretty good and the cranberries have a good flavor, but the chocolate is cheap and rather than melting in your mouth it crumbles in your mouth.  Even though they're not great you decide to keep eating them.  The more you eat the better they taste.  You can't wait for the next cranberry -- despite the book's downfalls, I'm looking forward to the next one.

YA Covers - The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

Here at YA Galley we have very strong opinions about book covers. They matter. A lot. A good cover beckons the reader, and is also an indication of how much value the publisher places on the novel. We are more likely to pick up an book that has a  great cover with engaging art and high quality printing.

We spent our meeting this week looking at recent galley covers and discussing what we liked, and what we didn't like. 

Good

Covers on the right were simple, had good color schemes, a focus on one object, weren't too overwhelming, had contrasting colors, no faces, depth, and a smooth font.  

Bad

Covers on the left had people posing, which included girls in long flowing dresses, couples kissing, and half-faces, had garish colors, cheesy bling, and bad illustration.  

We really liked some of the books on the left, but the covers were definitely a detraction. Some of the books with great covers were actually not that wonderful, but the covers were so much more appealing that we were more likely to give them a try. Publishers, how about student review groups for cover art?

Conjured

by Sarah Beth Durst

Eve is a girl placed in a special witness protection program that concentrates on people like her who can do magic.  They protect her and other strong magic-weilders from a mysterious serial killer who has been targeting people like them.  However, Eve cannot use her magic without blacking out and having visions of the Magician and the Storyteller, and she has no memory of her life before the witness protection, except for a few flashes here and there.  Often, when she blacks out, she'll lose days, weeks, or even months of her memories.  All she knows is that she is very important to the people trying to catch the serial killer, and they need her to remember her past.
The plot developed slowly, but not in a bad way.  It took a while to figure out what was going on, but figuring it out was interesting.  The memory loss was done pretty well, and the characters were consistent and distinct.  Three of the characters - Aiden, Topher, and Victoria - struck me as superfluous.  Their main purpose was to push Eve on to discover things, but she could very well have discovered them on her own.  There's also some slight backstory, but it is barely explored, and it is not important enough to merit being mentioned.  If the book had more scope, which I would have liked, then the backstories could have been very interesting and I would have liked these characters a lot more.
The end was extremely rushed.  It happened suddenly, and everything was handed to Eve.  She spent the whole book trying to figure out what was going on, and in the end, it was simply explained to her.  The end scenes were short and happened one after another.  Expanding the end would have made the book more enjoyable and it would have made it possible to expand the scope and include the other characters a little more.  The pacing for most of the book was a slow build-up, and for the end to happen at the rate it did was disappointing.
This book is a 3.  Decent writing, decent plot, decent characters.  It is bread; it is not great, but not bad. It isn't the fresh-out-of-the-oven, homemade, soft-in-the-middle bread - which I think it could have been if it had been written differently - but it is also not the limp, tasteless bread that is better off left uneaten.

Mortal Fire

by Elizabeth Knox

Canny is 16 years old and lives in a world "very like our own" in 1959.  She is a mathematical genius, remembers pretty much everything, and has the unique ability to see "Extra," which she later discovers is part of an intricate magic system that only some can use,
mainly the Zarenes.  The Zarenes are a family that live in Zarene Valley, and Canny stumbles upon them while traveling with her older brother, Sholto, and his girlfriend, Susan, on a research project of the 1929 coal mine explosion that happened near the valley.  The only Zarenes that live in the valley are between five and thirteen, plus Iris, Cyrus, Lealand, and Ghislain.  Canny spends a lot of time wandering around, lying to her brother, and discovering the secrets of the valley and her past.  After quite a lot of this, the end happens.  And it's not because she figures anything out.  It just happens.  Canny comes up with various ways to do what she wants, most of which involve telling her brother somewhat unnecessary lies.  A little deception might be necessary, but the amount of lies she tells is far outweighs this necessity.  Despite being presented as someone who acts and thinks based purely on logic, Canny constantly reacts illogically.  Her interactions with Cyrus made little sense, and I gave up trying to follow her thought processes halfway through the book.  Furthermore, the conversations in the book do not feel like real conversations.  They are exchanges of words between the characters so that they can have interactions. While reading this book, I felt like I did when I read Shakespeare for the very first time.  As you read, you get the general gist of what's going on, usually, but you miss a lot of the individual actions and happenings that make the story feel real.  The author often implied action rather than described them.  Sholto and Susan felt like shells of characters rather than characters with depth.  They acted as Canny or the plot required, and I got little sense of personality from them because it changed so much.  The book also mentioned that Canny and Susan dislike each other, but it was almost impossible to tell this from their actions.  It says they complain about each other a lot, but it only ever tells you that they complain, and it does not show them complaining about each other.
What made the entire book even more disappointing was that it could have been beautiful.  There were some nice parts that could have been wonderful if the book had been written better, but lack of emotional consistency ruined them.  The end would have been so much more poignant if it had been set up.
Overall, the book is a 2.  It is your least favorite flavor of meringue.  The magic and histories were interesting, but the book was a chore to read.  After biting into a meringue, it dissolves away in your mouth.  After reading passages of the book, you have to let them dissolve within your head and just keep on reading.  It is not an action-packed book, it is a wandering book.  There is lots of air and less substance than I would like.

The Flame in the Mist

by Kit Grindstaff
This book was published in April 2013

        I was looking for some magic and fantasy so I picked up The Flame in the Mist. The cover was well done and it seemed to reek of magic. So far so good. I launched into Jemma's world where she and her family live in a castle and rule over the land. They love to eat rotten food and spoiled milk, and every week make an offering to Mordrake and Mordrana, their family ancestors. Using magic they summon up evil things like bats, spiders, and monsters. However Jemma hates the weekly ceremonies and falters at doing anything evil. Obviously, she is different.

        I read one fourth of the book before I skipped to the last page, read the last paragraph, and declared the book finished.

        The plot moves a bit too quickly and awkwardly, using sleeping, escaping, and sneaking around heavily and repetitively in the plot. Too repetitively. In the first 24 hours of the book Jemma sleeps four times, sneaks around more than that, and attempts escape three times. This is essentially the first 100 pages of the book with 450 more pages to go. You might see now why I didn't finish it. Stephanie agrees with me although she was able to finish it.

       However, I think that this book has a place where it can find success. Middle schoolers and below will probably be more forgiving of the errors I find glaring and sympathize better with Jemma, who is 13. They won't find it immature and more they will be more likely to glaze over the oddly repetitive, shallow bits.

       Since I didn't enjoy this book I rate it a 2. I think a younger audience would give it a 3 or slightly higher. If this book were a food, it would be candy dots. Were they actually that good when I was young? I don't think so, but I also didn't care. Older teens and adults know to spend money on something else.

Beautiful Decay

by: Sylvia Lewis

This book has a pretty good start.  Ellie is a girl that seems to make everyone she touches sick.  She has no friends and she's fine with that.  Then a new kid, Nate, comes.  They becomes friends, as you might have guessed.  Then Nate tells Ellie that there are more people like her and that she actually works with life.  He works with death which is why he knows about this.  Everything is going well until things happen with Nate's family -- his father worked in a secret organization of these special people.  Then the end comes and is rather silly.  The book was doing pretty will with the viviomancer-necromancer thing but then this secret organization ends up being pretty stupid.

This book is a 2.5 .  It had a good potential but the characters and plot weren't complex enough.  It was too simple.  It was sort of like a souffle that is growing and growing but then because the baker forgot to add something it simply collapses back in on itself.