What We Saw at Night and What We Lost in the Dark

By: Jacquelyn Mitchard

I decided to review these two books together because the plots were so closely linked.  It would have been hard to review the second one in a separate review from the first one.  First, I just want to say that I think the covers are absolutely beautiful.  I think the silhouettes and the colors are really pretty. I also think that the the number of silhouettes on each cover is interesting to think about after reading the books.

















 The idea behind these books is that there is a genetic disease called XP, which is basically a fatal allergy to the sun along with other symptoms.  Most people with XP die young.  As a result the three characters in the first book Allie, Juliet, and Rob decide that they don't want to miss out on life and do things that push the limit of existence.  In What We Saw at Night, they learn parkour (this is the first one).  However.  What the book is really about is a serial killer.  Allie, the main character, sees this man with a blonde streak through his hair several times with a dead girl in his hands.  Allie makes it her mission to find out more about this man.  Even though Rob and Juliet don't see the man they believe her even though many people don't.  The second book has a lot to do with what happens at the end of the first one.  What We Lost in the Dark focuses more on the relationship between Rob and Allie, which starts in the first, and Allie's effort to catch the Serial Killer from the first.

Overall, I would give the duology a 2.3.  However, individually each book would be very different.  The first book would probably be a 1.35.  It had some good points to it but some bad as well.  It had an interesting idea but everything worked out just a little too nicely.  Everything went just a tad too fluently for the serial killer.  Also, I didn't feel very connected with the characters.  I felt removed from the book.  It was as if I was watching someone read it rather than actually reading it myself.  Also, whenever something more fast paced happened I found the writing confusing.  Even after reading the passage two or three times I still would be confused.  However, What We Lost in the Dark was much better.  I would give it a 3.25.  I found the characters more interesting and the plot was a little more clear.  The first one lacked direction and the second one didn't.  That being said, the climax of the second, which was the climax of the duology, was sort of anticlimactic.  It just sort of happened and then it was over.  And then the book was over.  This book was like somebody else's strawberry short cake.  It has the potential to be fantastic, light, fluffy, and delicious, but, unfortunately for you, someone else is eating it.  The strawberry short cake's potential is just out of your reach.

Allies and Assassins

by Justin Somper


When Anders dies, his younger brother, Jared, who is only sixteen, must take his place as Prince of All Archenfield.  Most of the plot is focused on catching Anders’s assassin, and Jared befriends Asta, the physician’s niece and apprentice, as they attempt to crack the case together.  Jared doesn’t know where to begin, inexperienced as he is, and he is unsure which members of his council he can trust.
Despite his constant self-doubt as well as other characters pointing out his youth, I found most of the other characters to be much more naive than Jared.  The Twelve, along with the heir to the throne, make up Jared’s council, and they are heads of various jobs including the palace cook, the guard, the beekeeper, and the executioner.  They swallowed false leads with surprising gusto and seemed perfectly content to sit by as people were murdered around them.  Most of them were barely fleshed out, and there were minor character inconsistencies.  The beekeeper, for instance, is introduced as using few words, speaking only when she has something important to say, but later, another character rebukes her by saying that the beekeeper likes listening to her own voice too much.  There were a few characters, such as Jared’s younger brother, that fell by the wayside and half the time I forgot they existed.
Jared also had some character flaws.  He was inconsistent about his feelings toward Axel, the head of the guard, sometimes thinking about how close they were and feeling comfortable in his presence and at other times sure that Axel was going to kill him.  His behavior, as well as Asta’s, can only be described as bumbling at times.  His mistakes would work out half the time, as the plot required, and it got a bit tiresome when his rudimentary tactics brought out convenient answers.
That said, there were parts of the book I enjoyed.  There were some really nice passages, and the plot was, for the most part, fairly engaging.  There were a couple scenes that I think would be better to be left out - they were a little too revealing.  I think the next one in the series might be better because a lot of this book was set-up.
Overall, this is a 3.  There were solid parts but also a lot of parts that made me want to give up on the story and the characters.  It was like a cinnamon raisin bagel.  I love cinnamon and bagels are pretty great (though not as exciting as doughnuts), and this is a genre I enjoy, but some of the plot pieces and characters need to be picked out like raisins or they add an unwanted squish to the taste.

Tim Defender of the Earth

By: Sam Enthoven

Imagine a giant bowl of green Jello.  You find it amusing for no other reason than the way it jiggles back and forth after just a slight tap.  This is sort of how I feel about Tim Defender of the Earth.  It was amusing but I not always because of the actual content of the book.  Sometimes just the idea of what was happening was funny.

Tim Defender of the Earth was a book about a giant dinosaur who British scientists created beneath London.  He learns that he is and ho to be the Defender of the Earth from a giant 9 million year old kraken.  This dinosaur's name is Tim, hence the name of the book.  He defends the Earth from a swarm of nanobots that can genetically modify anything so that they can turn anything into anything else which includes into more nanobots.  There are also two human characters, Chris and Anna.  I just thought I should mention them because they are also sort of important.

This book was very funny and the characters were pretty good, too.  Overall I like the book and it was very entertaining.  It is also a very fun book to talk about because of the overall plot of the book.  This book was a 3.4 star book: solid and entertaining.

Chorus

By Emma Trevayne


This is the sequel to Coda, an intriguing futuristic story about a society that is controlled by addictive music until a boy named Anthem creates his own music and leads a revolution.  Chorus is the story of his younger sister, Alpha, who has moved to Los Angeles and is working hard in school so she can discover a cure to strange and powerful flashbacks that have been haunting her and her twin brother, Omega. There was a lot that bothered me about this book.  There was one of the most pointless deaths I have read (which I won’t expound on to avoid spoilers) as well as a character just being able to guess a super important password, which is something that always bothers me in books.  When setting a password on a top-security system, it’s not going to be something that someone can just guess. However, what bothered me most of all was that the author hid relevant information that the main character knew.  For the first few chapters of the book, Alpha is worried.  But does she say what she’s worried about?  No.  The worry is a primary driving force to Alpha’s character, and the reader is kept in the dark.  The back cover states that “it takes only one call to bring Alpha back to the brother that raised her ... and to the Web.”  And the call comes at the end of the third chapter.  So this is when the reader is finally told what’s bothering Alpha, right?  Wrong.  She and her friends are set into a frenzy, immediately packing up to go back to the Web.  They were clearly all prepared for this and they all know exactly what’s going on, but the reader doesn’t.  It isn’t until almost forty pages in that it’s finally revealed that Anthem is dying.  There were hints - a snippet of dialogue, for instance, but the connection between the call and Anthem’s illness are thin and I only found them when I went back to reread the beginning and was looking for them.  All it would take is one explicit thought of Alpha’s to flesh out her worry and save the reader a lot of confusion.  Maybe this was mentioned at the end of Coda, but I read that a long time ago (when it came out as a galley), and again, all it would have taken is a simple thought and everything would be clear. Because of things like this, the story was difficult to follow at times.  There was a lot of inferring left to the reader, which can be good at sometimes, but it happened way too much in this story.  It made me think in the wrong way - not a thought-provoking thinking, but more of trying to piece the plot together thinking.  The author took the “show don’t tell” a little too far.  It’s one thing to wonder about motivations, secrets, or plot twists, but another thing to wonder about what happened five pages ago.
This book is a 2.  There was nothing especially special about this book and there were too many things that bothered me peppered throughout.  There were some old characters and some new ones.  There were some cheap plot devices, but there were also a few interesting concepts, though nothing that wasn’t done better in Coda.  If Chorus were a food, it would be overly-processed chicken.  The chicken is dependent on packaging to sell itself, and you’re not really sure what you’re eating as you chew.

In the Shadows

by Kiersten White (text) and Jim Di Bartolo (art)

Charles is sick with a disease that doctors cannot cure, so his father sends him to a boardinghouse for fresh air with his brother, Thom.  There, they meet sisters Cora and Minnie as well as another boarder named Arthur.  Together, they delve into secrets left by Arthur’s father that seem to be following Charles and Thom in the form of a group of mysterious strangers.  It struck me as gothic in tone, complete with hidden pasts and witches.

Overall, this book was flat.  It is told in sequences of pictures (done by Jim Di Bartolo) alternated with text chapters (done by Kiersten White), and it seemed as though the authors skimmed over the story like an in-depth summary rather than really digging into it.  The entire time I read it, I felt emotionally detached.  The characters weren’t fleshed out and the depth of plot and world was hinted at rather than explored.

This book is a 2.2.  I’m left with very little to say about it given the lack of feeling I was left with after finishing.  There was some mild confusions over what I had just read.  It was like a cereal bar.  It’s not terrible, but you eat it, you finish it, and you go on with your life.  Eating the cereal bar is barely a blip in the day, which is how I felt about reading this book.  It’s good for a quick read if you need something to use up some time.

The Kiss of Deception 
By Mary E. Pearson
I would recommend for this book trail mix to go along with all of the time they spend on the road.
Lia is a princess and a first daughter in a world where the eldest daughters are always married off often for political gain. Her father has decreed that she is to marry the Prince of Dalbrek , a near by kingdom with which they seek to improve relations. Lia, who has never met this prince and is known for her quick temper, is livid and has no desire to follow tradition and be condemned to an uncertain life not of her choosing, so she takes her fate into her own hands and runs away with only her faithful servant Pauline, but she is pursued. Lia also had two love interests, Rafe and Kaden, who are more then they seem.
I really liked Lia as a character. She didn't complain very much and when she didn't like something she took it into her own hands to change her situation. She is also smart and has a quick temper. She stands up for herself and doesn't rely on other to things for her. At the same time she is very likable and relatable. She reacts realistically to events that happen around her. I also liked the implications about who she is and what power she has, and hope to see where the author takes it in the future. While in the beginning she takes a little warming up to I really enjoyed her as a character. The other characters were enjoyable as well. They were all developed with their own quirks and secrets to be uncovered.
The world itself was also very interesting with its own religion that Lia seems to respect and scorn, as it has governed her whole life. There was a lot of interesting things interspersed throughout the novel, and the author only gives you a taste of the world was a whole leaving some things to be developed later.
While I did love this book over all the one part I did not like as much was the beginning. I felt like it dragged a bit and that it took a while to get to know Lia's character as who she is, not as the princess running away. Overall The book was very strong. I just felt the beginning could have used some improving.
4/5 Stars

Take Back The Skies
By Lucy Saxon 
    To go with this an éclair to pair with the stormy skies.
Take Back The Skies is set in a very original steam-punkesque universe where ships sail through the sky and storms not the ocean is the threat.
Catherine or Cat is a very likable and well rounded main character. She has spunk and independence which is much appreciated. She doesn't let others decide things for her, and she figures things out quickly.
The book starts out with Catherine planning her escape because her father has decided to marry her off, and her mother is dying, so there is nothing keeping her there. We then begin to explore the universe,  as Cat has stowed away on a smuggler's ship.
The universe its self is fascinating with elements of steam punk, dystopia, and fantasy all melded together. In addition the universe is truly original. All to often books seem to fit it to cookie cuter formats with some variation. However this book creates a fun new world.
Its on the ship that we meet the majority of the other characters including the main romantic interest, Fox. All of the characters are fleshed out well and I really liked Fox. He was interesting, funny, and he and Cat take time to like each probably because Cat pretends to be a boy.
The ending and final part of the book is also really interesting because of all the twists that I'm not going to spoil. Its safe to say that you won't see them coming.
While there is another potential romantic interest introduced, Prince James. I appreciate that Cat shows no interest. Also I liked that the characters react very naturally to events that happen.
4/5 Stars
Lucy Saxon Take Back the Skies