Transparent by Natalie Whipple (review)

Paperback, 368 pages
Expected publication: May 21st 2013 by HarperTeen
Source: Edelweiss

Synopsis:
Plenty of teenagers feel invisible. Fiona McClean actually is.

An invisible girl is a priceless weapon. Fiona’s own father has been forcing her to do his dirty work for years—everything from spying on people to stealing cars to breaking into bank vaults.

After sixteen years, Fiona’s had enough. She and her mother flee to a small town, and for the first time in her life, Fiona feels like a normal life is within reach. But Fiona’s father isn’t giving up that easily.

Of course, he should know better than anyone: never underestimate an invisible girl.

Review:

Natalie Whipple’s YA debut novel is quite a strong one. I enjoyed it. It certainly presents an interesting new premise. Before I started the novel, I thought the invisibility thing was something she could turn on and off so I was a happily surprised when I realized that Fiona McClean is invisible all the time. Even to herself. This may have been the first time I have encountered an invisible protagonist.

The set up is intriguing: a mob boss’s daughter in a world where “special skills” are common, running so her father cannot exploit her invisibility and use her in his war with the other mob bosses. A mother who is addicted to her father who is really satan’s spawn. Nothing soft about this man. More on this later. She finds herself in a new town, meeting new friends and two brothers. I have a soft spot for books that take time to build relationships between family members. I also like it when the romance is not the cheap kind (the insta-love, I mean) and is accorded attention and given time. Cohere. However, I have some complaints about that so more on that later.

I thought that removing the body from the girl would perhaps give us a chance to see a narrative without discussion of beauty and physicality. However, if anything, this magnified the issue and Whipple does Fiona’s desire to see herself very well. I felt her yearning to see what colour her hair is and what her eyes look like – things we take for granted but are actually impossible for her. The pacing is fast and the writing is smooth. There are no awkward transitions and I like the flow of the narrative from one scene to another.

The climax, however, could have done with more work though I appreciate that for once, there was no grand forgiveness scene; sometimes parents suck and it’s totally okay to tell them that they do and no child has to forgive a parent when the parents actions are beyond atrocious and YA novels should probably stop perpetuating that ideal of parents as flawed but ultimately redeemable. Yes, I have an issue with that but we’ll discuss it some other day.

So this book, you guys, it was fun. Entertaining. There were two things I had issues with though:

1. I thought the girl friend and her family were too welcoming and friendly. There needed to be more in the way of their motives. Some explanation. I believe in goodness, I truly do, but that kind of goodness is suspicious. Everyone’s looking out for number one. Maybe I’m just cynical?
2. This is a spoiler so avert your eyes.
   I wondered how Whipple would address Fiona’s invisibility where the romance was concerned. I thought it was amazing that the dude, even though he couldn’t see her, had fallen for her and it made me feel all kinds of tingles realizing that. However, in the end we find out that he had been able to see her all along. That was his skill and it was disappointing. It was even more concerning however when Fiona mentions that having him see her made her feel complete, as in, his recognition of her physical person made her feel complete. I would have liked to see Fiona come to that realization, that state of feeling, without a man helping her. Her reaching the point where she was self-actualized, assertive and confident of her own existence would have had more impact had she found the feelings through her own actions. It would have been more satisfying to see her get there on her own. As it is, all this is doing, albeit unintentionally, is reaffirming patriarchy. And yes, I went there.
   /End spoiler

Do I recommend this book to you? Yes, I do. While it has some troubling aspects, at the heart of it, it is entertaining, fun and dude, it would make such an awesome movie but the movie would probably make the protagonist visible and that would ruin everything. Ah well. I liked the book! I hope you do too.

Parallel by Lauren Miller (review)

Hardcover, 432 pages
Expected publication: May 14th 2013 by HarperTeen
Source: Edelweiss

Synopsis:
Abby Barnes had a plan. The Plan. She’d go to Northwestern, major in journalism, and land a job at a national newspaper, all before she turned twenty-two. But one tiny choice—taking a drama class her senior year of high school—changed all that. Now, on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, Abby is stuck on a Hollywood movie set, miles from where she wants to be, wishing she could rewind her life. The next morning, she’s in a dorm room at Yale, with no memory of how she got there. Overnight, it’s as if her past has been rewritten.

With the help of Caitlin, her science-savvy BFF, Abby discovers that this new reality is the result of a cosmic collision of parallel universes that has Abby living an alternate version of her life. And not only that: Abby’s life changes every time her parallel self makes a new choice. Meanwhile, her parallel is living out Abby’s senior year of high school and falling for someone Abby’s never even met.

As she struggles to navigate her ever-shifting existence, forced to live out the consequences of a path she didn’t choose, Abby must let go of the Plan and learn to focus on the present, without losing sight of who she is, the boy who might just be her soul mate, and the destiny that’s finally within reach.

Review:

 

Reading this novel is like turning into a yoyo. You are up and then you are down and then you are dizzy and then your head is spinning and you are not aware whether you are standing up or sitting down. Or if you are in fact upside down. These things happen.

If you are familiar with chaos theory (which I am not) and know anything about The Butterfly Effect (Wikipedia helps), you will know that according to it, a small action could have drastic consequences later on. For example, if you are sitting in class one day and realized that you had lost your eraser but instead of asking the person sitting beside you for one, you decide to just cross out the word or whatever and continue with your work. Seemingly harmless, yeah? Now consider this, if you had asked the person for the eraser and struck up a conversation with them, you may have become friends and that person could have introduced you to his father who was one of the interviewers at the university you wished to go to. And had you met the father, you would have been more comfortable at the interview which would have led you to passing the interview and getting accepted, graduating with honors, becoming say a doctor and saving thousands of lives. All because you asked for an eraser.

With me so far?

Okay, Parallel, truthfully, it confused the heck out of me for the first third. I am not scientifically-inclined to begin with and I just couldn’t  place myself in the narrative so I took a break. A long break. So long that I almost didn’t come back to it but I did and I am so glad I did because this book is kind of awesome. Still confusing and not perfect, but original and interesting.

There is some kind of collision between two universes and Abby gets displaced or something like that – this is the hazy part. The parallel world is one year behind the “real world” and somehow all the actions of her parallel self affect Abby in the real world. I think. Let’s go with that. So the chapters are alternate usually from high school parallel Abby to Yale Freshman Abby. But the “real” Abby is actually a movie star. Yikes. Anyways.

The pacing is steady and the writing is unproblematic. The mechanics are unclear but that could just be me. I liked seeing  how the high school Abby’s decisions affected Freshman Abby in the future. That was the fascinating part.

There is a love triangle and it was handled rather clumsily but still, there are two separate Abbys and so two different soulmates and just…I’m getting confused again. I did like the friendship between the best friends, warts and all.

I think you need to read this book for yourself. It’s certainly different and other people may articulate their reviews with greater eloquence than I seem to have the capacity for. I enjoyed the novel mostly though I wasn’t a fan of the waffling. I thought the ending was a bit too neat and too smug, if that makes sense, but that didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the novel as a whole. Recommended.

The Rules (Project Paper Doll #1) by Stacey Kade (review)

Hardcover, 416 pages
Expected publication: April 23rd 2013 by Disney-Hyperion
Source: Net Galley

Synopsis:
1. Never trust anyone.

2. Remember they are always searching.

3. Don’t get involved.

4. Keep your head down.

5. Don’t fall in love.

Five simple rules. Ariane Tucker has followed them since the night she escaped from the genetics lab where she was created, the result of combining human and extraterrestrial DNA. Ariane’s survival—and that of her adoptive father—depends on her ability to blend in among the full-blooded humans in a small Wisconsin town, to hide in plain sight at her high school from those who seek to recover their lost (and expensive) “project.”

But when a cruel prank at school goes awry, it puts her in the path of Zane Bradshaw, the police chief’s son and someone who sees too much. Someone who really sees her. After years of trying to be invisible, Ariane finds the attention frightening—and utterly intoxicating. Suddenly, nothing is simple anymore, especially not the rules…

Review:

Ooh, I liked this book. There are some books (and authors) who are very clear on what they are trying to achieve and they aim for that without getting derailed or distracted by anything else that might crop up during the process of writing. I loved the tense atmosphere Kade creates, this sense of impending doom when the bad guys find Ariane and return her to that room in the laboratory. It’s always present and there were moments when I screamed at Ariane to not do whatever she was going to do because I didn’t want her to be caught. Yes, I get caught up in the books I read.

Ariane herself is a believable character. It’s not exactly something I can correctly articulate. There’s this “otherness” to her, in the way she observes things, reacts to them and then mulls over them. She is something other than human but at the same time she is just a teenage girl trying to find herself no matter what species she is (or is not). The novel is told from two different perspectives with alternating chapters. Zane, when we first meet him, is not someone any sane girl would like to know. He is a follower, the Mean Girl’s most loyal supporter but what I appreciated was that Kade takes our initial perspective of the dude and then changes it by showing us more about him, growing him as a character. And while Ariane does not change as dramatically, there is change in her character as she finds out things and experiences more emotions and love than she ever thought was possible for her.

Two things I did have trouble with though were:

a)      Jenna. Ariane’s so-called best friend. She’s not a very good friend and while Kade does try to give us something more than just a superficial explanation of her horribleness, I think we needed to see some scenes of the two girls together to properly appreciate what the friendship meant to Ariane.

b)      The Mean Girl. Okay, I  buy her mean-girlery and even understand that she uses power in the only venue available to her – power that she doesn’t have over her parents. It’s her sick way of feeling better about being basically abandoned by her own parents. I get that. But the ending is a bit too fast. I don’t know, I needed a bit more.

All that said however, this book is fun, entertaining and contains a twist that I didn’t see coming. It manages to be fresh and engaging without regurgitating tired plot devices. I strongly recommend it.

Unremembered – Jessica Brody (Unremembered #1)

Hardcover, 320 pages
Expected publication: March 5th 2013 by Farrar, Straus, & Giroux (BYR)
Source: Net Galley

Synopsis:
The only thing worse than forgetting her past… is remembering it.

When Freedom Airlines flight 121 went down over the Pacific Ocean, no one ever expected to find survivors. Which is why the sixteen-year-old girl discovered floating among the wreckage—alive—is making headlines across the globe.

Even more strange is that her body is miraculously unharmed and she has no memories of boarding the plane. She has no memories of her life before the crash. She has no memories period. No one knows how she survived. No one knows why she wasn’t on the passenger manifest. And no one can explain why her DNA and fingerprints can’t be found in a single database in the world.

Crippled by a world she doesn’t know, plagued by abilities she doesn’t understand, and haunted by a looming threat she can’t remember, Seraphina struggles to piece together her forgotten past and discover who she really is. But with every clue only comes more questions. And she’s running out of time to answer them.

Her only hope is a strangely alluring boy who claims to know her from before the crash. Who claims they were in love. But can she really trust him? And will he be able to protect her from the people who have been making her forget?

From popular young adult author, Jessica Brody comes a mesmerizing and suspenseful new series, set in a world where science knows no boundaries, memories are manipulated, and true love can never be forgotten.

Review:

The premise of this novel is not original – amnesia seems to be affecting quite a number of YA protagonists – but the characterization of the main character in all her blank glory reads far more authentically than others. Violet is like a blank slate – I am not certain she is even human. Who she is, what she is, where she is from – these are questions that seem to have no answers to her. It is more than amnesia that affects her, however. Violet doesn’t seem to know anything. Not hugs, not macaroni and cheese, nothing. She is a blank slate and Brody does a fantastic job in portraying that.

The novel is compulsively readable with a rapid pace and sequences with high tension and danger. There are men in black trying to capture Violet and a strange boy who makes Violet feel emotions she doesn’t understand. I thought that the execution of the whole romance portion a bit tired. It didn’t make sense that (spoiler) Violet (aka Sera) would erase not just the boy she purports to love but also the memories of their time together while knowing that the trip they’re planning to take is chockfull of uncertainties and there are no guarantees that things would go as smoothly as they had hoped it would.

Zen has a lot of potential as a character but right now he is limited by his role as a love interest. He is defined by it and he is not rounded as a character with his own dreams, thoughts and desires that exist outside his love for Violet. The plot is very interesting and again, has a lot of space for further development but the latter part of the novel is rushed and the ending, a somewhat cliffhanger, does not answer questions that I really want have answered. Who and what is Sera? Is she human? The manner in which Sera/Violet handles her stepbrother is abrupt and perhaps a bit too neat to suit the story.

While the novel is entertaining, these gaping holes and unanswered questions make for a clunky read with frequent pauses as you try to decipher what’s going on. Perhaps the story will find its rhythm in the second book in the series. For now, I say give it a whirl. It’s not the best one out there, but it is entertaining. You may like it more than I did.

The Mad Scientist’s Daughter – Cassandra Clarke Rose (Review)

Paperback, US, 400 pages
Expected publication: January 29th 2013 by Angry Robot
Source: Net Galley

Synopsis:
The Mad Scientist’s Daughter is the heartbreaking story of the journey from childhood to adulthood, with an intriguing science fictional twist.

There’s never been anyone – or anything – quite like Finn.

He looks, and acts human, though he has no desire to be. He was programmed to assist his owners, and performs his duties to perfection. A billion-dollar construct, his primary task is to tutor Cat.

When the government grants rights to the ever-increasing robot population, however, Finn struggles to find his place in the world.

Review:

This was not an easy novel to read on many accounts. In fact, I still don’t quite know how I feel about it.

The biggest problem I had was the pacing. The novel, instead of occurring within a set of period of time, follows Cat, the titular daughter, from a very young age until she is in her mid-thirties (or so I deduced from the amount of time that had passed). Events occurred and then recurred and things just seemed to go around a circle without any progress being made. It felt that we (the readers) continued to see Cat make mistakes, choose the wrong thing over and over again. This is not to imply that there wasn’t internal progress being made, there was, but it just made for very frustrating reading.

It is fascinating to see the gradual progression of feelings that Cat has for Finn. From feeling revulsion for him to being unable to stop thinking about him to denying she feels anything for him. Her conflict is pretty easy to understand: how can you be in love with a thing, a thing that looks, talks and breathes like a person but at the end of the day, is not a person. A thing that does not have a soul or even a heart or even emotions. How can you feel and love something like that?

The book engages in themes of the meaning of humanity. What does being human mean? What is a human being? These are all questions I think we’ll be grappling with in the future if sentient robots are created. When Finn finds his emotions, learns to think and perhaps to feel, does he cross some boundary and become human? The sex troubled me the most, to be honest. Cat orders him to sleep with her and he does. I wondered whether it was a violation of sorts. Finn cannot really refuse, right? He has to obey and so he does. Is that a violation of his body? What am I supposed to think about Cat who uses him to sate her desire for a man she can never have?

At the climax, after that long (extended) journey through Cat’s lives, being with her as she married the wrong man, made the wrong decisions and mourned the people she loved, seeing her almost within the grasp of happiness is a strange feeling. She has learned a lot, grown from the little girl who thought Finn was a ghost. The novel is strange, clunky and yet all the more readable for it. It asks some very difficult questions and while it doesn’t expect any clear answers, it does expect that you, the reader, will think about the questions it raises. Finn may be a fictional character and his life may be the product of an author’s imagination but there is no guarantee that such a situation will never arise in reality. How will we feel about robots who look, feel and think like humans but aren’t really humans? Can you love something like that? Should you be allowed to? I don’t know. I really don’t.

I think you should read the book. Make up your own mind. Think your own thoughts about it. And then come talk to me about them.

Ghost Planet – Sharon Fisher (review)

Paperback, 352 pages
Expected publication: October 30th 2012 by Tor Science Fiction
Source: Net Galley

Synopsis:

Psychologist Elizabeth Cole prepared for the worst when she accepted a job on a newly discovered world—a world where every colonist is tethered to an alien who manifests in the form of a dead loved one. But she never expected she’d struggle with the requirement to shun these “ghosts.” She never expected to be so attracted to the charming Irishman assigned as her supervisor. And she certainly never expected to discover she died in a transport crash en route to the planet.

As a ghost, Elizabeth is symbiotically linked to her supervisor, Murphy—creator of the Ghost Protocol, which forbids him to acknowledge or interact with her. Confused and alone—oppressed by her ghost status and tormented by forbidden love—Elizabeth works to unlock the secrets of her own existence.

But her quest for answers lands her in a tug-of-war between powerful interests, and she soon finds herself a pawn in the struggle for control of the planet…a struggle that could separate her forever from the man that she loves.

Review:

Sharon Fisher’s Ghost Planet starts out very strongly. While the synopsis does give away the premise of the novel, the initial approach and the manner in which Elizabeth finds out that she is dead are interesting and kept me reading. Elizabeth is initially a very engaging character and her struggle both with herself and with the world are expressed in a very intriguing manner. Elizabeth’s conflict about her identity is easy to relate to – if she is not human, than what is she and how can she be any different when she feels exactly the same as she did before she did? Which brings her to her second struggle – being accepted by the world in which she exists as a person despite not being one in the traditional sense of the word. I don’t think the identity issues are explored to my liking. It felt like there was so much more that could have gone, the depths remained unexplored and my questions about the nature of the aliens were unanswered.

Elizabeth’s struggle for acceptance is interesting because when she had human status, she actively followed in spurning the “ghosts” though having qualms about it. Her gradual realization of the unexpected humanity of the ghosts makes for an interesting read. The earlier parts where Elizabeth is actively working on combating the general idea about ghosts are the strongest in the novel. I felt that the shift towards romance detracted from the entire novel because the focus shift takes away from more important matters. The novel becomes a romance novel than an intriguing scifi novel. The emphasis on the romance was really not necessary and I would have liked it better had the romance been the kind that simmered slowly and not necessarily been an all-consuming passion.

The scientific side of the novel also goes haywire when things inexplicably start happening. That is, it never is explained why ecology and nature reacts so favorably to amiable interaction between ghosts and their partners. I would have liked more information and this issue becoming a larger focus of the narrative but alas, everything is subsumed by the grand passion of the main characters. I was disappointed because I had walked into the book thinking it was a sci-fi with smatterings of romance. Instead, I found a romance novel disguised as a sci-fi thriller. People who go in expecting a romance will not be disappointed at all. It was actually totally my fault for not reading the synopsis more closely. Anyway, in conclusion, romance fans will enjoy this one a lot. Non-romance fans may have trouble with it.

Eve and Adam – Katherine Applegate, Michael Grant (Review)

Hardcover, 304 pages
Expected publication: October 2nd 2012 by Feiwel & Friends
Source: Net Galley

Synopsis:

Sixteen-year-old Evening Spiker lives an affluent life in San Francisco with her mother, EmmaRose, a successful geneticist and owner of Spiker Biotech. Sure, Evening misses her father who died mysteriously, but she’s never really questioned it. Much like how she’s never stopped to think how off it is that she’s never been sick. That is, until she’s struck by a car and is exposed to extensive injuries. Injuries that seem to be healing faster than physically possible.

While recuperating in Spiker Biotech’s lush facilities, she meets Solo Plissken, a very attractive, if off-putting boy her age who spent his life at Spiker Biotech. Like Evening, he’s never questioned anything… until now. Solo drops hints to Evening that something isn’t right, and Emma-Rose may be behind it. Evening puts this out of her mind and begins her summer internship project: To simulate the creation of the perfect boy. With the help of Solo, Evening uncovers secrets so big they could change the world completely.

Review:

I quite liked this for a while. I think up till about 40%, I was enjoying it a lot and then it somehow began to fall apart for me. Here’s the thing, I really like Applegate’s books. I loved Sharing Sam and have read it countless times. I haven’t read anything of Michael Grant but people seem to really like this Gone series so I figured I was in safe hands. And I was, to a large portion, I was.

The concept is really unique and the characterizations are well done. The fractious relationship between Eve and her mother is very intriguing and Solo presents a mystery I would have liked to delve into. I felt that the narrative veered off course when Adam appeared. The world building, too, was not as strong as I would have liked it to be and there is a whisper of more but it remains a whisper and Solo’s vendetta against Evening’s mother goes nowhere.

I was not a fan of the romance in this book. If it had been Solo alone, yeah, but there’s Adam and then there’s some insta-love thrown in. We are basically told who Eve prefers rather than being shown and this detracted a whole lot from the entire story. I felt that the latter part of the narrative is suddenly thrown together and that people who weren’t even present for most of the narrative suddenly are important and the readers are being demanded to accept things that have no basis or given any foundation prior to the reveal. I read something by Patricia C. Wrede the other day where she said that authors have to be careful to not throw readers out of the narrative by flaws in their world building. For me, this occurs during the whole dilemma where if Eve “built” Adam to be her perfect mate, there should have been no way she could have resisted him. If she does resist him, he is not her perfect mate. Know what I mean?

Do I recommend this? It was an okay read but it lacks a coherence (in my opinion) that ties up everything together. If Solo is prepared to go against Eve’s mother, why hasn’t he prepared a place for himself outside the medical facility? Ah, there are many other questions like this one that makes reading this novel a bit of a challenge.

Adaptation – Malinda Lo (Review)

Hardcover, 400 pages
Expected publication: September 18th 2012 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Source: Publisher

Synopsis:

Reese can’t remember anything from the time between the accident and the day she woke up almost a month later. She only knows one thing: She’s different now.

Across North America, flocks of birds hurl themselves into airplanes, causing at least a dozen to crash. Thousands of people die. Fearing terrorism, the United States government grounds all flights, and millions of travelers are stranded.

Reese and her debate team partner and longtime crush David are in Arizona when it happens. Everyone knows the world will never be the same. On their drive home to San Francisco, along a stretch of empty highway at night in the middle of Nevada, a bird flies into their headlights. The car flips over. When they wake up in a military hospital, the doctor won’t tell them what happened, where they are—or how they’ve been miraculously healed.

Things become even stranger when Reese returns home. San Francisco feels like a different place with police enforcing curfew, hazmat teams collecting dead birds, and a strange presence that seems to be following her. When Reese unexpectedly collides with the beautiful Amber Gray, her search for the truth is forced in an entirely new direction—and threatens to expose a vast global conspiracy that the government has worked for decades to keep secret.

Review:

 If you have read the synopsis for this novel, you will understand exactly why it is so intriguing. The mystery it promises reeled me in and I began with the intention of reading a few pages but about two and a half hours later, turned the last page. Lo knows how to tell a story. She knows how to reel a reader in and while Adaptation had some flaws, you have to give credit where it is due.

It is inevitable that I will end up discussing the romance in this novel because of two reasons: one, it is a large portion of the novel and two, it is the weakest part of the novel in my opinion. The love triangle here is inevitable but it is an interesting one because one of the players for our heroine’s affections is a girl. I couldn’t connect to Reese at all and I felt that someone who has such overwhelmingly strong feelings for the boy in her life, falling almost immediately for the next person (regardless of their gender) was a bit unbelievable. The hurricane fast progression of Amber and Reese’s relationship is a bit baffling especially considering that Reese has not even considered liking girls before she met Amber. A bit more caution, a bit more hesitancy on Reese’s part would have made the whole thing a lot more realistic than it ends up being.

The only way I can make myself accept the hurried pace of their relationship is by a bit of theorizing and this will take place under the spoiler tags. (Highlight to read.) Amber is an alien and comes neatly packaged with these supernatural talents which perhaps also includes persuasion. So their relationship may have had genuine seeds but Amber may have used her talents to get the ball rolling and keep Reese entangled, manipulating her emotionally to keep her pliant. This, of course, is supremely icky and I hope I am wrong but well, it makes sense in my head.

David is portrayed a bit too ideally for my taste and he is way too understanding and accepting for it to be realistic. Moving on to the actual narrative, the premise that is unsurprisingly overshadowed by the romance, things are interesting though the entire secret that the book is built on is not really as surprising as I was hoping it would be. And I was surprised how the reason for the plane crash is added in almost as an afterthought.

Despite all my complaints however, I did enjoy the book. It is very readable and Lo shows with eerie precision how helpless ordinary citizens can be when the enemy is the government. When people who are supposed to be working for your good turn around and decide you are expendable, now that is real terror and Lo is uncannily adept at narrating the fear, the terror associated with these instances. I can’t tell you whether to read this book or not, but I can encourage you to make up your own mind about it.