31 posts tagged “the 100+ challenge”
Finished Perfect Fifths by Megan McCafferty for the Numbers Challenge.
It's the fifth (and, according to the author, final) book in the saga about Jessica Darling and Marcus Flutie.
This is possibly the only series that I've been reading since the first book came out, and I'm really sad to see it end. (I am, however, pretty happy with the way it ended.)
Anyway, Jessica and Marcus (another couple in the tortured love category) run into each other--literally--in the airport. Much talking ensues. (Much anxiousness on my part also ensues. Will they finally, FINALLY! get it together?)
I can't really explain (at least based on this book) why I love the Jessica Darling books so much. I think the best I can say (and it's a blurb from someone else) is that it's Judy Blume meets Dorothy Parker. And how can you not love that combination?
So yeah, I'm hoping that Megan McCafferty changes her mind.
Finished The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton for the Just4thehelluvit Challenge.
I read her other book, The House at Riverton, and really enjoyed it. This one was even better.
It takes place in three different times and focuses on four different women.
Nell learns on her 21st birthday that she's not who she thought she was. Her parents actually adopted her after her father found her wandering alone on the docks where he works. She was abandoned on a ship headed for Australia. Most of the book is Nell (and later her granddaughter, Cassandra) trying to solve the mystery of who Nell's parents are.
The other two women in the story are Rose and Eliza. Rose is Nell's mother and Eliza is the woman who abandoned her on the ship.
This is a very Gothic story (lots of long-hidden secrets and whatnot) so if you like tales like that, I think you'd love this book about as much as I do. :)
Finished Girl Meets God by Lauren F. Winner for the New Author Challenge.
This book was an impulse buy, but I'm so glad I got it. I loved the title (bet you can't guess why) but it was so amazing.
Lauren became an Orthodox Jew in college (she grew up Jewish, but Jewish law holds that you're not really Jewish if your mom isn't one, because it's passed down through the mother), but not long after (a few years at most), she starts to feel a sort of pull toward Jesus and so she converts to Christianity. I'm deliberately not going to say much, because it's so good and I know there's no way I can do it justice. It's funny and smart and thought-provoking.
I absolutely want to read more of her books.
Finished Deadline by Chris Crutcher for the New Author Challenge.
I did really enjoy this one. It's about a teenage boy who learns that he has roughly one year to live (he has some sort of blood disease). Treatment is possible, but it won't fix the problem; at best, it will just buy him a few more months.
He's 18, so he decides to skip the treatment and just live his life as best he can for however long he has left.
He starts playing football and he starts talking to the girl he's got a huge crush on. He starts arguing with teachers and he begins a project to get a street in his town named after Malcolm X.
You know how the book will end the whole time, but it's not as sad as it would be if it were written by, say, Laurie Halse Anderson.
Finished Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin for the New Author Challenge.
This was about a teenage girl who died suddenly. Apparently heaven is a place where you live your life in reverse sort of (as in, if you died when you were 16, you are in heaven for 16 years, aging backward, and then you get to be reincarnated). And it's about how she adjusts to that.
It was entertaining enough, but I don't remember that much about it, honestly.
Finished Jesus in the Margins by Rick McKinley for the New Author Challenge.
This was a birthday present, and was much appreciated. I'm still trying to figure out what (if anything) I believe, and this was a really interesting book and not unlike Blue Like Jazz.
The idea is that a lot of times, people feel like they need to be perfect to be sort of accepted by God and Jesus, and that sometimes they won't start going to church until they feel ready to get their lives together. But Rick McKinley posits that it isn't necessary to do that, because Jesus has never been about only being around the "good" people. He befriended a prostitute, remember?
So the idea is that Jesus' whole point, almost, was to reach out to the people who needed Him and not just the people who were the best people around.
Very interesting; I'd like to read more of his books.
Finished Long Lost by Harlan Coben for the Pub Challenge.
I've loved his books for years now, and this was another good one (although I thought the ending was a little weak).
This was another of his Myron Bolitar series, which I'm not as familiar with. General gist: Myron gets a call from an ex inviting him to Paris for basically a no strings attached weekend of naked fun. He says no 'cause he's dating someone but things sort of fall apart there, so he figures that Paris is sounding better and better all the time.
Except in Paris, we learn that the woman's ex-husband has been killed and that there's a chance that her daughter (who died in a car crash when she was little) may not be dead after all.
Really fun; I read most of it on the plane to Arizona. Like I said, I wasn't a huge fan of the ending, but the rest of the book was good enough that I didn't really care as much as I otherwise may have.
Finished If I Stay by Gayle Forman for the New Author Challenge.
This is getting quite a bit of buzz in the YA community because (among other things), it's one of Catherine Hardwicke's next projects. She directed this movie, you may have heard of it...Twilight?
But there's also buzz because it's this amazing, heartbreaking book. And I'm just glad that I didn't read it right after The Book Thief, because I would not be able to handle two sad books in a row like that.
Anyway, it's about Mia, who is in a car accident with her parents and brother. They die; she is in a coma. She has to decide whether to live or die. And the book is the hospital mixed with her life up to that point, and it's just amazing.
This is another one of those books where I seriously want to grab people and make them read it. Every character in the book is incredibly real and they all seem like people you know (which, of course, makes it even more heartbreaking).
Finished The Book of Lies by Brad Meltzer for the Celebrate the Author Challenge.
This is one of those books that's hard to describe. Here's the general gist: You've all heard of Superman, right? Well, the kid who created Superman did it partly (or mostly) because his father was killed in a robbery gone bad (this is actually true, according to the author note).
Here's where the fiction comes in. He was killed because he knew something about the Book of Lies, which may or may not be related to the mark of Cain. (Apparently the Bible never says exactly how Cain killed Abel, and some believe that the murder weapon may have been a book.)
Very entertaining, although it took me a long time to get into it. I'd compare it to The Da Vinci Code, except better written (although the secret isn't quite as good). Still, it's an interesting departure from his usual genre (political thrillers).
Finished Story of a Girl by Sara Zarr for the Just4thehelluvit Challenge.
Really good book and it's a National Book Award finalist, according to the bright silver circle on its cover.
It's about Deanna, who has been branded the school slut for one incident that happened a couple years ago. (She was 13 and having sex with a high school boy. Her dad caught them.)
Since then, the boy (Tommy) has told everyone at school, so she's basically harassed and teased every day. AND since it happened, her dad can barely look at or talk to her.
I just felt awful for her because wow, can you imagine your whole life changing because of one stupid mistake you made when you were 13? (And of course nothing happened to the gross high school boy who had sex with someone who was barely a teenager.)
