The Love That Split the World by Emily Henry
Release Date: January 26, 2016
Publisher: Razorbill
Source: ALAMW2016
Rating: 
Buy It: Amazon | IndieBound
Natalie Cleary must risk her future and leap blindly into a vast unknown for the chance to build a new world with the boy she loves.
Natalie’s last summer in her small Kentucky hometown is off to a magical start… until she starts seeing the “wrong things.” They’re just momentary glimpses at first—her front door is red instead of its usual green, there’s a pre-school where the garden store should be. But then her whole town disappears for hours, fading away into rolling hills and grazing buffalo, and Nat knows something isn’t right.
That’s when she gets a visit from the kind but mysterious apparition she calls “Grandmother,” who tells her: “You have three months to save him.” The next night, under the stadium lights of the high school football field, she meets a beautiful boy named Beau, and it’s as if time just stops and nothing exists. Nothing, except Natalie and Beau.
Emily Henry’s stunning debut novel is Friday Night Lights meets The Time Traveler’s Wife, and perfectly captures those bittersweet months after high school, when we dream not only of the future, but of all the roads and paths we’ve left untaken – Goodreads
Review:
I struggled with this book. According to goodreads, The Love That Split the World took me over a week to read this book, for most this is probably normal, but for someone who reads a book in about 3 days, this is very unusual and for as long as it took, I did note a lot of passages. Which would usually lead one to believe I enjoyed the book.
And I did? I don’t know to be honest. Months later I’m still confused about my feelings on this book. I found the Native American aspect to be inappropriately used and not needed. I feel that Henry could have made a better story if she would have stopped bringing up the Native American aspect, particularly because it was not used well, at all. There was also instalove and comments about how the other was just so pretty. For Henry’s debut book I feel like she tried too hard and threw too many things into this novel. From info dumping to mentions something once and never again it just…didn’t work.
Here’s the thing, I wanted to enjoy this book. I did. I even thought I was going to enjoy it until I sat on the story and realized the problematic aspects of the book bothered me too much. (Of course, that’s not to say I don’t enjoy problematic things. I do. I love many problematic things, unfortunately this was not a book that worked for me.)
Soundless by Richelle Mead
Release Date: November 10, 2015
Publisher: Razorbill
Source: ALA2015
Rating: 
Buy It: Amazon | IndieBound
In a village without sound…
For as long as Fei can remember, no one in her village has been able to hear. Rocky terrain and frequent avalanches make it impossible to leave the village, so Fei and her people are at the mercy of a zipline that carries food up the treacherous cliffs from Beiguo, a mysterious faraway kingdom.
When villagers begin to lose their sight, deliveries from the zipline shrink. Many go hungry. Fei and all the people she loves are plunged into crisis, with nothing to look forward to but darkness and starvation.
One girl hears a call to action…
Until one night, Fei is awoken by a searing noise. Sound becomes her weapon.
She sets out to uncover what’s happened to her and to fight the dangers threatening her village. A handsome miner with a revolutionary spirit accompanies Fei on her quest, bringing with him new risks and the possibility of romance. They embark on a majestic journey from the peak of their jagged mountain village to the valley of Beiguo, where a startling truth will change their lives forever…
And unlocks a power that will save her people. – Goodreads
Review:
I did not know it was possible to be so underwhelmed by a book and I was. There was nothing special or spectacular about this book. I thought it would be nice to read a Mead book outside of the Vampire Academy world, but reading Soundless made me think maybe I should just stay inside the Vampire Academy world.
In the Soundless world there are three classes: the miners, the artists, the beggers. That’s it. Everyone falls into one of these three categories. In reality, everyone falls into one of the first two categories and as soon as someone goes blind, they become beggers. Everyone is also deaf, they have no idea how they lost their ability to hear, but it is what everyone knows.
I also am not sure why in Soundless there is a such a focus on Asian culture in the beginning of this novel because it doesn’t come up ever again. Soundless was dry and bland. There was no humor. There was no character development, or world building. I had come to expect more from Mead and this makes me wonder about those expectations.
Audrey, Wait! by Robin Benway
Release Date: April 10, 2008
Publisher: Razorbill
Source: Personal Copy
Rating: 
Buy It: Amazon | IndieBound
The wait is over for the paperback of this irresistible, fast-paced, hit-worthy debut! When funny, charming, absolutely-normal Audrey Cuttler dumps her boyfriend Evan, he writes a song about her that becomes a number-one hit and rockets Audrey to stardom!
Suddenly, tabloid paparazzi are on her tail and Audrey can barely hang with her friends at concerts or the movies without getting mobbed?let alone score a date with James, her adorable coworker at the Scooper Dooper. Her life will never be the same at least, not until Audrey confronts Evan live on MTV and lets the world know exactly who she is! – Goodreads
Review:
Audrey, Wait! is the story of Audrey, a teenager who happens to have a song wrote about her. While Audrey just wants to be normal, her life is nothing but. She is now navigating life where the whole world knows about her and she misses her old life where she could get into concerts with her best friend and her best friends boyfriend. She misses her job at the ice cream shop that she never thought she would miss. She misses being..Audrey.
What Benway is able to do throughout Audrey, Wait! was make a relate-able novel. I felt like Audrey was sitting next to me telling me this story. Cringing, rolling her eyes and laughing just like she did living her life during this time. Audrey is also a 16 year old and does things teens do. She swears, she talks about sex, she gets along with her parents, she gets annoyed with her parents. She loves her best friend more than she loves anyone in her life. Her and her best friend even fight and still figure out how to come back to each other.
There is something about Robin Benway’s books that are like coming home for me. They’re full of comfort. They’re feminist. They’re full of strong friendships and strong characters. They’re full of love between family, friends and of course there is a love story. The fact that they’re well written and draw me in everytime are just a cherry on the top.
Vitro by Jessica Khoury
Release Date: January 14, 2014
Publisher: RazorBill
Source: First to Read
Rating: DNF
Buy It: Amazon
On Skin Island, even the laws of creation can be broken.
On a remote island in the Pacific, Corpus scientists have taken test tube embryos and given them life. These beings—the Vitros—have knowledge and abilities most humans can only dream of. But they also have one enormous flaw.
Sophie Crue is determined to get to Skin Island and find her mother, a scientist who left Sophie behind years ago. With the help of Jim Julien, a young charter pilot, she arrives–and discovers a terrifying secret she never imagined: she has a Vitro twin, Lux, who is the culmination of Corpus’s dangerous research.
Now Sophie is torn between reuniting with the mother who betrayed her and protecting the genetically enhanced twin she never knew existed. But untangling the twisted strands of these relationships will have to wait, for Sophie and Jim are about to find out what happens when science stretches too far beyond its reach – Goodreads
Review:
To be quite honest, I am not sure why I read Vitro. While Origin was solid, I didn’t find it spectacular and I wasn’t dying to read any sequel. But was I glad I gave Vitro a chance? Erm. Sadly no. I hesitated. I tried to finish it. At 21% I said on goodreads “Will this be my first DNF of the year?” and at around 30% it was. Seeing I rarely DNF, it was hard, but needed.
I didn’t care about Sophie who was trying to find her mom. I didn’t care about Jim and his backstory with Sophie. I stopped just as they found her Vitro twin, Lux and I still couldn’t be forced to care. I mean, I didn’t even flip to the end to see how it ended. Which I feel says everything about this novel. I just found it hard to care. Which is upsetting because Khoury’s writing was fairly strong in Vitro. But it was not enough to save this novel for me.
Virals (Virals #1) by Kathy Reichs and Brendan Reichs
Release Date: August 23, 2011
Publisher: Razorbill
Source: Personal copy
Rating: 
Buy It: Amazon | IndieBound
Adventure is in Tory Brennan’s blood. After all, she’s the grandniece of world-famous forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. Always up for a challenge, Tory and her science-geek friends spend their time exploring the marshlands of Loggerhead Island, home to the very off-limits Loggerhead Island Research Institute, where something strange is going on. After rescuing a stray wolfdog pup from a top-secret lab, Tory and her friends are exposed to a rare strain of canine parvovirus, changing them–and their DNA–forever. Now they are more than friends. They are a pack. They are Virals. And they’re dangerous to the core. But are they unstoppable enough to catch a cold-blooded murderer? – Goodreads
Review:
While I’m a huge fan of the show Bones I have not read Kathy Reichs’ series about Temperance Brennan mostly because science has never been my thing. Liberal arts major over here! But! My BFFSarah has. Sarah read them in the basement of the student union during undergrad and continuously freaked out when anyone would say hi to her. If I never review again, assumed she killed me for telling that story.
Sarah did however give me the okay for this series. She told me forever ago that it was more me than the “adult” series, but my TBR list being what it is, it never happened. And then I went to YALLfest and saw Brendan Reichs do things he would rather forget and then I knew I had to read the series. Yes, sometimes authors do help me adjust my TBR list.
This is a thick book, not necessarily in size, but in information. The co-authors do not dumb anything down for the younger audience and there is a solid 200 pages of plot and an information dump, which of course, thankfully didn’t feel like an info dump to a point. I mean, I still know an info dump when I see one. That being said, this felt like an adult book that was marketed to the YA audience. Tori spoke like a 30 year old. While she skipped a grade, she didn’t skip being a teenager. I understand not all teens talk a certain way, but this did not seem authentic. It felt like a 40 year old in the body of a 14 year old (and that is being said by a 80 year old in the body of a 25 year old.)
This is the story of Tori, Tempe’s grandniece, is extremely smart and confident and I love that about a YA character. Tori lives near Charleston, South Carolina with her new found father, since her mother’s passing. I need to say that Charleston works for this story. I felt like I was in Charleston while reading this. The authors made Charleston work for this novel, plus the feature of two maps was extremely helpful and awesome. (I’m a huge huge map person. Tina, who along with being my friend is my facebook friend, is laughing because my facebook is often LOOK AT THIS MAP GUYS. MAAAAAAAAAAAAP.)
So Tori, lives on this island near Charleston with her father and her best friend Hi. Hi and her go to the local high school where they are looked down upon for being “island people” and the stigma that comes with it. Along with this stigma, Tori must face her father’s girlfriend and the COTILLION world that comes with her. Because nothing screams “THIS WILL MAKE YOU FIT IN” quite like a cotillion does (Southern United States or not.) That aside Tori and her friends run into a fit of supernatural trouble and a murder mystery that didn’t completely work for me. Murder mystery? Yes. The supernatural bit..ehhhh.
I did however enjoy the novel, even if it shocked me at a point which involved me sending CAPLOCKS BECAUSE HOW..HOW DID THIS BOOK SHOCK ME. But it did. I’m not necessarily dying to read the next book in the series, but I am interested in what happens to the characters.
Dark Eyes by William Richter
Release Date: February 21, 2013
Publisher: Razorbill
Source: NetGalley
Rating:
Buy It: Amazon | IndieBound
Get ready for the vigilante girl detective of the next generation.
Wally was adopted from a Russian orphanage as a child and grew up in a wealthy New York City family. At fifteen, her obsessive need to rebel led her to life on the streets.
Now the sixteen-year-old is beautiful and hardened, and she’s just stumbled across the possibility of discovering who she really is. She’ll stop at nothing to find her birth mother before Klesko—her dark-eyed father—finds her. Because Klesko will stop at nothing to reclaim the fortune Wally’s mother stole from him long ago. Even if that means murdering his own blood. But Wally’s had her own killer training, and she’s hungry for justice.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for teens, this debut thriller introduces our next big series heroine!
Review:
Valentina, renamed Wallis, or Wally, was adopted from Russia (something Americans are no longer allowed to do) at age five. Her removal from the orphanage was a sad scene, and the one that follows it is the same. Wally is, appaently, selling ecstasy and ketamine to college kids. And when the narrative switches from Wally to Detective Greer, it’s a bit of a cold open, so to speak. I loved it. I never mind having things I don’t understand thrown at me in the beginning, as long as the pieces come together eventually (which was true of recent urban fantasy novel Between Two Thorns). The beginning is also a red herring, a lie, and I liked that too. I tore through this one, even though it’s almost 400 pages, because the writing is tight, the plot moves quickly, and it’s just so good. Plus, not all the characters are white! Wally and Jake are, but Tevin is black and Ella is Asian. That’s more diversity than the last ten books I’ve reviewed here, and even then, the POC characters are secondary. Wally the blonde is the main protagonist, which is so normal in YA literature, I’m kind of amazed it doesn’t get called out more often.
Anyway, Wally is the leader of the group, and the one with the least messed-up story. The other kids have had hard lives and tragedy, while Wally had an adoptive mother unwilling to allow her daughter to be Russian. And maybe Claire was doing what she thought best, if she knew the secret of Wally’s parentage. Even at the beginning of Wally’s search for self, danger lurks. The narrative style is third person omniscient, which is a style I personally like (how can you only like first person POV? It can get really annoying), so the narrative switches between characters, some seemingly minor, to give the reader information about the mystery. I could see a movie play out in front of me as I read this novel, which makes sense, as Richter is a screenwriter by trade. I had an idea about who Wally was from the start, and I was partially correct, but the whole story is so much better. And as a personal aside, Dave has a friend who was adopted, and while he knew his birth family, he still had some textbook issues, like abandonment, jealousy, things like that. I sort of felt like Richter’s story demonized adoption, and I don’t believe it’s always terrible. I have an adopted cousin and he’s totally fine. Most adopted kids are fine. I think when things start to go bad is when the adoptive parents won’t let their children learn about or immerse themselves in their own culture, which is what happened with Wally and with Dave’s friend.
Wally is on a personal quest that just so happens to involved murderers and generally bad people. This is sort of a coming of age tale on steroids. You know how much I like coming of age stories! This one was just so polished. I usually don’t like it when men write female characters, but Richter really did a great job. I can totally understand why this one is being compared to Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It’s smart, the points of view shift, and it’s a really compelling mystery with interesting characters. What it’s missing is the horribly boring first 100 pages of Larssen’s novel (sorry, but it’s true), and who can really complain about that? I thought the writing was really tight and the book held my interest for the entire span of the book. I think I read it in about 24 hours. And the only reason I dropped a star is I saw the twist coming from a mile away. That did not detract AT ALL from the story though. I really recommend this one. It was fantastic. This one can almost be a standalone novel, but there is a sequel, called Tiger, that was released on March 21 from Razorbill. I will definitely be reading that one too!
Origin by Jessica Khoury
Release Date: September 4, 2012
Publisher: RazorBill
Source: Library
Rating:
Buy It: Amazon
Pia has grown up in a secret laboratory hidden deep in the Amazon rain forest. She was raised by a team of scientists who have created her to be the start of a new immortal race. But on the night of her seventeenth birthday, Pia discovers a hole in the electric fence that surrounds her sterile home–and sneaks outside the compound for the first time in her life.
Free in the jungle, Pia meets Eio, a boy from a nearby village. Together, they embark on a race against time to discover the truth about Pia’s origin–a truth with deadly consequences that will change their lives forever.
Origin is a beautifully told, shocking new way to look at an age-old desire: to live forever, no matter the cost – Goodreads
Review:
Origin was a buzz book of 2012. It is YA heaven. This is the story of Pia. Pia’s life is surrounded by a jungle, literally. She was born and raised in the middle of a jungle to be immortal. Pia was created by a group of scientist to be the strong immortal out there, which she is. Her skin cannot pierced, she has heightened hearing, sight, smell and even speed. Pia however has her weaknesses. She has normal strength and is extremely stubborn, both of which are extremely looked down upon by her ‘family.’ Of course she doesn’t really have a family, she has a group of scientists who have become her family. She calls a woman ‘mother’ and a group of men ‘uncle’. There is nothing wrong with creating your own family, I am all for it. However when it comes down to it, and in a pivotal point of the novel it will, she’ll come to find who is really her family and who isn’t.
Pia is often seen as naive throughout this book by many scientists because she has never left this bubble that is her life. And it’s true until one day her need to know about the outside outweighed her need to stay in the bubble that was her world. She found a hole in the electrified fence and went through it. Once through that hole Pia realized that the world outside of all that she once knew isn’t that scary. In the outside world, Pia meets Eio, who happens to be a jungle boy. While he is kind and patient with Pia, he sees the danger of her bubble, of Little Cam as it is known. Eio is also honest to a fault and because of this honesty he tells Pia how bad Little Cam is and how dangerous it is to Pia.
Pia of course doesn’t believe Eio because Little Cam, her bubble, is all that she knows. Yet, even with Eio encouraging her to leave, Pia and Eio slowly fall into love. Eio is quicker to admit to love of Pia than Pia is of Eio because she isn’t confident in what love is. Pia’s world of Little Cam is quickly changing throughout the week that Origin covers. Even though Origin only covers a week, Khoury’s writing is so strong that you don’t even notice the fast pace speed of the book.
All of this being said, this book is a solid 3.5 book. There is nothing wrong with it to me, this book just isn’t my type of book. I highly recommend it, I just couldn’t give it a higher rating because I personally won’t be running out to buy the book.
yAdult Review 