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Friday, February 14, 2014
A Love-Filled Valentine's Vlog
1:00 AM
Happy Valentine's Day!
I hope all of you are having a wonderful holiday full of love. As a special V-Day treat, I have Holly Schindler visiting today. I talked about the author yesterday, so we're just going to continue on with the Holly-love. Holly's prepared a little vlog for us about the part love plays in her new middle grade book, The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky. Since she does a great job explaining what the story's all about, I won't bother with a plot summary. You get to hear it straight from the author herself!
I haven't had a chance to read The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky yet, but it sounds like a sweet, empowering story. I'm excited to see what it's all about!
Holly's put together a blog tour for the book that's full of fun posts. Click on the icon below to follow along:
I hope all of you are having a wonderful holiday full of love. As a special V-Day treat, I have Holly Schindler visiting today. I talked about the author yesterday, so we're just going to continue on with the Holly-love. Holly's prepared a little vlog for us about the part love plays in her new middle grade book, The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky. Since she does a great job explaining what the story's all about, I won't bother with a plot summary. You get to hear it straight from the author herself!
I haven't had a chance to read The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky yet, but it sounds like a sweet, empowering story. I'm excited to see what it's all about!
Holly's put together a blog tour for the book that's full of fun posts. Click on the icon below to follow along:
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Cover Reveal: Feral by Holly Schindler
1:00 AM
I first heard the name Holly Schindler back in 2010, when the generous folks over at Flux sent me an ARC of her debut novel, A Blue So Dark. The taut YA drama about a teen dealing with her mother's schizophrenia touched me, while convincing me that this author was one to watch. Schindler's sophomore novel, Playing Hurt, also impressed me. Tomorrow, I'm going to talk a little about her recently published middle grade novel, but today I'm excited to be a part of the cover reveal for Schindler's fourth novel, Feral:
Sounds like a perfect Halloween read. I don't know about you, but I can't wait. I love the always versatile Holly Schindler and I'm anxious to see what she does with this newest book!
What do you think about the cover? The plot? Does it look and sound like something you might find interesting?
If it does, be sure to add it to your Goodreads bookshelf and pre-order yourself a copy from Amazon or your favorite bookstore.
Oooh, it's so mysterious and intriguing. I love it!
And here's a plot summary for Feral, which will release from Harper Collins on August 26, 2014:
It’s too late for you. You’re dead. Those words float through Claire Cain’s head as she lies broken and barely alive after a brutal beating. And the words continue to haunt her months later, in the relentless, terrifying nightmares that plague her sleep. So when her father is offered a teaching sabbatical in another state, Claire is hopeful that getting out of Chicago, away from the things that remind her of what she went through, will offer a way to start anew.
But when she arrives in Peculiar, Missouri, Claire quickly realizes something is wrong—the town is brimming with hidden dangers and overrun by feral cats. And her fears are confirmed when a popular high school girl, Serena Sims, is suddenly found dead in the icy woods behind the school. While everyone is quick to say Serena died in an accident, Claire knows there’s more to it—for she was the one who found Serena, battered and most certainly dead, surrounded by the town’s feral cats.
Now Claire vows to learn the truth about what happened, but the closer she gets to uncovering the mystery, the closer she also gets to discovering a frightening reality about herself and the damage she truly sustained in that Chicago alley.
With an eerie setting and heart-stopping twists and turns, Holly Schindler weaves a gripping story that will make you question everything you think you know.
Sounds like a perfect Halloween read. I don't know about you, but I can't wait. I love the always versatile Holly Schindler and I'm anxious to see what she does with this newest book!
What do you think about the cover? The plot? Does it look and sound like something you might find interesting?
If it does, be sure to add it to your Goodreads bookshelf and pre-order yourself a copy from Amazon or your favorite bookstore.
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Innocence: I Didn't See That Coming
1:41 PM
(Image from Barnes & Noble)
Sometimes the jacket copy on a book is so succinct, so scintillating in its simplicity that it's absurd to try to rewrite it in my own clumsy way. I'm not much for reinventing the wheel, so I give you the professionally-written plot summary for Innocence, Dean Koontz's newest mystical thriller:
He lives in solitude beneath the city, an exile from society, which will destroy him if he is ever seen. She dwells in seclusion, a fugitive from enemies who will do her harm if she is ever found. But the bond between them runs deeper than the tragedies that have scarred their lives. Something more than chance—and nothing less than destiny—has brought them together in a world whose hour of reckoning is fast approaching.
Lovely, right? I think the text offers a perfect boiling-down of a novel that's actually very difficult to describe. Like Koontz's popular Odd Thomas books, Innocence is a mix of mystery, mysticism and otherworldly suspense. It's a strange tale, confusing at times, beautiful at others. Overall, it held my interest while making me very curious to see just what made the main characters so repugnant to society. The answer was one I really did not see coming. At all. I loved the big reveal—it surprised and delighted me, while making me ponder my own beliefs. I didn't adore every aspect of this novel, but overall, I enjoyed it.
(Readalikes: Reminded me of Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz)
Grade:
If this were a movie, it would be rated:
for language (no F-bombs), violence, and adult subject matter
To the FTC, with love: Another library fine find
Friday, February 07, 2014
A Time to Kill: Which Do You Prefer—Book? Movie? Both? Neither?
9:25 AM
(Image from Barnes & Noble)
Many moons ago, while a student at BYU, I watched an edited version of A Time to Kill, the 1996 film based on the book by John Grisham. I remember being blown away by the movie—it made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me swoon, it made my blood boil ... in other words, it touched me. So much so that when Grisham published a sequel to the book (Sycamore Row, 2013), I thought, "Hm, I should read A Time to Kill and re-watch the movie, just to see if the story is as powerful as I remember it being." It was an interesting little experiment and I'll tell you what I learned ... in a minute.
First, a plot summary:
Relations between the black and white residents of Ford County, Mississippi, have never been what you might call peaceful. The only black sheriff in the state works there, it's true, but that hardly makes the county progressive. Or sympathetic toward those with brown skin and woolly hair. This fact becomes increasingly apparent when Carl Lee Hailey, a 37-year-old black mill worker, kills the men accused of raping his 10-year-old daughter. The murdered "boys" are white rednecks, the kind of dumb, lazy oxen who will be mourned only by the clients of their flourishing drug-dealing business. Still, it's a shocking turn of events. As deserving of a lynching as the pair might have been, most folks in the small town of Clanton are horrified by the commission of such a violent act of vigilante justice on their own soil. Especially by a black man against two white men.
When Carl Lee asks Jake Brigance, a local white lawyer, to defend him, things get even more interesting. Jake knows it's the kind of case that could make his whole career, so despite some misgivings, he takes it. It's not long before he's receiving death threats, burning crosses on his lawn, and pleas from his wife to hand the whole mess off to someone else. The more heated the situation becomes, however, the more determined Jake is to keep Carl Lee out of prison. No matter what the cost. Which is becoming dearer and dearer. With the help of his ragtag legal team, Jake might just be able to pull it off. But, with the Ku Klux Klan, corrupt court officials, and the deep-seated racism which has defined Ford County for more than a century all standing in his way, it's going to be a long, perilous journey—one which just might end at the electric chair.
The book, as you can probably tell, is an intense, action-packed drama filled with colorful characters forced to wrangle with a whole host of sticky moral dilemmas. It's a thrilling, edge-of-your-seat page turner, for sure. If you've read Grisham, you know he writes what I call "guy books," meaning fiction that focuses more on action than on character development, emotional reaction, or relationships between characters. Because of this, A Time to Kill—like most "guy books"—feels a little stiff to me. I still enjoyed the story, I just had trouble empathizing and identifying with most of the characters (with the exception of Carl Lee). Even Brigance, whose devotion and determination—not just to his client, but also to his family, his friends, and his town—comes through so palpably on-screen, falls flat in the novel. In fact, book Brigance is a grouchy, sexist media whore who's almost as slimy as the rest of his comrades. This disappointed me since I found his movie character so appealing (and not just because of McConaughey's pretty face). Now, I do have to say that the film version skips over some of the humor and subtlety that makes the novel stand out and yet, I like the former so much more than the latter. Is it because I'm a girl? Maybe so, but the movie has a whole lot more heart than the book, mostly because it shows Brigance experiencing a wide range of emotions—we see him feeling confident, conflicted, remorseful, sad, guilty, nervous, proud, scared, etc. This makes him seem empathetic and human in a way the book does not. For this and other reasons, I much prefer the film version of A Time to Kill. Which isn't to say it's a sweet, heart-warming family flick. It's not. At all. It's depressing and difficult to watch, but powerful all the same. The book has its moments, of course—overall, though, the movie tells a better story.
(Readalikes: Sycamore Row; also reminds me of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee)
Grade:
If this were a movie (and it is!), it would be rated:
for language (no F-bombs), including frequent use of racial epithets; violence (including a fairly graphic rape scene), and depictions of excessive drinking and illegal activity
To the FTC, with love: I bought a copy of A Time to Kill from Amazon with a portion of the millions I make from my lucrative career as a book blogger. Ha ha.
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