(Image from Barnes & Noble)

If there's one thing 24-year-old Ashley Barrett has learned from her older sisters, both of whom married early and started families right away, it's this:  that life isn't for her.  Oh, she'll do the whole marriage/kids thing, alright—just not until she's good and ready.  There are things she wants to do first.  Twenty-five things to be exact.  Things like skydiving, buying a sports car, and helping the disadvantaged in a third world country.  Only after she crosses everything off The List will she even consider settling down.

Before starting graduate school in the Fall, Ashley decides to spend the summer in Huntington Beach, California, in order to work on #13.  Learning to surf shouldn't be that tough, but Ashley doesn't seem to be catching on fast enough.  That's why she needs Matt Gibson, a gorgeous 26-year-old surf god who just happens to attend the same singles ward she does.  If she can snatch Matt's attention away from the gaggle of flirty girls that always surrounds him, she might even be able to kill two birds with one stone.  After all, #17 on The List just so happens to be Have A Summer Fling.  

As it turns out, getting Matt's attention isn't the difficult part.  Hanging out with him isn't exactly a chore either—Matt's funny, down-to-Earth and just as much of an adrenaline junkie as Ashley.  The problem is keeping their developing relationship from becoming more than just an easy, breezy fling.  Ashley's been up front with Matt about the fact that she wants to go back to BYU with no attachments, but is that what she really wants?  What's more important, after all, The List or Matt?  It's a decision she'll wrestle with all summer, a choice she'll have to make before her time in California dwindles away completely.

So, you know how I'm always dissing on LDS novels, calling them melodramatic, cheesy and unrealistic?  Well, I'm not going to hurl my usual accusations at The List, a debut novel by Melanie Jacobson.  Which isn't to say the book doesn't have its issues, because of course it does.  Still, it's much better written than most of the contemporary LDS  novels on the market today.  For one thing, it has a fun, lighthearted tone that promises a story that's quick, upbeat and, most of all, entertaining.  Plus, its heroine actually has a discernible voice.  And a personality!  Amazing!  Ashley's confident, sure of herself in a way most fictional females are not.  Plus, she's snarky, something goody-goody Molly Mormon/Peter Priesthood story people usually are not.  As a character, I must say I find Ashley Barrett quite refreshing.  Irritating, but refreshing.  What's not to like about her, then?  Well, here's the thing:  she's selfish.  And shallow.  Not to mention egotistical, self-absorbed and heartless.  There's a reason heroes and heroines are supposed to have a story goal that's selfless, or at least admirable in some way—if they don't, they come across as narcissistic brats.  Like Ashley.  I kept wondering what in the world Matt saw in her and why he would keep chasing her when it was perfectly obvious the only person she was interested in was herself.  So, yeah.  Without that unfortunate aspect of the story, I would have enjoyed The List a whole lot more.  Still, Jacobson's debut impressed me with its fun tone, its more realistic depiction of LDS life, and the fact that the cast (most of it, anyway) was made up of more than just the usual cookie-cutter Mormon characters.  All of which convinces me that Melanie Jacobson can and will create LDS novels I actually want to read.  And if that doesn't make her a writer to watch, I don't know what does.              

(Readalikes:  Not My Type by Melanie Jacobson)

Grade:  B-

If this were a movie, it would be rated:  PG for mild sexual innuendo

To the FTC, with love:  I received a PDF of The List from the Whitney Awards Committee.  Thank you!  

(Image from Barnes & Noble)

(Note:  Although this review will not contain spoilers for Showoff, it may inadvertently reveal plot surprises from earlier books in the Swindle series.  As always, I recommend reading books in a series in order.)

Hanging out with 12-year-old Griffin Bing, a.k.a. The Man With the Plan, can be dangerous.  Just ask his best friend, Ben Slovak.  He's already been roped into enough of Griffin's crazy schemes—he doesn't want to be involved in even one more.  So, when Savannah Drysdale's ferocious Doberman goes crazy at a dog show, leading to the injury of a prize-winning Beagle and the subsequent incarceration of the Doberman, Ben begs Griffin to just leave it alone.  The boys are both terrified of Luthor, but they can't stand to see Savannah so hurt by the loss of her beloved pet.  Besides, there's something fishy about the whole thing.  Luthor's not exactly the most docile pooch in the world, but why would he go bezerk all the sudden?  It doesn't add up.

When Griffin makes one of his famous plans, this time to break Luthor out of the pound, he and Ben are unwittingly thrown into a whirlwind adventure involving a monster dog and the fussy, but cutthroat world of competitive dog showing.  The misbehaving Doberman clearly isn't Best of Show material and yet, the only way to save Savannah's slobbering dog is to turn him into a model citizen.  In the meantime, the boys can poke around all of New York City's most prestigious dog shows for clues as to who was really responsible for Luthor's strange behavior toward the Beagle.  The boys will, of course, get more than they bargained for—the Man With the Plan wouldn't have it any other way.

Gordon Korman books are always hit and miss for me.  My kids adore everything he writes, but I find some of his stuff (like Swindle) to be too underdeveloped, too far-fetched, to be truly appealing.  Don't get me wrong—I love children's books, I just want them to be well-written, you know?  At any rate, I wasn't super excited when the librarian at my kids' school asked me to read Showoff, the fourth book in the Swindle series.  Being the dutiful volunteer that I am, I did it anyway.  And was pleasantly surprised.  Showoff turned out to be a fun, zany mystery that kept me laughing and turning pages.  It's not like my favorite children's book of all time, but I actually enjoyed this one much more than I thought I would.  My kids, of course, think it's Newbery material; I wouldn't go that far.  Still it's a fun one.   

(Readalikes:  Swindle and the rest of the books in the Swindle series by Gordon Korman)

Grade:  B

If this were a movie, it would be rated:  PG

To the FTC, with love:  I borrowed Showoff from the library at my children's elementary school and read it as part of my volunteer work with the school's Quest reading program.  

(Image from Amazon)

If you're a Dan Wells fan—and even if you're not—you should be getting your hands on his hilarious novella, A Night of Blacker Darkness.  'Course, that's a lot easier said than done right now.  As far as I can tell, the only way you can get the book (until May, anyway, when the ebook will again be available) is to buy it at as an audiobook at Audible.com.  Luckily for me, Whitney Academy members have access to a PDF version, which I happily downloaded and read on my Kindle Fire.  It didn't take long for the story to make me laugh out loud. In fact, I decided pretty early on that A Night of Blacker Darkness is my favorite of Wells' books.  It's that delightful.  

I like the plot summary I found on Wells' website, so I'm just going to go ahead and use it:

It's 1817.  Wrongly imprisoned, Frederick Whithers is desperate to commit the crime he's already being punished for: defrauding the bank out of a vast inheritance.  He fakes his death to escape, but when he's seen climbing out of a coffin everyone assumes he's a vampire; when he shows none of the traditional vampire weaknesses, they assume he must be the Great One, the most powerful vampire in the history of the world.

Half horror and half farce, Frederick's tale is an ever-growing avalanche of bankers, constables, graverobbers, poets, ghouls, morticians, vampires, vampire hunters, not to mention some very unfortunate rabbits.  With a string of allies even more unlikely than his enemies, can Frederick stay alive long enough to claim his (well, somebody's) money?  And if he can't, which of his innumerable enemies will get to him first?

Lara Reid thinks her family is just like every other one in the U.K.  Her father always tells her she's special, she just assumes that's the reason people gawk.  Turns out, that's not it at all.  According to the playground taunts, Lara's family doesn't "match" and everyone knows families are supposed to match.  Anyone with functioning eyes can see the one thing Lara's never really understood—a Caucasian couple like Barry and Pat Reid could never have produced a child with Lara's brown skin and bushy, black hair.  Realizing the truth in her classmates' insinuations, Lara comes to the only logical conclusion: she's an alien.

Anyone who knows about my beautiful, bi-racial daughter, adopted a few years ago from the bayous of Louisiana, will understand why I found Being Lara by Lola Jaye such a compelling novel.  I would have read the book based on the cover alone (when my little girl saw the model on the front, she exclaimed, "It's me, Mommy!"), but the plot line also intrigued me.  With themes of transracial adoption, racial/cultural identity, family, and other issues I ponder every day, I knew this story would speak straight to my heart.  And it did.  I sympathized with Lara, in all her confusion and vulnerability, as well as with her two mothers, both of whom narrate some sections of the story.  While I don't necessarily agree with how the Reids handled the whole adoption thing, I recognized all their feelings of anxiety, doubt, guilt and fear, as I've experienced them all since the day I decided to become an adoptive mother.  As for the actual story, it's fast-paced, well-told, realistic (except, perhaps, for the rather tidy end) and heartwarming without being sappy.  I'm not sure I buy the idea that Lara didn't notice her family was different until age 8 (after all, my 3-year-old will look at a picture of Disney princesses and identify herself as Tiana and me as Belle), but that's a small matter, really.  From the lovely cover (I need the number of the hairstylist responsible for that gorgeous hair!) to the important (and very relevant to me) themes to the globetrotting storyline (just try not to be affected by Jaye's descriptions of Nigeria, a place she once lived), I liked Being Lara a whole lot.  It reminded me that families aren't about "matching," they're about love.      

(Readalikes:  Reminds me of No Biking in the House Without A Helmet by Melissa Fay Greene and When the Black Girl Sings by Bil Wright)

Grade:  B-

If this were a movie, it would be rated:  R for language (2 F-bombs, plus milder invectives) and mild sexual innuendo/content