New Girl

• the plot of the book

The narrator, whose name is Callie although we learn that in the last couple of pages of the novel, is enrolled in a boarding school she lost interest in years ago for her senior year. She temporarily fell in love with the idea of boarding school after reading Harry Potter but quickly got over it when her chosen school rejected her. What Callie didn't know was that her parents wanted her to be happy so much that they kept resubmitting her application year after year despite her desire had been long forgotten. But she enters the school, M-something, long from wanted and we quickly discover why.

The reason Callie has finally managed to gain a spot in this school is because last year another girl enrolled...and disappeared. This girl, Becca, left a large (Alison DiLaurentis like) presence on the school despite her disappearance. The day Becca got on campus she managed to start a tradition of weekend parties in the school boathouse without any of the students getting caught and sleeping with the most unattainable guy on campus. Anyway, Becca was definitely loved and Callie was definitely not. Everyone immediately despises her for taking Becca's place especially their roommate, Dana. There are the typical mean girls but they're divided in half. There's the ones who are loyal to Becca's memory who warn Callie that Becca's past boy-toys, her ex-boyfriend Max and (I'm unsure of why they did this since they didn't know Becca and he were hooking up) Johnny. So, of course Callie falls for one of them, the ex-boyfriend, which feels purposeful. If Becca comes back, then she can be with Johnny and Callie can be with Max.

Not that anyone, especially Dana wants that to happen. Everyone is convinced that Becca will come back and until then, her so-called wannabe, Callie needs to stay away from everything that belongs to her. Dana even goes so far as to steal Callie's Halloween costume in order to get her into Becca's old Marilyn Monrue costume from last year to make everyone at school agree with her that Callie is just a Becca wannabe. Also, unnoteably so, Callie and Max have a series of enteractions and eventually they start sleeping together-without a title-which goes against everything Callie is trying to do. She wants to be viewed as herself which no one does, they all call her "new girl" and only see her as Becca's replacement. Too bad she did exactly what Becca did, sleep with Max without a title.

Anyway, half of the book is devoted to Becca's beginning junior year, a year ago that keeps in time with Callie's current senior year. In it we learn that Becca was a little psychotic. Although Becca starts dating Max, it's kind of something that she shrives to do because she doesn't want to be rejected and she wants to be the envied golden couple. Who Becca really wants is Johnny, who happens to have a thing for a roommate than Becca ruined on her first day. Eventually she gets Max to commit but keeps Johnny around on the hush. Towards the end of the novel, we discover that one of the rumors about Becca (that she was kidnapped, that she ran away, that she was murdered...etc) is true; she was pregnant. Not that we get to know who the baby daddy is. Becca ends up so drugged up, but she tries to convince Johnny to be with her not knowing that Dana is eavesdropping. Johnny drugs her up more to try and calm her down but all the drugs in her system cause Becca to end up drowning. Dana saw her on the dock but was the person who believed the most that Becca was alive.

Then everyone graduates, Max and Callie end up together and presumably go to college in the same town or near each other (I don't know what towns Boston University and Harvard are in) and Becca's mom turns out to be pregnant. The End.

• my thoughts on the book

This book was properly named although I don't like the wisp of premise on the cover. What if no one knew your name? It completely misdirects the direction that the novel is actually going to go. New Girl doesn't explore the idea of someone who the people around her don't know the name of. Instead, it explores the idea of replacing someone else against your will so much so, that everyone refuses to acknowledge your name but rather the action of replacement. I felt or understood most of Callie's feelings about being thrust into Becca's shadow so much. And it's one thing to be always cast in Becca's shadow by her peers but by the guy she likes too...that must suck.

However, New Girl doesn't truly belong in the mystery category. Sure, there's a mystery but every clue that we should've gained by sleuthing, Callie's sleuthing, was told to us by Becca's third person sections of the book. It was so anti-climatic and un-interesting although informative. The most suspenseful part of the entire novel was when Becca showed up as a hallucination? (This part was unclear because Callie wasn't asleep  unlike the later times she runs into Becca). At that point in time it wasn't known of Becca was alive or not.

Anyway, everything that could've been done with this book was tossed aside. It was anti-climatic. The romance was soooo uninteresting. I was more invested in Johnny and Becca than Callie's romance with Max (in which neither of them learned anything about one another that didn't somehow relate to the Becca mess). And I started to believe that Dana had killed Becca and was succumbing to guilt or was going off the deep-end but that all turned out to be post-traumatic stress symptoms probably due to Dana seeing Becca on the dock as/or the results of her rape, which she confided in Becca about that made her so loyal  to her. But instead Becca just died, pregnant and drugged up. This book, now that I think about it was soooo disappointing. 

Another Little Piece (Kate Karyus Quinn)

Another Little Piece is about the return of a girl named Annaliese to her hometown after disappearing a little under a year ago after trading her soul for the lust of her crush, Logan, the running back on her school football team. However, what she didn't realize is that she got cheated in more ways then one. As soon as she gives it up to Logan in the woods, she tells him he loves her and he pretends not to hear as he goes back to the party they're at. 

But it sucks for Annaliese because now she's lost everything and she's given up her soul for a boy who has what he wanted. Anna, the name of the one Annaliese gives her soul too, tells Annaliese she has to pay now. So Annaliese cuts Anna's heart out of her current body and then eats it, not realizing that in doing so she has given Anna control of her body. 

However, something goes wrong when the body Anna-is-currently-in's mother shows up and messes up the ceremony spiraling into a series of events that leads to Anna's memory loss and the beginning of the novel.

When Anna-as-Annaliese returns she runs into every love interest she's going to have in a record amount of time. Lucky for us though, it's never any contest who she has feelings for or any kind of love triangle. 

Eric/Franky is the creepy loser who manipulated Anna into her more than nine-lives years ago who insists that he loves her and she'll give in to moving onto the next body when the hunger for a new body takes over her. Apparently, the first time she switched bodies, it took over her and she killed her original family. 

There's Logan, whose role in the climax I should've seen coming but missed. I think that the lust may have evolved into something else because the first time Anna-as-Annaliese runs into him, he drunkingly reveals his guilt of taking her virginity and leaving her in the woods in front of the whole school turning her from a poor-victim into a home-wrecking whore.

Eventually, Logan becomes prey to Eric/Franky when he wants Annaliese's love and gives up his body and soul for it. 

And then there's Dex, the boy next door who's not as normal as you might think. Dex can see people's deaths and saw Annaliese's years ago, therefore recognizing that she is someone else not that that stops him from developing feelings for her.

I liked this book for a number of reasons.  I enjoyed how the author took a step away from the Twilight formula. I loved the romance factor. Anna and her love interest, Dex never say "I love you" to each other in the book. They never become creepily obsessed with each other or even get anywhere close to having those I-love-you feelings. And there's something about Dex that makes him so much more compelling then most YA love interests especially the paranormal versions. 

I also liked that it was a standalone novel instead of the author being greedy and trying to bank off of a series of books. And I also enjoyed that not every mystery of the book was wrapped up at the end. We didn't really learn about why the Physician was who he was and did what he did or about his sisters. But I'm glad we didn't because not everything had to be wrapped up at the end although I am curious but I feel like the explanation concocted wouldn't live up to the standards of the mystery.

This book was nothing like I thought it was going to be. But that is a good thing. I thought it was a realistic, suspenseful mystery and while it was two-thirds of those things, it also had supernatural tones too. And not the supernatural tones most books have. This book was actually dark and that was part of the reason I enjoyed it. Now-and-days most paranormal, supernatural books try to follow the success that Stephenie Meyer discovered with a Twilight-esque formula and everything but switch the new girl for the boy boy or the supernatural entity being the girl instead of the boy and blah-blah-blah. This novel was far from Twilight and I loved that about it.

Parallel

I loved this book. And it wasn't because of the writing or the plot. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure entirely why I loved this book. It kind of reminded me of Gimme a Call, but instead of the Abby's being apart of the same time stream, in this one the girls live in two different dimensions. I think one of the reasons I loved this book is because one of the themes was how choices can define your life and you as a person. And if someone is different, who's to say that the people they choose to love and love them aren't so different either? Abby-from-Here (the true main character) starts dating this guy named Michael while she's attending Yale. Which she is absolutely beguiled about because she wanted to study journalism at Northwestern (this was a flaw for me in the novel because Yale doesn't have journalism, yet we never learn Abby's major or if she even has one) and in her world she's currently staring in a movie that she was forced to give up college for. That is until her world collides with a parallel Earth (let's call it Earth 2)and her life starts being dictated by Abby-from-There's (Abby 2's) choices because her world takes place a whole year later.

I've been searching all over for novels about situations similar to the premise of this book. Just the other day I finally got a hold of one called Don't You Wish but could barely get through it because of how boring and superficial it was. Sure, this book had it's bad points but another reason I loved it, was that it made me think. People always wonder how different choices could have determined their lives or themselves as a person and in this novel we really got to see that. I understood Abby-from-Here's fear about waking up and being in a whole new place with a new history every night. I understood her confusion about Josh although that could've been emphasized. And I definitely understood her wish to get her best friends, Caitlyn and Tyler together and it soooo sucked that that backfired. I especially understood her anger and anguish when Abby-from-There (2) caused the car accident that could've killed Ilana (the mean girl) in her quest to get her friends together and how it nearly killed all her friendships.

But I mostly loved the ending. Although I had a few problems with it. We got introduced to all this scientific theory in the beginning, I expected that in the end, this would be the savior. But it also makes sense about why that didn't end the book. I guess I just felt like it was rushed. Abby-from-Here and Abby-from-There chose the boys that we didn't actually get to see them dating in the novel. Instead we got brief moments with them before Abby-from-Here chose to be with Josh and Abby-from-There chose to be with Michael (ha! I caught onto them being brothers only paragraphs before it was revealed). But looking back, it kind of made sense for Michael and Abby-from-There to be together. He loved/wanted/liked the Abby who was a rowing/boating team member. Haha, that's my only clue but still. However, I didn't like we were kind of pushed into that direction. Both Abby's had a flash of the future in which their "soul-mates" starred and from there, realized who they should be with.

Abby-from-Here took this widely romantic gesture after breaking up with Michael on a whim to be with Josh, who she barely knows. However, luckily she doesn't have to be with a Josh who already knows how to be with her. In the end, the earth's separate (or that's my theory) and each Abby's life is her own. Abby-from-Here's life reverts back to the beginning of the novel where she is starring in a movie. Only luckily as fate has it, she was supposed to be with Josh after all and ends up meeting him for the first time at the baseball game she Choose him at. So now, she has the chance to be with Josh and it's assumed after main Abby declares it, that Abby-from-There chose to be with Michael and go to Yale and be on the rowing team. I kind of wished we had gotten to see more about that but this book wasn't about Abby-from-There but Abby-from-Here. Overall, though I enjoyed it.

Janie Face to Face [Janie #5]

This title was illogically chosen. It's called Janie Face to Face and you would think that it would refer to Janie finally coming face to face with Hannah considering the premise, however she doesn't. That was the most disappointing part of this book. There are few books where I am unable to guess the plot if not large chunks of it but surprisingly this was one of those books.

The premise talks about a famous crime writer wishing to write a story about Janie/Jennie/Jane but it turns out that the writer isn't who we think he is. Everyone in the book considers people around them for choosing to write the book and everyone has their own motivations. It turns out that some of Janie's Spring family resent her for choosing her Johnson family over her bio-family for what seems to be the last time by allowing Hannah to still go free in the last book. But it turns out that despite everyone's desire to catch Hannah and get justice, it's no one we know betraying Janie. Instead, it's Hannah. Like I said, totally surprising.

I don't know how I didn't see that coming from the moment that we heard the book's title, The Happy Kidnap and all the badmouthing the author did towards Janie's Johnson parents. In the end, however, Hannah does get caught but without any sort of confrontation that I was waiting/hoping for. Instead, she gets arrested in the Johnson's new house while they are at Janie's wedding and that's the end of that. I felt like the ending was sort of rushed. Like maybe the author didn't know how to make Janie and Hannah come face to face so she just didn't allow them too.

I loved this book but I also hated it too. I loved that Janie and Reeve got married and they had that romantic airport proposal with all of those people watching. That was probably one of my favorite scenes in the book. And it was fitting that later when Reeve gave Janie her engagement ring, it was also in the airport. I just wish we had gotten to see some of the time Janie and Reeve had together during the weekend that led to the spontaneous proposal. Without it, it makes me feel slightly lost.

I hated that Janie was becoming Jennie Spring. That she was leaving behind her Johnson family in favor of the only family she was supposed to have. But I think that she and the author forgot that nothing was how it was supposed to. I hated everything that Janie was doing to become herself. I loved her college essay, I loved her emotional turmoil. It all reminded me of Juliet from Shakespeare's question, What is in a name? I wanted Janie to continue to balance her lives, her selves. Because she wasn't just Janie Johnson but she wasn't just Jennie Spring either and it felt wrong to me for her to give up everything she was in order to be someone she never got the chance too. She wasn't the Jennie-who-might-have-been, so why try now? I hated all of that. I wanted her to choose a new wedding dress for herself, not use her Spring mother's old one. I wanted her to figure out a way to tell both of her families at the same time that she was getting married. I hated Janie's evolution into Jennie but luckily she married Reeve and became someone with a different name entirely.

Overall, though I did enjoy the book although some of the repetition with things bothered me. I do recommend fans of the series read this book. We got into Hannah's head quite a bit. She hates Janie. She believes she stole her parents, her money and all the love she should've had. Every time someone is mean to her, she blames it on Janie. We learn that she viciously chose to give Janie to her parents believing that they would get busted within days and thrown in jail for kidnapping.

Of Poseidon

I had such high hopes for this book. This is the second book in a couple of days that disappointed me due to the love story. Of Poseidon is about a girl named Emma who has the Gift of Poseidon which means that she can talk to underwater mammals in order to feed her people. Which is awkward because Emma hates seafood.

The story started off kind of boring so I skimmed the first few pages describing Emma's encounter with a boy and his sister who happen to have the same purple eyes that she does while on vacation with her best friend who happens to be black (yay!) but dies in the cruel and vicious attack of a shark that Emma later describes as not hungry but playing a game with her (how sadistic). The guy, Galen, and his sister, Rayna try to help Emma out but fails. The shark only stops when Emma screams for it to stop while underwater, not realizing that her best friend has already bled to death.

In the first moments of this novel, I mentally wept for Emma. But then the book took a turn. Suddenly, a few months later I'm in a flipped mermaids-not-vampires version of Twilight. Galen is Edward in personality but Bella in that he's the new student and Emma tries to change her schedule to get away from him because he reminds her of her deceased best friend. However, instead of Emma fainting from classroom blood testing, she hits her head and passes out during a argument with Galen.

This next part was so unrealistic to me. Emma's mother starts yelling at her demanding to know who Galen is and talking about how the principal saw how "intimate" they were with each other and how Galen "never left her side or let go of her hand". What kind of principal notices things like that then mentions them to her mother. And why was the principal observing all this when she should've been helping Emma, or getting the nurse. That's who should've been there. Not her. Emma's mother bothered me from the start, like she really pissed me off. Usually I have a talent of guessing plots and I was pretty sure that her mother was Galen's brother's long lost-fiance who disappeared after they had a fight in a human mine that blew up. What I couldn't understand though, was Emma had this early memory of nearly drowning in a pond and the fish saved her life and her mother of all people didn't believe her. She didn't even bother wondering if her daughter was going to have a fin or have any of traits from her Syrenan heritage. Or I guess she was just stupid as what and expected Emma to tell her. But after that denial of the fish, I can understand why Emma didn't talk to her. That woman is hard to talk to. In ways, she's worse than Bella's dad.

However, she's not the only one who has issues to me. Galen has issues. I guess his mission originally made sense to me. He came to Emma's vacation spot to see if she was one of them and quickly got a bunch of yes' and a bunch of no's and obviously confused, he followed her home and enrolled in her school. Quickly, all the girls want him (is that what every woman/girl wants because this is something common in movies and YA. The guy who every girl wants, happens to want the protagonist which she, of course, finds hard to believe due to her self-esteem issues) and he wants Emma.

At some point I started skimming over the book because the plot got so cliche. Emma and Galen want each other, she doesn't believe he wants her though, his best friend kisses her to make Galen's sister, his "mate" jealous and Galen nearly kills him. Blah, blah, blah. I don't like Galen. Emma seems to have forgotten Chloe...in the end, the novel ends with a cliffhanger. Galen finally realizes the obvious: Emma's mother is the Poseidon heir, Nalia who was supposed to marry his brother but disappeared. And confronts her about it.

Sigh, this book could have been soooo much. But really, it just turned out as a disappointment. I'm wondering if every time I try to read YA or magical/paranormal books, the thing that ruins them for me is the boring romance.