The Summer of Chasing Mermaids (Sarah Ockler)

The youngest of six talented sisters, Elyse d’Abreau was destined for stardom—until a boating accident took everything from her. Now, the most beautiful singer in Tobago can’t sing. She can’t even speak. Seeking quiet solitude, Elyse accepts a friend’s invitation to Atargatis Cove. Named for the mythical first mermaid, the Oregon seaside town is everything Elyse’s home in the Caribbean isn’t: An ocean too cold for swimming, parties too tame for singing, and people too polite to pry—except for one. Christian Kane is a notorious playboy—insolent, arrogant, and completely charming. He’s also the only person in Atargatis Cove who doesn’t treat Elyse like a glass statue. He challenges her to express herself, and he admires the way she treats his younger brother Sebastian, who believes Elyse is the legendary mermaid come to life.  When Christian needs a first mate for the Cove’s high-stakes Pirate Regatta, Elyse reluctantly stows her fear of the sea and climbs aboard. The ocean isn’t the only thing making waves, though—swept up in Christian’s seductive tide and entranced by the Cove’s charms, Elyse begins to wonder if a life of solitude isn’t what she needs. But changing course again means facing her past. It means finding her inner voice. And scariest of all, it means opening her heart to a boy who’s best known for breaking them . . .

A woman-of-color as a YA protagonist!

And-no white washing the cover!

A book about a black girl in a retelling of the Little Mermaid!

No shade, but I feel like white girls take for granted all the novels that have girls that look like them on them. Trying to find YA books that feature girls of color (without focusing on their color too) is sooo rare. So when I saw this book I was too excited. I couldn't wait for it and hoped I wouldn't be disappointed. And I was not!

This book takes the Little Mermaid (Disney and otherwise) and turns the tale on its head. Nothing is what you would expect it to be.




Ursula is a loving aunt here, Vanessa isn't trying to steal the Mermaid's man, she's all good on him! Sebastian isn't a crab but the prince's brother who is obsessed with mermaids. Like I said before, the tale of the Little Mermaid is twisted. One huge way is that it's the mermaid that is somewhat evil not Ursula. 

The book stays pretty close to the movie and legend. Elyse, the "mermaid" has six sisters she's close too, she loves singing and she's actually from Trinidad! But she fell off a boat and when her sister and her boyfriend pulled her up, she wasn't breathing. Trying to save her life, her sister cut a hole in her throat but in the process severely damaged her vocal cords and there was nothing surgery could do to get them back.
That's when she moves to Atargais Cove with her aunt Ursula and her cousin . The story weaves in and out of reality and fantasy. Ursula is a witch of sorts here, there is the mermaid Atargonis who is stalking Elyse. Other than that, the story is very grounded in reality.
Now the prince: a man-whore named Christian Kane who I liked but didn't love or hate. I wasn't entirely convinced of why he starts treating Elyse differently then other girls. One of my favorite, fresh features of this series was that even though our first glimpse of Vanessa is something along the lines of this:

She's not a rival for Christian's affections, not the mean-girl troupe you would expect her to be. Not only was she a behind the scenes champion for Christian and Elyse's relationship, she and Elyse are friends.
Christian gets roped into a racing contest for the fate of Atargatis Cove. His jackass of a father and the sexist (but not racist as the story makes a point to point out) mayor make a beat about this Pirate's sailing race the cove has every year. To keep this little seaside town quaint and not a tourist trap, Christian has to win. He'll even get his best friends (the mayor's sons) boat as a prize. Unwilling to go back home, Elyse finds the motivation to try and fight her fear of the sea and becomes his first mate.

This brings the two of them together, brings Sebastian who (unlike the blurb suggests) thinks Elyse is the legendary mermaid Atargatis but only brings it up twice, and wants to participate in the Cove's mermaid parade which is traditionally only for girls. But Elyse finds a way to sneak him in to his father and the mayor's anger/annoyance.

Next is the Pirate's Regatta.

Unfortunately, Elyse has a freak out during the race that causes them to be second place. And the bet was strategically made that even though the mayor's son lost to, the point was Christian lost. This is when the story officially meets its climax. After a night of sex on the boat, Elyse gives herself to the sea and fights for her voice realizing that losing your physical voice isn't the only way you can lose yourself or your voice. And the mermaid really isn't evil like we believed she was.

Anyways, this book stands out in so many ways past just diversity. 

There's sex, there's masturbation, there's a young boy who crosses social ideas of gender norms and a girl who embraces her sexuality without slut-shaming.

I also felt like Elyse's heritage was wonderfully explored. We hear about her culture, her family's economic and social status as well as her racial heritage. I really felt like the author properly explored and researched Elyse's Trinidad heritage and I really believed that this girl was a girl of color.

Anyways, can we pleassseee have more books with girls of color like this? Please, oh book gods, please??

Although one con: (aka the whitest line ever) "It's not a race thing."

Other than that: read this book!

Second Star (Alyssa B. Sheinmel)

A twisty story about love, loss, and lies, this contemporary oceanside adventure is tinged with a touch of dark magic as it follows seventeen-year-old Wendy Darling on a search for her missing surfer brothers. Wendy’s journey leads her to a mysterious hidden cove inhabited by a tribe of young renegade surfers, most of them runaways like her brothers. Wendy is instantly drawn to the cove’s charismatic leader, Pete, but her search also points her toward Pete's nemesis, the drug-dealing Jas. Enigmatic, dangerous, and handsome, Jas pulls Wendy in even as she's falling hard for Pete. A radical reinvention of a classic, Second Star is an irresistible summer romance about two young men who have yet to grow up--and the troubled beauty trapped between them.

I tried to read this book.

I really did.

I thought, Peter Pan retelling?

Awesome!

A younger, sexier Hook?

Awesomer!

A love triangle between Peter Pan and Hook...

Anyway, the story opens just after teenage Wendy Darling has graduated. She lives on the coast of California with her parents, her dog, Nana and her missing brothers, John and Michael. Her brothers are twins and surfers who disappeared one pregnancy nine months ago. (Haha, that's all I could think when she said nine months.) She has a best friend named Fiona, who doesn't go, do or think without her boyfriend at her side. This part of Fiona's cardboard character really bothered annoyed me.

Anyway, Wendy soon meets Peter Pan's Second Star counterpart, Pete. Pete is a surfer and former foster care teen who lives with a bunch of other runaways (all teens; no kids in this world) in a abandoned mansion on a cliff. Pretty soon into meeting him, Wendy falls for Pete, who kisses her, although he has this complicated relationship with a blonde named Belle.

They spend the night together, the night they meet, just kissing. Not even making out, just kissing. Pete seems nice and boring enough. Soon after meeting him, Wendy lies to her parents that she is going on a road trip with her best friend and like typical YA parents, they're all like, Sure, honey, whatever you like. We're barely around anyway!

Then she enlists the help of her best friend into lying to her parents and tells Fiona that she's going on a trip
Wendy doesn't go to Neverland. Instead, she goes to Kensie Cove or Kensington (a allusion to the Kensington Gardens in which Peter Pan lived before Neverland) and meets this guy named Pete. He is a former foster care kid who lives with  a bunch of runway teens in abandoned mansions in the cove. He takes Wendy in and teaches her to surf which is something her brothers never did.

However, Pete is also a liar because he knew John and Michael, but lies to Wendy about it early in the novel. From what I learned from skimming and skipping around, the twins used to live with Pete and his gang until he found out they were using fairy dust and kicked them out.

Belle later reveals that she saw what happened. John and Michael were high on 'dust' and tried to surf a forty foot wave. She doesn't say it out loud, but alludes to their death after they wiped out.

The other half of the Kensie belongs to his former partner, Jas (aka Hook) who now deals a drug called fairy dust and has a gang full of dusters who live with him. Jas and Pete used to be surfing buddies (think Plankton and Mr. Krabs) until Jas started dealing and Pete excommunicated him from his house.

Angry about Pete's lies, Wendy leaves and goes and joins up with Jas' crew. However, to get into his house to look for him she has to take some dust. That's the price to get in. She does and the stuff messes her up so bad that she ends up on Fiona's front step. Fiona calls her parents who take her home and send her too her room to "re-establish authority."

This is especially funny because while she is locked away in her room, Jas shows up and they run away to try to look for her brothers. It was around here that I just couldn't take anymore and gave up reading this book. Now I understand the term DNF (Did Not Finish) when it should be called CNF-Could Not Finish.

At the end, Wendy is with Jas, Pete and Belle as this famous waved called Witch Tree shows up. Something happens as the the wave hits and her last memories are of Jas. Then she wakes up in the psych ward of a hospital with her parents.

They tell her she wasn't on a boat with Jas, Pete, Belle and crew.There were no boats out on the sea during the storm because Coast Guard shut the area down. Instead, she tried to swim out into the sea during a storm on Pebble Beach. And no one brought Wendy to the hospital because she was alone. Basically, the girl is crazy.Her brothers are still missing at sea (aka dead) and she imagined everything. Fiona is the only one who has realized that she has gone crazy.

She either went went off the deep end due to her grief and started doing the combination of drugs that make up dust or the drug cocktail made her lose her mind. Either way, she's off her rocker, they say. So she goes through therapy and starts saying everything's fake to convince her parents no matter how wrong it feels to her.

Until it doesn't anymore.

She gets out the crazy house and slowly bides her time until everyone trusts her again. Then, Wendy eventually goes back to Kensington Cove to see if it really wasn't real. Apparently, the place was once called Kensington Beach before all the mansions in the area were abandoned. The houses are empty and rundown without any trace of Pete or Jas or their crews. The beach doesn't even exist. There's no white sand just a bunch of waves and rocks.

I'm sure this novel would be better if the author hadn't tried to connect the story to Peter Pan. I might've even enjoyed it more. I mean, I kind of understand the connection. Wendy (and her brothers) run away with Peter Pan to Neverland because they weren't ready to grow up at the moment. Peter Pan offers that escape.

Eventually, however, Wendy comes to the realization that she has to and is ready to grow up and she and her brothers go home.

Wendy in Second Star goes to Pete and Kensie Cove to find her brothers... Although, if she's truly crazy then she went to Kensie Cove because she isn't quite ready to face her brothers death. Which is also representative of the escape Pete provides her. However, eventually she allows herself to come to terms with it (aka when Belle tells her she witnessed). See, that's soo interesting. It just would've been a lot better if the story wasn't connected to Peter Pan. I just wasn't feeling it.

I especially felt like What the fuck? because at the end Wendy receives some mail. It's a picture inside a envelope without any address or stamps because someone just slipped it in the mailbox. And the picture is of Jas and Pete with surfboards and their arms around each other. Suddenly, Wendy starts wondering if the Witch Tree wave could've washed out the beach, messed up Pete's house and literally swallow her memories. She isn't crazy, she decides. Jas must've pushed her in the right current then saved the others then he and Pete went off the surf the world together. But someone wanted her to know it was all real.

...or maybe she's just crazy after all and put that picture in her own mailbox.

And if that's true, then what was the point of the story? Either way, I sure was disappointed.

Being Sloane Jacobs (Lauren Hoppill)

Meet Sloane Emily Jacobs: a seriously stressed-out figure-skater from Washington, D.C., who choked during junior nationals and isn’t sure she’s ready for a comeback. What she does know is that she’d give anything to escape the mass of misery that is her life. Now meet Sloane Devon Jacobs, a spunky ice hockey player from Philly who’s been suspended from her team for too many aggressive hip checks. Her punishment? Hockey camp, now, when she’s playing the worst she’s ever played. If she messes up? Her life will be over. When the two Sloanes meet by chance in Montreal and decide to trade places for the summer, each girl thinks she’s the lucky one: no strangers to judge or laugh at Sloane Emily, no scouts expecting Sloane Devon to be a hero. But it didn’t occur to Sloane E. that while avoiding sequins and axels she might meet a hockey hottie—and Sloane D. never expected to run into a familiar (and very good-looking) face from home. It’s not long before the Sloanes discover that convincing people you’re someone else might be more difficult than being yourself.

It wasn't until I was about a fourth of the way into this book before I realized that, hey, this is the Princess and the Pauper...just, on ice.

Each of the Sloane Jacobs is trying to run from something. Both are having family problems as well as each are choking on the ice. I almost wish they were the same character because they might as well have been. The problem I wondered going into this book was how the author was going to try to make each voice distinct and she kind of failed in my opinion. S. Emily is the rich figure skater whose senator father is having an affair with his secretary.

She happened to walk into his office and see...this part I'm not so sure about. Emily spent a good chunk of the novel trying to hide this from us. And when the scene was finally described to us, I wasn't entirely sure what she saw. Anyways, this is what has been causing her to choke because her mother doesn't know what she witnessed but her dad does. And he tries to buy her off with money and snacks. (Lol, what a loser.)

Then there's S. Devon. She's the Pauper counter part of this story. I can't remember exactly why she keeps choking on ice but she describes the sensation as "tingles". Haha, funny that she's supposed to be this badass hockey player who refers to choking as 'tingles'. 

Anyways, Devon is supposedly dating this musician named Dylan who never is shown in the story and she only has one interaction with. In fact, now that I think about it, she cheats on him. But more about him later. Devon's mom is also an alcoholic who got banished away to rehab and now Devon is about to get banished to hockey camp after getting into a fight on the ice.

At the hotel both girls are staying at before leaving for their respective camps they run into each other and have a very Parent Trap reaction with the other. First they don't like each other, then they realize they look pretty damn similar. 

This part of the novel was very Suspend All Your Disbelief. Because apparently both Sloane's are 5'4 and have the same dark, long hair but Devon has more pounds then Emily. It's not already crazy enough that they share a name but now they have the same height and hair color. Too much. Anyways, then S. Emily gets the idea for them to switch. With a night of preparation the girls switch places. 

Devon goes off to rich people's figure skating camp. She quickly finds out figure skating is harder then she thought and makes friends with a black guy and a redhead. The redhead is literally only seen like three times in the book but suddenly she and Devon are close? Okay... Andy, the African American, was the typical token black BFF. I nearly thought the author was going to a another level and make him gay, but I don't think that's what she was doing. Haha, I'm not sure. 

Just when I was happy that a Character of Color wasn't having their skin color compared to food or coffee, Devon runs into Nando. This guy she knew back at home who I think is Hispanic or Spanish or something. His skin is described as coffee with cream or sugar. Who the fuck remembers what coffee looks like when you add stuff to it? Anyways, Devon finds him delightfully attractive but falls too fast. I never understood the concept of Insta-Love until reading this scene. Not it all makes sense. What I do like is that Devon managed to keep her wits about her and her priorities straight... Mostly. Nando is supposed to be at college on hockey scholarship but he reveals that the pressure got to him and he dropped out. Devon went all Bella-Swan on his ass and decided not to tell him about her own choking issues as well as running away to get away from this. Her reasoning is that he seems to hold on to the idea that she is thriving, so so can he. She's his life line.

Meanwhile, S. Emily is at hockey camp. She meets this guy named Matt who is the typical man-whore who has been in a lot of places... haha, there was no better way to put it. However, he soon is chasing after Emily claiming that:

While neither romances really grabbed me Matt's character really pissed me off. He and Emily agree to be friends and then he gets mad at her when she blows off watching game tape with him and his team. First, she had something else to do. Also, it's not like you were alone; your whole freaking team was there!!! And his response and the way her doormat ass apologized really irked me. Like, mother like daughter, I suppose. Anyways, his next plan of action is to ambush her with a surprise obviously not a just-friends picnic then takes her around town where they kiss. They really don't know each other, except to impress him she pulled a fire alarm, they rode on the bus to camp together and she told him she didn't want to be with him because he was gross. They really did not convince me.

Anyways, both girls also attract bullies and while the Doormat (aka Emily) actually manages to tame hers, Devon isn't as successful. Both girls are living life happily until shit hits the fan.

First, Nando happens to run into Matt and hears him gushing all about his Sloane Jacobs. Angry that she has been playing him when she has a whole other guy, Nando gets mad and takes off. Haha, ironically he has an right to be mad. Sure, Devon isn't really dating Matt and stringing him along but there is the whole matter of Dylan back at home.

Emily's dad's scandal is exposed and Devon's evil roommate sees a picture of Emily and realizes that she isn't who she is claiming to be. She tries to blackmail Devon into leaving (this happens literally like three times in this story) but Devon gets mad and tries to kick her ass. Then runs away.

She goes to Emily's camp and tells her what's up and Matt overhears everything. He flips shit because (and ironically he has a point) Emily made a big deal about not being able to trust him when she was the one who was lying. She didn't tell him the truth. They fight, she cries and he leaves. Then she and Devon make a plan to run away again. They'll meet up at the airport and run. But in the end, they change their minds and finish out the games/showcases they've been preparing for for a month. Both do well and each of their real parents (not Emily's dad though) see them. Each girl manages to fix things with their boys and their families seem okay.

The ending also annoys me because there really is no diversity between the girls' voices. Devon is supposed to be a tomboy but yet she knows the names of designer handbags and is giving more feminine descriptions of things. And in the end, they both decide they aren't sure if they want to stick with their sports any long. WHAT THE HELL? So what was the point of all this then?

Gorgeous (Paul Rudnick)

SUMMARY: Inner beauty wants out.

When eighteen-year-old Becky Randle’s mother dies, she’s summoned from her Missouri trailer park to meet Tom Kelly, the world’s top designer. He makes her an impossible offer: He’ll create three dresses to transform Becky from a nothing special girl into the most beautiful woman who ever lived.

Becky thinks Tom is a lunatic, or that he’s producing a hidden camera show called World’s Most Gullible Poor People. But she accepts, and she’s remade as Rebecca. When Becky looks in the mirror, she sees herself – an awkward mess of split ends and cankles. But when anyone else looks at Becky, they see pure five-alarm hotness. Soon Rebecca is on the cover of Vogue, the new Hollywood darling, and dating celebrities. Then Becky meets Prince Gregory, heir to the British throne, and everything starts to crumble. Because Rebecca aside, Becky loves him. But to love her back, Gregory would have to look past the blinding Rebecca to see the real girl inside. And Becky knows there’s not enough magic in the world.

MY THOUGHTS:

This book was fairly interesting. It kind of read like a parody because even though at the heart of the book there's a good message, there's all this humor and wit. I will admit this isn't the BEST book I've read this summer but it's definitely one I'd like to re-read in person (aka not a e-book but a plastic covered hardcover from a library).

However, in the beginning I found it hard for me to get into it. I actually started this book weeks ago but the first couple of chapters bored me and were taking to long to get to the plot that I forgot all about it until last night. Not to mention the descriptions of the outfits people were wearing and other things were sooooo long. I started skipping those paragraphs so get the point of the scene. Not a good thing I know but still. Over-all I did mostly enjoy this book there were some plot holes.

It's revealed that the Tom Kelly that Becky meets isn't exactly real. Or alive I mean. It turns out that he's her dad and he died before she was born from AIDS (I could be wrong about the disease but it was never stated by name). He really did love her mom and she made him promise to give her daughter beauty too. So I'm guessing that the reason no one saw him for the 20-ish years before Becky came to NYC is that he was dead. In the beginning I thought maybe he was the devil, and I wasn't the only one but the whole death thing and how he came back to life thing wasn't really touched on. So I don't get what happened. Just that after Becky got her happily ever after, he called her and said goodbye, her dead mom said she loved her and the call was over. I was/am so confused.

Also I wasn't that invested in Greg and Becky's love story. I thought it was somewhat interesting the way they're conversations went and I think even if they loved each other, I don't think they were IN LOVE. But maybe that would happen in time. And at least it wasn't that "insta-Love" crap. I kind of wanted Becky-as-Rebecca to ask Greg if he could still love her if she didn't look the way she did. I mean, sure the end of the book answers this question but I'm curious to hear Greg's reaction to that especially considering his WTF reaction when she pulled off her veil at their wedding and was just Becky after that. Lol, although I don't know how she and Rocher managed to run away without the Brit police catching up to them.

I really did enjoy Becky's best friend although she kind of annoyed me when she got into a fight with Lady Jessalyn (the one England actually wants Prince Greg to marry) and only Becky is implicated in the press for it. It was ridiculous. And I could not believe that neither one of them thought to save any of the Rebecca money she had to have made from her VOGUE shoot or the movie she did. But it did seem very dramatic that they became poor after that. It kind of reminded me of the end of [book: Jane Eyre] after Jane runs from Rochester and goes and lives with these other people.

Anyway, over all this book is a interesting read. Although I think the writing and plot holes do give the reading a bit of a hard time (and I NEVER notice plot holes) I definitely think this book offers something to readers that other books similar to this don't...lol although I can't exactly describe what that is.

MY DE-CRYPTION OF THE BOOKS CHARACTERS AND THEIR REAL LIFE COUNTERPARTS

Tom Kelly=Ralph Lauren

Prince Gregory=Prince William

Prince Jasper=Prince Harry

Princess Alicia=Princess Diana

Queen Catherine=Queen Elizabeth II

Lady Jessalyn=Kate Middleton

Shop-a-Lot=Save-a-Lot/Shop-n-Save (I figured this out from my time in Missouri for college)

Valu-Brite=Wal-Mart

Kill Me Softly

The cover totally throws off the actual story. It makes it look like a murder mystery or something and while there's murder and mystery it's so much more then what it is. But you know, don't judge a book by it's cover

Anyway, I really enjoyed this book. It kind of reminds me of the Sisters Grimm series with a more grown up, harsher tone. Mirabelle runs away to find her parents grave and finds love instead. And not just love that consumes you but love that kills you.

And a love triangle The Vampire Diaries style because it's between two brothers. And surprisingly enough I didn't hate the triangle. It was so much more realistic then most. First she meets Blue and loathes him 100%, not attracted to him, no hints of more, just completely hates him. Then she meets his brother Felix and as a girl who is 15, grown up in a strict household where she couldn't wear make up or date (so probably hasn't been kissed or had crushes/returned crushes) she falls instantly for his charms. He puts her up in a room in the Valentine hotel/casino and she's gone.

What attracted me:
The town she's come to reminds me of Ferryport Landing in the Sisters Grimm. A bunch of magical beings relating to fairy tales reside in secret in a town together. But here they are all cursed and marked to show what exactly their curse is. While the whole idea of the fairies and curses and marks didn't exactly appeal to me, I did enjoy the psychology of living a life that was set for you, from beginning to the end. Of course, Mira just happens to also be one of these characters. It's a strange set up the way the curses work out, but anyway it turns out that Mira is a "Sleeping Beauty" and her prince is this guy named Freddie that she doesn't want. But instead of a spindle, her "spindle" is a razor".

That's what made Felix a slightly more three dimensional character rather then a cardboard cutout of a villain masquerading as someone charming. I just wish some of this angst that he feels had appeared when he tried to kill Mira.

But the rising action kind of deflated when the climax hit (Felix finding Mira in his Dead Girl Room--why is it that Felix's name is Felix but their mom named his brother Blue...one of these things is not like the other...). Because he doesn't hurt her and she tries to run like once and then they start making out but I wish it could've been painful--him stealing her love--because it kind of deflated the action. So she cuts her self with her spindle--a razor (Oh, that's why her godmothers only let her use Nair to get rid of unwanted hair. That makes sense) and falls into her Sleeping Beauty sleep. Then Freddie and Blue show up and instead of a fight with Felix or something to drive up the action, they quickly hack through the thorns, find Mira and save her in like 30 minutes. Then there's a party, she saves herself from being without Blue and that's the end...C'mon there was so much more you could've done with that.

if only, if only, if only...
I only wish that Mira's parents had made an appearance because the introduction to them just seemed like a device used for Felix to gain Mira's love/trust and to get her to town in the first place. She even gets their number and her guardians reappear at the end of the story but everyone's pretty much forgotten all about them. So there are some loose ends that need to be tied up.

Especially because Blue foreshadowed that the curse (he and Felix are correspondents of a Bluebeard story except because they are Romantics, they kill the ones who love them by feeding on their love) wouldn't allow him to just let Mira live knowing about his collection of dead girls. Hopefully there will be a sequel in Mira's POV and then others following up the stories of Viv (Snow White counterpart), Rafe (a Beast counterpart), Layla (the Beauty counterpart) and the rest. I was actually drawn in by this world and there are some loose ends that need tying up.

All and all, an interesting read.

Splintered [Splintered #1]

the premise:

Splintered is a novel, the first of a series or a trilogy, I'm not sure. About Alyssa Gardner, one of the illegitimate American descendants of Alice Liddell, the girl who inspired Alice in Wonderland. However, ever since then, the female descendants of Alice all go crazy. They believe this is due to a curse bestowed upon Alice after she caused mistakes in Wonderland, but they couldn't be more wrong. When Alyssa decides to go to Wonderland in order to save her "crazy" mother from a electric shock treatment, she takes her best-friend-and-secret-crush, Jeb although part of her reason for going is to find the boy from her lost memories.

Yes, , it's another love triangle. 

Although I don't even believe that it should be such. Jeb is Alyssa's best friend and although there were times in the novel that he seemed a little sexist and annoyingly Edward-from-Twilight-y, he wasn't as bad as Morpheus. 

I cannot understand why people are Team Morpheus. The guy is not a good guy. He takes all the bad boy, mysterious guys from all other YA paranormal novels and turns them on their heads. He's a selfish, manipulative jerk who has been manipulating Alyssa and her family members for centuries and manipulates Alyssa throughout the novel until the end!

...But more about that later.

I thought the idea of the plot was semi-interesting, a girl who can hear bugs and flowers talk until I actually experienced it through the book and realized I thought it was quite stupid. Why would flowers or bugs say half of the things that Alyssa claimed she heard. But as the novel went on it made more sense.

Morpheus (whose name comes from the Greek God of Dreams) is the boy from Alice's childhood that her mother forced her to forget in her quest to save her from going to Wonderland. Only it turns out everything Alyssa and her past family members thought was wrong. This was actually one of the most annoying parts about this book. Every time we were told something, it turned out that it was wrong and we learned the "real story" ten more times! 

It turns out that the Alice who returned to Earth after her adventures in Wonderland isn't the real Alice Liddell. The real Alice had been locked up in a cage in Wonderland for 75 years while the Red Queen stole her life, married, had children and had grandchildren. Ha! How's that for an evil plan? Morpheus, who is the basically the Caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland wakes up as a moth, (he was turning from a caterpillar into a moth for apparently the last 75 years-who does that?) and switches the Red Queen and the real Alice's places for the last time. 

But when the Red Queen died, she forced him into making a promise that he has to abide by (another Wonderland tradition that is called Deathspeak) or he loses his soul. This is the reason that Morpheus manipulates the whole novel and Alyssa's existence. He trained her from when she was little (the only childhood he claims to have and this is the reason he claims to "love" Alyssa) until her mother caught wind of what was happening and forced him to leave her alone which works...until Alyssa comes looking for him. 

This is how the novel's events gets started. 

Everything that Alyssa does in the majority of the novel in Wonderland is to right Alice's wrongs (this is before she realizes that her Alice was not the real Alice) when she came to Wonderland the first time so that the crazy-curse and the bug and flower curse will disappear from their family. 

But it turns out that Morpheus is really training her to complete the tasks she has completed which is the only way she can become Queen-his Queen. At this point, the history we've come to believe is disputed again as we learn yet another version of what really happened when Alice came to Wonderland. I was confused and still don't understand what I learned. 

Anyway, Jeb dies and Alyssa uses a wish to wish that he had never came with her to Wonderland, the ghost of her crazy fake-Alice ancestor, Queen Red tries to take over her body but she fails, Morpheus seemingly dies and Alyssa goes home. There she and Jeb get together, Morpheus appears to say he's not dead and he hasn't given up on her and Alyssa's mom gets released from the crazy home.

Although I originally thought I would like this book, the writing in it was a little too disconnected for me and the novel was written in present-tense. But then the talking-flowers-and-the-bugs started to annoy me and so did the whole love triangle too. Alyssa should not even consider being with Morpheus, the guy is crazy and deceitful, but seeing how there is sequel coming out next year to this book called, Unhinged, I fear that the author will break the YA rule and stick Alyssa with Morpheus instead of Jeb. Or, actually since she met Morpheus as a kid then she met him first...

I'll probably read the next book in the series and finish it. I don't think it was a bad idea but the changing background story confused me immensely and I wasn't really invested in the main character due to the writing. Actually, and her own characteristics. I forgot that in the beginning of the novel, she steals almost $300 from Jeb's girlfriend and immediately describes it as borrowing the money and feels no remorse except once. That was completely unrealistic to me for the character we were supposed be sympathizing with. I didn't even get any sense of remorse when she starts making out with the girl (Taelor's) boyfriend, aka Jeb, later on in the book. 

But at least she's from Texas. :)