The Probability of Miracles (Wendy Wunder)

Dry, sarcastic, sixteen-year-old Cam Cooper has spent the last seven years in and out hospitals. The last thing she wants to do in the short life she has left is move 1,500 miles away to Promise, Maine - a place known for the miraculous events that occur there. But it's undeniable that strange things happen in Promise: everlasting sunsets; purple dandelions; flamingos in the frigid Atlantic; an elusive boy named Asher; and finally, a mysterious envelope containing a list of things for Cam to do before she dies. As Cam checks each item off the list, she finally learns to believe - in love, in herself, and even in miracles. A debut novel from an immensely talented new writer, The Probability of Miracles crackles with wit, romance and humor and will leave readers laughing and crying with each turn of the page.

First off, yayyyy for a protagonist that's not white for once!

Or, at least not full white. Not to mention Cam's other culture (she's half Samoan) is completely embraced in this novel. There's even a scene where one of her friends tries to make a little joke about her Samoan side but she quickly sets them straight. You go, girl!

There are few books that make me want to reread them in physical form (versus in electronic form), but this is one of them. Despite the different plot points and characteristics that frequent most contemporary YA novels, this one managed to stay original...mostly.

Most importantly, Cam is dying of cancer. And Since her father died, Alicia (Cam's mom) has been with a bunch of different guys. Therefore Cam has learned true love=not real. Commitment=doesn't exist. People=are fickle. Also, Cam is a very sarcastic, I'm-not-a-typical-teenager teenager. The story isn't told through her point of view but third person, however the focus remains strictly on Cam. 

Cam has a best friend (who also has the same cancer) who is having an affair with another girl's boyfriend. I was really hoping this plot-line was going to be different. First the guy, Ryan, goes to youth group and his girlfriend won't have sex with him. Lily (the best friend) goes to youth group too but will have sex with him. When we first see Ryan and Lily interact he seems to go beyond the stereotypes the plot demands of him. He waits for Lily to eat before he does, he helps her when she has a remission-caused nosebleed and seems like he genuinely cares about her. But when Cam gets him alone and asks his intentions, Ryan basically states he doesn't see the point of dumping his girlfriend for him. I can't decide if he thinks this because she is dying or because he really doesn't want to be with her. It sucked.

Cam's best friend also ties in another plot device from other YA stories. When she and Cam were younger and were away at what seemed like a cancer camp, they each made bucket lists. However, to keep them from sounding so depressing they call them Flamingo lists. 

A lot of Cam's sarcasm and personality comes out in her penning of the list, which is a sad ode to the life of a teenager/teens in YA. (Is this really what we're like?)

FLAMINGO LIST (I rearranged them in the order they are achieved)

* Experiment with petty shoplifting.

* Have an awkward moment with my best friend’s boyfriend.

* Dabble in some innocent stalking behavior.

* Drink beer.

* Lose my virginity at a keg party.

* Have my heart broken by an asshole.

* Stay out all night.

* Wallow in misery, mope, pout, and sleep through Saturday.

* Get fired from a summer job.

* Go cow-tipping.

* Kill my little sister’s dreams.

Anyways, in the beginning of the novel Cam has just found out that she is in remission yet again but this time there is nothing the doctors can do for her. This flashback was really sad because Cam's doctor was upset and she was trying to make him feel better. So her mom is like, we're going to find a cure. She hears about this magical miracle town in Maine called Promise and whisks Cam and her little sister Perry away from their DisneyWorld life (they work/live at DisneyWorld, BTW) and leaves her current boyfriend behind.

Once in Promise, miracles ignite. Almost immediately in their entrance to the town Cam meets a boy named Asher. Asher is a bunch of cliches. He is a good-looking football player who has the cream of the crop (what the hell does that saying even mean?) to chose from with girls. However, in his spare time Asher enjoys getting hand jobs from older women. Also, Asher is afraid. He's afraid to leave Promise because his parents died when they left, so what if he does too?

In the beginning I liked Cam and Asher's relationship. Yes, she thought he was cute and engaged in some innocent stalking from her widows walk but he wasn't all that she was thinking about. Cam still had a personality past her crush on Asher. And their relationship seemed to progress at a good phase. That is, until Cam's new employer and Asher's aunt reveals his back story to her. I felt like this took the place of a actual intimate bonding moment between the two characters that could've furthur developed their relationship. Instead, it was still used as such. Soon a rift occurs between Cam, Asher, Perry and Alicia, they kiss and soon are all touchy-feely with each other.

Cam soon gets a lot of her list done. In one night and the fallout that follows, she manages to knock a good three or four off her list. Perry insists that she goes to a island rager which you have to zip-line to get too. Once there Cam actually makes some friends her age like this girl named Sunny and starts hula dancing. She also drinks a little and manages to catch a drunkie. The guy's name is Alec and he is a French exchange student. He leads Cam to this boat where they start making out. She tries to tell him no, but he's all:

and takes her virginity even though she didn't say yes. In fact, she specifically said no. So it was non-consensual sex. I know she didn't fight and later said that it actually started feeling good...until it didn't but still. If someone says no, it means:

I didn't even really process what the fuck had happened until later when I re-read that scene. Ugh, what a fucking loser. Then on top of that, (of course) Alec has a girlfriend. A girlfriend that Cam sorta-kinda-but-not-really be friends as time passes. I know she had given up on finding love before she died but I really wish that she could've had a different first time.

This book brought up some good points. Like Perry goes off on Cam once for not recognizing that as young as she is, she's had to make sacrifices for Cam's illness too. Cam isn't the only one being effected by her cancer. So is her mom and her sister. I think it's fairly easy in books like these for the authors and main characters to get lost in their struggle and seeing the grief in the people around them that they forget this aspect. The loved ones of someone with cancer aren't just mourning, they are making sacrifices for the cancer patient whether they are dying and trying to find a cure. It was so sad though to hear Perry have to tell Cam this. 
One of the main issues in the story is that Cam refuses to believe in miracles. She refuses to believe that the town was magical. She even gets into a fight with her mom and sister about this. They beg her to believe and she refuses. Trying to help them, she tries to make her mom's garden magically grow overnight and makes a donkey into a unicorn for her sister. However, she fails miserably.

At this point Cam hits the lowest of low points. Desperately needing someone to talk to, she tries to call Lily but her mother informs her that Lily actually died three days ago and they had forgotten to call Cam and let her know. Finally Cam is done.

She decides that she's tired of living and takes a bunch of pills and tries to drive her car off a cliff. But the pills kick in too soon and she crashes into a bouncy house and Asher manages to find her (after his dick's happy time) and forces her to throw up the pills. After this, she manages to work everything out with her family and Asher. This actually leads to Asher cutting off the older girl and he and Cam eventually start dating.

Everything seems good for a while. Somehow Lily managed to send Cam a couple of gifts beyond the grave. The first is the now-bedazzled picture of them that Cam stole from her house. She also actually made a real version of that book thing they were writing together. She also sent Cam her own Flamingo list. The only thing that wasn't checked (I was soooooo sad. I had hoped things would change for her) was "find true love" but Cam decided that she, herself had. The last thing Lily arranged was a Make a Wish gift that ironically sent Cam back home to DisneyWorld with her friends.

Just as she prepares to take Asher and her friends to DisneyWorld, Asher notices a blue spot (a symptom of her disease) on her, but she blows it off. Her focus is getting him and her friends outside of Promise to show them what the world is like. Her mother kept refusing to let her go because she was scared that leaving Promise would send Cam in remission. She's partly right, but the new blue spot appears right before they even leave. Anyway, the trip is nice, she and Asher have sex (although they've had sex before this and are dating now, hence the touch-feely period) and they bring back Alicia's left behind boyfriend because Cam realizes now that her sister and mother love him more then just temporarily. The boyfriend proposes to the mom and they get married in Promise.

This is where the next couple of chapters keep having the perfect endings for the novel, but they aren't the endings. It'll just be another chapter. Cam starts semi-dreaming of the future. She's been accepted into Harvard and Asher is semi-considering leaving Promise. However, Cam can feel death coming for her. The symptoms started just before she left Promise and are only getting worse. But then the two of them get into a  huge fight as Cam tries to push Asher to leave Promise. It almost sounds like a last wish. Angry, Asher goes out in the sea and a huge storm appears.

A ghost ancestor of his appears to Cam and tells her that yes, she will be dying soon but she has to call him back. Cam holds on for as long as she can before she passes out. Her family has to leave Promise to get her to a real hospital. Cam says goodbye to her family and luckily Asher appears and they say their goodbyes.

And then she dies. My first thought was: What? WHAT? She dies? She dies? What the hell kind of book is called The Probability of Miracles and she actually dies!!?! Was that the point? So we could calculate the chances of the things that Cam did experience in Promise were actually miracles? Or were they just a bunch of coincidences? Was it a coincidence that the flamingos came there or were they really for her? Was it a coincidence that she was getting better before she died or was it really the works of a miracle that didn't work?

But maybe the miracle wasn't that Cam was supposed to live. Maybe the miracle was that she actually saw and experienced love and died with it. I know when she died she was surprised she still felt the love of all her loved ones. Maybe the miracle was Asher. Maybe the miracle was finding friends, a family. Maybe the miracle was seeing that true love and commitment were real despite her past and people like Alec probing her wrong. Maybe the miracle was the love Cam actually had to earn from Asher and Sunny and the others and the love she witnessed between Perry, her mother and her boyfriend. Maybe that's the miracle: love.

Anyway, despite my spoiling of the plot you should definitely read this book. I loved the writing and some of the characters. This book is underrated on Goodreads and should definitely be read more.

Gorgeous [Avery Sisters #2]

SUMMARY: She's looking good...but Allison Avery can't believe it. Growing up with beautiful, blond sisters, Allison has always been the dark-haired, "interesting-looking" Avery. So when the devil shows up and offers to make her gorgeous, Allison jumps at the chance to finally get noticed. But there's one tiny catch, and it's not her soul: The devil wants her cell phone.

Though her deal with the devil seems like a good idea at the time, Allison soon realizes that being gorgeous isn't as easy as it looks. Are her new friends and boyfriend for real, or do they just like her pretty face? Allison can't trust anyone anymore, and her possessed phone and her family's financial crisis aren't making things any easier. Plus when she finds out that she might be America's next teen model, all hell breaks loose. Allison may be losing control, but how far is she willing to go to stay gorgeous forever

MY THOUGHTS:
Okay, this book is very bad, forget “ehh”. It doesn't really take itself seriously.

There’s the cliche girl who is the middle child and feels like her family treats her older sister and the baby of the family way better than her. And she is a MAJOR pushover. Her so-called best friend Jade basically judges any and every one from the amount of make-up they were to their grades and how many extracurriculars they're involved in. I especially don’t like Jade because she tells Allison that by skipping ONE DAY OF HIGH SCHOOL IN THE 9TH GRADE colleges weren't going to accept her.

Um, okay because that’s not a strict exaggeration.

And she expects everyone to abide by her rules. And if they don’t, she gives them the silent treatment. It’s like her go-to solution. For example: Allison laughs too loudly at a joke Jade makes in the cafeteria and Jade and their other friend (basically Jade’s lackey) Serena just follows her example.

And then the boy of the story, Ty/Tyler is ugh. He’s fickle. He flirts with Allison’s new friend Roxie and then her best friend Jade (another reason I don’t like her because she knows that Allison has had a crush on him for forever and she just disregards that) and then starts going after Allison when she gets pretty. And then the author tries to make him seem like a good guy by humanizing him and throwing in that he has a brother with Down Syndrome and he is his hero.

I’m confused. Is he good or bad?

And Allison is kind of naive too. Like when Tyler admits to her that he only/started liking her because she got hot, she seems surprised.

And don’t even get me started on the devil part.

This really makes no sense. It’s used as a plot device to get the actions of the book started but it's not properly executed at all. Like when the devil first shows up, Allison doesn't freak out. She just goes pee and keeps herself covered because she doesn't want to expose herself to him. And then they haggle over a deal that makes no sense. He tries to offer Allison her sisters metabolism in exchange for her soul (but apparently she doesn't have one? I didn't understand this part) but she asks to be gorgeous instead...in exchange for her CELL PHONE! And the devil takes it.

What does he need a cell phone for???? He doesn't even take it away. Instead, he merely “possesses it” which means it basically does whatever it wants, whenever it wants. Making weird sounds, playing the music randomly and loudly. And he allows her to keep it...um, okay?  Then the devil turns out to be the editor-in-chief of the magazine Allison is a finalist in. And he expects her to tell all about her family's financial problems and her trouble with Jade and Roxie and Ty and her stuff with her sisters. Which I guess is the author's way of saying something about beauty and culture and magazines and the people behind them.

And it ends the way it began, Allison rips up a photo of her looking gorgeous and walks out choosing to be noble and to keep her family's secrets out of the spotlight at the expense of herself. Which is kind of a predictable ending. And with that she decides she's good enough to date Ty and they start dating.

The end.

Talk about time waster reading this book was.

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

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.

Hidden [House of Night 10]

Sadly, I literally had to force myself to read this book. That's how bad or how far this series has come too. I remember when I first found Marked in 9th grade and how in love with the series I was. I found the next book or two and read them over that same weekend. But now...I'm so over it. It's like the authors just want to profit now. I used to go back and re-read the entire series before reading the newest installment (this was supposed to be over a lonnnggggg time ago) but I don't feel like doing that anymore.

So what I noticed was there were all these characters, so many that I couldn't keep them straight and half of them sounded the same dialogue wise. Like the boyfriends of Aphrodite, Zoey and Stevie Rae all sounding the same. THEY'RE DIFFERENT! I feel like Stevie Rae's boyfriend would be more reserved and quiet and definitely not PDA with Stevie Rae (even if it is cute_. And Darius and Stark wouldn't sound similar because Darius is supposed to be a grown man!

And another thing I noticed, for such a feminism society that this world is built up off of, isn't weird that pretty much every girl/woman who is evil is a slut?

~Neferet,

~Erin, after she suddenly decides that she likes Dallas after she and Shaunee stop acting like two-girls-one-brain and strips off her clothes and does God knows what with him.

~Nicole was portrayed as a slut as was Aphrodite before she and Zoey became friends.
Every girl who had chosen to be evil is shown to be a slut.

"Sluts equals evilness" is a stupid mindset not to mention sexist mindset that goes completely against everything that feminism stands for what with gender equality and what-not. Those who are branded sluts are shown to be victims of gender inequality.

And I heard how the authors don't/still don't plan for Zoey to settle down so that's why they keep adding all these guys. Okay, that might have made sense in the beginning. Zoey had been with Heath since she was little so it kind of made sense that she decided to try something new with Erik and then Loren came and took her virginity opening up a whole new relationship when Stark came along but this is ridiculous. Stark being all jealous and possessive and Heath coming back as (basically) a Minotaur is just skirting around the issue. By choosing one guy to date she's not choosing forever. You could leave the ending open to interpretation so that we can think whatever we want, but this is ridiculous.

Okay, I'm done ranting. Now my actual review: Nothing happened. 

• Erin turned evil/slutty and became Dallas' new girlfriend.

• Everyone realized that the bull-boy really is Heath.

• Kalona really is "Good" now.

• Erebus is revealed as his brother and shows up twice in the story.

• Erik's thoughts are revealed (he's actually more of a jerk/such a guy then  I realized so I actually enjoyed this) as well as his interest in Shaylin--or rather love interest.

• Zoey's grandma is kidnapped by Neferet and is saved.

• Neferet explodes into a bunch of spiders and is exiled by the High Council or whatever their name is.

• Damien gets a new love interest.

• Lenobia's new love interest Travis is revealed as her soul mate who died a long time ago and came back Heath style.

• Nicole starts turning nice.

The end of this series doesn't even sound appealing anymore now that Kalona is on the good side for real now.

I forced myself to read this and I probably will force myself to read the last two books because I don't want to have wasted all of this time and effort. But really, Cast family, this series was supposed to be done along time ago. I'm in college now; I have no time to read. Why can't you just be done like everything else these past two years: Gossip Girl, the Twilight movies, the Hunger Games trilogy, Smallville, and a bunch of other stuff.

End already!