Flashback Friday

Flashback Friday: The Age of Miracles

Published by Paola on May 10, 2013 | 2 Responses

AUTHOR: Karen Thompson Walker

GENRE: YA Science Fiction

FORMAT: Hardcover, 273 Pages

âLater, I would come to think of those first days as the time when we learned as a species that we had worried over the wrong things: the hole in the ozone layer, the melting of the ice caps, West Nile and swine flu and killer bees. But I guess it never is what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophes are always differentâunimagined, unprepared for, unknown.â

When news breaks out that the earth’s rotation is slowing down, Julia is eleven years old. It’s a typical Saturday morning in a typical suburban household, but it’s one of the last normal days they will ever have. The changes are subtle at first, but become more and more pronounced as the days and nights grow longer and the established laws of both gravity and nature are slowly altered. Along with millions of others on the planet, Julia finds herself fighting to adapt to this new world, where the middle of the night is as bright as high noon and birds can no longer locate true north. Crops die in the blazing sun and freeze in the seemingly endless nights.

I’ve seen a lot of mixed reviews regarding this book. Most of the criticism concerns the author’s liberties with science/physics/what-have-you, and I can understand those criticisms. However, I walked away from The Age of Miracles with a good feeling about what I’d just read, and I think my favorable reaction stemmed from approaching the book as more of a coming-of-age story than anything else. I stand by my opinion that it’s not so much about the world ending as it is about Julia’s life beginning at the end.

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The Night Circus

Published by Paola on April 26, 2013 | 2 Responses

Every Friday, weâll be reviewing one of our past favorites that never made it to the blog. (Hey, life happens.) Check back once a week for some of our most highly recommended reads!

TITLE: The Night Circus

AUTHOR: Erin Morgenstern

GENRE: Fantasy

FORMAT: Hardcover, 387 Pages

Is magic born and bred? Or can it be trained, disciplined through logic? This question lies at the heart of a mysterious circus, its black and white tents serving as the stark background to a duel between two schools of thought. It is a duel that has taken place before, the game played on a different field and with different pawns. On one side is Celia, the daughter of a famed master illusionist, whose talent and abilities are as natural to her as breathing. On the other side is Marco, the ward of a mysterious man who teaches him that magic belongs to anyone and can be mastered with diligence. Each is told that they are bound to another: a rival, an opponent, whose identity they will not be told. The winner is determined by the wonders he or she can create. The game will not end until that winner is chosen. Thus, the night circus is born. It becomes something more than a mere gathering of tents and performers, as Celia and Marco begin a battle that spans years. It is a war waged in secret, interwoven with the crisp autumn air and the sound of applause. Each move brings something new and unexpected: mirrored halls that reflect scenes from somewhere else, rooms containing entire deserts, a carousel that seems to live and breathe. Even more unexpected is the love that takes root between two people who are tied to one another by a rivalry that ultimately separates them.

You guys. I can’t talk about this book. I love it with an intensity that can’t be expressed in words. I mean, that’s pretty obvious considering how melodramatic I get just trying to type out a few sentences. That summary up there? Nearly drained all the energy I have. Writing about The Night Circus makes my heart ache. Yes, it was a very popular book when it released and the hype was out of this world. Please, don’t let anything you’ve heard get between you and this book. You’ll miss out on something enchanting and rare.

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Code Name Verity

Published by Paola on April 5, 2013 | 3 Responses

Every Friday, weâll be reviewing one of our past favorites that never made it to the blog. (Hey, life happens.) Check back once a week for some of our most highly recommended reads!

TITLE: Code Name Verity

AUTHOR: Elizabeth Wein

GENRE: Historical Fiction

FORMAT: eBook, 354 pages

If you’ve read any of my past reviews, you know that I usually write the summary/synopsis of a book myself. It’s just personal preference, sort of like a mini warm-up writing exercise for me (I’m a nerd) and a chance to kind of mull over my feelings about what I read before sharing them in the rest of the review. But for this time, and this particular book, I’m going to use the synopsis on Goodreads because I just feel like the best person to give you insight into Verity’s story is none other than Verity herself. She is hands down one of the most memorable voices I’ve ever encountered in fiction. I love her, and this book, so fiercely that I don’t even really know how to articulate how I feel about it. Seriously. It was one of those books for me when I read it last year. Pretty much face in a pillow, screaming and crying and laughing, once I turned the last page. It was a book that left me feeling bereft after reading it — like I’d been forced to say goodbye to a friend.

I have two weeks. Youâll shoot me at the end no matter what I do.

Thatâs what you do to enemy agents. Itâs what we do to enemy agents. But I look at all the dark and twisted roads ahead and cooperation is the easy way out. Possibly the only way out for a girl caught red-handed doing dirty work like mine â and I will do anything, anything, to avoid SS-HauptsturmfÃ¼hrer von Linden interrogating me again.

He has said that I can have as much paper as I need. All I have to do is cough up everything I can remember about the British War Effort. And Iâm going to. But the story of how I came to be here starts with my friend Maddie. She is the pilot who flew me into France â an Allied Invasion of Two.

We are a sensational team.

That “Allied Invasion of Two” is the heart of Code Name Verity. It’s not Verity by herself, although I feel like she really carries the bulk of the story. It’s not Maddie by herself either, even though she balances Verity perfectly. The two have to be taken together. As Verity notes at one point, “It’s like being in love, discovering your best friend.”

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A Brief History of Montmaray

Published by Paola on March 29, 2013 | 1 Response

Every Friday, weâll be reviewing one of our past favorites that never made it to the blog. (Hey, life happens.) Check back once a week for some of our most highly recommended reads!

TITLE: A Brief History of Montmaray

SERIES: The Montmaray Journals, #1

AUTHOR: Michelle Cooper

GENRE: YA Historical Fiction

FORMAT: eBook, 235 pages

This series is chronicled through the journals of Sophie FitzOsborne, princess of an impoverished, storm-tossed little island kingdom off the coast of Spain called Montmaray. She isn’t the heir to the throne — that’s her charming, vibrant brother Toby — and she isn’t the avowed genius of the family — that’s her fiercely clever cousin Veronica — but Sophie has a quality about her that makes you feel instantly at home in their drafty castle. Her world is bounded by the wide blue sea, the castle itself is both perched precariously on the cliffs and falling apart all over the place, and things like candles and paper are a luxury to the world’s most obscure royal family. The reader sees this world through Sophie’s eyes, from the castle’s threadbare grandeur to the blackouts and bombs in wartime London.

This is a series that really, truly gets better with every installment. My experience has often been that the following books just aren’t as good as the first, but the opposite is true for The Montmaray Journals because Sophie, our narrator, grows up A LOT between Book 1 and Book 3. I liked her better and better as she got older, and her family swiftly became my family. It’s a story of war, the true meaning of ‘home’, of love and of loss. I could talk about it forever.

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