Review: This Song Will Save Your Life

Author: Leila Sales
Series: Standalone
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Release: Sep 17th 2013
Source: Borrowed
Pages: 279 (hardcover)
( Amazon | Goodreads )

Making friends has never been Elise Dembowski’s strong suit. All throughout her life, she’s been the butt of every joke and the outsider in every conversation. When a final attempt at popularity fails, Elise nearly gives up. Then she stumbles upon a warehouse party where she meets Vicky, a girl in a band who accepts her; Char, a cute, yet mysterious disc jockey; Pippa, a carefree spirit from England; and most importantly, a love for DJing.

Told in a refreshingly genuine and laugh-out-loud funny voice, THIS SONG WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE is an exuberant novel about identity, friendship, and the power of music to bring people together.

This Song Will Save Your Life is an incredibly personal read in the sense that no other books or characters have ever reflected so much of myself in them like this one. It is a book about being an outcast who desperately tries to belong and the inexplicable process of finding one's true self. If you have ever struggled with these hurdles growing up, you will for sure see a hint of yourself in Leila Sales' breathtakingly realistic and relatable protagonist - Elise Dembowski.

ARC Review: The Summer I Found You

Author: Jolene Perry 

Series: Standalone

Publisher: Albert Whitman Teen

Release: Mar 1st 2014

Source: Netgalley

Pages: 256 (ebook)

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All they have in common is that they're less than perfect. And all they're looking for is the perfect distraction.

Kate's dream boyfriend has just broken up with her and she's still reeling from her diagnosis of type 1 diabetes. Aidan planned on being a lifer in the army and went to Afghanistan straight out of high school. Now he's a disabled young veteran struggling to embrace his new life. When Kate and Aidan find each other neither one wants to get attached. But could they be right for each other after all?

I'm surprised at how much I enjoyed reading The Summer I Found You, even though my analytical left brain is yelling furiously at my silly emotional right brain the whole time. It is so contradictory that I find myself bewildered about how I can possibly like it when I see its problems as plain as day. Nevertheless, it is, without a doubt, one of the more delightful reading experiences I have undergone lately and I appreciate this lightening of mood if just for its entertainment value.

Review: Tiger Lily

Author: Jodi Lynn Anderson
Series: Standalone
Publisher: Haper Teen (Harper Collins)
Release: July 3rd 2012
Source: Purchased
Pages: 304 (paperback)
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Before Peter Pan belonged to Wendy, he belonged to the girl with the crow feather in her hair. . . .

Fifteen-year-old Tiger Lily doesn't believe in love stories or happy endings. Then she meets the alluring teenage Peter Pan in the forbidden woods of Neverland and immediately falls under his spell.

Peter is unlike anyone she's ever known. Impetuous and brave, he both scares and enthralls her. As the leader of the Lost Boys, the most fearsome of Neverland's inhabitants, Peter is an unthinkable match for Tiger Lily. Soon, she is risking everything—her family, her future—to be with him. When she is faced with marriage to a terrible man in her own tribe, she must choose between the life she's always known and running away to an uncertain future with Peter.

With enemies threatening to tear them apart, the lovers seem doomed. But it's the arrival of Wendy Darling, an English girl who's everything Tiger Lily is not, that leads Tiger Lily to discover that the most dangerous enemies can live inside even the most loyal and loving heart.

Peter Pan was never a favorite of mine, nor was I at all familiar with the myths of Neverland. Although adored by many of my friends, it seemed that I never cared enough to read this particular fairy tale, which also explained my initial hesitation towards Tiger Lily. Let me tell you now, my friends, I was such a fool. Tiger Lily was nothing like the ridiculous and predictive story I had expected. Instead, it was a grand display of fascinations and wonderments. I loved exploring Neverland in Jodi Lynn Anderson’s imaginations and the tale of Tiger Lily and Peter Pan is downright heartwarming and tear jerking all at the same time.

Mini ARC Review: Under the Wide and Starry Sky

Author: Nancy Horan
Series: Standalone
Publisher: Ballantine Books (Random House)
Release: Jan 21st 2014
Source: NetGalley
Pages: 496 (ebook)
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At the age of thirty-five, Fanny van de Grift Osbourne leaves her philandering husband in San Francisco and sets sail for Belgium to study art, with her three children and a nanny in tow. Not long after her arrival, however, tragedy strikes, and Fanny and her brood repair to a quiet artists' colony in France where she can recuperate. There she meets Robert Louis Stevenson, ten years her junior, who is instantly smitten with the earthy, independent and opinionated belle Americaine.

A woman ahead of her time, Fanny does not immediately take to the young lawyer who longs to devote his life to literature, and who would eventually write such classics as Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In time, though, she succumbs to Stevenson's charms. The two begin a fierce love affair, marked by intense joy and harrowing darkness, which spans decades as they travel the world for the sake of his health. Eventually they settled in Samoa, where Robert Louis Stevenson is buried underneath the epitaph:

Under the wide and starry sky, 

Dig the grave and let me lie.

Glad did I live and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:

Here he lies where he longed to be;

Home is the sailor, home from sea,

And the hunter home from the hill. 

(Requiem, Robert Louis Stevenson)

Though most of the books I read are YA fantasies, occasionally I do try out some other genres as well, for the purpose of broadening my perspective. Under the Wide and Starry Sky is precisely the case of such experiment. While I appreciate the interesting story and Nancy Horan's excellent writing, this is simply not the kind of books for me. I struggled quite a bit trying to rate it and the 2 stars you see here reflect nothing except personal taste.

Review: Mistress of the Wind

Author: Michelle Diener
Series: Standalone
Publisher: Season Publishing (self published work)
Release: Dec 23rd 2013
Source: NetGalley
Pages: 350 (ebook)
( Amazon | Goodreads )

Bjorn needs to find a very special woman . . .

The fate of his people, and his own life, depends on it. But when he does find her, she is nothing like he imagined, and may just harbor more secrets than he does himself.

Astrid has never taken well to commands. No matter who issues them . . .

She's clashed her whole life with her father, and now her lover, the mysterious man who comes to her bedroom in darkness and disappears to guard his mountain by day as a bear, is finding it out the hard way. And when he's taken by his enemies, no one is prepared for Astrid's response.

It is never wise to anger the mistress of the wind . . .

This novel is a retelling of the fairy tale East of the Sun, West of the Moon.

If you are a frequent reader of this blog, you know I'm a huge fan of fairy tale retellings. I love the fresh voice and delightfulness that come with each new add-ons and spin-offs. So when I finally got my hands on Mistress of the Wind, I was nothing less than thrilled. Unfortunately, after a fairly promising start, Mistress of the Wind fell terribly short to all my expectations.

Review: Endless

Author: Amanda Gray
Series: Standalone
Publisher: Month9Books
Release: Sep 10th 2013
Source: NetGalley
Pages: 384 (ebook)
( Amazon | Goodreads )

Jenny Kramer knows she isn't normal. After all, not everybody can see the past lives of people around them.

When she befriends Ben Daulton, resident new boy, the pair stumble on an old music box with instructions for “mesmerization” and discover they may have more in common than they thought. Like a past life.

Using the instructions in the music box, Ben and Jenny share a dream that transports them to Romanov Russia and leads them to believe they have been there together before. But they weren't alone. Nikolai, the mysterious young man Jenny has been seeing in her own dreams was there, too. When Nikolai appears next door, Jenny is forced to acknowledge that he has travelled through time and space to find her. Doing so means he has defied the laws of time, and the Order, an ominous organization tasked with keeping people in the correct time, is determined to send him back.

While Ben, Jenny and Nikolai race against the clock - and the Order - Jenny and Nikolai discover a link that joins them in life - and beyond death.

It is hard to describe the feelings that are going through my head right now. It has been awhile since the last time I got this attached to a book. Endless left me completely speechless, and I still cannot quite articulate the emotions I'm experiencing. I loved and hated the moment I flipped through the last page. When I realized there was no more to Jenny's story and that I had finished it, I felt my heart aching. Amanda Gray's brilliantly composed plot and characters swallowed me as a whole and I am perfectly content to stay in this mesmerizing dream.

Review: The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Author: Neil Gaiman
Series: Standalone
Publisher: William Morrow (Harper Collins)
Release: June 18th 2013
Source: Purchased 
Pages: 259 (ebook)
( Amazon | Goodreads )

Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.

Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what.

A groundbreaking work from a master, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out. It is a stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is the first Neil Gaiman novel I have read so far. Although unfamiliar with his work, I have indeed heard a lot of praises regarding his other novels. I was very curious and excited about his style of story telling and the fantasy world he built for us fellow readers. And after finishing the book, I would totally say that I for one will be following closely with Neil Gaiman's future publishing activities.