Review: The Unidentified

Title: The Unidentified
Author: Rae Mariz
Publisher: Harper Teen
Pages: 296
Rating: 4/5
From the book jacket: 
Fifteen-year-old Katey (aka Kid) goes to school in the Game -- a mall converted into a "school" run by corporate sponsors. As the students play their way through the levels, they are also creating products and being used for market research by the sponsors, who are watching them 24/7 on video cameras.

Kid has a vague sense of unease but doesn't question this existence until one day she witnesses a shocking anticorporate prank. She follows the clues to uncover the identities of the people behind it and discovers an anonymous group that calls itself the Unidentified. Intrigued by their counterculture ideas and enigmatic leader, Kid is drawn into the group. But when the Unidentified's pranks and even Kid's own identity are co-opted by the sponsors, Kid decides to do something bigger -- something that could change the Game forever.

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I think the thing that hit me hardest about this book is that it's totally plausible. Maybe not in the immediate future, but the technology of the Game is fast approaching and education spending is decreasing and corporations are on the rise... is it really so ridiculous to imagine a world where "school" is a blend of technology, video games, and marketing?

Before I get too rambly, let me start at the beginning. Katey, known to her friends as "Kid," is basically the epitome of mediocrity in the Game. She has decent scores, "riding high on the bell curve" as her advisor puts it, a few friends... she's not on the It List (which is an actual list in the Game), she's not a social pariah, she's just...average. And she's happy that way, mostly. And then an anti-corporate prank rattles her world. She's the only one who seems to care - and that attracts attention. Suddenly corporations want her, her friends don't understand her sudden popularity, she maybe has a boyfriend -- and the anonymous group responsible for the prank knows she knows about them. Cue mystery and hidden agendas.

It took me a while to get into The Unidentified for a couple of reasons. First, the set-up was kind of confusing; I didn't really understand the Game for the first several chapters. Second, the slang was not what I was used to; Kid and Mikey and Ari were using words that I didn't know. It took some getting used to. But once I got into it...wow. I couldn't put it down.

I love that The Unidentified challenges us to think. To think about popularity, and fashion, and corporate America, and what it means to have an identity. The ideas that this book tackles are so big and so real that it's impossible to read it without fully engaging your brain - and that's a good thing. But at the same time, it's a very basic look at friendship and humanity that is just as applicable now as in the technology-dominated society Kid lives in.

It's a bit confusing at times, but I think The Unidentified is definitely worth your time.

Links:
Rae Mariz's website

Review: Killer

Title: Killer
Author: Sara Shepard
Publisher: Harper Teen
Pages: 321
Series: Pretty Little Liars #6
Rating: 4 stars
**WARNING: Contains spoilers from books 1-5.**


I'm not even going to bother posting the jacket cover description because it is so ridiculous and not related to the plot of the novel. It includes the line "Spencer is stealing - from her family." She's not. The other lines about what the characters are up to are equally irrelevant, and the rest of it is just background (Ali's dead, the girls are being stalked. We've known this since book one).

That said, these books just keep getting more and more mysterious. And I love the cover for this one. The purple is great. I think it's my favorite cover in the series, at least so far, and I've seen the other two, so I'm pretty sure this one is my favorite.

Anyway, though, the story. It is so difficult to define a specific plot for any one of these novels - they're like one big extended plot, which is probably why each one makes me want the next one ASAP. Hanna still annoys the heck out of me and Aria is still my favorite; the whole story with Spencer in this one seems kind of out of character but totally understandable, and I feel so much sympathy for Emily, especially with the whole Isaac thing set up in the previous book. Hanna excepted, I love the characters, and I love the way Sara Shepard develops mysteries.

The major thing that's going on in Killer is that the girls are tracking down who killed Ali. I won't say who (spoilers are horrid), but at the end of this one, it seems like they pretty much know who did it...I can't wait to find out where it goes in the next one.

So overall, great plot, good characters, and I've already put Heartless on hold at the library!

Links: 
Pretty Little Liars website

Review: Wicked

Title: Wicked
Author: Sara Shepard
Publisher: HarperTeen
Pages: 310
Series: Pretty Little Liars #5
Rating: 4 stars
**Warning: Spoilers for earlier books in the series.**
From the book jacket: 
In idyllic Rosewood, Pennsylvania, where Burberry earmuffs keep diamond-studded ears warm, four very pretty girls have done some very wicked things...

High school juniors Hanna, Spencer, Emily, and Aria have paid dearly for their sins. A stalker named "A" terrorized them for months and revealed their darkest secrets. But now that A's true identity has been revealed, the girls can finally go back to their pretty little lives.

Only, once a pretty little liar, always a pretty little liar - and these girls just can't help but be bad. Hanna will do anything to be Rosewood's queen bee. Spencer's digging up her family's secrets. Emily can't stop thinking about her new boyfriend. And Aria approves a little too strongly of her mom's taste in men.

As the secrets get darker and the scandals juicier, the consequences turn deadly. After all, girls who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. And in Rosewood, someone is always watching...

**********

I am enjoying these books, but I must confess, the book jacket descriptions are really annoying. I think the characters are all relatable to some degree (some more than others), but the jacket copies make the books sound like they're about a bunch of super-popular witchy gossip-queen girls who are all about doing every awful thing they can think of. (Only one of them is like that, and even then not the "do every bad thing she can think of" part. I mean, Hanna is my least favorite character, but she's not evil.)

However, jacket flap aside, I enjoyed Wicked. It went by too quickly! One thing about these books is that the plotlines all run right into each other and it's sometimes hard to pick out the one definite story arc that defines each novel as independent of the others. Or maybe it's just that there's so much going on! At any rate, I definitely want to read Killer ASAP.

Sara Shepard really does an excellent job of establishing mysteries that leave you wanting to know more, and she doesn't give us too many clues. All too often I figure out the plots of stories way before the characters do, and I love that with this series, I haven't. Okay, so the jacket flap pretty much gave away what each of the girls are going to be up to in the novel (even if the issue in question doesn't come up until halfway through the book), but I still don't know who New A is or who killed Ali or anything like that. I haven't solved the big mysteries yet.

I feel like I'm rambling a bit. This is probably the least coherent review I've posted to date (I blame the fact that I've been really busy and consequently sleep-deprived, although it's probably just that I'm in a rambly mood today). But to sum up my review of Wicked in just a couple of sentences: Definitely an excellent continuation of the series, but I'm starting to think that I'd enjoy these books a lot more if I just gave up on reading the covers.

Links: 
Pretty Little Liars website

Review: Unbelievable

Title: Unbelievable
Author: Sara Shepard
Publisher: Harper Teen
Pages: 335
Series: Pretty Little Liars #4
Rating: 4 stars
**WARNING: Spoilers for Books 1-3**
From the book jacket: 
Behind Rosewood's grand facades, where the air smells like apples and Chanel No. 5 and infinity pools sparkle in landscaped backyards, nothing is as it seems. It was here, back in seventh grade, that five best friends shared everything - Seven jeans, MAC makeup, and their deepest, darkest secrets. For Aria, Spencer, Hanna, and Emily, it was a dream come true...until Alison, the most beautiful of them all, suddenly vanished.

Now someone named A has turned their charmed lives into a living nightmare. Emily has been shipped off to her hyper-conservative cousins in Iowa. Aria is stuck living with her dad and his home-wrecker girlfriend. And Spencer fears she had something to do with Alison's murder. But Hanna's fate is far worse than all of that - she's clinging to life in the hospital, because she knew too much.

With A's threats turning dangerous and Ali's killer still on the loose, the girls must uncover the truth - about A, about Ali, and about what happened to Hanna - before they become A's next victims. But as they unravel Rosewood's mysteries and secrets, will it bring an end to the horror...or is this just the beginning?

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I was really excited to start this one after the end of Perfect - I wanted to know what had happened to Hanna. At first I was a little disappointed: it felt like it took ages for the plot to get moving, because it was split between four different points of view and so there were little cliffhangers all the time and it was just very spread out. BUT! It did get moving, and the mystery of A comes to a big climax in Unbelievable.

Sara Shepard really does do a great job with the mystery. I did figure out the big secret she was throwing at us a few pages before it was officially revealed, but for most of the novel I genuinely had no idea who the culprit was. She managed to resolve a lot of issues (which is good) and still leave enough there to make me want Wicked ASAP.

The issues are changing, too, which is good. The characters are still their same old selves (for the record, Hanna is still my least favorite, but I love the other three) and they're still dealing with their issues, but it's changing. Their secrets are out, so they're facing a whole new set of hurdles. Plus, the mystery of "the Rosewood Stalker" is escalating and they're dealing with that. There was still more preppy-popular-fashion-stuff than I liked because I don't relate to that well, but the story and characters are well-created, so I can overlook the other stuff. I think Unbelievable may have been my favorite book in the series to date.

Also, a random side note: these books are really hard to review once you get past the first one, because the plot is so wrapped up in the mystery that it's difficult to find something to say that's not some kind of spoiler, and I hate spoilers. But I shall keep trying, because I'm really enjoying these books. :)

Links: 
Pretty Little Liars website

Review: Perfect

Title: Perfect

Author: Sara Shepard

Publisher: Harper Teen

Pages: 308

Series: Pretty Little Liars #3

Rating: 4 stars

**Warning: Contains spoilers for books 1-2**

From the book jacket: 

In a town where gossip thrives like the ivy that clings to its mansions, where mysteries lie behind manicured hedges and skeletons hide in every walk-in closet, four perfect-looking girls aren't nearly as perfect as they seem.

Spencer, Aria, Emily, Hanna, and their best friend Alison were once the girls at Rosewood Day School. They clicked through the halls in their Miu Miu flats, tanned in their matching Pucci bikinis, and laughed behind their freshly manicured fingernails. They were the girls everyone loved but secretly hated - especially Alison.

So when Alison mysteriously vanished, Spencer, Aria, Emily, and Hanna's grief was tinged with...relief. And when Alison's body was later discovered in her own backyard, the girls were forced to unearth some ugly memories of their old friend, too. Could there have been more to Alison's death than anyone realizes?

Now someone named A, someone who seems to know everything, is pointing the finger at one of them for Alison's murder. As their secrets get darker and their scandals turn deadly, A is poised to ruin their perfect little lives forever.

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My thoughts about this one in terms of character development and general drama are pretty much the same as they were for the first two. The characters are relatable (although less so in this one, I felt like) and the drama is a little overdone but still definitely engaging. What made Perfect different from Pretty Little Liars and Flawless was the plot.

While "A" is still definitely present, this book is a lot less about the girls freaking out about being stalked and a lot more about finding out a) who killed Ali, b) who the stalker actually is, and c) putting their lives back together as A messes around with everything that matters to them. Hanna has always been the hardest-to-relate-to character for me, and in Perfect I started to really connect with her. As always, some of what goes on is way over the top, but it worked here.

Shepard's tackling a lot of issues - not only murder and stalking, but bulimia, homosexuality, divorce, family problems, cheating (in more ways than one), and being afraid of yourself. She manages to pretty much pull it off, though. I don't want to inadvertently spoil something (this one's got so much mystery that spoilers really suck), but I will say this: the ending of this one definitely makes me want number four ASAP, because I want to know what happens next. The plot of Perfect is probably the most engaging yet, at least in the second half, and I want to know what comes next!

Links:

Pretty Little Liars website

Review: Flawless

Title: Flawless
Author: Sara Shepard
Publisher: Harper Teen
Pages: 330
Series: Pretty Little Liars #2
Rating: 4 stars
**Warning: Contains spoilers for Book 1 (none for this one, though)**
From the book jacket: 
In the exclusive town of Rosewood, Pennsylvania, where the sweetest smiles hide the darkest secrets, four pretty little liars - Spencer, Aria, Emily, and Hanna - have been very bad girls...

Spencer stole her sister's boyfriend. Aria is brokenhearted over her English teacher. Emily likes her new friend Maya...as much more than a friend. And Hanna's obsession with looking flawless is literally making her sick. But the most horrible secret of all is something so scandalous it could destroy their perfect little lives.

And someone named "A" is threatening to do just that.

At first they thought A was Alison, their friend who vanished three years ago...but then Alison turned up dead. So could A be Melissa, Spencer's ultracompetitive sister? Or Maya, who wants Emily all to herself? What about Toby, the mysterious guy who left town right after Alison went missing?

One thing's for certain: A's got the dirt to bury them all alive, and with every crumpled note, wicked IM, and vindictive text message A sends, the girls get a little closer to losing it all.

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Normally, I get kind of annoyed by books that are super-girly and full of brand-name-loving rich kids, but Pretty Little Liars is an exception to that. The references to everything that makes Hanna (and, at one time, Ali) so popular and all the brand names are the hardest parts to get through, but there's a complex plot that more than makes up for it.

At the end of book one (yes, I warned you there'd be spoilers for that one), Alison turns up dead. Since she's dead, she obviously can't be the one sending Hanna, Spencer, Aria, and Emily all sorts of mysterious and threatening text messages and emails - so who is? And then, of course, there's Toby. Toby knows the girls' darkest secret: he knows about "The Jenna Thing," an incident they've kept secret for four years that could very well come back to haunt them. He's been at a reform school in Maine since then, but now he's back, and he's showing up everywhere.

On top of that, there are all the other events from the girls' lives. Aria's issues with her family - and her English teacher; Spencer's problems with her sister and her boyfriend; Emily dealing with her sexuality; Hanna's daddy issues. There are so many different things going on in this book. As far as the characters go, Aria's probably my favorite and the one I find the most relatable, but they're all very engaging and real.

My two major complaints about Flawless were that the drama seemed kind of overdone in places and that (some of) the characters are so focused on brand names and popularity. That said, the drama, the plot, and the characters do make you want to keep reading and find out more about who these people are, what their secrets could be, and who's behind it all. I will definitely be looking for book three as soon as I can!

Links: 
Pretty Little Liars website

Review: The Replacement

Title: The Replacement
Author: Brenna Yovanoff
Publisher: Razorbill
Pages: 352
Rating: 4.5 stars
From the book jacket: 
Though he lives in the small town of Gentry, Mackie comes from a world of tunnels and black murky water, a world of living dead girls ruled by a little tattooed princess. He is a Replacement - left in the crib of a human baby sixteen years ago. Now, because of fatal allergies to iron, blood, and consecrated ground, Macie is slowly dying in the human world.

Mackie would give anything to live among us, to practice on his bass or spend time with an oddly intriguing girl called Tate. But when Tate's baby sister goes missing, Mackie is drawn irrevocably into the underworld of Gentry, known as Mayhem. He must face the dark creatures of the Slag Heaps and find his rightful place, in our world, or theirs.

-------------------------

I would have loved to sit down and read The Replacement in one go, but unfortunately, schoolwork prevented that. It took me ages to get through this book because I had to keep hiding it from myself until schoolwork was done. But now I've finally caught up on schoolwork, so I sat down and finished it all at once. And since it comes out exactly one month from today, I figure that's just barely close enough to the release date that I can go ahead and put the review up right now.

The Replacement was awesome. I loved it.

What I didn't like was the description on the back cover. I feel like it says too much and not the right things. It  just doesn't quite fit completely with the story. But if you ignore that and just dive into the story...wow.

Mackie is not normal. He can't go to church with his family even though his father is a minister, because the ground is consecrated. He gets physically sick when he comes into contact with iron or comes too close to blood. He can't even kiss the girl he likes, because she has a metal tongue ring. He knows why he's not normal, and so does his family: he's not really their son, Emma's not his biological sister. The real Malcolm Doyle was stolen from his crib as an infant, and Mackie was left in his place. What makes Mackie different from the other Replacements is that he survived.

And now another child has disappeared: the baby sister of a girl from school, Tate. Mackie knows Tate - she's friends with two of his best friends, and he finds her intriguing. But he can't tell her that he knows what happened to Natalie. What he can do is find out what the truth is about who he is and how to save Tate's sister.

I loved Mackie as a narrator. I just connected to him -  he felt so real. His emotions, the way he struggled with his feelings for family and friends and classmates, his desire to fit in and hide his unusualness from everyone else...it was just excellent. It's very difficult to put into words the way I related to Mackie, but it was wonderful. I also really loved a lot of the side characters. Emma, Roswell, Tate, the Morrigan...and the Lady made the perfect villain. So, so awesome. I wish we got to see more of Tate and Emma.

So yes. I love the characters, I love the story (delightfully dark, creepy, beautiful and honest), and I love Brenna Yovanoff's writing style (seriously, it's awesome). The Replacement will be in stores September 21st, and you should definitely make a point of reading it.

Links: 

Brenna Yovanoff's website

Brenna Yovanoff's blog

Review: Pretty Little Liars

Title: Pretty Little Liars
Author: Sara Shepard
Publisher: HarperCollins
Pages: 286
Series: Pretty Little Liars #1
Rating: 4 stars
Description from HarperTeen: 
Never trust a pretty girl with an ugly secret.

Gossip thrives among the Mercedes-Benzes, mega-mansions, and perfectly manicured hedges in the exclusive town of Rosewood, Pennsylvania. Behind their big Gucci sunglasses, beneath their perfectly pressed Polos, everyone has something to hide, especially high school juniors Spencer, Aria, Emily, and Hanna. Spencer covets her sister's gorgeous new boyfriend. Aria is having an affair with her English teacher. Emily is infatuated with the new girl at school. And Hanna is using some ugly tricks to stay beautiful. Deeper and darker still is a horrible secret the girls have shared since sixth grade - a secret they thought was safe forever.

Then the girls start receiving threatening messages signed by someone named "A." Could "A" be Alison, the ultra-popular girl who disappeared three years earlier? Alison was their best friend. She knew everything about them. But if Alison isn't "A," who is? And how could anyone else know so much about the bad girls they were and the bad girls they've become? Suddenly, their secrets - the big ones, the little ones, the long-buried ones - no longer seem so safe. Suddenly, nothing is safe in Rosewood.

I have to confess that when I started this book, I was not prepared to enjoy it. I liked the idea of the mystery and the girl who disappeared, but I was afraid there would be too many designer-labels and "popular" girls that I couldn't relate to. I am very pleased to say that I was wrong.

The characters in Pretty Little Liars are incredibly relatable. Aria's the English nerd who's trying to figure out who she is and wants a guy with more to him than just looks. Spencer's always had a lot of pressure on her from her parents to do well in school. Emily's the younger sister who's living in her older siblings' shadow and a little scared of disobeying her parents. Hanna, probably the hardest to relate to for me, is dealing with her step-sister being Daddy's favorite and feeling like her parents don't think she's good enough. Each of the girls have their issues that they're dealing with, and they're also dealing with the unavoidable social changes of high school - changing friend groups, changing interests, romance or the lack thereof. Plus, it's one of those books that really just says "Hey, everybody has issues. People are people, regardless of social status." These characters, obnoxious though they can be at times, are ones that you can't help feeling drawn to.

And the mystery of A and Alison's disappearance is very well done. I've already said I like the characters, but even if I didn't, I think I'd be reading the rest of the series just to figure out who A is and what happened to Alison. There's enough to it so that readers aren't just like, "oh, whatever, sideline mystery," but it doesn't tell you so much that you can figure it out halfway through. The mystery is very well crafted and I am definitely going to pick up Flawless ASAP.

And, okay, Pretty Little Liars also has a fair amount of guilty pleasure appeal. The torrid affairs, the parties, and all the deep, dark, juicy secrets - it's the kind of stuff that you know you shouldn't want to read about, but you can't help wanting more anyway.

I felt like some of it got a bit over-the-top in places; some of the drama could have been toned down a bit and still worked just as well if not better. But on the whole, I really really enjoyed Pretty Little Liars. I read it straight through; put it down for bathroom breaks and family dinner, and not much else. Definitely a fun read for just about any teenage girl.

Oh, and one more thing. The cover. I'm not a huge fan of the yellow background, but the idea of the dolls to represent the girls? Love it. If I started going on about the metaphorical significance of the dolls, we'd be here all afternoon, but I think it works really, really well. So, three cheers for Sara Shepard, and another three cheers for the cover designer.

Links:
Pretty Little Liars website