Tuesday Twins

I cannot count how many times I've heard people say that a book's cover is its most important marketing technique. Book covers are important. That in mind, I know a lot of bloggers have cover-comparison features (such as Pop Culture Junkie's Lookalikes and Hooked on YA Books' Cover-Compare Fridays), but I love covers too, so I'm going to jump on the bandwagon.

So, we all know that Twilight is a huge deal right now. Even if we do feel like vampires are getting incredibly overdone right now, there's no denying that Twilight is popular and it sells. We see the black cover with the red and/or white image and that's just what we think of.  The whole series is that way. Red-and-white flowers on a black background are associated with the New Moon cover, period, end of story.

But even knowing that, I still got rather upset when I saw the new covers for Romeo and Juliet, Pride and Prejudice, and Wuthering Heights in my local Barnes & Noble:

  

I mean, the way these four covers look, they could be a series. The black backgrounds with red-and-white flowers and a trace of green in the stalks; the curlicue script for the titles; the spaced-out capital letters spelling out the authors' names...never mind that they were all written at different times by different people, these covers make them look like they simply belong together. The Wuthering Heights cover even mentions Bella and Edward!

I have to admit, the cover designers did a good job of it; I'm quite sure the covers were meant to resemble New Moon, and they do that well. And the covers are pretty, too! Not sure how well the roses represent Pride and Prejudice, but I do think that cover especially is really nice-looking. But it still makes me a little sad that someone might assume Pride and Prejudice to be a young-adult vampire romance novel just because of the cover. (If you didn't know or hadn't guessed, I really love Pride and Prejudice.)

What do you guys think of the new covers for these classics? Yay or nay?

Release Day!

Hey guys: Linger comes out today. You know, the one by the amazing Maggie Stiefvater, the sequel to the fantastic book Shiver. I know there are some copies already out there, but today is the official release date. That means that you should go get a copy right away.

Also out today: Siren by Tricia Rayburn and Shadow Hills by Anastasia Hopcus, both of which I am very excited to read. Unlike Linger, I don't have anything else to base my excitement for these two off of, but they both look very awesome and I cannot wait to read them.

Review: Tangled

*This review was originally written before the creation of Bookworm Boulevard; it has been reformatted and reposted here for archiving purposes.

Title: Tangled
Author: Carolyn Mackler
Publisher: HarperCollins
Pages: 320
Rating: 4 stars
From the back cover:
Jena, Dakota, Skye, and Owen are all at Paradise - a resort in the Caribbean, that is - for different reasons, but in Paradise their lives become tangled together in ways none of them can predict. The week might take Jena one kiss closer to having a life; set Dakota on a new path; push Skye to stop playing a role, or face the consequences; or inspire Owen to take a leap from his online life to a real one, all because of a girl he met in Paradise. Whatever happens here, it will change them all.

At first, I wasn't sure I liked Tangled. I thought it was going to be just another chick lit where the dorky-girl-who-has-no-life either ends up with some hot guy who turns out to have a sweet personality or discovers that being hot and popular is not all it's cracked up to be. But I kept reading, because I kind of liked the characters, and...wow. It turned out to be really good.

This book tells the story of four teens - Jena, her mom's friend's daughter Skye, a hotshot jock named Dakota, and his dorky younger brother Owen - who for various reasons have to spend a week at a resort called Paradise. Jena meets(/falls for) Dakota and finds a suicide note by a hot tub, and then things are in motion that are beyond their control. There are four sections in the book, each told from a different character's point of view and surrounding that character's individual story, but there's definitely crossover between them. The book is about how their lives get tangled together and how it changes all of them. Skye's and Owen's sections were probably my favorites because I could relate to them better, but they were all great. It was a little difficult to believe in places, but it worked. 

There is some strong language and some sexual content, especially in the first half, but it's written in so that on the whole it adds to the book rather than taking away from it. I almost put it down because of some of that content, but I am reeeally glad that I kept reading. Seriously. Sweet story, great characters, and just overwhelmingly real. Probably more of a girl book than a guy book, although guys would probably enjoy Dakota's and Owen's sections just as much; I'd definitely recommend it to anyone.

Links:

Carolyn Mackler's website

Carolyn Mackler's blog

Review: Glimpse

*This review was originally written before the creation of Bookworm Boulevard; it has been reformatted and reposted here for archiving purposes.

Title: Glimpse
Author: Carol Lynch Williams
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Pages: 484
Rating: 5 stars
Glimpse is absolutely wonderful. It's 484 pages long, but it's written in verse so in terms of word count it's probably pretty short. I read it over about an hour and a half. It's a quick read and an amazing book so please don't let the length scare you off.

Hope is 13. Her older sister Lizzie is 14. They have other friends, but ever since they were 3 and 4, they've been best friends and they've protected each other. So when Hope walks into their shared bedroom to find Lizzie pointing a gun at her own head and Lizzie gets shipped off to a mental hospital, Hope's world turns upside down. She doesn't understand why her sister would want to die. She doesn't understand what she's supposed to do now that she can't protect Lizzie anymore.

Hope's mother is not exactly a source of comfort; it seems like Lizzie has always been her favorite, but neither one of them was planned, and Momma hasn't really been there for the girls since their father died eight years ago. What Momma does have is a secret, and that secret may explain why Lizzie wanted so desperately "to leave/for good."

Glimpse was beautifully written and once you start reading it you just can't stop. Absolutely a must-read. So, so good. It was excellent. Both of the girls are incredibly relatable and real. Their problems don't make them any less normal girls. Hope's interactions with her best friend were always a lot of fun to read. And the writing is just spectacular. I really loved all of the poems and everything. This was a really, really awesome book. Definitely recommended.


Links:
Carol Lynch Williams' website

Review: All Unquiet Things

*This review was originally written before the creation of Bookworm Boulevard; it has been reformatted and reposted here for archiving purposes.

Title: All Unquiet Things
Author: Anna Jarzab
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Pages: 352
Rating: 4 stars
Description from Goodreads:
Carly: She was sweet. Smart. Self-destructive. She knew the secrets of Brighton Day School's most privileged students. Secrets that got her killed.

Neily: Dumped by Carly for a notorious bad boy, Neily didn't answer the phone call Carly made before she died. If he had, maybe he could have helped her. Now he can't get the image of her lifeless body out of his mind.

Audrey: She's the reason Carly got tangled up with Brighton's fast crowd in the first place, and now she regrets it - especially since she's convinced the police have put the wrong person in jail. Audrey thinks the murderer is someone at Brighton, and she wants Neily to help her find out who it is.

As reluctant allies Neily and Audrey dig into their shared past with Carly, her involvement with Brighton's dark goings-on comes to light. But figuring out how Carly and her killer fit into the twisted drama will force Audrey and Neily to face hard truths about themselves and the girl they couldn't save.

I will admit it took me a while to get into All Unquiet Things, but after the first few chapters I was completely hooked. Long story short, it's essentially a murder mystery. A year before the story starts, Carly Ribelli is found dead with four gunshot wounds to the chest. Her uncle, the father of her cousin and best friend, Audrey, was convicted of the murder, but Audrey doesn't believe her dad is guilty. So Audrey enlists the help of Carly's ex-boyfriend, Neily - who was still in love with Carly - to help her figure out who really did it. The story is a mix of murder mystery and high school drama; the focus is on the murder mystery, but the clues are embedded in the high school drama.

The story alternates between Neily and Audrey's perspectives. It's really well-written, maybe a bit slow at times but still very engaging, and the story - oh my goodness. Some of it is a bit hard to believe, but Anna Jarzab makes it believable. And the characters are so real and well-developed and amazing. They each have their own distinctive voices, but the transitions from one narrator to the other are (mostly) very smooth. There is some language and content that might not be appropriate for younger teens, but to anyone who doesn't mind that stuff, I would absolutely recommend this book.

Links:
Anna Jarzab's website

Quick Note About Reviews

Hey guys,

I've got a bunch of reviews that I've written in various places on various other websites from before I started Bookworm Boulevard. I'm going to start reformatting those reviews to the format that I use here and reposting them, for the purpose of archiving all of them in one place. I'm not reading four or five books a day or anything; just reposting them. Any reviews that have been reformatted and reposted from somewhere else will be marked, so if there's nothing saying "hey, this is an old review from a different source," it's safe to assume that it's new. :)

Review: Infinite Days

Title: Infinite Days
Author: Rebecca Maizel
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Pages: 308
Series: Vampire Queen Trilogy #1
Rating: 4.5 stars
From the back cover:
"I release you, Lenah Beaudonte.
Believe, and be free.


Those were the last words I could remember. When I awoke, I immediately felt a cold surface on my left cheek. An icy shiver rushed down my spine. 'Rhode!' I screamed. He had to be here. There would be no world without Rhode. A door somewhere near me opened and closed. Rhode loomed over me but he was a blur. Even in the haze of that moment his icy-blue eyes pierced me, down to my soul."


After centuries of terrorizing Europe, Lenah Beaudonte, with the help of the handsome Rhode, has been able to realize the dream of all vampires - to be human again. Now, as a raven-haired, sixteen-year-old, Lenah believes her greatest challenge is fitting in at her new school. But the challenges have only begun. The vicious coven Lenah once ruled is threatening the new-found pleasures of her human life, including the one guy who makes her feel most alive, Justin. Can this ex-vamp survive in an alien time and place or will her past come back to haunt her...forever?


I received an ARC of Infinite Days through LibraryThing Early Reviewers, and while I was excited to read it, I was a little wary of reading yet another vampire novel. I shouldn't have worried. With this one, Rebecca Maizel has completely remade all the rules. It's a completely new take on vampirism and I really, really loved it. It was also great to see vampires portrayed as the "bad guys" for the first time in a long time. I could have enjoyed it just for that. But there was so much more. It was a fantastic book.

Lenah is a wonderful character. Her emotions are so real, and the way she reacts to being in the twenty-first century for the first time is spectacular. It's a lot of fun watching her adjust to the modern world, getting used to the technology and the slang. You can really get inside her head. And the side characters were awesome too. Justin is a popular guy with depth to him, and Lenah's first friend in the human world, Tony, is easy to imagine just stepping off the page and coming to life. I felt like the "Three-Piece," the popular girls who date the most popular guys, could have been developed more than they were, but on the whole, the characters were excellent.

And the plot! Yes, it's a vampire romance novel, but it's so different from anything that's already out there. Lenah's relearning what it means to be human, what it means to have human senses, and that includes falling in love. The developing relationships between Lenah and Tony and Lenah and Justin are beautifully crafted, and the impending danger of the coven is really well-done too. There's a lot of mystery surrounding the ritual used to make Lenah human, and the reader gets really engaged in that.

Most of Lenah's vampire life is revealed through flashbacks, so she's really telling two stories at once: what's happening now, in the present, and how she got to be there. The flashbacks aren't necessarily continuous, which can get a tiny bit confusing, but it tells the story effectively. And almost all of the flashbacks are really well-done. Some of my favorite scenes were in the flashbacks.

So, in short, Infinite Days is a really great novel with an awesome new twist on vampire mythology and characters that you will not want to let go of. Definitely worth reading.

Links: 
Rebecca Maizel's blog