The Earth Hums in B Flat

Author: Mari Strachan



Published: 2010



Publisher: Canongate



What They Say: Gwenni Morgan is an incorrigible free spirit with a penchant for eavesdropping and a stubborn need to understand human behavior, which merely leads to more questions. Her struggle to define the world around her is offset by a fantastic dream world where each night she rises from the bed she shares with her sister and flies high into the sky above her small Welsh village. There, Gwenni becomes tuned into the earth's softest subtleties, and its hidden mysteries.

When a neighborhood family is rocked by the sudden, unexplainable disappearance of their patriarch, Gwenni believes that her unknown talents will allow her to discover the truth. But distinguishing fact from fiction carries more difficulties than she first predicted, and her quest for answers will soon lead her closer to home than she ever imagined.

What Sheli Says: I was really looking forward to reading this book as both a young adult book and being one of the few modern stories set in North Wales.

I really enjoyed reading the story and found the main character, Gwenni, endearing and innocent. I also liked that we learnt a lot about the wider community without it being too wordy. It was also very distinctly Welsh and I could very clearly picture a North Walean community and all of the gossiping that goes on there!

I wasn't really that keen on the more fantastical elements of the book and am unsure that they added a great deal to the story overall. I also found the timing of the book a little confusing as I couldn't place the era. I suppose that this gave it a timeless feel, but as there were some references to what I think was the 1950s, I would have liked a little more clarity for me to know if I was on the right track.

An enjoyable read.

Sheli's Rating: 7/10

Find it on Amazon

Geek Girl

Author: Holly Smale

Published: 28 February 2013

Publisher: HarperCollins Children's Books

What They Say: Harriet Manners knows a lot of things.

She knows that a cat has 32 muscles in each ear, a "jiffy" lasts 1/100th of a second, and the average person laughs 15 times per day. What she isn't quite so sure about is why nobody at school seems to like her very much. So when she's spotted by a top model agent, Harriet grabs the chance to reinvent herself. Even if it means stealing her Best Friend's dream, incurring the wrath of her arch enemy Alexa, and repeatedly humiliating herself in front of the impossibly handsome supermodel Nick. Even if it means lying to the people she loves.

As Harriet veers from one couture disaster to the next with the help of her overly enthusiastic father and her uber-geeky stalker, Toby, she begins to realise that the world of fashion doesn't seem to like her any more than the real world did.

And as her old life starts to fall apart, the question is: will Harriet be able to transform herself before she ruins everything?

What Sheli Says: What can I say? I was drawn to this book by the cover, and we all love a geek (especially if you are one like me!) and had to give it a go.

It was a quick, fun read and had more substance to it than I was expecting. The main character Harriet reminded me of myself as a teenager as she was a social outcast who couldn't do or say the right thing at the right time, but was very brainy. Although I have to say that the similarities to my own youth stopped at the modelling contract!

Some parts of the book were laugh out loud funny, particularly when Harriet was getting into the world of modelling. I loved that it was a book about the geeky girl who did well in an unexpected way, and was a teeny bit jealous that I hadn't had the same opportunities!

I liked the style of writing for this book and hope that this isn't the last we see of Harriet Manners. I will also be seeking out more of Holly Smale's work in future.

A great book, for both adult and young adult readers. 

Sheli's Rating: 9/10

Quotes:

“I didn't need to transform after all.
My name is Harriet Manners and I am a geek.
And maybe that's not so bad after all.” 

Find it on Amazon

Paper Towns

Author: John Green

Published: October 2008

Publisher: Speak

What They Say: Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs back into his life—dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge—he follows.

After their all-nighter ends and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues—and they’re for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees of the girl he thought he knew.

What Sheli Says: After reading The Fault in Our Stars last year I was intrigued by John Green's writing, even though I have only really just got into young adult books. I liked the premise of this book and am very glad that I gave it a go. 

This book is well paced and full of detail. It's like a detective meets and adventurer and goes on a crazy road trip. It is full of moments that kept me on the edge of my seat, and more importantly kept me guessing. It is obviously well researched and I loved the detail about map makers adding in a pretend town as a way to keep ownership of the design of the map.

The characters were well formed and I liked that the main character Q was a bit of an underdog and really seemed to have a lower opinion of himself than other people did. I found that really endearing and in some ways reminded me of myself.

I will definitely be reading more from John Green, and my Amazon wishlist has already got somewhat longer!

Sheli's Rating: 8/10

Quotes:

Liked!
view quote

Share on Twitter

Likes the quote "YOU WILL GO TO THE PAPER TOWNS AND YOU WILL NEVER COME BACK"

always post: reviewsuser statuses

“Nothing ever happens like you imagine it will”

Find it on Amazon

Afterlife Academy

Author: Jaimie Admans

Published: 7 March 2013

What They Say: Even being dead isn’t enough to get you out of maths class.

Dying wasn't on sixteen-year-old Riley Richardson's to-do list. And now, not only is she dead, but she's stuck in a perpetual high school nightmare. Worse still, she's stuck there with the geekiest, most annoying boy in the history of the world, ever.

In a school where the geeks are popular and just about everything is wrong, Riley has become an outcast. She begins a desperate quest to get back home, but her once-perfect life starts to unravel into something not nearly as great as she thought it was. And maybe death isn’t really that bad after all...

Welcome to Afterlife Academy, where horns are the norm, the microwave is more intelligent than the teachers, and the pumpkins have a taste for blood.

What Sheli Says: This book is the third book that up and coming indie author Jaimie Admans has published in the last 6 months, and boy is it a cracker.

To be honest I was expecting your average young adult slightly paranormal romance. But I was pleasantly surprised!! The storyline of this book is so original and every detail is well thought through and the imagery is brilliant.

I found it hard to put the book down and read it everwhere when I was reading it, in my favourite coffee shop, in bed, whilst eating my tea and even on the break of a training course! I would definitely recommend this book for a fun read that has a bit of the paranormal, some romance and is still well written.

I would like to see this book made into a series as I liked the characters and think a lot more could be made of them, particularly Riley and Narcissa.

All in all, another excellent book from a very talented indie author!

Sheli's Rating: 9/10

Find it on Amazon

A Monster Calls

Author: Patrick Ness

Published: September 2011

What They Say: The monster showed up after midnight. As they do.

But it isn't the monster Conor's been expecting. He's been expecting the one from his nightmare, the one he's had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments, the one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming...

This monster is something different, though. Something ancient, something wild. And it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor.

It wants the truth.

What Sheli Says: When I started reading this book I found it hard to put it down and finished it in a few hours. It is the story of a young boy facing a monster at a time when everything is changing and nothing is certain in his life.

The book is interspersed with tales told to him by the monster which gives the book a real fairy tale like feel to it. Although, not all fairy tales have a happy ending.

The story is really heart wrenching and by the end of the book I was an emotional wreck. That being said, it is not depressing or melancholy, just desperately sad.

The book was originally written for children/young adults, but has recently been republished for adults. A fantastic book that deserves a lot of credit for what it does and doesn't say. 

This was also one of Elaine's best reads in 2013.

Sheli's Rating: 10/10

Quotes:    

“You do not write your life with words...You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do.”

Find it on Amazon

Greyhound

Author: Steffan Piper

Published: April 2010

What They Say: Sebastien Ranes's single mom and her feckless boyfriend can't be bothered to take care of a stuttering twelve-year-old. Banished to live with his grandmother on the far side of the country, the boy can barely understand a bus schedule when he gets dumped at the Greyhound station in Stockton, California. Given $35 and a one-way ticket to Altoona, Pennsylvania, Sebastien must cross the country ? alone, without a clue how to fend for himself. Filled with youthful anger and na?vet?, Sebastien heads out into the “Morning in America” of Ronald Reagan's 1980s, encountering temperamental bus drivers, charming, shifty, and downright dangerous strangers, the music of Daryl Hall and John Oates, and an ex-con named Marcus, who takes the boy under his wing. In an unforgettable trek that evokes Oliver Twist and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the unlikely pair lurch from one misadventure to another, tumbling toward an elusive understanding of where and how, in a troubling world, to look for light.



What Sheli Says:I downloaded this book a while ago and totally forgot about it. I rediscovered it a few days ago when it appeared again on Amazon in the Christmas sale and tried to buy it again!

The book is told from the point of view of the main character, Sebastien, as he embarks on a road trip across America on a Greyhound bus in 1981. It is a coming of age story, but is set over just a few days on a rollercoaster of a bus trip!

Sebastien meets some great characters along the way on his road trip to go and live with his grandparents, some bad guys and some very good guys. The story has a lot of twists and turns and in parts is quite shocking.

The book is brilliantly written and Sebastien is such a likeable little boy, despite his terrible upbringing and treatment by his mother. Although the book is set in the early 80s, I do feel that it had a pretty timeless feel, despite a few pop culture references.

I will definitely seek out more from the author as I really enjoyed this book and would love to hear more about how Sebastien gets on living with his grandparents.

Sheli's Rating: 8/10             

Quote:

“Always try to be good to people don't always put yourself first, and don't always expect things to be fair, because they won't be.”

Find it on Amazon

The Age of Miracles

Author: Karen Thompson Walker

Published: June 2012

What They Say: 'It is never what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophes are always different - unimagined, unprepared for, unknown...' What if our 24-hour day grew longer, first in minutes, then in hours, until day becomes night and night becomes day? What effect would this slowing have on the world? On the birds in the sky, the whales in the sea, the astronauts in space, and on an eleven-year-old girl, grappling with emotional changes in her own life..? One morning, Julia and her parents wake up in their suburban home in California to discover, along with the rest of the world, that the rotation of the earth is noticeably slowing. The enormity of this is almost beyond comprehension. And yet, even if the world is, in fact, coming to an end, as some assert, day-to-day life must go on. Julia, facing the loneliness and despair of an awkward adolescence, witnesses the impact of this phenomenon on the world, on the community, on her family and on herself.

What Elaine Says: This is a very interesting little novel let down a rather poor ending.  It's beautifully written and remarkably focused.  It could very easily have drifted off,  like every other doomsday book out there, and focused on the terrors that face us, come our inevitable annihilation but you know what?  This book didn't do that.   It is not a novel about the big things.  It's much quieter and more intimate than that. 

So what would happen if the world was slowly advancing towards it's end?  We'd carry on of course.  We would adapt as best we could and continue living our lives as normally as possible.  That's what this is about.  How do we face the mundane, everyday, with the sword of Damocles dangling over us?

Thompson's writing is really quite beautiful in parts.  I have to admit to being surprised by how competent this novel was for a first time novelist and considering it falls into the new (and confusing) 'young adult' genre.

Unfortunately, the ending of this book was very frustrating.  I don't think I'll be revealing too much by saying this book was never going to have a grand finale but while the novel ended when it should, it ended in a way that felt like the author realised she needed to hand it in the next day and not like someone who had simply told their story.  I'm afraid to say it let the whole novel down.  Which really is a pity for such a book as this.

Elaine's Rating: 7/10


Quotes: 

"There was no footage to show on television, no burning buildings or broken bridges, no twisted metal or scorched earth, no houses sliding off slabs.  No one was wounded.  No one was dead.  It was at the beginning, a quite invisible catastrophe."

Find it on Amazon 

Dash and Lily's Book of Dares

Author: Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

Published: October 2010

What They Say:  

“I’ve left some clues for you.

If you want them, turn the page.

If you don’t, put the book back on the shelf, please.”

So begins the latest whirlwind romance from the bestselling authors of Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist. Lily has left a red notebook full of challenges on a favorite bookstore shelf, waiting for just the right guy to come along and accept its dares. But is Dash that right guy? Or are Dash and Lily only destined to trade dares, dreams, and desires in the notebook they pass back and forth at locations across New York? Could their in-person selves possibly connect as well as their notebook versions? Or will they be a comic mismatch of disastrous proportions?

Rachel Cohn and David Levithan have written a love story that will have readers perusing bookstore shelves, looking and longing for a love (and a red notebook) of their own.

 What Sheli Says: I really loved this book. It is a young adult book that looks at young love between two teenagers who meet through a red moleskein notebook left in a book shop in New York.

I really liked how the two main characters got to know each other through corresponding through the notebook and were able to be more confident and more able to embrace their own personalities as a result of being able to hide behind the page.

The story is really sweet without being over the top and I really liked that both teenagers were different in their own ways, but also very bookish. I felt an affinity with Lily as she was quite introverted and shy, but really has so much to give and was able to use her blossoming friendship with Dash, forged through the notebook to boost her confidence and become more comfortable in her own skin.

The one thing that let this book down for me was the ending. I felt that it was a huge anti-climax and felt unfinished. I felt that it could have been left open to interpretation in a much more effective way. The way it ends made me feel that part of the book was missing and I actually went back and re-read the last couple of pages just in case I had misread it!

Overall, a good read and I will probably re-read it at some point.

Sheli's Rating: 8/10

Quotes:

“Luckily, I always travel with a book, just in case I have to wait in line for Santa, or some such inconvenience.”

Find it on Amazon