Hana by Lauren Oliver

Overview from Barnes and Noble:

Lauren Oliver's riveting, original digital story set in the world of her New York Times bestseller Delirium.

The summer before they're supposed to be cured of the ability to love, best friends Lena and Hana begin to drift apart. While Lena shies away from underground music and parties with boys, Hana jumps at her last chance to experience the forbidden. For her, the summer is full of wild music, dancing—and even her first kiss.

But on the surface, Hana must be a model of perfect behavior. She meets her approved match, Fred Hargrove, and glimpses the safe, comfortable life she’ll have with him once they marry. As the date for her cure draws ever closer, Hana desperately misses Lena, wonders how it feels to truly be in love, and is simultaneously terrified of rebelling and of falling into line.

In this digital story that will appeal to fans of Delirium and welcome new admirers to its world, readers will come to understand scenes from Delirium through Hana's perspective. Hana is a touching and revealing look at a life-changing and tumultuous summer.

My thoughts:
I read Delirium a year or so ago and really enjoyed it.  Unfortunately I passed my copy along so I no longer have it to refer to.  It is hard to know which books to hold onto and which ones are safe to pass along.  Since I tend to not reread most I am making a real effort to pass then along in some way so that I don't get over run by books!  A little over a month ago I read the second book, Pandemonium.  I was so sad to see that one end that I bought Hana to try to tide me over until the next book in the series comes out, probably next year.  Hana is taking place concurrently with Delirium.  It is what is happening for Lena's best friend while Lena is falling in love with Alex. 

Lena and Hana have been best friends for years, and both of them are due to get their "cure" soon. Lena on the surface to Hana, seems content with going ahead as planned, but Hana is mixed up inside and not sure if she is ready to give up the possibility to fall in love.  Seeing the parties from her point of view was different, especially when she sees how her date sees her.

I was surprised by some of the events that conspired at the end of the story which explain some of the things that happen in Delirium.  I found myself wondering what would have happened instead if only that one thing had not been set into motion, but we will never know what would have happened, like so many things in life.  I can't wait to see where this series goes!

Product Details

• ISBN-13: 9780062124364
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Publication date: 2/28/2012
• Sold by: HARPERCOLLINS
• Format: eBook
• Pages: 64
• Age range: 14 - 17 Years
• Series:Delirium Series

I've Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella

Overview from Barnes and Noble:

I’ve lost it. :( The only thing in the world I wasn’t supposed to lose. My engagement ring. It’s been in Magnus’s family for three generations. And now the very same day his parents are coming, I’ve lost it. The very same day! Do not hyperventilate, Poppy. Stay positive :) !!

Poppy Wyatt has never felt luckier. She is about to marry her ideal man, Magnus Tavish, but in one afternoon her “happily ever after” begins to fall apart. Not only has she lost her engagement ring in a hotel fire drill but in the panic that follows, her phone is stolen. As she paces shakily around the lobby, she spots an abandoned phone in a trash can. Finders keepers! Now she can leave a number for the hotel to contact her when they find her ring. Perfect!

Well, perfect except that the phone’s owner, businessman Sam Roxton, doesn’t agree. He wants his phone back and doesn’t appreciate Poppy reading his messages and wading into his personal life.

What ensues is a hilarious and unpredictable turn of events as Poppy and Sam increasingly upend each other’s lives through emails and text messages. As Poppy juggles wedding preparations, mysterious phone calls, and hiding her left hand from Magnus and his parents . . . she soon realizes that she is in for the biggest surprise of her life.

My thoughts:
I listened to this on audio on my Ipod.  I have read a lot of the Shopaholic series, but it has been a while since I've read one of Kinsella's books.  Poppy was a fun character.  There was  a lot of texting and emailing back and forth and I found myself wondering what it looked like in print on the page.  Having a lot of texts actually moved the story ahead faster, as more was done with less words if that makes sense.

Poppy is a physical therapist who met her husband to be when he came in to work with her.  When her engagement ring goes missing at a party at a hotel, she starts to panic.  As she goes outside because of the fire drill a passing bike messenger takes her phone, so she is phoneless and ringless, until she finds a phone in the trash in the lobby.  She gives everyone the number before the businessman whose assistance trashed the phone comes looking for her.  She manages to get him to let her keep the phone and she ends up doing some of his work in the process.

Right from the start I liked Sam too, he seemed down to earth and honest.  While she tells him what is going on, she is terrified to let Magnus or his parents know that she can't find the family ring.  She is hiding so many things from so many people that it is a wonder she doesn't let more fall more often.  I particularly liked that there was both the mystery of the ring as well as another mystery that they work together to solve.

This would be a great beach or on the plane sort of read, fun and light.  I have gotten away from my usual audio for awhile, but I am getting back into it and it is funny to realize how much Ihave  actually missed it!

Product Details

• ISBN-13: 9780385342063
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2/14/2012
• Pages: 448

The Help- Movie Review

My children know that I have a rule, if you are going to read a book that has been made into a movie, you need to do it before you see the movie, otherwise it will be too hard to imagine the characters your own way and not see them as the actors from the film.  We regularly listen to audio books and read chapter books together, not this one of course but others, and they know the drill.  I did not let myself go see or rent this movie until I was done reading the book.  I finished the book on Sunday, so Monday I stopped by Redbox and picked up the movie.  I actually had to go to two different machines to find it as there were no copies available at the first one.

I thought they did a good job with with movie adaptation.  I was sorry to see some things glossed over or skipped, and of course the changes jumped out at me more since I had just finished the book, but to fit it within the time constraints of a movie, they did a good job.  That said, at times it felt a bit slow.  Some scenes dragged, while others went by way too fast.  I thought something would be done to make Emma Stone seem taller, since one of the big things in the movie was how she was too tall and plain looking with wild curly hair.  Emma as Skeeter seemed to be the same height as Hilly.

I am glad that I watched it and that I waited until after reading the book.  I don't mind at all that I missed seeing it in the theater, I think it was just fine at home.  The movie did not elicit as much of an emotional response as the book, I don't know if it was because I already knew what was going to happen or if it was because I did not get as involved with the characters. While both the book and the movie were good, I liked the book more than the movie.

Overview

A 1960s-era Mississippi debutante sends her community into an uproar by conducting a series of probing interviews with the black servants behind some of her community's most prominent families. Skeeter Emma Stone has just graduated from college, and she's eager to launch her career as a writer. In a moment of inspiration, Skeeter decides to focus her attention on the black female servants who work in her community. Her first subject is Aibileen Viola Davis, the devoted housekeeper who has been employed by Skeeter's best friend's family for years. By speaking with Aibileen, Skeeter becomes an object of scorn to the wealthy locals, who view her actions as directly challenging to the established social order. Before long, even more servants are coming forward to tell their stories, and Skeeter discovers that friendship can blossom under the most unlikely of circumstances. Bryce Dallas Howard co-stars in a touching tale of race relations based on author Kathryn Stockett's best-selling novel of the same name. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Product Details

• Release Date: 12/6/2011
• UPC: 786936814309
• Original Release: 2011
• Rating:
• Source: Walt Disney Video

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Overview

Be prepared to meet three unforgettable women:

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women-mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends-view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.

My thoughts:
I don't have any real reason why it took me so long to read this book, it seemed like everyone I knew had read it and loved it.  I borrowed it from a friend months ago and read half of it.  I put it down to read some other things and didn't feel a great pull to pick it back up again, then Sunday morning I started where I had stopped and I just couldn't put it down!  I think sometimes the reader needs to be in the right place for the book and I must not have been before.

I purposely tried to picture the characters on my own without letting the casting for the movie influence my vision of them.  I managed okay except for Minny and Aibileen, I kept remembering all the Oscar buzz so I kept seeing the actors for those two, but the rest of them I managed to imagine all on my own.  I know there was some talk about dissatisfaction with the way Stockett had the maids speak, but I didn't feel like it was an issue.  I recall having a bit of trouble with it at the beginning, but then it just became a voice with an accent in my head.

Skeeter, Minny and Aibileen were very well fleshed out.  Some of the other characters felt more like stereotypes, Hilly the mean girl and queen bee who had to have her way, Elizabeth who was willing to be a follower as long as she could fit in and not feel poor, and Celia, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks who can't find a way to make friends.  I felt bad for just about everyone at some point but Hilly, there is just something about a bully that really bothers me.  It would be nice to think that at some point we are able to get away from people like that but they just keep popping up. 

I felt like Stockett did a good job with making you really feel like it was the 1960's.  While I know things aren't perfect now, it is a bit heartening to see what strides have been made with civil rights since then and to think that it took so many people working together to make it so.  Reading the part they were each playing in writing a book about how the maids really felt about the white women and families they worked for, I wondered if I would have been that brave at the time.  Skeeter took big risks right along with Minny and Aibileen and her opinion was not the prevailing one.  It cost her socially in big ways.  It is so much easier to go with the flow than to stand up for what you feel is right.

I was sad to see the book end, even though I was racing along to find out how things were going to turn out.  The characters seemed like real people to me and I was sorry to see them go. 

Product Details

• ISBN-13: 9780425232200
• Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
• Publication date: 4/5/2011
• Pages: 544

It's Monday, What are you reading?

 

 

Last week I got back into doing this meme, I am trying to get back on track with a lot of things right now.  I still have most of last week's list to review, but I do have some updates.  This week I got three reviews up.  Not as many as I hoped, but it's a start!  This weeks finished books and reviewed books are:

Marathon Crasher: The Life and Times of MERRY LEPPER, the First American Woman to Run a Marathon by David Davis

Demonglass by Rachel Hawkins(Hex Hall series #2)

Spell Bound (Hex Hall #3) by Rachel Hawkins

 

 

 

Here is what I am still currently reading:

                                                    50 Shades Darker by E.L. James
                                                  Empire Falls by Richard Russo
                                                    The Help by Kathryn Stockart

Finished by not reviewed:

Hana by Lauren Oliver
I've Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella

                                 From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

Heaven is for Real by Todd Burpo
Matched by Ally Condi
Judy Moody Saves the World by Megan McDonald
Judy Moody the M.D. Is in by Megan McDonald
Judy Moody Goes to College by Megan McDonald
Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbit
Stink and the Super-Galactic Jaw Breaker by Megan McDonald
Stink: Solar System Super Hero by Megan McDonald
Stink and the World's Worst Super Smelly Sneakers by Megan McDonald
Stink and the Great Guinea Pig Express by Megan McDonald
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'engle (audio car)

A Wind in the Door by Madeline L'Engle

Insurgent by Veronica Roth

50 Shades of Grey by E.L. James

Spell Bound (Hex Hall #3) by Rachel Hawkins

Overview

Hailed as “impossible to put down,” the Hex Hall series has both critics and teens cheering. With a winning combination of romance, action, magic and humor, this third volume will leave readers enchanted.

Just as Sophie Mercer has come to accept her extraordinary magical powers as a demon, the Prodigium Council strips them away. Now Sophie is defenseless, alone, and at the mercy of her sworn enemies—the Brannicks, a family of warrior women who hunt down the Prodigium. Or at least that’s what Sophie thinks, until she makes a surprising discovery. The Brannicks know an epic war is coming, and they believe Sophie is the only one powerful enough to stop the world from ending. But without her magic, Sophie isn’t as confident.

Sophie’s bound for one hell of a ride—can she get her powers back before it’s too late?

My thoughts:
At the end of book 2 I just had to know what was going to happen, so I logged on with my Kindle and bought book 3.  Unfortunately the first night I was too tired to get very far.  I changed that the next day when I managed to finish the rest of the book.  I am a little sad as I think this might be it for the series.  Things wrapped up pretty well by the end, but that doesn't mean there isn't more that could be done.  According to Hawkins blog, Disney bought three books and her plans were to wrap things up by the end of book three, but she isn't against doing a bit more playing around with the world that Sophie lives in.

The end of book two was so tension filled that I was very glad that I waited until now to read the books since I was able to read them pretty much right after the other with no waiting in between.  While I love finding series when they are new, waiting for the next book can be hard and trying to keep track of each different set of characters and worlds they live in can start to get confusing, so there are times when procrastination pays off!

Sophie is without her powers at the start of this book, they are buried inside of her locked away by the spell she underwent before her removal was to take place.  She steps out of the Itineris to find herself in the forest with the Brannicks, who she thinks are the enemy of all Prodigium, but Cal has sent her there to find her mother so she trusts him and goes.  Turns out that not all is as it seems.  Someone high up in Prodigium society has been spreading rumors that are far from true about humans and those hunting Prodgium.  Just as someone has been raising demons on Graymalkin Island, right by Hecate Hall, not all the fires and destruction blamed on the Branicks and The Eye have been done by those groups.

Just as they are developing a plan of action, Sophie, Archer and Cal find themselves being magically transported back to a very different Graymalkin Island and Hecate Hall.  A spell has brought all the students back to create a force to take over the human world.  During the planning and battles that take place, a few things happened that made me pretty sad.  Archer learns the truth about his past and Cal sees what will be his future.  Sometimes knowledge is a good thing, but that doesn't always lessen the pain in can cause.

This series was really well done. I was glad to see on her blog that she is supposed to have a new series starting this summer as I really did enjoy her writing style and her way with characters.

Product Details

• ISBN-13: 9781423121329
• Publisher: Hyperion Books for Children
• Publication date: 3/13/2012
• Pages: 336
• Series:Hex Hall Series , #3

Demonglass by Rachel Hawkins(Hex Hall series #2)

Overview

Sophie Mercer thought she was a witch.

That was the whole reason she was sent to Hex Hall, a reform school for delinquent Prodigium (aka witches, shapeshifters, and fairies). But that was before she discovered the family secret, and that her hot crush, Archer Cross, is an agent for The Eye, a group bent on wiping Prodigium off the face of the earth.

Turns out, Sophie’s a demon, one of only two in the world—the other being her father. What’s worse, she has powers that threaten the lives of everyone she loves. Which is precisely why Sophie decides she must go to London for the Removal, a risky procedure that will either destroy her powers forever — or kill her.

But once Sophie arrives she makes a shocking discovery. Her new housemates? They’re demons too. Meaning someone is raising them in secret with creepy plans to use their powers, and probably not for good. Meanwhile, The Eye is set on hunting Sophie down, and they’re using Archer to do it. But it’s not like she has feelings for him anymore. Does she?

My thoughts:
This was one of my Mother's Day presents.  My husband asked what I wanted this year and I decided I wanted books.  I even picked them out myself so there were no surprises, I got exactly what I wanted!  I read book one of this series recently and really liked Sophie.  Her character is easy to relate to and likable.  She knew, or thought she knew, that she was a witch for years.  Her mother had her moving around a lot and her dad was not in the picture anymore.  In book one, after a spell goes terribly wrong, she is sentences to juvenile detention for Prodigium(supernaturals) and goes to a boarding school on an island off of Georgia.  Book one ends with her finding out that she is a Demon, not a dark witch as she thought, and having to kill her great grandmother who was raised from the underworld by a coven of dark witches at the school who thought they could control her.

Now Sophie on having her magic removed, but first she has to spend the summer with her father who happens to be the council leader for the Prodigium council in England.  As she gets to know her father and more about the history of Prodigium and Demons, plus meets to other teenagers who are also demons who can't remember anything about how they came to be demons on what their past was like, her plans start to waver.  Throw in the arranged future marriage that is in the plans for her and Cal, one of her best friends, and the fact that the guy she thinks she does love is working for the enemy, and she has an awful lot on her plate and distracting her from what is going on around her.

Many things are not as they seem on the surface, and things fall apart in a big way.  When I got to the end of this book I wanted to know so badly what would happen next that I went online and bought the third book on my Kindle so I didn't have to stop reading!  I think this is a good mix of likable characters, believable emotions, traitorous villains and supernatural elements.

Product Details

• ISBN-13: 9781423121312
• Publisher: Hyperion Books for Children
• Publication date: 3/1/2011
• Pages: 368
• Age range: 11 - 17 Years
• Series:Hex Hall Series , #2