Personal Rating: 2.5 Stars Goodreads Rating: 3.35 Stars Content Rating: PG-13 Driver’s Ed was like so many things in school. If the parents only knew . . . (goodreads.com) So… since that’s all Goodreads has to say about this book I’m just going to write a brief synopsis myself: Remy and Morgan are both on the verge of turning sixteen, which means they’ll be getting their driver’s licenses soon - if they can pass Mr. Fielding’s driver’s ed course. The only life and death course in school. (Okay, that line is from the back of my copy of the book.) Remy and Morgan are also harboring major crushes on each other. What a great time to be alive! One of the other kids in their class declares that it would be fun to go steal some street signs as a class activity (Mr. Fielding is oblivious to this scheme), but the only ones who end up going are Remy, Morgan, and that trouble making kid Nickie Budie. When they steal a stop sign they cause more trouble than they ever thought they could. Ta-da! Hopefully I did an okay job and you get the jist of it. There are teenagers, they’re in driver’s ed, they do some stupid stuff, their teacher is clueless. Personally, it’s not a book that sounds mighty appealing to me, but I really enjoyed the one other book (Twenty Pageants Later) that I read by Caroline B. Cooney, so when I saw this at a book sale I thought I’d give it a try. I kind of wish I hadn’t. I laughed a lot during most of the first chapter of this book. The writing style was hilarious, the characters were goofy in a good way, and the situations they were in were pretty ridiculous. Sure it was a little gaggy how much Morgan and Remy pined for each other, but hey! It’s a teen book! It is rare you can escape a teen novel without at least some pining. The first chapter was a good time. Maybe the first few chapters. But then… things happened. So, Remy and Morgan and this Nickie fellow (total idiot, I’m not gonna lie) go and steal some street signs, right? And hopefully you know that this is a bad idea. I mean, signs are there for a reason, right? And when they aren’t there it causes trouble. And in this book, it causes devastating trouble. I’m not going to get into it too much, incase you don’t want to know what happens, but you can probably guess what kind of problems stealing a stop sign will cause. Anyway, from there on out the book is really a downer. It kind of reminds of S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders in the sense that it’s a bunch of dumb kids, doing a bunch of dumb stuff, having a good time doing it until the results of their actions are shown. Except most of the characters in The Outsiders were likable and I felt bad for them. Mostly I just wanted to yell at Remy and Morgan, though sometimes I felt pretty bad for them toward the end. If you feel “second hand guilt” easily, then this probably isn’t the book for you. It is pretty much a two hundred page fiasco of that sick feeling in your gut when you’ve done something wrong and you’re not sure if you should confess to it or not. That and a lot of jibes at religion, a weird love story, and more bad decisions and you’ve got the whole book right there. As for redeeming qualities… uh… maybe, um… oh! I know! Remy’s little brothers were kind of hilarious. Morgan’s little sister was less so. And, um, yeah, that’s all I can think of at the moment. I guess it kind of had a good message over all about how nobody really deserves love, but everyone needs it. It seemed almost biblical, very nearly gospel - if it weren’t for the book going out of its way a few times to point out how silly the idea of God was at the worst and commenting that He was a “nice idea” at best. So… yeah. Not sure what to think about that. But it was short and it was thought provoking and it makes me want to be a safer driver, which means I didn’t totally hate it. And the first few chapters were pretty humorous. So it was decent? Well, thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed my ramblings about a book you may never read! I'm going to try to post at least once a week at least during the summer, so be sure to check back soon! TTFN! Image source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7120540-driver-s-ed
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Personal Rating: 4 Stars Goodreads Rating: 3.79 Stars Content Rating: PG-13 (mostly for violence) In 1919, Ada Navarra—the intrepid daughter of immigrants—and Corinne Wells—a spunky, devil-may-care heiress—make an unlikely pair. But at the Cast Iron nightclub in Boston, anything and everything is possible. At night, on stage together, the two best friends, whose “afflicted” blood gives them the ability to create illusions through art, weave magic under the employ of Johnny Dervish, the club’s owner and a notorious gangster. By day, Ada and Corinne use these same skills to con the city’s elite in an attempt to keep the club afloat. When a “job” goes awry and Ada is imprisoned, she realizes they’re on the precipice of danger. Only Corinne—her partner in crime—can break her out of Haversham Asylum. But once Ada is out, they face betrayal at every turn. (goodreads.com) PSA: Please take a moment to put on your favorite swing music or electro swing music. If you are unfamiliar with this type of music I have created a playlist for you which you can find here (and some of the songs on that playlist you’ll find are by a channel called Postmodern Jukebox, and if you like popular songs being turned into vintage songs you should really go check it out because it is amazing). *end PSA* I’m sure we’ve all read or will read The Great Gatsby and that we all have opinions on it. Personally, I wasn’t really a fan of it. I know the characters are supposed to be people who the reader dislikes, but I think F. Scott Fitzgerald did too good of a job. Obviously, you are free to feel about it how you will, I just didn’t like it. The Great Gatsby takes place toward the end of the 1920’s I believe, and Iron Cast takes place right as that era was getting started so they aren’t exactly at the same time, but they had a lot of the same things going on with Prohibition, dance clubs, racism, living life on the edge, and fantastic music. So forgive me, but I’m going to clump them into the same time period. As far as “Roaring Twenties” books go, I like this one much better than I like The Great Gatsby. Maybe because this book is about teenage girls so I can relate to it better, or maybe because Iron Cast was focused more on danger, crime, politics, and excitement than a convoluted love story. There are two love stories in this book, but they are really well written and they don’t take up the whole focus of the plot. The characters are actually more interested in solving their huge problems than they are interested in smooching up a storm. Which was quite refreshing. The set up for this book is really interesting and grabs the reader’s interest immediately. It kind of reminded me of X-Men, but in the 20’s. There are these people called “hemopaths” who have superpowers that they can control by wielding the arts. For example, songsmiths can make you feel emotions or forget things if they are playing music or singing. I don’t want to talk too much about the powers because I don’t want to spoil it for you if you read it, but there are some really cool ones that work really well with the plot. And the reason it reminded me of X-Men is because society hates the hemopaths because of their abilities. The characters were great and I could honestly spend this whole post just talking about them. I promise I won’t examine every single character individually though. We’d be here for a while. I’ll just tell you about the main characters. We have Ada Navarra as one of the two protagonists. Out of her and the other MC I think she’s my favorite. She was witty, kind, and smart, but she wasn’t always sure of herself and sometimes she made mistakes. She has a lot to deal with, what with not only being a hemopath, but also being a person of color in the 1920’s. She handles her difficult situations with a level head and she acts like a real person. Ada’s best friend, Corinne, was also pretty great. She was the more humorous of the two and the more excitable. In the book she is a marvelous con woman and can think on her feet. Even though tricking someone out of their money is something that would make me feel sick for doing, I always love reading about clever con artist characters. I love it when they outsmart everyone else in the room and do it all with a smile on their face. And typically those characters are men or boys (or twelve year old criminal masterminds) so it was really fun to have the fairly feminine Corinne out there making fools of the bad guys. Another character worth mentioning is Gabriel Stone. AKA the obligatory young adult novel mysterious brooding hunk. Alright, he was more than just a hunk. He was also kind and open to new ideas, which is a bigger deal than you think. How many YA guys - who aren’t the main character - can you think of who take time to consider both sides of every argument and who admit when they are wrong? Seriously, tell me if you think of any because none are coming to mind right now. Moving on, I really loved the way the plot fell together and how everything worked. I liked the mystery and secrets woven through the old timey gang atmosphere. The hemopath powers made it a fantastical read for anyone who likes for their historical fiction to play a little outside of history, and the glitz and glam of it all was fun to read about. I highly recommend reading this book with a bit of period music playing in the background if you like music while you read. It will really bring it to life for you, especially since they are usually playing music in the story. That about wraps up my review, I hope you enjoyed it! Reading any good books this summer? I’m very slowly making my way through my TBR pile… and adding more things to it. Well, they’re playing my song, so I’d better run! Image source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28818313-iron-cast Personal Rating: 3 Stars Goodreads Rating: 2.95 Stars Content Rating: PG-13 Rhea, Cadis, Suki, and Iren have lived together since they were children. They are called sisters. They are not. They are called equals. They are not. They are princesses…and they are enemies. Not long ago, a brutal war ravaged their kingdoms, and Rhea’s father was the victor. As a gesture of peace, King Declan brought the daughters of his rivals to live under his protection—and his ever-watchful eye. For ten years the girls have trained together as diplomats and warriors, raised to accept their thrones and unite their kingdoms in peace. But there is rarely peace among sisters. Sheltered Rhea was raised to rule everyone—including her “sisters”—but she’s cracking under pressure. The charismatic Cadis is desperately trying to redeem her people from their actions during the war. Suki guards deep family secrets that isolate her, and quiet Iren’s meekness is not what it seems. All plans for peace are shattered when the palace is attacked. As their intended futures lie in ashes, Rhea, Cadis, Suki, and Iren must decide where their loyalties lie: to their nations, or to each other. (goodreads.com) It’s summer! Time to read, put off reading because you think you’ve got plenty of time to read, eat frozen treats, join summer reading programs, go swimming, and worry about what you are going to do with the rest of your life! Gotta love summer! Do you have any particular genre you really love to read in summer? Maybe you just read a bit of everything, but my favorite thing to read in the summer is fantasy. I love to get into a high fantasy novel and just relish the world building and crazy magic going on. I already have several (a lot) of fantasy books lined up to read (though I doubt I’ll get through most of them). Hopefully I’ll also put up reviews for these books once I get done with them! The book I’ll be talking about today is one of the ones that I’ve been wanting to read for a while now. I like the concept of it, I really like the cover (and we all know it doesn’t take much more than a pretty cover to get me interested in a book), and it’s fantasy! Perfect for my first read of the summer! And I had such high hopes for it. Let me start by saying the book isn’t bad. It took me a while to get into it and it didn’t hold my attention as well as some books do, but it was still interesting and I was still somewhat invested in the story. It just wasn’t the best writing I’ve ever read in my life. Or the second best. If I’m being totally honest I’ve read fanfiction with a more developed writing style. But it was still a fairly enjoyable read! There were four main-ish characters, but I think the “most main” character was Rhea, as she is the one featured on the cover and it seems like she gets the most written from her perspective. Rhea was a character. She certainly was. I honestly don’t feel one way or the other about Rhea. She did some things that kind of annoyed me and she was a little bit too naive, but characters are supposed to have flaws, right? I didn’t love her but I didn’t hate her. She was lukewarm and that’s not really what you want from a character to my understanding. The second “most main” character is probably Cadis, who I liked a great deal more than I liked Rhea. In fact, she is probably my favorite of the “sisters”. Cadis had less irritating flaws and she was more interesting to read about… partially because she wasn’t pining over the stable boy like Rhea was (like every other paragraph Rhea was checking to see what the stable boy was doing and he was never doing anything worth reading about). Cadis was the heir apparent of a country made up of seafarers so she had so piratical qualities that I thought were fun. And she genuinely cared about people (unlike Rhea who only cared about her father’s opinion and if the stable boy was thinking about her), so it was nice to read about her interactions with people. Iren was another one of the girls and she was interesting and fun to read about too. I found the writing style of her chapters interesting because they were more focused on what the people around her were doing and what that implied rather than what she was thinking because she has the mindset of a spy. She was always observing and it was really fun to read from her perspective. It kind of reminded me of Sherlock Holmes and how he always deduces things about those around him. And last of the princess/queen/warrior/ladies is Suki. No offense to the author but every time there was a chapter about Suki I just wanted to scream. She’s a totally unstable little brat who hates everyone around her (except the stable boy) and is constantly trying to undermine the plans of the other girls. Not to mention her chapters were a bear to read because of all of the parenthesis. Basically (her sentences (went something (like this (because she has so many (distracting thoughts (about everything (so we never really get a complete (thought (and you can’t keep track (of what’s being said (because you’re so confused (not to mention it ends the sentence like this.))))))))))). AND THAT GETS REALLY ANNOYING REALLY FAST (though I did find it clever in the first chapter). Also, I’m aware that I did not use any of those parentheses correctly, I was trying to make a point. The last character I want to mention is the stable boy, Endrit *loud tired sigh of frustration*. So this guy is pretty much the only friend any of these girls have besides each other, and since they hate each other, he is pretty much their only friend. Now, I think the reason Iren and Cadis were so interesting and my favorite characters was because they didn’t care that much about Endrit. Rhea and Suki, however, seemed to be more focused on winning his heart than they were saving their kingdoms. It’s just boring to read about how Rhea is so worried about all the other girls he flirts with and how Suki wants to murder Rhea because Endrit seems to like her better. Endrit isn’t even that great of a guy! All we know about him for most of the book is that he is muscular, has brown (I think) curly hair, he can be mischievous, and that he must spend a lot of money on shirts because he’s constantly losing them. That’s it. That’s all we know. He does have a purpose toward the very end of the book, but it could have been filled by someone else easily. Other than that the only reason he was there was to be the love interest. The plot was good. I liked all of the political intrigue and stuff (not that I really understood it), I wish there had been a few less action scenes because I really don’t care that Rhea can do a murder-waltz or whatever or that Suki wanted to pretty much rip out Rhea’s throat. Oddly enough, I quite enjoyed the bit where Cadis was saving the day by destroying people with her bow skills (Cadis, you’re doing a wonderful job sweetie, keep it up) and Iren’s sneaky fighting style was fun to read about too. In my opinion there needs to be a sequel if there isn’t one already in the works. The plot ended far too abruptly for me to be satisfied and I really wanted to know what happened next. So far I can’t find anything about whether or not there will be a sequel so if you know something then please tell me. I can already picture the gorgeous cover for that book: green themed, because that’s Cadis’ kingdom’s color, with Cadis on the front, blonde braids billowing in the wind of the sea, and maybe some cannons going off in the background. I want it. And then a blue one for Iren! And if we have to we can have a yellow one for Suki - hey! They have the Hogwart house colors! They don’t fit very well into their designated houses though, except maybe Iren (and that could be because I like Iren and I like Ravenclaw). Anyway, I did enjoy this read and I am really excited to get going on the rest of my summer reading! Maybe I’ll post a list of all the books I want to read this summer and you can let me know some of the ones you want to read! Maybe we can do a book club thing! Oooh, that would be a load of fun, wouldn’t it? A bunch of people reading the same book and then we could have a discussion about it! I think there is a way to do a forum on here, maybe we could do it that way! What do you think? Would you want to do a book club online with me? What book would you like to read? Let me know in the comment section below! Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed my review! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go overthrow some kingdoms! Image source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30312847-daughters-of-ruin |
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