Making Ourselves Feel Ugly Is Not Fun

~Uglies~
Uglies
Book 1
By Scott Westerfeld
Amazon ~ Powell's

Everybody gets to be supermodel gorgeous. What could be wrong with that?

Tally is about to turn sixteen, and she can't wait. Not for her license—for turning pretty. In Tally's world, your sixteenth birthday brings an operation that turns you from a repellent ugly into a stunningly attractive pretty and catapults you into a high-tech paradise where your only job is to have a really great time. In just a few weeks Tally will be there.

But Tally's new friend Shay isn't sure she wants to be pretty. She'd rather risk life on the outside. When Shay runs away, Tally learns about a whole new side of the pretty world—and it isn't very pretty. The authorities offer Tally the worst choice she can imagine: find her friend and turn her in, or never turn pretty at all. The choice Tally makes changes her world forever.

Perhaps I've been reading too many well-written and utterly fascinating Dystopian books lately. Maybe I've grown too used to the idea that the world is doomed, humanity has all but killed itself, and the future holds nothing but torture and injustice. Or perhaps I've heard too much praise for the series. Because when it came to Uglies, I just didn't get the punch I was expecting.

Worrying About Ghosts Or—Shudder—High School

SPOILER ALERT
This review is for those who have read or are familiar with the previous books, Hex Hall, Demonglass, & especially Spell Bound or don't mind knowing some spoilers for them. School Spirits, however, will remain spoiler-free.
SPOILER ALERT

~School Spirits~
Hex Hall
Book 4
By Rachel Hawkins
Amazon ~ Powell's

Izzy Brannick was trained to fight monsters.

For centuries, her family has hunted magical creatures—and fifteen-year-old Izzy is the last of her line. But when her older sister vanishes without a trace, Izzy's mom decides they need to take a break from the Brannick's age-old calling.

As Izzy and her mom move on to Ideal, Mississippi, however, they discover the town is not as normal as it appears. A series of hauntings has been plaguing the local high school, and Izzy is determined to prove her worth and investigate. But assuming the guise of an average teenager is easier said than done. First, her clothes are all wrong. Second, what are these things called "friends"? Third, there's a boy named Dex making her heart skip—but not in a bad way...so, that's weird. For a tough girl who's always been on her own, it feels strange to suddenly be the center of attention.

Izzy's training taught her to never get attached, but she doesn't know if she can solve the case alone. Can she trust her new friends to find the secret behind the hauntings before more people get hurt?


After the disappointment I had with the last Hex Hall book, I admit that I was a bit reluctant to return. True, Hawkins had moved on to a new character, one with a completely different backstory, and there were no promises that this would be dragged out into its own trilogy, but I knew it was still a matter of whether the writing itself had changed or not.

Turns out that changes were made, and a lot of them were for the better.

This Place Is A Safe Haven

~Haven~
Winterhaven
Book 1
By Kristi Cook
Amazon ~ Powell's

Destiny brought them together.
Now it will tear them apart.

Violet doesn't understand why she feels drawn to the Winterhaven school. She just knows it's the right place for her. When she discovers the school's secret, it all makes sense: Everyone at Winterhaven has psychic gifts. For the first time in her life Violet doesn't have to hide her visions. She's always seen them as a curse, but now she can hone ther ability and try to control it.

But she's thrown completely off balance when she meets the most alluring—and most mysterious—boy in school. She's never connected with anyone the way she does with Aidan, and the intensity takes them both by surprise. But as their relationship deepens, she begins to have visions of Aidan's death—and sees that she's the one who's fated to kill him.

Violet's never been able to prevent her visions from coming true. But this time she'll do whatever it takes ... even if it means sacrificing herself for the boy she loves.


I will apologize beforehand if this review gets a little repetitive because it is so hard not to make constant Twilight comparisons. No, really, almost everything in this book can be traced back to Twilight. You've heard of the Twilight Clones? Well, get ready to meet the clone to end all clones...except better?!

Every Day She's More Withered

~Wither~
The Chemical Garden
Book 1
By Lauren DeStefano
Amazon ~ Powell's

What if you knew exactly when you’d die?

By age sixteen, Rhine Ellery has four years left to live. A botched effort to create a perfect race has left all males born with a lifespan of 25 years, and females a lifespan of 20 years--leaving the world in a state of panic. Geneticists seek a miracle antidote to restore the human race, desperate orphans crowd the population, crime and poverty have skyrocketed, and young girls are being kidnapped and sold as polygamous brides to bear more children.

When Rhine is sold as a bride, she vows to do all she can to escape. Yet her husband, Linden, is hopelessly in love with her, and Rhine can’t bring herself to hate him as much as she’d like to. He opens her to a magical world of wealth and illusion she never thought existed, and it almost makes it possible to ignore the clock ticking away her short life. But Rhine quickly learns that not everything in her new husband’s strange world is what it seems. Her father-in-law, an eccentric doctor bent on finding the antidote, is hoarding corpses in the basement; her fellow sister wives are to be trusted one day and feared the next; and Rhine has no way to communicate to her twin brother that she is safe and alive.

Together with one of Linden's servants, Gabriel, Rhine attempts to escape just before her seventeenth birthday. But in a world that continues to spiral into anarchy, is there any hope for freedom?

As I'm rather late in reviewing this book, I'm sorry to say that I was not completely impartial in my reading of it. I'd read less than savory things about this book/series. Now, I don't remember exactly what I'd read, nor do I want to find and read it again as I feel it's important to express my personal reactions, plus I don't want to repeat someone else's words. That being said, I admit that I went into this book expecting to hate it.

Well, there's good news, and there's bad news.

Surrounded by the Rot and Ruin

~Rot & Ruin~
Benny Imura
Book 1
By Jonathan Mayberry
Amazon ~ Powell's

Benny Imura couldn't hold a job, so he took to killing.

In the zombie-infested world Benny has grown up in, teenagers must work once they turn fifteen—or they'll lose their food rations. Benny isn't interested in taking on the family business, but he reluctantly agrees to train as a zombie killer with his boring brother, Tom. He expects a dull job, whacking zoms for cash. What he discovers is a vocation that will teach him what it really means to be human.

As his worldview is challenged again and again by the lessons he learns from Tom, Benny is forced to confront another horrifying reality: Sometimes the most terrible monsters are human.


These days it seems like you even mention the word "zombies" and people shudder. Not because they're creeped out, but because we've become overloaded. It's like we've been living with them so long, instead of being repulsed or scared by them, we just sigh and move along. So, it would take something pretty significant to break out of the sameness, right? Rot & Ruin might just be that book.