Somewhere in Between

by Katie Li

Summary from GoodReads

Two friends find a portal to another dimension and use this “in-between place” to avoid the stress of their everyday lives. What they don’t realize is that every time they enter, they alter reality.

Pseudo-punk Magnolia and underachieving gamer-geek Rom are two unlikely friends who only hang out during their walks home together after school. When they find the a portal that leads to different worlds, they use the “in-between place” as an escape from their lives in high school, then later, after college. 

Their visits through the portal bring them teetering along a tight-rope of fantasy and reality, where they don't always believe what is in front of them, not even their feelings for each other. 

The book is about changes—the ones that you can control, and the ones that you can’t. It’s about commitment and friendship. It’s about the stages in between where you have nothing but the unknown ahead of you.

Inspired by the work of Haruki Murakami and films like Eternal Sunshine of A Spotless Mind, Somewhere In Between is metaphysical coming-of-age story about defining love and finding yourself.

Thoughts on the Book

I received this book from NetGalley, I loved the cover and the premise sounded very interesting.

My Review

This book had a lot of jumping between the present - the reunion of Magnolia and Rom, and the past - when Magnolia and Rom first started to become friends.

I half loved this book and half was annoyed by it.  The jumping back and forth got very confusing, but that could have just been the formatting of the ebook.  The end bugged me though, I might need to reread it, I can't figure out exactly what happened, what was real and what wasn't, and at what point in their lives are these two?  But that could be the entire point of the story.

Magnolia was a very weak and insecure person, while at the same time she was fantastically unique, smart, and fun.  In trying avoid dealing with people she ended up ingraining herself with a bad group of people and she wasn't able to extricate herself from them.  Rom on the other hand was unforgivably himself even though he tended to be very shy.  He never tried to change himself for other people for any reason, either people appreciated who he was and were his friends, or they didn't and he didn't spare them a second thought.

I loved the story of the two friends despite the jumpy way it was told.  The end, when both fought their demons and realized exactly what they meant to each other was fantastic.  I love how Magnolia was back in the past of the day that she made the biggest mistake of her life, while Rom's was in the present debating whether or not he should make the biggest mistake of his life.

I give this a 8/10.  I loved it, but it was somewhat difficult to read and the ending was half awesome and half "so what happened?".

Immersed

by Katie Hayoz

Summary from GoodReads

Forget petticoats and demure female behavior. Melusine Doré prefers armored corsets and knives and slays evil creatures for a living. The grim and gruesome don’t frighten her; she’ll take on a cyclops or a dragon and not even break a sweat. But when her rival, the charismatic Levi Cannon, comes to town, all her buried fears begin to surface. Melusine realizes she is in danger of something much more horrifying than facing blood-thirsty beasts – she’s in danger of falling in love. Because love alone has the power to reveal a secret terrible enough to completely shatter her world.

Set in the muddy streets of 1850s steampunk Chicago, Immersed by Katie Hayoz is a dark yet romantic fantastical romp. It is a stand-alone novella, but the first in a series of adventures that follow Melusine on her quest to rid the world of monsters…and her struggle to come to terms with every monstrous facet of herself. 

Thoughts on the Book

I got this book through NetGalley.  I thought the premise sounded very cool.

My Review

This book is about Melusine, a cursed monster-killer.  She gets forced into working with her arch enemy, Levi, a fellow monster-killer.

I loved the world Hayoz built.  It's a steampunk Chicago filled with mythological creatures.  I love the rivalry between Melusine and Levi, and the tension between them.  I really enjoyed learning about Melusine's curse as well and the reason behind it.  I want to know more about her family life!  

My main issue with this book is that it was too short, some things felt kind of rushed or glossed over.  If Hayoz had taken time to really draw out some of the stuff, especially between Melusine and Levi, it would have been so much better!  Which is saying a lot since it was awesome as is.

I give this one a 9/10.  I can't wait to read more from this world!

Waving Backwards

by V.L. Brunskill

Summary from GoodReads

Imagine not knowing who you are, until you find yourself in a statue 800 miles from home.

Join intensely passionate and fiercely independent New York college student Lara Bonavito on an unforgettable journey of self-discovery in sigh-worthy Savannah, Georgia. Adopted into an abusive and impoverished home, Lara’s quest to find her roots lands her in the southern jewel’s historic district. A vivid cast of characters help her unravel clues found in a cryptic letter hidden in the family bible for two decades.

“The baby’s roots are with the southern lady who waves forever.”

With the help of mischievously handsome trolley tour guide Robert Taylor; Kipling-quoting florist Abel Bloom; and comically outspoken Louisiana beauty, Susan Fletcher, Lara uncovers family secrets wrapped in the mystique of Savannah’s Waving Girl statue.

Waving Backwards is a coming-of-age quest that reveals the healing power of family bonds, and maternal love

Thoughts on the Book

I received this book from NetGalley.  It's been sitting on my Netgalley bookshelf for a while, but I finally got around to reading it.  I requested this book because it sounds really cool.  A girl receiving a cryptic letter which leads her to search for her biological family.  The cover looks pretty awesome too!

My Review

This book is about an adopted girl, Lara, who finds a letter in the family bible which prompts her to want delay college for a second year while she goes off hunting down her biological family, who made it known they didn't want to be contacted with the agency.  Lara "figures out" that the letter references Savannah, Georgia and she heads down south to find her family.

I can't get over the stupidity of this story.  It was excruciating to read.  The first two chapters were written in past tense then it just switched to present tense.  Then there's these awful random flashbacks which are also in past tense.  The tense, and the pointless date at the beginning of each chapter, is the only indicator that there's a flashback.  No book should be written in present tense.  The actual writing is awful too, some chapters are 2 pages, barely, if they're that short they shouldn't even be a chapter.  Here's an example of the prose: "Whirring past cars in a haze of haphazard thinking and driving, Lara reflects on the letter, pulling it repeatedly from the passenger seat to review the words as questions squawk in her head.  What if her family owned slaves?  Will she find a bunch of bigoted old folks who look down their noses at her? Will they like her?  Will there be brothers or sisters?"..."Questions and possibilities make it impossible to focus. Other drivers fly past, waving aggravated hands as she swerves to grab the letter."  That's about a quarter of chapter 4, by the way.  It's SO DUMB.  She's swerving around the lanes grabbing for a letter that's 5 lines long?  Her first question about her bio-family is if they owned slaves?  Then there's the fact that she's from a poor family in New York City, where'd she get the car from?  And how does she know how to drive?

The story seems to progress by Lara making random assumptions and weird decisions.  For example, she finds a "letter" in the family bible, automatically assumes it's about her since she's an only child (and no other children could have possibly been born - ever), then assumes it means the east coast of the US, and she had to look up the oldest cities in each southern east coast state, and randomly decided that Savannah had to be the city in question.  She gets this all from the line "Buried in the first city is a man who holds the 9th key".  If it were me, I'd immediately think the first city was Roanoke (the first British colony, founded in 1585), but since the colony didn't last a year, Jamestown would be my second guess (founded in 1607) both in Virginia.  Or if you want to go technical and say the first settlement/city that has been continuously inhabited in the Continental US it would be St. Augustine, Florida (founded in 1565).  Or, if you want to say the oldest (aka first) city of the United States it would be Lewes Delaware (founded in 1631) since that's the first city in the first state to sign the Constitution.  Savannah (founded in 1733) is so far down on the list of 'first cities' it's ridiculous.

At one point in the book there's a tornado.  In Savannah.  A tornado.  And these are normal there...check out this.  Yep, that's right, about 6 tornadoes in Savanna (12 if you expand your radius by quite a bit) since 1950.  This is because Savannah does not get tornadoes, they get this other storm quite often...I think it's called a hurricane.  Yeah, they get those a lot.  They get more waterspouts than tornadoes for crying out loud.  And supposedly the author lives in Savannah.  Give me a break.

The ending of the book was as dumb and boring as the rest of the book.  There's these stages in books that they're supposed to follow, Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, and Resolution.  There was none of that.  Barely an exposition, no rising action (unless you consider Lara making up answers to the "riddle" as a rising action), no climax so there was no falling action, and of course no resolution.  Just "whelp, found out what I wanted, now I'm going home to not go to college since I wasted all my loan money in the search for my bio-parents".  Never-mind what she actually found out and how it impacted her (that would have been the climax had it been written correctly).  She just got the answer of how she was conceived and by whom then called it a day.

I give this a 0.5/10.  It was truly awful and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.  Unless you really do enjoy a mediocre plot that is written like a 6th grader would write.  But I think that could be an insult to 6th graders.

The Unfortunate Decisions of Dahlia Moss

by Max Wirestone

Summary from Good Reads

For fans of The Guild, New Girl, Scott Pilgrim, Big Bang Theory, Veronica Mars, or anyone who has ever geeked out about something.


The odds of Dahlia successfully navigating adulthood are 3,720 to 1. But never tell her the odds.

Meet Dahlia Moss, the reigning queen of unfortunate decision-making in the St. Louis area. Unemployed broke, and on her last bowl of ramen, she's not living her best life. But that's all about to change.

Before Dahlia can make her life any messier on her own she's offered a job. A job that she's woefully under-qualified for. A job that will lead her to a murder, an MMORPG, and possibly a fella (or two?).

Turns out unfortunate decisions abound, and she's just the girl to deal with them

Thoughts on the Book

I received this book from Netgalley.  Based off of the first line of the summary I knew I would love it.  Veronica Mars is my favorite TV series (I totally kick-started the movie) I love Big Bang Theory and New Girl, and I'm pretty much Ramona from Scott Pilgrim (trust me, cabinet full of tea varieties, I have it).  After reading that first line I knew two things for sure - I needed to read this book, and I really should watch The Guild.

My Review

This book is about a perpetually unemployed girl, Dahlia, who gets hired to find a digital weapon and gets sucked into solving a murder.

I loved this book!  It was so much fun!  Dahlia is a little crazy/neurotic and her roommate, Charice is totally bonkers.  It worked with the story though.  Everything was a bit on the crazy side, so when Charice allowed for a production of Godspell to happn in their apartment so Dahlia had to leave to go hang out with a murder suspect she thought was cute it just fit perfectly within the story.

Probably my favorite thing was all of the geeky references dropped throughout the book.  Most I got, but there were a couple that went over my head.  Two of my favorite geeky lines were:

"I put on my sexiest clothes, then, worrying that I had overshot the mark, opted for my Jigglypuff cap. It was cold, and Jiggly helped send the message I wanted to send, which was apparently that I would like Nathan to fall asleep so that I could write on his face. (This is a hardcore Pokémon reference and if you do not get it, I apologize. If you do get it, I apologize even more deeply.)"

and

“Ever read one of those old private-eye mysteries where the detective gets double-crossed?”
“I suppose.” said Nathan. “I’m really more of a sci-fi guy.”
“But you knew all of those noir words!”
“Google,” said Nathan.
“Well, it’s a thing. Sam Spade is in his office, or wherever, and some dame with great legs comes in and asks him to find her sister.”
“Did Jonah have nice legs?” interrupted Nathan.
“He had nice pants, but let me finish. The dick takes the case, and when he finds the sister, he discovers she’s dead, gets framed, and besides which it wasn’t the dame’s sister anyway.”
“And the great legs were prosthetic,” added Nathan.
“Exactly,” I told him.
“There never was a dame, she was a hologram.”
“Yes, you’re moving into sci-fi.”
“The sister was a Cylon.”
“Now you’re just being derivative.”

One character, Kurt, was described as a snorlax, how awesome is that?  Then there was the bit with viola jokes (I play violin, my best friend plays viola, so I've always enjoyed sharing the more awful viola jokes with her).  

The flirting between Nathan and Dahlia was great too, I especially loved her iPod password at the end and Nathan's reaction to it.  If I continue listing all the funniest parts of the book, I'll end up just posting the entire book, out of order, so I'm going to stop now and say - go read this book! It's so awesome and if you have a geeky bone in your body, you'll love it!

I give this a 10/10.  Such a fun read.  I really look forward to seeing what Max Wirestone comes out with next!