Feb Reads

 Warning:  This contains spoilers for the below mentioned books.




 Storybound by Marissa Burt
This is one of those books that had me drawn in right away.  One of those, just one more chapter, and you wind up reading five and your family complains because they are starving and you forgot to make dinner.  The main character is an orphan who literally gets sucked into a book, into the land of stories.  I was absolutely riveted...until 2/3 the way into the book.  I did not like the plot twist where the girl discovers she was born into the land of stories, and placed into our real world.  I liked the fact that she was an outsider, figuring things out and saving the day.  It just left a bad taste in my mouth.  I won't be reading the next book in this series.




Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes by  Jonathan Auxier
This was another one of those books I didn't want to put down.  This orphaned blind boy has special thieving skills.  One day he happens upon a box with three sets of magical eyes.  They take him to a place where he and a cursed knight must save a kingdom.  I was really enjoying the ride when BAM!  You discover he is a long lost prince of this lost kingdom he is trying to save. WHAT? How did I get two books in a row with this same plot device.  GRRRR!  I was really pissed off because the writing in this book was even better than the previous book I read.  It was sort of a combination of Lemony Snicket and Roal Dahl humor, but just slightly more lighthearted.  I think if I had read this book before I read Storybound, I would have enjoyed it more.



Pure by Julianna Baggot
The next book I read, I thought I'd change things up from Fantasy to Dystopian post apocalyptic fiction.  In this book it is after a bomb has been dropped.  Some of the people were "saved" by living in this dome, while others who were exposed to the bomb were fused to objects around them.  The main character, Pressia happens to have a doll's head for a hand.  Those inside the dome are referred to by those outside the dome as "Pure". When a person on the outside turns 17 they are forced to join a sort of army or become target practice for the army.  A boy from the dome, Partridge, manages to escape and happens to joins up with Pressia.  He is on a mission to find his mother who was not allowed in the dome.  Then, can you believe it?  Pressia and the boy from the dome discover they are siblings.  WHAT?  Again?  are you kidding me?  Then amazingly they find their mother and their brother who was believed to be dead, but the brother turns out to have been tampered with genetically and has a bomb inside his head and blows himself and their mother up.  How is it possible that I checked out three books from the library in a row that were completely different, but have that same plot device that the main character is a long lost sibling.  Ugh.  I guess there are no new stories.  I am NOT going to read the next books in this series.



All These Things I've Done by Gabrielle Zevin
Ugh, finally, a story that's not about long lost siblings.  This one is based of a dystopian society set in the not too distant future (80 or 90 yrs).  At this point, chocolate and caffeine are illegal, water is rationed, and it costs postage to send an email.  What I liked about this story was that the negative situations of the time do not overwhelm the character.  Sometimes these futuristic stories are so bogged down about how horrible things are that the story almost gets lost.  This is just a way of life for the characters, much like a story set in the 80's would not have lamentations about how horrible it is to not have 3G networks.  People don't know what they are missing because their life is normal to them.  Anyhow, the main character Anya comes from a crime family that dealt in black market chocolate.  Her ex gets poisoned by chocolate, he finagled from her, and she has to try to prove her innocence.  The fact that she is dating the DA's son helps with that.  Only the DA thinks she is bad press for him.  In the end Anya learns where she fits within her family and that she has to make some big sacrifices in order to ensure the safety of those she loves, including her boyfriend.

Switched by Amanda Hocking

This story is about a changeling who discovers that she is not human.  She is what her people refer to as Trylle or trolls.  This is not the traditional sense of what stories describe as trolls, I'd say they were more like Fae.  Her human mother tries to kill her when she is 6 because she realizes she is an impostor.  When she is reunited with her biological family, she discovers she is the daughter of the queen.  Of course.  Why couldn't anyone be a normal average citizen.  Everyone has to be special class or royalty.  But if they did that, there couldnt be forbidden love.  Although the concept of the story was fairly original, the plot turned out to be pretty cookie cutter for this genre.  All things considered I enjoyed this book, probably because it was a quick read that I finished in one sitting.  I plan to check out the sequel to see where the story heads from here.