Review: The Fine Art of Truth or Dare by Melissa Jensen

The Fine Art of Truth or Dare by Melissa Jensen

Release Date: February 16, 2012

Publisher: Speak

Author Information: Website / Blog / Twitter / Facebook

Genre: Contemporary, Romance

Available Formats: Paperback and eBook

My Shelf: Want to Buy

Buy the Book: Amazon / Barnes and Noble / Books-A-Million / The Book Depository

Pretty in Pink meets Anna and the French Kiss in this charming romantic comedy.

Ella is nearly invisible at the Willing School, and that's just fine by her. She's got her friends - the fabulous Frankie and their sweet cohort Sadie. She's got her art - and her idol, the unappreciated 19th-century painter Edward Willing. Still, it's hard being a nobody and having a crush on the biggest somebody in the school: Alex Bainbridge. Especially when he is your French tutor, and lessons have started becoming, well, certainly more interesting than French ever has been before. But can the invisible girl actually end up with a happily ever after with the golden boy, when no one even knows they're dating? And is Ella going to dare to be that girl?

Review:

I was expecting a light, cute contemporary romance, but this book ended up being so much more. The story was moving, and there was a great deal of character depth which is not usually found in YA contemporary romances. I was pleasantly surprised by this book, and I ended up falling completely in love with it!

The most compelling thing about this book was the characters, hands down. They were so realistically rendered and portrayed, and I adored the main character, Ella. She is a true kindred spirit and very down to Earth. After an unfortunate accident as a child, she has been left with a scar that has resulted in her having some insecurities about herself, especially her body. She constantly wants to hide away, where no one will notice her or her scar, and where she is free to relish her art and study more about Edward Willing, her artistic (and dead) crush. To me, the insecurities she has with herself are what make her character both genuine and relatable. While not everyone has a large scar, most people do have insecurities concerning themselves and their bodies, and I loved watching Ella slowly and realistically come to accept herself, scars and all.

Alex’s character is all about breaking stereotypes. He’s rich, intelligent, extremely good-looking, seemingly unattainable…. You know where this story is going already, right? Wrong! There is a depth to his character that is not commonly found, and I enjoyed piecing together the anomaly known as Alex. When Alex and Ella were together, they had a real connection to each other, and watching their feelings gradually deepen was a real treat. The romantic aspect of this novel, while it cannot compare to the romance found in Anna and the French Kiss (but really, what book can?? St. Clair=LOVE!), was delightful and adorable, and Alex and Ella’s relationship contained all the fluffy fun I was hoping to find.

The Fine Art of Truth or Dare is definitely a book worth reading. There were a few facets to this novel that I did not particularly care for, such as Ella’s over-obsession with Edward Willing and some teenage moments of angst, but overall, this was a well-written and beautifully conceptualized novel telling the story of how two teens found one another and learned to accept themselves. It is a ridiculously cute and romantic read that you should not miss out on!

A Great Escape

Waiting on Wednesday (30)

Waiting on Wednesday was created by Jill at Breaking the Spine, and it's a weekly meme mentioning an anticipated upcoming release!

My choice:

Inhuman (Fetch, #1) by Kat Falls

Release Date: March 2013

Publisher: Scholastic

Author Information: Website / Facebook

Add to Goodreads!

In a world ravaged by mutation, a teenage girl must travel into the forbidden Savage Zone to recover lost artifacts or her father's life is forfeit.

America has been ravaged by a war that has left the eastern half of the country riddled with mutation. Many of the people there exhibit varying degrees of animal traits. Even the plantlife has gone feral.

Crossing from west to east is supposed to be forbidden, but sometimes it's necessary. Some enter the Savage Zone to provide humanitarian relief. Sixteen-year-old Lane's father goes there to retrieve lost artifacts--he is a Fetch. It's a dangerous life, but rewarding--until he's caught.

Desperate to save her father, Lane agrees to complete his latest job. That means leaving behind her life of comfort and risking life and limb--and her very DNA--in the Savage Zone. But she's not alone. In order to complete her objective, Lane strikes a deal with handsome, roguish Rafe. In exchange for his help as a guide, Lane is supposed to sneak him back west. But though Rafe doesn't exhibit any signs of "manimal" mutation, he's hardly civilized . . . and he may not be trustworthy.

Whoa! There are so many things that make me excited about this book! The cover seems very dystopian/urban fantasy-like, and I there are not nearly enough YA UF reads, in my opinion. Also, the synopsis has me thinking that this is going to be Tomb Raider meets Feral/Ravaged World, and who would not be interested in reading something like that??

What is your pick for this week?

Send me a link, and I will check it out! :)

100 Followers Giveaway!

Wow! I have reached 100 followers! *squee* Thanks to everyone who has followed the blog and for all of your support! Since I am so excited about this, what better way to celebrate than with a giveaway? :) There are many highly anticipated titles coming out in July and August, and the winner will be able to choose one upcoming release from the following selection (click on the cover for Goodreads info):

This contest is international, so anyone can sign up! Thanks again for following my blog, and happy reading!

Contest details:

- Open internationally

- Winner will have 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be chosen

-  If the selected book is not out by the time the contest ends, it will be pre-ordered and shipped to the winner’s personal address upon release

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Review: Monument 14 by Emmy Laybourne

Monument 14 (Monument 14, #1) by Emmy Laybourne

Release Date: June 5, 2012
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Author Information: Website / Blog / Twitter
Genre: Survival, Dystopian
Available Formats: Hardcover and eBook

My Shelf: Want to Buy
Buy the Book: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Books-A-Million

Your mother hollers that you’re going to miss the bus. She can see it coming down the street. You don’t stop and hug her and tell her you love her. You don’t thank her for being a good, kind, patient mother. Of course not—you launch yourself down the stairs and make a run for the corner.

Only, if it’s the last time you’ll ever see your mother, you sort of start to wish you’d stopped and did those things. Maybe even missed the bus.

But the bus was barreling down our street, so I ran.

Fourteen kids. One superstore. A million things that go wrong.

In Emmy Laybourne’s action-packed debut novel, six high school kids (some popular, some not), two eighth graders (one a tech genius), and six little kids trapped together in a chain superstore build a refuge for themselves inside. While outside, a series of escalating disasters, beginning with a monster hailstorm and ending with a chemical weapons spill, seems to be tearing the world—as they know it—apart.

Review:

How can you not be interested in a story where what appears to be a normal, rather mundane day turns into a struggle to survive with the world literally falling apart around you? There are all kinds of crazy things going on in the beginning of this book: deadly, destructive hailstorms, exploding cars, and buses ramming into supermarkets, and I was immediately pulled into the story. Throw into the mix some nuclear disasters and megatsunamis, and I was hooked (yeah, survival of the fittest, baby!). It sounds like a great premise for a survival dystopian novel, right? However, while the book was quite enjoyable and entertaining, it lacked a few things that made it memorable for me.

With the beginning of the story starting out action-heavy and rather dramatic, I expected a similar kind of tone/pacing for the rest of the story. However, once the children get confined to the supermarket, things really decelerate and cool down. Survival for them comes in the form of structure and order, where everyone has chores they need to carry out, such as cooking, sorting supermarket items, and taking stock inventory. While it was impressive to read about how these teenagers and children were able to care for themselves, especially in such trying times, it lacked entertainment value. The only intense moments were intermittent fights over who would be leader of their group or relationship drama between a few of the high schoolers. These moments helped the story progress, but the slow pacing kept me from being fully invested. My favorite moments were when they were able to get information about the outside world, but unfortunately those moments were few and far between. I mean, the world is being destroyed, I want to know what is going on!  Even at the end of the book, I was uncertain of what the current situation was and the ramifications of all the disasters, but hopefully those things will be further explained in the next installment.

I found the characters to be a tad superficial. Dean was a decent male lead, and I like how the story is told from his perspective (yay for male POV!), but I found his overall emotions to be rather dull and listless. There were many times where he would be distressed or tensions would run high, but I never really felt any kind of heightened emotions myself. Also, some of the characters just annoyed and/or disturbed me. Two of the older teenagers, who should be role models for the younger children, spend most of their time either high or drunk, Dean peeps on his crush and her boyfriend getting physical with one another (the boyfriend naming her boobs = super distasteful), and one girl is so desperate for male attention she usually is flashing some kind of feminine body part. While personality flaws like this worked well with creating dramatic moments and establishing character dynamics, they did not make me particularly care for any of the characters. To me, the characters were ordinary and… just there. I had a pretty strong disconnect to almost all of them throughout the novel, and I think they should have been fleshed out a bit more.

One other aspect to the book I want to mention is the writing style. While it did not bother me, I can see how it would grate on others. Laybourne has a very simplistic prose, and she mainly uses basic sentence structures and does not delve too far into emotions and explicit details. This is in no means a bad thing, and I personally attributed her prose style to the fact that the story is told from a teenage male’s perspective, but some people could be very turned off to this kind of writing style.

Overall, while this book is not perfect, I did enjoy it. The ending definitely saved the book for me, and it left room for a lot of potential in the sequel. I liked the idea Laybourne has about children surviving the end of the world (that actually sounds terrible of me to say ><), and while she could have expanded on the story and made it more action-packed/dramatic, Monument 14 is nevertheless an entertaining read and I am excited to see where the second book takes us.   

A Decent Escape

New Releases for July are Up!!

New releases for July are now up! To see all the releases for this month, just click on the “New Releases” cloud in the nav bar! There are actually quite a few books I am looking forward to getting my hands on. Here are my picks for this month:

What are you excited to read this month?