Waiting on Wednesday - Erin & Janelle

This week's WoW (courtesy of Jill at Breaking the Spine!) comes to you from Erin & Janelle!

Janelle

A Secret Kept by Tatiana de Rosnay
St. Martin’s Press
Release Date: September 14, 2010

From Goodreads: This stunning new novel from Tatiana de Rosnay, author of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller Sarah’s Key, plumbs the depths of complex family relationships and the power of a past secret to change everything in the present.

It all began with a simple seaside vacation, a brother and sister recapturing their childhood. Antoine Rey thought he had the perfect surprise for his sister Mélanie’s birthday: a weekend by the sea at Noirmoutier Island, where the pair spent many happy childhood summers playing on the beach. It had been too long, Antoine thought, since they’d returned to the island—over thirty years, since their mother died and the family holidays ceased. But the island’s haunting beauty triggers more than happy memories; it reminds Mélanie of something unexpected and deeply disturbing about their last island summer. When, on the drive home to Paris, she finally summons the courage to reveal what she knows to Antoine, her emotions overcome her and she loses control of the car.

Recovering from the accident in a nearby hospital, Mélanie tries to recall what caused her to crash. Antoine encounters an unexpected ally: sexy, streetwise Angèle, a mortician who will teach him new meanings for the words life, love and death. Suddenly, however, the past comes swinging back at both siblings, burdened with a dark truth about their mother, Clarisse.

Trapped in the wake of a shocking family secret shrouded by taboo, Antoine must confront his past and also his troubled relationships with his own children. How well does he really know his mother, his children, even himself? Suddenly fragile on all fronts as a son, a husband, a brother and a father, Antoine Rey will learn the truth about his family and himself the hard way. By turns thrilling, seductive and destructive, with a lingering effect that is bittersweet and redeeming, A Secret Kept is the story of a modern family, the invisible ties that hold it together, and the impact it has throughout life.

I really enjoyed the author's previous work Sarah's Key, in which she delved into the 1942 round-up of over 10,000 Jews in France, so I'm excited to know that she has another book coming out this fall. Her exploration of  the horrific events of Vel d'Hiv using the parallels of Sarah's life during World War II and an American journalist named Julia kept me capitvated, as their stories began to intersect and we learned more about Sarah and this Parisian tragedy, so I look forward to the story de Rosnay will tell next.

Erin

Blameless (The Parasol Protectorate, #3) by Gail Carriger
Orbit Books
Release date: September 1, 2010

From Goodreads:  (I'm giving you the summary for the first in the Parasol Protectorate series because the summaries for the second and third books contain spoilers)

Alexia Tarabotti is laboring under a great many social tribulations. First, she has no soul. Second, she's a spinster whose father is both Italian and dead. Third, she was rudely attacked by a vampire, breaking all standards of social etiquette.

Where to go from there? From bad to worse apparently, for Alexia accidentally kills the vampire -- and then the appalling Lord Maccon (loud, messy, gorgeous, and werewolf) is sent by Queen Victoria to investigate.

With unexpected vampires appearing and expected vampires disappearing, everyone seems to believe Alexia responsible. Can she figure out what is actually happening to London's high society? Will her soulless ability to negate supernatural powers prove useful or just plain embarrassing? Finally, who is the real enemy, and do they have treacle tart?

Steampunk Victorian England? Werewolf detectives? Vampire dandies?  When I first heard of this series it seemed almost too good to be true.  This series, besides have awesome covers that I want to blow up, frame and put on my walls, is just delightful.  I can't believe someone hadn't combined two of my favorite things (Victorian England and the supernatural) before this.  Alexia is a smart, independent woman and a fabulous protagonist, but I have to admit, it's Lord Maccon that has me eagerly awaiting this new book.  I was quite put out with the werewolf and the end of book two and hope he redeems himself in this new book.  I can't wait to see how Carriger delves deeper into the world she's created.  If you haven't read Soulless or Changeless I wholeheartedly recommend you pick them up before September 1st!

Review - The Actor and the Housewife by Shannon Hale

What if you were to meet the number-one person on your laminated list—you know, that list you joke about with your significant other about which five celebrities you’d be allowed to run off with if ever given the chance? And of course since it’ll never happen it doesn’t matter… Mormon housewife Becky Jack is seven months pregnant with her fourth child when she meets celebrity heartthrob Felix Callahan. Twelve hours, one elevator ride, and one alcohol-free dinner later, something has happened…though nothing has happened. It isn’t sexual. It isn’t even quite love. But a month later Felix shows up in Salt Lake City to visit and before they know what’s hit them, Felix and Becky are best friends. Really. Becky’s husband is pretty cool about it. Her children roll their eyes. Her neighbors gossip endlessly. But Felix and Becky have something special…something unusual, something completely impossible to sustain. Or is it? A magical story, The Actor and the Housewife explores what could happen when your not-so-secret celebrity crush walks right into real life and changes everything.

After settling in for what I thought was going to be a quick, breezy read I was pleasantly surprised to discover that this novel has some depth.

Very rarely can you read a book where the main characters are of the opposite sex and just friends. Nothing more, nothing less. Heck, I won’t lie…I really don’t ever want to read one of those novels. I enjoy my romance and my women finding their happily ever after. So I picked this one up because I was intrigued by Becky, a married & Mormon pregnant woman who gets to meet Felix Callahan, this fictitious world’s version of George Clooney. Their chemistry is immediate & the banter between Becky and Felix is clever, quick and, at times, laugh out loud funny. She’s not intimidated by his sunny, golden-boy good looks and he’s intrigued by her honesty and her complete lack of awe.

Hale has created complex, wonderful and lovely characters (both main and surrounding) that make even the unlikeliest events in this book tolerable. I found myself often rooting for them to get together; despite the fact that Becky was married with children (this makes me a creep!). I’m not entirely sure I can blame Hale who, in tackling the question “Can men and women be just friends?”, takes great care to reinforce Becky’s love for her husband and children, to show Felix’s lack of belief in Mormonism & to continually remind us of how different these two really are in life, beliefs and values. On the other hand, Felix and Becky get to be such good friends that the intimacy between the two makes you feel a little uncomfortable when remembering Becky’s aforementioned family. I was left torn, hoping that Becky would remain true to her family and yet still wanting these two to provide my happy ending. So while the issue of platonic relationships between men and women is explored, nothing is resolved.

I will say this book is not for everyone. Some parts of it are so sweet and sappy, it’s ridiculous. Also, I ‘ll admit that I don’t know much about Mormonism, so certain things struck me as odd. Still, it’s a pure, fun story and sometimes that’s all you need.

LitSnit verdict: B

Review - The China Garden by Liz Berry

Summary: [if i had written the back cover blurb]

This book is about Clare, a girl on the brink of womanhood, whose life is unexpectedly transformed over a single summer as she discovers both who she is and who she is meant to become. Moving with her mother from London to a hidden village (Ravensmere) in rural Britain, she is faced with a familial past she had never been told about, but whose existence is pivotal to everything in her future. It is here that she also meets Mark, a boy rebel, whose fate is just as firmly bound to the Ravensmere estate as it is to Clare’s. Together, they try to uncover the secrets of the estate past before its curse dooms their future.

Review: Overall, The China Garden is a satisfying if slightly mundane. Meeting contemporary YA standards, the story has a little bit of everything it in: mystery, romance, and fantasy. Compared to recent over-hyped-on-the-supernatural publications, this work can be classified as nothing more than a conservative fantasy. Our heroine (Clare) is simply endowed with brief visions and random moments of telepathy, freeing her character from excessively thinking about her ‘gift’ so that she can spend more time exploring the mysteries of the Revensmere estate, a land both lovely and cursed. The descriptions of Clare’s lonely ventures in this magical landscape are where the author truly shines; Berry clearly has much love for old and decrepit estates on the English mores.

Clare is maintained as the story’s sole focus for the first 100 pages of the book, which allow her to emerge as someone very relatable: Clare is a smart, college-bound, middle-class, restless with her youth, and confused about her future. Her plump character development gives the reader hope for more of the same from Mark, her romantic counterpart. Alas, when he finally makes his introduction, Berry overwhelms us with his physical description (a muscular biker boy with long hair and light eyes) and not much else. The relationship that develops between the teens is rather speedy. Trying to tie the magic of the estate to their romance, Berry makes Clare and Mark innately connected to each other in a way that turns them from strangers to lovers in the instant it takes their eyes to meet. A very non-epic romance follows and the reader quickly understands that the only intrigue remaining in the plot is uncovering Revensmere’s secret.

It seems that Berry’s goal in The China Garden was to make her teen heroine embrace adulthood and womanhood by being confronted with a past once hidden. It’s hard to assess Clare’s success; the more she discovers, the more she oscillates between mature and childish feelings. In the end, there is sense that both Clare and Mark are too young to properly handle the circumstances Berry dreams up for them. For me, this would have been a better story had it been set in the past with older characters.

Lit Snit Verdict: F

Review - Raised By Wolves by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Summery (via Goodreads): Adopted by the Alpha of a werewolf pack after a rogue wolf brutally killed her parents right before her eyes, fifteen-year-old Bryn knows only pack life, and the rigid social hierarchy that controls it. That doesn't mean that she's averse to breaking a rule or two.

But when her curiosity gets the better of her and she discovers Chase, a new teen locked in a cage in her guardian's basement, and witnesses him turn into a wolf before her eyes, the horrific memories of her parents' murders return. Bryn becomes obsessed with getting her questions answered, and Chase is the only one who can provide the information she needs.

But in her drive to find the truth, will Bryn push too far beyond the constraints of the pack, forcing her to leave behind her friends, her family, and the identity that she's shaped?



Review: I’m a sucker for a good werewolf story, especially if it’s female-centric, so I was slightly put off at first when I realized Bryn wasn’t actually a werewolf, but as I got into the story she became such an engaging, irreverent character her mere “human-ness” didn’t matter much at all.

Barnes has an interesting take on the genre, creating almost “proxy werewolves” through the process of Marking, which makes select humans part of the wolf pack in every sense but the furriness. The pack dynamic itself is fascinating. The werewolves and those that are Marked have almost psychic bonds with each other. The scene where Bryn finally opens herself up to the pack mentally and emotionally is really poignant and makes you really understand what the members of the pack mean to each other. It actually made me tear up a little as I was reading.

I really loved all the female characters in Raised By Wolves. Every single one was strong and independent, yet very real and vulnerable. This looks like it’s the first in a series and I, for one, can’t wait to see what they do with the character of Kate, who I found absolutely adorable. I’m really interested to see how female werewolves, who are few and far between, grow up and develop in the pack. I almost hope we get a novel from Lake’s (Bryn’s werewolf friend) point of view.

Devon, Bryn’s best friend was also a really fascinating character. He undermined my ideas of “typical” werewolves in his obsession with Broadway musicals and designer labels, yet he didn’t lose one ounce of masculinity and wasn’t in any way reduced to a stereotype. Bryn’s relationship with Chase was a little quick and it took me a little while to adjust to their sudden closeness, but it definitely worked for me in the end.

What I loved most about Barnes’ novel was the way she took this masculine world that normally has women regulated to sexual objects, maternal figures, or victims and really created something new. Many other werewolf or shifter series have women that step into positions of power. Yet, they are merely given these positions by their male predecessors. In Raised By Wolves, Bryn creates an entirely new hierarchy for herself and others. Bryn, a character that, by traditional thought in the genre, should be weak as both human and female isn’t given any sort of power, but demands it and takes it, turning the whole dynamic of the pack on its head.

For a novel that could have easily been just a fun, thrilling YA fantasy, it’s really refreshing to be forced to think about gender roles, and see a strong female character set her own terms for how and where she fits into society (werewolf society or not).

Lit Snit Verdict: B+

Book Club Discussion - The Book of Lost Things

We're very excited for our first ever LitSnit Book Club discussion and we hope you all are as well! Our pick for June was John Connolly's The Book of Lost Things.

Below you'll find some discussion questions, which we came up with as a jumping off point for the discussion.  Feel free to answer some or all of the questions, or even veer off topic with thoughts of your own!

Many of the original fairy tales written down by the brothers Grimm are dark and very violent, which Connolly seemed to draw upon in his novel.  However, we’ve grown up with much more sanitized versions of these tales.  How did you react to the darker aspects of familiar fairy tales in The Book of Lost Things?  Did these darker elements surprise you?

Which of your favorite childhood fairy tales did Connolly not
include in his book?

Who or what do you think is the real villain in the novel and why?  Who is the hero?

What do you think is the significance of the title “The Book of Lost Things”?  What has Jonathan “lost”?  What has David?

In your opinion, what is the story’s central conflict?

How did you react to the ending?  Did you find it sad/uplifting/hopeful?

If you could rewrite the ending, would you? What would be your ending?

Lastly, a fun question: if they were going to make a movie inspired by "The Book of Lost Things" who would you cast? [David, Leroi, Roland, Jonathan, etc.]