Review by Mayfair

Title: From Bad to Cursed
Author: Katie Alender
Genre: Young Adult paranormal fiction
Publisher: Hyperion
Publication date: June 2011
Reviewed by Mayfair Rucker

In From Bad to Cursed, Alexis is thrilled with the fact that her younger sister, Kasey, has joined a club, The Sunshine Girls, and made new friends. That was until Alexis felt something was wrong. She and her best friend, Megan, decide to join the club and see for themselves what’s going on. But soon Alexis can’t even remember why she joined the club, only that she’s one of Aralt’s girls now. All of the Sunshine Girls have pledged themselves to the evil spirit Aralt. This is a gripping story that will keep you from putting the book down. Author Katie Alender has some unexpected surprises that will keep the pages turning.

The first book in the series, Bad Girls Don’t Die, featured younger sister Kasey and her attempts to be stronger than the spirit trying to posses her. This book focuses more on 16-year-old Alexis, who has to make a decision between the lives of the Sunshine Girls as well as her dedication to the evil spirit Aralt. Overall if you liked Bad Girl’s Don’t Die you should like this book. They are both exciting and will have you wondering if there really are spirits.

Review of Ashes

First of all, I have two guest blogs waiting to post but my computer won't let me cut and paste the text for some reason. If you are one of the guest reviewers, I apologize for the delay. I'm going to try from my home computer as soon as I have a free hour at home.

[cover image not available yet--stay tuned!]

Title: Ashes
Author: Ilsa J. Bick
Genre: Young Adult post-apocalyptic fiction
Publisher: Egmont USA
Release date: September 2011

This book was completely not what I was expecting. Although, rereading the back, I'm not sure why I was so surprised. The back cover reads:

An electromagnetic pulse sweeps through the sky, destroying every electronic device and killing billions. For those spared, it's a question of who can be trusted and who is no longer human...

Desperate to find out what happened and to avoid the Changed, Alex meets up with Tom--a young army veteran--and Ellie, a young girl whose grandfather was killed by the electromagnetic pulse.

This improvised family will have to use every ounce of courage they have just to survive.

My first surprise was the writing. It seems like there are dozens of post-apocalyptic novels getting published these days, in the wake of The Hunger Games and The Maze Runner, and quality of writing is not always the first consideration. This book, though, is actually well-written. Ilsa J. Bick obviously has a vast knowledge of guns, wilderness survival, emergency medicine, and human biology, and her descriptions are detailed yet accessible. It's not all about the action, though--Alex's emotions are vivid and real.

The second surprise was the scope of the novel. This is no cookie-cutter action book, where monsters keep popping out of nowhere and the characters are running helter-skelter from one disaster to the next. There are quiet periods. A realistic amount of time passes. I was not exhausted and glad to be finished with the book when I came to the end. And the world is complex, well thought-out.

There is one similarity with other post-apocalypse novels: the cliffhanger ending. I should have been ready for it, since I was very clearly approaching the end with no resolution in sight, but I was still thrown for a loop. All in all, a pretty impressive start to an exciting new series.

Review of The Language of Flowers

Title: The Language of Flowers
Author: Vanessa Diffenbaugh
Genre: Adult fiction
Release date: August 2011
Publisher: Ballantine Books

This book is crazy good. CRAZY. GOOD. I started it this morning before work and couldn't think about anything else all day. Even though I know it's going to be at the top of the New York Times bestseller list as soon as it comes out, and obviously I want everyone and their mother to know about it, I'm feeling a little possessive. I don't want anyone else to read these words and have opinions about them until I've had them to myself for a little while.

The story opens on Victoria Jones's eighteenth birthday: the day of her emancipation from the foster care system. Ever since she was found abandoned three weeks after her birth, her life has been a string of bad foster parents and brutal group homes, broken only by the year she spent with Elizabeth. But Elizabeth, like all the others, is in the past.

Now Victoria faces a life with no backup plan. She has no friends, no family, and no skills or interests beyond her knowledge of flowers. After spending several nights in a public park, Victoria knows she has to make a life for herself--and the life she makes is nothing like the one she'd envisioned.

Vanessa Diffenbaugh will take the literary world by storm with her debut novel. The chapters alternate between the present day and Victoria's ninth year, the year that Victoria lived with her last foster mother. She is hard to love at times, but impossible not to. Her world comes alive on the pages: I could smell it, feel it, and taste it as I read--and everything is imbued with tinges of anger, defensiveness, and self-doubt that make it possible for the reader to almost understand what it's like to be a foster child. Most of the time, Victoria is her own worst enemy. In the words of publisher Libby McGuire, "She's like a friend you just know will able to find love and happiness, if only she can get out of her own way."