Review: Playlist for the Dead by Michelle Falkoff (ARC)

Playlist for the Dead by Michelle Falkoff
HarperTeen, 288 pages
Expected US Release Date: January 27, 2015
Format/Source: ARC via Around the World Tours - thank you!

A teenage boy tries to understand his best friend's suicide by listening to the playlist of songs he left behind in this smart, voice-driven debut novel.

Here's what Sam knows: There was a party. There was a fight. The next morning, his best friend, Hayden, was dead. And all he left Sam was a playlist of songs, and a suicide note: For Sam—listen and you'll understand.

As he listens to song after song, Sam tries to face up to what happened the night Hayden killed himself. But it's only by taking out his earbuds and opening his eyes to the people around him that he will finally be able to piece together his best friend’s story. And maybe have a chance to change his own.

Part mystery, part love story, and part coming-of-age tale in the vein of Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Tim Tharp’s The Spectacular Now, Playlist for the Dead is an honest and gut-wrenching first novel about loss, rage, what it feels like to outgrow a friendship that's always defined you—and the struggle to redefine yourself. But above all, it's about finding hope when hope seems like the hardest thing to find.
----------------------------Goodreads summary

Notable Quote

“Different strategies, same problems.”

So, I’m going to say this, and it may be mean, but I don’t intend it as mean as it will come out: saying this compares to The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky was a terrible disservice. It made me expect too much, it made me think a certain development, a certain style, a certain self-exploration was going to happen—and unfortunately, it didn’t. It didn’t even come close.

Without the comparison, Playlist For the Dead was pretty good. I liked the little bits of mystery, how we’re trying to figure out what really happened to Hayden and why he did what he did. I enjoyed the music from the playlist too, it helped set a tone and a mood as long as I knew the song. And I admit that I only knew about 40% of them, so I think I definitely missed a few things about it…but it was enjoyable as it was.

I think my main complaint about this book is how anti-climactic it was. I didn’t think the breaks in action were really appropriate, nor did it follow through with the impact it was built up to be. None of the reveals really shocked me, none of the characters or the parts they played really came out of left field. I won’t go as far as to say it’s predictable, but…it was fairly obvious the direction things would go, and I found I was able to guess almost 100% correctly every time.

Weirdly, I kind of like how violent this story got. I don’t endorse violence! Do not think I am condoning going after someone with a bat, or anything remotely close to that! But I appreciated that this book went there, because that is an unfortunate reality to life, especially when it comes to an unfairness of someone taking his life and trying to understand why. Playlist For the Dead faced the helplessness of being left behind, the rage and anger at wanting to understand without being given all the pieces to do so. And I think that was a great thing to tackle, because not many books will.

Perhaps what I attached to most relates to the quote I chose to highlight: “Different strategies, same problems.” It’s a really clever way of summing up so much of this story. Two sides to everything. Different takes on the same thing. So many varying viewpoints and opinions and stories that culminate to the same thing, but take incredibly different paths to get there. It’s kind of a nice way to explain away a lack of depth to a lot of the characters, why sometimes the story is a bit chaotic. But it’s also a clever way of being a little more introspective than it seems.

Playlist For the Dead had a few disappointments for me, but still resonated in its message and the overall takeaway. I appreciated how head on it faced such a tough, sensitive subject—I just wish it had been done a teeny, tiny bit better.

3.5 stars

Holiday Giveaway: A Box of YA Books! (US only)

If you saw this tweet, you know what this is about :) I'm participating in a Secret Santa, and the box I bought for my #TBTBSanta was too small for all the goodies! Solution? Have a giveaway to fill the box, of course!

ONE (1) lucky winner will win a box of YA books!

Most of the books will be ARCs from 2014 or earlier, a few finished copies, and I'll even toss in one or two 2015 ARCs I picked up via Comic-con and/or ALA! The ones I can definitely tell you included are:

 

My True Love Gave To Me, edited by Stephanie Perkins (finished hardcover, pictured)
Great by Sara Benincasa (ARC)
Zodiac by Romina Russell (a 2015 ARC!)

….but that's just the beginning :)

US Only
(sorry INT!)
Ends December 23, 2014

Please do not leave your email in my comment section.

Enter through the rafflecopter below, and all my usual giveaway policy rules apply.

Good luck!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
May the odds be ever in your favour!

Feature & Follow Friday (18)

Follow Friday is hosted by Alison Can Read and Parajunkee's View, meant to spotlight blogs and allows bloggers to link up and meet other fabulous bookish friends and share the Following love!

This week's spotlight blogs are Mo_Books and Books Are My Life!

And the question of the week is:

Do you decide in advance what you read for the coming week/month? Why or why not?

Yes and no. (Confusing, I know) Since I do touring ARCs via Around the World Tours, I do have to plan out what to read and when if I know a book is coming or one has arrived. Luckily, I'm all about reading multiple books at once and have no problem with it, so if one pops up I wasn't expecting (either from the publisher, from tour sites, or NetGalley), I can roll with it pretty well.

That all said, I've abandoned this many times, too. It all really depends on the my mood and what I can stomach in terms of genres. Sometimes too many contemporaries in a row skew my reviews, or I start comparing too much if I read 4 dystopians in a row. I usually make a small stack of the ones I know I definitely want to get to in the coming weeks--but I know I'll probably stray far and fast.

If you're wondering, these are some of the books I hope to read this month!

What's your reading plan? Do you keep to it?

Leave me your link and I'll hop by!

And of course I'd love to return a follow if you are kind enough to follow me :)

Review: The Jewel by Amy Ewing (ARC)

The Jewel (The Lone City #1) by Amy Ewing
HarperTeen, 358 pages
US Release Date: September 2, 2014
Format/Source: ARC, via Around the World Tours

The Jewel means wealth. The Jewel means beauty. The Jewel means royalty. But for girls like Violet, the Jewel means servitude. Not just any kind of servitude. Violet, born and raised in the Marsh, has been trained as a surrogate for the royalty—because in the Jewel the only thing more important than opulence is offspring.

Purchased at the surrogacy auction by the Duchess of the Lake and greeted with a slap to the face, Violet (now known only as #197) quickly learns of the brutal truths that lie beneath the Jewel’s glittering facade: the cruelty, backstabbing, and hidden violence that have become the royal way of life.

Violet must accept the ugly realities of her existence... and try to stay alive. But then a forbidden romance erupts between Violet and a handsome gentleman hired as a companion to the Duchess’s petulant niece. Though his presence makes life in the Jewel a bit brighter, the consequences of their illicit relationship will cost them both more than they bargained for.
--------------------Goodreads summary

Notable Quote

“Hope is a precious thing, isn’t it” she says quietly. “And yet, we don’t really appreciate it until it’s gone.”

I kind of hate saying this, but I feel like The Jewel is going to be my new The Selection series. One where I like a lot of the elements, and I kind of have to know what happens…but there are so many other parts that make me SO ANGRY I just can’t say I like the book. It was so frustrating to read and recognize the things I didn’t like, but still have that need of finishing or finding out if what I think is true, actually is true. (Usually it was.) (Actually, it always was.)

Largely, The Jewel was interesting and unique, if not a little…flat. I’ve not encountered a Dystopian world like this yet, but I felt like I knew so little about The Lost City. It had a lot of elements similar to other books—the circular levels and districts that determined your worth, the past of a war that made it this way, the element of a Power (or Augury, in this one) that becomes the ticket to elevating your status.  And that’s all well and good, I just don’t really get a good sense of this world around it. I couldn’t figure out how far in the “future” it was, if even in the future…I guess it’s more of an alternate world? I’ll settle on that one, for ease and clarity.

I liked the element of Auguries and how that affected their Lot number, and opened up a whole unexplored territory of what the Surrogates could do. It was interesting to have Surrogates be a little reminiscent of slavery but still be living in the lap of luxury with their own ladies-in-waiting and maids. If I searched for it or felt like linking it, I could find a lot of historial parallels here—and while I don’t think that was really an intention, it was something that held my interest.

However, I really did not like the romance in this. It’s very much insta-love, and entirely expected. All their parts felt rushed and clichéd, without any real development. It just was. While the idea of Companions makes sense, I never liked when Ash and Carnelian were together. I hated Carnelian as a character—she’s too despicable for me to ever get a feel for her, and it made me have no sympathy for any of her parts. I just resented every time she was on the page, because I felt like she was a device meant to make me feel some way without really getting to discover that feeling.

I think what bothered me most about this book was the writing—not that it’s weird or terrible. I just felt like it wasn’t developed well, that a lot of the plotlines that happened did because it was supposed to be that way. Not much of this felt like a natural, flowing story. Like The Duchess was this evil character, but she had moments of weakness and humanity—but those moments felt so fake and calculated. Every time that would happen, it was because I knew she had been too evil and we were just waiting for a “positive” so we would get a rounded character from her. A lot of characters are that way for me; they’re constructed to be just-so and it didn’t feel natural at all.

In the same regard as The Selection, I feel like there is a lot of potential for this series. A lot of the plot itself is interesting, if only because I want to know what’s going to happen, how it will all happen. There’s a lot that can grow from here, that we can eventually learn…I just don’t quite know if it will ever get there.

I’m a bit torn about The Jewel, just because I felt so much that way while reading it. There would be small parts I was into, but it would quickly follow with parts I couldn’t stand. And while I’ll definitely pick up Book 2 just so I can know, I know I’m going to have reservations and doubts going into it.

3 stars

Review: A Thousand Pieces of You by Claudia Gray (ARC)

A Thousand Pieces of You (Firebird #1) by Claudia Gray
Harper Teen, 368 pages
Expected US Release Date: November 4, 2014
Format/Source: ARC via Around the World Tours - thank you!

Every Day meets Cloud Atlas in this heart-racing, space- and time-bending, epic new trilogy from New York Times bestselling author Claudia Gray.

Marguerite Caine’s physicist parents are known for their radical scientific achievements. Their most astonishing invention: the Firebird, which allows users to jump into parallel universes, some vastly altered from our own. But when Marguerite’s father is murdered, the killer—her parent’s handsome and enigmatic assistant Paul—escapes into another dimension before the law can touch him.

Marguerite can’t let the man who destroyed her family go free, and she races after Paul through different universes, where their lives entangle in increasingly familiar ways. With each encounter she begins to question Paul’s guilt—and her own heart. Soon she discovers the truth behind her father’s death is more sinister than she ever could have imagined.

A Thousand Pieces of You explores a reality where we witness the countless other lives we might lead in an amazingly intricate multiverse, and ask whether, amid infinite possibilities, one love can endure.
------------------------------Goodreads summary

Notable Quote

This, I think, is the boundary line of adulthood. Not the crap they claim it is -- graduating from high school or losing your virginity or getting your first apartment or whatever. You cross the boundary the first time you're changed forever. You cross it the first time you know you can never go back.

I was a little nervous heading into A Thousand Pieces of You, since I’m a self-admitted time travel hater. I can’t stand time traveling in anything, and I figured this concept of layers of fate would translate the same to me. And it didn’t help when I disliked the beginning pages so much—the storytelling seemed off to me, and I was annoyed with how abstract it felt. I couldn’t grasp at much, and I wanted to give up on it.

However.

I am so, so glad I never did. It quickly turned into this fascinating concept of traveling within your fates, and I was 100% onboard with the idea when it introduced the boundary of only being able to travel to a layer you would actually exist in. THAT was such a tiny but important element that it completely won me over, in every way. It was creative and logical and sensical and brilliant all in one.

Ignoring how I felt about the first few pages, A Thousand Pieces of You just flies by—the pace just keeps picking up and going on and on and you feel like you’re swept away on this amazing, terrifying adventure. The amount of creativity and how stunningly unique all the stories and time periods were just fascinating, and I felt like I fell in love so many times over. Not just with the characters, but with the words and story and the simple idea that all these common words together can still create a breathtaking novel.

I quite liked each character as well, though it took me awhile to come around to Marguerite. Theo I was quick to like and quick to fluctuate on; and Paul pulled me in every single direction. Meeting each of them in each layer was also an interesting facet—while sometimes I felt like they were a little too different to actually be the same character, they relatively retained the same characteristics and personalities throughout. What was solid and true remained, and while it took some digging, a reader can find it and fall in love with them.

I’ve been seeing some complaints about the sci-fi missing in a novel that’s advertised as sci-fi…and I could see that, actually. But for me it was one of the best parts! I’m not a sci-fi reader by any means—it’s not that I hate it, I’m just not particularly drawn to it. I’ve read some ok sci-fi, some good sci-fi, and some brilliant sci-fi, in all age ranges…but it still isn’t something I will seek out. So when A Thousand Pieces of You turned into a sci-fi-but-not-fully-sci-fi, it totally worked for me. There was a little bit of historical elements, a lot of futuristic things, and a whole lot of contemporary and romance and general storytelling. It was nice to not be completely stuck in one genre, and I thought it worked really well with the story itself.

Quite obviously, I was thrilled with the first book in the Firebird series. Great characters, a wonderful, fast-moving plot with one of the most original, fascinating concepts of “fate traveling” I’ve ever seen—I can’t wait to see what else we have in store for this organization and these characters.

5 stars

Clearing the Shelf Giveaway: Three (3) 2014 ARCs! (US Only)

I've got too many books, so you get to help me clear the clutter!

ONE (1) lucky winner will win three 2014 ARCs!

Sinner by Maggie Stiefvater
Let's Get Lost by Adi Alsaid
Falling Into Place by Amy Zhang

US Only
(sorry INT!)
Ends October 22, 2014

Please do not leave your email in my comment section.

Enter through the rafflecopter below, and all my usual giveaway policy rules apply.

Good luck!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
May the odds be ever in your favour!