Summer '17 Book 9

Finishing School: Book the Fourth: Manners & Mutiny by Gail Carriger

Several months after the events in book three find Sophronia and her friends, most of them anyway, back at Mademoiselle Geraldine's. It is Christmas break, and Sophronia spends some time in London with her newly married sister. Agatha and Dimity join her. They have a grand time shopping, and even have dinner with a vampire who wants Sophronia to work for him after she completes finishing school. The person she has agreed to work for is there as well, and they are trying to thwart the Pickelmen and their dastardly plans. To do this, Sophronia is to work herself back into Felix's good graces, which tends to be harder than she anticipated.

Soap is more in love with Sophronia than ever, and although she cares for him, he can't or won't take the hint when she tries to tell him why it can never be. He still tries to win her over though.

At the New Year tea, Mademoiselle Geraldine's is attacked and overtaken by Flywaymen and Pickelmen. The school is evacuated, but Sophronia goes back because she wants to make sure the sooties are ok. Once there, she's one woman for herself trying to defeat the Pickelmen.

Will she succeed? Will she succumb to Soap's wishes? You know I'm not going to answer those! Read the books!!

Summer '17 Book 8

Finishing School: Book the Third: Waistcoats & Weaponry by Gail Carriger

First, I would just like to say that, apparently, today is the fifth anniversary of this blog! Thanks to those of you who have stuck with me through this. All two of you. :) Seriously, this has been fun for me, and sometimes therapeutic.

This one picks up about a year after the events in the second book. Near the beginning, Sighead receives some terrible news, and misses some school. She turns up at the engagement ball for Sophronia's older brother, and we find out that the terrible news is that her grandfather is no longer in charge of his werewolf pack. Sighead has had to choose her loyalties, and she chose the pack, even though they were going to commit an act of treason.

Sighead needs to get to her pack in Scotland, so Sophronia, Soap, Dimity, and Felix set out on an adventure to get her there. Along the way, they run into Monique, up to her old habits of being a troublemaker.

One aspect I really enjoyed was the Sophronia-Felix-Soap love triangle. Obviously, Sophronia has feelings for both boys, but for different reasons. I was a bit sad at how their triangle ended, but it had to happen eventually. If nothing else, Sophronia has decided where her loyalties will lie after finishing school.

Summer '17 Book 7

Finishing School: Book the Second: Curtsies & Conspiracies by Gail Carriger

Picking up a little after the first one left off, the girls in the Debut class at Mademoiselle Geraldine's are taking their first round of tests. It's a skills test that covers the things they learned in the first six months of school. Sophronia scored the highest of anyone, ever. Because of this, she is shunned. At first, she thinks it is because her friends are truly hurt by her scores, but it turns out that they were told by one of the teachers to shun whoever scored the highest grade.

This shunning doesn't stop Sophronia from being a good friend, however. Dimity receives a letter from a young man at Bunson's that she has a little crush on, but when she sneaks out to meet him, it's not him at all. Sophronia snuck out as well to make sure her friend was ok, and saved Dimity from the trouble that could have arisen from the imposter.

This wasn't the only time trouble found Dimity. At an outing, Dimity and her brother, Pillover, were almost kidnapped, and later, were kidnapped from a coming out ball. What's up with that?

So much went on in this book. Some of the boys from Bunson came aboard the airship and had classes with the girls. There were some questionable vampire relations issues. And, of course, there was Monique's coming out ball. The best thing to come out of this book is that Monique will no longer be at school, though I suspect this isn't the last we've heard from her.

This is a neat series, and I can't wait to see what happens in the next one.

Summer '17 Book 6

Finishing School: Book the First: Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger

A week ago, I did not know this series of books existed. Thankfully, I have great friends and coworkers who think of me when a cool book comes to mind, and that was the case here. As a matter of fact, I ordered this series because a friend/coworker/former teacher of my daughter's tagged me in a post on Facebook that included a teaching guide for this. How can you not then check it out? If you're me, you can't.

The premise is pretty cool. It's a finishing school that teaches girls in the fine arts of espionage, conspiracy, and all things covert. There's an element of the supernatural, as one of the teachers is a vampire and another is a werewolf. There's also the whole steampunk feel to things too, what with the mechanimals, the fact that the school is dirigibles strapped together, and the mechanical guards/servants. Just really cool.

Ok, so Sophronia is the youngest daughter of a passel of children. Because she is not the oldest, she is often overlooked, or would be, except that she is accident prone and has an aptitude for the way devices work. One day her mother is meeting with a woman who thinks it would be a good idea to send Sophronia to finishing school. To get Sophronia out of her hair, her mother agrees. She meets another young lady, Dimity, and her brother, Pillover, on her way to the school. There's also one of the teachers with them.

On the way to the schools, they are accosted by flywaymen. As it turns out, the teacher wasn't really a teacher but another student named Monique, and the flywaymen were after her to get a prototype that she had. Monique refuses to give this prototype to the teachers, and is demoted from a senior to a debut student. Sophronia makes it her mission to find out why the prototype is so important and find the device itself to give to the proper authorities. Monique doesn't make this easy for her.

Along the way, Sophronia befriends a wide range of people who help her, and comes into her own. She may not be a master of the curtsy yet, but she is well on her way. It doesn't hurt that she has amazing critical thinking skills.

There are three more books in the series, and I am looking forward to what happens next.

Summer '17 Book 5

That Summer by Sarah Dessen

A couple of years ago, my daughter asked my son to get her some Sarah Dessen books for her birthday. Like the awesome brother he is, he complied. She read them, then "donated" them to my classroom library. I have been meaning to get around to them, but haven't and now they're locked in my classroom cabinet for the summer. So, yesterday when I was buying books, I had to check with my daughter to make sure this wasn't one of the ones we already had.

Having no frame of reference for Dessen, I didn't know what to expect. This book is short--just under two hundred pages, so it took next to no time to read. The blurb on the back was enough to make me interested, but not enough to have a clue as to what this book was about. Given that it mentions the older sister's ex-boyfriend coming back, I thought there might be some ex-boyfriend/little sister scandalous relationship, but I was wrong. There was a lot going on in these few pages, and what held it together is what it's like to be a teenaged girl with a lot of changes going on. That's it.

The book starts and ends with a wedding, and takes place over the course of, roughly, two months. The wedding at the beginning of the book is that of Haven and Ashley's father, a sportscaster on the local news, and the weather girl at the same station (who is the reason their parents divorced). The wedding at the end is that of Haven's older sister, Ashley.  Over the course of the two months, Haven works at a job she hates, her mother is looking to maybe go to Europe for a month with her singles group, her mother is looking to sell their house, and Haven reconnects with the one of her sister's ex-boyfriends that she liked, Sumner.

Haven likes Sumner, but not in a romantic way. She likes him because when he was dating Ashley, Ashley was good to Haven, and therefore life was good. All that changed when Ashley broke up with Sumner. Or, at least that is how it appears to Haven.

So much is going on in Haven's life right now, and everyone is chalking it up to the attention being paid to Ashley because of the wedding. I'm sure that has something to do with it, but the way I saw it was that there were just too many changes for Haven at the time, and she was having trouble coping. I wish there'd been more substance to the book, but there just wasn't. That is not to say that this wasn't an enjoyable read. If I were the type to read a book on the beach, this would be the type of book I would bring: something that doesn't ask a lot of the reader in terms of understanding. If you're looking for a not complex, easy read, this is it.

Summer '17 Book 4

Vacations From Hell by Libba Bray, Cassandra Clare, Claudia Gray, Maureen Johnson, and Sarah Miynowski

Having read three of theses authors, I felt I couldn't go wrong with this book of short stories. For the most part, I was correct, though, to some degree, I expected better than this.

This is a set of five short stories that are, as the title implies, vacations from hell. The first story involved vampires, and was a bit on the cheesy side. Thank goodness it was short.

The second involved witches. It was better, but still kinda cheesy.

The third took place in France, and involved a girl going crazy after some murder/suicide action going on in the town where she's staying. This was one of the better stories.

The fourth involved a witch, but I felt it was more voodoo related. Also one of the better stories presented here.

The last one, was about a town that used to sacrifice children to the devil, and although this had not been practiced in over 100 years, it was coming back. Some American teenagers backpacking across Europe get roped in.

All in all, this was a fast read, but not one that is going to stick with me.

Summer '17 Book 3

The Whole Thing Together by Ann Brashares

I first fell in love with Ann Brashares books about a dozen or more years ago when I read the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series. She has a way of writing that draws you in and makes you want more. And her writing is so real that you feel you know the characters as people, not just made up on the page. This was no different.

I bought this the Sunday before I went on my very first trip to New York City. I was buying toiletries, but since we were at Target, I looked at the books. Our book selection is still lacking, but there was one copy of this, and it had the magic words "signed copy" on the cover. I knew it had to be mine without even knowing what it was about. I read the blurb in the car, and then more or less forgot about it while I was in the City that Never Sleeps. I started it the night I got back home, and it was lovely because it takes place in Brooklyn and Manhattan, so it was like holding onto my New York adventures a little longer.

Sasha and Ray are the same age and sleep in the same room, but they've never met. They share three older sisters, but they've never met. Ray's mother and Sasha's father were once married, they divorced, and now share the ancestral beach home of Ray's mother because they both feel entitled to it. Every other weekend, Ray lives at the house with his parents, as well as every other week during the summer. On the weekends and weeks that Ray's family isn't there, Sasha's family is. Their shared siblings are there whenever they want to be.

So, you'd think this is about Ray and Sasha, but it really isn't. It's about all of the siblings. Smart and in love Emma, who meets the love of her life, Jamie. Ethereal and knowing Quinn, who centers everybody. Saucy and young Mattie, who just wants to find her place in the world. Arguably, we learn more about the older siblings than we do about Ray and Sasha. These five "children" show what it's like to be children of divorce, both the children prior to the divorce and the ones that were the products of the divorce.

Great book. A little sad at times, but that's the way life is. It's not all sunshine and roses, and books should reflect that.

Summer '17 Book 2

Lair of Dreams by Libba Bray

The very first year I participated in my school's TAYSHAS contest, I read the book The Diviners. This is the second in the series.

This picks up with Evie, who is on the outs with her uncle Will because she came out as a diviner, but, because she is a diviner, has a popular radio show. Henry and Theta still live together. She's one of the Ziegfeld girls, and he's a pianist. Jericho still has a thing for Evie, and Mabel still has a thing for Jericho. Sam is still Sam. Just when you think things are going ok for our group of friends, we find out just how wrong we are.

Now there is a thing called the sleeping sickness, where people fall asleep, but never wake up. As it starts in New York's Chinatown, the general populace believes it is a foreigner's disease. This leads to more ethnic division, but also introduces us to a new character, Ling Chan. Ling is half Chinese, half Irish, and like Henry, she can walk in dreams. As you may expect, Henry and Ling team up to try to find the cause to the sleeping sickness.

Also, the museum that Evie's uncle runs is in financial trouble. Unfortunately, he ups and leaves on a mission, and it is now left to Sam and Jericho to try to raise funds to save the museum. They enlist the help of Evie, the Sweetheart Seer, to help them.

One thing that bothered me (and wasn't really resolved) was that people kept mentioning a man in their dreams with a stovetop hat. This reminded me of the villain in the first book, which leads me to believe that everything is connected. Maybe this will be resolved in the third book. Unfortunately, we'll have to wait until October to find out.

I can see how the length of this might be off putting. It's a little over six hundred pages. I read nearly half of it on a flight from Houston to New York City, so it is a quick read, despite the number of pages. Really great book.

Summer '17 Book 1

Bring Her Home by David Bell

If you've been following my blog for the past couple of years, you know I discovered David Bell around the time of my thirty-ninth birthday. I've read all of his books in that time. A few months ago, I saw that he had a new book coming out this July, so I pre-ordered it. Then, a month or so ago, I checked an email from First to Read, an advanced reader service from Penguin Publishers. I check these emails whenever I get them, but they seldom have anything that I want to read and if they do, I am never chosen for it. Until this book. A few weeks ago, I received the email that I was chosen to get an advanced reader copy of this. The only drawback, as I saw it, is that it was an ebook, and not a paperback like all of my other copies of Bell's books. I am so glad I got to read this before it came out to the general public; it made me feel pretty special.

As with Bell's previous works, this is a book of suspense, and it keeps you on the edge of your seat in the very best way possible. Even with the wonky format on my Kindle that made reading this troublesome sometimes, I didn't want to put this down to go to sleep or be a productive member of society.

When the book starts out, Bill has just arrived at the hospital. His fifteen year old daughter, Summer, had been missing, and it seems she has been found. She went missing with her friend, Haley, and someone called in an anonymous tip that allowed the girls to be found. Both girls had been beaten severely: one within an inch of her life, and one who died of her injuries. When she got moved to the ICU, Bill sat with his daughter, hoping she would heal. Having lost his wife a year and a half prior, Summer meant even more to him.

Bill's sister, Paige, came to offer support, and after some of Summer's unconscious actions drew her attention, she questioned if the girl they'd been standing vigil over was actually Summer. As it turns out, it wasn't; it was her best friend, Haley. This only left the dead girl, which everyone had thought was Haley. As Bill is trying to process the death of his daughter and makes arrangements for her burial, he receives the call that this girl is not his daughter either. So, where is Summer?

Bill follows every lead, almost getting himself into trouble with law enforcement himself. He believes that some of Summer's male friends may be involved, and everyone seems to be a suspect, even himself at one point. He learns who he can trust and who he can't.

Like everything I have read of Bell's, this book makes you think. I found myself second guessing myself the whole time in who I thought was the guilty party, which is part of the fun of reading this type of book for me. Bell makes you feel what the characters feel, and he writes so that you can envision what's going on clearly. No detail is left out, but it's not tedious like many books with a lot of detail can be.

If it wasn't obvious from this post, I will continue reading Bell's books. They are something I find myself looking forward to every summer.