Summer Book 11

The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner

I am fairly certain that this was on the TAYSHAS list sometime in the past couple of years, and I didn't read it because I was put off by the title. I thought it was going to be about snakes, which is not outside the realm of possibility for TAYSHAS. I mean, there was that grasshopper book that made it a couple of years ago. Perhaps if I had noticed that it was by the same author that wrote The Goodbye Days, I would've given it a chance, but I didn't notice that. So what made me read it now, on my Kindle, while I have 20+ books stacked on my coffee table? I was at a training this week where the presenter was Amy Rassmussen, one of the authors of the Three Teachers Talk blog that I follow. I was to only one in the room who'd read The Goodbye Days, so she asked if I read this. It came highly recommended, so I downloaded it after I finished the book I was working on earlier this week. Having finished, I am glad I took the time to read this.

Dill is a bit of a pariah in his town. His grandfather was the original Serpent King because he used to kill every snake he came across, and wear their skins and heads. His father was a pastor who used snakes and poison in his ministry, but who is currently serving time in prison for having child porn on his computer. Many people, including Dill's mother, feel that his dad is in prison because of him. Because his father is in prison, there are a lot of debts, and Dill is expected to work to help pay them off, which means no college for him. Dill has two very good friends, Lydia and Travis.

Travis went to the same church as Dill, after his father went to prison, and that is how they became friends. Travis' dad is a certifiable asshole. Travis had an older brother, but he was a Marine who died in Afghanistan, which only made things harder for Travis. Travis was into fantasy novels, and worked at the lumberyard. He didn't plan to leave their small town either.

Lydia's circumstances were a bit different. Her parents were a bit more well off, so she could actually leave their small town in Tennessee. She had a blog, and knew important people in the industry wanted to work in. She is leaving and going to NYU after she graduates.

This is told by all three of the teens, and you feel what each of these characters feel. They are very real, and deal with real issues. I know I have glossed over a lot, but I am afraid I will give away important plot points, and you know I don't want to do that. This one is so worth your time. At times it will make you laugh, at others, it will break your heart.

Summer Book 10

To My Sister by Marci

This may be cheating a little because it is so short, but it is almost 100 pages and has a spine, so I feel like it qualifies as a book. 

My sister gave this to me in July 2014, when she was pregnant with my niece and nephew. For some reason, this wasn't on my bookshelf, and I came across it with another book in a bin of school supplies. I have been thinking about my sister a lot lately, for a variety of reasons, so I felt like now was a good time to read this. Almost everything in this explains how I feel about my relationship with my sister.

I say almost everything because we didn't grow up together, or rather, she grew up with an older sister, but I didn't grow up with a younger sister. In fact, it's a little complicated. 

In December 1995, my dad married my sister's mom, thus technically making her my stepsister. I was nineteen, and she was five. Because my dad and I had a rocky relationship, she and I weren't close. That didn't start to happen until about a decade later. I regret that we weren't closer sooner, but we are much closer now, so it makes things better.

Then, in December 2013, my dad and her mom divorced, thus meaning we technically weren't related anymore. The thing is, when someone has been your sister for eighteen years, something as silly as a divorce doesn't break the sisterly bond. I've seen her graduate high school, college, get married, and have babies. She's an amazing aunt to my children, and she was a huge comfort the weekend I left my oldest child in Montana--2,000 miles away from home.

Like I said, most of the sisterly sentiments contained in this book speak to the nature of our relationship. If you have a sister, I highly recommend this for you.

Summer Book 9

Every Last Word by Tamara Ireland Stone

I want to be upfront and say I most likely won't do this book the justice it deserves. This is one of those that touched me, and I have noticed I don't always express what I need to say as well as I should/could.

The main character, Samantha, or Sam as she prefers to be called, suffers from OCD. It causes her to have insomnia and sometimes have disturbing thoughts. She's obsessed with the number three. She has a group of friends that she's known since kindergarten, the Eights, but lately she's been questioning whether they are really her friends.

On the first day of school, she meets Caroline. Caroline convinces her to meet her in the auditorium on Thursday and gets her to join (or try to) the Poet's Corner. There's a bit of resistance at first because AJ, who is basically their bouncer, doesn't want to let her in. The reason for this is because when Sam was younger, she teased/bullied AJ about his stuttering. So, Sam has to prove that she belongs. She must do something right because they allow her to join them.

Every Wednesday, Sam sees her psychiatrist, Sue. Sue has been working with Sam for five years, and has told Sam she needs to branch out from the Eights, but Sam has been hesitant to do so. Now that she has Caroline and the people in Poet's Corner, she is starting to see that there is life beyond the Eights. Also, Sam begins to get romantically involved with AJ.

Between her new friends, a boyfriend, and her poetry, Sam is starting to feel "normal." Not long after sharing this with Sue, something happens to rock Sam's world, and everything comes crashing down.
Will Sam ever recover from this event?

In all honesty, I really enjoyed this. I hated for it to end. Even with the plot twist that I kinda saw coming, I didn't want to put this one down. I look forward to seeing what else this author has out in the world because something tells me it will be worth my time.

Summer Book 8

A Stranger in the House by Shari Lapena

I have wanted to read this since it came out last summer but decided to wait until it came out in paperback. I enjoyed Lapena's book The Couple Next Door last summer, so I figured this would be a good read. It was. It was suspenseful and secrets were revealed frequently enough that I didn't want to put it down.

This starts out with Karen flying down the road, running red lights, swerving out of the way of other cars and hitting a light pole. She's injured enough that she is taken to the hospital. She has a concussion and amnesia and cannot account for why she was where she was.

Her husband, Tom, comes home to a house with the door unlocked, dinner started, his wife's phone and purse, but not his wife. He starts calling her friends to see if they can shed some light onto where Karen might be. When he comes up empty-handed, he calls the police. They show up moments later, and he thinks that is super fast for a missing person, but it turns out they are informing him of her accident.

What happens next is a story of intrigue, deceit, murder, and crazy people who can't get over past affairs. Like I said, there are twists and secrets at every turn. I highly recommend this one, and it is interesting enough that it won't take you long to read.

Summer Book 7

Sunfish by Shelby Eileen

Shorter than most of the books of poetry that I have been reading, but still worthwhile. One thing I really loved about this poetess is that she wrote about her dysfunctional relationships with her parents and also the relationships with her grandparents. I don't know about the rest of you, but the relationships with my parents haven't always been the best. Sometimes you just need to see that someone else feels this way too, and that was the case for me. And, being someone who is/was incredibly close to her paternal grandparents, it was nice to read poetry from someone expressing this same love to her grandparents.

This book of poems doesn't have the angst and pain that the other books of poetry I have read, and that is totally ok. This is a quick read, but so worth the time.

Summer Book 6

light filters in by Caroline Kaufman

This was an impulse buy today at Target, but it was well worth the money. Once again, it's a book of poetry. Once again, there are subjects I can relate to, so I liked this.

I have to wonder though: where was all this insightful poetry when I was younger? Perhaps if I'd been exposed to this during the years when we all start to hate poetry, I wouldn't hate it as much as I do. Ok, hate is probably too strong a word, since I enjoy this now.

Or maybe my age and experience are finally allowing me to enjoy poetry.

Summer Book 5

Sixteenth Summer by Michelle Dalton

As previously indicated, this book was included with another book by the same author in one volume. I have roughly sixty pages to go, but I felt it was pretty safe to go ahead and write my thought about it anyway. It's not like I am going to give away the ending. Plus, this author seems to have a formula for her books, so I feel like if you read one, you know how another is going to go.

Anna lives on Dune Island, just off the coast of Georgia. It's pretty much a summer town, and her family owns an ice cream shop. Anna is the oldest of four, though there's not a ton of interaction with her siblings in the book.

Will is from New York City and is visiting Dune Island with his mother and brother. His mother used to come to Dune Island growing up, and now that she is divorced from Will's father, she thought it would be a good idea to bring her sons.

Across the beach at the beginning of June, Anna looks across the beach and sees Will. He sees her too, and they meet a few days later. They hit it off and start dating. Then, on the fourth of July, Anna realizes her time with Will is short because he will be going back to New York City at the end of August, and she breaks it off with him.

Like I said, I have about sixty pages to go, but I suspect Anna will realize that she made a mistake and get back together with Will. If I am wrong, then I am wrong.

This has taken me longer than it probably should have since this is fluff, but it's not the kind of thing I usually enjoy. I didn't hate it, but it was far from a favorite, particularly since it had the same premise as the book I read just before it.

Summer Book 4

Fifteenth Summer by Michelle Dalton

This was an impulse buy last week, and I wasn't really sure what to expect. I mean, the blurb on the back was informational, but not too much. Also, I should mention that this tome is two books in one volume. And, in all honesty, I picked it up because I thought it might interest my daughter (and I was at least half right because she's already read the second book in here).

Chelsea is fifteen years old, has two older sisters, and lives in LA. Every year, her family would travel to Michigan to spend the summer with her Granly, her mother's mother. Unfortunately, in January, Granly passed away, so Chelsea and her family travel to her home to decide what to do with it.

The thing about Chelsea is that she feels that she's nothing special, particularly next to her sisters. Oldest sister, Hannah, is super smart and headed to college to become a doctor. Middle sister, Abbie is a competitive swimmer. Both are beautiful, and all Chelsea can see is her unruly red hair and freckles. Additionally, both sisters are planning to rekindle "romances" with boys they knew from the previous summer, but Chelsea is still new to the relationship game.

That all changes when she meets Josh in the bookstore. He runs hot and cold where Chelsea is concerned, and she never really knows where she stands with him. He does, in his own way, help her to get a job at the restaurant next door to the bookstore so they can see each other more.

Since this is Chelsea's first relationship ever, it's really sweet to see it develop over the course of the book. These are the things we sometimes forget as we get older, so it was nice to be reminded of things we once felt ourselves.

Sweet book, and I look forward to the next one in this volume, even though, as it turns out, it's not about the same couple.

Summer Book 3

Sam and Ilsa's Last Hurrah by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

It's no secret that I fell in love with this duo's books last summer, and have made an effort to read all of their collaborations. So, when I found out this was being released, I put it on my to buy list. Like I've said about most of their other couples, this is no Dash and Lily, but it was a good read.

Sam and Ilsa are twins that live in Manhattan. They are not well off, but they do have access to their grandma's badass rent-controlled apartment. They have been known to throw dinner parties, and this book revolves around their last one. Last because their grandma sold the apartment and is moving to Paris, so this is the final opportunity.

Sam and Ilsa, though twins, are very different. Ilsa is outspoken and bitchy, where Sam is more level-headed. Sam plays piano and cooks like a chef, and Ilsa is a dancer. Sam is unequivocally their grandma's favorite, and this bothers Ilsa. She hates that he can do no wrong.

For this dinner party, Ilsa and Sam each give out three invitations, but they don't tell the other who they've invited. Sam invites his best friend (and Ilsa's ex-boyfriend), Parker, his own ex-boyfriend, Jason, and Johan, a guy from the subway he is attracted to. Ilsa invites KK, the bitchy girl who lives in the penthouse of the building, Liane, a girl from school who always brings exquisite chocolates, and Freddie (and by extension, Caspian), a boy she thought was hot when he was playing basketball.

The evening is spent with everyone exploiting each other's insecurities and inadequacies. Through this, and the alternating viewpoints, we see the people Sam and Ilsa are, and what their relationship is like.

This was a fun read, but I mostly felt sorry for Ilsa and Sam because they were twins but didn't have the typical twin relationship.

Summer Book 2

A Totally Awkward Love Story by Tom Ellen and Lucy Ivison

I bought, or rather my husband bought this for me, for a couple of reasons. First, it has a cute cover. Second, the names of the main characters are Hannah and Sam. My daughter's name is Hannah, and her best friend, although female, is Sam. Obviously, I had to have it.

This has two authors, so all the Hannah sections were written by Lucy, and all the Sam sections were written by Tom (it says so on the inside of the back cover). This led me to wonder if all of the David Levithan and Rachel Cohn collaborations are done the same way, but that is a tangent to save for later.

Sam and Hannah live in London. They go to different schools, and both just finished their exams for their last year of school. Hannah's best friend, Stella, is throwing a party at her mansion like house, sans parents, to celebrate. Hannah laments that she is still a virgin, and has decided that tonight is the night. She's going to lose her virginity to some guy she's crushed on intermittently for years named Freddie. She meets Sam while psyching herself up in the bathroom, and they instantly click. Unfortunately, Freddie shows up, so Hannah goes in search of him. Things do not go well with Freddie since Stella has taken it upon herself to control the situation. Turns out, it's ok because Hannah really felt a connection with Sam. She doesn't know his name though, and he becomes known as Toilet Boy.

Sam, for his part, feels an instant connection to Hannah too but loses her to Freddie. He goes to hang out with his friends in the closet under the stairs in Stella's kitchen, where Stella throws herself at him. After a lengthy kiss, they exchange numbers. The next day, Stella asks Sam to meet her and a friend. He has no idea that the friend is Hannah. Thus begins a series of awkward moments that encompass a summer of Hannah and Sam finding and then losing one another.

This was a cute story, but the first two-thirds of the book dragged a bit more than I would have liked. The end more than made up for the dragging.

Summer Book 1

The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

I don't remember when or why I got this for my Kindle, but I am so glad I did. This is not your typical scorned wife book. No, this one messes with your head for the first third and you don't know where the book is going to go next. In fact, I can't write about this one without ruining any aspect of the book.

What you really need to know is this: Richard discarded his wife, and is now marrying a replacement. He claims she drinks too much and she's crazy. And, oh yeah, she can't give him a baby. Is this the real story? You'll have to read this to find out.

Seriously, just when you think you know what's going on, the author's turn the story on its end, and they do it over and over all the way until the story finishes. It's a wild ride and I loved it.