Review: Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver

Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

Lauren Oliver just keeps getting better and better for me. There hasn't been a book that I haven't liked from her, then again this is only the third book that I've read by her. But I think it's safe to say that I've become a fan of her work and writing.

The Good:

The plot was fantastic. Lena does change a bit from Delirium, but her change is expected and very realistic. The chapters went back and forth from "then", which takes place right after Lena escapes to the Wild, and "now", which happens many months after this when Lena is living in New York.

Both show how Lena is adapting to her new world. In the wild, she experiences hunger, death, and survival. In New York, she's experiencing survival in a different form. One that is a lot more dangerous than battling the elements.

At first, I was really into the chapters about the Wild, but after awhile the chapters taking place in New York got really interesting and I wanted to know what was happening.

Since Alex is captured or dead, there is a new love interest and I was ready to hate him. I hate love triangles and knew that the new guy didn't stand a chance. But the more I read about Julian, the more I hoped Alex was dead.

Alex didn't really have much of a presence. His role was to open Lena up to a world she never knew about, because of this he was a great guy without any flaws or hangups. Julian was so different. There was a childish quality, but also someone who was willing to stand up fight. He struggled, like Lena did, but his change was natural and their relationship made sense given their circumstances. He was also flawed and I liked that about him and surprisingly enough liked him with Lena.

The Okay:

I still don't think that the virus and love is explained all too well. There is a mention that passion is close to love, so people stay away from it. But for the most part, it still doesn't make sense to me. Unlike the last book, we don't really see much of the cured world, so this wasn't as big of a problem as before.

I would like a better explanation though.

The Bad:

Sadly, the bad is due to the ending which is predictable, but something I wish didn't happen. It's a bit of a spoiler, so if you'd like to read the spoilery rant, click here to visit my goodreads review of this.


Overall, the book was fantastic. I enjoyed it a lot more than Delirium and loved how the characters were realistic and flawed. I hate the ending, but I'm hoping that the next book won't focus so much on it and instead on the resistance.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Review: Wither by Lauren DeStefano

Synopsis:

By age sixteen, Rhine Ellery has four years left to live. She can thank modern science for this genetic time bomb. A botched effort to create a perfect race has left all males with a lifespan of 25 years, and females with a lifespan of 20 years. Geneticists are seeking a miracle antidote to restore the human race, desperate orphans crowd the population, crime and poverty have skyrocketed, and young girls are being kidnapped and sold as polygamous brides to bear more children.

When Rhine is kidnapped and sold as a bride, she vows to do all she can to escape. Her husband, Linden, is hopelessly in love with her, and Rhine can’t bring herself to hate him as much as she’d like to. He opens her to a magical world of wealth and illusion she never thought existed, and it almost makes it possible to ignore the clock ticking away her short life. But Rhine quickly learns that not everything in her new husband’s strange world is what it seems. Her father-in-law, an eccentric doctor bent on finding the antidote, is hoarding corpses in the basement. Her fellow sister wives are to be trusted one day and feared the next, and Rhine is desperate to communicate to her twin brother that she is safe and alive. Will Rhine be able to escape--before her time runs out?

Together with one of Linden's servants, Gabriel, Rhine attempts to escape just before her seventeenth birthday. But in a world that continues to spiral into anarchy, is there any hope for freedom?

Pages: 368 pages (Hardcover)
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
Released: March 22, 2011

Can I just start by saying that this book was fantastic? Because it was. It really, really was.

When I opened the book and read the first chapter, I knew that this was going to be a great book. The plot can be summed up in two sentences. *ahem* Rhine is captured and is bought by a Housemaster who marries her, along with two other girls. She wants to go back to her brother, but must play by the rules in order to find the perfect moment to escape.

From this summary, you will probably realize one thing. This book, mostly takes place in a house. A rich house. Despite this being a dystopian novel we don't really get a sense of this, because of the location. There are hints, for example the first chapter when the Gatherers show up, when certain characters die, despite their young age, and when Rhine tells us about how Rowan and her survived out in Manhattan. Other than this, not so much is shown.

So if you are looking for a heavy dystopian novel, this one might get you disappointed. But you should still give it a try.

The characters, for the most part, are fleshed out nicely. I do think Rhine was slightly naive about her situation, but she's young so I forgave her. I did love Rhine's sister wives, Jenna and Cecily, though. Jenna was a fantastic character, who was smart, observant, and knew how to play the game. Cecily, while naive like Rhine, did show that she's observant and can make things happen for her.

I liked the interactions between the sister wives and their husband. Linden, despite some of his problems, made for a better love interest than Gabriel.

Overall:

I really loved this book. So much so that once I finished, I went out and got Fever. Yay! In terms of dystopian novels, this is different, but it does have a good premise and an interesting story.

I liked it!

Review: Hate List by Jennifer Brown

Synopsis:

Five months ago, Valerie Leftman's boyfriend, Nick, opened fire on their school cafeteria. Shot trying to stop him, Valerie inadvertently saved the life of a classmate, but was implicated in the shootings because of the list she helped create. A list of people and things she and Nick hated. The list he used to pick his targets.

Now, after a summer of seclusion, Val is forced to confront her guilt as she returns to school to complete her senior year. Haunted by the memory of the boyfriend she still loves and navigating rocky relationships with her family, former friends and the girl whose life she saved, Val must come to grips with the tragedy that took place and her role in it, in order to make amends and move on with her life.

Pages: 432 pages (Paperback)
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Released: October 5, 2010

Once upon a time, I did a project on bullying and the legal side behind it for my law class. Obviously, bullying is a horrible thing, but we never really hear about it until it's too late. Since that project, I've been fascinated by fictional books about bullying and seeing what the author does with that kind of story.

Jennifer Brown took a story about bullying, school shooting, and made it into something different. The story isn't about Nick, the one who was bullied and decided to shoot a bunch of people at school before turning the gun on himself. It's about Valerie, the shooters girlfriend who had no idea that this was going to happen and where everything went wrong.

Even though the shooting plays a huge role in the novel, I liked how it was also about Valerie trying to find herself too. She was the one who came up with the Hate List, the list that Nick and her spent time on writing about everything and everyone they hated. It was also the list that Nick used to target people. She struggles with the feeling of guilt over her part in the shooting and it doesn't help when your family and friends believe that it's partly her fault as well.

~-.-~

Overall:

The story moves back and forth between what happened on that day and how Valerie moves on afterwards. It was nice watching her grow as a person and getting more in-tuned with herself. When it comes to her friends, Valerie is apprehensive about getting too close. She wants to be left alone, which is perfectly understandable. And even though her new friends are pushing her too move on, I kind of wish we saw some of her old friends doing the same thing. It does make sense that they wouldn't be as close anymore, but the selfish side of me wishes that there was some more scenes between them.

I was also interested in Nick and Valerie's relationship. I do believe that there was a strong love there, but you could also feel like Nick was pulling her down to his level of sadness. I liked how Valerie made a passing comment about how her friend moulds herself to fit in with others, because I felt like Valerie did the same thing when it came to Nick.

I enjoyed my time reading this. It made me tired, because I decided that the best time to read this would be before bed. This was a bad idea, since I slept really late, but it was worth it because this was a great little gem. Definitely check this one out!


4.5 stars

Review: Asleep by Banana Yoshimoto

Synopsis:

Banana Yoshimoto has a nuanced and magical ability to animate the lives of her young characters, and here she spins the stories of three women, all bewitched into a spiritual sleep. One, mourning for a lost lover, finds herself sleepwalking at night. Another, who has embarked on a relationship with a man whose wife is in a coma, finds herself suddenly unable to stay awake. A third finds her sleep haunted by another woman whom she was once pitted against in a love triangle. Sly and mystical as a ghost story, with a touch of Kafkaesque surrealism, Asleep is an enchanting new book from one of the best writers of contemporary international fiction.

Asleep
Pages: 72 of 177 pages (Hardcover)
Publisher: Grove Press
Released: July 26, 2000

The third and final novella in ‘Asleep’ is ‘Asleep’.

Terako use to be a lively and energetic person, but for some reason she can’t help but sleep all the time. She isn’t sure when it started, but realizes that whenever she is alone she just can’t help herself. The only thing that keeps her from wasting away in sleep is her boyfriend Mr. Iwanaga.

After Terako would spend time with Mr. Iwanaga, she’d usually talk to her best friend, Shiori, about it. However, Shiori commits suicide and Terako feels a sense of loss and loneliness from it. She can’t talk to her boyfriend about Shiori as he has his own problems to deal with. His wife has been in a coma for several months now and even though he’s in a relationship, he can’t let her go. Naturally, he doesn’t want to talk about it, but Terako finds herself growing more and more fascinated about his wife and waiting for the day when he finally lets go of his wife and comes to her, body, mind, and soul.

I feel like Asleep could relate to anyone who has ever been in a standstill in their life. When something happens and you find yourself in a rut, it’s hard to come out of it and you find yourself almost in a trance. It isn’t until someone gives you a wake-up call that you start to change your life.

Banana Yoshimoto’s simple prose and dreamlike setting worked incredibly well here. To me, this was her strongest story in this collection.

~-.-~

Overall:

I liked the story; I mean I really, really liked this story. The sense of loneliness, even though you are with someone that you feel from both Terako and Mr. Iwanaga was sad, but interesting to watch. Both of them had to overcome their own demons if they wanted to have a proper relationship. Even though they both suffered from different things, they were still connected by Mr. Iwanaga’s wife. I do wish this was longer, but it was great.

4.5 stars