Review: After the Parch

After the Parch by Sheldon Greene
Age Group: Young Adult
Genre: Dystopian
Release Date: March 21, 2014
Buy Links:

Amazon ♥ Barnes and Noble

Book Description:

It's 2075. California is nothing like we know it. The USA has broken up and California has become an independent refuge dominated by a single omnipotent corporation. Eighteen-year-old Bran, a shepherd, is given a mission to traverse the California republic in ten days, in order to save his rural community from forfeiting its land. 

On the way, he teams up with a seventeen-year-old girl who has the skills and prowess of a warrior, an eleven-year-old wild boy with uncanny survival skills, and a wandering musician with a secret revolutionary agenda. After the Parch is a fast-paced, vivid, dystopian fantasy with a chilling resemblance to the way we are, and a vision of what we might become. 

It's a well-crafted story and the plot flows naturally from one crisis to another, with three-dimensional characters right up to the taut and positive climax. Sheldon Greene has been called "a born storyteller" by the Los Angeles Times for his book Lost and Found (Random House). This is his fifth novel. "I felt the need to describe our country as what it might become if we continue on the current trajectory." 

He is a lawyer and an executive in a wind energy development company, and has a background of high impact public interest litigation in health care, labor law, land policy, and immigration. He also sings in the Oakland Symphony Chorus and serves on several boards

♥ ♥ ♥


"After the Parch" by Sheldon Greene was a book that was hard for me to get into. It's a young adult book set in a dystopian setting in future California, which has been separated from the rest of the country, and follows the adventure of an 18-year-old boy named Bran. Bran has 10 days to travel through California even though he has never really left his home before and needs to secure a permit for his community's land from being taken away.

Naturally, things don't go as smoothly for Bran as he thought and hoped that they would. Things start off with the bus that he's supposed to take most of the way crashing, and he has to fend for himself from there. This is a future where most people are only out for themselves and Bran has to get where he needs to go safely without being robbed on the way. The pacing of the book is fast as we travel along with Bran for these 10 days through his California

I started out by saying that it was hard for me to get into this story, and that proved true throughout the majority of the book. For awhile when I first started reading, I actually kept putting the book down and reading other things. It wasn't until I was maybe one-third into it that the story started to pick up and get a bit more interesting. However, even then, I never felt completely invested in "After the Parch".

Review: Doomed (Damned #2)

Doomed by Chuck Palahniuk
Age Group: Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Release Date: October 8, 2013
Buy Links:

Amazon ♥ Barnes and Noble

Book Description:

Madison Spencer, the liveliest, snarkiest dead girl in the universe, continues the adventures in the afterlife begun in Damned. 

Having somewhat reluctantly escaped from Hell, she now wanders the Purgatory that is Earth as a ghostly spirit, seeking her do-gooding celebrity parents, fighting the malign control of Satan, recounting the disgracefully funny (to us, anyway) encounter with her grandfather in a fetid highway rest stop in upstate New York when she...

oh, never mind, and climaxing in a rendezvous with destiny on the new, totally plastic continent in the Pacific called, not at all accidentally, Madlantis.

♥ ♥ ♥

I almost didn't even bother with Chuck Palahniuk's new book, "Doomed.” The last book of his that I actively enjoyed was "Rant” and there's been four other books between that and "Doomed.” His earlier works are some of my favorite books ("Invisible Monsters" being high on the list), but I seem to just be tolerating his newer stuff.

After his last book, "Damned,” I wasn't running to the bookstore like I normally did for a Palahniuk release. While most (okay, ALL) of his books are weird, "Damned" was just gross. It relied mainly on crass humor and gross out factors that only seem to impress prepubescent boys, and it was difficult for me to get through. If it wasn't for the 30% off sticker on the cover of "Doomed,” I might have just skipped it entirely.

"Doomed" is the sequel to "Damned” and this is actually the first time that Palahniuk has tried his hand at creating a series. The series follows a 13-year-old girl, Madison Spencer, as she dies, goes to Hell, and then escapes from Hell. That is where "Doomed" picks up, with Madison back in the real world, this time as a ghost. She sees that there is a new religion that seems to have the attention of everyone, and she's at the heart of it.

Review: Want (Want #1)

Want (Want #1) by Stephanie Lawton
Age Group: New Adult
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Release Date: June 7th 2012
Buy Links:

Amazon

Book Description:

Julianne counts the days until she can pack her bags and leave her old-money, tradition-bound Southern town where appearance is everything and secrecy is a way of life. A piano virtuoso, she dreams of attending a prestigious music school in Boston. Failure is not an option, so she enlists the help of New England Conservatory graduate Isaac Laroche to help her.

She can’t understand why he suddenly gave up Boston’s music scene to return to the South. He doesn’t know her life depends on escaping it. Julianne must face down madness from without, just as it threatens from within. Isaac must resist an inappropriate attraction, but an indiscretion at a Mardi Gras ball-the pinnacle event for Mobile’s elite-forces their present wants and needs to collide with sins of the past.

Will Julianne accept the help she’s offered and get everything she ever wanted, or will she self-destruct and take Isaac down with her?

♥ ♥ ♥

Want by Stephanie Lawton follows 17-year-old Julianne as she attempts to get into New England Conservatory (NEC) in Boston while dealing with her Mother’s abusive outbursts, her lack of friends, and her quickly deteriorating state of mind. 

Her piano playing is her only escape from the crappy hand she was dealt in life and Juli is determined to get into NEC no matter the cost. So, when her piano teacher Mr. Cline has a stroke and his nephew, Isaac, comes to town to pick up her teaching where Mr. Cline left off, Juli is determined to make the most of it despite her trepidation.

I’m having incredibly mixed feelings about this story. On the one hand Lawton is a very talented writer. Her descriptions of things and the words and images she uses to describe Isaac’s music and Juli’s as well is literally breathtaking. But the actual story left me wanting. Technically this could be an issue of mine, but had I known that Isaac was 27-28 (he has a birthday in the book) and Juli was 17 before I started reading, then I most likely would not have chosen to read the book.

Review: Shadows

Shadows by Ilsa J. Bick
Release Date: September 25th
Purchase @ Amazon

The Apocalypse does not end. The Changed will grow in numbers. The Spared may not survive.

Even before the EMPs brought down the world, Alex was on the run from the demons of her past and the monster living in her head. After the world was gone, she believed Rule could be a sanctuary for her and those she’d come to love.
But she was wrong.

Now Alex is in the fight of her life against the adults, who would use her, the survivors, who don’t trust her, and the Changed, who would eat her alive. 

Welcome to Shadows, the second book in the haunting apocalyptic Ashes Trilogy: where no one is safe and humans may be the worst of the monsters.

♥ ♥ ♥ 

After reading Ashes, I’ve decided to do something different and review Shadows while reading instead of waiting until after the book is through. I’m already in part two, which is only eight percent into the book and I am still extremely confused. While I like seeing perspectives from more than one person because it gives us a better view of what’s going on and where, there is a such thing as too many point of view at once.

Shadows picks up almost immediately where Ashes left off, except from a different point of view. We aren’t with Alex in the Zone any longer, instead we are with Tom! Although we don’t actually know that at first. I can’t tell you how excited I was to find that he was still alive, I knew he would be, but within the first few minutes of found that out he starts thinking about Alex and how something inside of him is telling him she’s in trouble.

At that point I started to feel terrible for Tom, because while Alex had been worried about him for a while she eventually settled into Rule until recently when she found her whistle at the end of the last book. Then of course I got mad because here he is thinking about nothing, but her and she’s getting a little too friendly with Chris. When we finally do see Alex she’s fighting the Changed kids and while the action is great and sort of has you biting your fingernails the end result is lackluster.