Princess Academy: Palace of Stone

Author: Shannon Hale
Author's Website: http://www.squeetus.com/
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Released: August 21, 2012
Genre: YA Fantasy
Series: Princess Academy #2
Source: Library

When Miri and a few of the girls from Mount Eskel's princess academy travel to the capital to help the princess-to-be get ready for her wedding, they have no idea what to expect. Some are worried about leaving their beloved mountain for the first time, others are thrilled about going to the big city, and Miri is mostly just happy to see her best friend. But not everything in Asland is as perfect as the mountain girls hoped. As Miri learns more about her new home, she finds herself deep in the middle of an upheaval that affects everyone she loves. Torn between loyalty to the princess and her belief in her new friends' daring ideas, Miri must test the strength and skills she gained in the princess academy.

When I first read Princess Academy, I thought it was a classic like The Secret Garden or A Little Princess. This was before I started paying attention to publication information like dates, and I honestly thought it belonged in that category.

Well, it does. It may not have been written at that time, but I love the way it has the same "feel" and atmosphere. And Palace of Stone has that same quality. Palace of Stone reads like a more contemporary fantasy, where the heroine has a clear choice to make between two impossible situations. But it still captures that undefinable magical quality that, in my opinion, will make it last for a long time as a favorite book.

Miri, as we already know, is a strong, opinionated character. It's great to see her falter in her opinions, to really have to stop and grapple with things. She has that same can-do attitude as in the first book, but nothing is as clear-cut as it was back then. And she realizes more and more that her actions can have devastating or liberating effects - sometimes both, and she has to know which one is more important.

I love the way everything is resolved. The solution is classic Miri, when she finally sees things clearly and knows which side to be on. The way all the characters get in on it (well, almost all..) adds to the sweeping quality of the resolution, but we're still kept breathless until it really all succeeds, with many twists along the way to pose obstacles to the girls' plans.

That's something I love about this book, also. It's not a clear rise and fall, things get worse and then they get better. It's a roller-coaster. Things appear to be starting to move forward, and then suddenly they're all back to square one and have to start over, or they come across new information that changes the way they see things and they try desperately to turn back the tide of what their actions started. It's a great journey to be on!

Chasing Fire

Author: Nora Roberts
Author's Website: http://www.noraroberts.com/
Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons
Released: April 3, 2012
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Series: No
Source: Library

Rowan Tripp has been jumping fire for quite some time now, but this season, everything changes. First, there's the rookie, Gull, who challenges her rule of not getting romantically involved with her colleagues, wearing down her resistance with charm and personality. Then there's the more sinister angle of the season, with someone obviously out to get her and her team, aiming to wound or even kill members of the squad as payback for last year's tragedy. Rowan knows she has to keep her wits about her at all times, in the plane and on the ground when she's fighting fire, but all these distractions make it difficult. She has to figure out how to let someone in and be a part of her life, to have someone to lean on in the hard times, without allowing it to overtake her.

What struck me most about this book is the amount of research that must have gone into getting every detail of fighting fires exactly right! Each fire that they battle is described in its own way, each time they have to choose different strategies based on the nature of each fire, and it amazed me how many variations there are in it, that it's not just going in there and spraying water on the fire. And that Nora Roberts was able to vary things in that area is an amazing feat in itself!

The romance in this book takes a bit of a back burner to the suspense portion of the story. The focus is on the danger and on figuring out who the perpetrator is. I guessed early on who it was, but I kept doubting myself as new information came in - which is the point. I was a little disappointed in that I felt it was unreal that the police would keep the same suspect they first charge with the crime, because it looks like he was set up right from the beginning, and as things progress, it becomes clearer and clearer that he didn't do anything. 

But overall, I was fully engrossed in the story and enjoyed it very much.

The Uninvited

Author: Liz Jensen
Author's Website: http://www.lizjensen.com/
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Release Date: January 8, 2013
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Series: No
Source: ARC from Publisher

A seven-year-old girl puts a nail gun to her grandmother's neck and fires. An isolated incident, say the experts. The experts are wrong. Across the world, children are killing their families. Is violence contagious? As chilling murders by children grip the country, anthropologist Hesketh Lock has his own mystery to solve: a bizarre scandal in the Taiwan timber industry. Hesketh has never been good at relationships: Asperger's Syndrome has seen to that. But he does have a talent for spotting behavioral patterns and an outsider's fascination with group dynamics. Nothing obvious connects Hesketh's Asian case with the atrocities back home. Or with the increasingly odd behavior of his beloved stepson, Freddy. But when Hesketh's Taiwan contact dies shockingly and more acts of sabotage and child violence sweep the globe, he is forced to acknowledge possibilities that defy the rational principles on which he has staked his life, his career, and, most devastatingly of all, his role as a father.

The Uninvited is like an environmentalist, anti-capitalist - and much more violent - Childhood's End. Arthur C. Clarke leaves many things unanswered in Childhood's End - all the whys and what for's - and I feel like The Uninvited is (intentionally or not) a sort of response to that. The group-think of the children is what led me to this train of thought at first, but as the narrative moves on, the motives and results of the children's actions faintly echo how Clarke told his story.

Of course, the way the story is told is affected by Hesketh's Asperger's. The choice of making Hesketh have Asperger's is brilliant in so many ways. First of all, it provides a detached narrator, someone who can relay events in a logical way without having it tinged by his emotional attachment. That of course disappears about halfway through the novel, which makes the effects even stronger. When an outsider like Hesketh begins to feel personally involved, you know there's something really terrifying going on. 

Besides that, Hesketh's voice adds a chilling quality to the story. Having all these crazy things going on, but told in such a matter-of-fact, plodding sort of way - it takes you a step back from the events and forces you to expend energy to think about what's going on and what it all means for the way the adults have to deal with it - and that means that as a reader, you're much more involved and definitely more affected by the shocking turns of events. And then when Hesketh's survival method of origami-making in his mind escalates and escalates, becomes more frenzied and more common, it heightens the eeriness of it all.

I loved watching Hesketh grapple with his innate logical and reasoning skills when presented with things that just don't fit. I loved seeing him fight and fight against admitting that "supernatural" things could be happening. And I also loved trying to stay a step ahead of him and figure out what was really going on. I didn't. But I tried! When he finally comes to terms with it all, when he finally figures out the real truth, I love the way he reacts. It emphasizes the futility of fighting back, the way he accepts it as reality and goes on with his life, albeit very much altered.

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Smart Girls Get What They Want

Author: Sarah Strohmeyer
Publisher: Balzer + Bray (HarperCollins)
Released: June 26, 2012
Genre: YA Contemporary
Series: No
Source: Kindle

Gigi and her friends are smart. They work hard for great grades that will earn them spots in Ivy League colleges. They're only in tenth grade, but they've been working for this forever. But when they realize that their focus on schoolwork and smart stuff has earned them status as social non-entities, that some of their classmates don't even know they exist, they take a good look at their priorities. Gigi, Bea, and Neerja begin to take a more active role in high school activities and social life, and the things they discover astound them. Their preconceived notions about people, about life, about everything they think they know - all are challenged as they venture out into the big, wide world of high school.

A really exciting ride, this book! Lots of twists and turns, lots of surprises - which fits for a book about how blind and ignorant such smart girls could be. They're definitely book smart, but they lack all fundamental knowledge of how things work, of what makes people tick, even of themselves. I love, though, that as clueless as they are, I still identified with them and felt for them right from the start. They're not bad girls, they're not hermits by choice, they just need an education. And boy do they get one!

The people who seem smart are not necessarily so, and vice versa. And people who think they like one person find out they actually like someone else entirely, for reasons that become clearer and clearer to the reader even as those people remain in the dark. And when the girls think they're being shunned, they don't realize that it's mostly their own fault they feel that way.

Then there's the aspect where the girls overcome their fears. Especially Gigi - the way she starts out vomiting at the thought of public speaking and ends up speaking fearlessly when it's necessary is so great, so indicative of her overall growth as a teenager instead of an Ivy-League-bound bookster. 

Small point - I like the parent figures in this book. They're not too meddlesome, but I like that the girls have their parents to support them, even when they go behind their backs. Parents who are there and not in some emotional turmoil with their kids is rare in this kind of fiction, but in this case it allows the focus to be on the girls' social life without being eclipsed.

A really fun read with some deep, thoughtful moments...

Torn

Author: Stephanie Guerra
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish
Editor: Marilyn Brigham
Released: May 15, 2012
Genre: YA Contemporary
Series: No
Source: Kindle

Stella is captivated by Ruby from the moment Ruby makes her grand entrance into class as a new student. When Ruby singles her out for friendship, Stella gets a taste of what taking risks and living on the wild side feels like. But it comes at the expense of her old friends who disapprove of Ruby, and Stella is left to choose whether to stand by Ruby and become a social pariah or to go back to her old friends and reclaim her previous comfortable place on the social ladder. When things seem to be spiraling way out of control, Stella makes a desperate attempt to set things straight and salvage her life - but is it too late?

I love the way Stella's descent into madness is so vividly and realistically portrayed. It's gradual, one little thing at a time, so it feels natural, and I felt the whole time like I was watching it happen. Ruby is definitely a fun character to read about, but she also pulls at your heartstrings quite a bit. Stella's home life also plays on your emotions, and the way she balances everything adds to the complexity of the story.

Though I do wish some points had been more developed - like her home life, particularly her relationship with her mother. Her sister's relationship with Stella is fully developed, but I feel like there are some points with her mother that could have been explored more. Her relationship with Mike also. That's laden with psychological possibilities, but it gets superficial treatment.

Stella's relationship with Ruby, though, is so real, so believable. And the way everything wraps up at the end - beautiful!