Backlist Briefs – Mini Reviews for Turtles All the Way Down and Speak Easy, Speak Love
/31 Comments/by SuzannePublished by Dutton Books for Young Readers on October 10th 2017
Genres: Contemporary Fiction, Young Adult Fiction
Pages: 288
Source: Purchased
Amazon
Goodreads
GOODREADS SYNOPSIS
#1 bestselling author John Green returns with his first new novel since The Fault in Our Stars!
Sixteen-year-old Aza never intended to pursue the mystery of fugitive billionaire Russell Pickett, but there’s a hundred-thousand-dollar reward at stake and her Best and Most Fearless Friend, Daisy, is eager to investigate. So together, they navigate the short distance and broad divides that separate them from Russell Pickett’s son, Davis.
Aza is trying. She is trying to be a good daughter, a good friend, a good student, and maybe even a good detective, while also living within the ever-tightening spiral of her own thoughts.
In his long-awaited return, John Green, the acclaimed, award-winning author of Looking for Alaska and The Fault in Our Stars, shares Aza’s story with shattering, unflinching clarity in this brilliant novel of love, resilience, and the power of lifelong friendship.
Review:
While not my favorite John Green book, Turtles All the Way Down was still a moving read for me. I loved the main character Aza, who is smart, funny, and sometimes extremely quiet. She’s quiet because she is living with OCD, which often occupies her thoughts and keeps her locked inside of her own head. John Green does an incredible job of showing what OCD is like from inside the mind of someone who is actually experiencing it. It’s raw and honest and sometimes quite painful to read. If you think you know what OCD is like from either something you’ve read or maybe from someone you’ve watched going through it, you only know part of it. Seeing from Aza’s perspective that ever-tightening spiral that kept her locked inside of her own mind was so enlightening. Turtles All the Way Down is also an #ownvoices novel, so many thanks to John Green for sharing his own experiences with us.
In addition to the way it provides a greater understanding of OCD, I also liked the book’s focus on friendship. While I wasn’t big on the part of the story where Aza and her best friend, Daisy, decide they want to play amateur detective and investigate the father of Aza’s friend, Davis, I was very big on their friendship. Aza and Daisy have a wonderful relationship that is built on honesty, even if that honesty is sometimes a little brutal. I liked the idea that Aza ultimately knew she had someone in her corner no matter how tough things got.
What else? Oh, a really sweet romance develops between Aza and Davis. I liked Davis a lot and thought he and Aza had wonderful chemistry. More importantly, I didn’t feel like their romance took away anything from the rest of the story and I liked that romance was not a cure for OCD.
The only thing I really didn’t like was a distracting and seemingly random subplot about an ancient lizard called a tuatara that Davis’ father kept as a pet. Maybe there was a deeper meaning there that I missed, but for me, the lizard was just in the way. Still a moving and entertaining read overall. 3.5 STARS
Speak Easy, Speak Love by McKelle George
Published by Greenwillow Books on September 19th 2017
Genres: Young Adult Fiction, Historical Fiction, Retelling
Pages: 432
Source: Purchased
Amazon
Goodreads
GOODREADS SYNOPSIS
Six teenagers’ lives intertwine during one thrilling summer full of romantic misunderstandings and dangerous deals in this sparkling retelling of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.
After she gets kicked out of boarding school, seventeen-year-old Beatrice goes to her uncle’s estate on Long Island. But Hey Nonny Nonny is more than just a rundown old mansion. Beatrice’s cousin, Hero, runs a struggling speakeasy out of the basement—one that might not survive the summer.
Along with Prince, a poor young man determined to prove his worth; his brother, John, a dark and dangerous agent of the local mob; Benedick, a handsome trust-fund kid trying to become a writer; and Maggie, a beautiful and talented singer; Beatrice and Hero throw all their efforts into planning a massive party to save the speakeasy. Despite all their worries, the summer is beautiful, love is in the air, and Beatrice and Benedick are caught up in a romantic battle of wits that their friends might be quietly orchestrating in the background.
Hilariously clever and utterly charming, McKelle George’s debut novel is full of intrigue and 1920s charm. For fans of Jenny Han, Stephanie Perkins, and Anna Godbersen.
Review:
Speak Easy, Speak Love was just such a delightful read for me. It’s a retelling of one of my favorite Shakespearean plays, Much Ado About Nothing, and author McKelle George manages to capture all of the magic of the original play, while simultaneously crafting a fresh new story. If you’ve read the original play, you’ll be particularly delighted to know that not only does she have her own Benedick and Beatrice, but their verbal sparring without a doubt rivals that of their Shakespearean counterparts. I found myself laughing out loud numerous times, which is always refreshing.
Aside from bringing to life new versions of my favorite characters, George also chooses a fabulous setting for her retelling, New York in the 1920s. The 1920s is such a rich and vibrant part of American history and I loved how George was able to incorporate so many important aspects of that time period. She seamlessly weaves in Prohibition and speakeasies, the Mob, the Jazz Age, and with Benedick in particular who wants to be a writer, she also touches on the rise of great American authors like Hemingway and Fitzgerald.
I can’t recommend Speak Easy, Speak Love highly enough. There are lots of great shoutouts to Much Ado About Nothing sprinkled throughout the novel too, so before you read the book, I’d definitely also recommend reading the play or, even better, watch the 1993 film version where Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson play Benedick and Beatrice. So much fun! 4.5 STARS
About John Green
John Green is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Paper Towns, and The Fault in Our Stars. He is also the coauthor, with David Levithan, of Will Grayson, Will Grayson. He was the 2006 recipient of the Michael L. Printz Award, a 2009 Edgar Award winner, and has twice been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Green’s books have been published in more than 55 languages and over 24 million copies are in print. John is also an active Twitter user with more than 5 million followers.
About McKelle George
McKelle George is a reader, writer of clumsy rebels, perpetual doodler, and associate librarian at the best library in the world. She mentors with Salt Lake Teen Writes and plays judge for the Poetry Out Loud teen competitions (but has no poetic talent herself). Her debut young adult novel Speak Easy, Speak Love comes out from Greenwillow/HarperCollins in 2017, and she currently lives in Salt Lake City with an enormous white german shepherd and way, way too many books.
Can’t Wait Wednesday – ESCAPING FROM HOUDINI by Kerri Maniscalco
/36 Comments/by Suzanne
“Waiting On” Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted at Breaking the Spine, which encourages fellow bloggers to spotlight upcoming releases that we’re excited about. It is a meme that I have loved participating in for over a year now, but as Jill is no longer actively posting, from now on I’ll just be linking to Can’t Wait Wednesday, hosted by Tressa, which is a spinoff of the original WoW meme.
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My selection for this week is Escaping from Houdini by Kerri Maniscalco. When I first started this series, I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it or not. But man, I fell for it hard and fast. I adore both Audrey Rose and Thomas and can’t wait to see what they get up to in the third installment of this series. This one sounds especially intense with everyone being trapped on a ship with a killer on the loose.
ESCAPING FROM HOUDINI by Kerri Maniscalco
Publication Date: September 18, 2018
From Goodreads:
In this third installment in the #1 bestselling Stalking Jack the Ripper series, a luxurious ocean liner becomes a floating prison of scandal, madness, and horror when passengers are murdered one by one…with nowhere to run from the killer. .
Audrey Rose Wadsworth and her partner-in-crime-investigation, Thomas Cresswell, are en route to New York to help solve another blood-soaked mystery. Embarking on a week-long voyage across the Atlantic on the opulent RMS Etruria, they’re delighted to discover a traveling troupe of circus performers, fortune tellers, and a certain charismatic young escape artist entertaining the first-class passengers nightly.
But then, privileged young women begin to go missing without explanation, and a series of brutal slayings shocks the entire ship. The strange and disturbing influence of the Moonlight Carnival pervades the decks as the murders grow ever more freakish, with nowhere to escape except the unforgiving sea. It’s up to Audrey Rose and Thomas to piece together the gruesome investigation as even more passengers die before reaching their destination. But with clues to the next victim pointing to someone she loves, can Audrey Rose unravel the mystery before the killer’s horrifying finale?
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I’d love to hear what upcoming book releases you’re waiting on this Wednesday? Leave me your link in the comments below and I’ll stop by and check out your CWW selection for this week. 🙂
Top Ten Tuesday – Top 10 Books I Can’t Believe I Read
/38 Comments/by Suzanne
Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Top Ten Tuesday has been one of my favorite memes ever since I started blogging, so huge thanks to Jana for taking over the hosting duties!
This week’s TTT topic is Top Ten Books I Can’t Believe I Read. I imagine there are lots of different ways I could explore this topic, but looking around at my bookshelves, I’m going to go with ‘I can’t believe I read these…because they’re literally the size and weight of bricks!‘ That’s not to say they were bad reads — most of them were incredible and didn’t feel like they were anywhere near as long as they actually were, but there were a couple (I’m looking at you, Moby Dick!) that I thought I would never finish.
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TOP 10 BOOKS I CAN’T BELIEVE I READ
1. LES MISERABLES by Victor Hugo (1,463 pages)
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2. A STORM OF SWORDS by George R.R. Martin (1,177 pages)
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3. BLEAK HOUSE by Charles Dickens (1,017 pages)
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4. MOBY DICK by Herman Melville
(728 Pages, but felt like it was about 3,000 pages. Way too many chapters about whale blubber for my liking!)
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5. JOHN ADAMS by David McCullough
(751 pages – I don’t even usually read Nonfiction, much less over 700 pages of it, but this was riveting!)
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6. GONE WITH THE WIND by Margaret Mitchell
(1,037 pages – As much as I complain about romance, I still can’t believe I read and adored this one, lol.)
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8. MIDDLEMARCH by George Eliot (904 pages)
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9. THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1,072 pages)
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10. ANNA KARENINA by Leo Tolstoy (1,008 pages)
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