My Reading Wishlist – Ten Things I Really Want to See More of in Books
/46 Comments/by SuzanneTop Ten Tuesday is a fun weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s topic is Ten Things On Our Reading Wishlist (things you want to see more of in books — tropes, a time period, a specific type of character, an issue tackled, a certain plot, etc. All those things that make you think I WANT MORE OF THIS IN BOOKS!). This was a tough topic for me because pretty much any book I read and enjoy, I want more just like it. After giving it some thought though, I finally narrowed my reading wishlist down to these ten items.
Ten Things I Really Want to see More of in Books
1. BOOKS THAT FOCUS ON FRIENDSHIP – I’m all about bromances and sisterhoods, so bring on the friendship novels!
2. STANDALONE BOOKS – I love a good series as much as the next person, but I have so many half-finished series sitting in my TBR right now that I’d love an influx of standalone novels so that it’s just one book and done.
3. BOOKS THAT FOCUS ON FAMILIES AND WHAT THEY GO THROUGH – I’d love more of these stories because they’re almost always relatable and compelling.
4. BOOKS SET OUTSIDE THE U.S. – As much as I adore books set in my favorite city, NYC, I also love books that take me to places I’ve never been to before so I’d love to see more books set outside the U.S. If I had to make a wishlist of specific countries I’d love to see more of in my books, I’d pick Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Switzerland, India, and China.
5. BOOKS THAT FEATURE MORALLY AMBIGUOUS MAIN CHARACTERS OR ANTI-HEROES – Aren’t these just some of the most fascinating characters to follow through a story?
6. LESS LOVE TRIANGLES – Enough said.
7. REALISTIC ROMANCES – I’d love to see more romances that mirror relationships you see in everyday life.
8. RETELLINGS THAT ARE BASED ON LESSER KNOWN FAIRYTALES AND FOLKLORE – One of the best books I’ve read in the last few months is The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden, which is based on Russian folklore. The folklore was totally new to me and it just made for such a unique and beautiful read. I’d love to read more books like this one.
9. BOOKS WITH BADASS FEMALE CHARACTERS WHO DON’T NEED TO BE SAVED OR ROMANCED – Actually how about badass female characters who save men in distress?
10. BOOKS WHERE THE PROTAGONISTS ARE ARTISTS – I read several great books this past year where the main characters were either painters, writers, musicians, or actors and I just love that added layer of creativity that threads its way through the storyline.
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Question: What are some of your biggest reading wishlist items? Do we have any in common?
Book Review: The Female of the Species by Mindy McGinnis
/19 Comments/by SuzannePublished by Katherine Tegen Books on September 20th 2016
Genres: Contemporary Fiction, Young Adult Fiction
Pages: 341
Source: Library
Amazon
Goodreads
Goodreads Synopsis: Alex Craft knows how to kill someone. And she doesn’t feel bad about it. When her older sister, Anna, was murdered three years ago and the killer walked free, Alex uncaged the language she knows best. The language of violence. While her crime goes unpunished, Alex knows she can’t be trusted among other people, even in her small hometown. She relegates herself to the shadows, a girl who goes unseen in plain sight, unremarkable in the high school hallways.
But Jack Fisher sees her. He’s the guy all other guys want to be: the star athlete gunning for valedictorian with the prom queen on his arm. Guilt over the role he played the night Anna’s body was discovered hasn’t let him forget Alex over the years, and now her green eyes amid a constellation of freckles have his attention. He doesn’t want to only see Alex Craft; he wants to know her.
So does Peekay, the preacher’s kid, a girl whose identity is entangled with her dad’s job, though that does not stop her from knowing the taste of beer or missing the touch of her ex-boyfriend. When Peekay and Alex start working together at the animal shelter, a friendship forms and Alex’s protective nature extends to more than just the dogs and cats they care for.
Circumstances bring Alex, Jack, and Peekay together as their senior year unfolds. While partying one night, Alex’s darker nature breaks out, setting the teens on a collision course that will change their lives forever.
MY REVIEW
Wow, what a book! I hardly know where to even begin so I’m going to start off by saying Mindy McGinnis’s The Female of the Species is a book that definitely isn’t going to be for everyone. This is not a light contemporary read by any stretch. The Female of the Species is dark, violent, and incredibly intense. It’s also one of the most powerful takedowns of rape culture that I’ve ever read.
LIKES
For me, the most fascinating part of The Female of the Species is main character, Alex Craft. Alex has always had a dark side. She can feel the violence bubbling beneath the surface, just waiting to be unleashed. For most of her life, she has been able to keep this dark side under control. However, when her older sister Anna is sexually assaulted and murdered and the murderer goes free, the beast within Alex awakens and she takes matters into her own hands to get justice for her sister. Alex gets away with her crime but feels like she could easily do the same thing again if she encounters another predator so she doesn’t really trust herself to be around other people. Because of this, she doesn’t really make any friends at school and is mainly known by her classmates as “the girl with the dead sister.” That is, until she unexpectedly becomes friends with Jack and Peekay, her first real friendships, and it suddenly becomes a lot harder to hide her true dark nature.
I loved the complexity of Alex’s character. On the one hand, she’s a straight A student in line to be valedictorian of her class and she also volunteers at the local animal shelter and is super gentle with all of the animals that she cares for. On the other hand, she’s a stone cold vigilante who will go after anyone she views as a predator.
The first time her new friends witness vigilante Alex in action is in the hallway at school when a guy makes a really bad sexual joke in front of Alex. The joke is stupid, hurtful, and offensive and it earns the guy a punch in the groin from Alex that brings him to his knees. The reactions of those who witness the punch are a mixed bag: some are shocked and appalled, while others pretty much cheer her on. I count myself as one of those who cheered her on.
At first I thought that perhaps her friendship with Peekay (aka Preacher’s Kid, but whose real name is actually Claire) would help to settle Alex and help her live a more normal day-to-day life as they worked at the shelter together and bonded so well. Instead, however, it actually makes the vigilante behavior escalate because the more Alex begins to care about Peekay, the more protective she becomes of her. When Peekay gets drunk at a party and some guys try to take advantage of her, Alex swoops in like a hawk and violently attacks the guys, actually drawing blood and disfiguring one of them. I have to admit that I cheered Alex on here as well but at the same time was a little uncomfortable with just how violent she got. Or maybe my discomfort was more with myself for thinking “Yes! Get them, Alex!” while she was pulverizing them. Either way, this was kind of a ‘Holy crap!’ scene for me.
To fully flesh out Alex’s character, McGinnis structures the story so that it is told from three different points of view, each of them giving us a slightly different look at Alex. Alex, of course, is one of them, while her friends Peekay and Jack are the other two.
It is through Alex’s chapters that we see how dark of a character she really is. One standout moment for me was when she thinks back to a time when she tried reading a bunch of psychology textbooks trying to figure out what’s wrong with her because she knows the way she feels isn’t normal but doesn’t think she’ll ever feel differently: “I’m not fine, and I doubt I ever will be. The books didn’t help me find a word for myself; my father refused to accept the weight of it. And so I made my own. I am vengeance.”
Alternating Alex’s dark chapters with those of Peekay and Jack allows us to not only see how Alex views herself, but also how others around her see her and how their views of her change the more they get to know her and see her darker side showing itself more and more. While Alex views herself as this monster who can’t be trusted around others, Peekay sees her as a wonderful friend and as the one who can work magic with even the most hostile animals at the shelter where they work.
Jack, along the same lines as Peekay, sees Alex way different from how she sees herself. He sees her as a girl he wants to know as more than just the girl with the dead sister. He becomes attracted to Alex because he sees her as having so much more substance than other girls their age. Eventually Jack and Alex do become romantically involved and their closeness gives Alex a glimpse at what a normal life could look like and she starts to wonder if it’s possible to control the darkness within her and live happily ever after with Jack.
Seeing the story from these three different points of view made for a very suspenseful read because as that darkness kept showing itself and giving Jack and Peekay little glimpses into Alex’s violent nature, I couldn’t help but want to know if these relationships would survive if they were to find out the whole truth about Alex and what would happen to Alex if she were to lose these two people who had become so important to her.
DISLIKES
My only real dislike was that there was one scene that contained animal cruelty, which is always a turnoff for me. Thankfully it was a small scene, but it just didn’t feel necessary to the plot so I was disappointed that it was in the book.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Even though I’ve said this isn’t a book that will appeal to everyone because of the darkness and the violence, The Female of the Species is still such an important book that I wish everyone would go outside of their comfort zones and read it anyway. It makes a powerful statement about rape culture and how it affects people. There shouldn’t need to be Alex Crafts in the world to take matters into their own hands.
That said, I can state without hesitation that Alex Craft and The Female of the Species are going to stick with me for a long time. They’ve given me a lot to think about.
RATING: 4.5 STARS
About Mindy McGinnis
Mindy McGinnis is an Edgar Award-winning author and assistant teen librarian who lives in Ohio. She graduated from Otterbein University with a degree in English Literature and Religion, and sees nothing wrong with owning nine cats. Two dogs balance things out nicely.
Mindy runs a blog for aspiring writers at Writer, Writer Pants on Fire, which features interviews with agents, established authors, and debut authors. Learn how they landed their agents, what the submission process is really like, and how it feels when you see your cover for the first time. Mindy does query critiques every Saturday on the Saturday Slash for those who are brave enough to volunteer.
Beat the Backlist Book Review: When We Collided by Emery Lord
/10 Comments/by SuzanneAlso by this author: The Names They Gave Us, The Map from Here to There
Published by Bloomsbury USA Childrens on April 5th 2016
Genres: Contemporary Fiction, Young Adult Fiction
Pages: 352
Amazon
Goodreads
Goodreads Synopsis: Seventeen year-old Jonah Daniels has lived in Verona Cove, California, his whole life, and only one thing has ever changed: his father used to be alive, and now he is not. With a mother lost in a deep bout of depression, Jonah and his five siblings struggle to keep up their home and the restaurant their dad left behind. But at the start of summer, a second change rolls in: Vivi Alexander, the new girl in town.
Vivi is in love with life. Charming and unfiltered, she refuses to be held down by the medicine she’s told should make her feel better. After meeting Jonah, she slides into the Daniels’ household seamlessly, winning over each sibling with her imagination and gameness. But it’s not long before Vivi’s zest for life begins to falter. Soon her adventurousness becomes all-out danger-seeking.
Through each high and low, Vivi and Jonah’s love is put to the test . . . but what happens when love simply isn’t enough?
MY REVIEW
Emery Lord’s When We Collided is a beautiful and moving story that follows teenagers Jonah Daniels and Vivi Alexander as they meet and fall in love in Verona Beach while on summer vacation. What makes When We Collided such a standout novel for me, however, is that it’s so much more than just a contemporary romance. It also offers up fully fleshed out, flawed and therefore realistic characters that I immediately connected with and wanted to know more about, has a strong focus on family, and most importantly, it gives the readers an honest and poignant look at what it’s like to live with bipolar disorder and depression.
LIKES
Emery Lord does an incredible job of crafting a dual point-of-view story where each point of view is distinct and equally compelling. From the moment we meet them, we learn that each character has a secret they’re trying to hide – Vivi is trying to hide the fact that she has a mental illness while Jonah and his siblings are hiding the fact that their mother has been practically catatonic since their dad passed away seven months ago. It’s easy to see that Vivi and Jonah’s decision to keep these facts hidden probably isn’t the best course of action in the long run, but at the same time, I can see where they’re coming from and why they’re not ready to let anyone know what they’re going through.
Jonah Daniels – I fell in love with his character from the first moment we encounter him as he’s walking his little sister down to the pottery shop so that she can paint a mug. He’s such a sweet and devoted brother and son and he’s incredibly mature and responsible for his age, almost too responsible honestly. His father’s death and his mother’s subsequent depression has forced Jonah to become an adult and the head of their household even though he’s only 17 and the third of six children. It should be his summer vacation, but instead of enjoying his summer like his classmates are doing, Jonah spends every waking moment juggling work and taking care of his three younger siblings.
Vivi Alexander – Vivi has this vibrant, larger than life personality and so she blows into Verona Beach like a whirlwind and makes it her mission to spread her love of life all over the town. She is a free spirit who wants to see and experience everything that life has to offer. As light and buoyant as Vivi seems, we do learn early on that there was some drama back at home and she and her mom are spending their summer at Verona Beach as a way to basically give Vivi a fresh start. We also learn, when we witness Vivi make a production about tossing a pill out into the ocean, that she is supposed to be taking medication for something and has clearly chosen not to do so. Seeing her do this so early on let me know right away that there’s way more to Vivi than meets the eye and I felt that things would not be all sunshine and rainbows for her during the course of the story.
Exploration of Mental Health – One of the things I really liked about When We Collided was that even though on the surface it looked like it was going to be summer romance story, it’s really so much more than that. Emery Lord explores many aspects of mental health, including bipolar disorder, grief, and depression. Her exploration is thorough in that it not only allows us to see what it’s like to live with bipolar disorder and/or depression, but it also shows us what it’s like to live with and/or love someone who has either bipolar or depression.
In my mind, Vivi and Jonah aren’t so much in love with each other in this story as they “collided” at a time when each had a void in their lives that they needed filled. For Jonah who has barely been living his own life since his dad died and his mom got too depressed to really function, Vivi arrives and brings much needed excitement, fun, spontaneity, and romance, giving Jonah somewhat of an escape from his all too serious life. For Vivi, Jonah is someone she can focus her attention on this summer – she can have a fun summer fling with someone who isn’t watching her like a hawk for signs of mental illness and who knows nothing of the drama that her illness apparently created back home for her. Since no one in Verona Beach knows of her history, everyone just assumes that her over-the-top enthusiastic personality is just that – her personality. They don’t see it as a sign of untreated mental illness and so Vivi can live her life with a clean slate… well, as long as she can keep her disorder in check anyway.
Focus on Family – I loved Jonah’s whole family just as much as I loved Jonah. Each sibling is well drawn and even though the story is mostly about Jonah and Vivi, Jonah’s family members don’t just function as a backdrop. Lord really does a wonderful job of fleshing out the complexities of the Daniels family dynamic and I especially loved seeing Jonah’s relationship with each of his siblings. He really does have a special bond with each of them, especially the older siblings that share the burden of trying to keep their family together. While it was a little frustrating that they didn’t just go to someone to get help for their mom, I did admire how they all banded together to take care of each other.
The Setting: Verona Beach is this charming small town on the California coast. I fell in love with the town because it reminded me so much of my own hometown. It’s one of those places where everyone knows everyone else and there’s just a real sense of community. There are also lots of quaint little shops all over town, like the pottery studio where main character Vivi ends up working and the diner where the waitress calls everyone nicknames like sugar and honeybun. Everything about Verona Beach is just picture perfect.
DISLIKES
Because I saw this novel as more of an exploration of mental illness, I kind of wish it didn’t have a romance in it. What Jonah and Vivi each really needed was a good friend to confide in more so than they needed someone to flirt with and date. Their relationship was still cute at times, but I think the story could have been even more powerful and memorable than it already is if it had been more about friendship. Just a personal preference though and the romance didn’t diminish my love of the story.
FINAL THOUGHTS
If you’re looking for a fun summer read, I’d honestly say that this probably isn’t the best choice. Even though that romance is there, it’s definitely not the focus of When We Collided. If you’re looking for a thoughtful read that gives an honest look into what it’s like to live with bipolar disorder and/or depression, then When We Collided would be a great choice.
RATING: 4 STARS
About Emery Lord
“Hi! I’m Emery. I’m the author of four novels about teenage girls: OPEN ROAD SUMMER, THE START OF ME & YOU, WHEN WE COLLIDED, and THE NAMES THEY GAVE US. I was born near a harbor on the East coast and raised near a beach, an ocean, a great lake, and the Ohio River. I’m a longtime Cincinnatian, where we love good beer, good music, and our public library. I’m married to a scientist who shuts down every wedding dance floor, and we are owned by two rescue dogs. I believe in the magic of storytelling, Ferris wheels, and you.” – Emery Load, in her own words