Conjuring Raine

Title: Lassiter, Maya.  Conjuring Raine.  Waking Dreams Press, 2010.  Print.

Overview:  Raine has known Joshua all of her life.  He shows up for an hour, a day, and then disappears for months and sometimes years.  For most of Raine's life Joshua has managed to remain elusive and mysterious.  Then, one night, Raine gets drawn into what Joshua does for a living and draws the attention of people who want her hurt.  Now Joshua must protect her while keeping his distance to keep her safe from the demon that's been taking over his body since the day he became a vampire.  The only problem is that Raine doesn't want distance, she wants to get to know this man that she's known all her life without really knowing him.

Critical Analysis:  I read this book as soon as I finished Toby Streams The Universe.  It wasn't until I posted the last two reviews that I realized I'd never posted this one.  While the story of Conjuring Raine is completely different from Toby Streams The Universe it's just as interesting.  The book goes back and forth from Raine's point of view to Joshua's, not only dealing with the present but with their pasts as well.  Through flashbacks you learn not only about Raine and Joshua's past encounters but also who Joshua was before he was a vampire and how he became one.  Another interesting aspect to the story is Joshua's demon, a thing that manifests itself in black veins that grow to cover more and more of Joshua's body as it takes over more control.  The demon speaks to Raine while Joshua sleeps, striking up a bargain with her.  Joshua's past and Raine's present become intertwined in twists and turns that are an intricate as they are surprising.  There's also a great cast of more minor characters including Joshua's best friend and a ruling body of vampires that see over all vampire affairs.

Book Recommendations With Similar Themes:

1. Sunshine by Robin McKinley.  The Voodoo Wars are over and Rae "Sunshine" Seddon thinks she'll be safe visiting her family's abandoned lakeside cabin, a place she wants to go to clear her head.  Unfortunately, that's where a group of vampires find and abduct her to use as bait.  Chained in a room with a starved vampire named Constantine she befriends him and makes an escape but their journey is far from over.  As she fights the vampires who abducted both her and Constantine she learns about her own magical abilities, abilities her grandmother tried to teach her when she was young.

The Nightmarys

Title: Poblocki, Dan.  The Nightmarys.  New York: Random House, 2010.  Print.

Overview: When Timothy July and Abigail Tremens are partnered for a history project they don't realize that their once separate lives are going to become intertwined by waking nightmares.  Both haunted by different horrors - the ghosts of two girls who made Abigail's world a living hell, and a dead and rotted vision of Timothy's brother, Ben - the two come together to find out just what's going on and why they're being haunted.  With the help of Abigail's grandmother they work to find out the truth and put an end to the horror.

Critical Analysis:  From the opening scene this is a book filled with horror and scary things going on.  The style the author uses to describe the details makes the nightmares come to life. It's easy to see exactly what Timothy, Abigail, and the others are seeing.  As the book progresses it becomes harder for the characters to discern the nightmare from reality and keep the two separate.  They must use tricks to keep the nightmares from overtaking them and the fear from paralyzing them.  The book is very much about taking a person's deepest fears and using them against that person.  With elements of magic, the book definitely delivers on the scare factor.  Unlike a lot of horror books it wraps up nicely at the end which I found satisfying.

Book Recommendations With Similar Themes:

1. Rotters by Daniel Kraus.  Joey Crouch lived a life like any other American teenager until an accident kills his mother and he's sent to live with a father he knows next to nothing about.  A father who disappears for days at a time, coming back with strange things he locks in a safe in his room.  His father's profession is anything but legal, most definitely macabre...and Joey's about to learn the family business.

A Monster Calls

Title: Ness, Patrick.  A Monster Calls.  Massachusetts: Candlewick Press, 2011.  Print.

Overview: Conor awakes one night to find a monster outside his window.  The monster has a strange request: it wants to tell Conor three stories in exchange for a fourth told by Conor himself.  But the fourth story must contain "the truth", something Conor isn't ready to admit to himself much less to this monster.

Critical Analysis: From the synopsis on the back of the book the book seems like a straightforward suspense.  There's a monster, though not the one Conor dreams about on a nightly basis.  So, of course, this will be about scary monsters and filled with horror and suspense, right?  Wrong.  This story isn't a horror novel, but more one of growing and learning  Through the stories the monster tells Conor learns more about his world and about himself as his own world crumbles and his mother battles with cancer.  It's just as much about family as it is about the monster that came calling.

Book Recommendations With Similar Themes:

1. The Giver by Lois Lowry.  Jonas lives in a world where students are given a life assignment once they come of age.  Jonas' life assignment is to become the receiver of memories.  He begins a relationship with The Giver, the town's holder of memories who transfers them to Jonas showing Jonas things he never knew existed.  Through these memories and his time with The Giver he realizes that his perfect world has many dark secrets.

Toby Streams The Universe

Title: Lassiter, Maya.  Toby Streams the Universe.  Waking Dreams Press, 2011.  Print.

Overview: Toby Hay, like his father, grandfather, and a large majority of the Hays that came before him, is psychic.  Like his father, grandfather, and all the other psychic Hays he's slowly losing his mind to the visions.  The most popular way for the Hays to make the visions stop and end the ride into insanity is suicide.  Afraid that he himself is starting to crack, Toby prepares for the worst.  That is until a voice in his head tells him there's another way and that insanity and suicide isn't the only option.

Critical Analysis: The first thing that comes to mind about this book is the imagery.  Along with being able to pick things out of people's minds Toby sees things, like the mermaid protectors swimming around his new neighbor with her own dark past.  The way the author describes what's going on to Toby and the things Toby is seeing paints an extremely vivid picture.  Not only do you get to see what Toby sees, but you get to live what he's living.  I found myself fascinated with the author's way of describing it all.  Besides Toby's journey we also see what the other generations of psychic Hays endured in the Family Histories, entries added to a journal chronicling each person's descent into madness.  Through them Toby learns about the past generations as he's learning about himself.  From stonings to being hanged as witches to multiple suicides the reader also gets to see how the others handled what's happening to Toby and how they were treated by the people around them. And, for once, I didn't see the end coming so it came as a great surprise.  At times the characters can be annoying - Lara's extremely hot and cold, and Maddie can come off as a petulant child - but it's what makes them interesting.

I will say that as soon as I finished reading this book I immediately bought Maya Lassiter's other books, eager to see more of what she has to offer.  I have a feeling I won't be disappointed.

7 Souls

Title: Miller, B. & Orlando, J. 7 Souls.  New York: Delacorte Press, 2010.  Print.

Overview:  Mary Shayne is beautiful, popular, and loved by all.  On her 17th birthday all of that will change.  Waking up naked in a window display at Crate & Barrel is nothing compared to what happens that night.  When Mary is killed she learns that her friends weren't as true as she thought.  After her death she's forced to relive the day that she died with a twist - she's living it as her closest friends, taking over their bodies.  With each one she sees a memory they have of her and a reason they'd want her dead.  Hopefully, if she's lucky, she can figure out who killed her and how to keep it from happening again.

Critical Analysis:  I started reading this book at 11:30pm when I crawled into bed.  A while later I realized I was almost halfway into the book and it was 2:00am.  It was almost painful to stop reading, but my job requires a great deal of patience and coherence, something you can't get on zero sleep.  I turned out the light and found myself awake again at 7:30am unable to go back to sleep because I just had to finish the book.  I got up and finished it with moments to spare before I had to leave for work.

This book was amazing.  Not only is it a thriller, but it has my absolutely favorite thing ever - character growth.  As Mary lives the day she died through the eyes of her friends she learns just what kind of person she is and how she was seen by everyone around her.  The pain she causes others grows as she moves from friend to friend and lives one of their memories of her, a memory of a time she hurt them either knowingly or unknowingly.  I couldn't stop reading and I didn't want to.  The first half of the book records Mary's last day, the day she dies.  You see her image of herself, the way she interacts with the ones around her, and the events leading up to her death.  The second half of the book has Mary "possessing" her various friends and living a moment in their life on the day that she died.  It's a psychological thriller, another thing that's a favorite of mine in both books and movies alike.  In all areas this book delivered and I could be happy reading it again right this minute.

Book Recommendations With Similar Themes:

1. Getting Revenge on Lauren Wood by Eileen Cook.  In 8th grade Lauren did something so horribly humiliating to her best friend, Helen, that Helen's parents packed her up and moved to another city.  Such a huge betrayal isn't easily forgotten and Helen's spent three years obsessing over what happened that day and exactly how to get back at Lauren for it.  Now Lauren's the cheerleading captain, dating the star quarterback, and the most popular girl at school, but not for long.  When Helen moves back she's got a new look, a new name, and a very detailed plan on just how to get back at Lauren for what Lauren did to her.  Revenge is going to be very sweet.

2. Dead Girl Walking by Linda Joy Singleton.  Amber Borden has just had a near-death experience.  Unfortunately, when she recovers she makes a mistake and ends up in the body of the most popular girl at school, a girl who just tried to commit suicide.  Amber isn't sure what could possibly be wrong in such a perfect-looking life that would warrant a suicide attempt, but she's about to find out.  If she can get her classmate on the right track maybe, just maybe, she can get back into her own body.

Desert Angel

Title: Price, Charlie.  Desert Angel.  New York: Farrar Strauss Giroux, 2011.  Print.

Overview: Angel is on the run.  That's okay, running is something she's learned to be good at.  With a string of mother's abusive boyfriends in her life from an early age she's learned to be tough and protect herself.  Always have water, find a safe place to hide, fit in.  These are just some of the things that Angel has learned and after Scotty, her mother's current boyfriend, kills her mother Angel has to put all of her knowledge into action to stay alive.

Critical Analysis: This is a book that had a great potential to be one of those books you read in one sitting.  It wasn't.  I found that the plot lagged and things happened slowly.  After reading Dead Connection and loving it so much I dove into Desert Angel preparing to devour it the way I had with the previous Charlie Price novel.  That just didn't happen.  The characters seemed to all be alike with no real discerning qualities to separate one from the other.  Scotty was at least mildly interesting though instead of showing what he was doing from his point of view a paragraph was tacked onto the end of random chapters saying what Angel had missed (cigarette butts where they shouldn't be, a car that hadn't been there before) in an effort to tell us what Scotty was doing at that time.  I really hoped to love this book, but I was very disappointed.

Book Recommendations With Similar Themes:

1. Jump the Cracks by Stacy DeKeyser.  15-year-old Victoria is on a train to visit her dad.  When, big surprise, he doesn't show up to pick her up from the train station she's there to see a teen mom stash her dirty and bruised little boy in the train bathroom then run.  Fed up with parents who don't take care of their children like they should Victoria picks up the little boy and boards the next outbound train, determined not to let another child fall through the cracks.

2. So B. It by Sarah Weeks.  Heidi's mother is mentally disabled.  The woman only knows 23 words, one of which is the word "soof."  Heidi's never been able to find out what the word meant no matter how many times her mother repeated it.  All she knows is that this word is important to her mother and she needs to find out why.  Taking the little that she owns she heads across the country and finds out not only what "soof" is, but things about her past she never imagined.

The School for Dangerous Girls

Title: Schrefer, Eliot.  The School for Dangerous Girls.  New York: Point, 2009.  Print.

Overview: Hidden Oak is a boarding school and last resort for the most dangerous girls who have nowhere else to go.  Its fine staff of doctors and psychiatrists work hard to turn even the most dangerous girl into a contributing member of society.  The problem?  Some of their methods aren't exactly what you might call humane and some girls are never meant to leave.  As Angela gets further into the Hidden Oak program she finds out more and more secrets the school would do anything to keep hidden and she would do anything to expose.

Critical Analysis: This book was interesting with a side of weird.  It's some kind of strange cross between Girl, Interrupted and Lord of the Flies.  I really enjoyed the characters, each with their own unique "disorder" and personality.  There were parts that had me riveted and parts that left me thinking, "Uh...ooookay."  The plot was interesting, the characters well thought out.  While the staff's treatment of the girls was barbaric at the best of times it was fascinating to read, especially Angela's sessions with the school psychiatrist.  It didn't take me long to read - not because it was simple, but because I just wanted to know what would happen next and who would win.

Book Recommendations With Similar Themes:

1. After by Amy Efaw.  Devon Davenport doesn't remember what happened, but everyone is telling her that she gave birth and left the infant in a dumpster.  Could that be true?  She hadn't even known she was pregnant.  Her entire life she'd been the epitome of maturity and responsibility.  Now she's in lock-up with other girls who have done horrible things and are awaiting their trials.  As she works with her lawyer she pieces together what really happened to her and how she came to be on the front page of every newspaper as the teenager who left her baby to die.

2. Ultraviolet by R.J. Anderson.  16-year-old Alison confessed to murdering Tori Beauregard, the most popular girl at school.  Unfortunately, Tori's body can't be found and Alison can't explain exactly how she killed Tori.  The thing is, Tori disintegrated.  Poof!  One minute they were fighting and the next Tori was just gone.  How can Alison explain what happened when she doesn't even understand it herself?  Committed to a mental institute, she works on figuring out exactly what she's done and what it means.