Gemini Bites by Patrick Ryan

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Rating: 3/5 stars.

Overall, a cute, funny, not-so-serious story about two siblings fighting for a mysterious guy who might have supernatural abilities. Here’s a quote I liked:

“I stared out at the dark orange field surrounding us, and my heart was in my ears now, whump, whump, whump, and I had this totally moronic sequence of thoughts: Something gay is about to happen here. This spot will forevermore be the place where you had your first gay encounter. People will live here one day, in a nice big house, and never know they’re living on a sacred ground of gayness.”

Judy and Kyle Renneker, sixteen-year-old fraternal twins in a family of nine, have competed with one another throughout their lives. Judy has always been a jerk, and her latest scheme involves seducing an attractive, religious boy by pretending to be Christian. Kyle recently came out to his family and more or less desires a boyfriend. Things get shaken up when Garret Johnson, a strange and slightly vampiric guy their age, decides to reside in the attic of their house for a short amount of time.

Patrick Ryan could have taken Gemini Bites in many different directions.

Every Day by David Levithan

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Rating: 4/5 stars.

If you stare at the center of the universe, there is a coldness there. A blankness. Ultimately, the universe doesn’t care about us. Time doesn’t care about us.

That’s why we have to care about each other.

Every day, A wakes up in a different body. A different life. A has gotten used to it by now, but when he encounters Rhiannon, he finds himself falling in love – and farther away from what he’s ever known before.

Levithan just gets better and better. Boy Meets Boy and Love is the Higher Law failed to impress me, but after reading The Lover’s Dictionary and Every Day I can safely say I’m a fan of his. His writing has grown more gorgeous with each novel, and the quote above is one of the many that exemplifies it.

Plot-wise, Levithan focused on two main points in Every Day – A’s supernatural circumstance in which he wakes up in a new body every morning, and A’s romance with Rhiannon.

Silence by Becca Fitzpatrick

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Rating: 3/5 stars.

In the third book of the Hush, Hush series, Nora finds herself in a confusing conundrum when she forgets the past five months of her life. The victim of a veiled kidnapping, nobody really knows where she went or who took her. As she tries to adapt to her changed environment, she slowly and steadily stumbles upon more clues about her forgotten past – including a deadly struggle, and an unforgettable stranger.

Unearthly by Cynthia Hand

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Rating: 4/5 stars.

Unearthly is one of those books that you finish and then forget about in a couple of days. That sounds harsh, but I am not implying that I didn’t enjoy it. I liked Cynthia Hand’s smooth and simple storytelling, though it wasn’t especially memorable.

A lot of people have been talking trash about the young-adult paranormal genre recently, specifically paranormal romance. While I cannot comment on the validity of those criticisms (I’m getting behind on my reading because of school), I can say that the appeal of paranormal stories has been thoroughly exploited and taken advantage of. So much to the point where any book an author writes is subjected to accusations of plagiarism: vampires? Twilight. werewolves? Shiver. fallen angels? Halo, Hush, Hush, and… Heavenly. I don’t agree with these claims, though the books themselves are becoming a bit dull.

That isn’t true of Unearthly, however. Hand’s intertwining of the divine world of the fallen angels and the definitive, human life of Clara Gardner is expertly done. Reading Unearthly is an effortless experience; you can pick up the book, and Hand’s writing will whisk you away into Clara’s story and her struggle to decode who she is. She also, unsurprisingly, has to choose between two attractive guys. If anyone’s curious, I vote Tucker.

The only problem I had reading this book was that I felt no immanency, no sense of conflict or danger. Despite Clara’s purpose and her vision I did not feel compelled to pick up the book and tear through the pages to see what was going to happen next. The climax fell flat for me as well, and its cop-out feel disappointed me even more because the entire book had been leading up to it.

So, if it weren’t for the fact that the book was due back to the library on Wednesday I probably wouldn’t have finished it until today. A good read, but not one that would keep me up at night.

A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb

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Rating: 3.5/5 stars.

I liked this tale of two lurid lovers, but I didn’t enjoy it enough to give it a higher rating.

Laura Whitcomb’s writing was wonderful, considering A Certain Slant of Light is her debut novel. It’s sensational yet sweet, hair-raising yet unhurried – there were a few quotes I took special notice of but now regret not writing down. After quickly scanning the first chapter or two, here’s a quote that I think shows her talent:

“I had two strong and seemingly contradictory sensations. One was a fear of being seen by a mortal – as if beheld naked when you know you are clothed. The other was an almost indescribable sensation of attraction – the vine curling toward the sun’s light in slow but single-minded longing.”

However, I had issues with the plot. While it’s plain to see this book delved deeper into the heart of human emotion than most young-adult books, Whitcomb’s execution of the storyline unsettled me. There was so much going on – Helen and James’s past lives and their struggle to fit into modern society, Jenny and Billy’s current lives, the spiritual side of the story, etc., that I couldn’t connect to the characters. If she had taken a couple of these story elements or conflicts and fleshed them out further, perhaps I would have loved this book instead of merely liking it.

Overall I wanted less, but I wanted more at the same time. I apologize if that’s confusing. Nevertheless A Certain Slant of Light can only be truly understood by a reader possessing an open mind and the maturity to handle some serious stuff, so if that doesn’t sound like you, I would avoid this book. Certainly not a bad read, though.

The Lost Saint by Bree Despain

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Rating: 3.5/5 stars.

Honestly, I do not know why I am giving this book a 3.5 rating when it deserves a slightly lower one.

Not to jump on the “let’s bash paranormal romance by labeling it as a Twilight ripoff” bandwagon, but I have to admit, The Lost Saint was exactly the same as New Moon. Once in love boyfriend grows distant with a mysterious secret, girl is completely clueless and relentlessly questioning, new guy shows up to test the girl’s affection for the original guy… yes, it is all here.

For some reason, I still liked this book though. Probably not because of its originality, because it barely has any, but some mysterious factor I cannot seem to place. Maybe just the overall story itself.

Well, I am too tired to provide adequate reasoning for my rating of this book, but I’ll end with this note: read this if you liked The Dark Divine or Twilight, do not read this if you did not like The Dark Divine or Twilight. That simple.

The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff

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Rating: 2.5/5 stars.

There seems to be a reasonable amount of hype for this book. Honestly, the only reason I picked it up was because one of my favorite authors, Maggie Stiefvater, heartily endorsed it with an extolling review. Did it live up to what I had predetermined it to be? No, not quite.

This is the epitome of a paranormal story gone wrong. Take an interesting concept like faeries that do not belong in the human world but inhabit it anyway, but fail to fill it in with charismatic characters or a scintillating setting. The dearth of amiable characters was what really detracted from the overall appeal of this book.

Another thing that bothered me was how the town accepted what was going on underground so readily. Sure, the author supplied the idea that they ignored it because it made the town pretty, and so on and so forth. But the atmosphere of the city, although discussed in the book, felt so vague I could not even begin to estimate what was truly going on.

If you are into the paranormal genre or are searching for a book with creepy monsters of the night, I would recommend The Replacement. Otherwise, skip this one.