Kat C

Room by Emma Donahuge

July 30, 2016 Leave a Comment

Since Brie Larson took home an Academy Award for the film adaptation of this book, I finally decided to give it a read on audio. Room is told from the point of view of 5-year-old Jack, a boy who has lived his entire life in captivity with his mom in a shed.

I did this on audio and at first I was like nope, nope, nope when I heard narrator Michal Friedman’s 5-year-old boy voice. But once you settle into the story– it works. I think the little boy voice is close to her speaking voice because she has also done some chicklit with a similar tone. She did a great job and her voice is so unique. I was sad to see she died a year after this came out

…

Read this Post

Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters

July 5, 2016 Leave a Comment

With all the discussion surrounding #ownvoices and representation in publishing I know some readers will be turned off this book because Ben Winters is White and judging by his Twitter feed is like all of this writer’s woke ex-boyfriends. That said, I saw Attica Locke praising this book and I thought I’d give it a try.

Spike Lee has this mockumentary C. S. A , about an alternate future where slavery never ended. Well, Underground Airlines is in that kind of world. It’s the 2010’s and there are still 4 Southern states where enslaving Black people is legal. We meet Victor, a runaway slave living in the North who has been conscripted by the US Marshall Service to locate and return runaway slaves to their owners. His latest mission takes him to Indianapolis, but he soon discovers this case isn’t all it seems.

…

Read this Post

YA Books I’d Love to See as Anime

May 30, 2016 Leave a Comment

I’m kind of falling out of love with YA movie adaptions, but I think there are so many books that would make some great anime ! With the right animation and voice acting I can see these YA books coming to life in a whole new way.

Anime is all about the blue hair don’t care

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

I have two reasons for this pick 1.) a live action movie would have to be very expensive to get the chimeras right and 2.) Karou has blue hair ! From Pokemon to Sword Art Online, anime is the trope codifier forYou Gotta Have Blue Hair.

…

Read this Post

For The Record by Charlotte Huang

May 25, 2016 Leave a Comment

Release Date: November 10, 2015

Pages: 320 pages

Genre: Contemporary YA

Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers

Chelsea Ford gets the opportunity of her dreams, when she is asked to step in as the lead singer of the rock band Melbourne for their summer tour. While she has chemistry with the band onstage the same can’t be said for offstage. Chelsea’s struggles to be accepted by her three male band members and it doesn’t help when teen heartthrob actor, Lucas Rivers, takes a liking to Chelsea.

Teen drama ensues as the band travels from city to city. The deeper into the summer they go the less sure the band is that it will still be together by the end.

The heart of this story is in the details. I saw on Huang’s website that her husband has connections to the music industry , so she has probably seen so much of what she is writing about. Huang brings to life the landmarks and eclectic venues where the band performs.

Her female characters are allowed to have sexual agency without slut shaming. Huang swiftly subverts the asexual Asian trope by having the band’s Chinese member, Malcolm Ho, be the biggest ladies man.

Soapy, flirty and fun this story of life in the spotlight will have readers ready to rock.

…

Read this Post

Kat’s Top 5 BEA Books

May 23, 2016 Leave a Comment

This year at BookExpo America I connected with a lot of publishers and heard about ALL the books. Out of all the books I heard about here are the ones I can’t wait to read /get my hands on.

…

Read this Post

The Scorpion Rules by Erin Bow

May 4, 2016 Leave a Comment

I’m kind of on a science fiction fantasy YA kick now and The Scorpion Rules has to be one of the most unique speculative YA books I’ve read in a long time.

In a world where global warming is here and territory wars have run rampant, the UN turns to an artificial intelligence named Talis to create solution for peace. Going rouge, Talis starts incinerating cities of warring countries via satellite and makes new rules for humanity; each country’s leader must give one of their children to him and if that country wants to go war that child will be killed as a sacrifice.

400 years later, 17-year-old Greta Gustafsen Stuart, Crown Princess of the Pan Polar Confederacy (so, like Canada) is one of those children. She has spent a majority of her life in the isolated school with the rest of the hostages. Greta and her cohorts accept their fate as hostages with dignity and spend their days in intense study hoping they won’t be called on to die. That is until Elián Palnik, a hostage from the newly formed country shows up. He doesn’t play by the rules and makes Greta question everything she’d ever accepted.

So, it’s basically Dead Poets Society with a cyberpunk twist.

…

Read this Post