Books and Sensibility

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★★★★

Love is The Drug by Alaya Dawn Johnson

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  • Release Date: September 30th 2014
  • Pages: 352 
  • Genre: Science Fiction
  • Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books (Scholastic)

A few months ago I read Alaya Dawn Johnson’s The Summer Prince as my starting point to support the  We Need Diverse Books campaign and to start including more diverse books in our blog. The Summer Prince started out kind of rocky for me but morphed into an intricate, creative poignant dystopian tale. When I saw Johnson’s next book on NetGalley  I jumped at the chance to review it.

In the political, power-hungry world of Washington D.C. Our main character 18-year-old Emily Bird occupies a curious space as a black upper-class teen in D.C. society. Bird grits her teeth and bares it as her mother, who raised herself up from the lower-income Northeast DC neighborhood, pushes Bird to join the Ivy league crowd whether she wants to or not. But when  Emily loses hours of memories right before a pandemic flu turns D.C into a quarantine zone, she becomes a girl of her own making. With the help of Coffee, the son of a Brazilian diplomat and new friends, they will uncover her memories and who is trying to keep her from remembering….

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Audiobook Review: Noggin by John Corey Whaley

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  • Narrated by Kirby Heyborne
  • Release Date: April 8th 2014
  • Pages: 356
  • Audiobook Hours: 8 hours 45 minutes
  • Genre: Science Fiction ???
  • Publisher: Antheneum Books for Young Readers (Simon & Schuster)

 

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Complicit by Stephanie Khuen

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  • Release Date: June 24th, 2014
  • Genre: Thriller
  • Pages: 256
  • Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin (Macmillan)

Kheun’s 2013 debut, Charm and Strange is in the top 5 books I read this year, and when I saw Khuen had a new book coming out this year I had to get my hands on it! …

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A Matter of Fate: If I Stay by Gayle Foreman & Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

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At first these two books seem worlds away, one a much-praised modern literary classic the other a backlist YA contemporary climbing its way up the NYT bestsellers list with a film release weeks away.  

I found myself reading both books at around the same time and the more I thought about writing the individual reviews, the more I realized these books have a lot in common. Both main characters, Kathy  H. in Never Let Me Go and Mia in If I Stay, are young women trying to figure out their future. While Kathy’s path has been laid out  since  birth Mia gets the opportunity to decide hers.

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At first these two books seem worlds away, one a much-praised modern literary classic the other a backlist YA contemporary climbing its way up the NYT bestsellers list with a film release weeks away.  

I found myself reading both books at around the same time and the more I thought about writing the individual reviews, the more I realized these books have a lot in common. Both main characters, Kathy  H. in Never Let Me Go and Mia in If I Stay, are young women trying to figure out their future. While Kathy’s path has been laid out  since  birth Mia gets the opportunity to decide hers.

…

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The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson

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  • Release Date: March 1, 2013
  • Pages: 289
  • Genre: Science Fiction
  • Publisher: Arthur A. Levine (Scholastic)

June Costa is the best artist in Palmares Três, the lush futuristic pyramid city built a midst a post post-apocalyptic South America. June’s art has always been about expressing herself and the things she loves, but her street art takes on new heights when she teams up with Enki, the 17-year-old reigning summer king of Palarmes Três who, as dictated by tradition, will be sacrificed at the end of the year. 

The Summer Prince is a fairly complex novel, there is just so much going on in this world and society I don’t even know where to begin. The world building can be a bit tough to get into, especially for someone like me coming from a Western world. Johnson’s  world  is so far from anything analogous to American society. The driving force of this novel is the tradition of the summer king; Palmares Três matriarchal society elects one boy to serve as the summer king alongside the Queen and he is sacrificed at the end of the year. The reasoning behind this tradition is a little fuzzy in the book, but this is based on some ancient South American traditions.

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The Last Policeman and Countdown City by Ben H. Winters

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Release Date: January 1, 2012

Pages: 316

Genre:  Adult Mystery

Publisher: Quirk Books

 

 

The story of the first big case for rookie detective Henry Palace could easily be a run of the mill mystery novel. Except in The Last Policeman universe an asteroid, known as Maia, is coming and in six months the planet Earth won’t  exist. They are suddenly  “in a world where the idea of long term consequences had magically disappeared” which also means it’s not the best time to be in law enforcement. But when Palace  suspects foul play during a suicide he strikes out  on his own to solve the murder before time ticks away.

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