Books and Sensibility

We're an Open Book

YA Science Fiction

Book Review: What’s Left of Me by Kat Zhang

     8 Comments

 

  • Release Date: September 18th 2012
  • Pages: 352
  • Genre: Alternate Universe
  • Publisher: HarperCollins

 

Synopsis: Eva and Addie started out the same way as everyone else—two souls woven together in one body, taking turns controlling their movements as they learned how to walk, how to sing, how to dance. But as they grew, so did the worried whispers. Why aren’t they settling? Why isn’t one of them fading? The doctors ran tests, the neighbors shied away, and their parents begged for more time. Finally Addie was pronounced healthy and Eva was declared gone. Except, she wasn’t . . .
For the past three years, Eva has clung to the remnants of her life. Only Addie knows she’s still there, trapped inside their body. Then one day, they discover there may be a way for Eva to move again. The risks are unimaginable-hybrids are considered a threat to society, so if they are caught, Addie and Eva will be locked away with the others. And yet . . . for a chance to smile, to twirl, to speak, Eva will do anything



What’s Left of Me by Kat Zhang has to be one of the most hotly anticipated YA novels of 2012. This book has been on Books and Sensibility’s radar since we featured Zhang in our 25 Under 25 feature and the young author does not disappoint with her debut YA novel.

In the world of What’s Left of Me, everyone is born with two souls and in early childhood the dominate soul takes over and the recessive one fades away. It’s completely natural, normal and expected. Only, in the case of Eva and Addie, Eva is a recessive soul that never settles. She refuses to fade away and when doctors declare only Addie to be left, Eva’s exostence becomes a secret only Addie know. Being a hybrid, having two souls is illegal and considered dangerous so the sisters work together to keep their closely guarded secret. But, when Addie meets Halley, the new girl in school the girls learn that they are not the only hiding hybrids, but this knowledge may cost them everything.

…

Read this Post

Audiobook Reivew : Pure By Julianna Baggott

     5 Comments

  • Publication Date : Feburary 8th 2012
  • Genre : Post-Apocalyptic 
  • Pages : 431
  • Audiobook Length : 14 hours 9 minutes
  • Publisher : Grand Central Publishing (Imprint Hachette Book Group)

 . . . Pressia barely remembers the Detonations or much about life during the Before. In her sleeping cabinet behind the rubble of an old barbershop where she lives with her grandfather, she thinks about what is lost-how the world went from amusement parks, movie theaters, birthday parties, fathers and mothers . . . to ash and dust, scars, permanent burns, and fused, damaged bodies. . .There are those who escaped the apocalypse unmarked. Pures. They are tucked safely inside the Dome that protects their healthy, superior bodies. Yet Partridge [feels] . . . Different. He thinks about loss . . . that this Dome has become a swaddling of intensely rigid order. . . When Pressia meets Partridge, their worlds shatter all over again.

Pure is the ultimate survivalist story

I started reading the galley of this book a few months ago and  found its  vivid descriptions and imagery a little dark; or as Kat said on Twitter “It makes The Hunger Games look like a Disney film.” However, I’m glad I gave this book a second change.

Pure is one of the best post-apocalyptic novels I’ve read all year. It mixes what YA survivalist novels like Eve by Anna Carey and Under The Never Sky by Veronica Rossi  have done, but in such a uniquely dark and unbound way. It takes the story of the protected “insider” meets the savage “outside world” and turns it completely on its head.

…

Read this Post

Audiobook Review: Tempest by Julie Cross

     5 Comments

  • Release Date: January 17th 2012 
  • Pages: 334
  • Audiobook: 10 hours 51 minutes
  • Genre: Science Fiction
  • Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin

Synopsis:  The year is 2009.  Nineteen-year-old Jackson Meyer is a normal guy… he’s in college, has a girlfriend… and he can travel back through time. But it’s not like the movies – nothing changes in the present after his jumps, there’s no space-time continuum issues or broken flux capacitors – it’s just harmless fun.That is… until the day strangers burst in on Jackson and his girlfriend, Holly, and during a struggle with Jackson, Holly is fatally shot. In his panic, Jackson jumps back two years to 2007, but this is not like his previous time jumps. Now he’s stuck in 2007 and can’t get back to the future. 

Forget everything you know about time travel. It’s 2009 and  19-year-old Jackson Meyer can travel through time, but it’s nothing too exciting; until the day he gets stuck in the past. 

This book is interesting because it falls more into the New Adult category than Young Adult. Our protagonist, Jackson is a  student at NYU  and falls into the older side of YA protagonists at 19. His girlfriend Holly, an NYU freshman,  doesn’t know he can time travel and is the basic pretty, middle class girl with standards and  modesty about her success. 

I knew this book has lukewarm ratings so I was hoping the audiobook would help me like it more. I found the narrator to be spotty and at times his voice for a character would become inconsistent. Some of his voices were even kind of annoying.  His voice for Holly’s friend Jana was just so ridiculous I couldn’t take it seriously.

…

Read this Post

Book Review : Cinder By Marissa Meyer

     4 Comments

  • Release Date: January 3, 2012
  • Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
  • Genre: Fantasy/Sci-Fi
  • Pages: 387
  • Audiobook hours: 10 hours 6 minutes

Synopsis : Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. . [Cinder is] a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future


…

Read this Post

Book Review : Across The Universe

     8 Comments

“A leader doesn’t make pawns – he makes people.” 

― Beth Revis, Across the Universe

Synopsis : Amy is a cryogenically frozen passenger aboard the vast spaceship Godspeed. She expects to awaken on a new planet, 300 years in the future. But fifty years before Godspeed‘s scheduled landing, Amy’s cryo chamber is unplugged. . .
Now, Amy is caught inside an enclosed world where nothing makes sense.Godspeed‘s passengers have forfeited all control to Eldest, a tyrannical and frightening leader, and Elder, his rebellious and brilliant teenage heir.All she knows is that she must race to unlock Godspeed‘s hidden secrets before whoever woke her tries to kill again.

I was a little nervous about starting this book because I’ve always been wary of true to form sci-fi, and my previous adventure in sci-fi “spaceship” YA fiction didn’t go very well. However, Across The Universe has changed my mind completely.

…

Read this Post