I cannot believe I forgot to post a review on this, especially now when I'm trying so hard to be more frequent! Prepare for more "I forgot" blog posts as I read quite a bit in 2018 but I only wrote occasionally here. I didn't even post on Goodreads, I just read books and never reviewed or kept track of them. Me! Someone who likes to track everything and loves Bullet Journaling!

That was a side note. Anywho.

Sky in the Deep written by Adrienne Young was a phenomenal story narrated by the incomparable Khristine Hvam. I should have recognized this narrator's voice as I loved her for the Daughter of Smoke and Bone series (I still have book 3 to listen to on Audible - these are the problems of a supposedly voracious book reader. There is just never enough time).

In this Viking tale, Eelyn is a loyal warrior of her clan who rivals with another clan centuries old, but when she sees her brother alive and fighting side-by-side with the rival clan on a battlefield five years after his supposed death, everything she once knew as the truth has been turned upside down.

This is a solid and exciting story of a very strong young lady who has to come to some acceptance that her brother is still alive, and with their rival clan. The betrayal she feels that he was always alive is palpable and heartfelt, and since she has to live with them during an impossibly difficult time to travel back to her own Viking clan, she also has to somehow live side-by-side with her sworn enemies. During this time, she comes to learn even more, and especially from her brother's best friend, Fiske. I was swept up in this story and especially loved how satisfyingly tough Eelyn was, without being overbearing and impossible to believe. Adrienne Young's writing has me looking forward to the companion novel.

And another side note: It's so refreshing to read these young adult stories nowadays with such strong female lead characters, and I know I would have enjoyed this when I was younger, considering I really wanted to be Luke Skywalker. What would the world be like today if stronger female representation was more consistent and natural in books, and other media, thirty years ago? Who knows, right?

About the Author (from her website)

Adrienne Young is the New York Times Bestselling author of Sky in the Deep and the upcoming The Girl the Sea Gave Back. A born and bred Texan turned California girl, she is a foodie with a deep love of history and travel and a shameless addiction to coffee. When she’s not writing, you can find her on her yoga mat, scouring antique fairs for old books, sipping wine over long dinners, or disappearing into her favorite art museums. She lives with her documentary filmmaker husband and their four little wildlings beneath the West Coast sun.

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The first installment of The Folk of the Air series, The Cruel Prince by Holly Black brings young adult fantasy to a fun and thrilling level at a time when I needed it the most.

When Jude is abducted by her real father in the human world after he murders her human parents, he spirits her and her two sisters away into the High Court of Faerie, Jude spends ten years learning to love this new world and even this father, a man who took away the only parents she ever knew. It is a world filled with magic and courts and secrets and thrilling twists and turns, a world that completely fulfilled my need to escape my reading slump. Not many turn to this category when a reading slump happens, and not many even care one bit about young adult books or fantasy tales when we are in our older years, but I'd like to remind you that most of us love Game of Thrones (actually called A Song of Ice and Fire series) by George R.R. Martin. And when once we were all young, we read Judy Blume, or Go Ask Alice for tough subjects, we read J.K. Rowling, or J.R.R. Tolkien, and we loved books and movies like The Neverending Story, The Princess Bride, or  (What? I never wrote a review of this??) and one of my favorites, Something Wicked This Way Comes and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Back to this one, though (and I hope I've convinced you to give Young Adult fantasy tales a try). Holly Black's writing was exciting, toggling us between the land of faerie and the land of humans, graduating the audience from one level of Jude's plans to another, and I eagerly awaited each shift in scene when Jude's plans for knighthood are thwarted and she instead is thrust into a completely different world of games of politics and strategy. When the cruelest prince of them all, Prince Cardan is in line for the kingdom, surprise and shocking changes ensue when Jude's own father becomes more involved in a scheme unexpected by all.

Holly Black is a fantastic writer and The Cruel Prince makes me pine for the second installment, The Wicked King, which I believe is out now but I have to check my library app. The audiobook was narrated by Caitlin King, and many of you may know her voice as she has a bajillion books she's narrated (click here to see the available titles on Audible.com). The Cruel Prince is 12 hours and 36 minutes, and so many people say to me, "I can't sit that long and listen to a book." Yeah, me neither. I don't know many people who do. So since I do a ton of errands and drive my car and clean the house and do yard work, that's when I listen to audiobooks and podcasts, and my life is more enriched because of it. Check out Holly Black's The Cruel Prince or listen to the audiobook, and have a fantastic time. Can't wait for this to be turned into a mini-series of some sort.

About the Author (from her website)

Holly Black is the author of bestselling contemporary fantasy books for kids and teens. Some of her titles include The Spiderwick Chronicles (with Tony DiTerlizzi), The Modern Faerie Tale series, The Curse Workers series, Doll Bones, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, The Magisterium series (with Cassandra Clare) and The Darkest Part of the Forest. She has been a a finalist for an Eisner Award, and the recipient of the Andre Norton Award, the Mythopoeic Award and a Newbery Honor. She currently lives in New England with her husband and son in a house with a secret door.

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I just finished The Moon and More and it was my first time reading young adult author Sarah Dessen (@sdessen) and it won’t be my last, no doubt about that. Why have I waited so long to read her work? I will not make that mistake again.

Emaline is smart and ambitious, wanting more out of life in the last summer before she leaves the small touristy beach town she’s lived in her whole life for college and is feeling extremely guilty about it at the same time. She’s got a great family and a great boyfriend, but things take a different direction when her biological father comes to town to settle matters at a beach house, bringing her younger half-brother with him. She’s never had a relationship with either of them, except for disappointments from her absent father, especially recently when things seemed to round the bend whenever they discussed her education and college and her future. There’s also a filmmaker in town to put together a documentary on a local friend they never knew was an artist, and working on the film is an intern who makes things even more complicated for her after her boyfriend of three years lets her down. And throughout it all, there is a sense of an internal foundation Emaline has that anchors her, keeps her grounded through the pain of disappointments from what it seems like just about everyone.

Wise beyond her years but still young and sometimes naive, this is one of my favorite moments between Emaline and her mother that I think encapsulates life overall:

"But you’re right. You’re a big girl now. I can’t protect you anymore from everything. Especially yourself." She looked away, then back at me, taking a step forward. "But know this, Emaline. The mistakes you make now count. Not for everything, and not forever. But they do matter, and they shape you. If you take nothing else from what I’ve been through, at least remember this: make your choices well. Because you’ll always be accountable for them. That’s what being an adult is all about."

 FTC Disclosure: I checked this book out of the public library.

About the Author

Sarah Dessen is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of over a dozen novels for teens, which have received numerous awards and rave reviews. Her books have been published in over thirty countries and have sold millions of copies worldwide. She is the recipient of the 2017 Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association for outstanding contribution to young adult literature for her novels: Keeping the Moon, Dreamland, This Lullaby, The Truth about Forever, Just Listen, Along for the Ride, and What Happened to Goodbye. Her newest novel, Once and for All, will be released in June 2017. An NC native, she currently lives in Chapel Hill with her family.

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Called the "Watergate of the high school level" by the National Council of Teachers of English in 1975 when The Chocolate War was first published, it's amazing to see how thirty-seven years has not changed much when it comes to the banning of books. It is startling at times when you consider how books are a target, and that seemingly thoughtful individuals can be pulled into the fray of banding together to support censorship. Surprising and disconcerting, to say the least, but I like to use the word frightening.

About twenty years ago, browsing the library in a small town in Maryland, I came across The Chocolate War. Intrigued, I checked it out and read it in one night, paging as fast as I could to find out what was to happen in this bully-filled boys' school in Massachusetts. It kept me up half the night, reading in my room by the hallway light. I was struck by this seemingly simple story of a school tasked to sell thousands of boxes of chocolates in order to satisfy the administrators, but I soon realized it was much more. Diving into issues that are still relevant today such as bullying and peer pressure, The Chocolate War is a reminder that not wanting to get involved can sometimes be much much worse.

I read this for Banned Book Week, hosted by Sheila at Book Journey, and I'm so glad I did. This is the 30th anniversary of Celebrating the Freedom to Read, and if you'd like to get a little more information from the American Library Association, click here or here. Reading The Chocolate War gave me a chance to walk down my bookish memory lane and to celebrate creativity, the honesty that writing can bring to the forefront things no one wants to talk about. The Chocolate War is a brilliant and insightful cut into high school life and it is timeless.

Jerry Renault is a freshman in high school, trying to secure a spot on the football team. After moving into an apartment with his father following his mother's painful battle against cancer, Jerry's sad memories are put to the side in order to concentrate on school. When the Vigils, a group of boys notorious for their "assignments" to students that result in outrageous pranks, assigns Jerry the task to not sell chocolates, Jerry takes it further by going longer than assigned, ultimately defying both the school's corruption and the Vigils. It is a story that reminds one to, no matter how difficult, not always follow peer pressure and to remember that one individual can, in fact, really change things. It may be dangerous, as in Jerry's case, but it may be the right thing to do.

And speaking of the right thing to do, let's talk about corruption. It surprises me that this book would ever be banned because Jerry's silent defiance against the corrupt school administrator, Brother Leon and Andrew of the Vigils, might be an uplifting story teenagers should read. It's an opportunity to stretch their minds, to really think about what is right and wrong, to openly discuss how people can be led astray so easily because "everyone else" feels a certain way. It might be tough to go against the grain, and sometimes it might be tough to even shift your thinking from what everyone else thinks you should be doing, to what you know to be right. The level of control exerted by varying age groups in this book is astounding, but it is not far at all from reality. To ban a book like this, or any book that makes one think, is book-blasphemous. Is there language in the book? Yes. Are there sexual images portrayed? Yep. Do teenagers talk and do the things that are in this book? Sure do. But do we really want to hide our heads in the sand and think that the book is the sole reason that puts ideas into kids' heads? Come on now. The Chocolate War is a gritty expose of high school corruption, of bullying,  ego, control, our primitive lust for barbaric events, and what happens when people abuse authority.

For those out there who are considering removing a book, please think hard. Re-examine what makes your opinion the right one over someone else's. What authority might you have to determine society's moral compass?

Passages of Note:

"Simple, Carter, simple." Archie reveled in the moment, basking in Carter's admiration, Carter who had humiliated him at The Vigils meeting. Someday he'd get even with Carter but at the moment it was satisfying enough to have Carter regarding him with awe and envy. "You see, Carter, people are two things: greedy and cruel. So we have a perfect set-up here. The greed part - a kid pays a buck for a chance to win a hundred. Plus fifty boxes of chocolates. The cruel part - watching two guys hitting each other, maybe hurting each other, while they're safe in the bleachers. That's why it works, Carter, because we're all bastards." (p.231)

Carter disguised his disgust. Archie repelled him in many ways but most of all by the way he made everybody feel dirty, contaminated, polluted. As if there was no goodness at all in the world. And yet Carter had to admit that he was looking forward to the fight, that he himself had bought not one but two tickets. Did that make him like everybody else - greedy and cruel, as Archie said? The question surprised him. Hell, he'd always thought of himself as one of the good guys. He often used his position as president of The Vigils to keep control of Archie, to prevent him from going overboard on assignments. But did that make him one of the good guys? The question bothered Carter. That's what he hated about Archie. He made you feel guilty all the time. Christ, the world couldn't be as bad as Archie said it was. But hearing the shouts of the kids in the bleachers, impatient for the fight to get underway, Carter wondered. (p.232)

FTC Disclosure: I checked this book out from my local Virginia Beach library.

Giveaway (ending October 7th) - One copy of Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War.
(For US residents only due to shipping costs.)

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