#CBR10 Book 63: "The Start of Me and You" by Emery Lord

Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 4 stars

#CBR10Bingo: Brain Candy

A year ago, Paige's boyfriend died in a tragic drowning accident, and she is still suffering from nightmares and is known around town as "the girl whose boyfriend died". She hasn't been able to even get near a pool since it happened. It seems like everywhere she goes, she gets "the look" of people who don't really see her, but just associate her with the dead boy she'd dated for two months before his life was tragically cut short.

Determined that she needs to move on and reclaim her life, Paige makes a list of tasks to achieve in the coming school year. She discovers that Ryan Chase, the guy she's crushed on since childhood is suddenly single and with the support of her three best friends, she is convinced that she might have a chance with him. She also wants to become more sociable and go to parties, join some kind of school club, she wants to travel and scariest of all - she need to try to get back in the water and swim.

Of course, life doesn't really neatly a neatly numbered list, and Paige's plan soon takes a few twists and turns. Her grandmother, who has always been super supportive of Paige, and is the only one who knows about her screenwriting career dreams, is starting to take a turn for the worse. Her divorced parents (whose divorce was rather acrimonious) are now dating again - the twist - they are dating each other. While Paige's little sister thinks this is great, Paige, who is old enough to remember how bad they were before they split up, is both upset and worried. Ryan's cousin Max has joined their high school and convinces Paige to join the quiz bowl team, and before long, Paige is spending a lot more time with Max than with Ryan.

While this is yet another of FYA's Swoonworthy Summer Reads, the thing I liked the most about this book (which is one of the many e-books I've bought on sale over the years and then promptly forgotten about) was not actually the romantic subplot, but the close and supportive friendship between Paige and her three best friends. They have been friends since childhood and always have each other's backs, through thick and thin. Tessa, Morgan and Kayleigh were excellent supporting characters and there was never any sense of rivalry, jealousy or cattiness between them.

I found Paige's disgust about her divorced parents suddenly dating very amusing. My own parents decided to stay together "for the kids" for several very awkward years where both my younger brother and I would much have preferred them to live apart, then separated, yet stayed more or less friendly for ten years. The family always celebrated Christmases and other major holidays together, certainly. Then, after a decade of living separately, when my younger brother finally decided to move out, it seems Mum intended to mend things with my Dad (but told NO ONE about this). Dad, because they prior to my brother's decision to move out really had been drifting apart and rarely spoke anymore, took this as a sign that maybe it was time to actually get a divorce. He gave Mum divorce papers to sign, and she (convinced that he had met someone else) signed them (but was really depressed about it). Only after the divorce was actually official did they start communicating properly again and while they are still divorced (and currently live in different countries), now go on vacation together at least once a year and still spend all the major holidays together. So I know of strange parental relationships.

While I agree that both Ryan and Max were pretty dreamy, it would not have hurt the story for the romance subplot to be more prominent in the book. I would say this was a book about female friendships and overcoming grief and trauma, with some romance on the side. I discovered that Emery Lord has a sequel to this book coming out in 2019 though, so maybe I'll get more romance in that book. Fingers crossed.

Judging a book by its cover: I have no idea who chose and approved the cover for this, certainly not anyone who'd read the book. Paige's boyfriend drowned! She has a recurring nightmare about drowning and is terrified of getting near water. There's no way she'd be sitting gazing at the sunset at the side of a body of water - that would pretty much literally be her worst nightmare. Stupid, generic YA cover. Do better, publishers.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR8 Book 120: "Hold Me" by Courtney Milan

Page count: 303 pages
Rating: 4.5 stars

Maria Lopez runs a small niche blog where she imagines apocalyptic disaster scenarios and uses her comprehensive knowledge of science to figure out how to best try to avoid said scenarios. While it used to be just a hobby, and the blog wasn't widely read, recently it's getting a lot more visitors, and Maria has started getting actual job offers. She has kept her real identity closely guarded, so none of the people offering to hire her know that she's a woman, working towards her actuary degree. Maria doesn't really have a lot of friends or family around to support her. There's her roommate Tina, who is also her best friend, there's Angela, who's sometimes more of a chore than a support to Maria, there's her brother and there's her grandmother. She's cautious both professionally and emotionally, because she's been badly hurt in the past.

Jay na Thalang is utterly driven, and he knows he's a genius at what he does. He works hard, never slows down and expects the same kind of all-consuming passion for science from all those who work under him as well. He has a strained relationship with his parents, due to a tragedy in their past, and he barely has any friends, as they never seem to stick around once they realise he barely has time for them. Maria's brother is one of the few people who has still stuck around, and he tries to set Maria and Jay up. It is an absolute disaster. Jay misunderstands why Maria is initially there, and has judged her and found her a frivolous airhead before she has a chance to even speak much. While they both find the other physically attractive, it's pretty much hate at first sight.

What neither Maria nor Jay know, is that they already know each other. Jay is a huge fan of Maria's apocalypse blog, and they've been exchanging messages for nearly a year. Messages that have gone from polite conversation to develop into friendship and possibly even something more. These conversations, where both are hidden behind Internet user names, continue to get more flirtatious, even as Jay and Maria keep running into each other in real life and fanning the flames of their animosity towards one another. Are they ever going to discover the truth?

This is a romance novel. Of course they are going to find out! I was very worried about how Courtney Milan was going to handle it, because in the hands of a lesser author, this situation would be drawn-out and painful and involve lies and added complication. I needn't have worried. In her normal inimitable fashion, Ms. Milan defuses the situation quickly, and while Jay initially considers lying to Maria, once he realises who she really is, he instead confesses exactly who he is to her online, and how he know who she is. He does this, knowing that their many hateful exchanges over the past months may mean that Maria never wants to see him again. He nonetheless doesn't want to lie to her.

Courtney Milan has shown herself to be quite progressive in the past, with both lesbian and homosexual supporting characters in several of her historical novels. She's had inter-racial romances, and several of her heroines have had a scientific background. In this book, the heroine is a Latina trans woman, and the fact that she is trans is never made into a huge issue. The hero is a half-Chinese, half-Thai bisexual man, where again, it's not really made into a big deal that he used to have a boyfriend, now he doesn't. Milan clearly knows a lot about the sort of discrimination and treatment women in the STEM fields face and many of these issues are addressed over the course of this book.

Jay doesn't believe himself to be a sexist, judgemental jerk. He's a big believer in what intelligent and driven women can do, after all, his mother is one of the CEOs of massive tech company Cyclone (think Apple). Yet in his early encounters with Maria, he dismisses her intelligence immediately, because she likes to wear high heels, makeup and dress in pretty clothes. Because she has interests outside of science and likes to talk to her brother about pop culture and entertainment, she can't possibly have valid thoughts or theories science or more serious topics. Through several encounters, Maria makes him see that he is, in fact, very wrong in the way he treats women, even his female grad students, whom he claims to respect and treat equally to his male ones. Jay is deeply unpleasant in the early parts of this book. Frankly, Maria is also quite unpleasant right back at him. Those parts were hard to read and is the main reason why I'm deducting half a star from the rating of this book. Also because I thought the family drama surrounding Jay was a bit contrived, and I find it very strange that it hadn't been resolved way before this book started.

In his defence, even as he desperately wants to dismiss Maria as an airhead, Jay does listen to what she tells him and he does take a long hard look at himself and is unhappy with what he sees. He is already on his way to becoming a less misogynistic, judgemental person when he connects the various dots that have been slowly revealed in the conversations with his online BFF and they all point to Maria. If Jay hadn't taken active efforts to change, he wouldn't begin to be good enough for Maria, who is pretty amazing, even though she has hang-ups and abandonment issues galore.

As well as mostly writing extremely satisfying romances, be they historical or contemporary (there are, sadly, exceptions, I'm looking at you, Once Upon a Marquess and Talk Sweetly to Me), Milan is very good about establishing a believable and enjoyable supporting cast in all of her books. In some of the stories, I like the side characters more than the actual couple. In this book, she introduces us to the somewhat difficult Angela, one of Maria's former room mates, who doesn't seem to be as socially aware as she probably should be, and whose prize science project is a glow in the dark shark. On Milan's website, it is clear that Angela is the heroine in an upcoming novel in the series, and I very much look forward to that. We also get to see Tina and Blake from Trade Me from a new point of view, as well as Blake's foul-mouthed and formidable father, Adam. Maria's relationships with both her brother and her grandmother are very touching and the way her grandmother supported Maria, when her parents couldn't, was one of the many things that brought tears to my eyes while I read the book.

Courtney Milan is more often great than not, and this is one of her really good ones. She features very progressive characters without making their gender identities or sexual preferences in any way a massive part of the story, which is probably the best way to make sure that it becomes more accepted in the mainstream. That is not to say that this is not an important book. Luckily, it's also a very enjoyable and well-written book. For a list of recommendations to Milan's best works, do check out my fellow romance enthusiast, Mrs. Julien's blog.

Judging a book by its cover: I have in vain tried to find out whether the female cover model is actually trans, or whether they just found a Latina woman and figured it was good enough. Considering how progressive Milan, both in her writing and online, I would think she will have tried her best to actually get a trans woman to portray Maria. It's would be such an important step for trans visibility. Is this how I pictured the characters? Not really, but I don't mind, and compared to many of the edited wedding dress photos of Milan's historicals, it's a perfectly nice cover.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR8 Book 117: "The Only Thing Worse Than Me is You" by Lily Anderson

Page count: 352 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Beatrice "Trixie" Watson has two goals for her senior year. She wants to save enough money to buy the collectible Doctor Who figurines at the local comics shop and she intends to knock her nemesis, Benedict "Ben" West down to fourth place in their fancy prep school ranking. The two have always had a tense and antagonistic relationship, going all the way back to when Ben caused Trixie to break her arm on the monkey bars during first grade. This year, she is determined to do everything it takes to crush him academically.

Ben and Trixie's friends, however, are less than thrilled about their decade-long rivalry, which only seems to be getting more mean-spirited with every year. When Trixie's best friend Harper starts dating Ben's best friend, Cornell, they are forced to spend more time in each other's company and their group of friends is adamant that they need to stop the constant sniping, as it's getting on everyone's nerves. Once they start actually talking civilly to one another, they discover that they share many geeky interests and possibly they don't need to savage each other verbally every chance they get.

As the school year proceeds, several students get accused of cheating, an unforgivable offence at a competitive school like Messina Academy for the Gifted. The group think little of it until one day, it seems these people may have been framed, by none other than Harper, who is immediately expelled. Cornell seems to abandon her and Trixie is furious. Will Ben pick Cornell's side or help Trixie investigate and clear Harper's name?

Back in July, Caitlin gave this book 5 stars over on the Cannonball group blog. A clever YA retelling of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, where all the various characters are nerds of all varieties attending a prestigious prep school? They are deeply opinionated about Firefly and Doctor Who (more on that later) and flirt about Saga. How could I not love this? While Caitlin said that all the nerdy references didn't work for her, they were part of what made me really get into the story. It really is so well done, and the modernised take on how Harper/Hero is ruined is much better than ZOMG! She may not be pure as the driven snow! of the original play and they don't actually have to fake anyone's death to resolve things, I was amused and happy throughout the story, with one notable exception.

Lily Anderson is a school librarian and has clearly spent a huge amount of time around teenagers. That much is clear. She's probably done quite a lot of research into the various fandoms she has her characters geek out about. She cannot, however, have spoken to anyone sane about Doctor Who, because in a moment that pretty much felt like a nails down the chalkboard, abrupt record scratch sort of an incident, she has her two main characters discussing their favourite Doctor Who episodes. Trixie claims her favourite episode is the Neil Gaiman-scripted The Doctor's Wife. As this is also my favourite, so far, so identifiable. Then Ben proceeds to say that no, his favourite episode is Nightmare in Silver (also scripted by Gaiman).

And I almost had to throw my e-reader across the room. I interrupted my focused Read-a-thon reading to rant loudly at my husband (the biggest Doctor Who fan I know) about this for some time, and it made me so sad, because up until that point, this book was well on its way to becoming a five star read. But no one in the history of ever who has actually watched the show and knows anything about how the episodes are recieved would have a character claim Nightmare in Silver was their favourite episode. It may have been written by Neil Gaiman, but it's also acknowledged by Gaiman himself, and Steven Moffat, the current showrunner, as a failure of execution and it's frequently rated as one of the least popular in the show's fifty year history in fan polls. As well as ranting to the husband about it, I posted about my outrage on Goodreads, and got support from others that this wasn't just a plotline choice that bothered me, but seemed baffling to others, as well.

I did stick with the book, although more filled with scepticism and distrust than before. The various twists and turns of the original play really are very well modernised and while I'm not entirely sure about the motivation of the person who is eventually revealed to be behind framing Harper, as I said, no one had to fake their death and there was a lot less judgemental virtue-shaming. The book clearly takes inspiration from great movies like Mean Girls and 10 Things I Hate About You. Even two months later, the complete failure on the author's part to properly research Doctor Who still upsets me, though. To someone less nerdy than me, this will probably not be such a big deal. If you like Shakespeare and/or cleverly written YA, give this book a try.

Judging a book by its cover: With two characters whose lives revolve around nerdy and geeky things and their weekly visits to the local comics shop, and who fall in love while discussing Saga, it seems very appropriate to have a cover evoking comic book panels. The leg up pose while kissing is possibly a bit cheesy, but I'll let it slide. Unlike that thing with Nightmare in Silver. Which is unforgivable!

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR8 Book 2: "Geek Girl" by Holly Smale

Page count: 385 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Harriet Manners is a geek. If she wasn't already painfully aware of the fact, and her less than stellar social status among her fellow teens, someone helpfully wrote the word in big red letters on her satchel. She does have a very good friend, and the ardent admiration of Toby, the only kid in school geekier and more socially inept than she is. When Harriet is spotted by a modelling agency, she is confused and conflicted. Becoming a model has been the dream of her best friend Nat for practically forever, so it feels wrong for Harriet to suddenly steal said dream. On the other hand, becoming a fashion model might give her a chance to reinvent herself and show to the kids in school that she's more than some unpopular dork.

Of course, being a supermodel isn't all that easy, especially not for someone completely unfamiliar with make-up or walking in heels. It quickly turns out that fashion models are even more vicious and back-stabbing than the teenagers in school (quelle surprise!) and virtual nobody Harriet coming in to become the face of one of the most coveted modelling jobs in the world isn't going to make her more popular among the competitive women. She also keeps running into Nick, the most beautiful boy she's ever seen, and already an established model. Considering he's the male face of the same campaign she's been hired on, it's rather awkward when she can barely speak in full sentences around him.

Then there's keeping track of the lying. Harriet's step-mother, high-powered attorney Annabel, doesn't want her to become a model. Nat has always wanted to become a model, how will she feel if Harriet steals that dream away from her? Harriet's father decides that it may be best to lie to them until Harriet is back from her first modelling gig (in Moscow!), but of course it's difficult to cover up something that is written about in all the newspapers. They come home to discover that Annabel has packed her things and left them, and Nat no longer wants to speak to Harriet. Left only with the advice of her loyal stalker, Harriet and her dad attempts to get their lives back on track.

I saw this book highly recommended over on Forever Young Adult, and when it became available in an e-book sale AND fit into my Monthly Key Word Challenge for January, it seemed like fate. Going back to work after being off sick either partially or completely for most of October and November was HARD, you guys. I had so much to catch up on, and to make matters worse, the deadline to log all the end of term grades was set a week earlier than I was expecting. That meant that I needed light and undemanding entertainment for the few moments when I wasn't working on last minute assessment or grading, and this book fit the bill admirably.

It's absolutely a young adult book, and probably meant for younger teens rather than older, more sophisticated readers. I liked that the author is British, and hence there were a lot of British English terms I don't normally come across in my reading of YA, which tends to be American in origin. Harriet is a nice girl, and I totally related to her social ineptitude, while I was never quite as much of a pariah as her in secondary or high school. I had my own little crow of nerds to hang out with. I do know that going along to look at all things fashionable when you just want to stay home and read would be pretty nightmarish, as would the life of high fashion.

Apparently, Holly Smale herself was discovered by a modelling agency at the age of fifteen, so while things may be exaggerated for comic effect, I have no doubt that some of the things in the book are true to life. My only experience with fashion is the coverage of fashion shows on Go Fug Yourself, or the episodes I watched every now and then of America's/Sweden's/Norway's Next Top Model. It wouldn't surprise me at all that a teenage girl could go from unknown one day to the face of one of the biggest fashion campaigns in the world over the course of about a week.

My biggest niggle with this book was the way in which Toby, Harriet's self-proclaimed stalker, is handled. He's not just some random school friend who admires her from afar and is excited if they happen to share classes or end up on the same school bus together. Nope, there is a Toby-shaped hole worn in the hedge outside Harriet's house and he knows pretty much every aspect of her life and daily routine to a point where it made me very uncomfortable, even though he's clearly portrayed as someone completely harmless and only occasionally annoying. That Harriet's friends, teachers and parents appear aware of his obsession but have done nothing about it, baffled me.

There's a whole series of these books, with the continuing adventures of Harriet in the fashion world. I really liked her friendship with Nat and the portrayal of the parents, not to mention Wilbur, the over the top modelling agent who discovers her. I will therefore probably check out more books in the series, to see how things progress. Forever Young Adult were right to recommend the book.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR7 Book 83: "You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost)" by Felicia Day

Page count: 288 pages
Audio book length: 6 hrs 17 mins
Rating: 4.5 stars

I'm trying to recall where I first encountered Felicia Day. I think it may in fact have been on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where she played one of the many potential slayers in season seven. I know I saw her in Dr Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog (true story, on our honey-moon seven years ago, I declined to go out and explore Stockholm with my husband until I had used the hotel wi-fi - which was really rather slow - to download and watch the second episode) before I actually watched and got completely hooked on The Guild.

I've known of and admired Felicia Day for a long time, is what I'm saying. I've been a member of her online book club, Vaginal Fantasy since it started, and one of the highlights of my month is watching her and her co-hosts talk about fantasy and/or sci-fi romance. I've probably watched most of the stuff she's put out on the web, including Co-Optitude, where she plays video games with her brother. So naturally I was going to pre-order this book. I chose to get the audio book, so Felicia herself could read me her memoir.

While I knew that Felicia Day was a good actress in the things I'd seen her in, as well as extremely smart, creative, fond of video games and romance and an internet entrepreneur, I learned so many new things about her from this book. That she and her brother were home-schooled, that she went to college at sixteen and ended up with a double major in violin and mathematics, or that the reason she cut her hair in a pixie cut a while back (which she, naturally, as a woman on the internet got so much hate about) was because stress and other very serious medical issues made her hair fall out in clumps.

I suspect that even if you don't really know who Felicia Day is, you'll enjoy this book. She's very honest and open and recounts stories from her life and her many impressive achievements in a very entertaining way. Being a successful woman in the social media age is not easy, being a successful woman who dares to have an interest in and opinions of video games on the internet has made her the target of a lot of hate and harassment. She's very forthcoming about her anxieties, the two years she was completely addicted to World of Warcraft, her obsessions and what drives her. I found her impressive and admirable before, now I'm very much in awe of her. This is not a funny celebrity autobiography like Bossypants or Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, although there are absolutely bits that made me laugh out loud. The closest comparison I can think of is Jenny Lawson's book, but they're really not all that similar.

This isn't a very long book, I listened to it in less than twenty-four hours. It pretty much made me feel all the feels and I can highly recommend it.
Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

CBR4 Book 12: "Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline

Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 5 stars
Date begun: February 2nd, 2012
Date finished: February 5th, 2012

In the year 2044, most of the world has pretty much gone to hell. Most of humanity spend the majority of their available time hooked into OASIS, the virtual reality environment that contains any world or environment you could possibly imagine. As his real life involves being an orphan being raised by a greedy aunt in a dilapidated trailer park, Wade Watts' only chance at escape from his dismal existence means completing the ultimate quest, set down by James Halliday, the creator of OASIS, upon his death. The first person to unravel the riddles posed in his video will, and solve the various puzzles, will inherit his entire staggering fortune.

Wade is a gunter (short for egg hunter), one of the many who have dedicated their lives to finding Halliday's golden egg. Halliday loved anything relating to the 1980s and nerd trivia, and Wade has played all the computer games, watched all the TV shows and movies, read all the comic books and exhaustively studied anything to do with Halliday and his life, in an attempt to figure out where the first key is hidden. Being young and poor, he's not really able to travel much within the OASIS, he can only really stay on the educational planet where he goes to school. But one day, nearly dozing off in Latin class, he realizes that the location of the first challenge may indeed be located nearby.

As Wade becomes the first gunter to appear on the giant virtual scoreboard in the OASIS, the entire world's attention is suddenly turned towards him. He's no longer an unknown nobody, he's a person to be reckoned with, and there are powerful forces in the world willing to kill to reach Halliday's prize first. Soon Wade finds himself homeless, hunted and in danger for his life, simply because his encyclopedic knowledge of Halliday trivia has brought him closer to competing the quest. Can he defeat the evil corporation, prove himself worthy to the girl he loves, and win the ultimate game once and for all?

Ready Player One is stuffed full of nerd and geek references, and while I grew up watching my brothers play many of the computer games referenced, and watching the movies and listening to the music mentioned, I didn't even get a fraction of the stuff Cline has crammed into his debut novel. To fully appreciate and really enjoy the book, I suspect you have to actually remember the 1980s, it just won't resonate with you otherwise. While I thought the book had a slow start, and it took me a few chapters to really warm to Wade and get interested in the world he lived in, once the plot really got going, I was completely hooked. Reading it is a bit like playing a computer game, with end of level bosses, and new and bigger challenges until the final climax. Part dystopian sci-fi, part adventure, part romance and part thriller, Ready Player One was a delight to read, and I join the ranks of devoted fans of the novel. I can't wait to see what Cline writes as his follow up book.