The Here and Now by Ann Brashares

*based on an ARC edition

    This is my first foray into the writing of Ann Brashares. I never read the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series (although I loved the movies) so I came into this without any preconceived notions about the type of stories she writes. Here and Now is a lofty endeavour. Time travel, apocalypse, super plagues, love, dictator-like control...this story has it all. And like any story with time travel, it is easier to not think too much into the paradoxes of it all, lest you end up with a headache. I personally love stories that involve time travel; who wouldn't want a chance to go back and change things? So I tend to never over-think it. It's nearly impossible to create a story that involves such things without mistakes.  And while there are a couple here, I may be one of the few who even notice them, because I am one of those annoying types of people. Overall it is very well done, and I can leave it with that.
   To put it into a nutshell, Prenna James and a select amount of people immigrated to 2010 from a period of time about 100 years into the future; a future destroyed by us because we ignored the warning signs of global warming. Most of the future's population is wiped out by dengue fever, and the mosquito is the weapon of mass destruction. It's a subtle and scarily possible message. The group that comes live by a very strict set of 12 rules, and to break those rules leads to no one ever hearing from you again. They have to take vitamins to ward off any 2010 viruses, and "something" about their trip make them barely able to see so they all wear special glasses. There seem to be eyes everywhere, always watching to see if someone slips. Which Prenna does, often, because she is not one to just let things lie. The biggest slip, one of the biggest rules to break, is to fall for a time native...and she does, despite trying so very hard not to. But even her love is more than meets the eye. In fact, nothing is exactly the way it seems- the past, the present, and even the future.
     I enjoyed Here and Now a great deal. It is a very interesting and clever premise, executed with near perfection. I can guess that it is a far cry from Sisterhood, but I, for one, think that is a good thing. 

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

*based on an ARC edition

     I was a lifelong fan of E. Lockhart's since I read The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks. We Were Liars has convinced me that my loyalty is quite deserved. I would read her grocery lists. Her writing flows like silk over water; she has the unique ability to be poetic and lyrical without being in the least bit flowery. One such example stands out, as the narrator describes her cousins and her love. She describes the love of her life as "He was contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee". Her cousin, Johnny- "He is bounce. He is effort and snark." Her cousin, Mirren- "She is sugar. She is curiosity and rain." I have never read anything like the way Ms. Lockhart sees her worlds. It is beautiful and mesmerizing, as is We Were Liars. 
     Cadence Sinclair comes from a family rich enough that having a name actually means something. She is a Sinclair, through and through. In the summers, she and her cousins go to the family's private island with their mothers to stay with their grandparents in order to (at least as far as the mothers are concerned) show who among them loves their grandfather more. It's all about inheritance and blood and the kids couldn't care less. There is one boy, Gat, a dark Middle Eastern boy who comes along because Cadence's aunt is living with his father, and throughout the summers Cadence falls helplessly in love. Then, in summer fifteen (as they call it) something happens. Cadence doesn't remember what. She just remembers that she had an accident that caused brain damage and that there are whole chunks of time she has lost. It takes two years to go back to the island, and nothing is like it used to be. 
    This is a book that just needs to be read. It is beautiful, it is sad, it is tragic, and it is mysterious. It has surprises and shocks. It has characters that are amazingly alive. It holds entertainment and you won't be able to put it down. So go pick it up the second it comes out. 

The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant

*based on an ARC edition

     The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant, all the way up to the end, was a breath of fresh air. Anne Merchant, after finding her mother dead of suicide, is sent by her father to what appears to be a rich boarding school. She's not rich, even though she lived all her life in the ritziest zip code in America; her father is a mortician for the super-wealthy. She's been a freak all her life, ostracized by her classmates. She's never had much contact  with boys, either...unless you count the time she kissed the cheek of  dead boy five years previously. She's an artist as well, and all these things together equal a childhood from hell. After her mother's death it seemed that in order to ensure her future at Brown and her ticket out of freakdom, Anne agrees to be sent to Wormwood Island in Maine, an uber-exclusive boarding school that she has no idea how her father could possibly afford. She discovers that a Senator friend of her father endorsed her application, but other than that tidbit, information is slim to none...and Slim left town. 
    It doesn't take long for things to get super-weird. No one hangs out with each other. Everyone walks alone, save the pre-requisite Mean Girl clique. Every student is assigned a Guardian that grades them on every waking moment, and something called a PT- basically a way to live that is solely THEM, and they have to live by this plan or they have no chance of winning the Big V race...V as in valedictorian. There's more, too. Everyone here is perfect. Perfect skin, perfect hair, perfect teeth. Except Anne, with her crooked tooth and wild curls. Agreements are signed in blood, there are dances in which you are not allowed to dance with anyone you actually like; in fact the rule is you must dance with someone you hate. There's a village you are not permitted to go into, or them to you. The penalty for breaking the rules is death. All in all, not your average boarding school.
     I figured things out fairly quickly, but that isn't a disparagement of the story or the writing. There were some excellent clever twists, and Anne is easy to like and easy to root for. This is one that no one who loves a good "What the hell is going on here??" story should miss.  My one, and only complaint is that it seems to be the beginning of yet another series and/or trilogy. I am sick to death of trilogies. I get the marketing perks, good for writers, etc, but as a reader I am way beyond tired of having to wait a year or more to continue a story that I am deeply into. What ever happened to just writing one amazing book with a beginning, middle, and end?! Sigh. In any case, trilogy/series aside, this is a great debut novel from a voice I am sure we will hear from many times in the future. 

And We Stay by Jenny Hubbard

*based on an ARC edition

I have to admit that when I got this ARC I mistakenly thought it was another author who wrote it; I was wrong, but after reading And We Stay I have become a faithful fan for life of Ms. Hubbard's. The copy for the book was slightly misleading, as was the dedication (in my opinion), as I thought it was about a girlfriend who survived after her boyfriend shot up their school- similar to the story in Hate List by Jennifer Brown. As this subject has been done before, I was pleasantly surprised by And We Stay. While the protagonist's boyfriend did in fact bring a gun into school there was so much more to the story than just that fact, and it was illustrated beautifully. It was about one moment, and another moment, and another moment...all of which contained a crossroad, and all of which turned the wrong way, which culminated in one last horrific moment. Emily Beam is sent to an all-girl's school (after her boyfriend commits suicide in their high school library) which at one time had educated Emily Dickinson. Our Emily is a poet and throughout the novel we can experience what she experiences by way of the beautiful poems that buttress the prose. And it is these poems that are the highlight of the book; while there is nothing I can find fault with in this book, it is the poems that will stay with me for a very long time. Typically I shelve my ARCs and may not visit them again, but with And We Stay I know I will go back again and again. 

The Companions by R.A. Salvatore

As a lifelong gamer, I love reading the novels set in the Forgotten Realms. I devoured R.A. Salvatore's books, loving above all others the tales of Drizzt Do'urden and his life both before and after his time with his Companions of the Hall. The Companions was my re-entry back into this new world, 100 years after the deaths of some of my favorite characters, the time after the Spellplague. I have my favorite Realms writers and I had previously stuck to only reading their books; however it had been quite some time since I had read any at all. 

Firstly I have to say that it was a joy to be reunited with Regis, Cattie-Brie, and Bruenor. Their mission to reunite after 21 years, having been given the choice of being reborn a century after their deaths to help Drizzt- although with what we have no clue. Only that Mielikki bade them too, and gave them the hope that they would still be alive the second time around and so would be there to help their friend in his time of need. 

However, and maybe this is because I am not as familiar with Drizzt's last couple of adventures, I was confused as to what that need was. I felt that the reborn Companion's journeys were too drawn-out. I had hoped for a reunion with Drizzt at the end, a great battle, or really any explanation of why this goddess would bring them back from their afterlives. I didn't get any of that. I understand that The Companions was only the first book in the Sundering series, but as I understand it these are all stand-alone books. Perhaps in the later ones I will gain the understanding I lack at the moment. I hope so. 

As always, though, it is a pleasure being back in the Realms. And as an active gamer I find myself thinking of the levels of each the spells that are used, the magic items that are mentioned, the saving throws the characters must have rolled. Hearing tale of the most infamous NPCs in the game makes me feel like I am home. So regardless of any slight shortcomings, The Companions is yet another win in R.A. Salvatore's prodigious column.

Champion by Marie Lu

As I usually do for trilogies, I read all three books in Marie Lu's Legend trilogy in one sitting. I believe doing so is the only way to truly appreciate the way the story flows, and this trilogy is no exception. Champion is a very good ending for this, one of my top ten YA trilogies. I often cursed Ms. Lu for not making June and Day's relationship go the way I wanted it to, and I did not much like Day's terminal diagnosis, but by the time I finished I knew it was perfect. 

The fate of the Republic and the Colonies was satisfactorily concluded, and the story clearly emphasized the flaws in both types of governments...and also how the grass isn't always greener on the other side of the quarantine zone. I was slightly skeptical about Day's plan to rally the citizens of the Republic; both the nature of humans and the vagueness of his plan make me think that things probably wouldn't work the way it did, but I forgave this weakness. My only other complaint is a scene in which Thomas, the killer of June's brother, gives June is whole confession of what happened the night of the murder. People simply do not talk that way. The dialogue was actually so painfully wrong I had to skip it. I got the gist, but I have a problem when characters speak in such a way that it becomes totally unbelievable. So while that was an issue, it only happened once. I'm surprised, actually, that Ms. Lu would have written something that way; her writing is at such a caliber that I can't believe she would have not felt strange writing in that way. 

These small issues aside, I was happy with the conclusion to the story. My heart hurt for awhile reading it, but it ended with hope. As much as I loved their story, I appreciated that the love story was not the most central part of it. 

In short, I believe that any reader and fan of Legend will not be disappointed by this conclusion.