December UppercaseBox

The December Box has arrived!  And with it, a solution to what to do about a 2016 literary calendar for my fridge!

Frankly, I wasn't feeling yet another teen romance with a traumatic family history, but the first few pages are intriguing - Parker is deftly and sympathetically drawn, at least in the morning!  Review to follow . . . when I get around to it!

Wolf by Wolf - UppercaseBox Review

Wolf by Wolf is one of those books I cannot stop talking about - and which I am four kinds of frustrated because my friends have not read it yet and don't understand what all the fuss is about.

On BookCrossing I have this tagged as Mystery/Thriller, because Action/Adventure is not an option.  Yael is herself a mystery, the unexpected consequence of a science experiment to further perfect the appearance of humanity, and her adventures are certainly thrilling - the pacing, with the events of the present and past alternating in the storyline help keep you from getting to worked up all at once, until the end that is.

The setting is an alternative past, one in which the Allied forces of the UK, Russia, U.S. and resistance movements lost the war; a world where Adolf Hitler has achieved the supremacy of the Third Reich over Europe, and the globe is split in an uneasy peace between the forces of the Hitler's Reich in the West and Hirohito's Empire in the East.

The International Olympic Committe is no more - there are no longer enough independent countries to compete - but the desire to celebrate the fitness and vitality of youth hasn't been lost, and so the East and West come together in celebration of their unified victory with the Annual Axis Tour, a grueling motorcycle race from Berlin to Tokyo, where the finest specimens of Aryan and Japanese youths vye for the title of Victor. 

This is where Yael comes in - a master impostor, raised first in the labour camps, later on the streets, and finally growing into womanhood under master tutelage in the Resistance, she has trained to take the place of the lone female racer representing Germany.  When she wins the race she will have the chance of a lifetime - to attend a dinner with the Axis leaders, and perhaps find herself dancing cheek to cheek with the Fuhrer himself.

Being an impostor is hard - harder still when you are pretending to be someone who's already achieved fame and is under constant scrutiny from her fellow competitors and the Reichssender cameras at every checkpoint; even more difficult when your fellow competitors include a racer with whom your subject has a previously acrimonious history and her twin brother.

One of Jennifer Donnelly's characters once said that hope was 'the crystal meth of emotions' leading you on through through pain and possibility to the inevitable crash.  It's hope, then, that drives Yael.  Under all the pain, violence and suffering, the broken bodies and broken hearts, it's hope that drives Yael onward; hope that she can be the change the world needs, hope that all the lives lost to war will not have been lost in vain.

Part of the success of this book for me is not just that, even in it's darkest moments (chapter 11 is where things seem to all come crashing down), it remains incredibly hopeful, but also that it's characters are drawn so deftly - so clearly alive.  From the spotted boy who makes the sign of the cross, to the racer who wants to teach literature, they are all real people you might know - and they become people you can't help but root for, pray for, hold your breath for, and when the hammer falls, you hope their hope will not be in vain.

This book is reviewed on BookCrossing.com, BCID 680-13751697  If you have read this book and would like to post a review, please share your reactions in the comments below or at BookCrossing.

UppercaseBox November 2015

It's here!  I am sure to become thoroughly spoiled as I am a 1-day ship point from the UppercaseBox homeworld, but with only a day's notice, my November box has arrived. 

This month's title, an alternate history complete with a race to save humanity, is sure to be a hit with all members of chez tarabu. 

UppercaseBox Book Review: First & Then

As I just got the shipping notification that my November UppercaseBox is on the way, it's probably about time I write up my thoughts on the October title.  Having finished the book I can say with all honesty: this is still not a book I would have picked out for myself.

The only character I could relate to from the start was Ezra, and not because I was ever a sports prodigy, but because he is the quiet outsider, new to the school and finding himself in the middle of everyone else's lives.  As someone who never went to the same school more than two years running until college, I found it easy to identify with someone who is the new kid senior year, plopped into the middle of friendships that have existed for, literally, a decade.

The narrator, Dev, is a mess, but thankfully she grows up a lot in the space of a few hundred pages and a couple of months.  She's hopeless and heartsick, with no actual direction or goals and nothing remotely like the oomph needed to go anywhere after high school or amount to much of anything.  At the start of the book she has literally no goals, other than a sarcastic interest in majoring in 'advanced breakfast with a minor in cable television'.

She is the center of a social circle comprised of near friends and close acquaintances, including:
Foster - the cousin she hasn't seen for years, who her parents are fostering while his mom deals with addiction and the loss of his father.  Dev's relationship with Foster grows from annoyed, affronted and put out, to fiercely protective.  I didn't like Dev much until she thought Foster might be moving back home - her reaction to that possibility, and how she handled the reality, made me proud to know her.

Cas - the best friend and unwitting love interest, the subject of her puppy love crush for, and I mean this, years.  Dev learns years pining for him, waiting for him to realize she was always the one, until she realizes she's worth seeking out, not being conveniently found.

Ezra - the new guy - cool, dashing, remote, and famous.  Ezra shows up with all kinds of baggage - the emotional kind he keeps private and the public kind that comes from being the new outsider who takes over the school football team.  His motives are in question before he passes his first ball and his reticence only makes the whispers louder and more fervent.

Lindsay - beautiful, popular, the apple of Cas' eye, Lindsay may be the greatest 'a-ha' moment Dev has - finally breaking out of her self-centered little bubble Dev not only sees Lindsay for who she is, but begins to see herself through Lindsay's eyes.

For the technical review - the writing is crisp and clean - at some times laugh out loud funny and at others, heart-stoppingly dramatic.  Unlike Romeo & Juliet, the main characters live, which is basically setting any work up for a possible sequel, but I don't know that I would want one.  The characters are so freshly drawn, with an ending that is equal parts melancholy and hopeful, and I wonder if a sequel would keep that newness about them or if, in maturing, they would develop harsher edges.

For the Uppercase review - this was my first UppercaseBox and I did not know what to expect from the Uppercase experience; and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  The discussions, videos and author input were well placed throughout the book and delightful additions to the reading experience.

4 stars - a solid four stars; although this is not a book I will describe with jazz hands to every passerby, it is a book I can whole-heartedly recommend to more than one reader in my life and at the end of the day, I am glad I read it.

This review is registered at BookCrossing.com, BCID 623-13699500.  If you have read this book and would like to post a review, please share your thoughts in the comments below or at www.BookCrossing.com/623-13699500 

Uppercase Box - just one and hooked!

For my birthday this month, in addition to a trip to Colonial Williamsburg, I was the lucky recipient of a subscription to Uppercase.

Uppercase is a monthly subscription of new YA titles - either something on sale the month it ships or the month before - no older. In addition to the book the monthly box includes a signed bookplate and a couple of pieces of bookish swag, all in a cute drawstring bag which does a marvelous job of keeping your book fresh when it's shoved in the depths of your bag.

October Uppercase box including first & then by Emma Mills

This month's selection is a book I flat-out never would have picked out for myself - the cover, although charming, is not particularly my style and the description (Pride and Prejudice meets Friday Night Lights) makes some delicate organ inside me seize up and twitch ever so slightly. However, two chapters in, I am enjoying it - the language is clever, the humour is the best kind of self-deprecating wit, and the characters are developing nicely. Sure I am not far in and I may want to abandon it at some point, but for now it has given me quite a few more laughs than I had without it, and if it weren't for Uppercase, I would never have given it a fair shake.