Mind Games

White, Kiersten. Mind Games. Harper Teen, 2013.

Fia has perfect instincts. When she follows her gut feelings, she does the right thing, all the time. Fia is an assassin, working for a company that is holding her sister hostage.  Her sister, Annie, is blind, but has visions of the future.  The same company is using Annie's visions to decide where to send Fia on her missions. Can Fia get Annie out of the company's grip and get them both far enough away that they'll be safe?

This was a very suspenseful, very enjoyable read.  I finished it in one sitting.  The chapters are told from both Fia's and Annie's perspectives, and there's a mix of current-day action and flashback scenes to fill in the missing information.  The chapters are short and intense. I could easily see this book being a contender for the ALA Quick Picks award this year.

Recommended for: teens and tweens, especially reluctant readers

Red Flags: some language; some violence

Overall Rating: 5/5 stars

SYLO

MacHale, D.J. SYLO. Razorbill, 2013.

Tucker lives with his family on an island off the coast of Maine.  He prefers to remain fairly anonymous, just trying to survive high school.  Then people on his island start dying, he sees a mysterious explosion off the coast of the island, and the Marines declare a quarantine on the island and start rounding up people and placing them in internment camps.  Does Tucker have what it takes to become a hero and save his island?

I enjoyed MacHale's Pendragon series, so I was glad to see another book by this author.  This book does not disappoint.  There's plenty of mystery and intrigue involved - why is the island quarantined?  How did those people die so suddenly when they were perfectly healthy? What is that weird, red crystal the surfer guy keeps trying to push on people? Combine that with plenty of action, and I can see this being a popular read for teens and tweens.  This novel is fast-paced and could easily lend itself to a sequel.  I look forward to more good things from MacHale.

Recommended for: teens, tweens, fans of sci-fi, fans of suspenseful books

Red Flags: the Ruby that some people end up taking is pretty obviously a drug; lots of violence (people getting murdered, etc.); language

Overall Rating: 5/5 stars

I received a complimentary copy of this book through NetGalley for the purposes of review.

Will in Scarlet

Cody, Matthew. Will in Scarlet. Knopf BFYR, 2013.

Will has grown up as a privileged son of nobility, but all of that changes when his family's house falls and he is forced to flee into the forest.  There he meets up with a group of bandits known as the Merry Men. His desire to avenge his family's misfortunes at the hands of Sir Guy is nearly his downfall.  Should Will attempt again to murder Sir Guy, or can he make a new life with the bandits and their leader, Rob?

This was a fun and interesting perspective on the Robin Hood story.  It took me a bit to get into this story, but after Will fled into the forest and joined the Merry Men, I was interested to see how the author would fit all of the aspects of the traditional Robin Hood tales into this new story, but I enjoyed watching how everything played out.  This is a fun, action-packed adventure story that will appeal to kids and teens alike.

Recommended for: middle grade, tweens, and teens; fans of adventure books; fans of Robin Hood stories; people who enjoy retold fairy tales

Red Flags: violence - lots of battle scenes and people being wounded; Rob is a drunk

Overall Rating: 5/5 stars

I received a complimentary copy of this book through NetGalley for the purposes of review.

Over the Rainbow

Rowe, Brian. Over the Rainbow. Brian Rowe, 2013.

Zippy, a 17-year old from a very religious family, falls in love with a girl, so her father decides to send her off to an ex-gay camp so she can be cured of this disease.  At the airport, Zippy hides in someone else's luggage and sneaks onto an airplane to go meet her girlfriend in Seattle, but the plane crashes and Zippy discovers that most of the passengers are gone. Not dead: gone. Zippy teams up with a few other survivors to try to find her way to Seattle.  Oh, and there are dinosaurs everywhere now.

This book was just weird.  First, it's set in the late 1990's, so Zippy meets her girlfriend over AOL, which gives the book a bit of the You've Got Mail feeling, but without Meg Ryan. Second, when 70% of the people on earth are taken, Zippy and her dad think it's the Rapture, but then they discover that it was just people who were outside or near windows who were taken.  Why didn't they figure that out before?  We don't live on a planet where 70% of the people claim to be Christians, and Zippy's uber-Christian family would have understood that. Then there are the dinosaurs (and other long-extinct creatures). There's no explanation for the appearance of the dinosaurs, and no one seems the least bit bothered by them.  This is never resolved, either.  Everyone seems to be okay with the fact that there are now dinosaurs roaming the mostly uninhabited planet.

Finally, this book tries to be a riff on The Wizard of Oz. Zippy is traveling to "the emerald city" with Frank, Elle, and Mr. Balm.  Frank's got no brain, Mr. Balm's got no heart, and Elle's got no courage. And they have a little dog, too.  So I was expecting at the end of this book to find that maybe Zippy had been discovered in the suitcase after she hit her head, so the rest of the book was just her dream/hallucination, but no such luck.  They get to "the emerald city," Zippy is able to find her true love, and everyone lives happily ever after. With dinosaurs.

This book is so incredibly not worth anyone's time.  We don't get to know any of the characters at all, the plot makes no sense and twists around too much, and the resolution is ridiculous.  Perhaps if one were to be smoking something while reading this, it would be really intense and deep.  As it was, it wasted valuable space on my Kindle.

Recommended for: No one

Red Flags: language, Zippy's homophobic father's comments about gay people

Overall Rating: 1/5 stars

I received a complimentary copy of this book through NetGalley for the purposes of review.

Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

Levithan, David and Rachel Cohn. Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List. Knopf BFYR, 2007.

Ely's gay and lives with his lesbian moms. Naomi lives next door to Ely with her mom and dad.  Naomi and Ely have been best friends forever, and they even survived Naomi's dad running off with one of Ely's moms.  They also created a "No Kiss List," a list of people neither of them will kiss so that they can remain friends.  Naomi would love for them to be more than friends, but she knows that's not possible.  But when she sees Ely kiss her boyfriend, it looks like their friendship is over for good.

Although I was intrigued by the title and the storyline, I didn't like this book.  I didn't find either of the main characters sympathetic at all.  Also, I wondered why the authors put the gay boy in the family with two moms, and why Ely had to be such a stereotypical, "I'll sleep with anything I can find" kind of person.  He was having tons of hookups and boyfriends and there was no discussion of him trying to be safe or maybe getting tested for the STD's he'll inevitably have after all of that.  And Naomi was a brat.  By the end of the book, Naomi gets a bit better, and Ely is starting to think about perhaps being more exclusive with his dating, but I still didn't like either of them. I read this book because it is a fairly well-known YA LGBT book, but I don't think I would recommend it to many readers.  Perhaps teens who enjoy books like Gossip Girl might like this one, but it didn't appeal to me.

Recommended for: teens, people who enjoy books about rich kids, fans of books about New York

Red Flags: Lots of drinking and sex in this book. Occasional drug use. No violence.

Overall Rating: 2/5 stars