Testimony by Anita Shreve

Pages (Mass Market Paperback): 352 pages

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; Reprint edition

Released: Aug 31, 2010

Description: At a New England boarding school, a sex scandal is about to break. Even more shocking than the sexual acts themselves is the fact that they were caught on videotape. A Pandora's box of revelations, the tape triggers a chorus of voices--those of the men, women, teenagers, and parents involved in the scandal--that details the ways in which lives can be derailed or destroyed in one foolish moment.

Writing with a pace and intensity surpassing even her own greatest work, Anita Shreve delivers in TESTIMONY a gripping emotional drama with the impact of a thriller. No one more compellingly explores the dark impulses that sway the lives of seeming innocents, the needs and fears that drive ordinary men and women into intolerable dilemmas, and the ways in which our best intentions can lead to our worst transgressions.

Review: Testimony is a book that I wanted to read for awhile now. Even though, I didn't like the twist about the unnamed boy and I hated what Sienna, the girl in the video, did, I did enjoy premise and the writing style. Each chapter was told by a different character, which was nice since it helped show how something like this can affect a multitude of people in complete different ways.

Grade: 7.5 lines out of 10

Read the full review at Books may Vary

New Moon by Stephenie Meyer

Pages (Hardcover): 608 pages

Publisher: Little, Brown Books

Released: May 31, 2008

Description: Legions of readers entranced by Twilight are hungry for more and they won't be disappointed. In New Moon, Stephenie Meyer delivers another irresistible combination of romance and suspense with a supernatural twist. The "star-crossed" lovers theme continues as Bella and Edward find themselves facing new obstacles, including a devastating separation, the mysterious appearance of dangerous wolves roaming the forest in Forks, a terrifying threat of revenge from a female vampire and a deliciously sinister encounter with Italy's reigning royal family of vampires, the Volturi. Passionate, riveting, and full of surprising twists and turns, this vampire love saga is well on its way to literary immortality.

Review: I'm incredibly disappointed by New Moon. I liked Twilight and even though I thought Bella was a horrible friend, it was a good book for the most part. In New Moon, Bella continues to be a horrible friend. Horrible! For some reason it seems like if you are human, Bella won't give you the time of day and it's frustrating to read.

Grade: 4 lines out of 10

Read the full review at Books may Vary

Teaser Tuesdays

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

* Grab your current read
* Open to a random page
* Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
* Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

-

My teaser is from Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

He’d said they’d be best friends again, once she was pretty. But the way he’d looked at her face . . . maybe that was why they separated uglies from pretties.

~ Taken from page 25 of Uglies

So what is your teaser this week?

Extraordinary by Nancy Werlin

Pages (Hardcover): 400 pages

Publisher: Dial Books

Released: September 7, 2010

Description: Phoebe finds herself drawn to Mallory, the strange and secretive new kid in school, and the two girls become as close as sisters . . . until Mallory's magnetic older brother, Ryland, shows up during their junior year. Ryland has an immediate, exciting hold on Phoebe but a dangerous hold, for she begins to question her feelings about her best friend and, worse, about herself.

Soon she'll discover the shocking truth about Ryland and Mallory: that these two are visitors from the faerie realm who have come to collect on an age-old debt. Generations ago, the faerie queen promised Phoebe's ancestor five extraordinary sons in exchange for the sacrifice of one ordinary female heir. But in hundreds of years there hasn't been a single ordinary girl in the family, and now the faeries are dying. Could Phoebe be the first ordinary one? Could she save the faeries, or is she special enough to save herself?

Review: I'm torn. On one hand, I enjoyed my time reading this. I thought Mallory was an excellent character, she's sympathetic, relateable, and you want to root for her, but don't at the same time. The relationship between Phoebe and Ryland, while it reminded me of an abusive relationship, was interesting as well. AND! Nantucket is in this book. On the other hand, Phoebe, the main character, is...

Grade: 7.5 lines out of 10

Thank you to Penguin Canada for providing this book for review.

Read the full review at Books may Vary

Uzumaki by Ito Junji

Pages (Paperback): 208 pages

Publisher: VIZ Media LLC; 2 edition

Released: October 16, 2007

Note: I'll be reviewing the entire series, which span between 3 books, but I'll be only posting the first book here.

Description: Koruzo-Cho, a small fogbound town on the coast of Japan, is cursed. According to Shuichi Saito, the withdrawn boyfriend of teenager Kirie Goshima, their town is haunted not by a person or being but by a pattern: uzumaki, the spiral, the hypnotic secret shape of the world. It manifests itself in small ways: seashells, ferns, whirlpools in water, whirlwinds in air. And in large ways: the spiral marks on people's bodies, the insane obsessions of Shuichi's father, the voice from the cochlea in your inner ear. As the madness spreads, the inhabitants of Koruzo-Cho are pulled ever deeper, as if into a whirlpool from which there is no return...

Review: This is the third or fourth story I've read by Ito-san and what I love about his work is that he takes such a simple concept and makes it into something strange and horrifying. The artwork is detailed and crisp, and I loved seeing how different people were effected by the spirals. I don't think I'll ever look at spirals in the same way again.Great story and a great manga writer/artist. Read this!

Grade: 10 lines out of 10


Read the full review at Books may Vary

A Room Swept White by Sophie Hannah

Pages (Paperback): 448 pages

Publisher: Penguin Canada

Released: August 24, 2010

Description: International bestselling author Sophie Hannah creates a brilliantly sinister atmosphere in this psychologically and socially acute novel that explores the bond between mothers and their babies, the tragedies of crib death and infanticide, and the effect of incompetent pathologists.

Documentary producer Fliss Benson receives an anonymous card at work. The card has 16 numbers on it, arranged in four rows of four--numbers that mean nothing to her. On the same day, Fliss finds out she's going to be working on a documentary about miscarriages of justice involving crib-death mothers wrongly accused of murder. The documentary will focus on three women: Helen Yardley, Sarah Jaggard, and Rachel Hind.

All three women are now free, and the doctor who did her best to send them to prison for life, child protection zealot Dr Judith Duffy, is under investigation for misconduct. For reasons she has shared with nobody, Fliss has decided that this is her last project.

And then Helen Yardley is found dead at her home, and in her pocket is a card with 16 numbers on it, arranged in four rows of four...

Review: A story about infanticide and women who were wrongly accused of killing their children is a fascinating thing to read about and for the most part it is. The news articles, interviews, book excerpts really added to the seriousness of the situation and I loved reading them. My only complaint is Fliss, and how her sections were written in first person, when almost everything else was in third.

Grade: 8 lines out of 10

Thank you to Penguin Canada for providing this book for review.

Want more? Then read the full review at Books may Vary.

Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino

Pages (Paperback): 544 pages

Publisher: Vintage

Released: February 12, 2008

Description: Life at the prestigious Q High School for Girls in Tokyo exists on a precise social axis: a world of insiders and outsiders, of haves and have-nots. Beautiful Yuriko and her unpopular, unnamed sister exist in different spheres; the hopelessly awkward Kazue Sato floats around among them, trying to fit in. Years later, Yuriko and Kazue are dead — both have become prostitutes and both have been brutally murdered.

Natsuo Kirino, celebrated author of Out, seamlessly weaves together the stories of these women’s struggles within the conventions and restrictions of Japanese society. At once a psychological investigation of the pressures facing Japanese women and a classic work of noir fiction, Grotesque is a brilliantly twisted novel of ambition, desire, beauty, cruelty, and identity by one of our most electrifying writers.

Review: Let me start by saying that this book is not for everyone. The plot, while interesting, is filled with really horrible characters that you will hate. There is one character that seems likeable at first, but once you hear their story you'll hate them the most. The book is filled with such horrible, pathetic, disgusting characters, and yet I loved the book for this reason. This is a fantastic book!

Grade: 9 lines out of 10

Read the full review at Books may Vary.

My Little Red Book by Rachel Kauder Nalebuff

Pages (Hardcover): 240 pages

Publisher: Twelve

Released: February 26, 2009

Description: MY LITTLE RED BOOK is an anthology of stories about first periods, collected from women of all ages from around the world. The accounts range from light-hearted (the editor got hers while water skiing in a yellow bathing suit) to heart-stopping (a first period discovered just as one girl was about to be strip-searched by the Nazis). The contributors include well-known women writers (Meg Cabot, Erica Jong, Gloria Steinem, Cecily von Ziegesar), alongside today's teens. And while the authors differ in race, faith, or cultural background, their stories share a common bond: they are all accessible, deeply honest, and highly informative. Whatever a girl experiences or expects, she'll find stories that speak to her thoughts and feelings.

Ultimately, MY LITTLE READ BOOK is more than a collection of stories. It is a call for a change in attitude, for a new way of seeing periods. In a time when the taboo around menstruation seems to be one of the few left standing, it makes a difficult subject easier to talk about, and helps girls feel proud instead of embarrassed or ashamed. By revealing what it feels like to undergo this experience first hand, and giving women the chance to explain their feelings in their own words, it aims to provide support, entertainment, and a starting point for discussion for mothers and daughters everywhere. It is a book every girl should have. Period.

Review: Whether you wanted it, or not (I didn't) almost every girl remembers her first period. First periods are fun, so It's interesting to see how normal people dealt with it, seeing as how I denied mined. My main problem is that I couldn't read this book all in one go. I have to read some here, put it down, then come back to it later. Reading too much was a little to heavy for me. (pun very much intended)

Grade: 8.5 lines out of 10

This is just the lighter version of this review, read the full version at Books may Vary

Teaser Tuesdays

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

* Grab your current read
* Open to a random page
* Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
* Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

-

So my teaser this week is from the book, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. It's been on my bookshelf for awhile now, but I never picked it up. So I'm reading it now.

A part of me wanted badly to tell him what was going on, and I suppose I knew that to do anything else would be to betray the trust we'd built up since the moment I'd reminded him about his polo shirt. And for me to strap up his arm in a splint would have meant my becoming one of the main perpetrators of the joke.

~ Taken from page 78 of Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

So what is your teaser this week?

Parasyte by Hitoshi Iwaaki

Pages (Paperback): 288 pages

Publisher: Del Rey

Released: May 1, 2007

Description: They arrive in silence and darkness. They descend from the skies. They have a hunger for human flesh. They are everywhere. They are parasites, alien creatures who must invade–and take control of–a human host to survive. And once they have infected their victims, they can assume any deadly form they choose: monsters with giant teeth, winged demons, creatures with blades for hands. But most have chosen to conceal their lethal purpose behind ordinary human faces. So no one knows their secret–except an ordinary high school student. Shin is battling for control of his own body against an alien parasite, but can he find a way to warn humanity of the horrors to come?

Review: When I first heard about this manga, I wasn't sure what to think. As I continued reading, it blew my mind. The story, characters, and message, are beautifully done. This manga is gory, so if you are not a fan of gore or you are young, I wouldn't recommend this to you. However, if you do pick this up, you'll not regret it. It's not only enjoyable, but thought-provoking as well. It's a great manga!

Grade: 9.5 lines out of 10

Reader the longer version of this review at Books may Vary.