Books and Bikinis Summer Reading Challenge!

I don't know about where you are but here the temperature is already in the 90s. Yes girls and boys summertime is upon us and that means it's time for BEACH READS! To get in the summer spirit and to help cool you off, I'm proposing the Books and Bikinis Summer Reading Challenge. This is an easy one, so don't worry. All you have to do is read 10 books this summer that have a water theme! It's a great summer for it because there are so many mermaid books coming out and what better way to cool off than with stories that make a splash.

Here is a list of reads I've found to get you started. You don't have to read these books, (but you'll want to) and some of them are being released this summer.

Any book with a water theme applies!

Siren by Tricia Rayburn

Hardcover, 352 pages
July 13th 2010 by EgmontUSA

The Forbidden Sea by Sheila A. Nielson

Hardcover, 304 pages
July 1st 2010 by Scholastic Press

Forgive My Fins by Tera Lynn Childs

Hardcover, 320 pages
June 1st 2010 by Katherine Tegen Books

Sea by Heidi R. Kling

Hardcover, 336 pages
June 10th 2010 by Putnam Juvenile

Sea Change by Aimee Friedman

Hardcover, 292 pages
June 1st 2009 by Point

The Summer of Moonlight secrets by Danette Haworth

Hardcover, 288 pages
May 25th 2010 by Walker Books for Young Readers

The Last Mermaid by Shana Abé

Mass Market Paperback, 592 pages
June 1st 2004 by Bantam

The Changeling Sea by Patricia A. McKillip

Mass Market Paperback, 144 pages
April 14th 2003 by Puffin (first published 1988)

Seven Tears into the Sea by Terri Farley

Paperback, 288 pages
April 5th 2005 by Simon Pulse

The Siren by Kiera Cass

Paperback, 276 pages
July 7th 2009 by iUniverse.com

And still more:

The Tail of Emily Windsnap by Liz Kessler
Sirena by Donna Jo Napoli
Aquamarine by Alice Hoffman

So far, for me:

1. The Siren by Kiera Cass
2. Seven Tears into the Sea by Terri Farley

Use the Mr. Linky to link to the page where you will list the books you read for the challenge. Feel free to leave book suggestions in comments so that others can add them to their list!

In My Mailbox (10)

In My Mailbox is a weekly meme hosted by Kristi @ The Story Siren in which we share the books we received for the week.

Very odd mix of books this week. Visited both new and used bookstores and had a visit from my book fairy.

Perchance to Dream by Lisa Mantchev
From Goodreads:
The stuff that dreams are made on.

Act Two, Scene One

Growing up in the enchanted Thèâtre Illuminata, Beatrice Shakespeare Smith learned everything about every play ever written. She knew the Players and their parts, but she didn’t know that she, too, had magic. Now, she is the Mistress of Revels, the Teller of Tales, and determined to follow her stars. She is ready for the outside world.

Enter BERTIE AND COMPANY

But the outside world soon proves more topsy-turvy than any stage production. Bertie can make things happen by writing them, but outside the protective walls of the Thèâtre, nothing goes as planned. And her magic cannot help her make a decision between—

Nate: Her suave and swashbuckling pirate, now in mortal peril.

Ariel: A brooding, yet seductive, air spirit whose true motives remain unclear.

When Nate is kidnapped and taken prisoner by the Sea Goddess, only Bertie can free him. She and her fairy sidekicks embark on a journey aboard the Thèâtre’s caravan, using Bertie’s word magic to guide them. Along the way, they collect a sneak-thief, who has in his possession something most valuable, and meet The Mysterious Stranger, Bertie’s father—and the creator of the scrimshaw medallion. Bertie’s dreams are haunted by Nate, whose love for Bertie is keeping him alive, but in the daytime, it’s Ariel who is tantalizingly close, and the one she is falling for. Who does Bertie love the most? And will her magic be powerful enough to save her once she enters the Sea Goddess’s lair?

Once again, LISA MANTCHEV has spun a tale like no other—full of romance, magic, adventure, and fairies, too—that readers won’t want to put down, even after the curtain has closed.

Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins
From Goodreads:
Three years ago, Sophie Mercer discovered that she was a witch. It's gotten her into a few scrapes. Her non-gifted mother has been as supportive as possible, consulting Sophie's estranged father--an elusive European warlock--only when necessary. But when Sophie attracts too much human attention for a prom-night spell gone horribly wrong, it's her dad who decides her punishment: exile to Hex Hall, an isolated reform school for wayward Prodigium, a.k.a. witches, faeries, and shapeshifters.
By the end of her first day among fellow freak-teens, Sophie has quite a scorecard: three powerful enemies who look like supermodels, a futile crush on a gorgeous warlock, a creepy tagalong ghost, and a new roommate who happens to be the most hated person and only vampire on campus. Worse, Sophie soon learns that a mysterious predator has been attacking students, and her only friend is the number-one suspect.

As a series of blood-curdling mysteries starts to converge, Sophie prepares for the biggest threat of all: an ancient secret society determined to destroy all Prodigium, especially her.

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
From Goodreads:
Ender Wiggin is a very bright young boy with a powerful skill. One of a group of children bred to be military geniuses and save Earth from an inevitable attack by aliens, known here as "buggers," Ender becomes unbeatable in war games and seems poised to lead Earth to triumph over the buggers. Meanwhile, his brother and sister plot to wrest power from Ender. Twists, surprises and interesting characters elevate this novel into status as a bona fide page turner. It captured the Nebula and Hugo Awards.

Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Halpern
From Goodreads:
After being dumped by his longtime girlfriend, twenty-eight-year-old Justin Halpern found himself living at home with his seventy-three-year-old dad. Sam Halpern, who is "like Socrates, but angrier, and with worse hair," has never minced words, and when Justin moved back home, he began to record all the ridiculous things his dad said to him:

"That woman was sexy. . . . Out of your league? Son, let women figure out why they won't screw you. Don't do it for them."

"Do people your age know how to comb their hair? It looks like two squirrels crawled on their heads and started fucking."

"The worst thing you can be is a liar. . . . Okay, fine, yes, the worst thing you can be is a Nazi, but then number two is liar. Nazi one, liar two."

More than a million people now follow Mr. Halpern's philosophical musings on Twitter, and in this book, his son weaves a brilliantly funny, touching coming-of-age memoir around the best of his quotes. An all-American story that unfolds on the Little League field, in Denny's, during excruciating family road trips, and, most frequently, in the Halperns' kitchen over bowls of Grape-Nuts, Sh*t My Dad Says is a chaotic, hilarious, true portrait of a father-son relationship from a major new comic voice.

Blackbird House by Alice Hoffman
From Goodreads:
With “incantatory prose” that “sweeps over the reader like a dream,” (Philadelphia Inquirer), Hoffman follows her celebrated bestseller The Probable Future, with an evocative work that traces the lives of the various occupants of an old Massachusetts house over a span of two hundred years.

In a rare and gorgeous departure, beloved novelist Alice Hoffman weaves a web of tales, all set in Blackbird House. This small farm on the outer reaches of Cape Cod is a place that is as bewitching and alive as the characters we meet: Violet, a brilliant girl who is in love with books and with a man destined to betray her; Lysander Wynn, attacked by a halibut as big as a horse, certain that his life is ruined until a boarder wearing red boots
arrives to change everything; Maya Cooper, who does not understand the true meaning of the love between her mother and father until it is nearly too late. From the time of the British occupation of Massachusetts to our own modern world, family after family’s lives are inexorably changed, not only by the people they love but by the lives they lead inside Blackbird House.

These interconnected narratives are as intelligent as they are haunting, as luminous as they are unusual. Inside Blackbird House more than a dozen men and women learn how love transforms us and how it is the one lasting element in our lives. The past both dissipates and remains contained inside the rooms of Blackbird House, where there are terrible secrets, inspired beauty, and, above all else, a spirit of coming home.

From the writer Time has said tells "truths powerful enough to break a reader’s heart” comes a glorious travelogue through time and fate, through loss and love and survival. Welcome to Blackbird House.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
From Goodreads:
[close] Everything that Lewis Carroll ever published in book form appears in this volume. In addition, at least ten of the shorter pieces have never appeared in print except in their original editions. Included are: "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" "Through the Looking-Glass" "Sylvie and Bruno" "Sylvie and Bruno Concluded" "The Hunting of the Snark" & all of the poetry, essays, phantasmagoria along with a substantial collection of the miscellaneous writings.

Fire by Kristin Cashore

Reading Level:: Young Adult/Fantasy
Pages: 352
Publisher: October 6th 2009 by Dial

In the Dells there live monsters of breathtaking beauty. With scales and fur of every hue, the country side at times is itself a rainbow. The monsters are lovely, and their magnificence lulls you, drawing you in, entranced by the visions before you, making you long to possess or touch them.

And then they kill you.

The monsters of the Dells are creatures to fear for even the most harmless ones are still monsters. And there aren't only monster animals, with their flashing beaks and talons itching for blood. There are human monsters too, of unsurpassed resplendence who are so beautiful it hurts to look at them and who's beauty, just as with other monsters, can draw you in to your death.

Fire is a human monster with the power to alter the minds and thoughts of humans and monsters alike. In a kingdom riddled with unrest, on the brink of war, a monster with the ability to detect a liar, redirect an assassin or even, more importantly, influence a king could be a great asset or she could be a greater danger to the kingdom then it's sworn enemies ever could.

Even Fire, with all her beauty and power has enemies. Men and women seek to control her, or possess her, both out of love and loathing and she has learned to steel her mind and body against them- but there are things that not even Fire can protect herself from.

The Dells know nothing of the seven kingdoms beyond the mountains and they are unaware of the existence of the Graced. They would never think twice about a young boy with one eye gray and the other red, even if they watched him engage in acts of cruelty or control. They would believe him kind, and good- if he told them to.

________________

I type this book-drunk. My head is spinning and I'm not quite sure how I got here and the last thing I can remember is being on a horse, riding towards an enemy army and then the rest is a blur. How it comes to pass that I am sitting on a couch in the safety of my own home I guess I'll never figure out because as far as I know, I haven't been here and I don't even live here anymore.

Cashore writes of Gracelings and monsters- creatures with powers we could never comprehend existing in our mundane lives. She writes fantasy fiction, straight forward and true to form but where she differs, and far excels others in her genre is in her uncanny ability to completely remove her reader from reality- mind, body and soul and plant them quite fixedly in the world of her creation where she doesn't even have to compel them to stay because they truly don't want to leave. In her world, it is her characters who have the power, but I think Cashore's Grace far surpasses those of her heroes and heroines.

Fire is a superb creation. Imaginative, vivid and at times disturbing. She creates a past already severe on its own and then meticulously adds details to it that pull at all the threads of your heart. I feel so awful for what Fire has suffered and suffers but I never once pitied her, for she's far too strong for that. And oh the romance in this book! I've never wanted to see two people together more!

I'm enamoured of these books and their world. An instant favorite, just like it's predecessor. I -loved- this book and I feel lost outside of it. You can read this without having read Graceling but the impact of one particular character's involvement will be lost on you. He's there to scare you and he's much scarier if you already know who he is.



If you've read both books:

In My Mailbox (9)

In My Mailbox is a weekly meme hosted by Kristi @ The Story Siren in which we share the books we received for the week.

Fire by Kristin Cashore
From Goodreads:
Fire, Graceling's prequel-ish companion book, takes place across the mountains to the east of the seven kingdoms, in a rocky, war-torn land called the Dells.

Beautiful creatures called monsters live in the Dells. Monsters have the shape of normal animals: mountain lions, dragonflies, horses, fish. But the hair or scales or feathers of monsters are gorgeously colored-- fuchsia, turquoise, sparkly bronze, iridescent green-- and their minds have the power to control the minds of humans.

Seventeen-year-old Fire is the last remaining human-shaped monster in the Dells. Gorgeously monstrous in body and mind but with a human appreciation of right and wrong, she is hated and mistrusted by just about everyone, and this book is her story.

Wondering what makes it a companion book/prequel? Fire takes place 30-some years before Graceling and has one cross-over character with Graceling, a small boy with strange two-colored eyes who comes from no-one-knows-where, and who has a peculiar ability that Graceling readers will find familiar and disturbing...

The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor
From Goodreads:
The Myth: Alice was an ordinary girl who stepped through the looking glass and entered a fairy-tale world invented by Lewis Carroll in his famous storybook.
The Truth: Wonderland is real. Alyss Heart is the heir to the throne, until her murderous aunt Redd steals the crown and kills Alyss' parents. To escape Redd, Alyss and her bodyguard, Hatter Madigan, must flee to our world through the Pool of Tears.
But in the pool Alyss and Hatter are separated. Lost and alone in Victorian London, Alyss is befriended by an aspiring author to whom she tells the violent, heartbreaking story of her young life. Yet he gets the story all wrong.
Hatter Madigan knows the truth only too well, and he is searching every corner of our world to find the lost princess and return her to Wonderland so she may battle Redd for her rightful place as the Queen of Hearts.

Waiting on Wednesday (2)

Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill @ Breaking the Spine, in which we share the book that we are anxiously waiting to be released.

I haven't been to France in awhile and it's time to take a trip back. I've become captivated by historical fiction set around the time of the French Revolution. It's so scandalous and smutty- both good things. For the King will be published July 8th 2010 by Dutton Books.


For the King by Catherine Delors

From Amazon.com:
From the author of the critically acclaimed Mistress of the Revolution comes a spellbinding historical thriller set in post-revolutionary Paris.

For her first novel, Mistress of the Revolution, which the Associated Press dubbed one of the "best reads of the year," Catherine Delors earned comparisons to Tracy Chevalier and Philippa Gregory. In For the King, she again demonstrates her matchless ability to illuminate key turning points in history while weaving a gripping story about a man caught between his heart and his integrity.

The Reign of Terror has ended, and Napoléon Bonaparte has seized power, but shifting political loyalties still tear apart families and lovers. On Christmas Eve 1800, a bomb explodes along Bonaparte's route, narrowly missing him but striking dozens of bystanders. Chief Inspector Roch Miquel, a young policeman with a bright future and a beautiful mistress, must arrest the assassins before they attack again. Complicating Miquel's investigation are the maneuverings of his superior, the redoubtable Fouché, the indiscretions of his own father, a former Jacobin, and two intriguing women.

Based on real events and characters and rich with historical detail, For the King takes readers through the dark alleys and glittering salons of post-revolutionary Paris and is a timeless epic of love, betrayal, and redemption.

Teaser Tuesdays (2)

"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!"

Paranormalcy by Kiersten White

"Horrified, I made my way around the desk. I had heard of things that could eat a person alive and wear her skin."

Graceling by Kristin Cashore

Reading Level:: Young Adult/Fantasy
Pages: 471
Publisher: October 1st 2008 by Harcourt Children's Books

"The Lady Katsa is it?"
Yes, Lord Prince."
"I've heard you have one eye green as the Middluns grasses, and the other eye blue as the sky."
"Yes, Lord Prince."
"I've heard you can kill a man with the nail of your smallest finger."
She smiled. "Yes, Lord Prince."
"Does it make it easier?"
She squinted at his form hunched in the saddle. "I don't understand you."
"To have beautiful eyes. Does it lighten the burden of your Grace, to know you have beautiful eyes?"

Throughout the seven kingdoms, there is one name that even kings fear to speak, that of the Lady Katsa, who fears her own name as much as they do. She is Graced, gifted with the ability to kill anyone, anywhere, anyhow, regardless of their own abilities or the strength of their defenses. When a child develops a Grace, he or she is sent to her king until the usefulness of their Grace is revealed. Some will have Graces that improve senses, make them swim the fastest, or many things that are gifts of no interest to a king and these children are sent home where acceptance is sought but never gained, to live burdened by their Grace. But a killing Grace, what a useful tool for a greedy, bullying king like Randa to have and Katsa belongs to the king.

With so little control over her own life, and a reputation that keeps her very isolated, Katsa has found ways and outlets to express as much of herself as she dares, as much of herself as she even knows. With the help of a group of nobles, Randa's son the Prince, and the king's own spy-master a council of people has formed across the kingdoms with Katsa's gift directing it to accomplish deeds of a more humane nature than King Randa would ever allow. An errand of recovery in a neighboring kingdom to rescue the grandfather of the Lienid royal family, brings Katsa face to face with a strange man who, from the very moment they meet, makes her desire to belong to something other than a controlling king. When the rescue of the Lienid grandfather reveals the possibility of an evil that far surpasses the petty bullyings of King Randa with a control so absolute it seems almost Graced, Katsa will be forced to face not only the monster within herself, but a monster against whom she is defenseless.

"A monster that refused, sometimes, to behave like a monster. When a monster stopped behaving like a monster, did it stop being a monster? Did it become something else?"

Katsa's story isn't told to you, it's whispered. The story is all around you, a gentle humming- a susurrus*, that sweeps you through every twist and turn of the story as you run with Katsa. It's whispered to you because you're far to involved to only be reading it, and you're much too busy running to keep up with your heroes to bother with scanning silly words on a page. You don't simply forget where you are, it's just that you're truly no longer there. You belong to the story now.

Sometimes I forget how much I enjoy fantasy fiction. The straight forward, magical beings, magical world kind that take you out of yours and set you down in the book's. What comes to mind is Edding's Belgariad series, Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar series, Tanya Huff's Quarters series- series I continually read over and over because I like living in the world they take me to.

And now I have not only a new favorite fantasy book, but a new favorite book as well. Graceling has a solid, permanent place on my top ten list of all time favorite books. I'm so grateful to have read it, for it's existence, for Cashore's gift and for the happiness I know each re-read will provide for years to come. Yes, I realize that I am gushing like an idiot but it's my raw emotional response to this book and I stand by it. I -loved- this book.



*I give full credit to Sir Terry Pratchett and The Wee Free Men for teaching me that word.

In My Mailbox (8)

In My Mailbox is a weekly meme hosted by Kristi @ The Story Siren in which we share the books we received for the week.

Paranormalcy by Kiersten White
From Goodreads:
Sixteen-year-old Evie's job is bagging and tagging paranormals. Possessing the strange ability to see through their glamours, she works for the International Paranormal Containment Agency. But when someone--or something--starts taking out the vamps, werewolves, and other odd beasties she's worked hard to help become productive members of society, she's got to figure it out before they all disappear and the world becomes utterly normal.

Normal is so overrated.

Mistwood by Leah Cypress
From Goodreads:
The Shifter is an immortal creature bound by an ancient spell to protect the kings of Samorna. When the realm is peaceful, she retreats to the Mistwod.

But when she is needed she always comes.

Isabel remembers nothing. Nothing before the prince rode into her forest to take her back to the castle. Nothing about who she is supposed to be, or the powers she is supposed to have.

Prince Rokan needs Isabel to be his Shifter. He needs her ability to shift to animal form, to wind, to mist. He needs her lethal speed and superhuman strength. And he needs her loyalty--because without it, she may be his greatest threat.

Isabel knows that her prince is lying to her, but she can't help wanting to protect him from the dangers and intrigues of the court . . . until a deadly truth shatters the bond between them.

Now Isabel faces a choice that threatens her loyalty, her heart . . . and everything she thought she knew.

Angelology by Danielle Trussoni
From Goodreads:
A thrilling epic about an ancient clash reignited in our time- between a hidden society and heaven's darkest creatures

There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them.
Genesis 6:5

Sister Evangeline was just a girl when her father entrusted her to the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in upstate New York. Now, at twenty-three, her discovery of a 1943 letter from the famous philanthropist Abigail Rockefeller to the late mother superior of Saint Rose Convent plunges Evangeline into a secret history that stretches back a thousand years: an ancient conflict between the Society of Angelologists and the monstrously beautiful descendants of angels and humans, the Nephilim.

For the secrets these letters guard are desperately coveted by the once-powerful Nephilim, who aim to perpetuate war, subvert the good in humanity, and dominate mankind. Generations of angelologists have devoted their lives to stopping them, and their shared mission, which Evangeline has long been destined to join, reaches from her bucolic abbey on the Hudson to the apex of insular wealth in New York, to the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris and the mountains of Bulgaria.

Rich in history, full of mesmerizing characters, and wondrously conceived, Angelology blends biblical lore, the myth of Orpheus and the Miltonic visions of Paradise Lost into a riveting tale of ordinary people engaged in a battle that will determine the fate of the world.

Birthmarked by Caragh M. O'Brien
From Goodreads:
After climate change, on the north shore of Unlake Superior, a dystopian world is divided between those who live inside the wall, and those, like sixteen-year-old midwife Gaia Stone, who live outside. It’s Gaia’s job to “advance” a quota of infants from poverty into the walled Enclave, until the night one agonized mother objects, and Gaia’s parents are arrested.

Badly scarred since childhood, Gaia is a strong, resourceful loner who begins to question her society. As Gaia’s efforts to save her parents take her within the wall, she herself is arrested and imprisoned.

Fraught with difficult moral choices and rich with intricate layers of codes, BIRTHMARKED explores a colorful, cruel, eerily familiar world where one girl can make all the difference, and a real hero makes her own moral code.

My Soul to Save (Soul Screamers, #2) by Rachel Vincent
From Goodreads:
“If she were going to die, I’d already be screaming. I’m a banshee. That’s what we do.”

The last thing Kaylee needs right now is to be skipping school, breaking her dad’s ironclad curfew and putting her boyfriend’s loyalty to the test. But starry-eyed teens are trading their souls for a flickering lifetime of fame and fortune in exchange for eternity in the Netherworld — a consequence they can’t possibly understand. Kaylee can’t let that happen, even if trying to save their souls means putting her own at risk....

Waiting on Wednesday: Perchance to Dream by Lisa Mantchev

Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill @ Breaking the Spine, in which we share the book that we are anxiously waiting to be released.

May 25th can't get here fast enough!

Perchance to Dream by Lisa Mantchev
From Goodreads:
The stuff that dreams are made on.

Act Two, Scene One

Growing up in the enchanted Thèâtre Illuminata, Beatrice Shakespeare Smith learned everything about every play ever written. She knew the Players and their parts, but she didn’t know that she, too, had magic. Now, she is the Mistress of Revels, the Teller of Tales, and determined to follow her stars. She is ready for the outside world.

Enter BERTIE AND COMPANY

But the outside world soon proves more topsy-turvy than any stage production. Bertie can make things happen by writing them, but outside the protective walls of the Thèâtre, nothing goes as planned. And her magic cannot help her make a decision between—

Nate: Her suave and swashbuckling pirate, now in mortal peril.

Ariel: A brooding, yet seductive, air spirit whose true motives remain unclear.

When Nate is kidnapped and taken prisoner by the Sea Goddess, only Bertie can free him. She and her fairy sidekicks embark on a journey aboard the Thèâtre’s caravan, using Bertie’s word magic to guide them. Along the way, they collect a sneak-thief, who has in his possession something most valuable, and meet The Mysterious Stranger, Bertie’s father—and the creator of the scrimshaw medallion. Bertie’s dreams are haunted by Nate, whose love for Bertie is keeping him alive, but in the daytime, it’s Ariel who is tantalizingly close, and the one she is falling for. Who does Bertie love the most? And will her magic be powerful enough to save her once she enters the Sea Goddess’s lair?

Once again, LISA MANTCHEV has spun a tale like no other—full of romance, magic, adventure, and fairies, too—that readers won’t want to put down, even after the curtain has closed.

Such a Pretty Girl by Laura Wiess

Reading Level:: Young Adult
Pages: 212
Publisher: January 2nd 2007 by MTV (first published 2007)

"Meredith," she calls, waving me closer. "Look who's here!" Her scarlet nails glow orange in the sunset. "Come say hello!"
     I can't. Breathing hurts and I want to run. His head turns toward me and my gaze jumps away, fixes on the fists filling my pockets. I count the rigid knuckles lumped beneath the faded denim. Four is my safe number. Eight is double strength. I smell terror in my sudden sweat. Oh god, please don't let this happen.
     "Meredith," my mother says again, and there's steel beneath the honey. "I'm talking to you. Come here and say hello please. Now."
     It's the bitchy "now" that punctures my paralysis. Now he's here. Now she's happy. Now I'm supposed to act like nothing ever happened...
      The passenger door opens.
     One sneakered foot is planted on the driveway. The other joins it.
     "Hello, Meredith."
     The voice is quiet, kind, hoarse with history...and it destroys me. A sick, writhing knot of old love and despair lays me open worse than that first time and the force of it almost takes me down. I lock my knees, trying not to sway. This was not supposed to happen. I spent years steeling myself, reliving every rotten moment over and over again to make myself immune, hiding from nothing so there would be nothing hidden left to cripple me, and I thought I'd made it, but now, with one simple greeting, I've already lost.
     "No, Daddy, no. Don't."

Meredith is sitting by a dumpster in her condominium complex waiting for her father to come home from prison. In the pit of her stomach is a boulder of anxiety and fear heavy enough to weigh her down to her spot on the curb because where would she run to even if she was light enough to move. This is home. For three years she's struggled to cope with what has happened, safe in the knowledge that she'd have six more years of freedom to deal with it.

All morning long her mother has chirped and fluttered about the house like a preening happy bird out of a children's fairytale because she's excited that the man who abused and molested at least five known children is coming home to her today. Everything will be perfect now. It was just a mistake. They are still family and family forgives each other's mistakes, right? The parole board did so it must be ok. He was suppose to go away for nine years but he's out in three because he's been so well behaved. He's been a model prisoner. He's so sorry and he's mended his ways.

It'll be like it never happened. At least until it happens again.
______________

So I don't need to tell you what this book is about. I think you get it and if you need a moment to process it, take it. It's a heavy subject, one that shouldn't even exist in a story, in a book, in a country, in a world or even in a thought. But it does and through very meticulous weaving of past and present events, Wiess has written a road map to guide you through the awful and to help you see rape and abuse through the victim's eyes without scaring you back into the safety of your own conscious that doesn't like to admit that such a thing is even possible. Taking into consideration the magnitude of this subject, the brevity and careful, thoughtful retelling of the events in Meredith's past make it easy to take the plunge and see the book through. Wiess never intends to scare you away or beat you down with her subject matter, she intends only to help you understand. Given what she could have done, I think she handles the reader's emotions with kid gloves.

This is a marvelous read worthy of immediate devouring. I couldn't put it down once I started. Be prepared to travel the full spectrum of emotion. The physical description of Meredith's father is so vivid- when she described his gold necklace against his hairy chest my skin crawled instantly and I hated him more than ever. I loathed her mother and wanted to beat her senseless with my bare hands. What a rotten, stupid, pathetic individual. And Meredith earned a "hell yes, girl" when she finally took matters into her own hands and saved her day with an almost superhero like display of strength. Meredith has a unique way of coping with what has happened to her and a very eclectic self-appointed safety net of people who's stories and roles in the book make for well timed breaks as we start to deal with Meredith's life. I loved it. It's re-readable because even without a happy ending (because can there ever really be one when we're talking abuse?) the story leaves us all set to go on with our lives. Definitely a good book hangover.


And for any reader, writer, publisher or other assorted book person who wonders how book bloggers can increase sales and readership- I bought this book because Angie @ Angieville said it was great. So there you have it.

Contest: Favorite Things

So I found this nifty four picture frame at Target that I wanted to hang in my dining room. I wasn't sure what I wanted to put in the frame, but I knew I wanted it. I was going through various artsy options when it occurred to me that well, duh, I love books. Goodreads has this amazing feature where you can view your bookshelves just as the covers and I picked out the ones that meant the most to me, my favorites. Here is the finished product:



Nation by Terry Pratchett, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith and Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett are four of my most favorite reads. Clicking on their images below will take you to their goodreads page.

And I think you'll love them too. Fill out the form to enter to win one book of your choice from the above list. I will accept entries until midnight (CST) on May 31st.

**UPDATE** I have added Graceling by Kristin Cashore not only to the giveaway but to my list of all time favorite books.




*Your book's cover may not be the same as the ones I have. They have been digitally altered to enhance their awesomeness and only exist on my wall.

In My Mailbox (7)

In My Mailbox is a weekly meme hosted by Kristi @ The Story Siren in which we share the books we received for the week.

Crank by Ellen Hopkins
From Goodreads:
Kristina Georgia Snow is the perfect daughter: gifted high school junior, quiet, never any trouble. But on a trip to visit her absentee father, Kristina disappears and Bree takes her place. Bree is the exact opposite of Kristina -- she's fearless.
Through a boy, Bree meets the monster: crank. And what begins as a wild, ecstatic ride turns into a struggle through hell for her mind, her soul -- her life.

Such A Pretty Girl by Laura Wiess
From Goodreads:
They promised Meredith nine years of safety, but only gave her three.

Her father was supposed to be locked up until Meredith turned eighteen. She thought she had time to grow up, get out, and start a new life. But Meredith is only fifteen, and today her father is coming home from prison.

Today her time has run out.