48 Hour Book Challenge: Finale!

Alright, we're about ten minutes or so from the end of my 48 hour span.  Here's the breakdown:

5 books:
1.  The Half-Life of Planets by Emily Franklin & Brendan Halpin (218 pages: 3 hours, 5 minutes).
2.  The Prince of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (214 pages: 2 hours, 50 minutes)
3.  The Extraordinary Secrets of April, May, & June by Robin Benway (282 pages: 3 hours, 25 minutes)
4.  A Small Free Kiss In The Dark by Glenda Millard (180 pages: 2 hours, 13 minutes)
5.  Not That Kind of Girl by Siobhan Vivian (322 pages: 2 hours and 29 minutes).

Page count: 1,216
Hour total: 14 hours, 2 minutes

Blogging reviews + Social Networking
1 hour on Friday, June 4
1 hour on Sunday, June 6
+ 1 hour of social networking:
3 hours

GRAND TOTAL: 17 hours, 2 minutes

Whew!  I easily surpassed my goal of 12 hours, though fell short of my goal for 6 books.  I really thought I read faster, but perhaps I read faster when I take more mini breaks?  Due to the timing part of this, I worked really hard to read in larger chunks of time.  And gained much compassion for my summer readers of summers past, who dutifully logged their time spent reading.

I'll definitely want to do this again next year!  Perhaps taking a break in the middle for the horrible but fun Sex and the City 2 and dinner with friends was not the best way to get the most out of my 48 hours.  But it did wonders for my sanity!

48 Hour Book Challenge, Book 5: Not That Kind of Girl by Siobhan Vivian

It seems like every school has one.  That girl that seems to rise above everything, the one who's so in control of her present and future, the one who has it all together.  Or so it seems.  Natalie Sterling is that girl, at Ross Academy.  After watching her best friend Autumn lose her social standing after being humiliated by her  jock, senior boyfriend, when she was a freshman, Natalie has basically avoided all contact with the male species.  She's focused on school, her grades, saving Autumn, and becoming the ninth girl in her school's history to become Student Council President.

A last minute challenge by asshole jock Mike Domski isn't enough to derail Natalie, who narrowly defeats him.  She's in charge as much as she's ever been.  But success never comes easy, and Natalie's soon distracted by her old babysitting charge, now a spunk freshman, who has her own ideas about feminism, most of them along the line of using sexuality to get boys to like her.  As much as they don't see eye to eye, Natalie still wants to rescue Spencer, convinced she's got everything all figured out.  But she didn't count on Connor, the football QB, making a pass at her, and she certainly didn't count on her... liking him back.

Siobhan Vivian's latest looks at the double standards for guys and girls, but also puts a human spin on it. I found myself constantly reevaluating my own opinions and judgments, as much as Natalie has to, throughout the book.  It turns out it's not so easy, to be just one kind of girl, and maybe...maybe that's okay.

This book is pretty hard to put down, especially when you're in a crunch to beat the clock.  Vivian does an excellent job at getting at the nuances in the book's many relationships, whether its Natalie and Connor, Natalie and her best friend Autumn, or Natalie and her teacher-mentor, Ms. Bee.

In my opinion, a must-read for high school girls.

* This review is based off an Uncorrected Proof.  The finished book will hit bookstores in September 2010. *

48 Hour Book Challenge, Book 4: A Small Free Kiss In The Dark by Glenda Millard

Imagine if Cormac McCarthy wrote The Road and made it hopeful.  Okay, I know, that's not what Cormac McCarthy would do, but it's sort of what Glenda Millard does in A Small Free Kiss In The Dark.  Skip's a teenager who never quite found what he was looking for via the foster care system.  He's homeless, but he gets by, spending time in the library and creating chalk art.  Until something very not beautiful happens.  His dingy city world, a world he still saw the beauty in, becomes war-torn.  Buildings are blowing up, people are dead in the street, or cowered in what's left of the library, trying to figure out what to do next.  His world is a war-zone.  And nobody knows what to do.

With an older homeless man, Billy, and a kid named Max, whose mother never made it to pick him up from the library, Skip leaves the city, venturing through the underground tunnels where the trains used to run, and finds a new home, in an abandoned amusement park.  Thinking the tanks and bombs won't come for them there, Skip, Billy, Max, and a beautiful ballerina/teenage mother Tia and her baby make their home there, carving out an existence in a place that's supposed to inspire hope and doing the best they can to survive.

Millard crafts a gripping story in an unreal setting, at least for this country.  As much as this is not a story about the apocalypse, the setting nevertheless feels like it, with no one aware of what is happening, except the fact that everything has changed.  Gorgeous, evocative writing, and a hopeful, thoughtful protagonist make this story both memorable and powerful. 

48 Hour Book Challenge - Book 3 - The Extraordinary Secrets of April, May, & June by Robin Benway

There's something powerful about sisterhood.  I know this mostly because I only have a brother, and have always felt something missing when talking to friends who have sisters.  There's something special about sisterhood: the antagonism, the rivalry, and the closeness that can only come from spending so much time in the same house, year after year, with someone related to you and also, so much like you.

April, May, and June are sisters whose parents got a little lazy when it came to picking names for their kids.  They were all born a year apart; April is the oldest (a junior), then May (a sophomore), then June (a freshman).  After their parents' surprising divorce, the girls were uprooted from the only home they knew and plunked down in Southern California, forced to start high school all over again in a place where they have no friends.  April, the brainiac of the family, has her mind set on college, while May's seriously missing her dad, and the only thing June cares about is finagling her way into the popular crowd.  But all of these plans are thrown for a serious loop when, on the way into school, their car almost hits another student.... and they realize they all have extraordinary powers.  April can see into the future, May can become invisible, and June can read minds.

If you're expecting for the girls to bond together with their secret powers to save the world, you are reading the wrong book!  These sisters use their secret powers, for good and for bad, dealing with the crises of high school that everyone -- yes, even those of us without super powers -- can relate to.  Their powers pull them apart and divide them (can you imagine being able to read your sibling's mind?!), but they also bring them together, in a powerful finale that will remind readers of the fragile bonds that tie siblings together, for better or for worse, as family.

This is a perfect beach read for the end of summer (sorry, it doesn't come out until August) or for the start of the school year.  Robin Benway is a witty writer with a deep understanding of all that goes down in high school: the good, the bad, the ugly.  Each chapter is written by a different sister, and I have to say, my favorite sections were the ones narrated by Meg.  She's the perfect moody antidote to June (who's basing her life off a little too much reality TV) and had some hilarious moments getting all snarky with her peer tutor, Henry.

  Readers of Audrey, Wait! have been waiting a little while for this one, and it won't disappoint.


*This review is based off the Advance Reader's Copy.  The book will be published in August 2010.*

48 Hour Book Challenge - Book 2: The Prince of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

From the moment I picked up Carlos Ruiz Zafon's debut YA novel The Prince of Mist (finally out in the United States) from the library this afternoon, I've been dying to read it.  The moody, mysterious cover totally sucked me in, and the blurbs from just about every reputable book review source on the back increased my enthusiasm.

And then I started the book.  And I understood the power of masterful storytelling.  That's exactly what's going on here.  The skeleton of the story sounds familiar to anyone who appreciates a good mystery or horror story.  A family packs up all their belongings, relocating to a huge house by the ocean.  Huge houses by the ocean don't come easily, or cheaply, and so it's not completely surprising to learn that the young boy who lived here died, and soon after, so did both his parents.

Max, along with his two sisters, and mother, is sort of creeped out by the place when they arrive.  It seems like it hasn't been touched in ten years, but every now and then, he gets a glimpse of what a grand place it must have been.  And then he's getting glimpses of something else.  In the expansive yard, he finds an overrun garden with statues, of circus performers, all pointed toward a clown in the center.  His dad finds some old reels of film and plays them for his family on the wall (it's the 1940s, and that's how it was done back then).  One of the reels has footage of the statues, except they aren't posed the same way.  And the weird thing is, Max's sister just had a dream about the statue the night before.

This is a tale where nothing's quite as it seems, and Max has to do a fair bit of research and unraveling to get at the bottom of everything, in a race against time before the Prince of Mist returns for what he believes belongs to him.  This one has all the atmosphere, creepiness, and cinematic flair to draw in readers of all ages who like a good, spooky, creepy tale.  This is precisely the kind of book younger me would have loved (of course, current me loved it too) because I did go through a phase in which I was fascinated by this sort of paranormal stuff.  Werewolves, vampires--not so much, but give me a good "ghost" story or something with an oracle doll or possessed doll house, and I was there.

This one will definitely appeal to Stephen King fans, but that's not to say it's straight-up horror.  Mystery and supernatural fans will find much to admire as well.

48 Hour Book Challenge, Book One: The Half-Life of Planets by Emily Franklin and Brendan Halpin

Disclosure: I haven't read anything by Brendan Halpin OR Emily Franklin before, but now that I've read this one, and found out that they live, basically, right in my neighborhood (okay, close: Newton and J.P.), I probably should read more!  Also, those are not the real reasons to read more, the real reason is because this book was GREAT!

Most of the time, love does not come easy.  And this is certainly the case for Liana, who has a hard time believing that she's not a "slut," as the note in her locker claims.  She's done her fair share of kissing and running.  And then there's Hank, who's never gotten close enough to a member of his opposite sex that wasn't Mother to even be thinking of love.  A chance meeting in a hospital bathroom brings these two characters from disparate places (in social standings, life, though they are from the same town) together for an unforgettable friendship that blooms into something more, a challenge for the both of them.

Franklin and Halpin clearly are a pair to watch (dare we say, the second coming of David Levithan and Rachel Cohn?!?!).  In fact, this book, for me, personally, surpassed Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist.  I found this love story so much more believable, because, let's face it, how rare is it to find love in a moment, in an evening?  The best relationship stories take place over a longer period of time, say, a summer, giving both characters plenty of time to completely embarrass themselves in front of each other, because cringe-worthy moments and complete mistakes give way to the most redeeming of apologies and forgiveness.

Music buffs will appreciate the way these two have bonded over a shared love of rock classics.

It seems that I must mention that Hank has Asperger's syndrome, since it is relevant to the story, but I must also then admit that this one of the first stories I've read about someone with Asperger's where that's not their defining feature, nor is it what the story is about.  Perhaps that is where the story really succeeds in defying stereotypes.  When Liana starts hanging out with Hank, she has no idea he has Asperger's, he's just a little bit strange sometimes (umm... what teenage boy isn't?) and he has an encyclopedic knowledge of rock music (you can say that about pretty much every guy that's worked at a record store). He has to tell her that he has Asperger's, just so she'll understand how some things don't come natural to him (like reading gestures, etc.).

This is the perfect quirky summer romance for anyone that likes to read about real, flawed, kind of hilarious people, finding each other and finding love.