Review: Paper Towns by John Green

Book: Paper Towns

Author: John Green

Publication Date: October 16, 2008

Publisher: Dutton Juvenile
Rating: 3 Stars

I never really understood what people meant by the John Green formula until I read this book. The mysterious, cool, distant girl, the slightly geeky boy, and the journey. It's very reminiscent of Looking for Alaska, which I think is part of the reason I didn't like it as much. Looking for Alaska is my least favorite John Green book, and I think that if I hadn't read that, Paper Towns would've gotten a higher rating from me. As it is, I think it's just a better done regurgitation of LFA.

There are some things about John Green's writing that I really enjoy, despite the repetitive formula. I like how he uses symbolism and how his books usually revolve around one clear concept (in this case, paper towns and facades). Some people might see it as needlessly rehashing something, but his ideas are usually pretty unique and about stuff I've never heard of. Also, his dialogue and characters never fail to make me laugh. The road trip in this book was my favorite part. It was so isolated from everything else and it really brought the friendships among all the characters into perspective. The way they all come together for a 23 hour car ride and the strangeness of the situation highlights John Green's capacity for imagination. Out of all the characters, my favorite character was Radar because he didn't suffer from the melodrama and selfishness that the others had. I didn't have much patience for Q and Margo's dramatics. In fact, I didn't understand how they went from not really talking to each other at all to suddenly in love. For Q, it's understandable. But why would Margo give him the time of day after years of not really interacting with him? Doesn't make sense.

The book is exciting, I'll give it that. I wanted to keep reading. But I got tired of Q's obsession with the projection that Margo was giving off, and I guess that was kind of the point. However, it was too reminiscent of Pudge's angst after Alaska's disappearance. I probably need a break from John Green before I pick up another one of his books.

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Review: Ten Tiny Breaths by K.A. Tucker

Book: Ten Tiny Breaths
Author: K.A. Tucker
Publication Date: December 11th, 2012
Publisher: Papoti Books
Rating: 3 Stars

Kacey Cleary’s whole life imploded four years ago in a drunk-driving accident. Now she’s working hard to bury the pieces left behind—all but one. Her little sister, Livie. Kacey can swallow the constant disapproval from her born-again aunt Darla over her self-destructive lifestyle; she can stop herself from going kick-boxer crazy on Uncle Raymond when he loses the girls’ college funds at a blackjack table. She just needs to keep it together until Livie is no longer a minor, and then they can get the hell out of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

But when Uncle Raymond slides into bed next to Livie one night, Kacey decides it’s time to run. Armed with two bus tickets and dreams of living near the coast, Kacey and Livie start their new lives in a Miami apartment complex, complete with a grumpy landlord, a pervert upstairs, and a neighbor with a stage name perfectly matched to her chosen “profession.” But Kacey’s not worried. She can handle all of them. What she can’t handle is Trent Emerson in apartment 1D.

Kacey doesn’t want to feel. She doesn’t. It’s safer that way. For everyone. But sexy Trent finds a way into her numb heart, reigniting her ability to love again. She starts to believe that maybe she can leave the past where it belongs and start over. Maybe she’s not beyond repair.

But Kacey isn’t the only one who’s broken. Seemingly perfect Trent has an unforgivable past of his own; one that, when discovered, will shatter Kacey’s newly constructed life and send her back into suffocating darkness.

“I don’t hate you. I could never hate you. Give me your heart, Kacey. I’ll take everything that comes with it.”

For all the times this Uncle Raymond dude is mentioned in the summary, he sure never appears in the book. At all. Really, you get what this book is about if you just read the last two paragraphs of the blurb.

I thought this book was interesting. It kept me reading, and I was curious to see what would happen. I got a little caught up in Trent's hotness too, but then again I always do that. I liked Tucker's writing style; it didn't drag, and it definitely could have. Why? Because nothing happens in the first half of the book. Kacey settles down in Miami with her sister, Livie, starts working at a strip club as a bartender with little experience, and avoids her hot neighbor, Trent.

A lot of things that happened in this story made me wonder if this was all possible. Running off to Miami without being found by your legal guardians, miraculously finding people who are that good with tons of cash to spare, getting a job at a club where the bouncers and the owners are complete gentlemen... I don't know, seems a little too perfect for me. Maybe I've been reading too many my-life-is-shit novels or something.

After the initial wow-that-guy-is-sexy phase, I started getting really annoyed of Trent and Kasey's reaction to him. Fine, he's really hot. But do you have to mention how you can't speak and your legs turn to jello every single time you meet eyes? Also, I'm sorry, but he's a stalker. There is no way to get around it. It's mentioned later that he has followed Kasey's life for months before he actually met her, and that is just creepy. Somehow, people think it's okay when the hot guy does the stalking, but stalking is still stalking. It's still the act of creeping on another person without his/her knowledge.

Here's the run-down of this novel:
30% Trent staring at Kasey
40% Kasey thinking about Trent
20% Kasey and Trent sexy times
10% actual substance

To conclude, 90% is about Trent. And he's pretty important, but come on. I thought the book was about Kasey healing herself, not her depending on some guy to do it for her. The unveiling at the end definitely gave me a good shock, though I feel pretty stupid for not foreseeing it earlier. I actually got more interested because of it. The book would've been pretty boring and less fucked up if Tucker had left the twist out, although it might still have worked. I thought everything was too easily solved with the epilogue and last chapter. I don't know if therapy is that miraculous. Maybe it is. But the way everyone seemed to come together again... Like the rest of the book and its characters, it seemed a bit too perfect. I didn't think Tucker spent enough time exploring the other characters for the conclusion to make sense; if she'd laid off a little on Trent and Kasey, there might have been some real, believable development in relationships. As it is, this book is interesting if you like runaway snakes and sexual tension.
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Review: Lovely, Dark and Deep by Amy McNamara

Book: Lovely, Dark and Deep
Author: Amy McNamara
Publication Date: October 16th, 2012
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Rating: 3 Stars

Since the night of the crash, Wren Wells has been running away. Though she lived through the accident that killed her boyfriend Patrick, the girl she used to be didn’t survive. Instead of heading off to college as planned, Wren retreats to her father’s studio in the far-north woods of Maine. Somewhere she can be alone.

Then she meets Cal Owen. Dealing with his own troubles, Cal’s hiding out too. When the chemistry between them threatens to pull Wren from her hard-won isolation, Wren has to choose: risk opening her broken heart to the world again, or join the ghosts who haunt her.

Before this book, if someone had approached me and said that it was possible to write a 350 page novel that basically revolves around a teenage girl angsting in a forest, I would've called bullshit. But this book proved me wrong. Apparently, teenagers can have a lot of angst. Enough to fill 350 pages. I don't want to blaspheme Lovely, Dark and Deep though, because at its heart, it's a beautifully written book. The writing is poetic and conjures up images in a way that a regularly written script of dialogue and hasty descriptions can't. One of the first things that clued me into the prose was the quote on the front jacket flap:

I came here because it's pine-dark and the ocean is wild. The kind of quiet-noise you need when there's too much going on in your head. Like the water and the woods are doing all the feeling, and I can hang out, quiet as a headstone, in a between place. A blank I can bear.

I still can't believe she compared herself to a headstone. She's basically saying her life is a cemetery. This should have been enough of a clue that I was about to venture into depression-land, but apparently it wasn't enough to drive me away.

The entire time I was reading, I kept imagining myself in this silent forest, the kind of forest you find in the east. The trees have heavy snow-covered boughs, and the only sound is silence. Other times, it seemed that this book had submerged me like a rock in the ocean, where everything is muffled but in clarity. This is the world that Wren seems to move through. After her car accident, when she sees her boyfriend die before her eyes, she's lost and can't seem to find meaning in normalcy anymore. The grief in this book is potent, and I had to take breaks from the book because there were times when I thought it would take me under and not let go.

Wren is a tormented character; she takes midnight jogs in the forest and basically wanders around, oblivious to everything around her. It wasn't so bad in the beginning, but as the book went on, I found it really hard to like her. There's an amount of grief that i can deal with, but the way she treated the people around her seemed too harsh. Her decisions were so childish, especially when she decides that she hates Nick, that I couldn't feel sorry for her. She hates quickly and falls in love equally quickly. Cal remains two-dimensional; although his illness gives him character, I never felt like I truly understood him or what he and Wren found in each other beyond their mutual knowledge of what grief feels like.

What I did like, besides the writing, were the side characters, like her father, Mary, and Zara. Although there's not enough exploration into each, their personalities are warm and offset the coldness that seems to surround Wren. When they appear in the book, despite Wren's sulky responses to their attempts to help, they seem to be beacons of hope and recovery. The normalcy they provide becomes more frequent, and I think McNamara did a good job of inserting them into Wren's life slowly but surely. I would've liked her to come to terms with her mother in some sort of way, but I guess the point of that and what happens to her and Meredith are both evidence that there are some circumstances in life that change everything, and there's not much we can do to change it back.

Lovely, Dark and Deep is a heavy novel, but it doesn't have enough momentum. As I mentioned in my introduction, it's 350 pages of teenage angst. The end didn't seem like an end because the story cuts off, and maybe McNamara intends for us to imagine the rest of Wren's life, now that she's learned to care about others again. At any rate, the story just seems like one prolonged moment, and I have a hard time finding a plot in it. It could have been cut down a lot more so that the sadness was more profound and seemed less like it was dragging on. Also, the fragmented sentences sometimes interrupted the flow of things, especially since the rest of the writing was poetic and smooth.

Well, that's that. I'm exhausted from this book. Time for some Julia Quinn! 
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Review: Crewel by Gennifer Albin

Book: Crewel
Author: Gennifer Albin
Series: Crewel World
Publication Date: October 16th, 2012
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Rating: 3 Stars

Enter a tangled world of secrets and intrigue where a girl is in charge of other’s destinies, but not her own.

Sixteen-year-old Adelice Lewys has always been special. When her parents discover her gift—the ability to weave the very fabric of reality—they train her to hide it. For good reason, they don’t want her to become a Spinster — one of the elite, beautiful, and deadly women who determine what people eat, where they live, how many children they have, and even when they die.

Thrust into the opulent Western Coventry, Adelice will be tried, tested and tempted as she navigates the deadly politics at play behind its walls.  Now caught in a web of lies and forbidden romance, she must unravel the sinister truth behind her own unspeakable power.  Her world is hanging by a thread, and Adelice, alone, can decide to save it — or destroy it.

So after I stopped mourning over the fact that I couldn't read the galley of this because MacMillan took it down, I finally got down to business when this book came out and read it. And well, it was interesting. The world is definitely as enigmatic and intriguing as the cover, and I think what this book really has going for it is the originality that's been incorporated through the world that Albin has created. But if we step back and really look at what this book stands for, we see that it's no different from any other doomy dystopian novel. There's the government that controls everything the people does, the President Snow-like commander who calls all the shots and crushes all opposition, and what I like to call "the other side of the fence," the convenient deux ex machina that chooses to make itself known at the most opportune time so there's always a place for the heroine to escape.

I honestly cannot pinpoint my feelings about this book. On one hand, it kept me flipping pages because I wanted to discover more about the world of the Creweler. I like the idea of having threads that make up people. But the world is not enough for a book. I liked Adelice. I especially admired her quick comebacks and her rebellious nature, but sometimes I wouldn't understand why she would do certain things. Also, I just didn't see why she loved Amie so much. I know they're sisters, but it seemed more like she thought of Amie as a burden than anything else. And her parents are mentioned at sparse intervals. It's another classic example of using the dead family to motivate the heroine, but in this case, Adelice never made her love for her family very clear.

Then, we have the bitchy, bitter shell of a woman who also isn't as good as the heroine. Naturally. And the two equally attractive men but of course Adelice chooses the one with the dark past. I liked Jost, though. Actually, for a while I was gunning for Erik, just because I like the whole well-groomed-but-rebellious shindig he had going before I realized he was way too one-dimensional. Then we have a whole host of characters who help Adelice but pay the price for doing so. Naturally. Also, the ending was just this big cliffhanger that involves the characters going to the "other side," which is the worst excuse for an ending ever. I'm worried about the dystopian genre. It's becoming way too predictable, which should never be the case for an end-of-the-world book. Here's to hoping that some book will break out of the mold and wow us all. 
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Review: Paranormalcy by Kiersten White

Book: Paranormalcy 
Author: Kiersten White
Series: Paranormalcy
Publication Date: August 31st, 2010
Publisher: HarperTeen
Rating: 3 Stars

Evie's always thought of herself as a normal teenager, even though she works for the International Paranormal Containment Agency, her ex-boyfriend is a faerie, she's falling for a shape-shifter, and she's the only person who can see through paranormals' glamours.

But Evie's about to realize that she may very well be at the center of a dark faerie prophecy promising destruction to all paranormal creatures.

So much for normal.

Don't you love it when true love triumphs between two inexperienced teenagers who happen to save the day because of their great capacity for emotion? It's so precious. It makes me weep.

Don't get me wrong; Paranormalcy isn't that bad. In fact, it can be even argued that it is one of the saving graces of the genre. The problem is that it just isn't anything new. Sure, I laughed, and I felt a little bit when characters died. But my general feelings are ambivalent. And when you read a book, is your only expectation that it not be gruesomely terrible, or even not bad? Especially after reading something like Days of Blood & Starlight, I needed something light, and this book did that for me. But I couldn't find any of the sort of depth and humanity that I did in Karou and her friends.

It was just so... meh. I can think of more thinks I didn't like about it than what I did like. For example, I didn't like the main character, Evie. Maybe it's a product of growing up, but I thought she didn't act her age. I can understand that she's been isolated from society, but does that really mean she has to go around calling everything cute and obsessing over pink things? There is this one part I remember where she said, "I even got a cute last name, Green." And the freaking out over lockers and high school things? It was cute (oh God, I sound like her now) in the beginning, but then it just became redundant. I got the fact that she was inexperienced. Also, Easton Heights sounds really dull. I prefer Gossip Girl.

The plot was... nice, I guess. It wasn't really anything new. Reth really interests me, though. He's so cruel yet attractive. Wow, I'm as bad as those Mary Sues. But Lend was too boring for me, especially compared with someone like Reth. If you're going to make one of your love interests a faery, you'd better match up. Lend is interesting, but in the end, if we deconstruct him, he's a teenage boy who reacts to things quite boringly. There wasn't even much wittiness tossed in there. He's supposed to provide a dose of normal, but I didn't quite like the normal that I got. Everything was mostly predictable, although I didn't expect what happened to Lisha.

I've been ragging on the book enough, though. I'm not giving it 3 stars for no reason; I did like some of the things that happened. Although the dialogue wasn't very witty, the way the book was written was very light-hearted, despite all the intense stuff happening. In that way, the normalcy helped ground it. I liked reading about Evie's interaction with the paranormal creatures that she bags and tags; there just wasn't enough of that. As far as supernatural YA goes, this is pretty decent.  

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Review: Grave Mercy by R.L. LaFevers

Book: Grave Mercy
Author: R.L. LaFevers
Series: His Fair Assassin
Publication Date: April 3rd, 2012
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Pages: 549
Rating: 3 Stars

Why be the sheep, when you can be the wolf?

Seventeen-year-old Ismae escapes from the brutality of an arranged marriage into the sanctuary of the convent of St. Mortain, where the sisters still serve the gods of old. Here she learns that the god of Death Himself has blessed her with dangerous gifts—and a violent destiny. If she chooses to stay at the convent, she will be trained as an assassin and serve as a handmaiden to Death. To claim her new life, she must destroy the lives of others.

Ismae’s most important assignment takes her straight into the high court of Brittany—where she finds herself woefully under prepared—not only for the deadly games of intrigue and treason, but for the impossible choices she must make. For how can she deliver Death’s vengeance upon a target who, against her will, has stolen her heart?

For while I am Death’s daughter and walk in His dark shadow, surely the darkness can give way to light sometimes.

Killer nuns? Historical fantasy? Right on!

I wasn't all that interested in the first couple chapters. Well, the first chapter definitely got my attention. First chapters that involve almost-rape always capture my attention. I think that's what they're supposed to do. But after that, things got a bit ehhhh. Okay, convent with lots of poisons that Ismae is fortunately immune to. Lots of man hating, as well as a class in which women can learn how to seduce...? Some interesting side characters that you think are going to have greater importance but end up popping up only once or twice throughout the story. Most of all, there was a lot of preaching about how killing a man is better than...doing anything else with a man. Yeah.

One heart cannot serve two masters.

The political intrigue was good stuff. It takes some serious logic to think of all the plots and pitfalls that come with being a duchess. Although, I didn't really get the duchess. She didn't really do anything useful except be pale yet determined (???)  all the time. While we're on redundancy, I have to mention that there was a lot of elbow grabbing and iron grips. What's with that?

 In addition, I want to point out that despite the gigantic problems that arose, they were all solved relatively quickly and efficiently. Duchess can't get a good husband? Here comes a man who just happens to have just lost his wife and has both looks and a formidable army! French whore (I don't call her this, the abbess does. Are nuns allowed to call other women whores? Huh.) and her son might be traitors? Just swear an oath and be spared from death (why didn't they do this sooner...?) I just don't think problems that concern a country's future can really be solved so easily. Then again, this IS a YA novel. Can't expect serious fiscal-crisis-stuff. That would ruin everything. Just like it's ruining America now. Ahem. Moving on!

The romance made me roll my eyes a healthy number of times. Example:

Perhaps Mortain knew I could not kill him even if he bore the marque. I cannot kill the only man I have found it in my heart to love.

Of COURSE he's the only man. You were locked up in a convent for most of your life until you met him! 

Anyway, Ismae sort of bothered me. She was way too good at everything she did, and even though I have great admiration for her collection of poisons and that badass bracelet she uses for strangulation (or something of the sort), there's no way for one person to excel at killing and hiding the way she does. Just... nuh-uh. No way. And that part at the end where she saves Duval? Totally expected something like that. The only problems she seemed to have concerned her angsting over him and the way she completely lost all of her nunnery smarts whenever he came into the picture. 

I do have a soft spot for Duval, though. He's way too sweet and perfect, which is how I like my fictional men.

“I know some call him oath breaker, for although the oath he swore to Saint Camulos required him to stand and fight, he turned his back on the fighting and instead carried me to safety. But as he explained to me later, what good is fighting if what you are fighting for is lost?”

Deep stuff. Anyway, Grave Mercy is how I've come to expect all these paranormal/fantasy/whatnot young adult novels to be. Now authors are trying to throw in kickass heroines and swoon-worthy males at an alarming frequency, and I don't think I like it. But you could definitely do worse than this book. Thus, 3 stars.

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Review: Flat-Out Love by Jessica Park

Book: Flat-Out Love
Author: Jessica Park
Publisher: Self-Published
Pages: 400
My rating: 3 Stars

Goodreads Summary:
Flat-Out Love is a warm and witty novel of family love and dysfunction, deep heartache and raw vulnerability, with a bit of mystery and one whopping, knock-you-to-your-knees romance.

Something is seriously off in the Watkins home. And Julie Seagle, college freshman, small-town Ohio transplant, and the newest resident of this Boston house, is determined to get to the bottom of it.

When Julie's off-campus housing falls through, her mother's old college roommate, Erin Watkins, invites her to move in. The parents, Erin and Roger, are welcoming, but emotionally distant and academically driven to eccentric extremes. The middle child, Matt, is an MIT tech geek with a sweet side ... and the social skills of a spool of USB cable. The youngest, Celeste, is a frighteningly bright but freakishly fastidious 13-year-old who hauls around a life-sized cardboard cutout of her oldest brother almost everywhere she goes.

And there's that oldest brother, Finn: funny, gorgeous, smart, sensitive, almost emotionally available. Geographically? Definitely unavailable. That's because Finn is traveling the world and surfacing only for random Facebook chats, e-mails, and status updates. Before long, through late-night exchanges of disembodied text, he begins to stir something tender and silly and maybe even a little bit sexy in Julie's suddenly lonesome soul.

To Julie, the emotionally scrambled members of the Watkins family add up to something that ... well ... doesn't quite add up. Not until she forces a buried secret to the surface, eliciting a dramatic confrontation that threatens to tear the fragile Watkins family apart, does she get her answer.
Flat-Out Love comes complete with emails, Facebook status updates, and instant messages.

There is no denying that Flat-Out Love is a very well-done book. That despite Jessica Park's little team-up with Jamie McGuire, this book will make you feel. Even though she's not acting cordially through her her support of McGuire in attacks against reviewers, I do not regret reading this book. The behavior of an author does make my opinion of him/her fall considerably, but it doesn't stop me from reading a book that promises to be good.

The revelation at the end was mind-blowing. I had no idea it was coming until a couple pages before (probably because I was up at 3 AM finishing up). Park duped me, and I feel simultaneously gratified and offended.

The cast of characters...I loved the characters in this book. Celeste, Matt, Erin, Finn...Ha. The dialogue was quick and witty, and I couldn't put the book down. I read it, in fact, for 5 straight hours. It's beautiful. This messed up, dysfunctional family, was beautiful. Julie was plenty amazing, too, with the way she deals with the situation and her attempts to help. Even though it was hard to like her at first for her rejection of the quirks of the Watkins family, her behavior towards Celeste and Flat Finn was enough to redeem her in the end.

I need to reread all of the messages with Finn after this. Damn it, that was brilliant.

I decided to be diplomatic and rate it a fair 3 stars, because even though I gave my honest opinion in this review, I still can't completely forget Park's past behavior.

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Review: Legend by Marie Lu

Book: Legend
Series: Legend
Author: Marie Lu
Release Date: November 29th, 2011
Publisher: Putnam Juvenile
Source: Library
Pages: 305 Rating: 3 Stars

Goodreads Summary: What was once the western United States is now home to the Republic, a nation perpetually at war with its neighbors. Born into an elite family in one of the Republic’s wealthiest districts, fifteen-year-old June is a prodigy being groomed for success in the Republic’s highest military circles. Born into the slums, fifteen-year-old Day is the country’s most wanted criminal. But his motives may not be as malicious as they seem. From very different worlds, June and Day have no reason to cross paths—until the day June’s brother, Metias, is murdered and Day becomes the prime suspect. Caught in the ultimate game of cat and mouse, Day is in a race for his family’s survival, while June seeks to avenge Metias’s death. But in a shocking turn of events, the two uncover the truth of what has really brought them together, and the sinister lengths their country will go to keep its secrets. Full of nonstop action, suspense, and romance, this novel is sure to move readers as much as it thrills.

"Each day means a new twenty-four hours. Each day means everything's possible again. You live in the moment, you die in the moment, you take it all one day at a time." He looks toward the railway car's open door, where streaks of dark water blanket the world. "You try to walk in the light."

While Legend is one of the better books of the YA dystopian market, it doesn't really introduce anything new to the genre. Sure, it has intense action sequences and two kickass main characters. But they're lacking something. I felt removed from the book as I was reading it, probably because everything seemed too simple. The characters, Day and June, were pretty two-dimensional, driven by the same old impulses to protect family. Not that I'm saying dystopian characters should ditch their families and shoot up on drugs in the streets, but as someone who likes reading so many books, things get old pretty fast. However, props to Lu for writing some awesome action. There are oodles of punching, shooting, slapping around with gun handles, and even some biting(!!!). The plot is relatively simplistic, and you can guess a lot of what will happen.

This is going to sound extremely weird, but I respect Lu's integration of death in her book. She manages to make the deaths in the book meaningful, and I'm so glad she doesn't engineer a bloodbath in the end. Despite the detachment I felt from Day and June, I did develop an affection for their family members.

Regarding the "love" in this book, I honestly feel that it happened way too fast. One minute June and Day are distrusting each other, and the next they're kissing each other. It just felt extremely unrealistic, given that Day was supposed to have street smarts. I would have expected him to be a little slow about trusting June, but he was remarkably naive about it. Legend, I think, is more a setup for the next two books. I learned about the world that June and Day live in, met some of the characters, got to see some blood fly. But in the end, I didn't take much from it. There's no great message, and the book never really engaged me completely. Otherwise, it's decent. I'll definitely be reading Prodigy.

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Review: Cinder by Marissa Meyer

Book: Cinder
Author: Marissa Meyer
Series: Lunar Chronicles
Publishing Date: January 3rd, 2012
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
My rating: 3 Stars

Initially, I wasn't going to read this book, maybe because I was a bit wary of a cyborg-Cinderella story. I mean, a cynic like me who hears rumors of a dystopian novel set with robots, technology, kingdoms, and BEIJING would immediately have expected something subpar. But I looked at that cover, and I thought that I should get it just to stare at it. I still can't stop staring at it. The reflections on the shoe and the metal bones. AHHH. That is some serious case of cover-love.

For this review, I'll start with the characters.
Cinder: Cool. Awkward. Another one of those ugly-but-pretty girls. Prone to strange acts of embarrassment, like hiding herself behind her hair while she gasps? I don't know. Meyer's description needs some improvement.

Kai: Cute. Immature, but of course he's never been taught in etiquette because he's a prince! No, he just suffers from some foot-in-mouth syndrome sometimes. Other than that, he improves towards the end, and his reaction to the situation is about the only one that made sense. Although he needs to stop inclining his head and making his hair fall into his eyes. He's going to go blind soon if he doesn't get a haircut.

Peony: Meyer is just too cruel. Peony is the sweetest character ever. And I feel like she had more potential than what she was given. To be honest, it felt more like she was more engineered to die and give Cinder something to fight for than anything else.

Pearl and Adri: Honestly? Bitches. Both of them. I was hoping for something that would make them understandable, and Meyer seemed to have been going in that direction in the beginning of the book, with all the stuff about Adri seeming guilty about sending Cinder away. But nope. They're just bitches. Which was quite a disappointment. Like Meyer sort of wanted to change things up but got lazy or forgot.

Dr. Erland: I quite like this guy. He's funny. Strangely enough, I thought he was the evil one, and his ulterior motives were some of the few things I didn't immediately realize in the beginning.

Queen Levana: Perhaps even bitchier than Pearl and Adri. Definitely more diabolical. However, I think Meyer spent a little too much time talking about Levana being evil instead of showing that she was. Because of this, her actions seemed more wooden, and I could only manage a "huh, did she just ruin all their lives?" at the end.

Not a very exciting cast of characters (with the exception of the Doctor. He was awesome.) or even witty dialogue, in my opinion, but something that redeemed this was the idea. CINDER is possibly one of the more original books I've read, which is ironic considering the fairytale it revolves around. It had so much potential, but Meyer only pulls off half of it. I loved the idea of the Lunars, since moving to space is a big deal in the world of science. That an author would consider exploring the ramifications shows capacity for creativity. The unfortunate thing is that Meyer starts off with a predictable plot, and an equally predictable set of characters. Despite the fresh idea, this book seems to be only a shell of what could have been amazing. The setting of New Beijing in the midst of all this stuff about "dystopian America" is actually nicely done. I can't complain too much about her world building--despite passing off a disease as something with no cure, no origins, no nothing, she does explain, albeit blatantly obviously.

That was what knocked off a star for me. How blatantly obvious everything is, even from the beginning. I basically read 200 pages just to have everything confirmed for me. It would've been nice if Meyer had thrown in a plot twist or two to spice things up. The ending was intended to be cliffhanger-y, but I just said "meh," then booted up my computer to write this review.

The other star is for the mediocre cast. The three stars are for the brilliant idea and the cover, maybe even for some of the cute scenes between Kai and Cinder that made me laugh. I liked her entrance into the ball. Also, this book kept me reading, despite everything, and that's always important.

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