ARC Review: The Girl from Everywhere by Heidi Heilig

Author:  Heidi Heilig

Genre: Young adult, historical, fantasy

Publisher: Greenwillow Books

Publication Date: February 16, 2016

464 pages, hardcover

Check out the full synopsis on Goodreads.

NOTE: I was provided with an e-ARC of this book via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Greenwillow Books for letting me read this!

This book, you guys. Heart eyes all the way over here. The Girl from Everywhere is full of magic and myths and beautiful writing. It’s got fantastic, strong, swoony characters and so much life. It’s magical – the story, the characters, the places, the actual magic. So so good.

I’ve got to start by talking about the world building which is utter perfection. Heidi is able to beautifully describe each of the (many) settings in such a way that they are all distinct. You can actually picture each of them, and this is a big feat. We’ve got New York, Hawaii, ancient China, a version of Africa only seen in myths.

And the characters are just as wonderful. Nix is independent and smart, and I was rooting for her the whole time. I loved following her on this journey, and I really appreciated her growth. I really loved all of the characters in the book (and I think that every single one of them was well-developed – like, seriously. I could picture them all), but after Nix, my favorite character is hands down Kash. You guys, Kash is bae. He’s from a fictional version of Arabia (it’s kind of impossible to not think of him as Aladdin), and he’s wonderful and swoony. But the best part to me? The romance wasn’t really the focus in this story. It’s there, sure, but not in the foreground, and I really appreciated that.

My favorite part though has just got to be the idea of travel like this – through time and space and myths and legends. It was absolutely fascinating, and I could read 100 more books like this and never get bored. There are so many places they could travel. I’m excited that this is the start of a series!

If I had to voice a small complaint, it would be that the book is a bit confusing once or twice because of the vast amount of information and stories we’re given. But it all makes sense in the end, and it obviously didn’t hinder my enjoyment much.

The bottom line: Read this if you like fantasy books. Read it if you like magical, amazing worlds and characters. Read this if you like great writing and fantastic stories. You know what?  Just read it, okay?

Rating: 8 – freaking fantastic

Waiting on Wednesday: A Drop of Night by Stefan Bachmann

 Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine in which we share a book that we are eagerly anticipating!

Publisher: Greenwillow Books

Author: Stefan Bachmann

Release date: March 15, 2016

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Seventeen-year-old Anouk has finally caught the break she’s been looking for—she’s been selected out of hundreds of other candidates to fly to France and help with the excavation of a vast, underground palace buried a hundred feet below the suburbs of Paris. Built in the 1780’s to hide an aristocratic family and a mad duke during the French Revolution, the palace has lain hidden and forgotten ever since. Anouk, along with several other gifted teenagers, will be the first to set foot in it in over two centuries.

Or so she thought.

But nothing is as it seems, and the teens soon find themselves embroiled in a game far more sinister, and dangerous, than they could possibly have imagined. An evil spanning centuries is waiting for them in the depths. . .

A genre-bending thriller from Stefan Bachmann for fans of The Maze Runner and Joss Whedon’s The Cabin in the Woods.

You cannot escape the palace.

You cannot guess its secrets.

Why I’m excited: I’m sorry for the language but HOLY SHIT YES PLEASE CAN I HAVE THIS NOW??? This sounds freaking awesome, and I can’t wait for it to scare the crap out of me. It sounds like it’s going to be a bit of a psychological thriller and probably mess with your mind a bit, and I can’t wait – those are my favorite kinds of movies, so I’m looking forward to having one in book form. Sounds like it’s going to be FREAKY.

Thursday Thoughts: Kevin Henkes Display at the Library

A lot of you have said that you really like when I share stuff from my job at the library – about programs or displays or whatever, so I thought I’d share this really fun display I did that I’m really proud of.

Greenwillow Books (HarperCollins) is running a contest centered around Kevin Henkes’ new book Waiting, and the grand prize is a freaking visit from Kevin Henkes!! So, of course, I wanted to try and win. Librarians (and booksellers) could request a promotional kit, and then they were asked to create a display that creatively and effectively promoted Waiting. This is what my display is all about: All of the characters in Kevin Henkes’ new book are waiting on something, so I wanted to see what our patrons (kids to adults) were waiting on. I asked everyone to write what they were waiting for on pieces of paper, and we had a multitude of answers – from Halloween to payday, grades to coffee on the front porch, a new baby brother to a big brother coming home from college, a visit from a fairy tale princess to an appearance by Kevin Henkes’ at the Pearl Public Library. All of the Henkes characters in the display, which come from many of his books, were hand drawn and colored by me, and I placed them around the display as if they were looking up at Waiting. My favorite is Owen with his fuzzy yellow blanket. It was SO MUCH FUN drawing all of these characters and seeing what all our patrons were waiting on. Other favorite answers: more teeth, 5 o’clock, my birthday, college, Thanksgiving, Christmas. Some of my answers: my next road trip, new books,

ARC Review: Made You Up by Francesca Zappia

Author:  Francesca Zappia

Genre: YA, Contemporary, Mental Illness

Publisher: Greenwillow Books

Publication Date: May 19, 2015

448 pages, Hardcover (326 ARC)

Check out the full synopsis on Goodreads.

Shout out to the wonderful Little Shop of Stories for letting me take this ARC! Check them out if you’re ever in Decatur, GA!

Alex just wants to free the lobsters. When Alex was seven, she freed the lobsters at the supermarket with the help of a boy with blue eyes, who disappeared almost as quickly as he appeared. Her mother never mentioned him, and it was soon after that Alex found out she has paranoid schizophrenia. But when Alex is 17, she meets the boy again at school and he is definitely real. Right?

This book was brilliant, you guys. It’s the perfect kind of unreliable narrator – Alex has hallucinations and delusions and she never quite knows if what she is seeing is real, so how are we meant to? Alex takes pictures of her life to prove to herself later that what she saw was real and if it doesn’t disappear from the photo, it really was there. Alex is the heart of this story and she is fascinating. She deals with what life’s given her as best as she can, and she’s tough and sarcastic because of it. I think she felt even more real because she isn’t always likable. There were times I wanted to shake her and that made her so realistic. I have always been fascinated with the brain and mental illness, and I was totally absorbed in learning about Alex’s paranoid schizophrenia.

And then there’s Miles, the boy with the blue eyes. He’s got his own issues; he sells himself out to complete sometimes stupid and sometimes dangerous tasks for people at their high school. He’s a bit arrogant and a bit of a jerk sometimes, but he’s also vulnerable and it’s easy to fall a bit in love with him, but I appreciated the fact that the romance doesn’t take a front seat to Alex and her struggle with mental illness. Plus, he’s not exactly your typical love interest.

All of the characters in Made You Up felt fully fleshed, not just Alex and Miles – the principle who has a weird obsession with the school’s scoreboard, mean girl Celia whose mother seems to be forcing her to be that way, Miles’ friends and Alex’s little sister and parents. Zappia does an amazing job with her characters and none of them felt pointless or two-dimensional.

I won’t give it away, but OH MY GOODNESS, the twist! I was NOT expecting that. Zappia is definitely really good with misdirection, which is why her unreliable narrator is so freaking well-done. One thing that kind of bothered me was the end, which felt a little rushed, but it didn’t really change my feelings toward this book.

The bottom line: Made You Up is an addictive, compelling story that is both wonderfully written and absolutely fascinating. I could give you a whole bunch of other adjectives to describe how much I liked this book, or I could just say this: READ THIS NOW.

Rating: 8 – freaking fantastic

Waiting on Wednesday – No Parking at the End Times by Bryan Bliss

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine in which we share a book that we are eagerly anticipating!

Publisher: Greenwillow Books

Author: Bryan Bliss

Release date: February 24, 2015

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Abigail’s parents have made mistake after mistake, and now they’ve lost everything. She’s left to decide: Does she still believe in them? Or is it time to believe in herself? Fans of Sara Zarr, David Levithan, and Rainbow Rowell will connect with this moving debut.

Abigail doesn’t know how her dad found Brother John. Maybe it was the billboards. Or the radio. What she does know is that he never should have made that first donation. Or the next, or the next. Her parents shouldn’t have sold their house. Or packed Abigail and her twin brother, Aaron, into their old van to drive across the country to San Francisco, to be there with Brother John for the “end of the world.” Because of course the end didn’t come. And now they’re living in their van. And Aaron’s disappearing to who-knows-where every night. Their family is falling apart. All Abigail wants is to hold them together, to get them back to the place where things were right. But maybe it’s too big a task for one teenage girl. Bryan Bliss’s thoughtful, literary debut novel is about losing everything—and about what you will do for the people you love.

Why I’m excited: Dude, this sounds fascinating. I’ve never read a book like this, so to me, it sounds really unique. I’m kind of intrigued by groups like this, that believe they can predict when the end of the world will be. I also really love books about family relationships and what someone will do for the people they love. Plus that title is awesome. Definitely want to check this one out.

What are you waiting on?