My Soul to Take by Rachel Vincent

Title: My Soul to Take (Soul Screamers #1)

Author: Rachel Vincent

Publisher: Harlequin Teen

Release Date: August 1, 2009

Source: Purchased

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository

Something is wrong with Kaylee Cavanaugh.

She doesn’t see dead people, but…

She senses when someone hear her is about to die. And when that happens, a force beyond her control compels her to scream bloody murder. Literally.

Kaylee just wants to enjoy having caught the attention of the hottest guy in school. But a normal date is hard to come by when Nash seems to know more about her need to scream than she does. And when classmates start dropping dead for no apparent reason, only Kaylee knows who’ll be next…

I have been hearing about the Soul Screamers series for the longest time and have had the books sitting on my shelf for quite a while, but I only just picked up My Soul to Take. And then I got hooked and had trouble putting the book down. It was a fantastic start to what I'm sure is a fantastic series.

For the most part, Kaylee Cavannaugh has a normal life. At least as normal as can be when her mother died when she was three and her father left, leaving Kaylee with her aunt and uncle. And then there's the whole screaming thing, which doesn't really make her the most popular girl in school. Because the thing about Kaylee is that she can sense when people are about to die and that causes her to scream. But now things are looking up. Nash, one of the most popular boys in school, is paying attention to her and seems to know more about Kaylee's screaming than he's willing to let on. But then girls start dropping dead left and right. And Kaylee can only hold in the screams for so long.

So why I waited so long to start reading the Soul Screamers series has become a mystery to me. I've had the books sitting on my shelf for the longest time but never really felt compelled to pick them up. But now that I've read My Soul to Take, I regret not having started this series earlier. It was a fantastic read, and one  that quickly drew me in. It didn't take very long for me to have trouble putting the book down. I just wanted to find out what was going on with Kaylee and all the mystery surrounding her family. Rachel Vincent really wrote an incredible story here, and made it so I want nothing more than to find out what would happen next. 

I liked Kaylee right from the start. She was a great character and I was happy she was the one telling the story. She had a fantastic voice and I loved finding things out at the same time as she did. I also loved seeing her grow and come into her own. The only issue I had with her was how quickly her relationship with Nash took off. But at the same time I really liked their relationship, so it was something that I was able to overlook. And I also, obviously, really liked Nash. He was a great counterpart to Kaylee and I loved all he was willing to do for her. As for the other characters, I would have liked to see more of them, especially when it comes to Tod. But I'm told that I should be patient and the time for more Tod will come.

I'm glad I finally picked up My Soul to Take and started reading the Soul Screamers series. I can't wait to find out what happens in the next book. 

Dead to You Blog Tour: Q&A with Lisa McMann

Today I am lucky enough to be participating in Simon & Schuster Canada's blog tour for Dead to You by Lisa McMann. I had the pleasure of asking author Lisa McMann a few questions and here is what she had to say.

Many of your books, and especially Dead to You, have a thriller feel to them. What is it about that genre that attracts you to it?

I’m not really sure. All I know is that I like books where the ‘enemies’ are bigger than the ordinary teen, because it’s so freaking awesome when a teen character successfully overcomes it. Often one of those enemies is internal. And I like books with action. Where something’s terribly wrong, and maybe there isn’t a perfect way to make it right, but people will go through strange, sometimes sinister feats to make it right as they can, even if that only makes it more wrong. (Was that deep or what?)

Dead to You is about a boy who returns to his family after having been missing for 9 years. Where did the inspiration come from for writing this story?

The inspiration came from a story in The New Yorker, though I took the concept in a different direction. I think the story title was The Chameleon – don’t Google it if you haven’t read DEAD TO YOU yet, because it will spoil the ending.

How did you go about doing the research for Dead to You? 

I had several conversations with a child/teen social worker and spoke with someone at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. I also did a lot of online research.

Are any of the characters in Dead to You, or any of your other books, based on or inspired by people you know?

I guess all the characters I write have characteristics in them of people I know or have met along the way. Some of them have traits I admire and wish I had. In The Unwanteds, Mr. Today is inspired by a combination of two people I know – a mentor of mine, and a mentor of my daughter’s. In the WAKE trilogy, Captain is a lot like my friend Diane.

How would you describe Dead to You in one sentence for people who haven't heard about it?

DEAD TO YOU is about a boy who was abducted at the age of seven. Now he’s sixteen and he’s found his family back…but he doesn’t really remember them. (Sorry, that was two sentences. J)

Thank you to Lisa McMann for answering my questions, and to Simon & Schuster Canada for letting me be a part of this blog tour. Before you go be sure to check out the trailer for Dead to You below, and if you haven't already be sure to also check out my review to know what I thought of the book.

Blog Tour - The Miseducation of Cameron Post

Today I have the pleasure of having Emily M. Danforth, author of the recently released The Miseducation of Cameron Post, here on the blog to talk more about her book and telling us what it was like to write a book that is set in the 1990s. So without further ado, here is what she had to say.

Cameron Post, the eponymous narrator of my first novel, comes-of-age in a world that’s now two decades old. Her experiences as a teenager slogging through the insistent gray muck (thanks to Colson Whitehead’s novel Sag Harbor for that phrase) that was the pop culture of the early 1990s, while sometimes identical to those of fifteen year-olds today—certain songs on the stereo, teen movies with memorable catchphrases, particular kinds of style and slang—are also, in many ways, completely alien when contrasted with the American adolescent experience of 2012. In 1991 you made somebody you liked a mixtape, you didn’t link them to your playlist on Spotify. In 1991 the internet wasn’t even commercialized yet (in fact, the very first website—as in one website—was built in a research lab in 1991). Meaning that your average teenager, even the nerdiest and most tech-savvy teenager, would not have “been on” the internet, because there was no internet (at least not as we know of it today, or even as we knew of it a decade ago). And here’s just one more: in 1991, not only was Ellen DeGeneres not yet out as a lesbian, she didn’t even have a TV show. And when she got one in 1994, it was a sitcom, not a talk show. And she played a straight character on it for several seasons. (Heck, in 1991 even Melissa Etheridge—yes— singer-songwriter, folk-festival-appearing, lady-loving Melissa Etheridge) wasn’t out of the closet. That didn’t happen, for the record, until 1993). Which brings me to my point (in case you thought that I didn’t have one): if one of the things that popular culture often “does” for us (especially for teenagers) is reflect our lives—our selves and desires—back to us, there just wasn’t a whole lot of easily accessible, non-straight popular culture to come by in eastern Montana in 1991 to be “reflected back” to non-straight audiences. Don’t get me wrong: there was a heckuva lot more than there was even five years before, or five years before that. But there were no online communities to join, or episodes of Skins or Pretty Little Liars (or even reruns of Will & Grace) to catch up on, or Lady Gaga songs to sing along with for empowerment or affirmation or even just moments of recognition. (We did, however, have Lady Gaga’s predecessor: Madonna. And 1990 gave us this classic queer gem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogue_%28Madonna_song%29).

Because of all of this, teens who were eager to find non-straight representations in popular culture but who lived in rural communities or small towns, suburbs or even insulated urban neighborhoods, had to seek it out in often unexpected places—and usually in complete secrecy. And while there’s certainly a kind of thrill in privately discovering a scene in a movie or a character in a novel that you can relate to, the energy and joy of sharing that with your friends, of watching a movie—a “mainstream” movie in a theater or in someone’s living room—with non-straight adolescent characters falling in love or hooking up or just growing up—is lost if you have to do all of this discovering in private and don’t feel like you can share it. By the end of the 1990s, things had changed dramatically in terms of LGBTQ representation in popular culture, but The Miseducation of Cameron Post takes place just before many of those changes occurred.

Luckily, Cameron is resourceful; she learns to look for subtext and subtlety in the movies she rents constantly, and she’s willing to sit through an otherwise terrible movie if there’s the slightest chance of a powerful female lead or a tomboyish sidekick. And it just so happens that there’s a video rental store just a few blocks from her house, and since her parents’ death she’s moved a TV and VCR into her bedroom, so those things definitely help. Even luckier, she soon meets Lindsey, a girl who lives most of the year with her mom in Seattle, but who spends her summers in Montana with her dad. And streetwise “riot-grrrl in training” Lindsey knows all kinds of things that become crucial to Cameron’s education (and maybe sometimes to her miseducation, too). Lindsey introduces Cam to books and movies, magazines and music, even to slang terms and acronyms, that make her feel like she’s part of a community; one that’s imperfect, to be sure, but one that she can claim even from the windswept prairie of eastern Montana.

If you’re straight you’re used to having lots of characters and situations in the world around you that reflect the way you love, or the way you crush, or maybe just the way you want to be in love. I’m not suggesting that you’re necessarily enthralled by or even interested in each of those stories or situations, but you can’t deny their presence. From the pages of novels to the big screen to the small screen to advertising to a glossy spread in a bridal or entertainment magazine: guys and gals are always falling in love, or falling out of love, or struggling through love, in pop culture. So it makes sense then, that non-straight teens are so hungry for non-straight stories and representations to identify with that they sometimes dedicate a whole lot of time to the pursuit of those representations, to tracking down obscure and low budget 1960’s vampire movies or novels from now-defunct publishers, and when they find them it becomes sort of like badge of honor to have recognized one more, to have joined in a quasi-secret conversation. At least that was the case for Cameron Post, back in 1991.

Thank you Emily for stopping by the blog today. Be sure to continue following the tour through The Teen Book Scene. 

Waiting on Wednesday (34)

For those of you who don't know, Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jill of Breaking the Spine where book bloggers devote a post to an upcoming book release they are particularly looking forward to reading.

THIS WEEK'S PICK:

CITY OF LOST SOULS BY CASSANDRA CLARE

The New York Times bestselling Mortal Instruments continues—and so do the thrills and danger for Jace, Clary, and Simon. Can the lost be reclaimed? What price is too high to pay for love? Who can be trusted when sin and salvation collide? Love. Blood. Betrayal. Revenge. Darkness threatens to claim the Shadowhunters in the harrowing fifth book of the Mortal Instruments series.

This is the best summary I could find for the book, but even with just that I am incredibly excited for the release of this book. The Mortal Instruments series is one of my all time favorite series, and I love pretty much everything that Cassandra Clare writes. All that to say I am very excited for City of Lost Souls.

City of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare will be published May 8th, 2012 by Margaret K. McElderry Books.

Dead to You by Lisa McMann

Title: Dead to You

Author: Lisa McMann

Publisher: Simon Pulse

Release Date: February 7, 2012

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository

Some memories are best left untouched.

Ethan was abducted from his front yard when he was just seven years old. Now, at sixteen, he has returned to his family.

It’s a miracle…at first.

Then the tensions start to build, and his family starts falling apart all over again. If only Ethan could remember something, anything, about his life before, he’d be able to put pieces back together.

But there’s something that’s keeping his memory blocked.

Something unspeakable…

Until I read Dead to You, I had heard plenty about Lisa McMann but had never actually read any of her books. But once I started reading, I pretty much read the whole book in one sitting. I'm definitely glad I've finally picked up a Lisa McMann book. 

For nine years, Ethan lived with a woman who wasn't his mother. But Ethan doesn't really remember having any other life. That's because when he was seven years old, Ethan was abducted from his front yard an all his memories from before that time seem to be blocked. Now sixteen, Ethan is reunited with his family and everything is going great. At first. But not long after Ethan's return, things start to take a turn for the worst. Right when Ethan starts feeling at home with his family, his younger brother starts doubting that Ethan isn't who he says he is. And from there, everything spirals downwards. But unless Ethan can remember his life from before the abduction, non one will know the truth.

I am very happy that I have now discovered what a fantastic writer Lisa McMann is. Dead to You was an incredible book. It kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time I was reading, and I just couldn't seem to put the book down. Every time I told myself I would stop after just one more chapter, I found myself reading on and on. It was just that good. The way Lisa McMann wrote the story, I couldn't help but want to find out more about everything that was going on. A lot of that also had to do with the fact she decided to tell the story from Ethan's perspective. This way, the reader would get as frustrated with everything as Ethan, and would want to understand what was going on as much as him. And the ending was great, though I'm not sure I was fully satisfied by it. A few weeks later I'm still sort of trying to make sense of it.

With this book, it's really hard to say anything about the characters, mainly because the story focuses mostly on Ethan and how he's reacting to being back with his family after nine years of being away. But that doesn't mean that Ethan wasn't an interesting character, because he really was. I loved that even though he was the one telling the story, there was still a lot of mystery surrounding him because he was missing some of his memories. I really enjoyed puzzling everything out at the same time as he did. But I also really liked finding out more about him and just getting to know him. He was definitely the most important part of the story. Ethan's family was also interesting, but I felt like I didn't know enough about them. But at the same time, knowing more about them would have completely changed the story.

Overall, Dead to You was an incredible story and I'm happy I've now discovered Lisa McMann as a writer. If you're in the mood for a mystery and a thriller, I definitely recommend you pick up Dead to You and give it a chance.